Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, first I want to thank the genuine American hero from Texas, Mr. Johnson, for leading us this afternoon.

I supported the use of military force to remove Saddam Hussein's regime because it was in America's interests. Afterwards, it should have been up to the Iraqi people, and not Americans, to determine their fate and how they govern themselves. President Bush has stated: The survival of our liberty depends on its expansion throughout the world and America must actively construct those institutions. Which, to me, seems like a Wilsonian view of America's role in the world.

In 2000, Candidate Bush rejected nation-building. A view held by the Founding Fathers who believed the exceptional calling of the American people was not to shape the world in our image, but to be a light that lightens the world. I prefer Candidate Bush's position.

Having said that, I cannot support Representative Skelton's resolution. Nothing better illustrates America's democratic institutions than this body having a full and open debate about this topic.

I hope the Commander in Chief will recognize the desires and concerns of the American people as expressed today through their elected Representatives. But America has only one, and not 535 commanders in chief. We cannot micromanage the conduct of a war. Representative Skelton's resolution sends horribly mixed signals to our troops who must solely focus on carrying out their assigned and dangerous mission.

Once a decision has been made and mission assigned, this body should support the troops and their one and only Commander in Chief, as Representative Johnson's resolution, had it been heard, would have been done.

Critics of tactics who resort to a congressional resolution tell our servicemen and women and their families, intentionally or not, that their mission is futile. When we undermine hope, we undermine resolve, and we reduce the likelihood of success.

As Senator Lieberman has stated, a resolution would, in quotes, ``give the enemy some encouragement, some clear expression that the American people are divided.'' Or, as Army Sergeant Daniel Dobson expressed, ``There is no honor in retreat, and there is no honor in what the Democrats have proposed.''

Instead, the responsible thing for this Democratic-led Congress would have been to propose a new way forward, new tactics, new strategies, not just in Iraq but in the entire war on terror. Speaker Rayburn, a Democratic Speaker, once famously remarked, ``Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a carpenter to build one.'' There are no carpenters at work with this resolution.

God bless our troops. God bless their Commander in Chief. God bless America.

Shortly after I entered Congress in 2003, America used military force to remove the Saddam Hussein regime. I supported that action because it was in America's interest.

The Hussein regime repeatedly defied the terms that ended the 1991 Gulf War--the transparent and verifiable dismantlement of the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction. Previously, that regime had used such weapons and wielded the potential of such weapons against its enemies. Rather than resorting to openness to demonstrate good faith compliance with its promises, the regime relied on Soviet- style deception and defiance.

In the face of such opaqueness, why are we surprised that the intelligence agencies of the United States and its Allies veered to a worst-case scenario? After all, the perceived ``missile gap'' that fueled the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union stemmed from Soviet deception about its actual nuclear weapon capabilities. The fault lies with those who deceive and not those searching for the truth.

The perceived threat extended beyond the Middle East and raised the specter of arming terrorists dedicated to harming the United States and the West. To those who scoff at this notion, I remind them about the dangers posed by ``loose nukes'' and how the West works everyday to counter this threat.

Furthermore, this brutal regime repeatedly attacked its neighbors-- threatening the stability of America's allies and interests in this region.

So with some sturdy allies, America took action. The Hussein regime was toppled. Others took notice. Libya surrendered its weapons of mass destruction capabilities to the U.S. including materials related to its nuclear weapons program and ballistic missile capabilities.

Today's U.S. military is the finest in world history.

America can defeat any contemporary enemy by itself. But, we cannot win the peace alone. We need help--not just from loyal friends like the British, Poles, and Australians. To win a peace, we need less reliable allies like France, Germany, and Spain to help. And we need support, or at least not hostile opposition, from former adversaries we are trying to befriend, like Russia and China. In this case, we have had too little help to win the peace.

And instead of focusing on establishing a free and stable Iraq, America strayed from the wisdom of its Founding Fathers who warned us of the hazards of trying to shape the world in our image. As John Quincy Adams noted in his 1821 Fourth of July Speech:

``America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.'' To do so would involve the United States ``beyond the power of extrication, in all wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition. . . . She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.''

The Founding Fathers believed that the exceptional calling of the American people was not to shape the world in our image but to be a light to lighten the world. Our exercise and preservation of liberty served as an example to other peoples. In today's world, we can see how our culture and international trade influence other peoples. But a critical difference

exists between being an example and trying to impose a set of beliefs.

The historian Walter McDougall describes this original tradition as follows:

. . . the leaders . . . did not interpret [American]

Exceptionalism to mean that U.S. diplomacy ought to be

pacifist, rigidly scrupulous, or devoted to the export of

domestic ideals. Rather, they saw foreign policy as an

instrument for the preservation and expansion of American

freedom, and warned that crusades would belie our ideals,

violate our true interests, and sully our freedom.

Accordingly, I support using American military might to defend our interests as needed including preemptive strikes to those who would do us harm.

But we strayed from this tradition by undertaking a mission to hold Iraq together, build a nation based on Western liberal democracy, and then spread that way of life throughout the Middle East. This Administration labels this effort ``transformational democracy.'' But it really is what Walter McDougall calls ``Global Meliorism,'' that assumes:

The American model is universally valid, that morality

enjoins the United States to help others emulate it, and that

the success of the American experiment itself ultimately

depends on other nations escaping from dearth and oppression.

Nothing is further from the conservative tradition. Conservatives understand that free societies and peoples take centuries to evolve. America traces its roots back to the Magna Carta. If you want to illustrate the shortcomings of social engineering and the illusive goal of remaking foreign societies, take these 792 years of hard earned experience and impose it on a nation cobbled together by the British after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and on a people who identify more with a tribal than a national identity.

Conservatives take a realistic assessment of human nature--including as George Will has noted ``the limits of power to subdue an unruly world.'' This sobriety contrasts with the idealistic dream of engineering the world--a dream with roots in Woodrow Wilson's visions for a post-World War I world. As George Clemenceau remarked after Wilson's 1917 Peace Without Victory speech:

Never before has any political assembly heard so fine a

sermon on what human beings might be capable of accomplishing

if only they weren't human.

President Bush has stated that the survival of our liberty depends on its expansion throughout the world and America must actively construct those institutions. In 2000, Candidate Bush rejected nation building. I prefer Candidate Bush.

It is up to the Iraqi people--and not us--to determine their fate and how they govern themselves. That is why in 2003 I proposed that the Administration loan and not grant $20 billion for Iraqi infrastructure. We weren't rebuilding things we destroyed during the war. Rather, we were attempting to build an infrastructure degraded and neglected by the Hussein regime. I wanted the Iraqi people from oil proceeds--and not Americans--to build, fund, and protect their assets. As T.E. Lawrence noted in an earlier era:

Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the

Arabs do it tolerably that you do it perfectly: It is their

war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them.

Actually, also under the very odd conditions of Arabia, your

practical work will not be as good, perhaps, as you think it

is.

Having said that, I cannot support Representative Skelton's resolution. Nothing better illustrates America's democratic institutions than for this body to have a full and open debate about this war. We are a strong and outspoken people. This Chamber has witnessed similar debates at crucial times in our past. I hope the Commander in Chief will recognize the desires and concerns of the American people as expressed through their elected representatives.

But America has only one and not 535 Commanders in Chief. We cannot micromanage the conduct of a war. Representative Skelton's resolution cannot bring good. Rather, it sends horribly mixed signals to our troops who must solely focus on carrying out their assigned and dangerous mission. Once a decision has been made and a mission assigned, this body should support the troops and their one Commander in Chief as Representative Sam Johnson's resolution would. We should deny the enemy encouragement and provide resolve to our servicemen and women.

Critics of tactics who resort to a Congressional Resolution tell our servicemen and women and their families--intentionally or not--that their mission is futile. When we undermine hope, we undermine resolve and reduce the likelihood of success. As Senator Lieberman has stated: such a resolution would ``give the enemy some encouragement, some clear expression that the American people are divided.'' Or as Army Sergeant Daniel Dobson expressed:

Most service members would tell you the same thing: There

is no honor in retreat . . . and there is no honor in what

the Democrats have proposed. It stings me to the core to

think that Americans would rather sell their honor than fight

for a cause. Those of us who fight for [peace] know all too

well that peace has a very bloody price tag.

Instead, the responsible thing for this Democratic Congress would be to propose a new way forward, new tactics, and new strategies--not just in Iraq but in the war on terror. Speaker Sam Rayburn famously remarked: ``Any jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build one.'' No carpenters are at work with this resolution.

God bless our troops. God bless their Commander in Chief. And God bless America.

Madam Speaker, further parliamentary inquiry.

Madam Speaker, I would like to ask unanimous consent that the Speaker close the board and all Members would have an opportunity to re-vote this issue. It might save a considerable amount of time.

Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to my friend from Iowa and to my good friend from Georgia. And I, too, just got off the last campaign cycle, and I watched the national newspapers. I saw it in the State of Florida, where over and over again I heard that there was a new, reformed Democratic Party, people that believed very differently than the Republicans in charge here in Washington, that we are going to reform the process, make it fairer and more transparent. I heard that we were going to be under new management.

Now I find it a little funny, because as I look at the chairmen of the committees, we have got one chairman that has been here for 56 years in Congress. We have got chairmen that have been here for 30 years in Congress, for 40 years that have been Chairmen before. So really it is deja vu in terms of who the leadership is of the important committees here in Congress. There is no change.

Americans need to know they are going to go back to the Jimmy Carter high-tax, high-regulation, high-speed, high-unemployment, high- inflation rates under their so-called new leadership because it is the same old, same old.

But I was really intent as I was working in my office, studying some of the crazy things that are coming up in our committee process this week, Mr. King. And I heard you offer to the new members of the Democratic majority that say, We are going to be very different, we are going to be transparent, we are not going to be liberal Democrats, we are going to maintain a threshold on taxes.

And yet in the very first 2 weeks, what we here have passed without one amendment allowed, without one committee hearing allowed, without any debate other than maybe an hour on this floor allowed, with the results preordained by a maestro--and we have to give her credit; the Speaker has been a wonderful leader in terms of making the trains run on time, which we know that people that do not engage in democratic processes, but engage in totalitarian processes are successfully able to do.

The first thing that the new majority, conservatives supposedly or moderates, do is pass PAYGO, which makes its easier to pass tax increases. The next thing they do is pass a minimum wage bill that exempts American Samoa. And they pass an energy bill that actually increases taxes at the pump ultimately on the people in my district that buy gas.

And, of course, they also gave as part of the Committee of the Whole here, a vote to the delegate from American Samoa who represents, he is a friend of mine, he is a great guy, but he represents approximately 60,000 people who are not a State which the Constitution requires in order for you to have an equal vote here on the floor.

Now, I would tell my friend from Iowa that I have football stadiums not far from me that hold more than 60,000 people in them. The football stadiums are not represented by a delegate or a vote in Congress. And maybe every football stadium with 60,000 or more votes under their new premise ought to be included

Mr. Speaker, my guess is about 80 percent of them are either payers of the income tax, the Medicare tax, the Social Security tax, or some Federal tax.

And with respect to American Samoa, I admire them. I actually think that they are fortunate. I am envious. They do not pay Federal income taxes, as the gentleman wisely pointed out. But they have a vote here, just like my football stadiums with 60,000 people do not have; American Samoans who do not pay Federal taxes on the Federal income code do pay taxes.

Now, I will tell my two great friends, I hope that I do not upset them here, but the States of Georgia and Iowa are two of my favorite States in the Union. But I happen to be very jealous; and believe that I was the speaker of the house of the greatest State in the country, the State of Florida.

And I will have to tell you that passing budgets is a very difficult deal, passing appropriations bills, it is hard. I like to compare every budget that I have dealt with at the Federal level or the State level as like a Clint Eastwood movie; it is part of the good, part the bad, and part the ugly. The only thing that justifies a budget is the process.

Where every elected member at the committee level, for all of the different Appropriations Committees gets to fight for his or her priorities, where on the House floor you allow amendments, you allow the entire body to sit down and figure out collectively. And democracy is an ugly process, but the only thing that justifies the outcome of budgets, which are like a Clint Eastwood movie, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, is the process itself.

The process that we witnessed today in the Rules Committee, and my friend from Georgia alluded to the fact that the Rules Committee apparently has said that not one single amendment to this omnibus package that was passed, not by a committee, but was passed by one Member, this is the Pelosi omnibus package. Nobody else had any control or say in it. Not one Member had a chance.

Mr. Speaker, traditionally that has always been true. This has never happened in modern history that any historian of the House can recollect.

But let me tell you exactly what has happened. I will have to admit, one of the very few things that I have liked in the first 60 days here is that the Democrats actually pledged that we are not going to have earmarks.

Now, they have pledged a lot of things. They violated virtually every promise that they made. But the earmark pledge is something I really like. I was one of the outspoken critics, even of Republican earmarks like the Bridge to Nowhere. But I have to tell you, you have got to give credit where credit is due, when they will stand up and say, we are not going to have earmarks. I thought, you know what, I can live by that policy if every other Member of the House can, or we are going to have transparent earmarks; everybody has to be honest about what they are spending the money on.

I want to read to you the definition from The Citizens Against Government Waste. An earmark is any proposal that does any one of the following seven things; if you do one of them, you are an earmark. This is important, because we are facing tomorrow the largest earmark in the history of the world under this definition that everybody uses, if you do any one of these things.

If you are requested by only one Chamber of Congress. This bill tomorrow is only going to be requested by

the U.S. House, not the Senate. If you are not specifically authorized by committees in the House. This bill has not been authorized, not one thing in it has been authorized by any committee.

If there are things in the bill that are not competitively awarded. Nothing in this bill requires any competitive awards for the new spending.

Number four, if it is not requested by the President. There are billions of dollars of spending in this bill that have not been even seen, let alone requested or reviewed by the President.

Number five, if it exceeds the President's budget request or the previous year's funding. We have issues here that have never been greater than in this bill that we have not seen because it is the Pelosi omnibus package that nobody had a chance to see or vote on.

Number six--remember, any one of those things makes it an earmark; this qualifies for all five so far--if it is not the subject of congressional hearings. Well, the funny thing is the Speaker and the Democratic leadership would not let us have a hearing on any of this spending. $463 billion, we have not had one minute of hearings, 1 minute of review.

And finally, number seven, if some of the things in the bill serve only a local or special interest. Now, I will leave you with this, Mr. King, because I really admire the points you have made. Every taxpayer is paying the price of this horrible process. It is not just about process. This is a $463 billion earmark, not because it violates one of the rules, but all seven rules.

And I would finish with this. I was really offended when Republicans were in charge of this Chamber and we had a $250 million earmark that I referred to as the Bridge to Nowhere. The earmark tomorrow is 2,000 times greater than the Bridge to Nowhere. This is the Congress that supposedly was going to be about reform, ending earmarks, and have transparency. There is not one pledge that has been made that will not be broken tomorrow if this bill passes.

With that, I thank my friend.

Madam Speaker, recently President Bush wrote that now is not the time to increase taxes on the American people. As the stock market hits an all-time high, employment is at an all-time high, unemployment is at a record low. Unfortunately, the first couple weeks in this House is not a good indication of Democratic leadership.

In week number one, we effectively repealed the three-fifths requirement to raise taxes.

In week number two, we passed a so-called PAYGO law that says any of the new liberal spending programs are going to be accompanied with huge new tax increases on the people of America.

And today, with the first major tax increase in 10 years, $7 billion is put on the backs of American energy producers that will directly translate to higher gas prices at the pump.

I ask all of my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, to sign a letter that is on your desk where we encourage the President to veto any bad tax increases, and we pledge to sustain that veto. Democrats and Republicans alike ought to keep this economy rolling. Please sign the letter that is on your desk. I welcome all of my colleagues to join me.

Madam Speaker, the world has recently witnessed the deaths of two bloody despots: one--Saddam Hussein--was executed for crimes against his own people; the other--President Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan--was able to escape justice by dying in his sleep.

Under President Niyazov, Turkmenistan became a secretive police state modeled after North Korea. Declaring himself President-for-life, Niyazov banned all political parties except his own; threw his opponents in jail or drove them into exile; and established a state monopoly on media, exercising control over the editorial content.

With the death of the dictator, one would hope that the people of Turkmenistan would finally wake up from their long nightmare and reclaim their rights, chief among them the right to elect their leaders in free and fair elections. However, the interim government has pledged to continue Niyazov's policies and has brought into question their ability to hold truly democratic elections

The interim government's most competent opponents--the exiled community of business leaders and intellectuals--have effectively been prevented from contesting the elections, even though their leader Khudaiberdy Orazov, whom the united opposition chose as its presidential candidate, would win the majority of the popular vote according to the most recent polls. As former chairman of the Central Bank and a renowned economist, Mr. Orazov is precisely the kind of leader whose insights are badly needed if Turkmenistan is to rebuild its crumbling infrastructure and revive its ailing education and healthcare systems.

I urge my colleagues in calling for free, fair, and democratic elections in Turkmenistan and for the interim government to allow its opponents the opportunity to contest the February 11 elections. In order to maintain our commitment to democracy, both at home and abroad, we can do no less.

I am including for the Record a copy of Jan. 3 Washington Post article, ``New Future for Turkmenistan,'' which was written by a well- respected pro-democracy opposition leader in exile, Nurmukhammet Hanamov, whose two sons were assassinated in retaliation for his outspoken opposition to Niyazov's regime. The U.S. government would do well to hear the heartfelt plea this courageous man makes in his article.

[From The Washington Post]

A New Beginning for Turkmenistan

(By Nurmuhammet Hanamov)

Last week Turkmenistan buried its brutal dictator,

Saparmurad Niyazov. His ruthless reign spanned two decades,

during which time his policies became increasingly irrational

and unpredictable. The long list of Niyazov's crimes against

our people includes: banning all political parties except his

own and jailing his opponents; preventing thousands of

disloyal citizens from traveling abroad; persecuting

religious and ethnic minorities; outlawing opera; and

shutting down regional hospitals, firing thousands of doctors

and nurses. Under Niyazov, Turkmenistan became a corridor for

heroin trafficking from Afghanistan to the West and gained

for itself one of the highest heroin addiction rates in the

world.

Above all, Niyazov was a selfish and kleptocratic despot,

stashing billions in proceeds from the sale of the country's

enormous natural gas resources in personal accounts in

Western banks. He used this money to fuel his outlandish

personality cult, building opulent palaces and golden statues

of himself even as his people were deprived of basic

necessities and suffer one of the world's lowest life

expectancy rates. The West's indifference was striking

compared with the relentless criticism by the United States

and the European Union against the more benign regime of

Alexander Lukashenko, president of gas-poor Belarus.

With Niyazov gone, the West has a historic second chance to

help our country make a peaceful transition to democracy.

Turkmenistan's interim rulers have unfortunately pledged to

continue Niyazov's policies, even ordering new statues of

him, and their efforts to grab power amount to a coup d'etat.

The former health minister--under the de facto control of

Niyazov's Presidential Guard--has arrested the speaker of

Parliament, who constitutionally is next in the line of

succession. He has sealed the country's borders and, using

other unconstitutional measures, has set the stage for his

own unchallenged victory in presidential elections scheduled

for Feb. 11.

The United States must send a clear message to Niyazov's

holdouts in the interim government in Ashgabat: that they

will not have its support unless they agree to hold free and

fair elections--ones that allow all citizens of Turkmenistan,

including exiled opposition leaders and political prisoners,

to take part.

We know that the United States has tried to help the people

of Turkmenistan in recent years, and thanks to American

educational exchange programs, there is a thriving community

of bright Turkmen students and intellectuals who are living

in Western countries and are ready to return and help rebuild

their country. This community is largely held together by the

efforts of Khudaiberdy-Orazov, a former chairman of the

National Bank and an accomplished and energetic leader who

was forced into exile several years ago. He was unanimously

nominated to be a candidate in the February presidential

elections by a broad coalition of opposition groups inside

and outside of Turkmenistan. According to a recent poll,

Orazov's candidacy would have the support of a majority of

Turkmen voters. Until Orazov and other opposition candidates

are allowed to contest the February elections, the United

States and the European Union must refrain from recognizing

the junta in Ashgabat and freeze all personal accounts of

Niyazov and his cronies abroad. We hope that members of

Congress and other government officials will visit

Turkmenistan soon to personally deliver that message.

We must rebuild our country, and with the help of our

friends and neighbors we can do it in an open and transparent

way. Priorities for a democratically elected government

during the initial post-Niyazov reconstruction must be to

release all political prisoners, conduct open tenders and

allow Western companies to bid for a stake in developing

Turkmenistan's oil and gas fields; to consider new ways of

getting our gas and oil to Western markets; to restore

private property that Niyazov confiscated from Turkmen

citizens; and to create a reconstruction fund using Niyazov's

personal bank accounts and proceeds from the sale of oil and

gas to revive the health-care and education systems.

The United States is spending billions of dollars trying to

turn Afghanistan and Iraq--both deep in the throes of civil

war--into democratic nations while all but abandoning their

peaceful post-Soviet neighbors to the north. Turkmenistan is

ready for a new beginning, and the West must finally step up

to the plate. To do otherwise would waste a historic

opportunity and allow yet another case of popular discontent

with an illegitimate government to become an anti-Western

lost cause.

Will the gentleman yield?

I would say to my friend, Mr. King, yesterday in the bill there was a discriminatory provision that favored or discriminated for or against some territories or States as opposed to others in the minimum wage bill. Is there anything that the gentleman is aware of in this bill that would discriminate in terms of Federal funding for human cloning, helping some territories and treating some States and territories different from one another as, unbeknownst to the Members, occurred yesterday in the minimum wage bill?

Is it theoretically possible that people in American Samoa who do not make minimum wage----

Will the gentleman yield?

Is it theoretically conceivable if yesterday's minimum wage exemption for American Samoa becomes law and today's bill passes that people that make less than the minimum wage in American Samoa will be doing with Federal funds embryonic stem cell research?

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Chairman Buyer, I want to thank Chairman Brown, and I want to thank Ranking Member Michaud, because as several of my colleagues from central Florida have said, our community in central Florida, which is home to almost 850,000 veterans, has for 30 years waited to get service that much of the rest of the country has enjoyed.

Over 45 percent of our veterans are underserved, according to the veterans' own criteria in having to travel more than 2 hours for treatment. That doesn't include the many people that call central Florida their winter home from all over the districts from my friends around the rest of the country. It doesn't include the veterans that come as tourists that need immediate attention. We will be able to finally, after three decades, provide the attention that these much deserved veterans need.

I would tell you that over 50 percent of our veterans have a service- connected disability; 18 percent of them have posttraumatic stress syndrome, and it is very difficult for them to travel as far as Jacksonville or Tampa or beyond. We are the largest metropolitan area in the country that is not currently served by a VA medical center. We thank the CARES commission. We congratulate our friends in Las Vegas for their much needed funding for a new hospital, and we are very, very grateful for our colleagues.

I will finish by saying that this site is a very, very exciting site. Five years ago, there was simply nothing existing here. Within 5 years, we will have a University of Central Florida brand-new medical school. We will have a Burnham Institute, one of the finest research medical facilities in the entire world, all sorts of spin-off businesses. The University of Central Florida, the University of Florida, probably Florida State University will all have medical research facilities located nearby.

In sum I would say that, out of nowhere, we have built a medical city, and in the midst of it our great central Florida veterans will be being treated. They will remember what we have done here today. Again, I express my appreciation for all of you

Today, there are more than 26.5 million veterans living in the United States and Puerto Rico with more than 1.8 million of them residing in the State of Florida. That is the second highest total in America, only behind California. More than one-third of these live in the Central Florida area alone. This number does not include those veterans who choose to

make Florida their home during the winter months of the year and those veterans who visit the numerous vacation areas in Central Florida, which can number in the tens of thousands.

According to the VA, Central Florida is the number one destination for combat veterans and veterans 65 years of age or older. It is also the number one area for veterans who have 50 percent or more service connected disability, and 18 percent of our veterans have post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Yet Orlando is the largest metropolitan area in the country that is not serviced by a VA medical center. In 2004, Orlando and its surrounding area was identified by the Department of Veterans Affairs through the Capital Asset Realignment for Enhanced Services (CARES) Commission as an area in need of a new VA medical center. CARES was intended to be a comprehensive, system-wide approach, identifying the demand for VA care and projecting into the future the appropriate function, size, and location for VA facilities. At this same time, CARES identified the need for a new medical complex in Las Vegas, Nevada. This need was appropriate and warranted, and the facility in Las Vegas has received funding and is scheduled to break ground this year. However, a hospital in Central Florida still remains an idea.

Orlando area veterans along with the 128 active veterans service organizations in the Central Florida region average 2 hours of travel time to get to VA hospitals located in Tampa, Gainesville, and Jacksonville. This includes veterans who live in Orange, Seminole, Brevard, and Volusia counties. In fact, only 45% of our veterans are within the VA's access standards for hospital care. An Orlando VA medical center would cut most drive times in half, making it more convenient and cut down travel costs. A closer facility would also mean veterans would pursue the medical services provided by the VA and lead to a better quality of life, which they deserve.

Concerns have arisen from Central Florida veterans associations in the area that a VA medical center will not come to fruition. At a May 1st public hearing administered by the Orlando VA Hospital Site Selection Committee, many veterans were accusing lawmakers of not caring for veterans because of the slow progress that has been made.

As of now, $25 million had been authorized by the VA for the Orlando VA Medical Center to assist in site selection, design, and planning. Choosing a site needs to be done while balancing the accessibility needs of Central Florida's veterans, along with the long-term economic impact the hospital will have on the State. This is essential as we look for ways to leverage funds to maximize investment benefit.

This bill would authorize more than $377 million for the construction of this desperately needed facility at the Lake Nona site. This site will include a proposed medical school for the University of Central Florida and the future site of a laboratory research facility from the Burnha Institute, one of the world's leading healthcare and cancer research institutes.

This stunning trifecta for Orlando: the VA hospital, the UCF Medical School, and the Burnham Institute will be valuable to both local veterans and the VA, as the medical school and research environment will provide insight into innovative and cutting-edge technologies which could serve as a vehicle for sharing expensive medical equipment. We also have confirmation from Orlando's Florida hospital that they look forward to partnering with the VA to help share in the costs of diagnostic equipment and contribute to residency and staffing needs. This commitment will ensure that those who have served our country have access to additional resources to further enhance the medical services the VA may offer to them.

Veterans in Central Florida have been waiting for nearly three decades for a new complex that has continuously met delays. I appreciate this opportunity to express Central Florida's immediate and urgent need for a medical facility and I strongly urge passage of this bill so that our growing veterans' population may finally have appropriate access to vital health care services.

I thank my friend from Texas, and I do want to make a few points here today.

One thing you have to give my Democratic friends credit for is their consistency on the war on terror. They have been consistently mad. They were mad we didn't do more surveillance-wise before 9/11 to stop that attack; and they have been mad that we have done too much surveillance since 9/11, which has helped successfully stop another attack, including attacks in Toronto and New York most recently.

But I rise here today to talk about the resolution itself. What this resolution does basically is to tell you, if you operate a flight school and you have reason to believe that the people learning to fly planes want to fly planes into American buildings to kill Americans, you shouldn't warn your students that they may be under surveillance. You should tell the FBI.

This resolution sends a message to all the people that operate hotels that if you are having people stay with you, paying you rent, and you have reason to believe they are putting together an attack on American civilians, you shouldn't warn them that they may be under surveillance. You should tell the FBI.

If you are a chemistry professor and you have reason to believe that a student is putting together weapons of mass destruction, like biological or chemical weapons, you shouldn't warn your student that they may be subject to surveillance. You should tell the FBI.

If you are an American banker and you have reason to believe that your client is depositing money to fund terrorist activities, you shouldn't warn your client that the American Government may be watching you. You should tell the FBI.

And, yes, it does tell American newspapers that if you are loyal, you should not deliberately give sensitive and secret information to the entire world of people that want to do us harm.

Finally, it says to every employee of the United States Government that if you deliberately leak sensitive information that you have access to that you may have committed treason and you may be a traitor.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman for yielding me time; and I especially thank him for his strong support for America's space program. The Weiner amendment would take $477 million from NASA's space exploration budget, essentially would cripple the CEV-CLV program.

Ladies and gentlemen, just so you know what that means, we are scheduled to fly our last shuttle mission in the year 2010. We have a bird on the pad. We hope we get it up July 1 or sometime soon. But we will be down for sure by 2010. We will have no manned space flight program after that unless we continue with the CEV development. This amendment basically wipes out that development in this budget cycle.

I will tell you we need a next generation of vehicles or we will not be in the human space flight business. The Weiner amendment raids the account that is necessary to keep the workforce in place.

If you allow the workforce to disappear from 2010 to, say, 2015 or 2020, you can never replace these people. The expertise that you lose cannot be put back together again. Once Humpty Dumpty and the skilled workforce is dead and depleted, you can never put it back together.

But I am not here just to talk about America's space program. I want to tell my colleagues about a firsthand experience I had. If you are not concerned about space, you ought to be.

I was the first American, along with our colleagues Rick Larsen and Mark Kirk, invited to see the Chinese human space flight program. They got started in 1995. They are 35 years behind us in time, but they are remarkable in how fast they have caught up in their human space flight program.

The Shenzhou vehicle has flown five times now, twice with Taikonauts that have come back successfully, and they have had extraordinary success. While our workforce is basically keeping healthy a 40-year- old, 30-year-old technology, the young Chinese engineers have put together a remarkable new technology that will be very, very powerful in the future.

Mr. Chairman, I want to read the Chinese announcement of their own human space flight program. They say, by 2007, there will be a series of unmanned satellites from the year 2007 through 2015. Starting in 2017, they expect to have unmanned missions to the Moon to bring back lunar samples. By the year 2024, they say they will have landed men and women on the Moon.

Folks, I think their real schedule is much more ambitious than that. If and when we get back to the Moon under the Weiner amendment, we will be looking at Chinese flags and maybe Chinese bases when we get there.

And if that does not stimulate your competitive interests, I am telling you that they are producing 5 to 600,000 engineers a year, by a factor of 8 or 10 what America is able to produce. Nothing stimulates our math and science brains in middle and high schools more than space exploration. The Weiner amendment would put an end to that.

Finally, I will tell you if you are not worried about human space, China is developing the Long March 5 vehicle. It will be able to take 25 tons into orbit. It is not just their human space capabilities that they are working on. They are trying to get space predominance so that they can potentially incapacitate all of our communications satellite and all of the satellites that America depends on for our force multipliers that allow our military to be the most capable in the world.

Ladies and gentlemen, please do not gut the human space component of America's exploration; and, if you do, be prepared for what happens when the Chinese beat us to outer space.

Will the gentleman yield? He asked a question. Will he yield for a second?

The COPS program has been completed.

It was intended to put 100,000 officers on the street.

I apologize. I thought he asked a question.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to express my concern with the potential port management transfer to Dubai Ports World.

Less than 1 month ago, our President stood in front of us and told us that homeland security was the number one issue this Nation faces. And, in fact, this administration has a strong and great record in defending our homeland.

But last week, when I was home, Americans throughout my district expressed deep concern that this fast track deal had not been given the type of scrutiny that all of us took a constitutional oath to do when we said we would protect our country.

I need to say that, although the United Arab Emirates has been recently a good friend, including a friend in the war on terror, this deal deserves much more discourse and much more scrutiny before it goes forward.

I plan to support legislation to provide congressional oversight for such important decisions in the future and to put a hold on this deal unless and until Congress satisfies itself, as the administration has, that America's interests and security will not be imperiled.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to thank Chairman Boehlert and Chairman Calvert and the respective ranking and minority Members.

We will recall in the aftermath of the Columbia accident, many of us on Capitol Hill and the space community observed the drift. America's human space program seemed to be adrift in terms of our space flight initiative and vision. The President responded with his vision which has now become America's vision.

The conference bill and the report provides unambiguous and bipartisan endorsement of America's Vision for Space Exploration. The direction of human space flight has now been set for future administrations and congresses. I look forward to progressing on this ambitious journey of exploration and science.

As we do move forward, Mr. Speaker, I hope we take to heart the Columbia accident investigation board's reminder and admonition that NASA ``is an organization straining to do too much with too little.'' As we work to provide NASA with a focused mission, including but not limited to human space flight, we need to avoid overloading and micromanaging this agency and its fine leader, Mr. Griffin.

With that, I thank the chairman for the time.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding me this time.

I want to speak in favor of the manager's amendment, if it is adopted, certainly a great and important bill, and the rule itself.

The actual truth of the matter is that housing ownership in America is at an all time high. This Congress and this President have established policies that allow virtually every American that has a job to find a way, if they desire, to own a home.

The GSEs, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, have played an important part in that. They provide liquidity in the secondary market so that there are more opportunities for people to borrow at relatively low rates of interest. We ought to preserve that system, and we ought to protect that system.

These are enormous entities. Fannie alone is $1.7 trillion in terms of assets, and both of these entities had some accounting troubles. The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Oxley) and the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Baker) have led the way so that we can reform and have appropriate oversight for those enormous, but important, entities that help the housing market in America flourish.

The question here today is whether the rule ought to be adopted. Some of our friends on the other side are very upset, because rather than providing money for bricks and mortar, what they would like to do is to provide money for politics. They want to allow folks that engage in political activity, including voter registration, to have access to money that otherwise would go to low-interest loans or to help affordable housing builders at the local level actually build bricks and mortar.

People that want a home do not need a lobbyist; they do not want a politician. They want somebody that will actually build them, with the sticks and the bricks and the mortar, a home to live in. That is what this fight is about. One of the largest advocates, the groups that the other side would like to have receive up to 2 or $3 billion this fund may reach in the next 5 years, is a group called ACORN.

Now, ACORN is an important group. They are a first amendment group. The gentleman is right. They have every right to participate in first amendment activity, but not with money that we give them from Congress. Thomas Jefferson said that to force a man to contribute to a cause in which he does not believe is the definition of tyranny.

We want to build homes. They want to buy liberal lobbyists and politicians. That is what this debate is about. ACORN had a game plan in the year 2003 in Florida. By the way, they do this in many other competitive States. ACORN wanted to register voters. They argued to the public that this was about support for a minimum wage constitutional amendment in Florida.

But their three bottom-line goals here are very important. Increasing the minimum wage was the least important thing as part of their voter registration drive. What they argued to contributors, who have the right to contribute to this activity, who we should not force probably to contribute to this activity, is they had three goals. And I want to read these into the Record.

The goals of this campaign are three-fold: To increase voter turnout of working class, mainly Democratic voters without increasing opposition turnout; number two, to increase the power of progressive constituencies by moving a mass agenda, putting together the capacity to get on the ballot and win and by putting our side on the offensive; number three, to deliver a wage increase to hundreds of thousands of Floridians. That was an afterthought.

Chairman Oxley and Chairman Baker have fashioned a great compromise. Let us build homes. Let us pay for bricks and mortar. Let us not pay for a liberal lobbyist.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that I may hereafter be considered as the first sponsor of H.R. 64, a bill originally introduced by Representative Cox of California, for purposes of adding cosponsors and requesting reprinting pursuant to clause 7 of rule XII.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the Central American Free Trade

Agreement, but I do so some reservation. While CAFTA should provide economic benefits to most industries in Florida, it does create some difficulties for our State's sugar farmers. I am disappointed that tonight's vote will have a negative impact on an important agricultural industry in our State, but along with this vote comes the broad economic benefits of free trade.

I have made a difficult decision tonight to support an agreement that will negatively impact some farmers in my State because of my belief in the principles of free trade. So it would be irresponsible of me not to make several points perfectly clear to my colleagues from other areas of the Nation, particularly the Midwest, whose farmers receive billions of dollars in farm program subsidies each year.

Unlike most commodity programs, the U.S. sugar program is designed to operate at no cost to the taxpayer. Unlike other crops, our Nation does not produce too much sugar, in fact we are the fourth largest importer in the world. We don't have to prop up sugar farmers by finding ways to get excess sugar out of the country, and we don't have to write billions of dollars of government checks to sugar farmers to allow them to stay in business.

I want to be sure that my colleagues understand that they may be called on to make an equally hard choice in the near future. Some corn groups have been especially critical of their fellow farmers who produce sugar cane and sugar beets. According to the President's budget, corn farmers will receive almost $9 billion in government support for the 2004 crop alone. If sugar farmers received billions of dollars in government subsidies, they might produce a surplus like corn and be less concerned about increased imports.

I don't raise this issue in an effort to attack other Members' constituent industries; rather, like many of my colleagues, I am very concerned about Federal Government spending and the deficit. I just ask that those who are so quick to dismiss the concerns of my State's farmers be willing to take the same position of responsibility when you are called on to cut spending to your farmers. There has been a great deal of scrutiny of the sugar program in recent months. It is time we applied that scrutiny to other, high cost, farm programs as well, and all do our part to cut government spending.

Mr. Chairman, I am very grateful today for the leadership of the gentleman from New York (Chairman Boehlert) for the advancement of science in general and space science in particular. I am grateful that the gentleman from California (Mr. Calvert), our chairman of the subcommittee, is about to pass the first authorization bill for NASA in some 5 years.

It is important now that the President has laid out a grand new vision for the future of space that Congress weigh in and participate, and this is our first opportunity on the House floor. I am grateful for both the gentleman from New York (Chairman Boehlert) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Calvert), but I too want to suggest that it is important we have a bipartisan consensus so that the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Gordon), ranking member, and the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Udall) have played an important role in making sure that this is a United States space vision, not a Bush vision, not a Democratic or Republican vision; and this is a great opportunity to start in this new millennium.

And, of course, Mike Griffin has done a terrific job. He has got a background with more science credentials than some entire science departments at universities; and he has proven that he can take the bull by the horns, change the entire attitude and culture at NASA in a positive way. And that is going to be necessary because in the aftermath of the Columbia accident, many on Capitol Hill and many in the space community observed there was a drift in the American human space flight program. The President responded with the Vision for Space Exploration, and I am pleased that this bill embraces that vision and enjoys such broad bipartisan support.

America's Vision for Space Exploration provides a logical pace and sustainable transition from current vehicles and missions to an exploration and science agenda that breaks out of low Earth orbit and ensures America will be a spacefaring Nation for generations to come. America will return the Shuttle to flight, complete the International Space Station, and then extend our presence to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

The Columbia Accident Investigation Board correctly observed that NASA ``is an organization straining to do too much with too little.'' As this bill moves forward in the legislative process, I hope that the lessons learned apply to Congress as well as to NASA, that we work to provide NASA with a focused mission, including, but not limited to, human space flight, but avoid overloading and micromanaging this great agency and its leadership.