Barney Frank

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, first, this Israeli retaliation did not come in the abstract. Let's be clear what happened. I speak here as someone who has been critical in the past of Israeli Governments that were, in my judgment, sufficiently willing to take risks for peace. I have been an advocate of giving up land in the interests of a comprehensive settlement. What happened tragically in the last couple of weeks is that Israel was attacked by entities who do not think there should be any Israel at all. It was attacked by people dedicated to the abolition of the Jewish State in the Middle East from two territories from which it had withdrawn. What was attacked was not just individual Israelis, but those in Israel within that democratic nation who have pushed for peace. In April, after the withdrawal from Gaza, very controversial, the people willing in Israel to withdraw from territory in pursuit of peace won an election. Those in Israel who would reject that approach lost. Sadly, the rejectionists then won in the Palestinian Authority. So you have people who had risked themselves in a democratic nation for peace now being undercut by those who use those very territories from which they withdrew for attacking them. And again these were not disputes over specifics. Hamas and Hezbollah both agreed there should be no Israel. These are people who want to return not to the borders of 1967, but to the borders of 1947 when there was no Israel. Now, no democratic nation can be expected to not respond, and that is what we have, a response to attacks across the internationally recognized border of Israel by people committed to destroying its very existence from territories from which they withdrew. So the attacks were clearly justified. Then the question is, well, how have they conducted the war? I think there were things that they should not have done. I wish they had not bombed the power plant in Gaza. But, you know, I look at what Israel is doing in Lebanon, and I must tell you what it most resembles in my recent memory, the American action in Yugoslavia when we bombed and bombed and bombed Belgrade and much of Yugoslavia, much of Serbia, to get them to withdraw from Kosovo. That was not a conventional military action. Now, I must note that Israel has not at this point taken out any embassies. We in the Yugoslav war took out the Chinese Embassy. We bombed convoys. Sadly, when people go to war, innocent people die. That is why I am very reluctant to vote for war. But that happens. But what happened in Serbia was America punishing the Serbian territory to get them to withdraw from Kosovo, and it worked. Now, I understand the pride of the Lebanese Government, but let me say this, first of all, in response to my friend from West Virginia. The resolution does not demand that the Lebanese Government disarm Hezbollah. It demands that the Lebanese do everything within its power, within its power, to change things. In contrast, the resolution does make an unconditional demand of Syria and Iran that they do the right thing. So it does differentiate between Lebanon and Syria and Iran. Now, let me say, with regard to Lebanon, I am struck by the pride of the Lebanese people, but I have to say this. Many of those who are now critical of Israel and say, what do you want from poor Lebanon, where were they when poor Lebanon needed them? Where were they when the Lebanese were unable to get Hezbollah to move? Why did they not get involved then? In defense of the Israelis, what they are saying is this: Look, a U.N. resolution said get Hezbollah away from us, because if they keep this up, we will have to retaliate, and nothing happened until they started killing Israelis inside Israel, and then Israel retaliated. So those who now say, well, you know what, do not blame the poor Government of Lebanon, I do not. I blame those in the Arab world and elsewhere who could have gone into that situation and avoided this. So now the question is what do you do? A simple cease-fire that leaves Hezbollah on the Israeli border, in violation of a U.N. resolution, free to continue to kill across that international border in their pursuit of their effort to destroy the State is not good enough. I would like to see us be involved. What the resolution says is have Syria and Iran be pressured by the rest of the world, including those great humanitarian nations of Russia and China and elsewhere that have expressed opinions here; let them intervene not simply to stop the shooting, but to get Hezbollah away from that border. Then it will be reasonable to ask Israel to stop, and I believe they want to. So it is not simply release the soldiers today so four more can be captured and more people killed tomorrow. Let the international community show its real concern for the Government of Lebanon by providing them with the assistance they need to move Hezbollah away. Let Hamas honor the fact that Israel withdrew at great political internal cost from Gaza and not use that as a lunching pad for their efforts to destroy Israel. So I must say, I think it is justified in terms of the response, in terms of the way it is conducted. Yeah, it is messy and bloody, and innocent people die, and that is why you try to avoid those situations, and why Syria and Iran should be pressured to get Hezbollah to move back so we can put an end to it.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. This is a question, and I appreciate the civil spirit in which he discusses it. Would the gentleman explain to me does how the fact that two women in Massachusetts who are allowed to be legally committed to each other in any way endanger or threaten marriages between heterosexuals elsewhere?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. But how does it hurt?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, as I listen, I am struck anew by the ability of preprogrammed rhetoric to resist the facts. We have heard talk about activist judges, Federal judges. No Federal judge has been involved here. There is not a pending decision that is now in force by a single Federal judge. That doesn't stop people from invoking it, because facts are irrelevant to this kind of rhetoric. In fact, this amendment is being described in ways that are not accurate. It is not an amendment to prevent judges, activist judges, pacifist judges, any kind of judges, from deciding. It is an amendment to prevent anybody from deciding. In the State of Massachusetts, we have had same-sex marriage for over 2 years. None of the negative consequences that people have predicted came true. In consequence, I believe the political community of Massachusetts is prepared to say, if two men love each other and are prepared to be committed to each other legally as well as emotionally, that is rather a good thing and we will say it's okay. If the voters of Massachusetts, in a referendum in 2008, which we might have, were to ratify same-sex marriage, this amendment would cancel it out. It has nothing to do with activist judges. It has to do with a decision that says no State by any political process can make that decision. The legislature of California, not judges in California, voted to allow two women who love each other to be legally responsible for each other. That, if it were to be ratified by a Governor after the next election, would be cancelled out. So this is not an amendment about activist judges. This is an amendment that says no State by whatever process, including a referendum, can make this decision. Why? I also feel strengthened in my advocacy of a cause when people won't tell me their real arguments against it. I think this is motivated, frankly, by a dislike of those of us who are gay and lesbian on the part of those who are the main motivators. You know, we are told don't take things personally, but I take this personally. I take it personally when people decide to take political batting practice with my life, when people decide that they would demonize, not just me, I am old, I am over it, but young people who are just starting out, who find themselves, for reasons they can't explain, attracted to someone of the same sex, and they are demonized in this House of Representatives as if they are a threat to marriage. That is the biggest nonsensical statement of all. Yes, marriage between a man and woman who are in love is a good thing. How does allowing two men who love each other to become legally committed endanger these marriages of 37 or 38 years? Let me tell you the logical structure, or the illogical structure, of the argument on the other side. People will remember the commercial for V8 juice years ago in which a cartoon character who was feeling poorly drank various juices to see if he or she could be energized. None of them worked. Tomato juice didn't work. Apple juice didn't work. Pineapple juice didn't work, and then someone gives him a V8. The cartoon character gets pumped up, literally, and steam comes out of his ears. He is literally now raring to go, because he had a V8. He says to himself, wow, I could have had a V8. Note for the record, I just smacked myself in the forehead to represent what happened in the commercial. Now, that is apparently the logical structure of same-sex marriages. Apparently there were these 37-, 38-, 42-year-long marriages all over the place. There are happily married men all over America, and they are content with their wives. They are heterosexual, and they feel this physical and emotional attraction to each other. Then they read in the paper that in the State of Massachusetts it is now possible for there to be a same-sex marriage. How is a marriage endangered? Apparently, people happily married in Indiana, Nebraska, Kansas, and Mississippi read that we have had same- sex marriage quite successfully in Massachusetts, and they look in the mirror and they say, wow, I could have married a guy. So, apparently, same-sex marriage is the V8 juice of America. And apparently there are people who fear that knowing that two men who love each other, want to be committed to each other, somehow will dissolve the bonds of matrimony between two heterosexuals, it is, of course, nonsense. I will do my friends the credit of acknowledging that they don't believe it. There is a political motive here. Now, there are people who are genuinely concerned that there would be negative social consequences. I understand that. I have heard that every time we deal with discrimination, when we dealt with the Americans with Disabilities Act, with gender, with race, with ethnicity, with age. I understand their fears. We have had same-sex marriage in Massachusetts for over 2 years. Thousands of loving men and women have been able to come together and express their commitment to each other, and no one, not even the most dedicated opponent, has been able to point to a single negative consequence. So I understand the people who are afraid. We have disproven the fears, and what is left is only dislike of many of us. It simply is not appropriate to score political points by demonizing or seeking to minimize the lives of your fellow citizens.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, first, let's be very clear: this is not an attempt to restrain judges. There have been two sources of opposition to same-sex marriage. A large number of people who bear those of us who are gay and lesbian no ill will have been opposed to it because they have heard that it would lead to social disruption. That is a common theme when we deal with issues involving particular groups in our society against whom there has been discrimination. I invite people to go back and read the debates over the Americans with Disabilities Act to read what people like Pat Robertson said in opposition to it. I remember this debate 30 years ago in Massachusetts when we were talking about the Equal Rights Amendment. And so, yes, I understand that there are people who are opposed to same-sex marriage who do not in any way feel themselves prejudiced against gay men and lesbians, but who worry about the social consequences. I think here we can point to the facts. We had full civil unions in Vermont in 2000. We have had same-sex marriage in Massachusetts for over 2 years. In no case is there the slightest evidence of social disruption. Let me say, though, that is one wing of the opposition. There is another wing in the opposition, the people who are motivated by this, who really, frankly, dislike the fact that we exist; and disliking the fact that we exist individually, they are particularly distraught at the notion that we will associate with each other in various ways. I want to address now the people who are worried about the social consequences, because I invite people to look at the evidence. There were no negatives. But now let me go back to the point about the judges, because that is relevant to Massachusetts, and the points are linked. Because in Massachusetts what we have seen is that thousands of people have had their lives enriched by being able to love each other in a legally connected way, and it has been a good thing for them, and it has had zero negative consequences. I believe the political community in Massachusetts, through the elected legislature, maybe through a referendum, although I hope it doesn't come to that, will support this. Be very clear: this amendment says that even if the people of Massachusetts, after 4 years of same-sex marriage being in existence, vote to ratify it by a majority, their vote does not count. This amendment cancels out a referendum. In California, where the legislature voted for it, if a Governor should be elected in November who would sign that bill, this amendment says, no, legislature; no, Governor. We the Federal Government will decide. So it is not about restraining activist judges. It is about overruling any decision. So then the question is, Why do it? Usually our view would be that if people are going to benefit from something, enjoy it, we would let that happen, in the absence of harm. Now, clearly there is value to same-sex marriage. There are men and women, millions of us, who, for reasons we don't understand, nobody really does, in my judgment, feel an attraction to people of the same sex. What many of them have said is, you know what, we would like to have our love put into a legally connected context. We want to be legally bound to each other, as we are emotionally and morally. Who is that hurting? Well, we are told that it hurts marriage. And here is where the illogic comes in. People get up and say we have to be against letting two women marry because it is very important that men and women marry. There is no connection. Nothing here threatens heterosexual marriage. It is just the most illogical argument I have ever heard. If two men are attracted to each other and want to live together legally, how does that endanger heterosexual marriage? So the argument that we must ban same-sex marriage to protect heterosexual marriage literally makes no sense whatsoever. No one has shown me what the connection is. As a matter of fact, of course, people will have an example of people of the same sex living together, and if that somehow destabilizes heterosexual marriage, then it is going to happen. If the gentleman wants me to yield, I would be glad to yield.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I would say to the gentleman this: no, I think we give preferential status to people who are married over people who aren't. What I don't see, what no one has argued, is how does allowing two men have that status interfere with the status. I assume you give a preferential status because you want to give people an incentive to marry. Okay, let's do that. Let's give people an incentive to marry. But if you are a heterosexual strongly attracted to someone of the opposite sex and really not at all attracted to the idea of someone of your same sex, how does the existence of that undermine this? Yes, I think we should give a preference to heterosexual marriage. We should incentivize it. How does the existence of same-sex marriage discourage or retard heterosexual marriage? Would anyone want to answer that for me?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. How does it hurt? How does the existence of a same-sex marriage in any way threaten a happy heterosexual marriage?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, one of the great intellectual inconsistencies of our time is the assertion by conservatives that they are opposed to ``judicial activism'' and wish to have important public policy questions left to elected officials. Of course that is true only in those cases where they agree with what the elected officials have done, and they have shown very little restraint when their ideology calls for judicial invalidation of public policy. Indeed, some of the greatest anger I have heard expressed toward judiciary recently by my conservative colleagues has been against the eminent domain decision, in which the justices are guilty in the eyes of my conservative colleagues of being insufficiently activist--that is, the court majority allowed the actions of elected State and local officials in Connecticut to stand. I agree that eminent domain has been abused, but so is intellectual integrity when people insist that the courts defer to elected bodies on the one hand, and then denounce the Supreme Court precisely for doing that in the Kelo case. Chief Justice Roberts to date appears to be very much in the mode of this one-sided condemnation of activism, as Adam Cohen cogently points out in the July 10 column in the New York Times--given the importance of consistency in the application of judicial principles, I ask that Mr. Cohen's very thoughtful analysis of the Chief Justice's inconsistency be printed here. [From the Editorial Observer, July 10, 2006] What Chief Justice Roberts Forgot in His First Term: Judicial Modesty (By Adam Cohen) At the confirmation hearings for John Roberts, there were two theories about what kind of a chief justice he would be. His critics maintained that he was an extreme conservative whose politics would drive his legal rulings. Judge Roberts, on the other hand, insisted that he was ``not an ideologue,'' and that his judicial philosophy was to be ``modest,'' which he defined as recognizing that judges should ``decide the cases before them'' and not try to legislate or ``execute the laws.'' Judicial modesty is an intriguing idea, with appeal across the political spectrum. For all the talk of liberal activist judges, anyone who is paying attention knows that conservative judges are every bit as activist as liberal ones; they just act for different reasons. A truly modest chief justice could be more deferential to the decisions of the democratically elected branches of government, both liberal and conservative, and perhaps even usher in a new, post-ideological era on the court. That is not, however, how Chief Justice Roberts voted in his first term. He was modest in some cases, certainly, but generally ones in which criminal defendants, Democrats and other parties conservatives dislike were asking for something. When real estate developers, wealthy campaign contributors and other powerful parties wanted help, he was more inclined to support judicial action, even if it meant trampling on Congress and the states. The term's major environmental ruling was a striking case in point. A developer sued when the Army Corps of Engineers denied him a permit to build on what it determined to be protected wetlands. The corps is under the Defense Department, ultimately part of an elected branch, and it was interpreting the Clean Water Act, passed by the other elected branch. Courts are supposed to give an enormous amount of deference to agencies' interpretations of the statutes they are charged with enforcing. But Chief Justice Roberts did not defer. He joined a stridently anti-environmentalist opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia that sided with the developer and mocked the corps's interpretation of the law--an interpretation four justices agreed with as ``beyond parody.'' The opinion also complained that the corps's approach was too costly. Justice John Paul Stevens dryly noted that whether benefits outweighed costs was a policy question that ``should not be answered by appointed judges.'' In an opinion on assisted suicide, Chief Justice Roberts was again a conservative activist. The case involved Attorney General John Ashcroft's attempt to invoke an irrelevant federal statute to block Oregon's assisted suicide law, which the state's voters had adopted by referendum. Even though it meant overruling the voters, intruding on state sovereignty and mangling the words of a federal statute, Chief Justice Roberts dissented to support Mr. Ashcroft's position. Chief Justice Roberts voted against another democratically enacted, progressive law when the court struck down Vermont's strict limits on campaign contributions. He joined an opinion that not only held that the law violated the First Amendment, but also engaged in the kind of fine judicial line-drawing-- in this case, about the precise dollar limits the Constitution allows states to impose--that is often considered a hallmark of judicial activism. One of the court's most nakedly activist undertakings in recent years is the series of hoops it has forced Congress to jump through when it passes laws that apply to the states. Judge John Noonan Jr., a federal appeals court judge appointed by President Ronald Reagan, has complained that the justices have set themselves up as the overseers of Congress. But Chief Justice Roberts voted to put up yet another hoop, requiring Congress to put the states on ``clear notice''-- whatever that means--before requiring them to pay for expert witnesses in lawsuits involving special education. It is a made-up rule that shows little respect for the people's representatives. These cases make Chief Justice Roberts seem like a raging judicial activist. But in cases where conservative actions were being challenged, he was quite the opposite. When a whistle-blower in the Los Angeles district attorney's office' claimed he was demoted for speaking out, Chief Justice Roberts could find no First Amendment injury. When Democrats challenged Republicans' partisan gerrymandering of Texas's Congressional districts, he could find no basis for interceding. The Roberts court's first term was not radically conservative, but only because Justice Anthony Kennedy, the swing justice, steered it on a centrist path. If Chief Justice Roberts--who voted with Justice Scalia a remarkable 88 percent of the time in nonunanimous cases--had commanded a majority, it would have been an ideologically driven court that was both highly conservative and just about as activist as it needed to be to get the results it wanted. Chief Justice Roberts still probably views himself as judicially modest, and in some ways he may be. He has been reasonably respectful of precedent, notably when he provided a fifth vote to uphold Buckley v. Valeo, a critically important campaign finance decision that is under attack from the right. He has also been inclined to decide cases narrowly, rather than to issue sweeping judicial pronouncements. But at his confirmation hearings, he defined judicial modesty as not usurping the legislative and executive roles. His approach to his new job is no doubt still evolving, which could be a good thing. The respect for the elected branches that he invoked while testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee is hardly a perfect judicial philosophy especially today, when we need the court to resist the president's dangerous view of his own power. Still, that principled approach would do more for the court and the nation than the predictable arch-conservatism the chief justice's opinions have shown so far.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, to begin, I want to express my appreciation for the remarks of the gentleman from North Carolina who just spoke with regard to his call for oversight. It has been sorely lacking, and it is relevant to the point I want to make today. Mr. Speaker, I meet, as we all do, with people in my district and people elsewhere in the country, and I have for a couple of years now been engaged in some debate with some of my liberal friends on the nature of our disagreements with this administration. And up until a few months ago, my argument was that we should focus on those policy issues where we disagreed, and there were many: the war in Iraq; an economic policy that undercuts working people, that promotes inequality; policies that weaken the environment; policies that undercut the rights of minorities. Others have said, no, we have to go beyond that. We have to indict this administration for his whole philosophy of governing and people have questioned its commitment to democracy. I continue to disagree that we should question this administration's commitment to democracy. Some of the words that get thrown around, authoritarianism and worse should not be used lightly. This remains today, in the sixth year of the Bush Presidency, a very free country. People are free to speak out, to dissent. People are free to be critical. So while I agree that this administration believes in democracy in the broadest sense, I am now convinced that it is a very different kind of democracy than that which has prevailed for most of our history, and which I think is the preferable form. Yes, the President agrees that the source morally or the power of the government is an election, and he believes that the President ought to be elected. I will turn a little later to questions that have been raised about the integrity of the election process. And I think enough doubt has been raised so that we need to do more to reassure people that we are committed to protecting that integrity. But let me take the President at his word now. After the election, he said, okay I have been elected. I agree that the President honors the concept that you gain power in a democratic society by winning the election. But here is the difference. We have historically talked about our checks, about balances, about our three branches of government. We have contrasted that to the more unitary governments in other parts of the world, even democratic ones. We have a separate legislative and a separate independent judiciary and the executive branch. We have talked, from the beginning of this country, in the debates over ratification of the Constitution, about the benefits of checks and balances. This is an administration which considers checks and balances to be a hindrance to effective governance. This is an administration that believes that democracy consists essentially of electing a President every 4 years and subsequently entrusting to that President almost all of the important decisions. Now, given the role of Congress, the administration, which I believe deeply holds this view, articulated most consistently and forcefully by the Vice President, they could not have succeeded in imposing it on this country and its Constitution as much as they have without the acquiescence of this Congress. And that is why I appreciated what the previous speaker, the gentleman from North Carolina, talked about, the need for oversight. I believe we have seen an overreaching by the President. I believe we have seen a seizing of power that should not have been seized by the executive branch. But executive overreaching could not have succeeded as much as it has without congressional dereliction of duty. I hope that some of the signs I am now seeing of resistance finally in Congress to that will take seed. But I do not see that yet. What we have is a President who won the election in 2004, was declared the winner of the election in 2000, much more dubiously. You know, in some ways President Bush was lucky that there was this flap over the votes in Florida. Because that obscured the fact that George Bush became President of the United States, after the election of 2000, trailing his major opponent by a larger popular vote than anybody in American history. If you assume that Florida was counted 100 percent accurately, a very hard assumption to make, George Bush still fell half a million votes behind Al Gore, the fact that he was a minority President, that is with Ralph Nader drawing off 3 million, while Pat Buchanan only drew off a half a million. But despite that, George Bush took over because of all of the attention had been on Florida. But from then on, he took the position that as President, he was, as he later articulated it, the ``decider.'' That is not a word that you find often in American history. Yeah, the President is a very influential and very powerful person. But he is not the single decider. He is the most important in a system of multiple sources of power. But thanks to the acquiescence of a Republican majority in this Congress, driven in part by ideological sympathy, he has been allowed to be the decider. So we have had a very different kind of American Government. We have had an American Government in which the President gets elected and exercises an extraordinary amount of power. It is democracy, but it is closer to plebiscitary democracy than it is to the traditional democracy of America. Plebiscitary democracy, political scientists use to describe those systems wherein a leader is elected, but once elected has almost all of the power. Indeed, I believe, it certainly would seem to me the aspirations of the Vice President, that in some ways the approach of this administration to governance interestingly has more in common with that of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela than almost anybody else. Elect the President. Let him win and then get out of his way. Now, this has become clear to me in recent months. We had a debate here a month ago on the floor of this House on the right of the President to ignore legislation passed 30 years ago, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, by which the President and Congress together set forward a method for wiretapping and eavesdropping in cases where we thought there were foreign threats to the U.S. This is a case where the President and Congress together, in the Carter administration, explicitly adopted a scheme to listen in on people who meant us ill. It was followed by Presidents from Jimmy Carter through Ronald Reagan and George Bush and Bill Clinton. And then this President said, no, I do not like that. That is too confining, so I will ignore it. And I will instead use my power to do what I want to do and forget the requirements of the law, that is, he was doing here exactly what the law talked about doing in terms of goal, but ignored the method that the law set forward. What Congress had decided with Presidential approval became irrelevant. Now, we debated that on the floor. And this really began to crystallize for me. And defenders of the President, opponents of our rule that said you cannot spend money to do this wiretapping in violation of the law, for the same thing the law calls for. You know, it is one thing if the President says, well, there is no law here, I have got to do what I need to do. That is dubious and we can get to it. But where the law has been set out in a prescribed constitutional manner as to how you do something, and the President says I am not going to do it that way, I will do it my way, then you are into plebiscitary democracy. Then you are into the democracy that says no checks and balances. No, Congress, I will do what I think necessary. Now, I wondered about the constitutional authority. And it was cited on the floor, what is called the ``vesting clause'' of the Constitution. And I thought, gee, that is a pretty important clause apparently; it gives him all that power. How come I do not remember it better? So I went and relooked it up. Here is what it says ``The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.'' That is it. That is the vesting clause. From those words the President and his defenders draw the conclusion that the President can ignore a duly enacted law of Congress if he thinks it should be done a different way. Well, this is of course totally circular. It is a perfect totality. It says: ``The executive power should be vested in the President of the United States.'' It does not say what the executive powers are. It does say, yeah, the President is the boss of the Secretary of the Treasury or the Secretary of State, but it does not define executive power. So what they have done is take a simple sentence that says the President is the boss of the executive and use that then to justify the insertion or the assertion of executive power in areas which should have been legislative or judicial. And that has been the pattern in this administration. In 2001, I voted for a resolution, the authorization of use of force in Afghanistan. You know, when my Republican friends, and some of the other Republicans talk about how Democrats will not stand up to terrorism, I am struck by how they forget the war in Afghanistan. I voted to go to war in Afghanistan because that was the place from which Osama bin Laden attacked us. Almost everybody, only one dissenter out of hundreds of Democrats, voted to go to war in Afghanistan. In fact, I wish we were doing a better job in Afghanistan. I wish the misguided and mistaken war in Iraq was not driving attention, taking attention away from the war in Afghanistan. But I voted for the war in Afghanistan. I voted for the authorization to use force. It said in there, and it was unfortunately the model here where the Republicans draft up a resolution and put it through in a way that cannot be amended and only has 20 or 30 minutes to discuss on each side, it said the President may take all necessary actions in this regard. Well, all of us who voted for it thought we were voting to authorize a war against Afghanistan if necessary to get Osama bin Laden. The Taliban was given the option of giving him up; they would not do it. We later found the President citing that as authority to order the arrest of American citizens on American soil who would then be held indefinitely in prison with no formal charges brought against them and no opportunity to defend themselves and no way to get out of prison. That was one of the cases in Chicago where they arrested a man in Chicago, he is an American citizen, they said he was up to no good. He may well have been up to no good, although ultimately they did not even prosecute him. But they arrested him and said they had the right to just lock him up forever, an American citizen with no recourse of any kind because the President ordered it. Well, there is a statute that says you cannot in America lock up an American without statutory justification. And people said, where is the statutory justification? And the administration said, and was maintaining it until the Supreme Court majority in the Hamdi case finally repudiated it, well, it said right there in 2001, Congress authorized the President to do whatever he had to do to deal with the situation of the attack in America. And that outrageously, illogically was cited as support for this. But it was in defense of this notion that the President could do whatever he wants whenever he wants to. Now some have argued, well, the President can do anything unless he is explicitly told he cannot. Not in this administration. They believe the President can do anything he wants, even if he is told he can't. That has certainly been the case in national security. It struck me when we recently dealt with the tracking of terrorist financing that the administration had done this with virtually no congressional cooperation. Now, the statute calls for them to be briefing Members of Congress. We all have seen the record of briefing. This program started late in 2001. They briefed two people early in 2002, when the program was just starting. They briefed one person in 2003. They briefed nobody in 2004. And they briefed two people in 2005, and nobody for the first 4 months of 2006. Then they learned that the newspapers were going to print it, so after they knew it was going to become public, then they briefed 23 other people. I was one of those offered a briefing. I turned it down because of the circumstances. They told me that they were going to tell me something that was a secret, when they told me, but was pretty soon not going to be a secret, but if they told it to me, I had to keep it a secret even if it was no longer a secret. So I said, never mind. But I asked the Treasury Department, why are you briefing me after the fact that it was going to become public? They said, as a courtesy. Well, that sums it up. You know, the process of briefing Members of Congress is supposed to be part of the constitutional mandate for collaboration. It does not come from Miss Manners; it comes from the Constitution. It is not a courtesy; it is a requirement of collaborative government. It is a chance to get back and forth about things. And it struck me, Congress would have clearly ratified their right to do the terrorist financing. Congress would almost certainly have given them a lot of the power they wanted with regard to the detainees in Guantanamo, perhaps more than I wanted to. You know, we had the PATRIOT Act situation where the Judiciary Committee on which I then sat unanimously adopted a very reasonable, balanced bill which gave law enforcement full powers, expanded powers in the nature of what you needed to fight terrorism, but had some safeguards against abuse. And that bill, having unanimously passed the Committee on the Judiciary, was reported by the Rules Committee. And the Attorney General, acting for the President, said, no, we do not like that bill. Here is a new one. And a new bill was written overnight and debated on the floor of the House with no ability to amend it. So I didn't like that and voted against it. It showed that Congress was ready to do what the administration wanted. But even knowing that it could probably get from this rather supine Congress whatever they wanted, they haven't wanted Congress to do it. It strikes me as to why: They don't want Congress to agree on their ability to detain people at Guantanamo or track terrorist financing or do a lot of other things, because accepting the right of Congress to agree with them implies that at some future date Congress might disagree. And the theory of plebiscitary democracy has no room for congressional disagreement once the President has made his decision. So we have a situation of unilateralism and a refusal even to take Congress in when Congress wants to be a willing partner. Now, there are a couple of problems with that. First of all, I voted for the balanced PATRIOT Act. I believe that the law enforcement people are the good guys and women. I believe that we need to give them new powers when we are dealing with murderous fanatics who are ready to kill themselves. Our basic law enforcement theory of deterrence doesn't work against people who are ready to commit suicide, although that didn't stop us from authorizing the death penalty for suicide bombers a few years ago. But I believe that the law enforcement people are the good guys, but I don't think they are the perfect guys. I think there were mistakes that were made by the FBI in Boston, outrageous mistakes. I think of Mayfield in Oregon, Captain Yee at Guantanamo, Wen Ho Lee under the Clinton administration, a number of cases in Guantanamo of innocent people captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan because of the fog of war. People make mistakes. What we should be doing is giving law enforcement full power, but also having some checks so that people who are unfairly accused can defend themselves and prove their innocence. Our problem is that when the administration does these things unilaterally, we have no way to know whether or not those safeguards are there. When the administration asserts the right to arrest American citizens on American soil, which happened, this is not a hypothetical, and lock that man up forever, fortunately the Supreme Court said, ``no,'' you can't do this, this is America. But when they assert that, the problem is not that they are being tough on terrorists, it is that they are being tough on an individual who chooses terrorism who has no conceivable way to defend themselves to say that there might have been a mistake. Shutting out the Congress means that you think you are perfect, that you think you can do these things, that you can exercise these extraordinary powers and you don't need anybody to say, wait a minute, maybe you should do it this way or that way. And, by the way, I do not think the argument is, well, we can't trust the Congress. I am not familiar with any pattern of Members of Congress divulging information or leaking. Frankly, the great majority of leaks I have seen in the 26 years I have been here have come from the executive branch, not from the Congress. They were leaks because of some policy dispute and somebody wants to leverage somebody else, and that includes leaks from the Bush administration when they thought it would help them make the case with Iraq, like Douglas Feith and others. But the problem of shutting Congress out is that you don't get that input that allows you to exercise powers in a reasonable way, but helps you with safeguards. In fact, what happens is this. You have things which are not, in themselves, controversial like tracking terrorist financing. Of course we should be doing that Or surveilling foreign terrorists or wire tapping, of course, with the right reasons, you should do that. But when the administration does them unilaterally and refuses to allow Congress in and refuses to follow some of the rules that Congress has set down, they take noncontroversial things or less controversial things and make them controversial. That is when things become politicized. The debate over the terrorist financing tracking is not over the substance of that program, but over the secretive and unilateral and arrogant way in which the administration decided to do it and shut out any chance for Congress to participate. So that is the problem with the plebiscitary approach. Yes, you elect a President and he is supposed to take the lead, but we don't elect perfect Presidents. You elect people who are important. And then we also have a Congress and a court that are supposed to be involved as well; and this administration has time and again refused to do that. Now, it has been especially the case in areas of national security where, with ignoring the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or not briefing anybody seriously over terrorist financing, or taking the authorization of the use of force in Afghanistan and bending it way out of shape to make it a universal mandate to do things that no one thought it was supposed to be used for. Or arresting American citizens and holding them forever, arguing that you could do that without any court ever being involved. Having no process by which people innocently caught up in the fog of war in Afghanistan could say, wait a minute, I am not a terrorist, I am just some poor guy wandering around here. But they have also done it domestically. One of the things this administration has used more than every other administration in history is the right, when signing a bill, a right that they claim to sign a bill, the Constitution says Congress passes a bill, the President can either veto it or sign it. And they say, okay, here is the deal, we will sign it, but when we sign it, we will say that we are really signing these parts and not the other parts, because we consider some of it unconstitutional, so we will ignore it. That is a wholly unconstitutional approach. The President has a right to say, this is unconstitutional, I don't like it. His job then is to veto the bill. But what he does is he picks and chooses; he thinks the legislation is a supermarket. He walks in, he takes some from here, some from there, he discards what he doesn't like. That is not appropriate. That is in the domestic area. The signing statements are an assertion of the plebiscitary power in the domestic area that we have seen in the international area, the right of the President to do whatever he wants, to take laws that Congress passed and pay attention to parts of them and not other parts. There are other examples of this. The Constitution does give the President the right to make recess appointments, but this President has abused that. They are to be used, it seems to me, in unusual circumstances. This President has regularly appointed people to office and to high court seats who couldn't have won confirmation in Senates controlled by his own party. The pattern of recess appointments is a very, very serious one. You also see it with regard to the people he appoints, because what they have argued is not just that Congress shouldn't be that powerful, but it is the unitary theory of the President. I was frankly surprised when I first came across the unitary theory of the President. I had not been aware of the schizophrenic theory of the Presidency or the notion of the twin Presidencies. But what we have seen in this administration, frankly, is a downgrading of public officials other than the President. You know, one of the great positions in American history has been Secretary of the Treasury. Very distinguished, important people have been Secretary of the Treasury. It has been a very important part of a system in which various segments in this society participate in discussions. James Baker and Robin Rubin recently, George Schultz, a large body of very impressive Secretaries of the Treasury. Under this Presidency, we have a new one coming in, we can't judge him, but two very distinguished men, John Snow and Paul O'Neill were appointed Secretary of the Treasury, and ignored, belittled by the President's staff. What we have again is the assertion that a President gets elected and essentially is the decider in ways that really go contrary to the notion of participation by other segments. Yes, it is true you win an election and you gain some power. This is a very big, very complex country. It really is not a good idea for one individual, even one who was legitimately elected in an election in which there was no contest, and we certainly didn't have that in 2000, to be the decider, to diminish input from others. Now, again, I have to reiterate that this could not have happened without the collaboration of a supine Congress. Never in American history has Congress been so willing to give away its constitutional function. I know people have said, well, what do you expect, it is a Republican President and a Republican Congress. That is what happens. No, the history of the United States is that even when the same party controlled the Presidency and the Congress, Congress did oversight. Harry Truman, and people said, well, it is a war, what do you expect? Harry Truman became a national figure when he chaired a Senate committee in a Senate in which the Democrats were a majority, supervising closely the conduct of World War II by the Departments of War and Navy under Franklin Roosevelt. Can you imagine what a Halliburton would have been subjected to in World War II given that Harry Truman was there? And efforts by this Congress, by my colleague from Massachusetts, Mr. Tierney, to institute such a committee, the efforts of our colleague from California, Mr. Waxman, to do oversight, they have been rejected by this Congress. So this Congress has not done oversight. Let's take a more recent example. When Bill Clinton was President for the first 2 years and the Democrats were in the majority, we had a very tough, emotionally searing hearing doing oversight on Waco. We had a hearing in the Banking Committee on Whitewater. Republicans thought it wasn't sufficiently condemnatory, but they got a chance to present witnesses; we had the hearing. It is only with the exception of President Bush and this Republican Congress that we have seen a collapse of the oversight function because members of the Republican Party belonging essentially to the same very conservative ideological faction that now controls the Republican Party as the President, has decided that partisan solidarity, and ideological solidarity even more, trump constitutional obligations. So we have seen no oversight. That has played into the hands of the plebiscitary Presidency, into the hands of a President who is allowed more power than is healthy for a society. And I reiterate, I am not charging authoritarianism. It still is a free country, and I encourage people to use that freedom and to be critical and to organize. But we are still talking about a very, very different mode of governance, the mode of governance in which, instead of the checks and balances and the collaboration and the input of a lot of people, you get one man making the decisions. Now, I understand that democracy can be messy and it is not always neat, but we have not before this had an executive branch that considered it to be more of a nuisance than anything else. I believe that that is the attitude of the Vice President, and he has a major influence on the President, and they really regard things like checks and balances and judicial review and the role of the media as interference with their ability to govern. Now, we do face a terrorist enemy. And if in fact these things detracted from our ability to defend ourselves, we would have a real dilemma, but they don't. The argument that democracy, that collaboration with the Congress, that judicial review, that an independent media, that these somehow detract from our ability to defend ourselves is not only morally flawed, it is factually wrong. This Congress would be very willing to participate with the President. And I think if a collaborative process in which thoughtful and well- informed Members of Congress who have gotten expertise in this and that area were able to meet in a collaborative way with members of the administration, the result would be to strengthen what we do. Instead, what we have is controversy after controversy after controversy because this administration does not learn, and they continue to follow the pattern of we will do it unilaterally, we do it without anybody else, we will do whatever we want. And it fails. I talked before, and I just want to elaborate the constitutional point about the President ignoring the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. My colleagues, when they defend the President, cite certain Supreme Court decisions. They never cite Youngstown Sheet and Tube against Sawyer, the steel case. In that case, the Court made a very important point, which is that there are sort of three situations in which you can talk about Presidential power. You can talk about cases where the President and Congress act together, and there the court said, you know what, that is when America is at its strongest. That is the point I want to make. Constitutionally, our ability as a government to assert our power, to protect ourselves, to mobilize our resources is strongest when the President and Congress work together. It is strongest constitutionally and it is strongest politically and in every other way. Then, the Court said there is the area where Congress hasn't said anything. Well, maybe the President can do it, maybe he can't. But the Court also said, but you know, and when Congress has said, do it this way, the President has no right to ignore it. Well, that is of course what they did in FISA. Now, people have legitimately said to me, well, if that is the case, if they are violating some constitutional principles, why aren't they stopped? Because of the nature of our judicial system, it is very hard to bring a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. You have to have what is called standing; there has to be a specific controversy that affects you in a very particular way. This administration has exploited that. They abuse power in ways that they know cannot be brought before the courts. When they are brought before the courts from time to time, they lose, and they have lost most of the decisions before the U.S. Supreme Court about their exertion of extraordinary power. The problem is that they are able to exert that power and get away with it in some cases. There is only one way for sure that an administration can be restrained from ignoring constitutional limitations and have that brought to court. That is if this Congress passes an appropriations amendment which says none of the money being voted here can be used for this or that or the other. That is the only way Congress can restrain a President from sending troops into battle, which was done in Nicaragua, although somewhat ignored by Reagan, but essentially it was obeyed. And, Angola and Vietnam. Only if this Congress says none of the funds appropriated herein shall be used for X will the Court enforce that. And we came close a little while ago where a majority on our side and a few on the other side said, no, let's tell them they can't ignore the FISA. But a majority of the House, overwhelmingly Republican, wouldn't go along. That is where the congressional dereliction of duty comes in. Presidents can get away with this assertion of extraconstitutional authority. Congress doesn't have to give them the authority, all it has to do is not stop them. That is what we have done. And that is a terrible mistake, whether it is domestic or international. And I want to repeat, with regard to national security, the problem is in many cases not what the administration has done, but the way in which they have done it. Yes, this is a Congress overwhelmingly ready to give them the power to combat terrorism. We, almost all of us, understood after September 11 of 2001 that we needed a new law enforcement mode in which we got more aggressive, that simply deterring people by the threat of punishment doesn't work in an era of suicidal fanatics. But this administration saw this as a chance to vindicate this theory, I think, of plebiscitary democracy that says that democracy means, you elect me and then you get out of my way; and checks and balances and congressional oversight and media scrutiny, these are all interferences. And, again, there is no basis for arguing that these will stop us from going forward. One of the arguments we got was, we can't use the court system. We have bad people here, and if we go to the court system, it won't work. Well, it has worked. John Walker Lynn was convicted, Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, was convicted. Moussawi was convicted. The courts have been unfairly maligned by this administration. We have been able to convict people. Given the record of the courts, there is no justification to asserting your right to lock up an American citizen whenever you want to on your say-so and have no judicial process available to that individual whatsoever. Again, thanks to an 8- 1 Supreme Court decision, that is no longer the case, but that was part of the assertion. That is part of the power that they are asserting. So whether it is signing statements or misuse of the authorization of use of force in Afghanistan, or refusal to talk to Members of Congress on things, or exploiting the fact that it is very hard to get judicial decisions, all of these things come together in a pattern. That is why I say, I acknowledge now that when I told friends over these past couple of years that we should just go policy issue by policy issue and not talk about the overall framework of governance, I was wrong. It is now clear to me there is a pattern to this administration's actions, and it is one that rejects not democracy, but the democracy of checks and balances and participation and cooperation and collaboration that we have long known; and it substitutes the democracy of the plebiscite, the democracy of the strong man who gets elected and is then allowed to go forward without interference. And I think that is wrong both from a philosophical standpoint and also from a practical standpoint. I think the insistence of this administration to doing it by themselves and by rejecting efforts to draw in other sectors of this society weakens America and doesn't strengthen it, that it makes things look more controversial than they need to be. Now, there have recently been some stirrings here. I was very struck when we had a hearing of the Financial Services Committee, the Subcommittee on Oversight, of the strong and articulate voice of the chair of that subcommittee, the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Kelly), who objected to the unilateralism of it. There were some other showings in the Senate. Some Senators have said, no, you can't just ignore what the Supreme Court did and you can't just put a little lipstick on this and forget about it. I wish the administration would understand that what we are talking about is strengthening America, not weakening it; that the democracy we have had, the checks and balances, they weren't suspended during World War II. People made mistakes during World War II, the relocation of the Japanese and others. Yes, those were terrible mistakes, but you had the Truman Committee and you had a very active Congress. We have not in any previous emergency felt the need to go from the America of our Constitution to a model of a strong man elected and all power ceded to him. And I hope, though I doubt very much this administration plans to change its approach to this, but I hope that what we are seeing now is a willingness on the part of the Congress to assert the constitutional role of the Congress; not to be obstructionist, certainly not for partisanship because the Republicans control both Houses, but in recognition that an America which functions as it was intended to function, in a way in which the branches cooperate and correct each other and improve each other and work together, we are of a common goal, certainly in the area of national security. We believe, many of us, that a process in which we work together will yield a better result; that a process which assumes that law enforcement is perfect and therefore can operate in secrecy, without any kind of input, that that will do more harm than good compared to what the alternative would be. Not more harm than good overall, but less good than you could otherwise do. I believe there is a very strong majority in this Congress prepared to work with this administration in ways that preserve the need for discretion and in which the expertise collectively in this body on a number of issues can help us go forward with the measures we need to protect ourselves and, at the same time, preserve our liberties. And if this administration continues the pattern of these past years, it will damage our ability to come together and make this effort, and I think, over the long term, diminish the nature of our democracy, because the democracy of the plebiscite meets minimal democratic standards, but it does not represent the full richness of a democracy in which all can participate. Now, my last point is this. Especially for this administration, with its focus on the election of the strong man, there needs to be better recognition of the widespread unhappiness about the electoral process. The election of 2000 clearly was a shambles. Go back to the mob in Florida. You know, we have the man who has been declared to be ahead in Mexico, Calderon, predicting that Obrador, who is challenging the result, will muster a mob and they will march. Well, he might have been describing the Republicans in Florida in 2000, when a mob intimidated people against counting the votes. And we had a Supreme Court opinion which did not meet the minimum standards, it seems to me, of legitimacy when they said, okay, the Republicans win this one, but please don't pay any attention to this in future races. Given this administration's view that elections are all you need, it is all the more important for them to understand that we need to reassure the country that elections are fully, fairly conducted. I do not understand why people confident of their mandate, confident of their ability to win would object to some of the things that have been put forward to reassure people that the votes are counted as they are cast. The worst you could say about that is that it would be a little unnecessary. An administration that spends money the way this one does can't really think that is a financial problem. And we have had examples of votes miscounted. We understand the vulnerability of machines to tinkering. There is no justification for continuing to fail to adopt safeguards for the counting of votes that will reassure people. Mr. Speaker, the democracy we have had, the checks and balances, the back and forth, Congress being an interference from the standpoint of the executive, in some cases, strong-minded executives, clashing with the President, maybe being fired trying to get support in Congress, a very assertive media, we have had those for a long time, and we are the strongest country in the world. It is very hard to argue from history that these factors weaken us. What we have is an administration that is radically trying to change the nature of our democracy. They want to simplify it, they want to neaten it. Democracy is not good when it is neat, certainly not in a country as vast as this one. No single individual, no matter how popular, can embody all of the wisdom and all of the values of the country. The democracy we have evolved of full participation isn't always convenient for those of us in power, it isn't always as quick as people would like, but it has proven over time to be effective, and it could be not only effective today, but even more effective in our collective self-defense than the current model, which produces controversy where none is called for and division where we could have unity. I am not optimistic that we will change the approach of this administration. But I do hope, Mr. Speaker, that our colleagues in this Congress will continue what I think are stirrings of change and reassert our historic role and restore the kind of messy and inconvenient and much better and more inclusive democracy that has been our country's legacy.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, as someone who voted against the original legislation authorizing the U.S. military action in Iraq, I remain convinced that our military involvement there is a mistake, regardless of which of the Administration's evolving rationales for sending U.S. troops there is put forward. I was therefore pleased to receive the resolution on Iraq that was approved recently by the New England Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. This statement, which calls for an orderly withdrawal of our troops from Iraq, points out the deficiencies in our Iraq policy, while maintaining toward our military and civilian personnel serving there an appropriately supportive position. I ask that a copy of the resolution adopted by the New England Annual Conference be printed here. RS--209 Regarding American Participation in the War in Iraq (Submitted by Proposed by Betty and Dan Allen, Mark Goad, Gary Richards, Don Rudalevige, Phil Susag) (Adopted Friday Evening, June 10, 2006) Scripture and the call of Justice demand of Christians a bias towards peace and reconciliation. Our calling as United Methodist Christians demands that we not remain silent regarding the on-going war in Iraq. We proclaim a God who cares for all people. Clear evidence of absolute need is required before engaging in armed conflict. Such evidence does not exist to support American occupation of Iraq. The conflict has crated and spread terrorism, not lessened it. It has compromised our own attitude as to the value of human life. Therefore, The New England Conference of the United Methodist Church calls on all churches to actively participate in peace-making through preaching, prayer, study and participation in local forums and peace actions. Further, we call on our church members to be in regular contact with their U.S. Representatives and Senators, calling for the orderly withdrawal of troops and personnel from Iraq. We recommend that such contacts begin during the week of June 19 and continue on a monthly basis until such time as withdrawal is achieved. Further, the Annual Conference directs the Secretary to send this resolution to the U.S. Representatives and Senators from the New England region, President Bush, Secretaries Rumsfeld and Rice. Further, the New England Conference is called upon to support those troops returning from Iraq with our prayers, love and gratitude for their service to our country.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, let me just emphasize that there is no conflict between what the gentlewoman from West Virginia said and our approach. We are not trying to displace the underlying bill. We are seeking to defeat the previous question so we can also have a vote on the minimum wage. Let me say first with regard to the underlying bill that the gentleman from Pennsylvania, who is the ranking member of our relevant subcommittee, who is a very thoughtful student of these matters, has a substitute; and I appreciate that it was made in order, which I think addresses the issue in a far more thoughtful fashion. Interestingly, as he has noted, the approach we are taking here does not wait for input from the SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission. I have found them to be in recent years a very thoughtful contributor to the process. So I will be strongly supporting the substitute the gentleman from Pennsylvania has put forward. But none of that says that there is any conflict between that and the minimum wage. The amendment we will make, if the previous question is defeated, will not diminish any consideration of the underlying bill, it will simply give the House a chance to vote on the minimum wage. Now, that is what the majority objects to. They do not believe sufficiently in the democratic process to allow a vote on it. Now, here is the reason. It certainly is not time. We finished up about 3 o'clock yesterday afternoon. We are going to finish about 3 o'clock this afternoon. We will be out Friday. We do very little those days. The reason is very simple. There are two sets of issues around today. One set are issues that the American public favors and the majority does not. They do not come up, because the majority is afraid they might pass. The other set of issues are those that the majority favors and the American public does not. They do not come up either. So we do very little because the majority has had to confront the fact that its agenda is unpopular with the American people. As Members of the majority are running for reelection, as are we, they are trying very hard to avoid those votes which would be unpopular with their voters. What other justification is there for the House of Representatives not voting on the minimum wage? If Members are opposed to it, let them vote ``no.'' I must say that the evidence, the last time we raised the minimum wage in 1996, was overwhelmingly that the minimum-wage increase caused no negative effect on employment. In fact, in those areas of the economy at that time where the minimum wage is relevant, there were job shortages because the minimum wage, if anything, may have influenced some people to enter the economy. So there is no economic reason to vote against it. By the way, it is particularly relevant, and I speak here as a member of the Financial Services Committee, for us to bring it up in this context, because we have a bill that I have introduced into the Financial Services Committee supported by people on our side to give stockholders the right to vote on CEO salaries. We have this extraordinary disparity in this country between hardworking people doing difficult and unpleasant jobs, 40 hours a week, for a pittance, $5.15 an hour, too little to support their families; and then we have CEOs getting tens and hundreds of millions of dollars when there is no connection between their work and the success of their companies that anybody has been able to measure. I will say, the majority is consistent. They do not want us to vote to raise the minimum wage, they do not want to vote to do anything about CEO salaries. By the way, we do not want Congress to set CEO salaries, we want to let the stockholders vote on them. Well, the majority is consistent. They do not think that Congress ought to vote on the minimum wage, they do not think that stockholders ought to vote on how CEOs get paid with the stockholders' money. I guess we should take some comfort from the fact that the majority does not want to allow a vote on this. The problem is that they understand that it is popular with the American people, and they are afraid that it might pass, or alternatively, it would fail only after, what, a 3-or-4-hour roll call, in which enough Members were pressured not to vote for it, so it would fail by one vote. We are really here talking about not just economic fairness, but democracy. This bill is the only opportunity we have to get a vote on the minimum wage because the majority has refused to allow democracy to function.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I thank the ranking member of the subcommittee for his leadership on this. The goals here do not divide us; the methods do. Maybe it is a little bit of a role reversal, but I think, as the gentleman from Pennsylvania has made clear, we believe that the SEC ought to be relied on more fully here. I understand the SEC supports the goals of this. We support the goals of this. The critical question is the implementation. We think this prematurely takes some decision-making that we ought to await for SEC input. We are talking about a very tough decision to make here. It is a lot of power to give an entity to be a rating agency. People have alluded to the great power the two existing ones have. It is important that we have complete assurance for ourselves that the process we put in place for new rating agencies be very thoroughly checked out and very much prevented against abuse. Competition is a good thing, but not competition that could be a race to the bottom; and we regard SEC as an important part of this. That is why the substitute that my friend from Pennsylvania has holds off on making some of these decisions, we believe, too hastily, and instead more deeply involves us with the SEC. We are not talking about waiting 5 or 10 years, but it seems imprudent to go forward without waiting for a full deliberation from the SEC. There are other companies eager to get into the business, but the fact that other companies are eager to get into the business should not be driving us any more than the reluctance of the existing companies to have new people in the business. Both sets of considerations should not be driving us, neither to protect the existing businesses nor to enable the new ones. What we ought to be doing is focusing on the public policy process for deciding who gets to do this, and we do not believe we are yet at the point where we can do that in the ideal fashion, and we will be better off if we wait for the SEC to give us its guidance.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, the Board of Aldermen of the City of Newton, on June 27th, passed a powerfully worded and forcefully argued resolution on the Darfur genocide. I know that in passing this resolution the Board spoke for the overwhelming majority of the citizens of Newton, and I am pleased that I was able to report to them that I am doing everything I can as a Member of Congress to act in accordance with the policy that they advocate here. Mr. Speaker, because the problem of genocidal practices in Darfur remains unresolved, it is important for us to continue to focus our efforts on the need for action to save people now in Darfur from being victims of genocide, even as we grieve for those who have already been victims. Mr. Speaker, in that spirit I ask that the resolution from the Newton Board of Aldermen be printed here. Resolution on Darfur Genocide Whereas, the government of Sudan has engaged in a policy of genocide against its own black African population in Darfur through use of its military and through sponsorship of attacks by armed Arab militias known as the janjaweed; and Whereas, the janjaweed and military of the Sudanese government are responsible for bombing villages and hospitals, gang-raping civilians, summarily executing throngs of black Darfurians, using forced starvation as a weapon of war, and impeding access of humanitarian aid to the 50% of Darfurians that are now reliant on assistance; and Whereas, the Sudanese government is responsib1e for the death of 400,000 Darfurians and displacement of 2.5 million more; and Whereas, in September 2004, U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, declared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that the Sudanese government and the Sudanese government-sponsored janjaweed have committed genocide; and Whereas, both the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate have declared, by unanimous votes, that the Sudanese regime of dictator Omar al-Bashir is committing genocide; and Whereas, international companies, by conducting business operations in Sudan, bring direct foreign investment dollars to Khartoum and provide both moral and political cover to the Sudanese regime; and Whereas Khartoum has funneled the vast majority of direct foreign investment into military expenditures used to perpetuate the genocide while neglecting needed development projects in the Darfur region; and Whereas, the government of Sudan has a history of remedying egregious behavior in response to economic pressure; and Whereas, the policy and practice of genocide is abhorrent to the moral and political values of the members of the residents of the City of Newton, the people of the United States, and, indeed, democratic and free societies everywhere; Therefore, Be It Resolved, that the Newton Board of Aldermen urges the President and Congress of the United States to take immediate action to apply pressure to the government of Sudan to end the genocide in the Darfur region; Be It Further Resolved, that the Newton Board of Aldermen urges the Massachusetts Legislature to enact Senate Bill 2166, which would divest the Commonwealth's investment funds from companies doing business with the government of Sudan in such a way as to support or passively enable the Darfur genocide; Be It Further Resolved that copies of this resolution be distributed to the President, members of the Massachusetts Congressional delegation, other members of Congress in positions of leadership of the House and Senate and their committees with jurisdiction over foreign policy and commerce, the Governor of Massachusetts and members of Newton's delegation to the state legislature, and other leaders of the state legislature as deemed appropriate; and Be It Further Resolved that this resolution be posted on the official City of Newton web site. Resolution offered by: Aldermen Parker, Burg, Linsky, Fischman, Hess-Mahan, Vance, Harney, Johnson and Danberg. Resolution Passed Unanimously. (SGD) R. Lisle Baker, President. (SGD) David B. Cohen, Mayor.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I strongly disagree with the gentleman from Iowa with whom I often agree. I don't disagree with him entirely. I will stipulate that there is nothing in the Bagavagida about gambling. But other than that, I don't think he got much right. He says that gambling on the Internet does not add to the GDP or make America competitive. Has it become the role of this Congress to prohibit any activity that an adult wants to engage in voluntarily if it doesn't add to the GDP or make us more competitive? What kind of social, cultural authoritarianism are we advocating here? Now, I agree there is a practice around today that causes a lot of problems, damages families, people lose their jobs, they get in debt. They do it to excess. It is called drinking. Are we going to go back to Prohibition? Prohibition didn't work for alcohol; it doesn't work for gambling. When people abuse a particular practice, the sensible thing is to try to deal with the abuse, not outlaw it. By the way, this bill allows certain kinds of Internet gambling to stay, so apparently the notion is that those few people who are obsessive and addicted will not take advantage of those forms which are still available to them. But the fundamental point is this. If an adult in this country, with his or her own money, wants to engage in an activity that harms no one, how dare we prohibit it because it doesn't add to the GDP or it has no macroeconomic benefit. Are we all to take home calculators and, until we have satisfied the gentleman from Iowa that we are being socially useful, we abstain from recreational activities that we choose? This Congress is well on the way to getting it absolutely backwards. In areas where we need to act together to protect the quality of our life, in the environment, in transportation, in public safety, we abstain; but in those areas where individuals ought to be allowed to make their own choices, we intervene. And that is what this is. Now, people have said, well, some students abuse it. We should work to try to diminish abuse. But if we were to outlaw for adults everything that college students abuse, we would all just sit home and do nothing. By the way, credit card abuse among students is a more serious problem, I believe, than gambling. Maybe gambling will catch up. But we have heard many, many stories about young people who have credit cards that they abuse. Do we ban credit cards for them? But here is the fundamental issue. Shouldn't it be the principle in this government that the burden of proof is on those who want to prohibit adults from their own free choices to show that they are harming other people? We ought to say that, if you decide with your own money to engage in an activity that harms no one else, you ought to be allowed to do it. And once you say, oh, no, but that doesn't add to the GDP, and that can lead to some problems in families, then this is hardly the only thing you will end up banning. The fundamental principle of the autonomy of the individual is at stake today. Now, I have to say, I understand a lot of the conservatives don't like it because there are people on the religious side who don't like it. Some of my liberal friends, I think, are being very inconsistent. We are for allowing a lot of things. I mean, many of us vote to say, You can burn the flag; I wish you wouldn't, but you can. It shouldn't be a crime. You can look at certain things on television that maybe other people think you shouldn't. You can do other things but you can't gamble. There is a fundamental inconsistency there. I guess people think gambling is tacky. They don't like it. Well, fine, then don't do it. But don't prohibit other individuals from engaging in it. People have said, What is the value of gambling? Here is the value. Some human beings enjoy doing it. Shouldn't that be our principle? If individuals like doing something and they harm no one, we will allow them to do it, even if other people disapprove of what they do. And it is, of course, likely to be ineffective. The best thing that ever happens to illegal gamblers is when you do a measure like this. I hope the bill is defeated.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, once again I want to call attention to the important work of the National Gaucher Foundation, a group of very dedicated people who are as they describe their work engaged ``in an ongoing endeavor to spread the word and help educate others about Gaucher Disease.'' September will be International Gaucher Awareness Month, and because it is important that people know more about this disease and how to combat it, I take the occasion to insert here an article from the publication Spotlight On Health that provides important information about this disease. Gaucher Disease predominately affects Jewish people of Eastern European descent--Ashkenazim--and the foundation notes that a large majority of those most susceptible to the disease remain unaware of it. This makes their work particularly important as part of our overall effort to give people the tools with which they can protect their health, and I ask that the article from Spotlight On Health about Gaucher Disease be printed here, in time for International Gaucher Disease Awareness Month. Gaucher Disease: Learning the truth (NAPS)--A simple test could help diagnose and treat a genetic disease that can cause severe debilitation. Yet nine out of 10 people most at risk for the condition do not even know it exists. The condition, called Gaucher disease, can affect all people, but is primarily seen in Jewish populations of Eastern European descent. The carrier rate for these people may be as high as one in 15 and the rate of the disease in the general population is believed to be about one in 100 to 200 people. If both parents carry the disease, the odds of a child being born with it are one in four. Gaucher disease is passed down from parent to child and can occur at any age. Signs and symptoms can include: Fatigue Unusual bruising Bleeding episodes An enlarged abdomen Bone pain. Although the disease can be devastating, it can often be managed. However, people must first be aware of the condition, which many are not. ``A survey showed that 90 percent of the Jewish population is unaware of Gaucher disease. That means many people may be symptomatic and have no idea that they even have the disease,'' says Rhonda Buyers, National Gaucher Foundation Executive Director. ``The good news is that, unlike other genetic conditions, Gaucher disease is treatable and can be diagnosed with the use of a simple blood test.'' Buyers says that lack of awareness about Gaucher disease extends to physicians as well. In fact, a survey found that four of five blood specialists suspected leukemia or lymphoma when presented with the signs and symptoms of Gaucher disease. Her group is working to change that. Not only does The National Gaucher Foundation fund research intended to cure Gaucher disease, it also works to promote physician and community awareness about the condition (September is Gaucher Awareness Month). At the same time, the foundation helps meet the needs of patients and families affected by Gaucher. People interested in information on Gaucher disease testing or who want to learn more about the disease's symptoms can visit the group's Web site, www.gaucher disease.org.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, several of us in the House are proud of the role we played in helping gain independence for the new nation of East Timor, and we have been pleased by the commitment of the leaders of that new nation to democracy. In particular, we believe that the President, Xanana Gusmao, and the former Foreign Minister and newly-designated Prime Minister, Jose Ramos Horta, have shown a commitment to the maintenance of a fully democratic society. In fact, President Gusmao--widely known and revered by the people of East Timor as Xanana--worked to get a candidate to oppose him in the first presidential election in the country because he wanted to set the right precedent. It was with great sadness therefore that we watched the violence that wracked this small country in recent weeks, and we believe that it is very important that the responsible leadership of East Timor receive the support they need to make this violence a temporary interruption in their progress as a nation. One very important element in this effort is the United Nations, contrary to those who would dismiss the UN as of no use in today's world. In a recent article in the Boston Globe, Prime Minister Ramos Horta and Raj Purohit make the case that ``it is vital that the UN continue to lead an inclusive effort to insure that Timor- Leste (the Portuguese official name for East Timor) becomes a strong democratic member of the international community.'' In addition to the UN, Australia has played a very constructive role in helping deal with the problems of this new nation. Mr. Speaker, the recent violence is a sad fact, but it should not lead to pessimism about the longer-term future of East Timor. Instead, members of the international community should heed the words of Jose Ramos Horta and Raj Purohit and support the steps that will lead to a stable and democratic future for this new nation. In particular, they ask that the new UN Peace Building Commission make East Timor one of the objects of its work, and I hope that this request will be supported by the United States Government and honored by the Peace Building Commission so that, in the words of the authors of this article, we can see that ``Timor-Leste finally takes its place among the world's stable democratic countries.'' [From the Boston Globe] Jose Ramos Horta and Raj Purohit In recent weeks commentators have framed the uprisings in Timor Leste as a country that has spiraled into violence despite UN peacekeepers. This gives the false impression that the United Nations has failed in the country formerly known as East Timor. The reality is significantly different. Having declared its independence a mere four years ago, Timor Leste is still a fledgling nation emerging from the aftermath of a long, and often bloody, struggle for freedom. Though citizens have been ably assisted by various UN missions as they attempt to build the country, Timor Leste still has many challenges to overcome. These challenges include speeding up reconciliation, building a democratic political culture, instilling the rule of law, and creating an economy that is able to provide sustainable livelihoods for its people. While critics correctly note that efforts for reintegration and development must be redoubled, they fail to note that international commitment to long-term peace-building processes must also be redoubled. Peace-building processes that pay attention to a nation's need to feed, employ, govern, and heal itself are essential in any nation-building process. But the world failed to offer sufficient assistance to Timor Leste. The world community, including the United States, moved on to the next failing state before Timor Leste had sufficient strength to stand on its own. Now we are at the point in Timor Leste's nation-building process where the key stakeholders need to make a calculated assessment of what needs to be done next, coupled with a renewed political and financial commitment to a UN-driven process. Yes, missteps occurred, but this does not demand a radical change of direction nor should nations abandon Timor Leste at this critical juncture. The first order of business is to address the violence caused by the dismissal of 600 striking soldiers. In the short term, the combination of regional and UN assistance coupled with a commitment from local government officials to address the tension will help dampen the fighting. In the long term, Timor Leste, working with regional governments, in particular Australia, will need to address the broad security challenges underlying the current instability. Second, and perhaps more significant, it is vital that the UN continue to lead an inclusive effort to ensure that Timor Leste becomes a strong, democratic member of the international community. The UN is the logical body to coordinate this initiative and it seems logical that the new UN Peace Building Commission should play a central role in this effort. The Peace Building Commission was formed to improve the coordination of relevant actors within and outside the UN and to extend the period of attention given by the international community to post-conflict recovery. In the case of Timor Leste, the commission should coordinate efforts to ensure that: There is an aggressive and sustained campaign to improve the livelihood of Timor Leste's people. This effort requires local buy-in and assistance from the World Bank and national and regional development groups. Local systems of governance are developed and respect for the rule of law is cultivated. In particular, emphasis should be placed on judicial institutions, which will enable accountability for past and current crimes. Peace and security is guaranteed for Timor Leste. Peacekeepers, instead of leaving prematurely, must remain to support military and police troops. The Peacebuilding Commission is selecting which post- conflict nation-states to adopt. Along with Burundi and Sierra Leone, Timor Leste is high on the list. The world community has an opportunity to rally behind Timor Leste, rather than abandon it, and help this nation become healthy and strong--a peace-building process that will take a long- term commitment from every international institution. Ian Martin, former special representative for the UN secretary general for East Timor, is forecasting a larger role for the UN. He should recommend that the Peacebuilding Commission take the lead in ensuring Timor Leste finally takes its place among the world's stable democratic countries.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I yield myself 10 seconds to point out that, yes, it's true, Ms. Pelosi was briefed. In 2002, at the beginning of the program. She is not a fortune teller.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. The gentleman made it a point to mention me and will not let me respond.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I now yield 2 minutes to a senior member of the Financial Services Committee and one of the leaders on the whole question of how we should be dealing with our current problem, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters).

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel).

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 10 seconds. There is a very clear notice in the Republican resolution, and I call it that simply because that is how they decided it should be. They drafted it and didn't even show it to us until it was printed. They asked for no input. But it very clearly references the current criminal statute that is there, and I do not think that was for no reason. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey).

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the dean of the House, who is a man of great experience in how to handle these conflicting issues, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell). (Mr. DINGELL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 10 seconds. If that was all the resolution had said, we wouldn't be here. It also says that the Bush administration has carried this out in a perfect fashion. And yet you can have hearings during a war. Harry Truman showed how to do that and made for himself a great reputation and helped the war effort. Mr. Speaker, I yield for the purpose of making a unanimous consent request to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee). (Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)