Duke Cunningham

Mr. CUNNINGHAM

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Well, if my colleague takes a look at the number of people at coalitions that are supporting the President, it is overwhelming. I think we also need to realize that many of the Middle East nations that are actually helping us, that helped us catch KSM just this week, they are helping us: Indonesia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia. These countries have been sterling. Yes, there is an issue with bases, but remember that these nations live at the back door of Saddam Hussein. Let us say that we did not go into Iraq and allowed Saddam Hussein to persevere once again. Can the gentleman imagine the risk that that puts these Arab nations in by coming out ahead of time? And I will tell my colleague that these nations will be with us when we go into Iraq, either to disarm Saddam Hussein or he disarms himself. Two real quick issues I think are important and I thank the gentleman for yielding. One critic says that let us look at the cost that it would cost. 9-11 cost New York $200 billion, another $83 billion in lost revenue while we were rebuilding New York. Look across the Nation. Look at the services. Look at the travel industry. Look at the airline industry. Look at the hotels and think about the devastation of our economy and how that hurt. So the cost of going in there is going to be far less than when al Qaeda hits the United States again. The second complaint they say, well, look at the innocent Iraqis that are going to be hurt. First of all, we will not target innocent Iraqis. There will be collateral damage, as in any conflict; but they will not be targeted, and I would go back from the time that Saddam Hussein was the XO, the executive officer per se, the president stepped down. He called an emergency session of his Congress. He had a witness stand up at a mike like this one and call off 250 names. They were marched out and shot that day. Think of the thousands of Kurds that he has killed. Think of the Shiites that he has killed and his own people that will be killed if we do not go in there. We will hurt less people in this conflict than Saddam Hussein will in the future. We are not going in there to annex Iraq. Look at Afghanistan, what we have done in there. We did not go in to invade it. We went in to free the people, and this is what we are going into Iraq for.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, would the gentleman yield?

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, I think it is important for the people to understand France. In France the conservative party is in the minority. The Socialists took over. They have joined with the Communist Party to have a majority. So the French parliament is a Socialist- Communist coalition. That is like having a Socialist on the other side here stand up and offer our position nationally. Secondly, Chirac wants the United States out of NATO. He wants to be the leading power in Europe; and to do that, he puts down NATO and wants the United States out of there and builds up the EU. That is critical. Thirdly, the French have been the whoremongers of the weapons market around the world. When I trained at Navy Fighters Weapons School, Top Gun, every nation we potentially stood to fight was carrying Matra Magic 550s and French missiles. We would have had to fight those, and if my colleague takes a look at what the French are doing with Iraq economically, I think they are afraid that we are going to find out exactly that they are supplying Iraq with chemicals, with weapons, with different things.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, I took the Grey Poupon out of my cupboard, and I do not think, what is the vodka that they have? Not Absolute. But there is a vodka. Anyway, I have asked our people to do away with it.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. It is called Grey Goose vodka. Would the gentleman yield for one other point on that?

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Many of the people say, well, it is a fight for oil, blood for oil. I have recommended to the President that after Saddam Hussein is removed and we have a democratic regime in Iraq, let the Iraqi people keep the oil. Let them have 100 percent control; but for those nations that helped liberate it, let them for a time sell those nations oil at a reduced price, not to make a profit but just to help the economy so it is not affected like Turkey and the United States and the coalition. But I want to tell my colleague, there is going to be a penalty for France, Germany, and Russia. We will still have diplomatic relations. We will still try to have good relations with them, but those nations that choose not to join in liberating Iraq, I personally believe there ought to be some dire consequences.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, what I would say to the gentleman is I would defer to the Pentagon. There are certain bases around the world that we need to maintain, not just for their security but for our own security as well. If we have to have launching pads for another conflict sometime, we may need those bases; and I would defer those determinations to the Pentagon and to a study that says what do we actually need. But if we do not need it and we are there at the cost of the American taxpayers and not supporting the United States' best interests, then I would go along with the gentleman on it. Can I make one other point about when the gentleman, the nerve gas and mustard gas? When Saddam Hussein used nerve and mustard gas against these people, it was not just the 30,000 that were killed. There are 10 times that many that have permanent defects. Nerve gas, there are thousands of people, Kurds and Shiites that cannot even walk today because nerve gas affects not only their internal systems, but their children and their children's children will be affected because it affects the chromosomes and the genetic make-up. So we are not looking at just a small group. We are looking for centuries that these people are going to be affected by the nerve gas that Saddam Hussein released on them.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. We hear over and over again from the other side that any tax, and I mean no matter what tax relief we have brought up in the 12 years I have been here, the other side talks about it being tax relief for the rich. From $5,000 to $30,000, you get a 20 percent tax relief. Twenty percent. If you earn above $200,000, you only get 11 percent tax relief. So the percentage of who gains the most out of it goes with the lower income. But my colleagues will say it is only for the rich. Why? Mathematically, if you pay $1,000 in taxes, you are not going to get as much money back as someone who pays $10,000 in taxes. You will get more money back, but you have not put that money in there in the first place. My colleagues like to do that so that their base will think, oh, Republicans are only doing it for the rich. It is just not true.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Another important point is that people think, well, I will be getting money back. Not so. You just do not have to send it to Washington, D.C. in the first place. My colleagues on the other side, many of them, believe that Washington can do the job better. Unfortunately, if you look at every department, including the Department of Defense, the Department of Education, INS, all the different departments, there is fraud, waste and abuse. For example, food stamps had over 50 percent in fraud, waste, and abuse. By not taxing individuals, they never send it here to Washington in the first place. That money stays in their pocket to pay for schools, or they can invest it, say in an education IRA. Say the day you know your child is going to be born, you set aside $2,000 to $4,000 in an education IRA, by the time that child is 16 years of age, if it was $2,000, you might think, well, that is only $32,000. No, because it is compounded, you can use that money for tutoring or for education, or if you have a child who qualifies under the individuals with Disabilities Act, you can use it for special education.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Three children; two daughters and my son was adopted.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Sixteen hundred.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Dr. Nancy Cunningham is the Chief of Staff for the Assistant Secretary of Education. She has two masters and she is bilingual in Spanish. So there is no doubt where she got the 1600 from.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Well, the gentleman's business people and his workers in Georgia are just like in California. One of our colleagues at the whip meeting pointed out that the tax laws against business are the worst of all the industrialized nations. The capital gains is the highest of industrialized nations. No other nation has double taxation. Just the United States. And what that does is it makes us not as competitive. We hear about cheap labor a lot, but the labor that we have is taxed so high that the cost of goods makes us not be in the market overseas. So I would like to see capital gains go to zero. I would like to see the double taxation go away. One of my friends right here tonight, he was looking for an apartment where I live, and a lady had a single room apartment for sale. She decided not to sell it to our colleague because after she looked, the capital gains she is going to have to pay on selling that are going to far exceed any benefit that she would get. So it also ties up capital and revenue.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, the law that we are going to debate on tort reform is based on California law which has been very successful. California has been more successful than the other States. What it does is it protects. It will allow, if we do this nationally, $60 billion to go into our health care centers instead of going to trial lawyers. People will still be represented and protected, but it will allow that money to go into our health care centers. Another example, I sit on the D.C. subcommittee. Thanks to a Member on the other side, on the D.C. subcommittee we capped trial lawyers' fees for IDEA, Individuals With Disabilities Act. In 2 years we saved $12 million. $12 million, instead of going to trial lawyers, goes to children with disabilities.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, the Individuals with Disabilities Act has done a lot of good. Parents think that they are going to have a homecoming queen or a fullback, and all of a sudden parents have a child with disabilities. Many parents do not know how to handle that. In many places, the child would be denied an education at school. That is wrong. What has happened is cottage organizations, anytime there is money, trial lawyer cottage organizations will bring activists in and demand 20 things instead of what they really are accredited for under an IEP, which is where they designate what that child's disability is and what kind of care that they need. The lawyers come in and demand, and we have cases where ambulance service has to bring the child to school; they have to have a full-time nurse. The average is about $5,000 per child nationwide per year. We have some cases where that exceeds $100,000 for one child. The bill that I am talking about caps the trial lawyers' fees so that the money stays in the education system to help those children instead of trial lawyers, but at the same time allows every child to be represented by a lawyer, and represented if they feel that they are being abused by the school system. Allen Burson, San Diego city schools, who was President Clinton's head guy under Border, is now the superintendent of schools; and he said this is his number one issue in taking money away from schools. We are losing good teachers. My sister-in-law heads up the Individuals With Disabilities Act for San Diego city schools. They are losing good teachers, teachers that just want to teach children; but the trial lawyers get them into court and just beat the heck out of them, and we are losing those good teachers.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Just like the rest of the country, there is an excess. As a matter of fact, I would just end it at that. There is an excess number of lawyers within the State of California. If we look at representation in our court system across the country, there is an excess. This law has not prevented people from being represented in California. Instead, it gives people a fair day in court, but yet it limits the extravagant and saves money for the health care system. So with that $60 billion, and that is per year, we could take care of every uninsured person within the United States.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. That is a question that I wanted to ask.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. I asked my colleague that spoke earlier, I said, In the caucus meeting, did you invite anybody else? They said, No, it was just the caucus. I asked, Did you invite anyone from outside so when you claim he did not answer questions, that it was not a fix, that the memo to the other body was not written before the conclusion of the caucus meeting? The reason for that is I heard all of the questions asked to Mr. Estrada. I missed a lot of sleep, and I also read the answers, and I heard the claims that he did not answer the questions on the other side. Every question was an A-plus answer, and the newspapers have editorialized about that. I wondered about the claims of the Hispanic Caucus in the House where they had a meeting, had no outside intervention. Was the gentleman from Florida ever asked to participate? Because they said the Republican Hispanics chose not to go on the Hispanic Caucus. Were you ever asked to sit in on the meeting where the questions were asked?

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Didn't the ABA give him a high rating?

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, I do not criticize my colleagues. It is their right to oppose somebody. But I also see what happened on C-SPAN. Then I look at some of the same issues that my colleagues are here bringing up, and they were false. I would think it would be more legitimate if a question was asked in the Hispanic Caucus, that the question be read and Mr. Estrada's answer just as it was in the other body. And that would be fair. And then let people make a decision. But to have a kangaroo court meet, in my opinion, with a decision already made before the court took place is wrong. To not allow anyone else within that room except for that limited group of people to see if it was fair is wrong.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. We rejoiced when the Democrats elected their leadership because we knew how far left it was. This is just a good example.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Can I ask the Chair a question?

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. When we are talking about something that is done in the other body, it is very, very difficult to talk about and compare without mentioning the other body, to compare what they are doing in relation to this body.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. We will try to be cognizant of that, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. I would ask the Chair again, for example, is it okay, a fact, that then the majority leader of the Senate stopped the flag amendment from coming forward in the other body. Would that be appropriate? That is a fact.