Barney Frank

Mr. FRANK

Mr. FRANK. I ask for an additional minute.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I will answer the gentleman's question: because the President and his supporters do not want to concede that there is any limit on his power even if he could get this done through FISA, and that is the----

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Let me just say this. Here is the constitutional text that my friend from California invoked, and pretty accurately. Good memory the gentleman has. Article II, section 1: The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America, period. Now, he says that gives him the power. This is circular. Why does the President have the power? Because he has the executive power. But we are precisely here defining for ourselves, as Americans today, what the executive power is and has meant to be. All this says is that he has the executive power. Does the executive power mean he can lock somebody up without a trial as he has said it does? Does the executive power mean he can ignore an act of Congress and wiretap when he wants to? That is the question. Saying that the executive power is vested in him simply is a way of putting the question. The question is, What is the executive power? I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I just want to say, stop hiding behind varying degrees of constitutional interpretation. By hiding behind them, I mean this: I don't think that people sat and said, oh, geez this is what John Jay told me and this is what I am bound by. I think we are talking here about what we think public policy ought to be. Should the President or should not the President have to get a warrant through FISA? That is the text of this amendment. Let us debate the public policy. I yield first to the gentleman from Washington.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. We are beyond that. Look, I do not think the Constitution, I will be honest with you, I think people decide and then they pick the----

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Let us have the common ground. The question here, and I think I will accept this, we are not debating constitutionality here; we are debating what public policy ought to be. The gentleman from California agrees it is appropriate for us to consider it and agrees that, if it passes, the President is bound by it. Now, I would yield to the gentleman. Are there other places the President can then find this money? Is that what the gentleman is saying? If the President were to be bound by this, would the gentleman suggest the President could then do this anyway in some other fashion? I would yield to him.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. So that if he can find, I thank the gentleman and I appreciate that. I take back my time. The gentleman knows the rules. The gentleman knows the rules. He may not know the Constitution, but he knows the rules. I take back my time just to say, so we understand----

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I take back my time. So the gentleman then agrees with this point. There is nothing inappropriate about this amendment. So while he believes the President is within his power to do this, does the gentleman agree that if this amendment is adopted by a majority, the President would be bound by it?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I congratulate the authors of this amendment. The debate here and potentially the outcome confirm a very important point: We do not suffer in this country from a problem of the Presidential usurpation of power. We suffer from congressional dereliction of duty. It is not a case of the President overreaching. It is a case of us ducking and dodging and letting him do all the tough issues. This amendment is a very simple one. Now, Members have said on the other side, I heard the gentleman from Kansas say, why don't you bring in a bill? Two reasons: First of all, if we brought in a bill, it would never see the light of day. How can a majority party which has specialized in strangling legislation at its birth complain when we don't think that is a good way to debate important issues? But there is another reason. This is one that can sustain a veto. The Supreme Court has made it very clear: It will not referee disputes between the executive and legislative branches. The only way you can put some restraint on a President who is acting without restraint is by an amendment that says there are limits on what he can do with the money. Now, we have heard selected quotations from John Jay. Poor old John Jay hasn't been mentioned in years. I am glad his spirit has been invoked. But nobody much cares about John Jay most of the time. We have had some Supreme Court cases cited. Youngstown Sheet and Tube against Sawyer, which restricted the President in a time of war, was not mentioned. Let's be very clear: History does not dictate the answer. This calls on every Member of this House to say what kind of Constitution do you want? Do you want one in which the President can have unchecked executive power, not just in time of war, but any time? We are in what the President now says is a war against terrorism that is unlikely to have an end. So we are not talking about temporary wartime powers. We are talking about what kind of Constitution do you want? We have a President who has asserted his right to do whatever he thinks necessary to protect the country, including, remember, arresting American citizens and having them incarcerated indefinitely with no chance to present a case. The Supreme Court said, whoa, that goes a little too far. But this is what the President has asserted with regard to FISA. One gentleman said, well, remember what Griffin Bell said. I will be honest with you, I have found that as a general principle, ignoring Griffin Bell is a good idea. I have always done that in important cases. But what Griffin Bell said or didn't say doesn't tell us. And this is the question, not what John Jay said or this one said, because you can quote each other to death. What kind of Constitution do you want? Do you want one where the President of the United States without any check can do what he thinks best? Because, by the way, the courts won't be involved here, because they can avoid a court decision by never prosecuting based on this evidence. So the only potential check here is if we say no. Yes, you can wiretap, as long as you can get a warrant. And getting warrants under FISA is not hard. But we do not like the principle of an unchecked Presidential power. I will yield to my friend from California if he will begin by answering this question: Conservatives tell me they like to be textual with regard to the Constitution. Would he cite for me, I thought maybe the Constitution got changed while I wasn't looking, so I went and read article II, it took about a minute and a half, it is a pretty small article. I am glad to see the President can get paid. It is right there in the Constitution. But would he cite for me the text of the Constitution, article II, which empowers the President to do this, even if Congress tells him not to? I will just add this. With regard to Youngstown Sheet and Tube, as I recall the analysis, it was there are three situations. I will ask for additional time, because I would like to have a colloquy. The President acting alone, the President acting with Congress, and the President acting in contradiction to what Congress has said. The analysis has always been acting with Congress, the President is at the peak of his powers. Acting alone, it is unclear. Acting in contravention to what Congress has said, he is at his weakest. Here, since we have FISA, this is in contravention to what Congress has told him to do. So I would now yield to the gentleman. Would he begin just by citing the parts of the Constitution that are relevant, and then, obviously, he is free to say what he wishes.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Please read it. I would ask the gentleman literally to please read it, because I think it doesn't say what he says it says. Please read it.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, first let's note what a degradation of democracy is taking place here. The majority party has put forward a resolution that allows no amendment. There will be a debate in which those of us who think some things are good and some are bad, contrary to every reasonable democratic procedure, will have no opportunity to say so. Here is the tactic that is being used: they take a number of things that people agree with, they mix in with them things which are quite controversial. They treat them as if they were not separable. Let me say what I have said again before. The majority party thinks the way to legislate is the way you feed a pill to a dog: you take the unpalatable with the popular. Now I will have to say this: one of the things we are trying to do is to persuade the people in Iraq to be able to work together and make democracy work. We are trying to persuade, we are told, the Shiia and the Sunni to work together. We are trying to tell the majority Shiia to share power. Mr. Speaker, how can you and your party believe that we inspire people to share power by giving the example of its monopolization in an abusive fashion? I just hope that the members of parliament in Iraq who may hear about this will remember a very important point: please do not try this at home. Now let's get to the substance. This war in Iraq came after September 11. It was not the response to terrorism the war in Afghanistan was. I am struck in listening to the Members on the other side of the aisle that Afghanistan appears to have too many syllables for them to pronounce. What is in fact happening is that the war in Afghanistan, which was the response to the terrorist attack, which was almost unanimously supported here and by Democrats in the Senate, is in fact not going as well as it should. One of the prices we are paying for the war in Iraq is the deterioration in Afghanistan. Now, the war in Iraq was launched based on a couple of lies we were told. And I am struck to hear people still defending the arguments about the weapons of mass destruction. It seems my colleagues on the other side have decided to adopt a Marxist idea. The Marx in question, of course, is Chico, and the mantra is: Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? Having been repudiated overwhelmingly by the facts, they stick to the rhetoric. Here is the price we are paying. We shouldn't have gone in. Of course having gone in, we are victimized by one of the most incompetently administered examples in American national security history. But here is the price we pay: the war in Afghanistan deteriorates our ability to protect ourselves at home. Every time you hear that we can't afford communications, we can't afford more people at the border, we can't afford port security, every time people hear that we can't afford something that would enhance our security at home, understand that it is the war in Iraq that makes it impossible for this Nation to afford it. If we did not have these hundreds of billions being drained there, we could take care of the agenda. Finally, it constrains us elsewhere in the world. It has led to an increase in anti-Americanism which I deplore, with which I disagree, but it is a fact. Our ability to deal with the potential Iranian nuclear weaponry is constrained by the fact that we are in Iraq. In fact, the Iranians have been among the major beneficiaries of what we have done in Iraq. So you went into a war on the basis of two lies. You have handled it incompetently. We are now at the point, well, does that mean you pull out? And here is the point. You tell us on the one hand that there is great success. We have built a government, et cetera, et cetera. But also, you tell us simultaneously that if we withdrew American troops the house of cards falls. Well, which is it? Have you built a successful entity in Iraq? If you have, why can't we pull out? Why can't 28 million people in Iraq, with a couple of hundred thousand Iraqis under arms deal with 15 or 18,000 terrorists? The fact is that this is a failed policy that gets worse every day.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and at the conclusion of my remarks I will yield control of the time to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler). Mr. Chairman, this is the antidisplacement amendment. It is a substantive amendment to current law included in the appropriations bill. Under current law when units are destroyed, made no longer fit for occupation, for habitation, which have had a section 8 voucher inhabitant, the section 8 voucher stays on and can be transferred to another unit as a matter of right. This bill adds two words, purely substantive. It is not a financial issue. It adds the words ``under lease,'' which means a unit which had been occupied by a section 8 tenant, if it becomes occupied and 2 days later is then subject for demolition, that section 8 voucher is lost to that community. What we have is this. Communities are dealing with the issue of an overconcentration, in some cases, of low-income people. We all pay at least lip service to the notion of at least genuine integration in our society: racial, economic and in other ways. We have programs that try to promote this, and they often mean let's destroy some of the units that have been too densely packed together for lowest income people and spread them out. What the addition of the words by the Appropriations Committee does, and it didn't go through the authorizing committee, is to say to a community, when you engage in this process of better distributing and better integrating people, you may lose some of your overall capacity to serve people. That is a terrible choice to put to people. You should not tell a community because you do not want such concentration, you will then be able to accommodate fewer low-income people. That is part of our problem. You know, there was a time, Mr. Chairman, when urban renewal was known in the black community as Negro removal, because what it meant was you tore down the buildings where all the low-income people lived and you built no replacements. We now have a policy that say yes, tear down some of them, thin them out, reconfigure them, make them more habitable, but don't have that result in an overall loss of those units which are available for low- income people. The addition of those two words, ``under lease,'' means more than already is the case; because we have not achieved perfection and the achievement is ideal, we will lose some of the units in communities that decide to deconcentrate poverty and race, will have to pay the price to some extent of having fewer section 8 units available than before. I think that is a very grave error. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler) to control that time.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, like my colleague from New York, I am glad we are getting something additional. This is symptomatic of this bill. It will provide too little money for a lot of very important programs. And we will be told, yes, it is a good program, but we do not have the money. I believe the members of the subcommittee did the best possible job. I commend them for doing the best possible job in the circumstances. The problem is that the majority created the circumstances. This is the consequence of too many tax cuts with wars at the same time, and a budget that then leaves too little money. So in case after case after case, we will be told, you are right, that is a very important function, we do not have enough money. This particularly troubles me because I would like to build the consensus in the country for the kind of vigorous law enforcement that we need to protect ourselves in the face of this new threat. When the oversight board on civil liberties and privacy that the 9/11 Commission recommended is starved for money, you lose the opportunity to achieve that balance that would increase support for law enforcement. And while no one says it is a bad idea, except maybe the Vice President, but he did not say that openly, I just guessed, no one says that it is doing a bad job. There is too little money left because the priorities are tax cuts, the war in Iraq, and then everything else gets stiffed. And this is an example of a very good program. The committee did the best it could, and the amendment of the gentleman from Connecticut makes a bad situation somewhat better. I am glad that it is here, but we are in this situation because this is an example of the price the country is paying for a very distorted set of priorities. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman, who has been a leader in this fight.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I thank the ranking member of the subcommittee for yielding. I was hoping to be able to offer an amendment, but we ran into a CBO scoring problem and I was told that therefore it would not be supported. I deeply regret this. There is in this bill a very good set of provisions in general, expanding the ability of the FHA to be responsive. It came from work we did in the authorizing committee. Frankly, I was surprised to see it plucked in part from the authorizing version and stuck into this bill. It is authorizing language. On the whole it is a good thing. The Appropriations Committee took from the authorizing committee much of what we did, but they did not take everything. Now, they are entitled, obviously, to pick and choose, but there is one grave omission here. One of the things this bill will do will be to give the FHA the authority the ability to extend loans to people who might be of lower credit risk. That is, it will try to help get to people who might not have been able to get loans by stricter standards. That is a good thing. And it says that those people will have to pay a higher upfront fee. It could be as much as double, from 1.5 percent to 3 percent of the loan, and they will also be forced to pay a higher fee going forward. With people who are just starting out, I will accept the need to do that. What my amendment would have accomplished, and it was something we were ready to do in the authorizing process and we lost the ability to do that, it was to say that a low income borrower, a borrower with some credit risk, who was meeting his or her obligations after a period of 5 years would be eligible to get back the extra money. In other words, without that provision the Federal Government is going to be something of a predatory lender. It will lend money to the lower income people with the higher credit risk and charge them more for that loan. Now, as a starting point that might be a reasonable idea. But once a borrower in that category, having borrowed the money, has demonstrated over 5 years a capacity and willingness to make the payments, why does the Federal Government continue to penalize that person? People have said, well, there might be some losses here. If there are losses, why should the responsible low income borrower be forced to bear all that cost? Why should that not be shared among all the borrowers? Why should the cost of paying for those loans that may default, a small percentage but there will still be some, why should that not go for everybody? So right now if you are getting the maximum FHA loan, it is irrelevant to you if these people default. We are making the poor pay for the poor. You are making in this a predatory lender of the Federal Government. Without the amendment that I was told would not be accepted, so I will not push it here, low income people who borrow money from the FHA will be charged more upfront, they will be charged more going forward, and no matter how well they meet their obligations, no matter how responsible they are, they will continue to pay more for the loan. The poor pay more under this bill. And what the CBO said as well, there is a certain element of subsidy here for the low income borrowers, and this would increase the subsidy. That is right, for the low income borrowers. I do think it is worth to trying to reach out to the lower income people, and I understand this means that some will default, but I do not understand why one low income individual or 10 or 20 low income individuals who meet their obligation ought to be the ones who bear the burden for those who do not. Now, as I said, I understand, because CBO said it was going to score it negatively, I was not going to be able to get it adopted. But I hope, to the committee, that this will not be the end of it. Please, we are talking, Mr. Chairman, about ending predatory lending. Without the language I was talking about, we, the Federal Government, become an entity that charges you more if you are poor than if you are wealthy, that charges you more if you are in the low income bracket because you are asked to shoulder the burden of people in the same bracket who will default. That is unworthy of us. It also, of course, retards the very purpose of the bill because you say you want to expand home ownership by reaching out to people and then you charge them more because they have to pay not only the price of their own home but they are going to be saddled with the price of other people in their income level and their credit rating level who default. That is an inappropriate thing for the Federal Government to do. And while I accept the fact that I cannot get this accepted now, I hope we can talk about this. By the way, the overall bill will raise money for the Federal Government. This would simply reduce it by a small amount. That is the least we can do for low income people.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for her leadership. She has been a consistent leader in helping cities' economic development. I want to point out this seems to me a particularly odd thing to do. Cities which use this are not getting additional funding. They pay it back.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, anyone who doubts the wisdom of the constitutional requirement that important officials be confirmed by the Senate before taking up their jobs should ponder the disastrous example of John Bolton, whom the Senate declined to confirm as Ambassador to the U.N., and who received a recess appointment from President Bush. His tenure has been disastrous, leading to a diminution of American influence and a failure to accomplish legitimate American goals. Like many other Americans, I greatly regretted the fact that Deputy Secretary General Mark Malloch Brown recently gave a speech strongly critical of America's role regarding the U.N., but my regret was aimed not at Mr. Brown for giving the speech, but at the Bush administration, and specifically Ambassador Bolton, for actions that led to the speech. As a Member of Congress, I am troubled by the fact that I have to agree with the substance of a speech so sharply critical of our Government, but I believe that Mr. Brown did us a service in speaking out, because it may alert my colleagues in Congress and the American people in general of the need to press for a change in the disastrous policies that Ambassador Bolton pursues in the President's name. In the Washington Post on Monday, June 12, Sebastian Mallaby wrote a thoughtful and persuasive piece about the Bolton record. Because the current situation regarding our representation of the U.N. does so much damage to legitimate American interests, Sebastian Mallaby's column is particularly welcome and I hope will be strongly considered by President Bush, Secretary Rice, and other policy makers in this administration. It is also very important for those of us in Congress to understand his points and I ask that his column be printed here. [From the Washington Post, June 12, 2006] At the U.N., Bluster Backfires (By Sebastian Mallaby) Last month President Bush issued a rare apology. ``Saying `Bring it on,' kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the wrong signal,'' he confessed. ``I think in certain parts of the world it was misinterpreted.'' Well done, Mr. President, you've understood that bluster can backfire. Now how about sharing this insight with your ambassador to the United Nations? John R. Bolton, the ambassador in question, has a rich history of losing friends and failing to influence people. He was notorious, even before arriving at the United Nations last year, for having said that 10 stories of the U.N. headquarters could be demolished without much loss; he had described the United States as the sun around which lesser nations rotate--mere ``asteroids,'' he'd branded them. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Senate refused to confirm Bolton as U.N. ambassador. ``Arrogant,'' ``bullying,'' and ``the poster child of what someone in the diplomatic corps should not be,'' Sen. George Voinovich called him. Bush sent Bolton anyway, bypassing the Senate by appointing him during a congressional recess. It soon turned out that dismissing foreign ambassadors as asteroid dwellers was merely a warm-up. As soon as Bolton got to New York, he blew up the preparatory negotiations for a gathering of heads of state, insisting that the other 190 members of the world body immediately agree to hundreds of changes in the summit document. If Bolton had picked a fight on a worthwhile issue, this might have been justified. But one of the chief aims of his edits was to eliminate all mention of the anti-poverty Millennium Development Goals, even though these targets for reducing child mortality and so on are inoffensive. After a week of Bolton-induced bureaucratic battles, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice weighed in, explaining that the administration actually had nothing against the development goals. When the summit convened, Bush himself had to declare during his speech that he supported the targets that his ambassador had repudiated. Bolton's next triumph was to demand U.N. reform, or rather to pretend to do so. An effort to create a credible human rights council was underway, but Bolton skipped nearly all of the 30 or so negotiating sessions. Then, when the negotiators produced a blueprint for the new council, Bolton declared it unacceptable, leaving furious American allies to wonder why he hadn't weighed in earlier to secure a better outcome. ``The job now is to get clarity on what the U.S. wants,'' the British ambassador said icily. But what Bolton really wanted was quite clear: to allow the negotiations to falter and then to condemn whatever they produced, throwing red meat to his U.N.-hating allies on the right of the Republican Party. Next, Bolton blundered into U.N. management reform, an issue that may soon precipitate a crisis. The top U.N. officials, led by Secretary General Kofi Annan, had laid out a menu of radical changes, designed to eliminate useless conferences and reports and to move staff to departments that most needed them. Bolton added his own brand of bluster to this plan: If poor countries carried on resisting management reforms, rich countries would stop paying for the organization. The deadline for agreeing on reform is the end of this month, but no breakthrough is in sight. Officials are wondering what to do if U.N. checks start bouncing. Not many reformers at the United Nations believe that the budget threat achieved anything. To the contrary, Bolton has so poisoned the atmosphere that the cause of management renewal is viewed by many developing countries as an American plot. And if Bolton carries through on his threat to cut off money for the United Nations, the United States will be more isolated than ever. Refusing to fund U.N. officials who are planning for a peacekeeping mission in Darfur is not a winning strategy. Last week the U.N. deputy secretary general, a pro-American Briton named Mark Malloch Brown, went public with his Bolton frustrations. He pointed out that the United Nations serves many American objectives, from deploying peacekeepers to helping with Iraq's elections. Given this cooperation, the powers that be in Washington should stick up for the United Nations rather than threatening to blow it up. They should not be passive in the face of ``unchecked U.N.-bashing and stereotyping.'' This merely stated the obvious. If you doubt that U.N.- bashing and stereotyping goes on, ask yourself what gallery Bolton is playing to--or check out the latest cover of the National Rifle Association magazine, which features a wolf with U.N. logos in its eyeballs. But Malloch Brown's speech didn't seem obvious to Bolton. ``This is the worst mistake by a senior U.N. official that I have seen,'' he thundered in response. ``Even though the target of the speech was the United States, the victim, I fear, will be the United Nations.'' Which would suit Bolton and his allies perfectly. But it should not suit Bush, at least not now that he's grasped that bluster can backfire. Arriving at the U.N. summit last September, a different Bush greeted the secretary general and gestured at Bolton; ``has the place blown up since he's been here?'' he demanded, teasingly. Well, it's now time for the new Bush to acknowledge that Bolton's tactics aren't funny. The United States needs an ambassador who can work with the United Nations. Right now, it doesn't have one.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Speaker, I disagree with the bipartisan House leadership criticism of the FBI's search of a Member's office. I know nothing specifically about the case, except that the uncontroverted public evidence did seem to justify the issuance of a warrant. What we now have is a Congressional leadership, the Republican part of which has said it is okay for law enforcement to engage in warrantless searches of the average citizen, now objecting when a search, pursuant to a validly issued warrant, is conducted of a Member of Congress. I understand that the speech and debate clause is in the Constitution. It is there because Queen Elizabeth I and King James I were disrespectful of Parliament. It ought to be, in my judgment, construed narrowly. It should not be in any way interpreted as meaning that we as Members of Congress have legal protections superior to those of the average citizen. So I think it was a grave error to have criticized the FBI. I think what they did, they ought to be able to do in every case where they can get a warrant from a judge. I think, in particular, for the leadership of this House, which has stood idly by while this administration has ignored the rights of citizens, to then say we have special rights as Members of Congress is wholly inappropriate.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I am here to confess my reading incomprehension. I have listened to many of my conservative friends talk about the wonders of the free market, of the importance of letting the consumers make their best choices, of keeping government out of economic activity, of the virtues of free trade, but then I look at various agricultural programs like this one. Now, it violates every principle of free market economics known to man and two or three not yet discovered. So I have been forced to conclude that in all of those great free market texts by Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek and all the others that there is a footnote that says, by the way, none of this applies to agriculture. Now, it may be written in high German, and that may be why I have not been able to discern it, but there is no greater contrast in America today than between the free enterprise rhetoric of so many conservatives and the statist, subsidized, inflationary, protectionist, anti-consumer agricultural policies, and this is one of them. In particular, I have listened to people, and some of us have said let us protect workers and the environment in trade; let us not have unrestricted free trade; but let us have trade that respects worker rights and environmental rights. And we have been excoriated for our lack of concern for poor countries. There is no greater obstacle, as it is now clear in the Doha round, to the completion of a comprehensive trade policy than the American agricultural policy, with one exception, European agricultural policy, which is much worse and just as phony. Sugar is an example. This program is an interference with the legitimate efforts at economic self-help in many foreign nations. So I appreciate the leadership of the gentleman from Arizona and the gentleman from Oregon. Here is a chance for some of my free-enterprise- professing friends to get honest with themselves, and now maybe we will see some born-again free enterprisers in the agricultural field.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I thank the ranking member. Mr. Speaker, first the criticism of the procedure. This is a difficult and complex bill. It has no business being before us under suspension of the rules. It ought to be subject to amendment and unrestricted debate. It's not like we didn't have enough time. And to show our commitment to democracy by muffling it here serves no good purpose. But we do have the bill before us. I plan to vote for it after some conversation in which I hope I can be joined by the gentleman from California. Mr. Speaker, let me explain my basic reason. We were told when Hamas won that election, tragically, when the majority of the people of Israel were ready to make significant concessions, had already begun to do that, an historic moment when Israel was ready to make significant concessions for peace, they were totally repudiated. We were told, well, don't overinterpret that election, because the victory of Hamas, which in percentage terms wasn't as great as in the Parliament for a variety of reasons, but we were told that victory for Hamas was not simply from people who agreed with their rejectionist, hateful philosophy; but it was probably because they were so much better than Fatah at delivering services. To some extent, we got the explanation, frankly, for congressional earmarks. Why do Members here like to earmark? Because they can go deliver the goods to people back home and then get votes from people who don't agree with them. That is, we all know, why we have earmarks. Well, I don't want Hamas getting any more earmarks. I don't want to contribute to a situation where Hamas can deliver the goods because they are well funded, and then can convert the good will they earned with that money into votes for rejection. That is why I fully support a strict refusal to fund Hamas. And people say, well, you will be punishing the Palestinian people. I have heard the argument before. There are a lot of differences, but there is one common thing. When this House helped override the veto of Ronald Reagan against sanctions against the hateful, racist regime of South Africa, we were told by many that we would be hurting the people of South Africa, and that was true. The average South African, the average black South African who was victimized by apartheid was, in the short term, victimized by sanctions. And we did not apply sanctions only against the racists who ran the government; we applied sanctions against the whole country. It is sometimes the case that appropriate public policy will have short-term negative effects. But here is our problem, as I say. We have been told that Hamas won that election in part because of its skill at delivering goods and services. That means if you support peace, it is very much in your interest not to aid Hamas's ability to deliver goods and services. So I fully support the part of the bill that says, no aid for Hamas. I have to say to some of my friends, I do also want to warn the President, as some of my liberal friends have come here to defend his right for flexibility in the foreign policy, please be warned that that is a very temporary alliance. Mr. President, please don't assume that your allies here arguing for your flexibility will last much longer than tonight. But I also am very skeptical of those who say, well, let's give the money so they can have better schools. Let's give the money so they can learn reconciliation, et cetera. No, I don't think a Hamas government is going to allow that. So I am very much in favor of this bill insofar as it says, no, we will not contribute to the further political growth of Hamas. I want that government to fail and fall. And that does mean, as it did with sanctions in South Africa, some short-term pain, although this bill, more than it has been described by its opponents, does allow for humanitarian aid. Let me say for those of my liberal friends who mourn for the President's flexibility: Don't you know that whenever we grant waivers, no matter how complicated the process, they are waived? There is nothing about a requirement of a Presidential waiver that ever stops the President from doing what he has done. The President can certify that Abbas was pregnant if he had to to get the bill through, and he would do it. The history of waivers is they have been no obstacle to what policy is. But here is my problem, and I would ask the gentleman from California to respond in this way, I agree that we shouldn't aid Hamas. But this bill says we should only aid any entity if it becomes democratic or has taken steps to become democratic and to become transparent. Now, I am all for democracy and transparency, although their immediate benefit is a little unclear in the Middle East right now. But I believe that if there were a strict interpretation of this criteria, we could not have helped the Camp David Peace Agreement with Egypt which was neither democratic nor transparent, nor is Jordan, nor was the PLO and the PLA before Hamas. Let me put it this way: If Abbas' team had won instead of Hamas, I believe there might have been an argument that they don't meet the criteria. So I would ask the gentleman from California, how strictly are we going to interpret these criteria? Can he give me some assurance that these criteria will not be so strictly interpreted that you would make it impossible to deal with the very imperfect regimes that we are going to have to deal with?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I thank the gentleman. Reclaiming my time, I hope as this process goes forward in the less restricted other body that we can clarify that and sharpen it. I will say that with regard to the international financial institutions over which the committee on which I serve has jurisdiction, we struck from the bill the requirement of democracy as a prerequisite for peace in the Middle East. Let me also note, by the way, I was struck, the gentleman from Virginia lamented the inclusion in the provision in this bill which some of the opponents have denied existed. It is kind of an odd thing. The poor provision is attacked by people who don't like it and denied by people who do. That is the provision allowing aid to the president of the Authority. The bill does provide that the aid can go to President Abbas to make peace, not just for his personal security. So I disagree with the gentleman from Virginia. It is that amendment and some of the other amendments that we have had in there. So I will be voting for the bill at this point in the spirit the gentleman from California has mentioned, namely that, yes, we say ``no'' to Hamas because we have no interest in funding Hamas so it becomes more politically popular in support of its rejectionism. But we do not interpret this bill as being an obstacle to negotiations of the sort that we have with Egypt, with Jordan, with Arafat, certainly no winner of the civil liberties award from anybody. With that assurance of the gentleman and the hope that we can refine this as it goes forward, I will vote for this bill.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I yield to the gentleman from California.