Barney Frank

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I must say the relevance of where either the gentleman or I went to law school, my friend talked about red herrings, that seems to me totally trivial. The fact is this: There is a very clear distinction between a Constitutional Convention and the rules for amending the fundamental rules and the day-to-day decisions, and no, I do not think decisions about whether or not we should have a Medicare program. And I want to be clear, the Medicare program would have been made impossible by this. This is a kind of imposition on the people they do not like. They try to whittle it down, now they would apparently wish they never had it. But the fact is that a decision about whether or not there were Medicare programs, a decision about whether or not to raise taxes on cigarettes, is not the same as the fundamental decision about the structure of government. And, yes, I think it ought to take two-thirds to decide if we are going to change the Bill of Rights, if we are going to change the basic rules by which we govern ourselves, but that is not the same as saying that the decision to raise the cigarette tax or to institute Medicare, and those are two issues which are involved, should be done only by a majority. And I think it is very clear the other side does not like a majority. The gentleman from California conceded that point. No, he does not want it to be by majority rule. They have had bad luck with the majority. They did come back into control of Congress in 1994, and it turned out the public has been less sympathetic to their wishes than they had hoped them to be. So what they are trying to do, the gentleman from Pennsylvania was right, they want to lock it in. They want to use the temporary majority they have now to change the rules so in the future majorities that disagree with them will not have a chance to vote. They do not like some of the highway bill. They think the highway bill is one of those programs where the Americans get bought off. I have heard some of the Republican leaders say that is what Democrats do. I think the American people have a right to decide they want to go forward with that program. I do not think they are getting bought off. Now the point again I want to stress is this: Results in tax limitation States and nontax limitation States seem to me irrelevant. We do not decide whether or not we are going to stay with the fundamental precepts of democracy because it might be advantageous. I will say as far as results are concerned there is a difference between a Federal and a State taxation base. I heard all these arguments about how terrible taxes were for the minority in 1993. They made all kinds of predictions about the tax bill of 1993 would hurt the economy. Never have they been more wrong. But the question is if we will stay with democracy or restrict the people because we do not trust them.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Yes, it is. Mr. Speaker, I would be glad to respond to the gentleman. Of course there is a difference, and this is a very profound and very clear difference. There is a difference between the day-to-day decisions that government makes and the question about what the basic rules will be. Of course the Constitution treats amending the Constitution differently than passing legislation, because what we say is when we are creating the fundamental structure of government, that is a more fundamental decision. And yes it is, I think, reasonable to say. And, no, I am not going to yield yet. The gentleman apparently just discovered that the Constitution required two-thirds and three- quarters.

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I think the previous speaker made it very clear. The motivation for this is a distrust of democracy in the people. The gentleman from Pennsylvania said the Democrats kept control by buying the support of the people with programs. In other words, the people dared to disagree with him. The majority preferred certain programs. For example, to take a program that I believe would have been made impossible by this amendment, the Medicare program, because the Medicare program was passed by less than a two-thirds majority, and it raised taxes because we financed Medigap through Social Security, and the gentleman is correct. The Democratic majority of 1965 would not have been able to buy the support of the people who crassly said, ``We'll take some Medicare in return for a tax increase.'' He would like to make it impossible. What this amendment is about is a fundamental distrust of democracy, and arguing frankly as to what the results are of having tax limitation or not seems to me inappropriate because we do not in my view derogate from democracy because we think it will have better results. If my colleagues are committed to majority rule, now we have a modified form of majority rule. We have 2 senators per State. We do not have undaunted majority rule, but within that framework we have always felt that a majority is a more democratic, more representative method than a minority, and what we are being told here is no, majority rule does not work. The gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson) made it clear. The darn people kept voting for Democrats. They were bought off. We cannot trust these people to make their own decisions. And then he said correctly, yes, people were unhappy so they voted Republican. But I think my Republican friends are not sure that is going to stick. They shut down the Federal government in 1995; it was not the best decision they ever made. They were a little worried. So what do they want to do? We heard the gentleman from Pennsylvania; he wants to lock in the decision. In other words, Democrats had won, now Republicans have won, let us not trust democracy. We never can tell about those people, they may get bought off by support for programs again. As my colleagues know, they were for Medicare, they were for Social Security, they may be for another one of those other darn programs. Let us therefore lock this in; let us change the rules. Let us, while we have a majority now, change the rules so if the people change their opinion, if the public decides that they want more of a public sector, if we were to decide that years from now we might want to increase this percentage of revenue, if the people decided they wanted to raise taxes on cigarettes and not necessarily reduce revenues elsewhere, if people decided they wanted to raise taxes on cigarettes just for programs dealing with health, let us make that impossible. Let us go to a two- thirds vote. The question is democracy, and by the way, that is a pattern.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I spoke with the gentleman. Apparently, he misspoke; that what happened, he had said that he had thought he had seen the Speaker an hour ago. He later told me he had seen him maybe a couple of hours or 2\1/2\ or 3 hours before. But we have since asked, because I was just puzzled. This debate is going to end by 3:00 or 3:30, and we were told we would not vote until 5:30. We have been told that the reason for the delay is that the Speaker is out of town. He wanted personally to reside, and that is why we are going to delay it. I mention that in the context of whether or not that was symbolic. So I appreciate the gentleman's information. Apparently, the gentleman from Texas miscalculated on the time, and he had seen the Speaker earlier. The Speaker since left town, and we are going to apparently delay the vote until the Speaker comes back.

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. So we will be voting right at the conclusion of this debate?

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I am reassured that this is not purely symbolism. But I am puzzled. As I calculate the debate, we have about 2 hours left. It is a quarter to 1. I went into my cloakroom assuming I would be told we would be voting between 3 and 3:30. But I am told that we have been informed that the vote will not be until 5:30 or so because the Speaker of the House is not in town. He is out doing something else, and we have to hold the vote so he can be sitting here. Now, I hope that is inaccurate. And I am always glad to be corrected. Well, not always glad. Sometimes I am gladder than other times. If I am to be corrected, I would like to be. But if we are holding up a vote for 2 hours just so our out-of-town Speaker can rejoin us and preside on the vote, that seems to me a little symbolistic.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for clarifying that and for not mentioning where my friend and I went to law school

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, does that mean we will be voting at the close of approximately an hour and a half that is left? Will we be voting right away around 3:30, for the Members that want to know when we are going to vote? Does that mean when this debate ends we will proceed immediately to a vote?

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to remove my name as a cosponsor of House Resolution 399.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, while I am not authorized, I think on behalf of the Clinton administration I can thank the Republican Party. There has been a lot of controversy about the President's decision to have troops in Bosnia. This bill, if it passes as is, will give him full legal authorization to keep troops in Bosnia longer. The current law says the funding runs out June 30. This appropriations bill specifically earmarks $486 million to continue the troops in Bosnia beyond the June 30 deadline. For as long as this appropriations bill is in effect, it gives the President the authority to keep the troops in Bosnia. Now I differ with the President. Because the Republican Party believes that to pay for the additional 3 months in Bosnia prospective, not because of any back pay, we should cut section 8. The President and the Republican Party both want to keep troops in Bosnia for 3 more months. I disagree. The Republicans want to pay for it in part with section 8 reductions. The President disagrees. I think the President's position, while wrong, is a little better than theirs. But be very clear, if we pass this bill--and I offered an amendment that was rejected by the Committee on Rules that would have let the House vote and restrict and give the President only 1 more month in Bosnia and then they would have had to pull out in 90 days. But this bill, and we are not talking about past money owed to Bosnia that was authorized and appropriated through June 30, this bill says $486 million for July and August and September. Pass this bill as is, those of my colleagues who vote for this rule and this bill, and understand that there is no basis for criticizing the placement of the troops in Bosnia. My colleagues are voting here prospectively to give the President authority, but I am not sure how grateful he will be in the end.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, on the international side, people have said the restaurant owners should not have to pay because someone has already paid for this once, the national TV, et cetera. Put that doctrine in the hands of the Chinese or others overseas and you say to them, okay, as long as something was once paid for in America, this book, this movie, this recording, this CD, then I can sell it without paying the owner, and you have destroyed our capacity to defend American intellectual property overseas.

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, let me stress that because the doctrines of contributory and vicarious liability are not obscure, what they say is, if one has rented the premises to people, and as I read the amendment, even if one has rented the premises and one knows what they are using them for and one knows there is this symptomatic effort to violate other people's rights, one is not at all liable. I ask Members to think what the People's Republic of China and other notorious abusers of intellectual property rights could do with these principles, and I guarantee the Members that if we enact these into law here in the United States House of Representatives, efforts by the United States Trade Representative or any others to enforce intellectual property overseas goes down the drain. We are talking about movies. We are talking about books. We are talking about music. We are talking about a number of very important efforts. I do not think that this is an enormous burden. By the way, we have heard from restaurant owners. People have said, well, it is a problem for appliance owners, this one, that one, convention centers. Nobody has heard from the convention centers of America complaining about this. What this amendment does, the underlying amendment of the gentleman from Wisconsin is to make it very, very difficult for us internationally to defend our intellectual property rights. The gentleman from Florida has responded sensibly to the complaints of restaurant owners. He exempts most restaurant owners. He says, if one is a larger restaurant and playing this music enhances one's ability to make money, one will share a little with those who created it. That is a reasonable approach.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. The gentleman from Texas was talking about apocryphal real people.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. No, the gentleman from Texas was talking apocryphal real people.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman from Texas acknowledging that he was being, as he said, apocryphal, a very nice word for ``made up.'' His incident that he began with is totally made up. It is a little bit apocryphal, too, when he talks about the passport, because under this bill, to become eligible for visa waiver, you would have to change the passport to make it machine readable. So the current Portuguese passport would not be the same. It would have to become machine readable. The fact is that if there is an overstay problem, that should be dealt with by enforcement. And this notion that somehow there are these thousands of Portuguese children waiting to be smuggled, in fact, exists only in the apocryphal imagination of the gentleman from Texas. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I would like to have the gentleman join me in acknowledging that the gripping story he began with was, of course, an invention, has not happened, and was in fact mythic. Now, the gentleman is entitled to employ myth, but the story about what happened because Portugal is not in the Visa Waiver Program, since it is not in the program----

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, and on the other hand you have an insistence on attachment to unyielding, undeviating fealty to the notion of bureaucratic perfection. That is hardly worth inflicting this degree of inconvenience on so many decent Americans and their relatives. I hope the amendment is adopted.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I guess the House is about to vote on the theory of the infallibility of the bureaucracy. The chairman of the subcommittee believes that when visa applications come, they are decided with a degree of precision and exactitude rarely equaled in American government. They are apparently perfect within a very small margin of error. Indeed, none of us has yet found a pollster in our own elections who could come closer to exactitude than the gentleman from Texas thinks can be found in the consular offices. Now I think highly of the Consular Corps, I just do not get them quite as high as the gentleman from Texas, who appears to have gotten them celestial in their perfection and absence of error. People make mistakes. What we have is a situation where residents of countries strongly allied to our own, countries that share our democratic commitment, countries which have living amongst us relatives and friends, innocent citizens, clearly innocent citizens of those countries, are to be penalized because of errors that second parties make about third parties. Now I understand the gentleman from Texas talked about overstays. Let us be very clear. If there are people who are overstaying, and the invincible bureaucratic officials know about it, why do they not make them go home? We are not protecting people who are here illegally. Nothing in this amendment diminishes one iota of the authority of the State Department and the Justice Department and anybody else they want to borrow to send the overstays home. The question is this: I represent an area in southeastern Massachusetts 2,000 miles from the Azores. A large number of American citizens came from the Azores. They have friends and relatives in the Azores, as close to them as Denver is. They go back and forth to visit. People come for weddings, for funerals, for family events. There are charter flights that go back and forth. If one lives in one of the islands in the Azores, and the islands are spread out, which does not have a full-time consular official, and there is an emergency that comes up, someone dies, sadly, or there is some other need for you to come right away, maybe someone is ill and they are going to come sit with the children for awhile, these are the kinds of interactions we are talking about. They have got to go and get a visa. Why do they have to go and get a visa, which they would not if they lived in any of the other European countries? Because some other people may have been trying to do something which a consular official did not like, so you are punished. We are talking about increasing the rate from 2 percent to 3 percent. It is simply not credible that 2 percent as opposed to 3 percent is some important qualitative difference. The gentleman from Texas apparently feels that 2 percent, that is absolutely the most, although I must say I guess neither the gentleman from Texas nor I were here when we first enacted this, and I would hate to be one of the residents of those countries who would have had to depend on him to enact the whole program in the first place. But the point is that it is there, and we are now saying at 2 percent, they come in at 3 percent, they cannot. What that means is if 97.8 percent of the people who apply are applying legitimately, and no errors are made, then they still have to go through the visa waiver situation. Remember the visa waiver program does not mean they sneak in here unknown. We have records of who is here. We have every right we have under the bill to deal with overstays. The gentleman from Texas has in his legislation language saying let us get the data on overstays. Our amendment does not change it. What our amendment says is this: There are a large number of American citizens of Greek and Portuguese ancestry who have friends and relatives with whom they would like to be able to visit, exchange visits, et cetera. Why, why would the House want so strongly to make it hard on them? What kind of determined attachment to bureaucratic norms insists on denying these overwhelmingly decent people a little convenience and a little ease? Is this great country threatened in some way with instability, with chaos, with economic ruin because we would go from 2 percent to 3 percent, allowing two fairly small countries in population to have a more easy interchange? As the gentleman from California pointed out, people are trying to smuggle themselves in here. They do not need to get visas. This is not affected by that. And I understand the State Department does not want it, the Justice Department does not want it. No, bureaucrats do not want a lot of things that we do want. That is why we have the lawmaking power, and not them. That is why we make the decision about what is decent and what is compassionate. So on the one hand, we have the citizens of this country who want a little ease and a little flexibility in seeing their relatives.