John Carter

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased that the President of the United States on two occasions has stated that we need to give our law enforcement authorities all the tools necessary to fight terrorism, and he agreed that he strongly supported the signal of a death penalty to deter this criminal acts, these criminal acts that are imposed upon our society. When I decided to run for Congress, it was in response to the 9/11 attack after serving for a long time on the judiciary. I am sponsoring this legislation today because in my experience the death penalty does deter crimes, and it is my hope and my prayer that this tool given to our prosecutors and given to our courts and to our engineers will enable us to better protect freedom and protect our citizens from this disaster that lurks in the shadows along with these terrorists that attack our Nation. I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin (Chairman Sensenbrenner) for allowing me to offer this amendment and for all the great work that he has done on this reenactment of the PATRIOT Act. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I would remind my colleague from Virginia that a legislative hearing was held before the subcommittee on June 30, 2005 on which the Justice Department testified in favor of this bill. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Green).

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, after 9/11, my fellow lawmakers wanted to make sure that the PATRIOT Act would protect Americans without trampling the civil rights that we cherish in this Nation. Mr. Speaker, today, 4 years later, the verdict is in. The PATRIOT Act works and is helping defeat terrorism. Those of us who thought the threat of terrorism receded can only look at Great Britain to know that this is not the case. Complacency allows waves of terror to come crashing over free nations. The attacks on London show that the war on terror is not over nor is it confined to a specific location. Securing our homeland is only one facet of the war. Spreading democracy in the savage lands where terrorism propagates is another. The PATRIOT Act gives us enforcement tools that keep America safe. The PATRIOT Act has removed major legal barriers that prevented law enforcement agencies from coordinating their work. It has also allowed law enforcement to use surveillance against terror-related activities and allowed the issuance of nationwide search warrants. The PATRIOT Act is doing exactly what it is supposed to do. We cannot allow these terrorists to gain momentum in this fight.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I appreciate the gentleman being willing to address this body and to talk about this. Mr. Speaker, when we were discussing this, when I heard the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) talk and also as I heard the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) talk and others, I thought about something that many of us in the Judiciary deal with every day, and it dawned on me that one of the things we toyed with for a while was defining ``gangs'' and what makes up gang violence. Basically a simple definition of a gang is a group of organized people bonded together for the purpose of committing some type of criminal activity. That is the way the law looks at a gang. We are dealing with an international gang when we deal with terrorists. There has become a magic or mystique that is being created by those who oppose the PATRIOT Act that for some reason we are stepping on the toes of some group of people, and yet the same tools that are in the PATRIOT Act have been used against gang violence, have been used against organized crime, have been used against gangs, against street gangs in this country. The tools have been used against drug dealers and drug importers. They have been used for years, and no one seems to be feeling like for some reason there is something terrible about those rules and those laws that we have used. But they do feel for some reason that using them against the largest, most organized gang on Earth, there is something wrong with that, the gang that has killed in one fell attack more Americans than were killed at Pearl Harbor, more civilian Americans than were killed at Pearl Harbor, that started the Second World War. For some reason, people are concerned about a PATRIOT Act that does nothing more than make uniform in many instances laws that exist in different jurisdictions across the United States. We hear talk about the sneak-a-peak warrant. For a while that was the section of choice to talk about for a long time, the sneak-a-peak warrant. It just sounds terrible. It sounds like a peeping tom looking through your window, and that is great terminology and well-worded by those who oppose it. So what is a sneak-a-peak warrant? Well, one time before I went on the bench, I was a young lawyer and I had a client who had a house out in the country. And he took it in on a debt and he was trying to sell it, but until he did, he wanted to rent it, so he rented it to a graduate student from the University of Texas. They came by my office every first of the month and laid $200 on my desk for that house, and for a year that graduate student lived out there in that house in the country outside of Round Rock. Then along about in the November time frame of the next year, I got a phone call from my client, who happened to be in the great State of Pennsylvania, and he said, ``I think I have got a buyer. I ought to be able to close this thing. I need to get the tenant out of the house. Would you go out there and tell him we will give him a month to vacate the house.'' I took my little boy, who now is a 35-year-old football and baseball coach at Round Rock High School, but at that time was about a 4-year- old, and we went out in the country to the house. We knocked on the door. Nobody was home. I had a key and the right of the landlord to enter, so I entered the home to write a note to put on the kitchen table. I discovered the house looked fairly unlived in. As I looked around to see if my tenant might have moved out, I opened a door to a bedroom and there stacked floor to ceiling were thousands of kilo blocks of marijuana, packed so dense you could not see the windows in this 12-by-14 room, floor to ceiling. My son, not knowing anything, and I, backed quickly out of the house and went to the police in Round Rock. The police, after a long effort, found a judge, applied for a search warrant, got a search warrant and an arrest warrant and went out to that house. They went to execute the warrant. There was no one at home. They examined the fact that there was a ton at least of marijuana in that house, and so they backed off and waited for those who were in possession of that marijuana to come home, because they had no one at that point in time. Ultimately, four individuals came back to the house. At that point in time they executed the warrant. That was a sneak-a-peak. They looked at it, they saw it, they backed off and executed later. Those gentlemen's rights were not violated. That is a tool we have used in law enforcement for years. Now, why does it sound so bad? Because we use the term ``sneak-a- peak.'' It sounds like peeping toms in somebody's neighborhood. We have got to get away from this terminology that is trying to take good, valid laws that have been tested time in and time out by our courts, both State and Federal courts, and putting some cute phrase on them that makes them sound like they step all over people's constitutional rights and causing our public to be concerned about what we are doing here. This PATRIOT Act follows the guidance the courts have given us over the years concerning law enforcement tools that we have used and we have used effectively. This PATRIOT Act has put together these tools not only which have been there in fighting the criminal justice issues in this country, but now the intelligence and international terrorism issues have the ability to use these same lawful instruments without fear of being crossed over between the various Federal acts that are involved in dealing with the terrorist issues. One of the things that the people are concerned about is that you get a search warrant that can be served across the United States. Just on that case I was giving you, before we went to a judge we tried to figure out which law enforcement agency ought to be seeking the warrant. Should it have been the constable, should it have been the sheriff in his jurisdiction, should it have been the city cops in their jurisdiction, or should it have been the Department of Public Safety in their jurisdiction? That was just a little old dope case in Texas, trying to go out and who seeks the warrant. We have now gone and said it is crazy when you have got people that operate instantly on the Internet, who can move across this country in record time and do crimes in various jurisdictions simultaneously and store elements of destruction in various jurisdictions simultaneously, to have to go to every jurisdiction in the Nation to get a valid search warrant. So all we have done is something that we have had, we have allowed one warrant to be served across the country. All of these are the various complaints that we hear about the PATRIOT Act. The PATRIOT Act is just that. What is interesting is it is a patriot's solution to the War on Terror, a group of patriots, both Republicans and Democrats, who joined together after a heinous attack on our Nation and passed the PATRIOT Act. This is a bipartisan bill that was passed in Congress. This is both sides of the aisle saying we have had enough. And it was put together I think effectively. This time in the reauthorization, as the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) explained, we have addressed concerns about should we have a little more due process. On some of the issues, we have enhanced the due process provisions. A grand jury foreman, he can subpoena records, business records or library records. He does not have to have anybody's permission to do it. The DA comes to him, he subpoenas them. As the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) explained, in the PATRIOT Act a judge looks at the thing, examines it to make sure there is probable cause, and he makes sure the law is abided by. Why are we worried about that, when we already have a procedure that we have used for years and years and years and nobody seems to have been crying about it? I never heard anybody complain about it at all. So let us get back to being patriots. Let us get back to saying, we have an enemy without and within that chooses to attack innocent people in this Nation for the purposes of imposing their will, their criminal will, upon society, and their number one target is our society and our way of life. Let us go back to being patriots and say, we will give our warriors, both the warriors that fight in the streets and on the Internet and in the law courts of this United States, and our warriors who fight in Iraq and Afghanistan and wherever the enemy may meet us overseas, all of the tools and weapons necessary to fight and destroy this evil war on terrorists, these terrorists who attack our way of life. Mr. Speaker, let us be proud that we are patriots who have created a PATRIOT Act, a bipartisan PATRIOT Act that protects the freedoms of Americans and protects the lives of Americans from terrorists.

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) for talking to us about the PATRIOT Act. It is always good to get the perspective of a lawmaker and a mother. The reality is if the mothers ran this country, we probably would be a whole lot better off. Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. McCaul) and just note that our districts are neighbors.

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. McCaul) for giving us great insight from a prosecutor's standpoint of a man who has used the tools, and seen a Department effectively use the tools. The Chair knows, as I know, that we have used these tools in law enforcement for years. We have used them to fight gang activity, organized crime, drug activity, and other activities in this country. We have now authorized our intelligence communities to use the same tools to stop international terrorism and attacks upon the United States of America by these heinous terrorists who strike the innocent of our society. Mr. Speaker, we heard this experience from the gentleman from Texas (Mr. McCaul), and I think it is great to know from a prosecutor's standpoint exactly what is enhanced by the PATRIOT Act and the ability to fight these crimes, the front-page crimes in the world today. So I am very pleased we were able to hear that perspective. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King), who would like to address this body concerning his views on the PATRIOT Act.

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to talk about something we are going to be going into this week, something that is of major importance to every man, woman, and child in the United States of America and around the world, and that is the USA PATRIOT Act, the reauthorization of some certain sections of that act, and the reexamination of the PATRIOT Act. As we all know, it is no news to anybody that this Nation had the most heinous attack in its history on 9/11, and the question has been raised, why do we need a PATRIOT Act? As a judge for over 20 years, I believe it is necessary to give our law enforcement folks the tools and the resources that they need to protect our citizens and our citizens' rights. We do not need to create sanctuary for terrorists to operate in our country. The USA PATRIOT Act removed major legal barriers that prevented law enforcement, intelligence, and national defense communities from taking and coordinating their work to protect the American people and our American society. Now, FBI agents, Federal prosecutors, and intelligence officials can protect our communities by connecting the dots to uncover terrorist plots before they are completed, while respecting the constitutional rights of all. To do this, certain tools are necessary for our investigators to fight terrorism. Many of the tools the act provides for law enforcement to fight terrorism have been used for decades to fight organized crime and drug dealers and have been reviewed and approved by the courts. Specifically, the PATRIOT Act allows law enforcement to use surveillance against more crimes of terror, such as the use of chemical weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. It allows Federal agents to follow sophisticated terrorist training to evade detection. It allows law enforcement to conduct investigations without tipping off the terrorists. It authorizes the court the discretion to issue an order to obtain business records in national security terrorism cases. This act is in the business of disrupting terrorist threats and capturing terrorists. It is in the whole business of catching them and preventing them from doing what they have been doing in the past. Since 9/11, our law enforcement and intelligence community and our partners both here and abroad have identified and disrupted over 150 terrorist threats and cells. Worldwide, nearly two-thirds of all al Qaeda known senior leadership has been captured or killed, including the mastermind, one of the masterminds of the September 11 attacks. Worldwide, more than 3,000 operatives have been incapacitated. Five terrorist cells in Buffalo, Detroit, Seattle, Portland, Oregon, and northern Virginia have been broken up. More than 401 individuals have been criminally charged in the United States in international terrorism investigations. Already, 212 individuals have been convicted or have pled guilty in the United States, including the shoe bomber, Richard Reid and the American Taliban, John Walker Lindh. The PATRIOT Act deals with increasing penalties for those who commit terrorist crimes. The PATRIOT Act increases penalties for those who commit terrorist crimes. And Americans are threatened as much by the terrorist who pays for the bomb as the one who detonates the bomb. We should even consider eliminating, in my opinion, the loophole and making sure that any terrorist who commits a crime resulting in death will be eligible for the death penalty or life in prison. In particular, this act prohibits individuals from knowingly harboring terrorists who have committed or are about to commit a variety of terrorist offenses, such as destruction of an aircraft, use of nuclear, chemical, biological or other weapons of mass destruction, bombing of government property, sabotage of nuclear facilities and aircraft piracy. It enhances the maximum penalties for various crimes likely to be committed by terrorists, including arson, destruction of energy facilities, material support to terrorists or terrorist organizations, and destruction of national defense materials. It enhances the number of conspiracy penalties, including for arson, killing of Federal officials, attacking communication systems, material support to terrorists, sabotage of nuclear facilities, and interference with flight crews. And it punishes terrorist attacks on mass transit systems, such as we just witnessed in Great Britain. It punishes bioterrorism. It eliminates and lengthens the statute of limitations for certain terrorist crimes. The PATRIOT Act is a tool creatively created by the United States Congress to maintain the Constitution and give our law enforcement and intelligence folks the tools they need to fight. Mr. Speaker, I now yield to my colleague, the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn).

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman from Iowa, whom I very much enjoyed sitting next to and talking to and working with on issues on the Committee on the Judiciary. We Texans are proud to have him here with us tonight because he is a true patriot in the sense of the American term ``patriot,'' and we are very proud of him. And the gentleman mentioned these issues of obtaining these records, this fear, this absolute fear that people have of somebody looking at their library records. Grand jury subpoenas have looked at library records for years. Grand jury subpoenas can be issued by the foreman of a grand jury. I do not know where the panic comes from. This has been going on forever, but somehow there is a panic. At this time I would like to welcome the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert), from East Texas. I feel really kind of like we are in a judicial conference. We have got a judge in the chair. We have got two of us down here on the floor. We are proud that we might as well just call a quorum and start doing some legal business. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert), a good colleague and close friend, to talk about some of the issues and the answers that we see in the PATRIOT Act.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, on June 22, 2005, I was unavoidably detained on official business in my Congressional District. On rollcall vote No. 293, if present, I would have voted ``nay.'' On rollcall vote No. 294, if present, I would have voted ``aye.'' On rollcall vote No. 295, if present, I would have voted ``aye.'' On rollcall votes Nos. 296 and 297, if present, I would have voted ``yea.'' On rollcall vote No. 298, if present, I would have voted ``aye.'' On rollcall votes Nos. 299, 300, 301, and 302, if present, I would have voted ``nay.'' On rollcall vote No. 303, if present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, on June 21, 2005, I was unavoidably detained on official business in my Congressional District. During rollcall vote No. 288, if present, I would have voted ``yea.'' On rollcall vote No. 289, I would have voted ``no.'' On final passage of H.R. 2475, authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2006 for intelligence and intelligence-related activities, rollcall vote 290, I would have voted ``yea.'' On passage of H.J. Res. 52, rollcall vote 291, I would have voted ``yea.'' On passage of H. Con. Res. 160, rollcall vote 292, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to call attention to a continuing threat to the longstanding goal of the United States to diversify our energy sources. Nigeria refuses to return full sovereign control of the oil-rich Bakassi Peninsula to Cameroon. The International Court of Justice has confirmed Cameroon as the rightful owner of this territory. However, President Obasanjo has not withdrawn Nigerian troops from the peninsula, despite having promised to do so by September 2004. Mr. Speaker, Nigeria's intransigence in Cameroon threatens to jeopardize the United States' energy security. I agree that Nigeria, despite its turbulent history, has been a valuable source of oil for the United States over the years. However, America's interests would be better served by Cameroon becoming another such source--a stable, independent source. Nigeria must return control of the Bakassi Peninsula to Cameroon.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, the Constitution of the United States designed by our Founding Fathers set up a system of establishing a judiciary. And in that establishment, they intended for the President of the United States to nominate people on the bench and they intended for the Senate to give advice and consent to that nomination and, by an up-or-down vote, vote on whether or not those people can serve for life in the United States judiciary. We are seeing today a constitutional challenge that is being met by the Senate as they go forward and meet their constitutional duty for an up-or-down vote for the judiciary and the nominees that have been proposed for our Federal judiciary. Mr. Speaker, we expect fair and impartial judges to be appointed to the court; and just because they do not meet our political litmus test, we should not allow anyone to intervene with our constitutional duty which we take an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States as we have served in these offices. I commend the Senate for the courageous act that they will go forward and do in the following weeks.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. And I too lived in such a county and presided over such a court. Our Williamson County jurors, they, when you start talking about $1 million, there is not that much money in the world as far as they are concerned, so they were very tight with their money and, therefore, you saw very few people; if you could file that lawsuit someplace else, they were not filing it in Williamson County, because they were seeking that pot of gold.

Mr. CARTER. It is a whole lot more fun to dream about winning the lottery. I mean, obviously, the whole country dreams almost every third night in this country about winning the lottery someplace; not very many of them that win it, but they are out there dreaming it. But the real crime of winning the lottery when we are talking about lawsuits is the fear of that big judgment that causes people to settle lawsuits that should not be settled to prevent the danger of that unlimited liability that is out there before caps were placed in the law. The gentleman knows there is nothing that irritates doctors more, and I have talked to doctors about this; they say, they made me settle the lawsuit but, by golly, I did not do anything wrong.

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, I would like to have a little conversation with the gentleman. The gentleman is right. It is very important to make the point that those people that should be at the courthouse addressing genuine harm are still getting to the courthouse and having that harm addressed. It is not cutting off the need of people to recover in the courthouse; it is cutting off these frivolous attacks to try to reach the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow by limiting the pot of gold, and we clearly can see what happened: Get them all in before the deadline so that we can win the lottery. After that, we are just going to get paid for our work.

Mr. CARTER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman. I want to say a statement the gentleman made, I want to emphasize how important it is to me and I think it is important to every Member of this House. That is, men of good will always look for solutions. We do not always have the right ideas, but if you do not lay proposed solutions on the table for a free debate among men of good will and women of good will in this august Chamber, we will not come up with a solution. I believe the American people are ready, willing, and able to listen to a debate from the United States Congress about the things that we are talking about here today; and that is what is wrong, how do we change our attitude towards the law, towards our rights and towards our responsibilities? What little things can we do to adjust, to help guide us down the path that I think our forefathers clearly intended for us when we designed the system, which, for all its fault, as the gentleman pointed out, is still the best system ever devised by man? I am not ashamed of it, and I am not ashamed of lawyers, and I am not ashamed of our system. But I think we must be men of good will and women of good will who seek solutions. Finally, I am going to just briefly pause. This will be the subject of a whole other talk, but we have got the issue that the press has decided to address as ``the nuclear option'' which is going on over in the Senate by dealing with the Senate rules and how we are going to get an up-or-down vote on judges. We love to address, and rightfully so, the Constitution of the United States as we discuss things on this floor. And we love to talk about the checks and balances in our government. And in a judiciary appointed for life as we designed in our system, you have to look into the Constitution and see where the checks and balances are. And I think clearly our framers designed the number one check and balance on the judiciary to be the fact that there will be a new process at least every 8 years now, but certainly 4 to 8 years, who will appoint different types of people to serve in our judiciary which will give a good cross-section of a blend of attitudes, views of the law to our judicial system, to give a system that spreads fairness for all citizens. To use procedural rules to prevent that appointment power which calls for the advice and consent of Senate, to prevent that using procedural rules, I think it is not a nuclear option, as we are discussing, it is a constitutional option. If we are not going to allow that check and balance to operate, then where will the checks and balances be? So this will be a subject of another discussion another time. But at this time, I just want to remind the American people as the rhetoric in the papers and on the TV and the radio, remember it is the best justice system in the world. But it is the best because we had some people who sweated blood, sweat, and tears in Philadelphia to come up with a plan that set balance to our system. And the number one balance to a judicial system appointed for life is the opportunity for the executive branch, through the President, to nominate new blood to our judiciary through every Presidential term. Some of that new blood will be just exactly what they think it will be with their views, and some of it will not. And we are always surprised to hear from our commentators: Well, it is true, but that judge was appointed by Reagan. That's right, that is how the system works. You put the new blood out there, that blood develops into a justice system, that spreads it out for everybody. And some of them, some people go the way everybody expects them to be and some people do not. When Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren, nobody anticipated the activist court that would come from the Warren court. And yet historically it is one of the most activist courts in America. So that system works. Why be afraid of it? I would urge everyone to look at this issue and let the Senate think just for a second, get the politics out of this for a minute and say, What did our Founding Fathers see here? That we had a system that works if we just let it work. Let us have a vote, up or down, on every nomination that the President has proposed; and when their President gets in there, if he ever does, we should do the same thing for them. That is what our Founding Fathers proposed. Madam Speaker, I have enjoyed being with you this evening and I am very honored that my colleagues were able to see me ranting and raving and come over here and help me out. Of course, you know one thing you can count on from Texans and Georgians is when there is a call to arms they always show up. So I am proud to see my colleagues from Texas come out and join me in this discussion, and I am very proud to have my colleague from Georgia join me. I thank them all for being here with me tonight. Madam Speaker, I thank you for your patience in listening to me tonight and for joining us and coming up with those solutions that men and women of good will can submit to this body and hopefully make America better.

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time. And I once again thank my colleague from Texas (Mr. Burgess) for being here with me tonight. I rose when I first started talking to tell you that there is, in my opinion, an attitude crisis for the justice system in America. We have talked about medical malpractice, and we have gone forward on the crusade. And I think we are getting some results. And the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess) has very clearly described how we are seeing those results in the State of Texas today. Hopefully, with the work this Congress will do, we will be able to find that same success in the area of dealing with medical issues in the courthouse, to put more fairness back in the system; and that our class action reform, I think, is putting fairness back in the system. But it is a bigger picture than that, Mr. Speaker. There are a lot of issues we really need to talk about as we talk about lawsuit reform in America. One of the real tragedies that you see in the courthouse today is people using our courts, not to redress grievances, but as a battering ram of costs to destroy competition with those that they are in business in competition against, or using it to try to change, make somebody do something they do not want to do by costing them enough medical costs, I mean, lawyer costs they cannot afford to go to court. So you just continue to file lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit, many of which could be frivolous; but you must defend yourself. And you must be insured to defend yourself. It is getting epidemic. And if you do not think it is epidemic, let us think about the world we are in today, the world of politics in America. Do you think our Founding Fathers ever anticipated that at the end of an election cycle parties would have 50 lawyers on retainer ready to go to court on both sides with both parties? Do you think that that is the system that we thought that we wanted to have in this country, America? And yet we seem to be there today. I am not taking the sides of whether you like or do not like how elections come out. But when did it become everybody goes to court? When did this have to happen? I mean, our Founding Fathers trusted the American people to elect their representatives. Did they design a system where judges rule the country? I do not think so. If they had had that system, they would have kept the King, and old George would still be around here. No, the purpose of the American justice system is justice. It is fairness, it is a place to seek recourse when there is no other place for recourse and to get a fair judgment. Now it has become a weapon of politics. It has become a weapon of business; it has become a weapon to make school boards change policies. It has become a weapon to make city counsels shut down parks or take down symbols. We have gotten to a point where we are letting the courthouse drive everything. Mr. Speaker, we love our rights in this country. We love to be a Nation that stands up for its rights. My problem is, with rights come responsibilities. And there are times in this life when you are responsible and you have to stand up and recognize I am responsible here. I do not need to sue somebody. If I do not like the way my neighbor cuts his yard, why in the world do I have to drag him into court and make him spend $100,000 on lawyers to make him cross-cut his yard instead of parallel cut it? And yet there are people who do that. I tried a lawsuit between whose cat and whose dog was doing their business in whose yard. And those people spent $60,000 a piece on lawyers. Mr. Speaker, that is unreasonable. That is ridiculous. But we have reached a point in America today where we have become so lawsuit crazy and we think we can get something for nothing, they are willing to force somebody to do something that they do not want to do by forcing them to spend their money on lawyers. It is not the lawyers' fault. They are just getting paid for their hourly wage. It is our attitude in this country. And as we start to show people how we can redirect and make things better, the gentleman from Georgia hit right on it. Not only as these judgments come down in the courtroom does it affect the individuals in the courtroom. The periphery around those individuals, it affects jobs, it affects businesses, it affects the availability of services, the availability of goods, our ability to compete worldwide, to be part of this great ever-growing world community. It affects everything that affects every American citizen by the fact that we are driving up legal costs and using our courts as a weapon. Mr. Speaker, we have got to do something to change this attitude. I am very blessed right now in Congress to have a multiple of my colleagues from Texas now Members of Congress, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert), who is here with us today. The gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe) is also a new Member of Congress, and I am very honored to have both of these fine judges with me. We have talked. We talk about what happens in our courtroom, what happens in our courthouse. And we see that there is an attitude in America that has got to be changed. And we do this by, I think, by doing what we are doing right now. Let us start taking the real problem areas, let us start analyzing them. Let us start coming up with a commonsense approach of how we are going to make sure that we are not in the business of making people rich. We are in the business of making people whole. We are in the business of making people right for the injury that occurred. And common sense will hopefully cause us to start to see that what our American court system is about is justice. And if it is not about justice, then it is going about things all wrong. Mr. Speaker, every day now in the newspaper we see somebody using the courts or somebody using accusations without convictions to harm and punish people in this country, and in this body. Mr. Speaker, that is wrong. That is not what our Founding Fathers intended. Our Founding Fathers told us that people are innocent until proven guilty. They told us we have a series of courts that are to provide justice and a resolution of disputes, not a battering ram to pound your opponent into submission. And this is the kind of thing that, as we look at the future of the American justice system, we have to do this. Now, when I get the chance to come up here and talk about lawsuit reform, there is one more thing we ought to talk about. And I may change the subject just so I can get my good friend, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert), to step up to the podium. I am going to yield to him right now, and then I am going to come back and talk to you a little bit about what is going on over in the Senate and checks and balances on the judiciary. But first, I thank the gentleman from Texas for coming up here this late hour and joining me. I am proud to have him here, as I said before.

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, I am honored to rise in this Chamber and discuss here tonight what has been a part of my life for my entire adult years, and that is the legal system of the United States, the attitudes of the American people about the legal system of the United States and where we are going in justice for America. Mr. Speaker, I have had the privilege and the honor to serve as a member of the judiciary for over 20 years of my life. I had the honor to appear before good judges and good juries for an additional about 12 years of my life. I am and have been a part of the legal system of the United States of America. I am a lawyer, I am proud to be a lawyer, and I feel I come from an honorable profession. But it is also the duty of those of us who practice in a profession, whatever that profession may be, when you see a problem that changes the direction of fairness and justice in America, you need to step up and say it is there. You should not let it hide under a box because you might make a little more honey. You need to step up and say, folks, in a certain area, we are starting to see the system be broke, and, if it is broke, we got to fix it. Now, we are going to hear the term ``tort reform'' thrown around. I have a son that coaches back in Round Rock, and he said, You know, the first time I heard tort reform, I thought they were talking about bacon, because the average people need to know what we are talking about when we talk about tort reform. We are talking about a part of the law which basically deals with personal injuries to people. It is a system of justice we have developed in this country to try to find out a way to try to compensate people who are injured by the negligence of others. It was the purpose to solve a problem. Mr. Speaker, a courthouse, the courtroom, a battery of lawyers, is nothing more than a massive problem-solving area for America, and tort reform solves the problem of someone being injured through the actions of another or their negligence. To look to reform the system, we need to say, what is broken? Many people in this Congress on both sides of the aisle, and many of my colleagues that I work with daily, would start by blaming the lawyers. I am not going to start by blaming the lawyers, although they certainly have a great amount of blame. I start with blaming the American people, because we have become soft and decided, many of us think we should have a free ride. The great, huge, gigantic verdicts that are being supported by some juries in this country are another way of winning the lottery in the eyes of many of the American people, and they are just as responsible for administering justice when they sit on a jury as a judge is or a lawyer who sits in that courtroom. So as we look at our system, we have to say, why do we see a $100 million verdict in a medical malpractice case when it is way beyond the imagination of anyone that that is what it takes to make that defendant whole from whatever injury that plaintiff has, that is what it takes from the defendant to make the plaintiff whole in that case? It is way beyond it. Why did they award that $100 million verdict? It is my personal opinion they awarded that verdict because we have become a country that would like to get something for nothing, and they are willing to give a fellow citizen something for nothing. As a juror takes his oath of office to serve as a trier of fact in a case, he should realize that his job there is to do justice. If the judge refuses to reform a verdict, it is his job to do justice. So as we start seeing these things in our system, we start saying to ourselves, those of us in the legislative branch of government start saying, well, wait a minute. We see these problems. Are there ways we can look to make it better so really justice is done, so really the purpose for the courtroom is well displayed by the verdict of the jury and the rulings of the court? And that is why this has now become a point in time where this society sues more people than the entire rest of the world put together by about 15 times. We are out of control in our lawsuits. The average jury award is now about $3.5 million, up more than 70 percent since 1995. So let us look and see who has come up with an idea that might help us address tort reform, help us work on this. The first area we have already once passed through this House is medical malpractice. I am happy to see that my colleague, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess), one of the practicing doctors who is now a Member of this august body, has joined me in the House. I am honored to have him here; and if he has the time, I would love for him to join me and talk a little bit about medical malpractice. One of the things you have got to think about is that young doctor that just graduated from school, and I will use Texas because I happen to know Texas, maybe UT or Baylor or Texas Tech or A&M medical school, SMU, someplace they are putting out good doctors. This young man wants to go back to a small town and practice medicine, and he wants to do it because he wants to make a decent living and help people stay healthy. So he may want to go into the family practice of medicine. He may want to deliver babies as part of that family practice of medicine because he loves children; and it is one of the things he loves, bringing life into this world. Today we have to tell that young doctor that, first off, you paid for all your medical school, probably with money he had to borrow from student loans, you are going to have to pay that back, but you are also going to have to get ready to kick in about $70,000 to $100,000. I would say your first $70,000 to $100,000 you make in the practice of medicine you are going to have to go to pay for liability insurance to make sure that you are protected. That may be a low number. I am sure that the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess) could tell us numbers that far exceed that in some specialties where people have to go out and get that insurance. That means when you open the door, you could be $100,000 in the hole for the first year of practice, and the first time something does not go the way somebody would like it, there you are facing a lawsuit. Now, seven out of 10 medical malpractice lawsuits filed in the United States have been proven to be frivolous; and many of these lawsuits, unfortunately, because of the nature and the fear of the large verdicts in our system, get settled even though they are frivolous, which causes what? The cost of the insurance to go up, not only for the individual, but for the body and for the specialty. There are places in this country right now where you are not going to find a neurosurgeon on staff because the cost of being a neurosurgeon is just prohibitive. People in the Valley of the Rio Grande of Texas, one of the poorest regions in the entire Nation, it is difficult to find a doctor who will deliver a baby. There are stories upon stories of women arriving at their doctor's office to learn that the cost of their medical malpractice insurance has put them out of the baby- delivering business. That woman is about to have a baby. She is faced with driving 80 or 90 miles to San Antonio just to find a doctor to make sure that baby is going to be delivered by a doctor, if she can get one. Mr. Speaker, this is a crisis, and it is a crisis that calls upon us who are in the legislative body to start coming up with solutions. I think that the vision that we have for following the California plan, which has shown that setting certain limits on awards, will assist us, and driving down the cost is important. So that is one area. We talked a lot about this over the last year, and I wanted to touch on it, because that is where we start and that is where we are starting. There is a book, I believe it is Mr. Grisham wrote this book, called ``The King of Torts.'' It is a novel, but it certainly is based upon some historical facts in this country about these class-action lawsuits. This session of Congress we did something about class-action lawsuits, this House did and the Senate did; and I am very hopeful we have got class-action lawsuits put where they ought to be. Because what was happening is these lawyers were putting together these large classes of people. Mr. Speaker, I told you, I highly respect the legal profession. I am not here to blast lawyers. But just because I respect the profession does not mean there are not people that in my opinion that I do not hold in high esteem. Some of these are those who would gather a class from thousands to hundreds of thousands of people in a class, and their victory is they get a certificate for a 20 percent discount and the lawyer gets $100 million. Mr. Speaker, that is not the right system; and I think, quite frankly, the lawyers that do that ought to be ashamed of themselves, because the system is designed to make whole those who are injured. Yet they forum-shop the Nation looking for these areas where clearly there were some courts who favored these types of actions. Now, we have put together a system which we feel is very good to put it in the right place, because these things cross State lines. They span the entire Nation and territories of the United States. Yet, they could go forum shopping in one individual jurisdiction to get better results. So, in order to stop this forum shopping, we have put together the Class Action Fairness Act which was signed into public law February 18 of this year. It will help unclog overclogged courts, it ends the harassment of local business by forum shopping, and it protects the consumers with the Consumers Action Bill of Rights that requires judges to carefully review the settlements and limits of the attorneys fees when the value of the settlement received by a class member is minor in comparison with the net loss of the settlement claim and the resulting attorneys fees therefrom. It bans settlements that award some class members a larger recovery than others. It allows the Federal courts to maximize the benefit of class action settlements by requiring that unclaimed settlement funds be donated to charitable organizations. Now, this is a good start, and we are going to have, hopefully, before this session of Congress is over, before the 109th Congress goes to bed, we are going to have more good starts. Mr. Speaker, I would say that my goal, and I think the goal of all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, is to make sure that our legal system, the system that we are so proud of, the fact that we stand in this Chamber day in and day out and talk about the rule of law, because we are proud that we are a nation ruled by the rule of law, that what we are trying to do is make the rule of law work better. The rule of law is not a Las Vegas slot machine. The rule of law is getting justice to every individual that breathes air in this great Nation of the United States of America, and justice means fairness to all. Mr. Speaker, we are seeing in our court system today a trend that, quite frankly, frightens me. It frightens me because people do not go to court to address grievances; they go to court to punish somebody. They go to court to hurt somebody or to make somebody bow down to their will. Mr. Speaker, that is the climate we have, and we have to start working on it. I would like at this time to yield to the gentleman from north Texas (Mr. Burgess), my colleague who is very knowledgeable on the subject of what this is doing to our doctors and our medical profession and our cost of medicine. I am honored that the gentleman is here to join me in this conversation.

Mr. CARTER. That is it. That is why I went to law school and not medical school.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the subject of my Special Order.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, on April 12, 2005, during voting on H.R. 135, the Twenty-First Century Water Commission Act and H.R. 541, the Lander County and Eureka County, Nevada land conveyance, I was unavoidably detained due to matters in my Congressional District. If I had been present, I would have voted yea on both votes.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, on February 10, 2005, during rollcall votes 28, 29, 30 and 31, I had to return to my Congressional district on an urgent matter and was unavoidably detained. If I had been present, I would have voted ``no'' on rollcall votes 28, 29, 30 and ``yea'' on rollcall vote 31, final passage.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Madam Speaker, I want to introduce three distinguished Texans to this House. First is Representative Louie Gohmert. Judge Gohmert is an attorney who returned to private practice this last year before being elected to Congress. Prior to that time, he was appointed Chief Justice of the Court of Appeals in Texas. He served his country as a captain in the United States Army. He is a Fighting Texas Aggie, graduating from Texas A&M University where he was class president and Brigade Commander of the Corps of Cadets. He earned his law degree from Baylor University School of Law, where he was the class president. Judge Gohmert has served as the President of the South Tyler Rotary Club, on the Boy Scout District Board of Directors and as deacon in the Green Acres Baptist Church. He also has been a director of leadership in Tyler, Texas, and a director of Centrepoint Ministries, among other numerous efforts. He and his wife Kathy have three children, Katy, Caroline and Sarah. He is going to be an asset to the State of Texas and to the United States, and I ask that we welcome him to our Congress. Judge Ted Poe, another judge, we are going to form an organization of Texas judges before this is over, Judge Ted Poe is a native of Harris County. Before being elected to Congress, he served as a felony court judge, having been appointed in 1981 and elected six times as a felony district judge. Before becoming a judge, Judge Poe was a felony prosecutor for the District Attorney's Office in Harris County for 8 years and served in the United States Air Force Reserve. He taught criminal justice courses at the University of Houston, conducted training at the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Virginia, and at West Point. Judge Poe has received awards from the National Victim's Center, Foundation for Improvement of Justice, the Texas District Attorney's Association, Kansas Peace Officer's Association, Houston Bar Association, Houston Police Officers Association and the Harris County Deputy Sheriff's Office. Ted Poe received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Abilene Christian University in political science and his J.D. degree from the University of Houston Law Center where he was a member of the Law School Honor Society. Ted Poe has lived in Humble, Texas, with his wife Carol for over 24 years and has four grown children, Kim, Kara, Kurt and Kellee. He is an active member of the Church of Christ. I ask that you welcome now Congressman Ted Poe to the 109th Congress. Finally, a man who took a vast majority of my old district in Texas, the Tenth District, Representative Mike McCaul. Mike McCaul was the Chief of the Terrorism and National Security Section with the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Texas before he was elected to Congress. He is a member of the Bush-Cheney transition team as well as Attorney General Greg Abbott's transition team. Mike McCaul served as Deputy Attorney General under John Cornyn and was a Federal prosecutor with the Public Integrity Section of the Justice Department's Criminal Division. McCaul received his BS from Trinity University in San Antonio and got a law degree from St. Mary's University School of Law. He is also a graduate of the Senior Executive Fellows Program at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Mike McCaul will be a great asset to this Congress, and we should all look forward to serving with him, and I ask that you welcome him to the 109th Congress.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, today I offer an amendment, the Terrorist Penalties Enhancements Act, which will provide new and expanded penalties to those who commit fatal acts of terrorism. Since September 11, Federal and State officials continue to work hard to prevent further terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. However, despite some changes to the law to increase penalties after deadly terrorist attacks, a jury is still denied the ability to consider a death sentence or life imprisonment for a terrorist in many cases, even when the attacks result in death and the court believes it is necessary to prevent further harm to our citizens. For example, in the case in which a terrorist causes massive loss of life by sabotaging a nuclear power plant or a national defense installation, there would be no possibility of imposing the death penalty under the statutes defining these offenses because they contain no death penalty authorizations. In contrast, dozens of other Federal violent crime provisions authorize up to life imprisonment or the death penalty in cases where victims are killed. Because the potential tragedy here is so great, we must hope that changing this law to allow a sentence of death or life imprisonment will serve as a deterrent to would-be terrorists. It is one more tool in our arsenal. Mr. Chairman, hearings have been held on this straightforward legislation, and it has been agreed to by the House Committee on the Judiciary. It will make terrorists who kill eligible for the Federal death penalty. This legislation will also deny these same terrorists any Federal benefits they otherwise may have been eligible to receive. These Federal benefits denied include Social Security, welfare, unemployment and food stamps. As a former State District Judge for over 20 years, I have presided over five capital murders trials, three of which resulted in the death penalty. I understand the gravity of seeking and imposing the death penalty. However, from my experience, I believe the death penalty is a tool that can deter acts of terrorism and can serve as a tool for prosecutors when negotiating sentences. I am pleased that President George Bush expressed his support for this legislation. In a speech to the FBI Academy, President Bush said, ``For the sake of American people, Congress should change the law and give law enforcement officials the same tools they have to fight terror that they have to fight other crime.'' In Hershey, Pennsylvania, President Bush reemphasized the inequity in current law. President Bush said, ``We ought to be sending a strong signal: If you sabotage a defense installation or a nuclear facility in a way that takes an innocent life, you ought to get the death penalty, the Federal death penalty.'' This legislation today puts all would-be terrorists on notice that they will receive ultimate justice should they decide to plan and execute a future attack. Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support this legislation. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.