Saxby Chambliss

Mr. CHAMBLISS

Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I rise today to celebrate what I think is going to be a very historic moment in the national security of this country. On April 9, 1997, in Marietta, GA, at the Lockheed Martin plant we will have the rollout of the F-22. I rise today along with my colleague from the 7th District of Georgia, [Mr. Barr], to talk about this historic event and to say that it marks the dawn of air dominance for the United States of America in the 21st century. The F-22 will be the fighter for the United States of America in the future. The F-22 contains three major characteristics that will allow the United States of America to maintain the air dominance that we have been able to maintain in every major conflict over the last 40 years. Those three attributes, those three assets, are: stealth, integrated avionics, and supercruise. Folks, this is one heck of an airplane that Lockheed Martin has put together, and I rise today with my friend from Marietta to celebrate this historic moment. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from the 7th District of Georgia [Mr. Barr].

Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and I wish to congratulate Lockheed Martin for the superb job they have done in the development of this airplane. I also wish to congratulate the U.S. Air Force for the work that they have done in moving this project forward. Mr. Speaker, we look forward to April 9.

Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Colorado, [Mr. Skaggs].

Mr. CHAMBLISS

Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take the place of my colleague, the gentleman from Colorado, [Mr. McInnis], in the 5- minute rotation today.

Mr. CHAMBLISS

Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to rise in support for H.R. 4000. Under the leadership of my chairman on the Personnel Subcommittee, Bob Dornan, this Congress has done more for the recovery of American servicemen than any Congress before. I am proud to support this legislation that sends a clear message to the administration that it must drop the rhetoric and adopt the resolve to recover missing Americans in Asia. I would also like to commend the hard work of the families and friends of our missing Americans like Ms. Joanne Shirley of Georgia who serves as the chairman of the board of the National League of POW/MIA Families. Her hard work, and the work of countless others like her, ensures that we remain committed to the promise printed on the POW flag that hangs in front of my office--``You are not forgotten.''

Mr. CHAMBLISS

Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate both my colleagues from Ohio and Maryland for moving this bill along as quickly as they did. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 4119. Judge William Augustus Bootle was born in Walterboro, SC, on August 19, 1902. He is a graduate of Mercer University undergraduate school, as well as Mercer University Law School. Mercer University is located in Macon, GA, and happens to be the university where my son, Bo, is currently in his second year of undergraduate work. Judge Bootle is married to the former Virginia Childs. They have three children, Dr. William Augustus Bootle, Jr., Dr. James C. Bootle, and Mrs. Ann B. Hall. Judge Bootle was admitted to the bar of the State of Georgia in 1925. He was appointed Assistant U.S. Attorney to the Middle District of Georgia and served from 1928 to 1929. He was appointed U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Georgia and served from 1929 until 1933. He then entered the active practice of law in Macon, GA. As the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Gilchrest] said, in 1954, which happened to be 16 days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling regarding the desegregation of public schools in this country, Judge Bootle was appointed to the bench as the Judge for the Middle District of Georgia. I asked a couple of Judge Bootle's friends to tell me a little bit about him and make a couple of comments regarding the naming of this courthouse after Judge Bootle, and the Honorable Duross Fitzpatrick, who is currently United States District Judge for the Middle District of Georgia, and Mr. Manley Brown, who is a mutual friend practicing law in Macon, GA, sent me these comments. They said when Judge Bootle was appointed to the court in 1954, the chief Judge was ill and remained so for an extended period of time, and therefore, until 1962, when another Judge was subsequently appointed, Judge Bootle handled all six divisions of the Middle District of Georgia. That included the Athens Division, the Macon Division, the Columbus Division, the Americus Division, the Albany Division, and the Valdosta Division. Those six courthouses covered 71 counties in Georgia. They say he is a very modest man, who has always shunned publicity and who always said ``I didn't do anything but what I was paid to do.'' Judge Fitzpatrick and Manley Brown refer to Judge Bootle as a lawyer's lawyer and a judge's judge. He was highly respected by lawyers throughout the district for his keen intellect, wonderful sense of humor, and utter fairness. He had no favorites at the bar. In 1935 he argued and won a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. He is a great story teller, who naturally attracts all those around him. He is a very optimistic person and an avid skeet shooter for most of his life. He developed a cataract in his right eye in the late eighties, and he had an operation on that eye, so it forced him to learn to shoot left handed. On this 90th birthday, Judge Bootle went out and shot skeet, and hit 25 out of 25 clay pigeons. Two very important decisions that Judge Bootle made that made his mark in history occurred in Athens, GA. He presided at a trial in Athens in 1964 of several members of the Ku Klux Klan who were convicted of following a black Army colonel through town and shooting him point blank as he crossed over the Broad River Bridge in a rural area. This was a high profile case and Judge Bootle was given high marks for the manner in which he handled it. I quote from a book titled ``Atlanta Rising'' which deals with a lot of history that took place in the Atlanta area during the years of the civil rights era. There were two black applicants to the University of Georgia, Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes, who were denied admittance. They filed suit in the Middle District of Georgia, and, quoting from this book, I read as follows: Two black applicants, Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes, went to the court attacking the welter of excuses University of officials had concocted to keep them out. The two made a convincing case that the only reason they had been denied admission was segregation, pure and simple. In a ruling issued late on the afternoon of Friday, January 6, 1961, Judge William A. Bootle ordered Hunter and Holmes admitted to the school, not in 6 months or a year, but bright and early the next Monday morning. I also called my good friend and former law partner, Lamar Moore, a very distinguished lawyer in Moultrie, GA, and told him we were doing this, and I said, ``Give me a comment about Judge Bootle,'' Lamar said: Judge Gus Bootle refereed a lot of battles between my clients and the government, mainly the Treasury and the Labor Departments, and I found his calls to be good and all penalties just, particularly those against the Government. Trying a case before Judge Bootle was always a pleasure, and I had been amazed how he recalls the details of amusing incidents after so many years. Put him back on the bench. Judge Bootle loved the law and legal profession. I would like to quote from a speech which Judge Bootle gave in April of 1995, which I think sums up his philosophy very well. As I see it, everything that is well organized is beautiful. Everything that functions well is beautiful. All harmony and proportion are beautiful, and so is every success and pursuit of a noble objective. By these exacting standards, law qualifies. Judge Bootle, I commend you on the many years of public service you gave to this country, and Mr. Speaker, it is very appropriate that we honor Judge Bootle in this way. I ask my colleagues to support the passage of this bill.

Mr. CHAMBLISS

Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. Speaker, you know there is something going on here that I simply do not understand. A couple weeks ago when the President took the action that he took to counteract the action of Saddam Hussein and Iraq, I came out immediately in strong support of the action that the President took. I think the President did the right thing. There is not time in an emergency situation like that for the President to come to Congress and say, ``Hey, this is going on, this is what I want to do, can I do it, should I do it?'' That is his decision to make. He made that decision; the American people fully support that. But now we are 2 weeks after the fact. We are 2 weeks into a crisis situation in the Middle Eastern part of this world, a very dangerous part of the world and a part of the world in which we already had sacrifices back 3 or 4 years ago. It is a part of the world that we have got to keep our pulse on, and what we are into now is the President of the United States again sending our young men and women into harm's way without coming to the Congress and saying after this 2- week period, ``Ladies and gentleman of the Congress, this is what is going on, I need you to know this, and I need your input into this.'' As I go home this weekend, I have 3 military bases in my district, I am going to be asked by men and women, not only military men and women, but civilian men and women, ``Tell me about what is going on in Iraq.'' I am going to say, ``Hey, you pick up the Atlanta Journal, you pick up the Macon telegraph, you will find out what's going on, and you'll know just as much as I know.'' There is something basically wrong about that. The chairman of a very powerful subcommittee on the Committee on National Security got up a minute ago and said that he knows nothing about this. He is the gentleman that is responsible for the research and development of the weapons that are being sent to Iraq today. He has no idea whether what he has been working on for the last several years by being a member of the Committee on National Security is the right thing to do. He knows nothing, nobody in this Congress knows anything about what is going on. I do not think we are asking a whole lot of the President to say, ``Mr. President, please come to us and just tell us what's going on. Why are you sending our men and women into harm's way? What should we tell our constituents out there as to why we are supporting you?'' And it is a very crucial question on a very crucial issue that I simply do not understand why we are not being advised on, and I yield to my friend from Pennsylvania.

Mr. CHAMBLISS

Mr. CHAMBLISS. I know the gentleman was a Member of this body back with events leading, where at the time events leading up to Desert Storm occurred. Can you tell us that President Bush did at that time as far as informing the Members of this body what was going on?

Mr. CHAMBLISS

Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. Speaker, I want to just echo the remarks of the gentleman from California and the gentleman from Pennsylvania that have just gotten up here and talked about. I would say to my friend from New York there has never been anybody in this House in the year and 9 months I have been here who has supported our troops more than I have. I have given them my full support in Bosnia, over an operation which I did not particularly agree with, but I supported the men and women once they were there. We are on the brink right now of potentially another Operation Desert Storm, but yet nobody in this House has any idea what is going on. I just left a national security meeting 30 minutes ago, in which the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon] made the comment, he said does anybody on either side of the aisle have any information about exactly what is going on in Iraq right now. Nobody, nobody has any idea, and yet we are asked to stand up here and take action to fund operations we know nothing about, to support operations we know nothing about. I think it is unfair. It is un-American. This body deserves to know. I implore the President to inform us, to let us know what is going on.

Mr. CHAMBLISS

Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this bill. Let me say to my friend, the gentleman from Mississippi, Mr. Sonny Montgomery, we will miss you and may God bless you. I commend the chairman and the ranking member for working in a true spirit of cooperation throughout the process leading up to this bill, being passed in committee and through its conference. I would also commend the work done by the bipartisan depot caucus which focused on the very difficult issue of defining the work to be done at the various service departs. The members of this caucus and the respective staff worked tireless hours and achieved a result that will be very beneficial to the men and women serving in our armed services. Mr. Speaker, this bill, among other things, provides for a pay raise for the members of each branch of our military and also provides a significant benefit for members of the dental profession serving in the military, benefits like this will allow our armed services to continue to compete with the private sector for the very finest young men and women our country has to offer. This is a good bill and I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. CHAMBLISS

Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the recognition by the gentlewoman from Maryland and I particularly appreciate the gentleman from California who introduced this bill. I was very proud to cosponsor it. Mr. Speaker, this is another of the commonsense reforms that this Congress is trying to make with laws that we have on the books right now. This is simply a way to look at a law that really is not just an inconvenience on those folks who are trying to bid on Federal projects, but it is an inconvenience and a mandate on those folks that really causes an increase in cost to the ultimate consumer, which is the taxpayer. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this bill, and I ask its passage.

Mr. CHAMBLISS

Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to salute my dear friend, Bill Emerson. Bill Emerson represented honesty, decency and integrity in this body in a very bipartisan way. Through my many conversations with Bill Emerson, I learned to understand that Bill had his priorities in order. Bill loved this institution and he loved his country. But above all else, Bill loved his God, and he loved his family. I thank God for the opportunity to have served with Bill Emerson in this body for the past 18 months. Because of the opportunity to serve with Bill Emerson, those of us who knew Bill will be better Members of this body. But above all else, we will be better citizens.

Mr. CHAMBLISS

Mr. CHAMBLISS. I will be happy to go back to my friend from New Jersey's recommendation that we go to $1,000 or $5,000 a ton limit. But the gentleman is correct in saying that his amendment does fix the price. If I am wrong about that, please correct me. That flies in the face of everything we have tried to do from a reform of agriculture programs and in particular the peanut program, which is now market oriented. The growers of peanuts took a significant reduction of $678 a ton to $610 a ton in anticipation of selling their peanuts more in the world market. That is the whole idea behind it. What this amendment does is to come in and slap those folks in the face and say, irrespective of how much it costs you to grow it, how much it increases the cost of growing your peanuts next year, throw those facts out the door. The maximum you can get for a ton of peanuts is $640. That is wrong. It is un-American. It is price fixing. I urge my colleagues to vote against this amendment.

Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. Mr. Chairman, none of us disagree with the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Durbin] that we ought not to encourage children from smoking. We ought to. This amendment will do nothing about that. All of us agree that smoking presents hazards to one's health. This amendment does nothing about that. This amendment is, pure and simple, about corporate America versus little farm family America. Mr. Chairman, I have very few big farmers in my district. Most of my farmers are small farmers. The big farmers, the corporate farmers, do not depend on the county agent for advice. They depend on the experts, the high-priced experts from Lexington, from Raleigh, from Athens. They can afford that. The small family farmer depends on that extension service agent, the Gary Gloes, the Scott Browns, to come out and examine their fields, be it corn, be it peanuts, be it cotton, be it tobacco. What you are doing is saying it is all right for you to look at your corn patch but I cannot look at your tobacco patch and tell you what is wrong or what you need to do. The gentleman and I know that the management of that will never work. It simply cannot work. I urge the defeat of this amendment.

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

Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. Chairman, that is exactly the point. There should not be a price-fixing cap by the Federal Government on any product in this country. My friend from Texas made a classic point. I think he struck at the heart of this amendment. We have the highest prices for corn and wheat in this country today that we have ever seen in the history of anybody that sits in this House. Yet this week the manufacturers of cereal, the manufacturers who process corn and wheat, have reduced their prices at the retail level. That shows us that a reduction in price is not going to translate into a reduction at the retail level. An increase in the price in that instance translated into a reduction at the retail level. I again say this amendment is deplorable, it is un-American, it is price fixing, and it ought to be defeated.

Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask our friend from Arizona, Mr. Kolbe, the sponsor of this amendment, the gentleman from North Carolina has just reiterated the fact that in our peanut title of the 1996 farm bill there was a reduction in the price from $678 to $610, in excess of 10 percent. Would the gentleman accept an amendment to his amendment which would reduce the price of a candy bar by 10 percent? And would the gentleman also accept an amendment that would put a cap on the price of all candy bars in this country?

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

Mr. CHAMBLISS. So we have set a maximum price on peanuts irrespective of the market oriented provisions of this bill, set a maximum of $640 a ton. Is that or is that not price fixing?

Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. Chairman, let us move on to talk about domestic price. the amendment establishes the fact that no grower of peanuts anywhere in the United States, of quota peanuts, can achieve a price in excess of $640 per ton. No grower of additional peanuts can receive a price in excess of $640 a ton; is that correct?

Mr. CHAMBLISS. Not in theory, in actuality, that is the way the program works?

Mr. CHAMBLISS. Does my colleague understand that under the buy-back provision that that 100,000-ton gap can be filled with additional peanuts by the Secretary?

Mr. CHAMBLISS. I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.

Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. As a member of Committee on Agriculture and one who comes from a heavy peanut-producing area, we began work on reform of the peanut program on November 9, 1994. We began talking to folks in the industry. We began talk to go growers. We began talking to shellers, everybody that is involved in it, because there was a continual attack on the peanut program. Within the Committee on Agriculture, in a bipartisan way, we made real reforms to the peanut program that ensured three things. We talked an awful lot about this: One was that we secure a no- net-cost program to the American taxpayer. We did that. The second thing was that we make the program more market oriented. We did that. We allowed the transfer of peanut quota across county lines, we did a number of things that would make it more market oriented. The last thing we did was to provide a safety net for our farmers. We did that with the program that we came up with in the Committee on Agriculture. Now, there has been some conversation about the domestic demand versus domestic quota. It is true that domestic quota under the previous farm bill was set at 1,350,000 tons. In order to make the program more market oriented, we removed that floor. That was not at the request of the manufacturer, the people who you are talking in favor of right now. They did not want a floor on it. By doing that, we ensured a no net cost, but it also eliminated a floor for domestic demand. Now, once we did that, the Secretary had the authority to come in and to set that floor at whatever domestic quota, whatever he thought domestic demand would be. It is true that the Secretary set it at 1,100,000 tons, and domestic demand had been 1,200,000 tons. That is a 100,000-ton difference. Does the gentleman understand the buy-back provisions in the peanut bill? Does the gentleman understand the buy-back provision?

Mr. CHAMBLISS

Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. Speaker, it is the same old story, same old line. We have heard about cuts, cuts, cuts, for so long. Only in this town does an increase in spending come to a cut. Never before in the history of Webster's Dictionary has the term ``cut'' been defined as an increase. The Republican plan, a budget to protect and preserve Medicare, provides for an increase in spending. I challenge any one of my colleagues to stand up and say that is not true. If they do, they are entitled to the $1 million that we promised a year ago. But they will not do that. Mr. Speaker, our budget that we are going to be talking about in the next couple of days does get to balance in the year 2002. Our budget has lower deficits than the President's budget in every single year. That is extremely important, because what that does is get it to balance. That is the only way we are going to get there is to decrease Federal spending.