Barney Frank

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier), and hope that he will remember me when he becomes chairman.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I am glad to turn away from the turf battles, which are to be of interest to no one outside this Chamber and very few inside, to talk a little more about substance. Madam Speaker, I said earlier that one of the things I liked about this bill was that we reversed or at least stopped this trend to impinge on free speech. We have reduced the tendency to restrict speech which is electronically transmitted to a lesser degree of constitutional protection. But this is not the only bill relevant. I want to talk here about the danger in some other legislation of our continuing the unfortunate tendency of holding electronically transmitted speech to a lesser standard of protection. I am told working its way through this body is legislation which would deny Federal aid to libraries and schools which do not impose various kinds of filtering devices on their own equipment. That it seems to me a very grave error. Of course, it makes a mockery of this profession of respect for States' rights which we occasionally hear, particularly when those who claim to be for States' rights do not like what the States are doing. But the notion that we would impose a Federal judgment on schools and libraries, and make them use this very admittedly imperfect technology of filtration so that they would be less than fully free in what they gave people, is an example of this unfortunate tendency to say that electronically transmitted speech has a lesser order of protection. I hope no one would propose that Congress would say libraries would not get any money unless they censored books, unless they censored public speeches. Why, then, do we insist, and I hope we do not, that libraries can only get Federal funds if they agree to censure their electronic devices? We already passed as part of the Telecommunications Act something called the Communications Decency Act, which was stricken by a 9 to nothing vote in the Supreme Court as unconstitutional. Indeed, some of the most ardent defenders of free speech during the campaign finance debate enthusiastically supported this, which was obviously unconstitutional at the time, and the Supreme Court held it to be. I would just say in closing, Madam Speaker, that while I am pleased that here we took great pains to protect intellectual property while avoiding giving any additional incentive to censor, we may be undoing that in other pieces of legislation. I would urge my colleagues to follow elsewhere the guide that I think we have set forth here: Do not adopt restrictions on electronically transmitted speech that we would not apply to written speech and to oral speech, to newspapers, to magazines, to theater, to other forums of public debate. As this society continues to increase the percentage of our communication with each other that is electronically transmitted, it is essential that we give electronically transmitted speech the same high degree of protection from censorship and regulation that we give other speech, or we will be a less free society in consequence. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, I did want to say that the ranking member of the full Committee on the Judiciary, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers), is in Michigan today because it is primary day in Michigan, and only that kept him from being here. The gentleman has been for a long time now one of the staunchest advocates of intellectual property rights. He is a man who has a great feel for American culture, and fully understands the role of intellectual property correctly understood in fostering our cultural traditions. So I did want to express the strong support of the gentleman from Michigan and note that his leadership in this was very, very important, and to explain his absence as being due entirely to the fact that he had to be in Michigan for his primary.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I did not want to interfere with the progress of the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Scarborough), but I did want to underline the significance of this to Members. As I understand it, we have now adopted an amendment that acts against the President's Federalism order. That is relevant, because I have been told, by looking at the work of the Committee on Rules, that when we do the Commerce, Justice, State appropriation, an amendment will be offered by the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Hefley) which would cancel an Executive Order involving the civil service and discrimination and will also include this. So I do want to make it clear now to Members that having adopted this amendment today, which cancels the Federalism order, when the vote comes on the amendment of the gentleman from Colorado which deals with sexual orientation and the executive branch, it will have a part dealing with Federalism which will be moot. That is, the Federalism part of that amendment, of the Hefley amendment, will now not mean anything. So the Hefley amendment is now back to its original form before it was transmogrified by the Committee on Rules. Thus, and I want to stress this again because it did get a little complicated, it is a little late, people may be getting low blood sugar and may not be paying attention, we now have adopted an amendment which, to the extent that we can, cancels the President's Federalism order. I was not in favor of that. I tried to yell loud, but nobody heard me. On the other hand, what it means is that when the Hefley amendment comes before us, even though it will purport to deal both with the question of sexual orientation in the Executive Order on the civil service and with anti-Federalism, it will in fact be solely on sexual orientation, because the Federalism part will be redundant and it will, therefore, have no role whatsoever in the debate.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the persistence of the gentleman from Indiana and the gentleman from Michigan. The Space Station was being debated when I first got here. And one of the major arguments for it was that we had to do it before the Russians did. I would recommend that people go back to the Congressional Record. This started out as something we had to do to frustrate the Russians. We now have to do it to help the Russians. The justification has flipped on its head, but the thrust goes forward. The gentleman from California does do, in my judgment, a very good job within the constraints that he has. We want to lessen his constraints. I do not know how many Members of this body have told veterans how much they regret having cut the smoking benefit. I daresay that a great majority of the Members of this House have said to the veterans, ``I am very sorry, but the constraints made me do it.'' This is the very appropriations account where we could reinstate that veterans health benefit for smoking simply by reducing this particular item. So the gentleman says, well, we do not understand how the Committee on Appropriations works. We do. We have rules, and the rules say the allocation goes to this particular subcommittee and they decide among NASA and EPA and HUD and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Members have a right to say that they want to continue with the Space Station. I do not think Members have the intellectual or moral right to say to veterans that they are very sorry that they could not fund their health benefit if they vote to go forward with the Space Station. That is the kind of choice we are making. Or to say to people, we wish we could clean up more Superfund sites, or house more people who are hurting. The other thing I must say. We sometimes get into rhetorical excess. The worst things I have ever heard about NASA sometimes comes from its defenders, because people come to the floor and say if we kill the manned Space Station we are killing NASA. What an unfair denigration of the important scientific work of NASA. The gentleman from Michigan just mentioned the Mars Pathfinder. That was not dependent on the Space Station. Indeed, those other things are competitors with the Space Station. The gentleman from California correctly mentioned Alan Shepard, one of our great heroes. And we all lament the fact that he died. We care a lot about human life. When we put human beings into the situation, we greatly increase the cost because of our concern for human life. There are times when human participation is scientifically very important. The justification for the amount of money being spent to put those people up in space in a Space Station is not scientific. It is psychological. It is political. Go back and look at what the arguments used to be. No one has argued to me and I have never seen any group of reputable scientists not directly involved in this project say that if the Federal Government were to make available to scientists this amount of money, that is how they would choose to use it. Of course there is some worth to it. It is not money wasted. The question is not whether it has got any value at all but whether this is the single best use of that money. And no one thinks there is a scientific justification. As I said, this started out with a political justification and a military justification. I am sorry I did not have time to go back into old Congressional Records of 10 years ago, when we were being told we had to do this as a matter of national security, we had to do it because if we did not do it the Russians would do it. Now it has become a part of the foreign aid program. The general point is very clear, as the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer) has made clear, the money has been spent. The gentleman from Wisconsin said we already spent $22 billion. I assume what he was doing was submitting for us an illustration in the dictionary of idioms. The gentleman from Wisconsin wanted to illustrate the meaning of saying ``throwing good money after bad.'' Because the argument that having spent $22 billion on a project that was originally supposed to cost 8, we should now spend another 70, has a logic which defies me. I do not understand why having already spent three times as much we were told we should, we should go on so we spend 12 times as much. We are in a very constrained situation. There is no case to be made that this is the best use of the money. I hope the amendment is adopted. If the amendment is adopted, we would have more money to use for housing, for the Environmental Protection Agency, for restoring the smoking health benefit for veterans, and to enhance the scientific mission of NASA. Because the great bulk of the money could go back to NASA. The gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer) has made an excellent case. Does anyone think if we had been told at the outset that this is what the Space Station would cost and what it would give us that we would have voted for it? The answer is no. It is not too late to ask for the correct information.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, it is an important day. The Republican leadership, and much of the Republican Party, will take a brief time out from attacking the President over China to vote for what China most wants. So that no one should be confused by these criticisms of the President in China, because today, with I believe the support of the majority of Republicans, China will get that which it most wants, a continuation of one of the most imbalanced trade and political relationships in the word. No one I know of is suggesting we should have no relations with China. What we are saying is that we have negotiated a lousy deal. We obsess that they might not think so much of us. Frankly, if I were the Chinese, I would be worried about what America thought of them. And I believe we have, with this enormous market of ours, of which they take great advantage, we have an enormous power to put better terms on our relationships with China. The question is not whether we should have normal or nonnormal trading relations. By the way, I am also glad to see the Republican Party repudiate their attacks on political correctness. By changing this from Most-Favored-Nation to Normal Trading Relations, they obviously show the power of semantics. But we can get a better deal than the one we are prepared to buy today.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I agree with all the positive programs that the gentleman from New York mentioned, and I will be supporting them. My problem is I think there are couple of gaps. Years ago when we had the failure in the savings and loan industry, and then in the commercial bank area, many less in the commercial bank area, this Congress, through the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity took the lead in establishing affordable housing programs for both what was then the Resolution Trust Corporation, dealing with the S&L crisis, and the FDIC's resolution entity as well. What they did was to take the houses that had come into the inventory of the Federal banking regulators and sell them to low-income people at a reduced rate. That is, we did not auction those off. We set them aside so that low-income people could buy them. They were not given away; they bought them. But they bought them at less than they might have to buy at open auction. Unfortunately, when the current majority took over the Congress they effectively ended those programs by not appropriating for them. So I would hope we would go back to that. I would hope we would say to the extent that there is a Federal housing inventory taken over by banks or taken over by HUD, we would also reinstitute programs which made that available to lower income people, because there is this danger that we will increase the difficulty for people at the lower end. It is obviously important to maximize home ownership across the board, but we should not forget people at the low end. Indeed, the one question I had, and we will pursue this on Thursday, when the gentleman from New York said we would allow people to use some of their rental assistance, public housing assistance, to buy housing, I am all for that. But it ought not to come at the expense of existing housing. There are ways to do that that would not cause problems, but there are ways that could cause problems. If, in fact, the result is that less money is available for maintaining existing assisted and public housing, we will have some problems. So, I do want to add to the ability of lower-income people to own their own homes, but not in a way that is going to exacerbate the problems of the people who rent. Because a certain percentage of the people, because of the circumstances they live in, are going to continue to be renters. And, yes, it is important to promote home ownership. The gentleman said, and the language said affordable housing for everyone. Some percentage of that is going to be rental housing, and we are not now doing nearly enough to help people at the low end live in decent, affordable rental housing. So I hope that we will not forget that, that we will not go forward with home ownership in ways that will exacerbate that. The resolution, as it is stated, is a reasonable one. I welcome the repudiation of the flat tax that it includes. I think we will be doing people a service by making clear that the flat tax is a rhetorical symbol, but the presidential campaign of 2000 to the contrary notwithstanding, as the gentleman from Nebraska stated, it is not to be a reality and people ought not to worry too much about it, and we can go forward with a series of programs which would include home ownership. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Minge).

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I must say that I owe an apology to the supporters of this. Having first read it, I was inclined to regard if as fairly trivial. It is a resolution with no binding impact. It seemed to me to just be sort of cheerleading. I was somewhat struck that in the week in which we are passing a housing appropriation bill which severely diminishes funds that should be available for people at the low brackets, we are celebrating the importance of affordable housing. In fact, there is a great inconsistency between the legislation we will be adopting, which significantly underfunds affordable housing and will allow the gap to greatly widen for those who need it. But it is not nearly as trivial as I thought. Indeed, there are some very interesting things. I notice on page 2, lines 4 through 6, the following: ``Encourage tax incentives such as the mortgage interest deduction at all levels of government.'' The gentleman from Washington also mentioned the low income tax credit. I guess, Mr. Speaker, when the House passes this today, the appropriate phrase will be, if I may lapse into a little bilingualism, ``sic transit gloria flat tax.'' We have heard a lot about the flat tax, and it seemed to be an idea that had some support in some Republican circles. But those circles appear not to be included in the circle of influence today. The mortgage interest deduction is, of course, the biggest bump in the flat tax. The mortgage interest deduction is very different than a flat tax, and I am struck that the House is today apparently repudiating the notion of a flat tax, because it is citing not simply the fact of the mortgage interest deduction, which is a major bump in that flatness, but it is celebrating the principles of using the Tax Code to achieve social purposes. What we are saying here is home ownership is a good thing, and let us use tax incentives to change what the economy might otherwise do. Now, I am for the mortgage interest deduction myself. I supported putting a cap on it, but I think it ought to exist. I was not sure whether my Republican colleagues remain as loyal to that as they apparently are.

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I would thank the gentleman. I would say this is a day for people to come together. I was particularly pleased to see the gentleman from Iowa expressing his support for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and his talk about the essentiality of this role. I will have to say this though. It seems to me you can be for the mortgage interest deduction and a flatter tax, but you cannot be and still remain within the confines of the English language for the mortgage interest deduction and a flat tax. It is very unflat, and, indeed, it is not simply the flatness of the mortgage interest deduction, it is the notion that it is legitimate to use the Federal Tax Code to achieve policy goals. Indeed, not just the Federal Tax Code. I notice this also encourages the mortgage interest deduction to be maintained ``at all levels of government.'' So apparently this is a case where the Federal government is also giving some advice to State and local governments. Apparently the people who drafted this believe that State governments, left to their own, probably would not get the Tax Code right. So here is a little advice to the States to follow the Federal example. As I said, I am supportive of this, but I think we ought to note that it is very much a deviation from the notion of a flat tax. I also noted, because I agree with the gentleman from Washington who talked about the low income housing tax credit, another bump, not as big, because it is the low income people and we would, of course, not do for low income people anything of the magnitude of the mortgage interest deduction, but it is another deviation from the principles of the flat tax. So I am in favor of this. The other thing though I do want to stress so that no one misunderstands, subparagraph (A), just before repudiating the flat tax, it says ``promote the ability of the private sector to produce affordable housing without excessive government regulation.'' Now, obviously no one is for more excessive government regulation. I am against excessive government regulation. But lest anyone think that means no government regulation, let us remember that last week we celebrated in this House the passage of a new government regulation of the private housing market, the bill to reform private mortgage insurance. That is private mortgage insurance, a part of the private sector, and we passed a Federal bill here which I supported, and I thank the chairman for bringing it forward, to increase regulation. So lest anyone think that there is an objection to excessive government regulation, meaning they are opposed to regulation in general, let me remind them that this House, which is about to pass this resolution, passed the bill reforming private mortgage insurance. The House and the Senate did it, and what that was was a new regulation. Previously there was no Federal regulation of private mortgage insurance that I am aware of, and we now have federally regulated private mortgage insurance. I am glad of that. I think people should understand that. We also, by the way, have decided that the private insurance market does not work too well without us, so we are about to pass, and I voted for it in full committee, a very significant government intervention into the flood insurance field. So once again, I would not want anyone to think that just because we say we are against excessive government regulation, we think we can leave the private sector to its own devices. We reformed the private mortgage insurance; we are going to reform flood insurance. So I want to note that sometimes, and I say this in defense of my Republican colleagues, sometimes they may appear more monochromatic than they in fact are. There might be people who just read the headlines and listen to the TV news, and they may get the sense that this is a group of flat-taxers and people who never want to see any kind of regulation. Instead, we have a group that now tells us that the mortgage interest deduction is very important, not just at the Federal level but at all levels; a group that decided that we better reform private mortgage insurance; a group that has decided that the flood insurance plan does not work on its own, the private flood insurance, and we better get involved. So I am delighted to support this resolution, not just because of what it says but because it does advance a goal, which is having people understand the true diversity ideologically of the Republican Party. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I would inform the gentleman I have at most one more speaker, so I will reserve the balance of my time at this time.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I know we are trying to reach common ground here, but that simply defies the English language. What we did with PMI was a government regulation of a private operation. Now, I agree it was beneficial. I had always been for it. But it was not undoing of regulation as we used the word. What we did was to pass a government regulation establishing new rules for what has heretofore been an entirely private set of transactions. I am glad we did, but that is what we did.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would again yield, yes, I agree. Government regulation often has the effect of unburdening people who should not be burdened.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I know we are all eager to conclude, but I did feel the need to speak. We have had a number of amendments today, and I find myself in the unusual position, as someone who has been on the Subcommittee on Housing for 18 years, of not really being able to enthusiastically get involved in the amendment process because some things are beyond repair, and this bill is one of them. It is no reflection on either the chairman or the ranking member. They have, in my experience, done in the past and continue to do an excellent job with what they are given to work with. The gentleman from California and the gentleman from Ohio I think have been sensitive and thoughtful in their responsibilities as leaders of the appropriations subcommittee. But what they have been given to work with in this bill is a disgrace. There is hardly an aspect of this important appropriations bill which comes close to being adequately funded, and we ought to be clear that this is a reflection of the outrageous, crabbed, insensitive, socially-destructive priorities that are now governing this Congress. What is particularly interesting, I think, is that there are probably 80 percent of the Members who have told some group that, yes, they wish we could have given them more money in veterans' health, in Section 8 housing, in brownfields, in the cleanup of Superfund sites. Everybody here, close to everybody, is for more money. But, in fact, we will be disappointing interest after interest, legitimate interests, because of a crabbed and insensitive set of priorities. There simply is no way to improve this bill. The gentlemen who run the committee have done as good a job as they can with the extraordinarily meager resources they are given, so as we amend here, we are reduced to not even robbing Peter to pay Paul, we are reduced to mugging Peter to pay Paul's burial expenses, because this bill systematically degrades and destroys and diminishes valuable government programs. Let us be very clear, this is a bill inadequate to help with our housing crisis. This is a bill which will leave people in need of housing, hard-working families, people who are being told to get off welfare and get jobs, it will leave them in a worse crisis, because they will, in many parts of this country, not be able to afford housing. It will leave the environmental problems of the country worse off. It will deprive veterans of this country of health care they need to have. What are we being told we will then do? We are going to cut taxes. We have a surplus, and we are told, particularly on the other side, that we should rejoice because there is this great surplus. I do rejoice that we are generating more money, but is not a nickel to go to the veterans who have already lost health care? Is nothing to go alleviate a housing crisis which this bill will make worse? Is nothing out of that even worth considering to deal with environmental problems which go undone? Members here, I guess I would at least ask for this, Members who have said this is the best we can do for the environment, for housing and for veterans, and we have to cut taxes, please have the decency not to tell people how much you wish you could have helped them. Please have the decency not to tell people, that, oh, yes, you were for more housing, and you were for more help for the veterans, and you were for more help for the brownfields, but somehow you could not do it. Do you know what we have? What I have called the reverse Houdini. Harry Houdini became famous, as Ragtime remembers, because other people would tie him in knots, and his trick was to get out of the knots. What we have here is a House that has done the reverse Houdini by voting a crabbed and inadequate budget that underfunds valuable social programs, and then says, if we have additional revenue, let us put all of it into tax cuts for people that are already pretty wealthy. And then people will come to us and say we need help with veterans. Veterans are going without health care. We need help with housing. We need help with the environment. What do we say to them? We cannot help you. Why can we not help you? Because we have tied our own hands. That is the reverse Houdini. The Houdini is when somebody else ties you up and you get out of it. The reverse Houdini is when you tie yourself up, and then people come and say please help me with these terrible social problems, and you say, I am sorry, I cannot do that, I am all tied up. But it a self-inflicted restraint. So I am not participating in this debate on the amendment process. Many of my friends are trying very hard, but they are trying to square the circle. Despite the good intentions of the gentleman from California, and I apologize to him for praising him in this context, I will do him no good, I am afraid, by doing so, but I know he tries. The gentleman from Ohio tries. But they have been given such a desperately inadequate amount of money to deal with some of the gravest social problems in America, not because the money is not there, but because this House chooses to misallocate the money in a reflection of terrible priorities. Mr. Chairman, that is why I took the 5 minutes right now. That is why I am so disappointed that we are so ill-serving the American people. Amendment No. 12 Offered by Mr. Lazio of New York

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I believe the amendment is a mistake. Yes, we have the power to do this, but it is not sensible to exercise indirectly every ounce of power we have. There are times when we may decide to get our purposes accomplished better by some delegation. One of the problems we have is we are talking here about emergency situations. In emergency situations it is useful for this government to have the power to react. Now it could come to Congress, but let us be clear about one of the major principles of legislation. The ankle bone is connected to the shoulder bone. There is a pattern here of an important bill coming to this body, and even more to the other body, and remember, this amendment does not say the House will decide, it says Congress will decide. So this means that nothing will happen unless it has gone through this body and the other body. The fact is that it can then become tied up with all matter of other issues. If, in fact, we think there ought to be a capacity to act on the merits or not in the particular financial situation, then saying there has to be an issue- by-issue vote in both the House and the Senate makes that very unlikely. Now we have heard all kinds of terrible things that could happen from this fund, but the opponents of the fund, the advocates of the amendment, have said noticeably we have had this since 1934. Well, where are the horror stories? Where are all the terrible things that happened? We have had people say, well, billions could have been taken, this could have happened. We got a lot of ``couldas'' and a lot of ``mightas'' and a lot of possibles, but we have no horror stories. And one thing that body is good at is giving the horror stories. If there had been abuses, we would have heard about them. Now my friend from Texas, who is intellectually honest and coherent, says that he is against the whole fund, he is a supporter of the gold standard, he does not like this whole notion of currency. He is a logical proponent of the amendment. But I would suggest that others less fiercely devoted to the gold standard than he probably are not as on solid logical ground. I will say my friend from Texas was, I thought, uncharacteristically a little inconsistent when he said on the one hand it is a terrible idea because it propped up other currencies, but then he also noted that according to him it is impossible to do that. So it may be guilty of trying to do the impossible, but it could not be guilty of having done the impossible. The gentleman from Alabama complained because we use it to prop up the yen. We propped up the yen because we wanted to stop the drain on American exports. The yen was reaching such a dangerously low level that it was threatening American jobs and jobs elsewhere. Yes, it was very much in America's interest to prop up the yen. Using the funds to prop up the yen was a very pro-American thing to do. And does anyone think that we could have done that by saying, oh, we have to have this emergency deal, and we are going to try and foil the speculators; I know what we will do, let us have a Senate hearing, and by the time we are through with this Senate hearing we will have foiled the speculators. Of course it would not work. We cannot do that. And then we have the gentleman from Florida, and he gave what I thought was the strangest argument for an amendment I have ever heard: Vote for it because it will be meaningless. Remember the gentleman from Florida said, well, he can lend 250 today, and 250 next week, and 250 the week after. So that is a pretty odd argument for an amendment: Vote for this amendment, it will not mean anything. It will just be more game playing. We are in a difficult world. I agree with my friend who pointed out that the aftermath in Mexico was bad. But, as my colleagues know, what we are forgetting when we deal particularly in the international world, the most important principle of a great philosopher, Henny Youngman: ``Whenever you are measuring the effect of any particular policy in this area, you have to remember the key question: Compared to what?'' Yes, there were terrible problems in Mexico after that problem when we responded, but would they have been worse or better without this? Is Kim Dae Jung and Boris Yeltzin, two men, and in one case there is some imperfections, but two men who I believe are great devotees of democracy, are they better off if we have to go through a Senate filibuster before we get through? Mr. Chairman, I will yield if the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) is asking me to yield, or is he just going to look puzzled?.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I take back my time. The gentleman was not responding to my question, and I have to say the gentleman is articulate and thoughtful, and I take his nonresponse as an example of the fact that no response is possible because my question was the gentleman cited the problems in Mexico. My question was would it have been worse or better? Yes, I am very critical of aspects of the global economy, but the question is does the existence of ESF make it worse or better, and I believe it helps.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The chairman of the subcommittee has explained this well. I want to stress in particular the importance of giving due recognition to the role of grandparents, especially in today's world. Grandparents often find themselves in a parental role. In fact, we are seeing a good deal of grandparent involvement in the raising of grandchildren, and the law has simply not caught up with that. I think the point of giving recognition to the strong emotional ties between grandparents and grandchildren, recognizing that grandparents, these days, are as likely to have the best interests of the children at heart as any other, those are all very important and I am delighted to support the legislation which adopts them. The other part of the bill, which deals with allowing the Federal courts some substantive involvement, I say there is some constitutional controversy, but what persuades me this is worth supporting is it sets forth a substantive standard of the best interest of the child, and we have had too many other competing kinds of interests advanced. So for those two principles, to the extent that we can federally, arguing that the best interest of the child should be the deciding point in custody cases, and recognizing the love and the care that grandparents parental and giving some protection to the grandparent- grandchildren bond, for those two reasons, I very much support this bill. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews). (Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Would it be at least that?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Let me first ask the gentleman one question. Just one question, and then the gentleman from California can finish. By ``complete'' does the gentleman mean a vote on the final version of Shays-Meehan? And I will yield again to the gentleman.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I reclaim my time to say my understanding is we have already gotten such a guarantee, so the question is not whether we get a guarantee, but whether we get a guarantee of the guarantee because we are now several removed from the original guarantee, and I will now yield to the guarantor. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas).

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I will yield to the gentleman from Michigan so that I can ponder.