Xavier Becerra

Mr. BECERRA

Mr. BECERRA. Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition to House Resolution 507.

Mr. BECERRA

Mr. BECERRA. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me, but more, I thank him for his efforts to get this to the floor and finally get it passed. I think we are going to get there. Mr. Chairman, this is truly a poison pill, but it is a poison bill for a number of different reasons. Perhaps the most important to a number of people is the fact that it poisons the well to people who wish to become for the first time ever participants in our democracy, because they have just become U.S. citizens. Let us make no mistake, this is not an effort to try to make sure that only American citizens vote. This is an effort to try to exclude those who are our newest American citizens from participating. Because if it were an effort to try to address the issue of all of our citizens, all of the people who live in this country being eligible to vote, then it would not target just the States where the most new citizens happen to reside, States like mine in California. If we look at page 2 of the bill, there it is, States of California, New York, Texas, Florida, and Illinois. If I were to name the five States with the highest Latino population in the Nation, they would be States like California, New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois. What a coincidence that this bill goes after those States where the most Hispanics happen to reside. That is where there are a lot of new Hispanic voters. What else does this bill do? It tells us that somehow, through the Social Security Administration and the INS, we are going to be able to determine the citizenship of the 267 some-odd million people who live in this country. Wake up. Social Security has never been able to determine citizenship for anyone. Wake up, the INS cannot determine the citizenship for even all the folks who have immigrateed into this country. Wake up, they are targeting only those who were not born in this country, and somehow in their mind they are not eligible to vote. Wake up, how will someone determine if this individual should or should not be checked in terms of citizenship? Tell me how a county registrar of voters is supposed to determine which individual to ask, ``Can I get your Social Security number?'' How will someone at the Motor Vehicle Department, when someone is filling out an application for registration for voting, say, ``Wait a minute, you have passed your license test to drive, but can I see your Social Security number? Because I need to check to find out if you are a citizen''? What will determine when someone gets asked whether or not they are citizens or not? Will it be the way they speak or the way they look, or will it be by the spelling on the last name? When that official tries to check with the INS and SSA and finds out that they cannot do this, what happens to that person's eligibility to vote? This is a targeted effort, unfortunately, at people who are beginning to participate. It scares some people. I am sorry that it does. The intentions may be good, but the mechanics of this amendment are totally wrong. Someone said, let us protect the integrity of elections. Absolutely, let us do that. Let us do so. But let us protect the integrity of the Bill of Rights. Let us protect the integrity of the right to privacy. Let us protect the integrity of the right to freedom. Let us protect the integrity of this effort to reform our campaign finance laws. Let us not get involved in this whole debate about how we tell which of the 267 million people who reside in this country are or not citizens through a process that we know cannot work, because the Social Security Administration and the INS have told us they cannot give us that information. Please defeat this amendment. This is not the way to do it, and certainly we send the wrong message to our newest citizens who are trying to live in this greatest of democracies.

Mr. BECERRA

Mr. BECERRA. Mr. Speaker, parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. BECERRA. Mr. Speaker, my parliamentary inquiry is, is it not the tradition of the House to divide the time equally between those who are in support and those who are opposed?

Mr. BECERRA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, but if this bill goes through, I definitely would not want to be from Texas. I know my colleagues have heard quite a bit on this. I think it is unfortunate that, once again, we are seeing communities that are poor, oftentimes unrepresented well in the Congress because they may not be sophisticated politically; they may not have a lot of money to give to campaigns, or for whatever the reasons, now again being dumped upon. If I may, rather than speak words that I believe will be spoken by others of my colleagues here, let me read a letter that was just yesterday issued by the largest Hispanic national organization in the country, the League of United Latin American Citizens. LULAC goes on to say, The selection of a poor Mexican-American community (which is already the site of one of the largest sewage sludge projects in the country) brings to mind serious considerations of environmental justice . . . The decision Congress now faces on this matter cannot be made in a vacuum, ignoring serious environmental justice questions that have been raised about the site selection process. These unjust procedures are an apparent contradiction of the 1994 Executive Order that firmly upheld environmental justice. LULAC would caution Congress not to be complicit in what has become, whether intentional or not, a repulsive trend in this country of setting the most hazardous and undesirable facilities in poor, politically powerless communities with high percentages of poor people of color. Only a vote against the Texas, Maine, and Vermont Radioactive Waste Compact conference committee report will ensure that this trend is not extended into Hudspeth County, Texas. I would urge all Members to heed what one of the largest and oldest national organizations, representing a very large section of this country, is saying, not because of what it says, but because of what this bill will do to the people that live in those areas. We are looking at affecting the lives of more than 5 million people that live in that area of Texas, and I would hope that my colleagues would look a little closer before moving forward on a compact that would jeopardize the safety not just of people, but mostly of children.

Mr. BECERRA. If I heard the Speaker correctly, the allocation of time is being distributed two-thirds to those who are in support of the bill and one-third to those who are opposed to the bill.

Mr. BECERRA

Mr. BECERRA. Mr. Speaker, on July 15, I was unavoidably detained during roll call vote number 282, on final passage of H.R. 3267, a bill concerning the Salton Sea. Had I been present for the vote, I would have voted ''no``.

Mr. BECERRA

Mr. BECERRA. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time. Please, Members, do not confuse the term foreign national with what this bill really does, and that is it goes after lawful permanent residents. Foreign nationals are people who may be visiting, may be coming to this country on occasion, but they are nationals, citizens of another country and do not have intentions of staying. Lawful permanent residents are exactly what the term says, they are lawfully here, they are permanently here and they are on their way to becoming U.S. citizens. This amendment is a sweeping indictment of the 8 or 10 million people who are lawful permanent residents, 2 million of whom are waiting up to 3 years to become U.S. citizens. This amendment is telling all those folks, tough luck. This Congress has been very good at stripping rights from lawful permanent residents, but it is very bad, and I am willing to give them what they deserve, the opportunity to participate. We tax lawful permanent residents. We expect them to defend this country in times of war, and they do, and we have Medal of Honor winners to prove it. We expect them to adopt a civil life in America, yet we want to now with this amendment exclude them from future participation. Members should vote against this amendment if they are serious about campaign reform. Vote against this amendment.

Mr. BECERRA

Mr. BECERRA. Mr. Speaker, I was reminded of some questions recently that my daughter was asking me and when I had to say no, she kept saying to me why, why, why? This whole debate reminds me of that conversation. Why, why, why? If the majority wants to get rid of it, what will they do? Do not tell us in the year 2002, tell us now. For those families who are thinking about buying a home, what will the price of the home be now? They need to know. Will they be able to deduct the mortgage interest on the home or not? Will that increase the price they have to pay or diminish the property value once they purchase? Will that individual, thinking of moving to a new company, have a pension plan because the company knows that right now the Tax Code provides an incentive for companies to provide employees with a retirement plan, and as a result, they get to deduct some of that from their taxes. But if we are going to abolish the Tax Code, will the company be offering pension plans to their new employees? Why? If my child is entitled to an answer, certainly the American public is entitled to an answer. Why? What? How? When? This is nothing but bumper sticker politics. We want to be able to go into November saying, ``We did this. We talked about abolishing the Tax Code.'' It does sound very good, and I suspect after the vote in this House by the majority party here, they will have the votes to pass it on. It will not become law, but they will be able to say they tried to abolish the Tax Code and it will sound great. But, Mr. Speaker, all the kids in America will still ask why, how, what, and they will never give them an answer. The majority will do the worst kind of policymaking that is possible in this country, and that is legislating by fiat, legislating by show, legislating by theater, legislating by bumper sticker. Mr. Speaker, that does not do anyone any good. We ought to give the American public, and America's children, whom this will affect most, an answer.

Mr. BECERRA

Mr. BECERRA. Mr. Speaker, S.1150 will come up, the rule will come up in just a few moments. I would like to echo the remarks of my friends and colleagues, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Dooley). We had a very delicately balanced package that addressed the needs of our farmers in America and addressed the needs of those in America who are hungry. It was a very difficult compromise to make because there is such a need out there in these various communities. Yet, we were able to strike that accord, bipartisan accord, rural and urban American accord. On the Senate side, 92 votes came out in support of this bill. In conference, it was a unanimously supported conference report. All of a sudden, now we have a rule on this bill here in the House that would destroy that delicate compromise, the balance that was achieved. Unfortunately, what it does is it guts the funding for the crop insurance aspect of this, for the agricultural research aspect of this, and for the dollars necessary to try to help those who are in need of food. We cannot let this happen. I would urge a no vote on the rule.

Mr. BECERRA

Mr. BECERRA. Mr. Speaker, as my colleagues just said, this rule breaks that delicate compromise that was reached that withdrew savings in food stamp programs, allowed us to provide more monies for agricultural research, more monies for crop insurance, and more monies to provide food for very hungry elderly, disabled, and children who are legal immigrants, legal immigrants. If we send this out, and I hope we do not, I hope we defeat this rule, the Senate will still be able to put holds by any single member of the Senate on this bill; the Senate will be able to amend this bill further; and even if it should pass out of the Senate and come back here and still pass, the President has already said he would veto this bill if it did not include the three components of this compromise. Why we would want to stall this bill I do not understand, except to say that what it does is, it kills entire components of the bill because there will not be money left over at the end of the day to do all we want to do on transportation funding, all we want to do for Social Security and still come back. Defeat the rule.

Mr. BECERRA

Mr. BECERRA. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Mr. Chairman, the Department of Defense does not support this, the Department of Justice does not support the Traficant amendment, the people who live along the border in Texas and parts of California do not support this amendment. And if you do not believe that, talk to the folks in Redford, Texas. When the military was deployed in Texas last year for that brief time they were out there, while we all talk here, talk about reducing drugs and the number of people who die in this country as a result of drug overdoses, the deaths that were occurring were not because of drug use so much as Ezequiel Hernandez, a U.S. citizen, dying at the hands of our own military. The first time since 1970 that someone who was an American citizen on American soil has perished at the hands of his own compatriot. That is what happens when you put a force that is trained to kill on a border to do work that is not necessarily to kill, but to interdict. If I were a Border Patrol agent watching this debate, I would say, ``Thanks a lot. I go out every day and I try to stop drugs from coming into this country, and you are telling me I do not do a good job. And you are telling me my fellow companions that go out there every day, they do not do a good job, and we have to have now someone else not trained to do my job, do my job.'' We have got to stop talking and give the resources, so the folks who do the work have the chance to do it. That is what we have to do. A lot of talk here, a lot of action on the border. Let us support the folks who do the action and stop the drugs from coming in, rather than just saying we are going to stop the drugs. That is what we need to do.

Mr. BECERRA

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

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

Mr. BECERRA. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. BECERRA. But if we gauge in a discussion and find that the legislation does affect and the law as it exists does affect those civil rights protections, would the gentleman be willing, or I ask the two sponsors, will they be willing to then incorporate language to make sure that we do not weaken civil rights protections.

Mr. BECERRA. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman. I do not think we will need the time.

Mr. BECERRA. Mr. Chairman, I thank my friend, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman), for yielding; and I also thank my friend from California (Mr. Condit) for his words. I appreciate what the gentleman from California has just said. And I agree. I do not think it is the intent of anyone, whether it is the sponsors or anyone who would vote on this legislation, to diminish, to weaken civil rights protections. But I think, and we can always sit down and discuss this further. I believe if we read closely what is clearly covered under the law under the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act and what the legislation we have before us do in tandem is it would permit legislation that would weaken civil rights protections. Because the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act only spoke about laws that establish or enforce; it did not talk about laws that weaken. So laws that weaken are permitted to go through this process without coverage to the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act.

Mr. BECERRA. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Let me explain my amendment briefly. We have entered into a debate through the amendment by my colleague and friend from California (Mr. Waxman) on the issue of what happens when a particular bill or a piece of legislation has the effect of weakening protections for the environment or public health and safety, and we had some discussion on that amendment. If my colleagues look at the legislation that we are discussing now and we now relate that same type of debate or discussion on the issue of civil rights, what we find is that this legislation actually would permit, permit, this Congress to establish laws that will weaken our current civil rights protections that we provide to the American public. Let me give my colleagues a quick example of what I mean. In both fair employment and housing law, there are exemptions made for small businesses. A small business is defined as having fewer than 15 employees. If we have legislation which attempted to broaden the definition of a small business to, say, 50 employees, in other words, something more than 15 employees, what we would do is we would now be excluding from civil rights laws and protections a whole array, many, many more businesses that now have up to 50 employees. Where, right now, under current law, those businesses that have between 16 and 50 employees would have the civil rights laws in the books applied to them; with this legislation, that would no longer be the case. I do not believe it is the intent of the authors of this legislation or of anyone in this Congress to weaken civil rights protections for the elderly, for the infirm, the disabled, for minorities that have been discriminated over the past, other people based on religion. I do not believe that is the intent of this Congress. Yet the legislation, as it is written, would allow that to happen. Why do I say that? Well, if my colleagues recall when we had the debate on the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act, when it was passed last session, a number of us raised this concern that we would make it nearly impossible to enforce and protect civil rights laws, constitutional protections and other matters with the legislation had it been drafted back then a couple years ago. We got included in the legislation the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act legislation that, in essence, said, we cannot apply this unfunded mandates law on bills that try to enforce constitutional rights of individuals or attempt to establish or enforce any statutory rights that prohibit discrimination. So no points of order would lie against legislation that tried to do exactly that, enforce constitutional rights or establish or enforce statutory rights that prohibit discrimination. But we have a situation here where now we are not necessarily trying to enforce the law. In this case, if legislation comes forward which tries to diminish the impact of that law, weakening that law, as the example I gave before where we went from considering a small business to mean only 15 or fewer employees in a business to now 50 or fewer employees in a business, by weakening that law, what we have done is weakened civil rights protections. I do not believe that that is the intent of this legislation and its sponsors. I would hope that Congress would not intend to go in that direction. And I offer this amendment to try to address that concern and hope that it can be unanimously accepted by this body. Mr. Chairman, if I could give one last example to, hopefully, make this as clear as possible. Right now, under the Americans With Disabilities Act, the ADA, a disabled individual who may have to use a wheelchair is entitled to be able to access a public place. And if there is a business that wants to open itself up to the public, it must also make itself available to disabled who are in wheelchairs. Well, if we had legislation that attempted to remove the ramp-access requirements for disabled, that currently would not be protected under the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act. This legislation would now make it possible to remove those standards and weaken the laws. So, for those reasons, I would ask Members to consider this amendment and adopt it unanimously.

Mr. BECERRA

Mr. BECERRA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Let me begin by saying that I fully support the funding increases in this bill for drug interdiction. That should have and could have been the focus of this debate. Unfortunately, at the last moment, provisions were added to this bill which changes character and also made it an anti-worker bill. Why this bill takes a swipe at workers I do not understand, but it does. Sections 221 and 222 of title II of this bill would remove the negotiating rights for front-line drug enforcement personnel, the very people that we are asking to take on this risky task of stopping drugs from coming through. On one day in April of last year, two U.S. Customs Inspectors were shot. At the same time that same day, there was a bomb threat in a cross-border pedestrian tunnel, and there was a 100-mile pursuit of a truck filled with immigrants who had no right to be in this country, this truck barreling through a border checkpoint and almost running down a Border Patrol agent. Those are the kinds of things that happen. Those employees put their life on the line. They should have every right to decide under what conditions they would work. Now, management does not have to agree to everything; and that is what the collective bargaining process is for. If we allow the process to work, it would work very well. Unfortunately, even in this own House, we do not follow process. This bill was introduced on May 7. We had a hearing on April 20 on Customs' issues. So at the hearing itself on these issues, we never took up this bill nor those anti-worker provisions. May 12, this went before the subcommittee; May 14, it went before the subcommittee; and today it is on the floor. Never once have we had a chance to discuss these anti-worker provisions. We would all probably be standing supporting this bill if it were not for the fact that, at the last moment, anti-worker provisions were added. It is a way to cloak those ugly provisions and get this bill passed. We should really be voting no on this bill until those provisions are removed.

Mr. BECERRA

Mr. BECERRA. Mr. Chairman, how sweet it would be if what my colleague, who just spoke, said were true; that we are a society based on equality of the laws and application of those laws. But the reality is we are not yet there, and if my colleagues do not believe it, just talk to those FBI agents. Not too long ago, African Americans who sat down at a fast food restaurant to get some food never got served. Or talk to the two young ladies in California who went to an ice cream parlor not too long ago and asked for ice cream, and were asked for ID before they would get any service whatsoever because they looked Hispanic. We are not there yet, and that is the truth about it. It would be nice to base something on merit, but numbers do not give merit. And if my colleagues have seen our public schools and they see where most minorities and poor people are, they will understand why we cannot just base things on merit, because someone can have a 4.0 in some of our inner-city schools and they cannot compete with a 3.5 from some of the suburban schools. That is where we are today. But worse than that, the amendment does not cure a real problem we have. My wife happens to be a physician, a professor of medicine at a university here, and if she stays there long enough, our three children, who are very young right now, will have an opportunity to go to that university, even if there are other children who grow up and get better grades and get better scores than my children do. Because my wife happens to work at that university, she will get her kids in. Great for me and my wife because now she is a professor there. But my parents and her parents were never professors. They were farm workers. My father was a laborer, my mother was a clerk typist; they could not have said that. We do not have the justice in this world that allows the children of everyone else to have parents who will be professors who can get their children into school. And as my father used to tell me when he was younger, that sign outside that restaurant that would not let me come in with the dogs, because it said ``No Mexicans or dogs allowed,'' and, by the way, my father was born an American citizen, are not there anymore, but they still affect us all. In the same way that he could not walk into a restaurant not long ago, we cannot still walk into some of those universities. Defeat this amendment.

Mr. BECERRA

Mr. BECERRA. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, today something tragic is about to happen. Again. Like so many debates before this House, we are about to allow the politics of fear to trump policies of reason. Logic tells us that if you have a problem and you can identify a sensible solution, your problem is on the way to being resolved. Here is the problem. Injection drug use is responsible for nearly 50 percent of all the new cases of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. It is responsible for 44 percent of all the cases reported for African-Americans, 44 percent of all the cases reported for Latinos, and 61 percent of all the cases reported for women. A sensible approach to a devastating problem as AIDS/HIV is, is needle exchange programs. It is one of the weapons we can use in an arsenal. HIV transmission is reduced when injection drug users are furnished with clean needles in exchange for dirty, potentially infected used ones. This is where the politics of fear comes into play. Those on the other side of this debate will tell you that needle exchange programs encourage illegal drug use and our streets will be overrun with drug addicts, and that is because we are offering them free needles. First of all, as we have already heard, the science does not bear that out. As we have been told, the General Accounting Office, the University of California, the National Institutes of Health have all conducted studies which show the efficacy of needle exchange programs. Second, more is involved in a person's decision to use illegal drugs than the provision of a free needle. To suggest that Americans are so weak- willed and feeble-minded that they would begin using illegal drugs solely because of the provision of clean needles is insulting. Mr. Speaker, I implore my colleagues in this House to allow reason to trump fear. Needle exchange programs work. Let us defeat this bill and let us save lives.

Mr. BECERRA

Mr. BECERRA. Mr. Speaker, for the first time in the history of the United States a Joint Delegation of the Parliamentary Committee of MERCOSUR (Southern Common Market), comprised of both Senators and Representatives from the Congresses of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, recently visited Washington, DC to meet with their United States counterparts. The visit of the Delegation emphasizes the transformation that has taken place in the last decade and a half in these four South American countries. Understanding the need to decentralize their economies, these countries worked together to establish policies and regulations that have resulted in successful market-oriented economies. The fifteen legislators from Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay participated in several working sessions, met with the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, the House Committee on International Relations, and with Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC). During their meeting with the CHC, we had the opportunity to discuss the political and economic integration process of MERCOSUR and the effects of this free-trade pact on the United States economy. Data from the Department of Commerce on the current balance of trade between MERCOSUR and the United States shows that the United States not only enjoys a surplus in trade with MERCOSUR, but also reveals that exports to MERCOSUR countries are significantly larger than those to China and Russia together, $23.3 billion versus $16 billion. This is an important fact we should remember as we continue to develop relations with these countries. Mr. Speaker, I would like to express my appreciation to the Joint MERCOSUR Parliamentary Delegation for visiting Washington and extend my congratulations to the MERCOSUR countries for their achievements.

Mr. BECERRA

Mr. BECERRA. Mr. Speaker, on March 27, 1998, I was unavoidably detained during two roll call votes: number 79, on agreeing to the amendment and number 80, on passage of the Forest Recovery and Protection Act. Had I been present for the votes, I would have voted ``yes'' on number 79 and ``no'' on number 80.

Mr. BECERRA

Mr. BECERRA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, because we have not been given enough time to truly and meaningfully debate this, let me tell a story about a meeting I had with some constituents on Friday night. I met with folks from the Citizens Committee to save Legion Park on Friday night, and I had a chance to briefly speak to them. I said this morning, meaning today, we are going to be debating campaign finance reform, but I said, do not hold your breath. Chances are we are going to do it in the dead of night, and it is going to be a stacked deck against the passage of any bill. Sure enough, that is what we have. But perhaps the worst thing and saddest thing about this is that none of my constituents were surprised. They all knew that we were not going to head toward any type of meaningful reform. So for me to stand here and tell why this legislation we have before us is bad for the average citizen who is fed up with money-driven elections, or bad for working men and women who simply want to keep their meager voice in society heard, or it is bad for long-term legal residents who are always asked to pay their taxes, but the little chance they have to express their voice in this democracy is now going to be stifled through this legislation. It is also bad for new citizens, whose new voice through their vote will be stifled, as well. That is okay with this bill, but we will not pass it because we know it is being done in the dead of night, stacked against us. It will go nowhere. Vote against this legislation.