Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this great bill. I want to thank and congratulate the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Blunt) and the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Ford) for this bipartisan effort.

America is the most charitable country in the history of planet Earth. We ought to rejoice in the American great tradition of charity. The problem is that unfortunately, taxpayers, businesses and individuals, are punished through the Tax Code even when they use after-tax dollars to contribute to the well-being of their fellow citizens. For all of the reasons that the critics dislike this bill, one critic suggested he is opposed to this bill because it does not do everything that we should be doing to help America. The last speaker just suggested that what we have is a problem in that the Federal Government is losing money. Well, the whole presumption is that somehow this is the Federal Government's money in the first place. I would suggest that people in Oviedo, where I live, think it is their money and that they are best able to determine how to help the well-being of their neighbors and charities.

This is a wonderful bill because it allows the two-thirds of us that do not itemize our deductions to participate in a tax deduction when we help our fellow citizens. I think that is a great idea. It levels the playing field. You do not have to be a wealthy, complicated tax filer in order to enjoy the deduction. This bill levels the playing field. All of us will get the deduction. It allows people that have built up assets in their IRA that maybe will not be necessary for their retirement to take advantage of a provision so that they will be able to contribute to important charities in their neighborhoods and communities. Finally, it adds additional help to businesses that want to provide food or shelter or well-being for the needy.

I will end with the fact that there are two approaches to how we can help our fellow man. Some people, well-meaning, think we ought to confiscate as much tax dollars as we can from individuals and businesses in order to have a one-size-fits-all government program to help the needy. My experience is that the best way to help people is through local charitable giving where you can help people not become dependent on government but you can help them reform their lives, get back on their feet and help themselves. That is what this bill does.

Mr. Chairman, the first thing I want to do is to thank my good friend, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake), who really is a great freedom fighter and somebody I admire and respect a great deal. But I have a huge difference of opinion in terms of what promotes freedom, not just in our hemisphere, but throughout the world with respect to this specific issue.

One of the many arguments I have heard from the proponents of this amendment is that the Cuban citizens would be better off if they had American tourists. Arguably, Iraqi citizens would have been better off if we had a free flow of Iraqi oil throughout the world and the prosperity that that might have brought, but not if Saddam Hussein was using the profits to terrorize his own people and to export terrorism and totalitarianism elsewhere throughout the world.

That is precisely the predicament we are in. Fidel Castro, as long as he is alive and in charge in Cuba, will use every last dollar to terrorize his own people, to basically jail dissidents, to execute people that disagree with him, and to export terrorism throughout the world. He is the single last remnant of the 100-year terrorism that communism plagued upon our entire planet in the last century. Yet, he stands just 90 miles off of our shores in Florida where he put missiles aimed at the people of the United States less than 25 years ago.

I will tell my colleagues that when the lambs lay down with the lions, lambs get slaughtered, and the day to capitulate and to acquiesce and to acknowledge Castro as some reality that we have to put up with, condone, and even support with tourism dollars is not here and it will never be here, as long as those of us who truly believe that the way to freedom is to show up and stare down dictators, not cooperate with them.

I will tell you this one out is the last remnant of communism, totalitarianism, repression, and it is the original terrorist state. We need to stare down Castro and not succumb to his evil deeds.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. Chairman, first, I want to rise to express a lot of empathy and sympathy with the concerns expressed on the Otter amendment. I think that they are very legitimate questions. I think some of the concerns about the rapidity with which the PATRIOT I Act was passed in the aftermath of a huge American historic tragedy are legitimate concerns. But the rapidity with which we are passing this amendment in some ways reflects the problems that some of the proponents of the amendment are suggesting the original PATRIOT Act is guilty of.

I will tell my colleagues that it is important to have deliberation and thoughtfulness as we go through the process of striking a new balance. I think all of us will recognize that the last time the mainland of the United States was attacked by a foreign power before September 11 was in 1812. All of us here are civil libertarians, but defining the balance between order and liberty is a constant struggle with new technologies, with new challenges.

When was the last time that we as Americans before September 11 literally thought about the terror of a potential biological, chemical, nuclear attack from a foreign power? This is a whole new set of balancing that we have to do within the great framework that the founders provided us in the Constitution. And I agree with the gentleman from Idaho (Mr. Otter) and the proponents of this amendment that we need to have careful and thoughtful reflection, and we need to be constantly dealing with balancing these new issues.

But I do believe that the best place to do that is through the subcommittee process, in committees like the Committee on the Judiciary, which I serve on. We hear expert testimony from civil libertarians and law professors, from prosecutors and defense attorneys, from people throughout the country who have expertise in advising us, as the body that represents the people of the United States in a democratic fashion, but also in a fashion that respects the constitutional framework.

I personally am a huge civil libertarian, and there is much in the suggestion that the gentleman from Idaho (Mr. Otter) and the proponents have of this amendment with which I hugely sympathize. But I will tell my colleagues this: in a new day when all of our children and all of our grandchildren are constantly under threat of biological, chemical, or nuclear terror, which was not true, 10, 15, 20, 30 years ago, the time for us has come to move into the 21st century in terms of preparing the defense of the homeland. That is why we created an Office of Homeland Security.

Now, let me address the merits of the amendment itself, because with all due respect, there is some suggestion that the PATRIOT Act radically changed the process of delayed notification. The question is when a subpoena is issued, are there times when actual prior notification to the recipient of the subpoena can be waived; and the answer is, it has always been true, or at least far before September 11, that in most circuits in the United States, Federal courts have allowed the delayed notification. But several things are required.

Number one, one would think from listening to some of the debate that any prosecutor or any sheriff or any law enforcement agent or any FBI agent could go in and subpoena records and tell people only after the fact that their records had been confiscated and reviewed by the government. That is a scary thought, but it is simply not accurate. The truth of the matter is that in all events, 213 requires that a judge make a decision. The authority is based on a court order and a court order alone. So a judge is going to review all of the potential evidence in the case to determine whether or not the delayed notification is warranted.

I want the people to understand throughout America when courts are in power, and the only time they are in power to approve delayed notification, courts can delay notice only when immediate notification, in other words, prior notification, might result in the death or physical harm of an individual.

Imagine the events leading up to September 11 and the intelligence we now know, if we had been better prepared to put it together, assimilate it, understand what it meant. Courts can only delay notification if the death or physical harm of an individual is impacted, or when there is flight from prosecution; and we had some 19 terrorists floating around America that we now know organized the September 11 events; evidence tampering, or witness intimidation.

Mr. Chairman, I would suggest that the Otter amendment raises concerns that I share, and those concerns are that we have to balance in a new technological world, in a world of new threats, liberty and order and security and homeland security. I would suggest that the issues raised here are appropriate to debate. We will be debating them for years, dare I say decades; but I do not think the place to debate them is in the appropriation bill of the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf).

Mr. Speaker, there are several gentlemen from Florida here tonight, including my cohort and friend Mario Diaz-Balart, along with the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling) and a lot of the Republican freshman class. We have been very concerned, as we review the last 5 or 6 or 8 years' worth of Federal spending, about some, really, misappropriations that are going on. It is very bothersome.

I will tell my colleagues that Ronald Reagan once defined the American taxpayer as somebody that worked for the Federal Government but did not have to take the civil service exam. Unfortunately, that is all too often too true.

The Americans for Tax Reform group actually estimates, based on economic estimates, that the average American has to work this year 193 days, well into July, just to pay their cost of Federal, State, and local taxes and regulations. That is obscene. It is a big problem.

I will tell my colleagues that P.J. O'Rourke once said that trusting your money to government bureaucrats and politicians was a little bit like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. It is just a bad idea.

So I am delighted to join the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling), the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mario Diaz-Balart) and most of the Republican freshman class who enthusiastically have said we are going to come down here to the well on a regular basis every week and we are going to talk about some of the outrageous misexpenditures of our constituents' money that offend us so badly.

We are grateful for the fact that we can stand here and talk to people around the country about the fact that we want every politician that serves with us and every bureaucrat and administrator that serves with us to know one thing: They do not want to be the victim of next week's most outrageous expenditure. They do not want to be, if you are the procurement officer in a specific government agency, the topic of the major speech that week. We intend to, for example, have some awards for the most outrageous abuse of taxpayers' dollars.

Now, I will tell my colleagues that 2 years ago there was at least $17 billion worth of expenditures for which there was no accountability. The agencies that spent the money could not tell us what happened to the money.

Aside from misexpenditures, there is the problem of duplication. We have a homeless problem in America, but there is something wrong when there are over 50 different Federal agencies dealing with the issue of the homeless. The duplication of services is a big problem.

We will regularly be coming and talking to our colleagues about the Washington Waste Watchers led by the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mario Diaz-Balart), led by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling), led by the Republican freshman class in 2003 to talk about how we can make government more accountable to all of our taxpayers.

I will tell you that, finally, there is something fundamentally wrong when, for example, the National Parks Service 4 years ago purchased an outhouse, a place where people could relieve themselves, and spent more than $800,000. Imagine that. Think for a second about what the bears did in that park, in that forest; but we spent $800,000 for people to relieve themselves.

We want everybody in charge of government dollars to know we will be here on a daily basis, on a weekly basis reminding them that we know spending other people's money is an intoxicating experience, but we intend to hold you accountable.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia for yielding me this time.

I am not surprised that some tax planners oppose this act, because what this does is to simplify the Tax Code. What the substitute amendment does is to make a 40,000-plus page Tax Code longer and more complicated. It is understandable that a few tax planners do not like this.

But there is something inherently unfair about taxing people when they die. My motto is: No taxation without respiration. When a person quits breathing, we ought to leave them alone. And the notion we are going to make a complicated Tax Code even more complicated with this ceiling under the Pomeroy amendment, this creates a ceiling on growth and prosperity and success. This is a ceiling on the future.

The bottom line is that we have more people in America engaged in the preparation and collection of taxes than we do in the growing of food and agriculture. That is wrong. We need actually to have fewer tax planners and estate planners. We need to let family farmers, we need to let small businesses, automobile dealers and other businesses in our communities plan for their future without the need of expensive lawyers and tax planners.

Again, my colleagues, let us abolish the death tax. No taxation without respiration.

Mr. Chairman, I want to congratulate and thank the gentleman from Wisconsin (Chairman Sensenbrenner) and the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte) for this fine bill. This is a commonsense reform of the class action process throughout the United States.

Mr. Chairman, this bill does not deny anybody access to a court or to a judge. What it does say is that lawyers that have a special relationship with a judge cannot forum shop and select their own judge; they have to have equal-handed justice. This cuts down on the lottery mentality in the court system and gives everybody the same fair and equal access.

Mr. Chairman, the Founders of our great Republic were very concerned about some forum shopping throughout the States where some States would not treat out-of-state defendants fairly, so they created diversity jurisdiction to allow Federal courts to make sure there was an even- handed array of justice.

In some States where they elect their justices, literally we have special interests, in some cases the trial lawyers, that are actually able to buy elections and have their favorite justices determine the entire constitutionality of issues because they run the supreme court.

All this bill does is to say everybody gets a fair shot at a Federal judge if there is legitimate diversity jurisdiction. It stops the lottery game in our court system.

Mr. Speaker, it is a big thrill to rise today to honor a hometown university, the University of Central Florida, and their cheerleading team for their Division I championship and cheerleading and dance team competition this year. UCF President John Hitt and the entire UCF family are simply thrilled with the success and are extraordinarily proud of this accomplishment. In fact, this is no fluke. UCF cheerleaders have finished in the top 10 for 9 out of the last 10 years. Talk about consistency. All champions exhibit quiet determination; but two teammates especially, Jamie Woode and James Kersey, demonstrated exceptional resolve above and beyond the call by competing with serious injuries, a broken fibula for Jamie and a torn rotator cuff for James. That is the UCF Knights spirit.

A student athlete's success is not merely measured by athletic performance, however. This 18-member team holds a cumulative 3.3 grade point average. During her 19-tenure as coach, Linda Gooch has witnessed all but one of her team members earning bachelors degrees, an all-too- rare accomplishment in Division I competitive student athletic programs. Today I will submit a resolution with many colleagues from Florida commending the fabulous success of the University of Central Florida cheerleading team on its championship this year and wish them continued success in the future both on and off the field.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time.

I rise in support of the rule. The rule was actually necessitated over a debate about what this bill should include.

Some of the opponents of the rule suggested it should include just the AMBER Alert system, and as they well know, actually the AMBER Alert system has already been instituted by Bush administration. It reminds me of an experience that Adlai Stevenson shared when he was running for President in 1956. At the end of what he thought was a great speech of about 40 or 45 minutes, a woman from the audience came up and said, Mr. Stevenson, I thought your speech was simply superfluous. To which he responded, to test whether she really had a full grasp of the English language, Thank you, Madam; I am thinking of having it published posthumously, to which she replied, Wonderful, the sooner, the better.

Mr. Speaker, I applaud the gentleman from Wisconsin (Chairman Sensenbrenner) in his effort to make sure that what we are doing today is not superfluous. The AMBER Alert system is wonderful at attempting to retrieve children that are kidnapped and transported over State borders, but it is already in effect.

What we have tried to do in the committee under the leadership of the chairman is to deter and punish people and put them behind bars for a long time, who are actually about to kidnap, abuse, or sexually offend against minors. That is what this bill ultimately did, thanks to the leadership of the gentleman from Wisconsin (Chairman Sensenbrenner).

One of the provisions that has been added, I have a particular interest in. It has been referred to as the Feeney amendment. This bill with the amendment in it, as it has been modified in conference, addresses a serious problem of downward departures from the Federal Sentencing Guidelines by judges across the country. Although the guidelines continue to state that departures should be rare occurrences, they have actually proven to have been anything but.

The Department of Justice testified before the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security that the rate of downward departures on grounds other than substantial assistance to the government has climbed steadily every year for many years. In fact, the rate of such departures is up by an overwhelming 50 percent in just the last 5 years alone. And by the way, the rate of departures downwards is 33 times higher than the rate the Federal judges depart upwards from the sentencing guidelines.

The Department of Justice believes that much of the damage is traceable to the Supreme Court decision in King v. United States. Actually, that decision has led to an accelerated rate of downward departures by judges.

What this bill now does is to contain a number of provisions designed to ensure a more faithful adherence to the laws of the United States, as passed by this Congress. Specifically, the amendment, as it was adjusted in conference, would put strict limits on departures for child crimes and sex offenders by allowing sentences outside the guideline only upon grounds that are specifically enumerated by the judge. This is important because it limits the judge's discretion, forces the judge to explain what he has done, and provides an opportunity for the prosecutors to appeal if the judge has been completely unfaithful.

There are a number of other reported provisions that are contained in the Feeney amendment. It calls for the Sentencing Commission to review and revise the departures from guidelines for all other cases that do not involve offenses against children, provides for the Department of Justice to have access to existing judge-identifying database maintained by the Commission, and it does also provide there will be a report to Congress every year by the Department of Justice reflecting the reforms of internal appellate review practices for these downward departures.

Finally, it provides that no more than three of the commissioners to the Sentencing Guideline Commission can come from the ranks of the Federal judiciary.

This is a great victory today. It is a great victory for children. It is a great victory for those of us who do not want to just retake possession of children that have been kidnapped or abused, but those of us who want to prevent the abuse and the kidnapping to begin with.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I am going to say to my good friend in that, in the first place, the primary source rule probably ought to be in effect here. I was not part of the conference committee, and what I have is a review of that.

I do note that the gentleman from Wisconsin (Chairman Sensenbrenner) is on the floor, paying close attention; so at a minimum, I hope he will correct me for any deficiencies.

As I understand it, with respect to being more restrictive in terms of when Federal judges can depart downward from the guidelines, the original Feeney amendment actually applied to all Federal offenses. With respect to that downward departure restriction that we are doing now, it only applies to offenses against children, sex offenses, kidnapping, abuse, pornography. It does not apply to offenses outside that specific realm.

As I understand what the conference committee report did, it is actually Hatch-Sensenbrenner-Graham, referring to Senator Bob Graham, who is a colleague of ours from Florida. I am sorry, Lindsey Graham; it is tough when we have got too many Grahams running around.

In fairness to the gentleman, I should suggest that with respect to providing for de novo reviews of downward departures, that will apply to all Federal offenses, and the gentleman will remember the King v. United States case, the Rodney King incident where, for example, the Congressional Black Caucus was very concerned and issued a letter suggesting that we provide this de novo review; so I think we have got the best of both worlds.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding time to me. I am grateful to the gentlewoman.

In the first place, the honorable gentleman has me at a disadvantage because he has been a member of the other part of our government, and I am respectful of the fact that he has some wisdom and insights that I do not.

I would suggest, however, that what we are doing here is not eliminating the ability of judges to depart from the sentencing guidelines; we are preserving their right and asking them to explain why they did so.

Finally, I would make the point to the gentleman that if the departure ratio was 33 times higher than sentencing guidelines, for every time that there is one below the guidelines, I would suggest to him that we might be hearing from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Criminal Defense Association, and the American Bar Association with a sense of outrage that people with disparate treatment are being abused by having too much sentences imposed on them.

By the way, historically in America there have been suggestions, and I do not have any studies to back it up, that racial and ethnic minorities have been particularly abused along those lines.

I would suggest we have struck a balance here.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to congratulate the Committee on the Budget and the chairman for the fine work they have done during admittedly very difficult times, internationally and at home.

I must admit, I have spent the last 3 hours listening to some great debates, but I do not know exactly where they are coming from. I feel like I am getting economics lessons from the same folks that taught geography to the Flat Earth Society.

What I am hearing from the same folks is the same philosophy that for 3 or 4 decades now has taken the position that we can spend, spend, spend our way out of trouble, is that we ought to somehow shrink a deficit that has been created largely over 30 or 40 years of spending.

The truth of the matter is that there are two approaches being taken here tonight. One side is advocating that we can spend our way out of trouble. The other side is advocating that we can grow our way out of trouble. The economic stimulus package that we are talking about, in the Kennedyesque style of the early sixties and the Reaganesque style of the 1980s is such that it will produce the same amount of growth that those great Presidents produced when they took the position that we can grow our way out of tough economic times.

I would remind Members from both sides of the aisle that in the aftermath of the victory in World War II, we had deficits that were much higher as a percentage of gross domestic product. We are now winning the war. As Prime Minister Thatcher said, Reagan won the Cold War without firing a shot. Yes, we had deficits, but after that, because of the low marginal tax rates, we had the highest period of sustained economic growth in history. Yes, we are winning the war on terror; we are winning the war on Iraq; and with Members' help, we can win the war to stimulate our economy by supporting this budget.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, I respectfully disagree with the amendment of the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott), and would ask a ``no'' vote on his proposed amendment.

In essence, this is a battle about two competing theories with respect to gun manufacturers and gun sellers in America. There is one theory that presumes that gun manufacturers and gun sellers are inherently guilty of something, somewhere, almost all of the time. The other theory is that, consistent with the second amendment, if we really believe that the second amendment protects the right to bear and own arms, that we must inherently protect the right of people to manufacture and distribute those arms.

What the gentleman's amendment does, as I read it, is basically several things that are very, very important, including allowing civil courts to find somebody guilty of criminal offenses without all of the inherent protections that we give to people who are accused of crimes.

It actually flies in the face of a subsequent amendment filed by the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Linda T. Sanchez), who makes the keystone of her amendment actually that one be convicted and found guilty of a crime before they are responsible in a civil action.

What this amendment of the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) does is to remove the requirement that you are convicted of any criminal act before you are held guilty in civil responsibility. It would allow lawsuits against firearms manufacturers, dealers, or importers if the action is against a transferor who knowingly transfers a firearm, knowing that such firearms will be used to commit a crime of violence or drug trafficking crime.

The bill currently allows for suits against people if the transferor is actually convicted of a crime. What this amendment does is to undermine the ability of somebody to defend themselves with all the inherent criminal protections that they ought to have before they are essentially found to have committed a crime.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, the gentleman is a very capable reader. I have discovered that in committee, and enjoy working with him.

However, I can read as well. What the bill does is say, before you are treated as a criminal, you need to be tried as a criminal in a criminal court, and you need to be convicted as a criminal. That is the American way.

What the amendment says is that you can be treated as a criminal even though you have never been tried as a criminal, and even though you have never been in a criminal court and certainly never been convicted.

Members will recall that the Bill of Rights, aside from protecting the right to bear firearms, also protects certain rights before one is convicted of a crime. It is the great American criminal jurisprudence.

Among other things, before you are a criminal, you have the right to a trial, you have the right to face your accusers, you have a right to call witnesses, you have a right to an attorney, you have a right to due process, and you have a right to be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

What the gentleman's amendment does is to essentially eviscerate all of the protections we give people in America who are accused of a crime and make them criminals even though they have never had a day to protect themselves in a criminal court.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, I would suggest that there are thousands of civil laws both at the Federal level and the State level, and we will try to get some research on which ones actually require a criminal predicate. But what I would suggest to the gentleman is that the part of the bill that he references regarding statutes that have been violated could be either a civil or criminal statute. So it does not require a civil court to find an individual defendant guilty of a crime. It actually permits a case against a gun manufacturer who violates a State law or Federal law in a civil matter. And I think this is very different because what the gentleman's amendment does is to specify a Federal criminal offense and to suggest civil courts can find you guilty even though you have never had your day in court, never been in criminal court, and certainly never been convicted in criminal court.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, actually I was debating the gentleman's amendment, and we have got staff taking a look at the specific provisions you have referred to. What I would suggest, Mr. Chairman, is ultimately this amendment is an attempt to eviscerate the second amendment in a way that the Constitution would not permit, in a way the courts fortunately have not permitted, and in a way that elected representatives and legislatures around the country and in this Congress would not permit.

What it basically does is to try to, through all sorts of litigation against gun manufacturers and gun sellers, make weapons that are protected under the second amendment unavailable. So what it does is to say that the second amendment to the United States Constitution, while it may protect your theoretical right to own and bear a weapon, actually is meaningless because we are not going to allow anybody either to manufacture or to sell those weapons.

And I would suggest that the adversaries of this bill and the people that are trying to weaken or undermine or eviscerate the bill refer back to Oliver Wendell Holmes's great statement in 1894 where he explained why you hold certain people responsible. He said:

Why is not a man who sells firearms answerable for assaults

committed with pistols bought of him since he must be taken

to know the probability that sooner or later someone will buy

a pistol of him for some unlawful end? The principle seem

pretty well established, in this country at least, that

everyone has the right to rely upon his fellow man acting

lawfully.

What the opponents of this bill want to do is to presume that everybody who manufactures or sells a weapon is guilty of something, ought to be put out of business through bankruptcy or some other means.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time to close.

Mr. Chairman, how much time remains?

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I want to apologize to my colleague because they asked the gentleman from Colorado to respond, and while Colorado is a great sunshine State, I actually represent the Sunshine State of Florida.

I yield to the gentleman from Virginia.

Reclaiming my time, there is no offense taken. Colorado is a beautiful State, but please come visit the Sunshine State when you get a chance.

I will give you this answer, and that is, while it will take me some time to research the tens of thousands of Federal and State civil actions to see which ones are predicated on a criminal conviction, I am also not aware of any situation where a civil court without the protections of the Bill of Rights can find one guilty of a Federal criminal offense that carries a 10-year punishment. And I think that is the crux of what this amendment gets to.

Because, as you know, the Supreme Court has stated, quoting James Madison in the case of The New York Times v. Sullivan: ``Some degree of abuse is inseparable from the proper use of everything.''

That includes hammers, ice picks, steak knives, lawn mowers, other things that have been used as weapons. What the opponents of the bill suggest is that every manufacturer and every seller must be guilty of something simply because they are selling a product that is not only a legal product, but it is particularly and especially protected by the second amendment to the United States Constitution.

A violation of section 18 of the U.S. Code, section 927(h) is exactly what the amendment that the gentleman gets to. A conviction under that statute carriers up to a 10-year imprisonment and a fine potentially.

What the gentleman wants to do is to basically say that somebody can be found guilty of that Federal criminal statute in a civil court, basically declaring somebody a criminal even though they have never been in a criminal court. For example, they would be called a criminal as actually the gentlewoman just did and she said we are protecting criminals if we do not adopt this wonderful amendment.

Ultimately, what we are doing here is to say to an accused person they will be found guilty in a civil court of a crime even though they never had the rights afforded them by the Bill of Rights, including the right to an attorney, the right to face your accuser, the right to call witnesses, the right to due process, and the right to be proven guilty of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt.

Please protect innocent parties, and please protect the second amendment and oppose the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank all of the sponsors of this resolution, especially my friends from Florida.

Mr. Speaker, there is an old saying that people do not miss fresh air until they live without it. My friends from south Florida understand what it is like to live without freedom and without fresh air.

While American men and women are halfway around the world fighting for freedom and democracy, we are finding out who our friends are. We are also finding out throughout the world who the really bad actors are. You can judge bad guys because while the cat is away, the rats are playing just 90 miles off the Florida border. And I will say that the roundup of these individual freedom fighters, who remind me of the original founders of our Republic, who pledged in the Declaration their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to stand up for what is right, the most recent roundup by Castro and his evil regime is nothing but a modern-day Stalinist purge.

I will say as we are fighting to free the Iraqi people, so we should stay the course and fight to free the Cuban people. I urge a unanimous vote by this House of Representatives and, once again, I want to thank all of my colleagues who are sponsors of this resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I wanted to come down to congratulate the gentleman from New Mexico for his advocacy for fiscal responsibility and his advocacy for taxpayers throughout America. I have been struck by the same sort of surreal, almost bizarre, arguments against this budget that the House has put together at this point and they seem to be in two categories that the gentleman has identified: number one, that we are having Draconian cuts in the budget; and, secondly, that somehow this tax cut proposal, the stimulus package, is designed to help the wealthy in America.

With respect to the first provision, I would suggest, Mr. Speaker, that the Chicken Littles are out in big-time form these days. The sky is falling, the sky is falling, Draconian cuts, et cetera, when the fact of the matter is I have been hearing this argument for about 30, 40 years. I remember watching TV as a small boy when President Ford was a Republican leader in this House of Representatives, and he was accused of cutting the school lunch program. Thirty-five, 40 years later, Mr. Speaker, actually we have an obesity epidemic in America's school

grounds, unfortunately all too often, and so the truth of the matter is that whatever Republicans have been cutting in terms of school lunch programs has not done a very effective job if we have been trying to cut off the food supply. I would suggest that scaring teachers, scaring parents, scaring children, scaring veterans, scaring farmers is the wrong thing to do as a moral political policy; but more importantly it is empirically ignoring all of the facts.

As the gentleman suggested, agriculture spending in America as a consequence of Republican leadership has increased from 1996 to the year 2003 from $6 billion to over $24 billion. Veterans medical care from 1998 to 2003 has increased from $17 billion to $24 billion. Education spending at the Federal level from 1998 to the year 2003, under President Bush especially, has increased from $30 billion to $58 billion. Medicare spending has increased in America from 1996 to the year 2003 from $175 billion to roughly $240 billion.

Mr. Speaker, I am new to Washington; but this is the only place where you can increase your budget an average of 5, 6, 8 percent a year and people will call it a Draconian cut to punish seniors. As a matter of fact, total discretionary spending since 1996 when Republicans took the leadership here has increased from $501 billion in programs throughout the budget to over $740 billion. Those are hardly cuts. As everybody that can do math knows, this is an increase, the overall spending proposed by House leadership and the House of Representatives as a whole, of over 3.1 percent during tough economic times. It comes in the aftermath of really what is soaring spending.

Indeed, the truth of the matter is spending other people's money is an intoxicating experience, but it has consequences. It has effects on the average family. In fact, the Federal Government bites out of every family's budget on average $16,000 per year. That is for every household budget in America. That has huge effects. That is $16,000 worth of spending that families do not get to cut out for their own purposes. Much of this is in duplicative or superfluous spending, unnecessary. There is this appetite of the Federal Government and bureaucrats and politicians to be indiscriminately meddlesome in trying to organize our life's affairs; and unfortunately, that stifles all sorts of economic growth, family planning, business planning, and I could go on.

I have got about five pages of incredibly wasteful spending I could go through; but in the interest of time, I know I have some distinguished colleagues who would like to address this matter, I will skip the details. I will say that for example, however, the Federal Government cannot account, last year alone, for $17.3 billion worth of spending according to our own records. $17 billion just lost somewhere in the system. The Federal Government made $20 billion in overpayments in the year 2001 alone. The truth of the matter is that we are woefully irresponsible and inefficient.

On top of that, what the gentleman from New Mexico knows and that is never pointed out by the opponents of the President of the United States and his fiscally responsible budget is that our cuts, the only cuts that we have asked for in this budget, come out of waste, abuse and fraud. We have instructed all of the budget draft persons to emphasize and never touch any of the important services provided to our military veterans, to the education system, to the farm system, certainly not to homeland security and defense that each see significant increases.

We have instructed them to cut 1 percent out of abusive, wasteful and fraudulent spending. I would submit, Mr. Speaker, that not one person in my district does not believe that we could not cut one cent out of every dollar spent at the Federal level. The truth of the matter is that only one in 4,000 Federal employees is ever laid off because of bad performance. People in my district just do not believe you cannot find more bad performance than that, and they just do not believe that we cannot find one cent out of every dollar in terribly wasteful and abusive spending.

I think the gentleman did a wonderful job talking about the importance. If we want to get this economy moving again, we have got to support the President's tax proposal and stop all of this demagoguery. I applaud the gentleman. I do not know how he and other Republican leaders were able to convince a Democratic policymaker, the distinguished Governor of New Mexico who happens to be a Democrat, how you were able to educate him in terms of the reality of job creation, wealth creation, prosperity and investment; but the quote from him, we need to stop talking about class warfare and the distribution of wealth, we need to start talking about economic growth, and reducing taxes puts us on the road to economic growth.

I want to endorse the comments of the governor of New Mexico, and I am thrilled with the very notion that we can go back home to Florida and convince some of my friends and colleagues on the Democratic side that we can cut taxes and spur economic growth, spur job creation.

Here is the bottom-line truth. If we want employment, we cannot punish all the employers in our State or in our country. If we want job growth, we cannot punish the people who are creating jobs. If we want wealth, we cannot punish those that are busy creating wealth for all of us, and if we want savings, we cannot punish those that save and invest.

I will leave you with this. I am a big proponent of the President's dividend tax cut. The fact of the matter is that dividends in America today are taxed in a very punitive matter. The highest rate at the corporate level is some 36.5 percent, but even after the corporation pays tax, it has only got about 65 cents or so left, and it pays that out in dividends to individual shareholders. Those shareholders may be subject to taxation rates of up to 39 percent. The effective rate of taxation therefore is that the Federal Government takes 70 percent of every dollar earned by corporate investments. No wonder we are having trouble creating new jobs, new economic prosperity, and new wealth.

On top of that, of course, there is a hodgepodge of other Federal taxes that are owed, State property taxes, State income taxes, State sales taxes that are collected by these corporations. It is a very punitive system that has effectively stifled much of the potential growth.

But I will leave the Members with this last thought. The notion that job creation should be continually punished in America, forever, I think hurts every family, but I will tell the Members that especially in Florida there are other portions of the President's tax cut program that make dramatic differences.

We have got some 92 million Americans that earn dividend income. We have got millions of families that will receive a huge benefit from the increase in the child credit. We have got small businesses that, as we expand the deduction for buying new equipment, will be huge beneficiaries. As we phase in the 10-year tax cuts on marginal rates, all sorts of families will save thousands of dollars.

The final thing I will leave the Members with is that the Democratic so-called tax cut proposal allows the average family to go out and buy a used television set on a one-time-only basis. The President's proposal puts an average of between $1,000 and $2,000 in every working family's pocket forever, every year. It will create jobs, it is will free families, and it is the right thing to do.

I thank the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce).

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 6 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment addresses long-standing and increasing problems of downward departures from the Federal sentencing guidelines. According to the testimony of the Department of Justice, this is especially a problem in child pornography cases.

Although the guidelines continue to state that departures should be very rare occurrences, they have in fact proved to be anything but. The Department of Justice testified before the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security that the rate of downward departures on grounds other than substantial assistance to the government has climbed steadily every year for many years. In fact, the rate of such departures for nonimmigration cases has climbed to 50 percent in the last 4 years from 9.6 percent in fiscal year 1996 to 14.7 percent in fiscal year 2001.

Increasingly, the exceptions are overriding the rule.

By contrast, Mr. Chairman, upward departures are virtually nonexistent. During the same period of time, from fiscal year 1996 to fiscal year 2001, the upward departure rate has held steady at 0.6 percent. That means that judges, by a 33 to 1 ratio, are deviating from the guidelines in order to basically help convicted defendants.

The Department of Justice believes that much of this damage is traceable to the Supreme Court's 1996 decision in Koon versus the United States. In the Koon case, the court held that any factor not explicitly disapproved by the

sentencing commission or by statute could serve as grounds for departure. So judges can make up exceptions as they go along. This has led to an accelerated rate of downward departures.

Judges who dislike the Sentencing Reform Act and the sentencing guidelines now have significant discretion to avoid applying a sentence within the range established by the commission, and it is difficult for government to effectively appeal such cases.

The amendment I offer today contains a number of provisions designed to ensure more faithful adherence to the guidelines so defendants in cases involving child pornography and sexual abuse receive the sentences that Congress intended.

Specifically, this amendment would put strict limitations on departures by allowing sentences outside the guidelines range only upon grounds specifically enumerated in the guidelines as proper for departure. This would eliminate ad hoc departures based on vague grounds, such as ``general mitigating circumstances.'' This amendment would also reform the existing grounds of departure set forth in the current guidelines by eliminating those that have been most frequently abused, such as ``aberrant behavior,'' which is already taken into account in a person's past criminal history.

In addition, Mr. Chairman, this amendment would require courts to give specific responses for any departure from the guidelines. It would change the standard of review for appellate courts to a de novo review, which would be more effective to review illegal and inappropriate downward departures. It would prevent sentencing courts upon remand from imposing the same illegal departure on some different theory and only allow courts to reduce a person's sentence for acceptance of responsibility when the government agrees with that finding.

Additionally, the definition of ``pattern of activity involving prohibited sexual conduct'' in the sentencing guidelines is hereby broadened. Currently, the guideline provides that such a pattern exists only where the defendant engaged in prohibited sexual contact on at least two separate occasions with at least two different minor victims. This definition does not adequately take account of the frequent occurrence where repeated sexual abuse against a single child occurs and the severity of the harm to such victims from such repeated abuse. The amendment would broaden the definition to include repeated abuse of the same victim on separate occasions.

Mr. Chairman, finally, the guidelines are remanded with regard to penalties for the possession of child pornography in two ways. First, penalties are increased if the offense involved material that portrays sadistic or masochistic conduct or other depictions of violence; and, second, penalties are increased based on the amount of child pornography involved in the offense.

The famous philosopher and statesman Cicero said that justice is the set and constant purpose which gives every man his due. Unfortunately, judges in our country all too often are arbitrarily deviating from the sentencing guidelines enacted by the United States Congress based on their personal biases and prejudices, resulting in wide disparity in sentencing.

Mr. Chairman, I would ask my colleagues to support this amendment. I want to thank the gentleman from Wisconsin (Chairman Sensenbrenner) for his great work on the bill, H.R. 1104, in protecting children and for his support for this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner), the chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, it does not surprise me that the Congressional Black Caucus long before I got here took the position that we should not have the whims and biases and prejudices of individual judges responsible for deviating widely in the sentencing in the same exact types of cases. So I think the chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary has done a wonderful job pointing out the problem when you allow widespread deviation.

There really had been no standards. Why have guidelines at all, if judges can make up ad hoc reasons to implement those guidelines?

This is an especially important problem in cases of child abuse and in cases of sexual offenses because of the enormously high recidivism rate. We have heard Attorney General Reno says something like 75 percent of sexual offenders are going to repeat their offenses. We know that exhibitionists, for example, have some of the highest sex offense recidivism rates, something like between 41 and 71 percent. The next highest recidivism rate is found among child molesters who offend against boys, somewhere upwards of 40 or 45 percent.

Now, it does the People's Congress no good to pass laws prohibiting child pornography or kidnapping or sexual abuse, for example, if we are going to have liberal judges deviate on a regular basis.

Mr. Chairman, I am delighted to have the endorsement of the Congressional Black Caucus for my idea, if not my amendment necessarily.

Mr. Chairman, in closing, I would just say that equality in sentencing is important for a number of reasons. Number one, we want to send a message to criminals and would-be criminals; and, number two, we wanted to make sure that all criminals are treated equally.

I think that is what this amendment does. I think it provides certainty. I think it provides a very important deterrent effect. We will have a lot less child abuse, a lot less child pornography, and perhaps less kidnapping if we adopt this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity to revise and extend my remarks and submit them into the Congressional Record.

I rise in support of H. Res. 132. Fellow Members, in this time of war, I think it is more important than ever to be able to express our patriotic and religious views together in unity and solemnity. The Pledge of Allegiance is a beautiful manifest of the feelings of Americans. We are a religious people. We always have been. America has been such since our inception. Granted, we are a people of diverse religious backgrounds, but being able to express our faith in public without fear of government condemnation or censure is without a doubt, the reason why you and I are standing here today. The desire for religious liberty was what brought the first groups of Americans to our country hundreds of years ago to build this shining ``city upon a hill.''

Members, I stand in support of the Pledge of Allegiance as did this great body on Flag Day 1954 when the words ``Under God'' were added. As President Eisenhower, who supported this change, so eloquently stated, ``In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America's heritage and future; in this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country's most powerful resource in peace and war.'' Eisenhower's words could not be more accurate or more timely. Americans' religious beliefs reach to the core of our being. It is in both times of uncertainty and turmoil, prosperity and blessing that we cling to our beliefs for direction, comfort, guidance and peace. To deny Americans the right to stand together and say the Pledge of Allegiance is to deny the spirit behind the Mayflower Compact, Patrick Henry's great Liberty Speech, the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address, and all of the other documents that serve as a mission statement of our people.

Members, in this time of war I urge you to support H. Res. 132 to defend the Pledge of Allegiance as a fitting and constitutional written expression for all Americans.

Mr. Speaker, I stand here tonight to honor a fallen hero from America's greatest generation. Leonard Ash was a Marine whose life richly illustrated President Ronald Reagan's observation. President Reagan said, ``Some people live their entire life and wonder if they ever made a difference in the world. Marines don't have that problem.''

Mr. Ash served in the 4th Marine Division and fought at Iwo Jima. Seventy-five percent of the 4th Marine Division were killed or wounded at Iwo Jima. Mr. Ash belonged to that 75 percent. His leg was nearly blown completely off. But some good emerged from that very dark battle. Iwo Jima's airfields provided a refuge for American bomber crews. As one of the Army Corps pilots observed, ``Whenever I land on this island, I thank God and the men who fought for it.''

While recuperating, Mr. Ash met Lt. Genoveve Durocher, a Navy nurse who eventually became his wife for 55 years and the mother of his four children. While often overlooked by history, Mrs. Ash and her fellow nurses proudly served our country. They healed and comforted the wounded, and they bravely stood by the side of servicemen who at times were on the threshold of eternity.

On January 31 of this year, 78-year-old Sergeant Major Ash watched a television documentary about protests of America's possible action to liberate Iraq. He scrawled out some notes in response to the anti-war protest that he had just watched. The next day he and his wife, Genoveve, attended an anti-war rally in Port Orange, Florida, near their home and in my district. He brought his notes in case he had an opportunity to speak and many of the protesters against America's participation in liberating Iraq did not want him to speak.

At the rally, one of the protesters yelled that they would rather bomb President Bush than Iraq. At that point Mr. Ash, outraged, clutching his notes, stood up to defend our President and our country. The following is what he intended to say:

``I am sickened at this propaganda against our country. Saddam is a murderous dictator. He has exhibited no remorse or hesitation in killing thousands of his own population with poisonous gases and other hideous means. His intent is to delay his defeat until he is able to use weapons of mass destruction against his enemies, the United States and his Arab neighbors.

``Those old enough to remember the few years prior to World War II should recall Mussolini and Hitler executed similar strategies against neighboring countries. Saddam must be stopped before he is able to deliver weapons of mass destruction into the hands of terrorists.

``Our country is blessed to have Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and President Bush with their commitment to protect Americans and our allies.

``No one wants war. America has only entered a war because war has already commenced itself upon us. America enters war to protect and to honor the freedoms of this great Nation. That is the duty of the President. America is here today because she has not fallen short and because she is not fearful.

``The time to stand firm is now. My wife and I both dislike war. We have seen it firsthand as Marine sergeant and Navy nurse. We stand here today as witnesses that the freedoms we share today have not come without a grave price.''

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Ash never got a chance to finish his speech. After standing up and explaining that he and his wife were World War II veterans, he clutched his heart and he collapsed and he died of a heart attack. But because his proud and loving daughter Annette shared his notes with me, while he was unable to finish his speech, I have had the great honor and privilege of doing it for him.

Mr. Speaker, to my friend, Mr. Ash, who I never met but feel like I know, all I can say is, Job well done, America's good and faithful servant.