Barney Frank

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, my thanks go to the chair of the committee, the gentlewoman from Florida, the ranking member from California (Mr. Berman), and the new ranking member from New York (Mr. Engel) for giving us a chance to try to achieve not just justice but love, the love of a father for children for whom he grieves daily because they were illegally and abusively kidnapped. As the gentlewoman from Florida pointed out, this kidnapping was in violation of a decision by the family court in Massachusetts giving full custody to the father. Members will not be surprised to learn that there have been very few complaints, that I've ever heard of, of there being a bias in favor of fathers in those courts. Some say there's a bias in favor of mothers. There is certainly a presumption, as I understand it, in favor of mothers. So for a court to say unequivocally that the father gets sole control is a strong indication of the unfitness of the mother. And so the case is very clear; but I want in my remarks, Mr. Speaker, to address the Government of Egypt. There's a new government in Egypt. There are points of friction between Egypt and the United States. We have a great interest in a good relationship. The foundation of peace in the Middle East began in 1979 with the Camp David Accords. America has consistently provided Egypt with more foreign assistance than all but a handful of nations. And in this current period when there are issues that could arise that could divide us, I urge the Egyptian Government not to put or keep in place a serious problem, not an irritant. It's more than an irritant when a loving father who has been given custody of his children because of the court's decision that the mother is unfit by virtue of a drug addiction, when he is denied the ability to have his paternal instincts honored, to be able to honor and protect his children. And I urge the Government of Egypt: do not minimize the extent to which this will be an obstacle. I will not be here in a week, Mr. Speaker. I didn't think I'd be here this week. But I know that my successor in Congress, Mr. Kennedy, and my colleagues, the chair of the committee and the ranking member, will not forget this. The Government of Egypt will be seeking from this House support of measures, and there are a lot of reasons why we want to work together. I plead with them, do not allow what to us is a very serious issue--perhaps to some in Egypt it appears minor--but to have a father's children taken away from him and kidnapped with the implicit cooperation of the prior Egyptian Government is a grave problem. If the current Egyptian Government does not correct this situation, it will be an obstacle to the kind of cooperation that is in our mutual interest. I hope we get a very large, indeed unanimous, vote for this resolution and the Egyptian Government understands that it is not just justice but its best interests that call for compliance.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, Paul Krugman has consistently and articulately defended programs that are essential for the quality of life for our most vulnerable residents, and exposed the flawed morality and impaired logic of those who seek to use the existence of a large national debt as an argument for exacerbating inequality in the United States. His column for Monday, December 31 is an excellent example of this, and I hope all Members will pay attention to its message. Brewing Up Confusion (By Paul Krugman) Howard Schultz, the C.E.O. of Starbucks, has a reputation as a good guy, a man who supports worthy causes. And he presumably thought he would add to that reputation when he posted an open letter urging his employees to promote fiscal bipartisanship by writing ``Come together'' on coffee cups. In reality, however, all he did was make himself part of the problem. And his letter was actually a very good illustration of the forces that created the current mess. In the letter, Mr. Schultz warned that elected officials ``have been unable to come together and compromise to solve the tremendously important, time-sensitive issue to fix the national debt,'' and suggested that readers further inform themselves at the Web site of the organization Fix the Debt. Let's parse that, shall we? First of all, it's true that we face a time-sensitive issue in the form of the fiscal cliff: unless a deal is reached, we will soon experience a combination of tax increases and spending cuts that might push the nation back into recession. But that prospect doesn't reflect a failure to ``fix the debt'' by reducing the budget deficit--on the contrary, the danger is that we'll cut the deficit too fast. How could someone as well connected as Mr. Schultz get such a basic point wrong? By talking to the wrong people--in particular, the people at Fix the Debt, who've been doing their best to muddle the issue. For example, in a new fund-raising letter Maya MacGuineas, the organization's public face, writes of the need to ``make hard decisions when it comes to averting the `fiscal cliff' and stabilizing our national debt''--even though the problem with the fiscal cliff is precisely that it stabilizes the debt too soon. Clearly, Ms. MacGuineas was trying to confuse readers on that point, and she apparently confused Mr. Schultz too. More about Fix the Debt in a moment. Before I get there, however, let's move on to Mr. Schultz's misdiagnosis of the political problem we face. Look, it's true that elected politicians have been unable to ``come together and compromise.'' But saying that in generic form, and implying a symmetry between Republicans and Democrats, isn't just misleading, it's actively harmful. The reality is that President Obama has made huge concessions. He has already cut spending sharply, and has now offered additional big spending cuts, including a cut in Social Security benefits, while signaling his willingness to retain many of the Bush tax cuts, even for people with very high incomes. Taken as a whole, the president's proposals are arguably to the right of those made by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, the co-chairmen of his deficit commission, in 2010. In return, the Republicans have offered essentially nothing. Oh, they say they're willing to increase revenue by closing loopholes--but they've refused to specify a single loophole they're willing to close. So if there's a breakdown in negotiations, the blame rests entirely with one side of the political divide. Given that reality, think about the effect when people like Mr. Schultz respond by blaming both sides equally. They may sound virtuously nonpartisan, but what they're actually doing is rewarding intransigence and extremism--which, in the current context, means siding with the G.O.P. I'm willing to believe that Mr. Schultz doesn't know what he's doing. The same can't be said, however, about Fix the Debt. You might not know it reading some credulous reporting, but Fix the Debt isn't some kind of new gathering of concerned citizens. On the contrary, it's just the latest addition to a group of deficit-scold shops supported by billionaire Peter Peterson, a group ranging from think tanks like the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget to the newspaper The Fiscal Times. The main difference seems to be that this gathering of the usual suspects is backed by an impressive amount of corporate cash. Like all the Peterson-funded groups, Fix the Debt seems much more concerned with cutting Social Security and Medicare than with fighting deficits in general--and also not nearly as nonpartisan as it pretends to be. In its list of ``core principles,'' it actually calls for lower tax rates--a very peculiar position for people supposedly horrified by the budget deficit. True, the group calls for revenue increases via unspecified base broadening, that is, closing loopholes. But that's unrealistic. And it's also, as you may have noticed, the Republican position. What's happening now is that all the Peterson-funded groups are trying to exploit the fiscal cliff to push a benefit- cutting agenda that has nothing to do with the current crisis, using artfully deceptive language--as in that MacGuineas letter--to hide the bait and switch. Mr. Schultz apparently fell for the con. But the rest of us shouldn't.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, given the role that former Majority Leader Richard Armey has played in significantly increasing the role in militant conservatives in the Republican party, the article in the Washington Post on December 25 is important information that all Members should know. [From The Washington Post, Dec. 25, 2012] Freedom Works Tea Party Group Nearly Falls Apart in Fight Between Old and New Guard (By Amy Gardner) The day after Labor Day, just as campaign season was entering its final frenzy, FreedomWorks, the Washington-based tea party organization, went into free fall. Richard K. Armey, the group's chairman and a former House majority leader, walked into the group's Capitol Hill offices with his wife, Susan, and an aide holstering a handgun at his waist. The aim was to seize control of the group and expel Armey's enemies: The gun-wielding assistant escorted FreedomWorks' top two employees off the premises, while Armey suspended several others who broke down in sobs at the news. The coup lasted all of six days. By Sept. 10, Armey was gone--with a promise of $8 million--and the five ousted employees were back. The force behind their return was Richard J. Stephenson, a reclusive Illinois millionaire who has exerted increasing control over one of Washington's most influential conservative grass-roots organizations. Stephenson, the founder of the for-profit Cancer Treatment Centers of America and a director on the Freedom Works board, agreed to commit $400,000 per year over 20 years in exchange for Armey's agreement to leave the group. The episode illustrates the growing role of wealthy donors in swaying the direction of FreedomWorks and other political groups, which increasingly rely on unlimited contributions from corporations and financiers for their financial livelihood. Such gifts are often sent through corporate shells or nonprofit groups that do not have to disclose their donors, making it impossible for the public to know who is funding them. In the weeks before the election, more than $12 million in donations was funneled through two Tennessee corporations to the FreedomWorks super PAC after negotiations with Stephenson over a preelection gift of the same size, according to three current and former employees with knowledge of the arrangement. The origin of the money has not previously been reported. These and other new details about the near-meltdown at FreedomWorks were gleaned from interviews with two dozen current and past associates, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to talk freely. The disarray comes as the conservative movement is struggling to find its way after the November elections, which brought a second term for President Obama and Democratic gains in the House and Senate. Armey said in an interview that the near-meltdown at his former group has damaged the conservative cause. ``Freedom Works was the spark plug, the energy source, the catalyst for the movement through the 2010 elections,'' Armey said, referring to the GOP midterm sweep. ``Harm was done to the movement.'' Stephenson, 73, declined a request for an interview. Matt Kibbe, the group's president, and Adam Brandon, its senior vice president, declined to discuss the issue. ``I don't comment on donors,'' Brandon said. ``He's on our board, he's a board member like anyone else. That's it. I see him at board meetings.'' Stephenson, a longtime but little-known player in conservative causes, is a resident of Barrington, Ill., a northwest suburb of Chicago known for its affluence and sprawling horse estates such as his Tudor Oaks Farm. He founded the Cancer Treatment Centers of America in 1988 following his mother's death from bladder cancer, according to the for-profit company's Web site and his public remarks. Stephenson also holds investments in a broad portfolio of other businesses, including finance and real estate companies. Stephenson has a passion for libertarian politics stretching back to the 1960s, when he attended seminars featuring ``Atlas Shrugged'' author Ayn Rand and economist Murray Rothbard, according to those who know him at FreedomWorks. Like Armey, Stephenson was an early supporter of Citizens for a Sound Economy, the conservative lobbying group founded by oil billionaires Charles and David Koch in 1984 that split into Freedom Works and Americans for Prosperity 20 years later. The Kochs, known for bankrolling a variety of conservative causes, kept control of AFP, while Stephenson and Armey stayed with FreedomWorks. FreedomWorks has been on a remarkable run in recent election cycles, growing its annual budget from $7 million to $40 million in just a few years and helping lead the tea party movement against Obama's agenda. The group was among several that rose up last week in opposition to a failed proposal from House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) to raise federal taxes on millionaires. The group played a crucial role in ushering a wave of tea party candidates into office in recent years, staging rallies, hawking books and videos, and organizing media appearances with conservative personalities such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. ``I've enjoyed my association with FreedomWorks,'' said Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who defeated incumbent Bob Bennett with help from the group. ``Matt Kibbe and Dick Armey endorsed me early in my candidacy for the U.S. Senate, and they were a big help to me.'' Despite such testimonials, FreedomWorks has struggled with accusations that it is an ``astro-turfer''--a national organization of big-money donors that swept in to lay claim to an independent movement. According to public records, FreedomWorks received more than $12 million before the election from two corporations based in Knoxville, Tenn.: Specialty Investments Group and Kingston Pike Development. The firms were established within a day of each other by William S. Rose III, a local bankruptcy lawyer. Rose, who could not be reached for comment, has said publicly he would not answer questions about the donations. But according to three current and former FreedomWorks employees with knowledge of the donations, the money originated with Stephenson and his family, who arranged for the contributions from the Tennessee firms to the super PAC. Brandon, FreedomWorks' executive vice president, told colleagues starting in August that Stephenson would be giving between $10 million and $12 million, these sources said. Brandon also met repeatedly with members of Stephenson's family who were involved in arranging the donations, the sources said. Stephenson attended a FreedomWorks retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyo., in August at which a budget was being prepared in anticipation of a large influx of money, according to several employees who attended the retreat. At the retreat, Stephenson dictated some of the terms of how the money would be spent, the employees said. ``There is no doubt that Dick Stephenson arranged for that money to come to the super PAC,'' said one person who attended the retreat. ``I can assure you that everyone around the office knew about it.'' Among other things, Stephenson wanted a substantial sum spent in support of Rep. Joe Walsh (R-I11.), a tea party favorite and Stephenson's local congressman, several who attended the retreat recalled. Walsh garnered national headlines during the campaign when he questioned whether his opponent, Tammy Duckworth, a former Blackhawk helicopter pilot who lost both legs in Iraq, was a ``true hero.'' Despite internal misgivings about the value of the investment, FreedomWorks spent $1.7 million on ads supporting Walsh; he lost the race. Two watchdog groups last week asked the Federal Election Commission and the Justice Department to investigate the donations from the two Tennessee companies. The groups, Democracy 21 and the Campaign Legal Center, say the arrangement could violate federal laws that prohibit attempting to hide the true source of a political contribution by giving it under another name. (Brandon declined to comment on the complaints, but he said the group's books were in order.) Partnership unravels For years, FreedomWorks was headed by an unlikely duo: Armey, 72, the old-guard poi who wears a black cowboy hat even when he's not on his Texas ranch, and Kibbe, 49, who sports mutton-chop sideburns and has a passion for the Grateful Dead. But the most important relationship appears to be the bond between Kibbe and Stephenson, who bridged their age gap through shared libertarian views and Kibbe's battle with testicular cancer a decade ago, Armey and others said. They said Kibbe, after being given a terminal diagnosis, was encouraged by Stephenson to get treatment at his cancer clinics; more than a decade later, they said, he is cancer- free. Until this year, the partnership between Kibbe and Armey worked well. Armey's renown as a former House member drew media attention and crowds of conservative activists--most of them old enough to remember Armey's role in the Republican revolution in Congress in 1994. And Kibbe's youthful intellectualism drew a new generation of libertarian soldiers into the FreedomWorks fold. In 2010, the two co-wrote a book, ``Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto,'' that became a New York Times bestseller and a successful marketing tool for FreedomWorks, which collected the book's proceeds and used it to attract donations. The partnership came to a crashing end when Armey marched into FreedomWorks's office Sept. 4 with his wife, Susan, executive assistant Jean Campbell and the unidentified man with the gun at his waist--who promptly escorted Kibbe and Brandon out of the building. ``This was two weeks after there had been a shooting at the Family Research Council,'' said one junior staff member who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media. ``So when a man with a gun who didn't identify himself to me or other people on staff, and a woman I'd never seen before said there was an announcement, my first gut was, 'Is Freedom Works in danger?' It was bizarre.'?'' By nearly all accounts, including from those loyal to him, Armey handled his attempted coup badly. Armey says he was stepping in because of ethical breaches by Kibbe and Brandon, accusing them of improperly using FreedomWorks staff resources to produce a book--ironically, named ``Hostile Takeover''--for which Kibbe claimed sole credit and was collecting royalties. The use of internal resources for Kibbe's benefit could jeopardize the group's nonprofit tax status; the group denies any impropriety. ``This is not only about this one incident,'' Armey said. ``But that one incident was a matter of grievous concern.'' Armey also accused Brandon, Kibbe and other staff members loyal to them of squeezing him out of media appearances and management decisions while using his name to market the group. Armey appeared out of touch and unsure of how FreedomWorks operated when he took over that Tuesday morning, according to interviews with more than a dozen employees on both sides who witnessed the takeover. Sitting in a glass-walled conference room visible to much of the staff, he placed three young female employees on administrative leave, then reversed himself when they burst into tears; his wife lamented aloud that maybe they had ``jumped the gun.'' In subsequent meetings, Susan Armey passed her husband notes that several employees assumed contained suggestions on what to say. According to a recording of a staff conference call provided to The Washington Post, Armey bewildered his audience by demanding more FreedomWorks support for Todd Akin, the Missouri Republican whose Senate campaign had already cratered after his comments about ``legitimate rape.'' ``It was clear that under Armey's leadership, the organization as we knew it was going to be driven into the ground,'' said one junior employee. Enter Stephenson, who agreed to the multimillion-dollar financial incentive to push Armey out and install Kibbe back at the helm. The payments were necessary, several FreedomWorks leaders said, because Armey was threatening to sue over Kibbe's book deal. ``It was very clear to him that I would not work with Matt,'' Armey said, referring to Stephenson. ``He felt that Matt knew the levers and understood it better than I did and was very urgent to reinstate that.'' Brandon, back in the No. 2 spot as executive vice president, scoffed at the notion that the group is in trouble or that the dispute with Armey was indicative of a larger problem for the tea party. He said Freedom Works has 2.1 million members, nearly 4 million fans on Facebook and a budget that has grown sixfold in five years. He also pointed to the elections of Senate conservatives Ted Cruz in Texas and Jeff Flake in Arizona as evidence of the group's electoral success. ``We doubled our budget, and we doubled our membership,'' Brandon said, referring to the group's growth since 2011. ``That's how we ended up the year.'' (Alice R. Crites contributed to this report)

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. The previous speaker complained about not being willing to make cuts. That's right after the House is apparently about to vote on a defense bill in which Members boasted about how they were putting weapons systems into play that the Pentagon didn't want, far more expensive than the kinds of things I've been concerned about. What troubles me most about this, and it's a tough choice, is the attack on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Now, I know my Republican colleagues hated the idea of an independent bureau responsive to consumers and not financial institutions. We created an independent one. They didn't have the votes to stop it. They don't have the willingness to take it on head-on. This buries in this large bill, which isn't subject to amendment, a provision that would take away the independence of the consumer bureau. It would say that they are now going to be subject to annual appropriations. Oh, but I'm told that's a matter of principle. But it's apparently not a matter of principle for a financial regulatory institution that the bankers like. I offered a motion in committee to subject the Federal Reserve System to annual appropriations. That was voted down by the Republicans. Oh, the consumer bureau, that's dangerous. There they go getting people refunds on credit cards. But the Federal Reserve, oh no, they can stay autonomous. The controller of the currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. So this strong principle my Republican colleagues discovered only came to light when we try to protect consumers. And with regard to every other financial institution, they say it's okay. They also would abolish the Office of Financial Research, a nonpartisan entity that's just to get information. There was a wide consensus that we had a problem in the first part of the century when we didn't know what has happening. The Republicans want us to vote for continued ignorance.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself my remaining time. Mr. Speaker, I have some differences with particular provisions here, I would agree with the gentleman from New York, but that's not my major reason. That's not my reason at all for commandeering the time of this debate, and I apologize to those on the committee who worked so hard and who had an expectation to be able to talk about this specifically. I tried to accommodate that some, but here is my dilemma: it's partly the structure of this institution and of our rules and of our task. The committee does a very good job of operating within the given parameters of America's military engagement. They discharge very well their obligation to fund that level. What we don't have in our structure is a form in which to debate the most important question we face as a country: What level of worldwide military engagement should we be committed to pursuing? Because that level of military engagement dictates the funding. Members have said this is a good bill because it supports the men and women who we send into battle and into harm's way. Of course it does. It would be immoral to do anything less for them. The question is not whether having made a decision to be engaged on a worldwide basis we fund them adequately, but whether we are asking them to do too much. I would say my general principle in part is this. We have a superior military, wonderful men and women, very well- equipped thanks to this House and this Senate and the administration. They do very well what a military can do. A military can stop bad things from happening. Where we make the mistake is of asking these wonderful people to do something that militaries are not good at: make good things happen, take on roles in societies, quite literally and metaphorically, foreign to us and deal with the deepest human problems of religious and cultural disagreements. I would be morally conflicted if I thought those kinds of interventions could be successful. I would like to alleviate the people in Afghanistan who suffer from some of these problems or in Iraq or elsewhere, but the point is we can't do that. The best trained and armed 30-year-old Americans can't resolve the problems that rack those societies. They can repel enemies, but they cannot create good societies. Beyond that, we are suffering, I believe, from cultural lag. Sixty- seven years ago, at the end of World War II, America needed to be there for virtually every society in the world outside of the vicious Communism presided over by Joseph Stalin. The nations of Western and Central Europe had been weakened by World War II. They were vulnerable to Stalin. Russia had been weakened, too, but he was able to use the brutal force of his system to put whatever resources he had into a military that not only threatened, but ate up freedom in many European countries. And Harry Truman, to his credit, with the bipartisan support from Congress said, No, no further, and inserted American troops and American money to keep the weak nations of Western and Central Europe from being overrun by Stalin. Stalin, thank God, is dead, and the terrible system over which he presided has crumbled. That does not mean that I believe Russia is a wonderful place to live. I continue to be grateful to my grandparents for getting the heck out of there, but it's not a threat to the United States' competence. On the other hand, the European nations that we went in there to protect are now strong and prosperous. We no longer have weak nations in Central and Western Europe, and there is no longer a belligerent threat to them. One thing that hasn't changed is we're still there, with tens of billions of dollars of American money protecting the strong nations against a nonexisting threat. Japan was disarmed 67 years ago because of understandable fears. Japan, today, is a very different country, and an American policy that insists on subsidizing the defense of Japan because of what happened 67 years ago is a disservice to the American people. I want us to be the strongest nation in the world, Mr. Speaker. Some of my liberal friends say that sounds xenophobic. It's very simple. Somebody's going to be the strongest nation in the world by the process of elimination. I look at the candidates, and I'm for us. I will be honest with you, if Denmark had the possibility of being the strongest nation in the world, I would be pretty relaxed about it, but they can't handle it. It's either going to be us or some country I'm not that crazy about. But we can be the strongest nation in the world much less expensively than we are. Let me read from some who are critical because this President hasn't gone far enough. And a couple of my colleagues have praised the bill for putting more weapons into play than the Pentagon wants for objecting to their retirement of these weapons; in other words, it's more money than the Pentagon wanted in some cases. Here's the viewpoint that I think is being expressed here. In an article in The Wall Street Journal on November 7, the day after the election--hope springs eternal for some people--Mr. Jack David and Michael Dunn wrote an op-ed piece. Mr. David was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Bush administration; Mr. Dunn had the former presidency over the Air Force Association. Here's what they say in support of more aircraft, part of which the committee appeared to be responding to. It wasn't directly, but it was in consonance with it. They complain that the Air Force has been a victim of its success. They say: Ironically, the inattention and repeated cuts that have taken a toll on this branch of the military haven't received the public attention they deserve because the Air Force has been so successful. No U.S. soldier has been killed by enemy airpower since 1953. For six decades, the Air Force has been able to deny operational airspace to adversaries, so U.S. ground forces have operated with little fear of enemy aircraft attacking their positions. This is in The Wall Street Journal, written by a former Bush Assistant Secretary of Defense and the head of the Air Force Association. But they say it's not enough to have had no American killed since 1953--for which I'm very pleased--and have totally dominated every battlefield for six decades. Here's what we have to do, they say: But the U.S. relies on the Air Force to do much more than that--including to hold at risk any actual or potential enemy target, anywhere in the world. At a time when I'm being asked--I'm not going to do it--to cut back on the cost of living for Social Security, when we don't have adequate funds for health research, when we have had cities lay off police and fire--you're worried about the safety of Americans? Let's give the cities the resources not to lay off police and fire--I don't want to vote money to hold at risk any actual or potential enemy target anywhere in the world. By the way, we have to do this ourselves, because the next thing we have to do is ``protect the ground forces of friends and allies.'' Why can't some of our allies protect their own ground forces? Is there something about Germany and Italy and France and Spain and England and Japan that renders them genetically incapable of having their own air forces? I know we were told we have to stay in Iraq and Afghanistan because they don't have their own air force, but neither do the people attacking them. The next thing we are told is ``to protect the U.S. from a nuclear attack.'' I agree. We have a nuclear capacity that far exceeds any potential combination of enemies. We had, during the height of the Cold War, the triad. We could destroy the Soviet Union in a thermonuclear war, and they had the capacity to go after us by missiles, submarines, or strategic air command. I have a proposal that sounds like I'm kidding. Sometimes I'm kidding; this time I'm not. Can we not go to the Pentagon and say, You know what? Now that there is no Soviet Union, there is a much weaker Russia--and I agree, Russia won a war against Georgia. They won a war against the country of Georgia. I think the way that we have armed the State of Georgia, I'm not sure what the outcome would be if that was the war. But Russia does not have anything like the capacity it had at the height of the Cold War. We still have the capacity to destroy them. Can we not say to the Pentagon, You know those three ways you have for destroying the Soviet Union? Please pick two. Would we not be very secure against a Soviet nuclear attack if we had two instead of the three and can save billions of dollars? Now we're told, also, we must ``provide navigation through its global positioning systems.'' We have to protect, I'm told, the trade routes everywhere in the world, we have to protect them against China. Mitt Romney got something right in his debate with the President when he said he's not afraid of toughening sanctions against China for currency manipulation because, he says, people say they're going to cut off their trade. They make an enormous amount of money out of that trade. Why would they cut it off? Agreed. Why would the Chinese shut down the navigation route over which they make an enormous amount of money? It's like Dominos decided to tear up the street so they couldn't deliver the pizza. We are spending money on the Navy that protects every shipping lane everywhere in the world as if we were the only ones who had that interest. Now let me give this one--surprising from conservatives--which is to airlift humanitarian aid anywhere in the world. I wish we were doing more in Haiti, and I wish we were doing more to stop children from dying of illness in Africa--but we have to give humanitarian aid anywhere in the world to our wealthy allies and others? Frankly, I wish we were better able to deliver humanitarian aid to New Jersey than to rich countries elsewhere. I don't say that as an isolationist. I wish we were doing more in some ways. I regret the attack on the International Monetary Fund--that I hear from my Republican colleagues--which would destabilize Europe. I would like to increase economic aid. I would like to do more to fight AIDS and malaria. I would like to do it in a more effective way. Now, I'm told, in part, well, it's bad for jobs if you cut the military. That is a head-swiveling degree of inconsistency. I am told by many of my Republican colleagues, when the Federal Government provides aid to cities to keep firefighters on the job, when it builds roads, when it builds housing for the elderly, that somehow that's just something called ``stimulus,'' which doesn't add to the economy; but apparently, when we spend money to maintain bases in Germany or in Okinawa, when we build weapons that aren't needed, and even more when we maintain a nuclear arsenal we don't need, that somehow, magically, that creates jobs. It's as if Keynes were only right if he were armed. It's military Keynesianism. The government does not help with the economy. Of the people who have said no government stimulation of the economy, how can they, Mr. Speaker, then turn around and say, We've got to do this for jobs? By the way, I think there is a government role in stimulating the economy. Defense tends to be, on the whole, the least efficient way to do it. The largest percentage of it is spent overseas. If we close down bases in NATO, it's going to hurt some people--but not here--and people who can afford it. Now I'm told, Well, that's mean because you're allies, and you're supposed to have troops where your allies are. Then how come I never saw any Belgian troops at the border in the United States? It's a one-way street. Now, let me say of the President--and he has done a very good job, and I appreciate his withdrawal from Iraq and his resisting of some of the pressure, but he should go further. I did note--and the country is ready for this--that during that memorable moment when Clint Eastwood lost the debate to a chair that one of the things he said that got enormous applause at the Republican convention was, Let's get out of Afghanistan right away. The American people understand we have long since stopped doing a lot of good there. That's not because there is any lack of bravery or skill on the part of those wonderful young people who are there. It's not their fault that we have put them in a place they no longer ought still to be. We ought to withdraw them. I have one difference with the President, let me say in closing. On this, he says--however he's the President, and when you're the President, they all tell you these things--that America is the indispensable Nation. We were in 1945. We should not consider ourselves to be the indispensable Nation today. We are not indispensable to the defense of Germany and Italy and England, and we act as if we are. We're not indispensable in keeping open sea lanes for other countries. Frankly, Mr. Speaker, the time has come for us to urge wealthy nations that face no significant threat to dispense with us from the standpoint of our military activity. So that's my objection to this bill. It does a reasonable job--with some disagreements some of us would have--of funding the current level of commitment, but the current level of commitment far exceeds any rational definition of ``national security.'' It's zero sum. It comes at the expense of every other program we try to maintain to promote the quality of life in the United States. I hope the bill is defeated.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, how much time remains on all sides?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, continuing to yield according to the arrangements of the gentleman from Washington, the ranking member, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler).

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I intend to reserve most of the time for myself, but I have shared with the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, who's done a very good job and had some commitments, and I'm yielding to some people as a proxy for him, but I will begin by yielding 1 minute to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Loebsack).

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, since both the gentleman from California and the gentleman from Washington signed the conference report, it is clear they are supporters of the conference report. So I claim the 20 minutes that is allotted for someone in opposition when both majority and minority are in support.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, at the request of the chairman of the full committee, I would now yield 2 minutes to him. I believe he intends to conduct a colloquy.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, earlier this year I was very critical of some actions that were taken by the Republican leadership involving sponsorship of a bill. It is not my intention to rehash that. But in the course of a discussion, which was fairly spirited, I accused the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling) of having said something that wasn't accurate. I have had a conversation with Mr. Hensarling, and I believe I said that unfairly to him. I continue to be critical of what happened, and again I don't want to get into it, but I now believe that I inaccurately imputed the complaints that I had and the actions to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling). So I wish to apologize to him for having inaccurately accused him of doing something that he informs me that he did not do, and I believe him.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, Paul Krugman is absolutely correct and every member of Congress should read his thoughtful column before voting on any economic matter. [From the New York Times, Sept. 30, 2012] The Real Referendum (By Paul Krugman) Republicans came into this campaign believing that it would be a referendum on President Obama, and that still-high unemployment would hand them victory on a silver platter. But given the usual caveats--a month can be a long time in politics, it's not over until the votes are actually counted, and so on--it doesn't seem to be turning out that way. Yet there is a sense in which the election is indeed a referendum, but of a different kind. Voters are, in effect, being asked to deliver a verdict on the legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society, on Social Security, Medicare and, yes, Obamacare, which represents an extension of that legacy. Will they vote for politicians who want to replace Medicare with Vouchercare, who denounce Social Security as ``collectivist'' (as Paul Ryan once did), who dismiss those who turn to social insurance programs as people unwilling to take responsibility for their lives? If the polls are any indication, the result of that referendum will be a clear reassertion of support for the safety net, and a clear rejection of politicians who want to return us to the Gilded Age. But here's the question: Will that election result be honored? I ask that question because we already know what Mr. Obama will face if re-elected: a clamor from Beltway insiders demanding that he immediately return to his failed political strategy of 2011, in which he made a Grand Bargain over the budget deficit his overriding priority. Now is the time, he'll be told, to fix America's entitlement problem once and for all. There will be calls--as there were at the time of the Democratic National Convention--for him to officially endorse Simpson-Bowles, the budget proposal issued by the co- chairmen of his deficit commission (although never accepted by the commission as a whole). And Mr. Obama should just say no, for three reasons. First, despite years of dire warnings from people like, well, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, we are not facing any kind of fiscal crisis. Indeed, U.S. borrowing costs are at historic lows, with investors actually willing to pay the government for the privilege of owning inflation-protected bonds. So reducing the budget deficit just isn't the top priority for America at the moment; creating jobs is. For now, the administration's political capital should be devoted to passing something like last year's American Jobs Act and providing effective mortgage debt relief. Second, contrary to Beltway conventional wisdom, America does not have an ``entitlements problem.'' Mainly, it has a health cost problem, private as well as public, which must be addressed (and which the Affordable Care Act at least starts to address). It's true that there's also, even aside from health care, a gap between the services we're promising and the taxes we're collecting--but to call that gap an ``entitlements'' issue is already to accept the very right- wing frame that voters appear to be in the process of rejecting. Finally, despite the bizarre reverence it inspires in Beltway insiders--the same people, by the way, who assured us that Paul Ryan was a brave truth-teller--the fact is that Simpson-Bowles is a really bad plan, one that would undermine some key pieces of our safety net. And if a reelected president were to endorse it, he would be betraying the trust of the voters who returned him to office. Consider, in particular, the proposal to raise the Social Security retirement age, supposedly to reflect rising life expectancy. This is an idea Washington loves--but it's also totally at odds with the reality of an America in which rising inequality is reflected not just in the quality of life but in its duration. For while average life expectancy has indeed risen, that increase is confined to the relatively well-off and well-educated--the very people who need Social Security least. Meanwhile, life expectancy is actually falling for a substantial part of the nation. Now, there's no mystery about why Simpson-Bowles looks the way it does. It was put together in a political environment in which progressives, and even supporters of the safety net as we know it, were very much on the defensive--an environment in which conservatives were presumed to be in the ascendant, and in which bipartisanship was effectively defined as the effort to broker deals between the center- right and the hard right. Barring an upset, however, that environment will come to an end on Nov. 6. This election is, as I said, shaping up as a referendum on our social insurance system, and it looks as if Mr. Obama will emerge with a clear mandate for preserving and extending that system. It would be a terrible mistake, both politically and for the nation's future, for him to let himself be talked into snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, previously I submitted an extraordinary, eloquent and thoughtful column by Thomas Friedman of The New York Times on the essentiality of free speech, the absolutely unjustified nature of violence and the hypocrisy involved when many of those who declaim what they found insulting are themselves guilty of equal vituperation of other religions and ethnic groups. Mr. Friedman has subsequently written a follow up to that column, which I found equally compelling. I submit this excellent column as well as it deserves to be widely read. [From the New York Times, Sept. 25, 2012] Backlash to the Backlash (By Thomas L. Friedman) One of the iron laws of Middle East politics for the last half-century has been that extremists go all the way and moderates tend to just go away. That is what made the march in Benghazi, Libya, so unusual last Friday. This time, the moderates did not just go away. They got together and stormed the headquarters of the Islamist militia Ansar al-Sharia, whose members are suspected of carrying out the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi that resulted in the death of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. It is not clear whether this trend can spread or be sustained. But having decried the voices of intolerance that so often intimidate everyone in that region, I find it heartening to see Libyans carrying signs like ``We want justice for Chris'' and ``No more Al Qaeda''--and demanding that armed militias disband. This coincides with some brutally honest articles in the Arab/Muslim press--in response to rioting triggered by the idiotic YouTube video insulting the Prophet Muhammad--that are not the usual ``What is wrong with America?'' but, rather, ``What is wrong with us, and how do we fix it?'' On Monday, the Middle East Media Research Institute, or Memri, which tracks the Arab/Muslim press, translated a searing critique written by Imad al-Din Hussein, a columnist for Al Shorouk, Cairo's best daily newspaper: ``We curse the West day and night, and criticize its [moral] disintegration and shamelessness, while relying on it for everything. . . . We import, mostly from the West, cars, trains, planes . . . refrigerators, and washing machines. . . . We are a nation that contributes nothing to human civilization in the current era. . . . We have become a burden on [other] nations. . . . Had we truly implemented the essence of the directives of Islam and all [other] religions, we would have been at the forefront of the nations. The world will respect us when we return to being people who take part in human civilization, instead of [being] parasites who are spread out over the map of the advanced world, feeding off its production and later attacking it from morning until night. . . . The West is not an oasis of idealism. It also contains exploitation in many areas. But at least it is not sunk in delusions, trivialities and external appearances, as we are. . . . Therefore, supporting Islam and the prophet of the Muslims should be done through work, production, values, and culture, not by storming embassies and murdering diplomats.'' Mohammad Taqi, a liberal Pakistani columnist, writing in the Lahore-based Daily Times on Sept. 20, argued that ``there is absolutely no excuse for violence and indeed murder most foul, as committed in Benghazi. Fighting hate with hate is sure to beget more hate. The way out is drowning the odious voices with voices of sanity, not curbing free speech and calls for murder.'' Khaled al-Hroub, a professor at Cambridge University, writing in Jordan's Al Dustour newspaper on Sept. 17, translated by Memri, argued that the most ``frightening aspect of what we see today in the streets of Arab and Islamic cities is the disaster of extremism that is flooding our societies and cultures, as well as our behavior. . . . This [represents] a total atrophy of thought among wide sectors [of society], as a result of the culture of religious zealotry that was imposed on people for over 50 years, and which brought forth what we witness'' today. The Egyptian comedian Bassem Youssef wrote in Al Shorouk, translated by Memri, on Sept. 23: ``We demand that the world respect our feelings, yet we do not respect the feelings of others. We scream blue murder when they outlaw the niqab in some European country or prevent [Muslims] from building minarets in another [European] country--even though these countries continue to allow freedom of religion, as manifest in the building of mosques and in the preaching [activity] that takes place in their courtyards. Yet, in our countries, we do not allow others to publicly preach their beliefs. Maybe we should examine ourselves before [criticizing] others.'' Whenever I was asked during the Iraq war, ``How will you know when we've won?'' I gave the same answer: When Salman Rushdie can give a lecture in Baghdad; when there is real freedom of speech in the heart of the Arab Muslim world. There is no question that we need a respectful dialogue between Islam and the West, but, even more, we need a respectful dialogue between Muslims and Muslims. What matters is not what Arab Muslim political parties and groupings tell us they stand for. What matters is what they tell themselves, in their own languages, about what they stand for and what excesses they will not tolerate. This internal debate had long been stifled by Arab autocrats whose regimes traditionally suppressed extremist Islamist parties, but never really permitted their ideas to be countered with free speech--with independent, modernist, progressive interpretations of Islam or by truly legitimate, secular political parties and institutions. Are we seeing the start of that now with the emergence of free spaces and legitimate parties in the Arab world? Again, too early to say, but this moderate backlash to the extremist backlash is worth hailing--and watching.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, the recent death of several American diplomats is an outrageous example of wholly unjustified violence that must be unconditionally condemned. The fact that some people were angry because of what other people put into a movie does not begin to be a justification for violence, even against those who made the movie, and it is certainly, not remotely in any logical world, an excuse for the murder of people wholly uninvolved in this. The question of the judgment of the people who made that terrible movie must be kept entirely separate from the question of whether or not there was any justification for any of the violence that it caused. The answer is, without any doubt, that there was not. It is bad enough when some leaders of the Muslim world suggest that there was some justification for killing people because someone felt that their religion was insulted. This error is compounded by the extraordinary hypocrisy involved when many of those who declaim what they found insulting are themselves guilty of equal vituperation of other religions and ethnic groups. In an extraordinary, eloquent and thoughtful column in the New York Times for September 19th, Thomas L. Friedman, a balanced commentator on the Middle East who has often been very sympathetic to the legitimate concerns of Muslim people, wrote an excellent column on the essentiality of free speech, the absolutely unjustified nature of violence, and the hypocrisy to which I just alluded--and to which, to be honest, I was not paying enough attention until I read Mr. Friedman's column. As Mr. Friedman says, ``an insult--even one as stupid and ugly as the anti-Islam video on YouTube that started all of this--does not entitle people to go out and attack embassies and kill innocent diplomats. That is not how a proper self-governing people behave. There is no excuse for it. It is shameful.'' Mr. Friedman goes on to note, with regard to some in the Muslim community who have been demanding that America apologize for this, said ``they might to look at the chauvinistic bile that is pumped out by some of their own media . . . insulting Shiites, Jews, Christians, Sufis and anyone else who is not a Sunni, or Fundamentalist, Muslim.'' Thomas Friedman's column should be very widely read, both because he has earned the right to be taken very seriously on the crisis in the Middle East, and because of its wisdom and eloquence. [From the New York Times, Sept. 18, 2012] Look in Your Mirror (By Thomas Friedman) On Monday, David D. Kirkpatrick, the Cairo bureau chief for The Times, quoted one of the Egyptian demonstrators outside the American Embassy, Khaled Ali, as justifying last week's violent protests by declaring: ``We never insult any prophet--not Moses, not Jesus--so why can't we demand that Muhammad be respected?'' Mr. Ali, a 39-year-old textile worker, was holding up a handwritten sign in English that read: ``Shut Up America.'' ``Obama is the president, so he should have to apologize!'' I read several such comments from the rioters in the press last week, and I have a big problem with them. I don't like to see anyone's faith insulted, but we need to make two things very clear--more clear than President Obama's team has made them. One is that an insult--even one as stupid and ugly as the anti-Islam video on YouTube that started all of this-- does not entitle people to go out and attack embassies and kill innocent diplomats. That is not how a proper self- governing people behave. There is no excuse for it. It is shameful. And, second, before demanding an apology from our president, Mr. Ali and the young Egyptians, Tunisians, Libyans, Yemenis, Pakistanis, Afghans and Sudanese who have been taking to the streets might want to look in the mirror-- or just turn on their own televisions. They might want to look at the chauvinistic bile that is pumped out by some of their own media on satellite television stations and Web sites or sold in sidewalk bookstores outside of mosques-- insulting Shiites, Jews, Christians, Sufis and anyone else who is not a Sunni, or fundamentalist, Muslim. There are people in their countries for whom hating ``the other'' has become a source of identity and a collective excuse for failing to realize their own potential. The Middle East Media Research Institute, or Memri, was founded in 1998 in Washington by Yigal Carmon, a former Israeli government adviser on counterterrorism, ``to bridge the language gap between the Middle East and the West by monitoring, translating and studying Arab, Iranian, Urdu and Pashtu media, schoolbooks, and religious sermons.'' What I respect about Memri is that it translates not only the ugly stuff but the courageous liberal, reformist Arab commentators as well. I asked Memri for a sampler of the hate-filled videos that appear regularly on Arab/Muslim mass media. Here are some: ON CHRISTIANS Hasan Rahimpur Azghadi of the Iranian Supreme Council for Cultural Revolution: Christianity is ``a reeking corpse, on which you have to constantly pour eau de cologne and perfume, and wash it in order to keep it clean.'' http:// www.memritv.org/clip/en/1528.htm_July 20, 2007. Sheik Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi: It is permissible to spill the blood of the Iraqi Christians--and a duty to wage jihad against them. http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/ 5200.htm_April 14, 2011. Abd al-Aziz Fawzan al-Fawzan, a Saudi professor of Islamic law, calls for ``positive hatred'' of Christians. Al-Majd TV (Saudi Arabia), http://www.memritv.org/clip/en1992.htm_Dec. 16, 2005. ON SHIITES The Egyptian Cleric Muhammad Hussein Yaaqub: ``Muslim Brotherhood Presidential Candidate Mohamed Morsi told me that the Shiites are more dangerous to Islam than the Jews.'' www.memritv.org/clip/en13466.htm_June 13, 2012. The Egyptian Cleric Mazen al-Sirsawi: ``If Allah had not created the Shiites as human beings, they would have been donkeys.'' http://www.memritv.org/clip/en13101.htm_Aug. 7, 2011. The Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan video series: ``The Shiite is a Nasl [Race/Offspring] of Jews.'' http://www.memri.org/report/ en/0/0/0/0/0/51/6208.htm_March 21, 2012. ON JEWS Article on the Muslim Brotherhood's Web site praises jihad against America and the Jews: ``The Descendants of Apes and Pigs.'' http://www.memri.org/report/en10/0/0/0/0/ 51/6656.htm_Sept. 7, 2012. The Pakistani cleric Muhammad Raza Saqib Mustafai: ``When the Jews are wiped out, the world would be purified and the sun of peace would rise on the entire world.'' http:// www.menuiorg/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/51/6557.htm_Aug. 1, 2012. Dr. Ismail Ali Muhammad, a senior Al-Azhar scholar: The Jews, ``a source of evil and harm in all human societies.'' http://www.memri.org/report/en10/0/0/0/0/51/6086.htm_Feb. 14, 2012. ON SUFIS A shrine venerating a Sufi Muslim saint in Libya has been partly destroyed, the latest in a series of attacks blamed on ultraconservative Salafi Islamists. http:// www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19380083_Aug. 26, 2012. As a Jew who has lived and worked in the Muslim world, I know that these expressions of intolerance are only one side of the story and that there are deeply tolerant views and strains of Islam espoused and practiced there as well. Theirs are complex societies. That's the point. America is a complex society, too. But let's cut the nonsense that this is just our problem and the only issue is how we clean up our act. That Cairo protester is right: We should respect the faiths and prophets of others. But that runs both ways. Our president and major newspapers consistently condemn hate speech against other religions. How about yours?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I have never had to learn more about an issue in my life than when I learned in 1992 that the City of New Bedford and its fishing industry was included in the new Congressional district that I have proudly represented. New Bedford is one of the most successful fishing ports in the county, and in fact for the 12th consecutive year New Bedford had the highest-valued catch of any port in the United States. Fishing is not only a vital part of the economy of the region, but an integral component of its culture and social makeup. I could not represent the needs of such a unique community without a talented staff, and I am honored that my longtime aide, Garth Patterson, is the recipient of the 2012 Friend of the Fisherman Award recognizing his exemplary work. He received this award from the fishing community of New Bedford because of the high quality of the work he has done to provide the kind of first-rate public service and advocacy that is so essential to the continued survival of the fishing industry. In some cases, our advocacy can be uncomplicated, but there are also cases where mastering a very complex body of data is essential if we are to do our job right. Garth provided me with an extraordinary degree of technical expertise, practical knowledge, political savvy, and an ability to understand all viewpoints and articulate his own. He has been an enormous asset not only to me, but also to those concerned with the survival of the fishing industry. Mr. Speaker, I join the fishermen in thanking Garth. He is a tireless advocate for the community, and his nearly quarter century of public service is the quintessential model of how constituent relations should be conducted. I am proud that he is receiving this award, proud of his hard work for the people of Massachusetts, and proud to call him my friend.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I thank the Democratic whip, and I thank him for the leadership he provided during his years as majority leader when we were able to do some things. You know, we're talking about what this Congress didn't do. I suppose in some ways we ought to be happy because some of what they said they wanted to do would have been totally destructive. This is the party that let the financial community run riot for years when they had both the White House and both Houses of Congress, did no regulation, so that we got the worst recession in 80 years, a near depression, because of their irresponsibility. They were threatening to undo it. Unfortunately, they were able to accomplish one thing. One of the things we did was to give the Federal regulatory agencies the power to regulate derivatives, a serious, obscure, powerful instrument that was a major cause of our crisis. While they were not able to repeal the rules, they were able to reduce the funding of the agencies that have to deal with this complex matter to a level where they have not been very effective. So that's one of the things they were able to do--undo by financial stealth what we tried to get done. But I want to come to their defense to some extent, Mr. Whip, because there may be some implication that they're not willing to work hard. No, let's be very clear. The reason we have such a dismal record here is not because they are lazy, our Republican colleagues. It's more because of a word that rhymes with ``lazy,'' which the House rules will prohibit me from using. The problem is this: in 2010, a significant number of Republicans were elected who do not understand the importance of governance in a free enterprise society in which there has to be a vigorous private sector creating goods and services and a public sector that works with it. That's why we have no postal bill, although the Senate passed one; why we have no agricultural bill; why they couldn't pass a highway bill and had to be dependent on the Democratic Senate to pass one, so they could catch on to it. They simply do not understand the importance of our coming together and doing things in this complex economic society that cannot be done by the private sector. It is an extremism. It is not laziness. It is extremism that grips the Republican Party so they are not able to discharge the normal functions of government. By the way, there is one particular inaction that I want to stress. It has to do with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. When my Republican friends are out of power, they know exactly what to do about housing. When they're in power, they forget. It's a peculiar form of amnesia. From 1995 until 2006, they controlled the Congress and did nothing about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. We came into office in 2007. At the request of Henry Paulson, George Bush's Secretary of the Treasury, we took action and put them in a conservatorship and stopped them from losing money. The next step was to go forward with replacing them. We said that we would do that. We did financial reform first. The Republicans said, in 2009 and 2010, you must do reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and we thought financial reform came first because we already stopped the bleeding. Then they came to power in 2011, and they've done nothing. The reason they've done nothing about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the reason they've done nothing about the post office and agriculture and couldn't do anything about the highways is very simple: they are a party torn between extremists and people who are afraid of extremists. People who will not take them on. A Speaker who will not bring an agriculture bill to the floor that might very well pass because he's intimidated by his own Tea Party extremist wing which rules him. They could not come forward with housing legislation because what a majority knows should be done to put in some kind of Federal-private cooperation without the mistakes we've made in the past, they couldn't get the votes for it because their extremists had a veto over it. Last point, Mr. Whip. I want to talk a little bit about bipartisanship. In 2007, things began to buckle in our financial system. I, as the chairman of the committee, worked closely with Mr. Paulson to deal with it. In 2008, the Bush administration came to us, and you know what they wanted? You remember, a stimulus. That terrible word ``stimulus.'' George Bush, that radical, and Ben Bernanke, his appointee, the Chairman of the Fed, and Hank Paulson, his Secretary of Treasury, said, Let's do a stimulus. This Democratic leadership worked with them. Then-Speaker Pelosi negotiated with them. We did a bipartisan stimulus. Then later on when the economy began to collapse because of financial dissolution, Hank Paulson came to us and asked for cooperation, and we gave him cooperation. From 2007 through 2008, we had a very bipartisan approach in the economic crisis. Then one thing happened: Barack Obama became President and bipartisanship disappeared because extremism took over the Republican Party, first when they were in the minority and now when they are in the majority. That's why nothing has happened. I thank the whip.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. He was a registered Republican but was three times appointed by George Bush to high economic positions.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, first, I note that the chairman of the Budget Committee said that we want to get this out of the backrooms. Then I reread the bill, and the bill says that one person, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, will draft this bill, certify it, and present it to the Congress with very limited time to debate. So it is true. They do want to replace the backroom, but with a telephone booth. Now, that's hard to do because there aren't that many phone booths left. But there will apparently be one in which the chairman of Ways and Means will single-handedly draft this bill without a great deal of input. What is it they're going to draft? What we're told is it will include reductions in the rates paid by the wealthiest, and it alludes in the most--not even close to specific terms--to getting rid of some loopholes. But we don't know what those are. This great courageous effort to deal with the special interests begins by ignoring it, by promising goodies to the wealthiest people will reduce your taxes, and we'll somehow make it up in a vague way. With how they don't know, because they don't want to say. Procedurally and substantively, the bill is a disaster. That's the bad news. The good news is that no one thinks it is a serous legislative effort. This is one more bumper sticker from the gang that cannot legislate. We are here today with the Republican leadership having backed down on passing a bill that the Agriculture Committee came forward with. Now, it's popular on the Republican side to talk about the Senate. Oh, the Democrats run the Senate, and they're choking everything off. Exactly the opposite is the case. The Senate passed a transportation bill. The House couldn't. The House couldn't even take one up because there is such division within the Republican Party. So here, in a procedural maneuver that smacks of a very undemocratic way, they sneaked into conference--a conference report came with the Senate transportation bill, the only bill that passed either House, and then Members obediently passed an omnibus bill, including a transportation bill, that this House never got to concede. But even that looks good compared to postal issues. The Postal Service is now in default. Yeah, it is de fault--it's de fault of de Republicans, who are, again, so ideologically driven, so unable to deal with the basics of government because of their dominance by a faction that does not understand the role of our coming together to do things in a society, and the post office, that's a pretty controversial one. That radical George Washington set it up. It's a great unifier in this country, and it continues to be. One of the things we do here, people scoff at it, we name post offices. But those are great symbols of the community. And I've got to say, with all of the new communications, no one has ever asked me to name an iPod after anybody. We use the post offices. But what happened? The Senate passed a postal bill. This House can't take one up, once again, because this Republican Party is so divided between their extremist wing and other people that--so we got transportation, we have postal, they can't do a postal bill, and the Postal Service is now in default while we debate this bill that no one takes seriously, that the chairman of Ways and Means will single- handedly put on his cape and fly down here with this bill that will help the rich, and it will do some unmentioned things regarding popular tax breaks, because they don't want to mention them. And then we have the agriculture bill. So on the fundamental functions of government, an agriculture bill, a transportation bill, and a postal bill, the party that couldn't legislate didn't legislate, again, because they cannot get people on their own side to understand what we need in this society. We need a postal service. We need transportation. We need an agriculture bill; although, I'd like to see one different than the one the committee brought out. But we didn't even get a chance to vote on them. Instead, we get a bumper sticker. Oh, we're going to cut taxes for the wealthy. And I did notice, too, they said they're going to get the taxes to be 18 or 19 percent of the GDP. We have Mr. Romney committing that we will spend 4 percent of the GDP on the military, whether that's what's needed or not, whether we go to more wars or not. So look at what's left. Take what they want to put in taxes, take what Romney wants to commit to the military, and there's no room for anything else. There's not much room for a good Medicare program. Social Security gets squeezed, the environment, clean water, transportation. That's why they can't legislate, because they're locked into an ideological mindset that reduces, they say, the revenues and increases the military beyond what is needed and leaves us unable to do those things which a civilized society wants to come together to do. So, yeah, the bad news is that this is a crazy bill, but the good news is that after today's bumper sticker waving, no one will pay attention to it.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, I think we should have an explanation here. The Clerk read the technical language; but as I understand it, what happened was that the bill that we were voting on yesterday and will vote on today has an error and gets ``employment'' and ``unemployment'' confused and that this is a bill that would correct the error in the bill that we debated yesterday. So I wonder, why do we now need a unanimous consent? Are we correcting the correction? It's the old Latin phrase ``Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?'' which means, ``Who guards the guardians?'' I guess the question today is, Who corrects the correctors? I would yield to the gentlewoman from North Carolina if she would explain why we had to get a bill to make a correction and why we now have to have a unanimous consent to probably correct the correction. What is the error? I guess I should ask, What is the error of the day? We know what yesterday's error was. What's today's error? I yield to the gentlewoman.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Reclaiming my time to say, if that's the case, if the letters ``U'' and ``N'' were left out, knowing the animosity on that side to the U.N., I can understand why psychologically that would have happened. I yield again to the gentlewoman.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, proceeding on my reservation, I appreciate the gentlewoman's mea culpa. She wasn't here at the time. I would note that it is my predecessor, the late Reverend Robert Drinan, S.J., who was better than I at responding to mea culpas. I won't be able wholly to deal with that. I do think this is more than simply a double error. It's a matter of haste. I would take exception to the gentlewoman saying, well, it's important that we get this done right away. I think, frankly, the problem has been in these past couple of years, and to some extent before, we haven't met frequently enough. I understand people would like to get back to the districts they represent, but I think that this is emblematic of not having enough time to deal with things. We are going to be voting, I think, on 20-something amendments today, important amendments on an important bill, that were debated for 10 minutes each late into yesterday evening, no proper airing of very controversial subjects. Indeed, I think this is what happens when you try to do too much too soon. People on the other side were critical of some of the legislation we passed. The financial reform bill, they said it was too encompassing. But it went through a much more thorough process than this very controversial, even more comprehensive bill that we're dealing with today. The bill that we're dealing with today deals with every single subject that comes before this Congress because it would put severe restrictions on the adoption of regulations about financial reform, about health, about the environment, about occupational safety, about transportation safety. Yes, it is a problem when you try to do too much too soon. I do not impute any nefarious intent. Let me say under the House rules, you can't impute nefarious intent, even if you think there is some, and I don't think there is any. So for two reasons, I don't impute that. But it does seem to me that this is an example of a flawed legislative process. We're doing this bill, which is kind of a big message bill. I know there's a lot of criticism on the other side of the United States Senate, but the Senate passed an agricultural bill. This House isn't even going to take one up, a very important agricultural bill. The Senate passed a transportation bill. This House had to go along with a conference without any chance to deliberate on it. The Senate passed a postal reform bill to keep the postal service going, and this House can't take it up. When we can't do the basic legislation that we should do and we do one of these broad message bills that's overly comprehensive and then we make mistakes, I think it's worth some notice.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I yield to my colleague from New Jersey.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Apparently, that is what was in the bill. They said it was a typo, that the letters ``U'' and ``N'' were left out. I will say there is certain equality here. The day before yesterday, the mistake was letters, and today it's numbers. I suppose tomorrow it will be astrological signs. I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. It's my time. If the gentleman wants me to yield, I will yield. First, I would note that the error was in the first substantive page. This was not buried somewhere deep in the bill. Just to reinforce the point that a lot of people didn't read the bill, that error was very much in the early part.