Spencer Bachus

Mr. BACHUS

Mr. BACHUS. I would say to the gentleman that it is not our obligation to contact Shorebank or even to decide whether they are worthy of a grant or not. This law sets up a review process and requires certain documentation to be made. Shorebank may, in fact, be a totally worthy organization. I have no reason to believe they are not a good organization that does good work. That simply does not entitle this fund to simply make a check out for $4.5 million and hand it to them without a review, without any documentation. Certainly the gentleman from Illinois would agree that the end does not justify the means. As worthy a goal as there may have been, it does not allow one to manufacture documents.

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, I think it is important for all of us in this body to define what this amendment does and why it is necessary and what it does not do. This amendment leaves funding at the present level of $50 million a year. We heard the gentleman from Florida that said the Senate, because of these same facts and what has happened in this program, zeroed out funding. But the amendment that the gentleman from Florida and I have offered leaves the funding level from last year. Why are we offering this amendment? Why are we opposed to the administration's request that funding for this program increase by 150 percent to $125 million? We are doing that for several reasons. One is that of the original $50 million that was appropriated by this Congress, $37 million of it was directed to this fund, and of that $37 million, as of March of this year, only $4 million had been spent. As of this time, the whole $37 million that was appropriated in 1996 has not been granted. We have got $37 million in an appropriation and since 1996 they have not appropriated all the money. Should this Congress come along and at this time say we are going to put another $125 million in? I think not. What has happened to the money that the people of the United States, the taxpayers, put in, this $37 million? Let us look at what has happened to it. First of all, not all of it had been spent and we are asking those same people for another $125 million. But of that that was granted, $11 million of it was granted without any written memorandum, no written review. In fact, to review, to do our necessary oversight, on April 14 of this year, I told the director of this fund that I would be reviewing the grant process and that my investigators would be there on the morning of April 18. Subsequent to my letter to her, she was at a conference in Paris, France, she called the deputy director and told him to create a memorandum, to create paperwork outlining the grant process. In fact, he did this on $11 million dollars worth of grants. To get there, to put this paperwork, documentation of how these grants were made, to be able to do that, they had to stay up all night the night of April 17, and during the middle of the night and until the next morning, and they only typed those papers up and put them in the files 2 hours before congressional investigators visited to determine if they had gone and complied with the grant process. The inspector general has reviewed this whole process. What has she found? She has said that this was wrong. She has said that this was done against the advice of legal counsel at the fund. She has said that legal counsel advised that these documents be dated. In fact, they were not only not dated but they were put in those four files and they were made to appear as if they were written sometime, I think, between May and July 1996.

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. BACHUS. Let me say this. I would say to the Treasury Department that they can facilitate this by some prompt action on their part.

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, I think that a lot of things have already been investigated and decided, and there is some action that could be taken this week. That is my fervent hope, and I hope the Secretary of the Treasury will show some good faith in setting standards. But I think we have an agreement.

Mr. BACHUS. But let me say this, and I want to reiterate this, what we know and what the IG has described happened over there----

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman from California would yield, or conditioned upon.

Mr. BACHUS. That is correct.

Mr. BACHUS. That is correct.

Mr. BACHUS

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is a simple amendment. It simply states that someone convicted of a crime and sentenced to death or life imprisonment shall not be entitled to a full honors funeral in one of our national cemeteries. In considering this amendment, I think we all need to do some serious soul searching. Who is in entitled to a hero's funeral? I think when we ask ourselves, who are our heroes, in this country, who do we honor? I think we can go back to the summer of 1994 to tell us that we may be doing the wrong thing, we may have confused celebrities with heroes, we may have confused notoriety with character. In 1994, on a Sunday afternoon, we will recall that there was a famous chase on an L.A. freeway and, in that chase, fully three- quarters of the news media in the country was focused on it. As almost what appeared to be half of the L.A. police force chased someone down that highway, America was transformed on to that event. At the same time, on our other shore, here in Washington, there was another ceremony going on at the very same time. At the White House, two young Army Rangers were being awarded the Medal of Honor. It was a posthumous ceremony. They had given their lives in Somalia. When they left the protection of their unit and tried to save some of their fellow soldiers, they were killed. And they and their families were at the White House receiving the Medal of Honor. There was no live TV coverage. There was no mention of it in my hometown paper, which was full of talk about what happened on that L.A. freeway. We really have to ask ourselves, who in our country are our heroes? Some people are saying that the fact that Timothy McVeigh did what he did in Oklahoma City, that he is still a military hero. I would remind my colleagues that our country's oldest military force is our National Guard; and when it was formed, the word was said that to be a good soldier, one had to be a good citizen, too; to fight for the country, you had to do it both at home and abroad. This amendment is not offered out of disrespect for any one person. It is offered out of respect, respect for the victims of those that we would honor in our cemeteries with a 21- or 12-gun salute, a chaplain, requiring military honor guard to be present. This amendment, the catalyst, is not Oklahoma City. The catalyst was Mobile, AL, where last week a man named Henry Francis Hayes was given a full military honor funeral and laid to rest at the Mobile National Cemetery, over the protest of several of the people serving in the unit who attended. Henry Francis Hayes was not a hero. He was electrocuted in Alabama on June 7 for the murder of a young black man, 19 years old, in Mobile, AL, who Henry Francis Hayes and other Ku Klux Klanners pulled from the safety of his family, took him to another county, beat him half to death with sticks, slit his throat, brought him back to Mobile County, put a hangman's noose around his neck, and hung him. A jury in the State of Alabama said that he was not a hero. But last week, in a military ceremony, we said to our children and grandchildren, we are overlooking this. This is a good soldier. This is a hero. And he got a hero's funeral, and he is buried in the Mobile cemetery. I will simply say, who is entitled to a hero's funeral? Who are our heroes?

Mr. BACHUS

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, the voice vote was yes on my amendment, and I did not request a recorded vote and am not requesting a recorded vote.

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, let me point out to this body that the State Department has been urged by this Congress to sell this property for 10 years, and from 1990 to 1995 they only sold about $150 million worth of property. The biggest piece of property that they sold, which was a $49 million piece of property in Singapore, they only sold because the Singapore government needed it for a road and actually condemned that land and compelled that sale. A $49 million piece of property in Singapore that our embassy did not need. A residence costing $92 million in Japan, which we are using as a residence for one of our mission members over there. Ninety-two million. How do we say to the American people that we are housing some of our foreign operations people, that we are using a $92 million piece of property to house someone in the foreign ministry, yet we turn down requests for $10 million and $20 million here? The GAO said in that case that for $4 million, well, they actually said that they could convert property they already had for a residence for this gentleman, and yet he is still there. I would just simply say to the gentleman from New Jersey, and I identify with what he is saying, but I think what I am saying, and in Jerry McGuire's words, to the American people, either show me the money, show me the savings, or start another panel or start another committee or study this thing a little more. This is obviously a luxury the American people do not want, they cannot afford, they have never requested, and it is time for action. It is time for a yes vote on my amendment, and it will save, I would say, a billion dollars that will go to deficit reduction, money that the taxpayers will not have to use to pay their hard-earned taxes in to go to pay interest on the deficit.

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, I have heard my colleagues here today talk about saving $10 million and saving $30 million and making priorities, and I commend them for that. This amendment will save the taxpayers of the United States, the American people, as much as a half a billion dollars. We are not talking about $10 million, we are not talking about $20 million. Mr. Chairman, today our Government, the State Department, owns over 1 billion, well, actually, over $10 billion, and I keep missing that, it is more than that, it is $100 billion in property overseas. Of that, as much as $1 billion is considered to be excess surplus property. This includes an orange grove in Morocco that is being used by the King of Morocco; it includes a $12 million mansion in Bermuda that our State Department says is ostentatious, to use their own inspector general's words; in Tanzania they have closed our post there but we still own the property. A billion dollars' worth of surplus property out there. Now, this Congress has sort of dabbled in this. They have tried to address this and they have asked the State Department to form a panel to make some recommendations, but I would say to this body that we do not need a recommendation on this $467 million that the State Department 2 years ago already told this Congress was unneeded, unnecessary surplus land. What my amendment does, it says that by March 1 they will list all of this land and that they will start selling this surplus property and that those savings will go into the deficit. Now, there may be some Member here that says, well, if they sell this surplus, unnecessary, unused property, why do we not let them keep the money. I would say that that would be giving them money that they do not need. They come before this Congress, and if they need $4 million to build a building in Germany, then they ask for an appropriation. Last year we gave the State Department over $400 million to build new buildings and to buy property in foreign countries and we are appropriating a like amount this year. This is surplus property. This is property that should go back to the deficit. It ought to be used by Americans. It ought to be used here at home. We do not need an orange grove used by the King of Morocco, we do not need a $12 million mansion that the State Department says is unneeded and is a luxury we cannot afford in these days of a budget crisis. We need to really set our priorities. We need to get serious about this. When we talk about our soldiers, our enlisted men that may not get a 2.8-percent raise, we are talking about millions of dollars, but here we are talking about saving $1 billion. I would much rather sell some land that this Government owns in Bangkok, which is not being used, that they have had for 8 or 9 years, and give that money for something worthy; either return it to the taxpayers, pay it on the deficit or apply it to things that the American people really need. I can continue to go down this list. I can continue to cite examples, but I would say this to the Members. We asked the GAO to review this thing 2 years ago and to report back to us, and they have come back and in this report they have said that the State Department, by their own admission, has 460 million dollars' worth of surplus land and property.

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. BACHUS

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker. I rise today in support of H.R. 1306, the Riegle-Neal Clarification Act of 1997. I commend Chairwoman Roukema for taking the lead on this issue and acting forcefully to make sure that interstate branching does not result in artificial impediments to the continued growth of State chartered banks. This bill will simply clarify the original intent of the Riegle-Neal Interstate Branching and Efficiency Act of 1994 which I cosponsored. This law, which goes into effect June 1, needs this clarification to fully address the issue of various State banking regulations and how this would affect a bank headquartered in one State operating a branch in another. Mr. Speaker, we have heard almost unanimous testimony that the unfortunate and unintended consequences of our failure to make these clarifications will be the devaluation of State bank charters in favor of national charters and the gradual decline of the State banking system. I am a firm believer in the dual banking system of State and federally chartered institutions and I am certain that the innovation and tremendous strength enjoyed by the American financial marketplace is due in part to the dynamic created by these separate charters. It will be indeed unfortunate if a vibrant State bank is unwilling or unable to take advantage of interstate branching. Many State banks will simply not expand rather than compete with national banks in another State or convert to a national charter in order to grow. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote for H.R. 1306.

Mr. BACHUS

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, if we have raised a point of order against the first paragraph, does it have to be read anyway?

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, I raise a point of order.

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, this provision violates rule XXI, and I would raise a point of order in that it deals with the Highway Trust Fund, whose jurisdiction to rescind contract authority is clearly within the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, not the Committee on Appropriations. I will say, as to this point of order and to the next two which I will raise, that the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure would be glad to work with the Committee on Appropriations at a future date. I renew my point of order.

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, I raise a point of order.

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, I raise a point of order.