Barney Frank

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I hope very much that we reject this rejection of the Sentencing Commission. Many Members of this body have a speech in which they talk about our efforts to fight poverty, our efforts to house people, our efforts to defeat hunger, and they say we spend all this money and it has not worked. They point to gross statistics that say, ``Gee, there are still poor people, there is still bad housing.'' Mr. Chairman, I do not think much of that method of argumentation, but I also would expect them at least to be consistent in applying it because, if we want to look at an area where a policy that has cost an awful lot of money does not on its face appear to have worked, let us look at the policy of trying to combat drug abuse by locking up for long periods of time people who have committed no violent crime, have taken nothing from anybody by force, have struck no one, have attacked physically no one, and are at most very, very low-level, bottom-of-the-chain members of drug sales or may not be sellers at all. They may simply be users, and they may, by that, be users who share with one or two other people. Mr. Chairman, what we have is a policy which has locked up large numbers of mostly young men for very long periods of time, and it has not worked very well. I know it is popular, and I have to say one of the things that is the oddest I have heard in this debate is Members who say, ``Let's have the courage to reject the Sentencing Commission, let's have the courage to continue to lock these people up for many, many years.'' I cannot think of anything that takes less courage in America today than the perpetuation of this policy. I think courage is, ``Let's think about it.'' But we are not simply talking here about what I think is a mistaken policy of locking up nonviolent violators of the drug law for very long periods of time, as dumb and as wasteful as I think that is. That is a policy I cannot change right now. We are talking about one particular aspect of this which says given that we are going to lock up these mostly young men who have done no violent crime against anybody and who have not been caught selling anything, because then they would be charged differently, but who are holding, what, almost a quarter of an ounce or a half an ounce, that we will treat them very harshly, but we will do it in a way which, and let us be very clear, no one has called into question the premise here. The sentencing disparity is overwhelmingly objectively a racist one. Now maybe my colleagues think it is justified, but no one has denied that the effect of the policy is to treat young black men much more harshly for the possession of a given quantity of this substance of cocaine in this form than others. I can think of no policy which we have which in fact ends up so racially distorted, and I have to say I have had people on the other side say, ``Well, it is because we care about these communities.'' Mr. Chairman, I am one who believes that elections are meaningful in this country. I am skeptical when I hear large numbers of voters complain about the actions of this Congress because they sent us here. No one parachuted into this dome, no one got appointed here, and I believe that people on the whole elect people who represent them. So when, and I have to say this to the overwhelming white majority of which I am a part in this House, when our African-American colleagues come here in large numbers and plead with us to allow a nonpartisan body of experts to change this racially disparate policy, it is a march to this floor of our African-American colleagues who are pleading with us to alleviate the most racially unfair policy in America, and, please, even if my colleagues disagree, do not tell them, ``Oh, this is in the interest of your community, this is what the people you represent really want.'' I believe that we do not stay in this place very long if we do not reflect the people who sent us here, and when we have this extraordinary expression from the wide spectrum of opinion we often get within the Congressional Black Caucus saying we are doing a terrible disservice to this Nation and to these young people when we perpetuate this racially disparate situation, then it seems to me people ought to listen. We have talked about the racial problems reflected in the verdict of O.J. Simpson. Many Members here, and let us be honest, many Members here were disappointed that a march led by Louis Farrakhan got such enthusiasm. I ask, ``Why do you think it is happening? Why do you have this great disparity?'' It is partly because of the kinds of policies we have here. Can we really be so sure about maintaining this disparity in sentencing in the face of the Sentencing Commission's argument, even if my colleagues think that maybe they can make some technical justification because of the chemistry of the powder versus the chemistry of the crack? Is it worth perpetuating the anger, and the anguish, and the sense of manifest unfairness that it brings? I do not see how anyone in good faith can argue that we, as a Nation, are well served by maintaining this. [[Page H 10266]] Mr. Chairman, no one is talking about letting people walk. No one is talking about letting people off the hook. We are asking for a recognition of a very grave racial injustice.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield further, why did the gentleman put out such a bill?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Yes, the gentleman has. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw my amendment.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. If the gentleman would yield further, I would ask if we could agree we could try to work out language to make it exactly clear so there is no ambiguity and other people would not get the same misimpression I have gotten. We would not have a problem.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I will explain it. It came from people who read it, as I read it, and I did not read that language as restrictively as the gentleman has interpreted it, and with the understanding that it is not intended to be more than cost recovery for the actual administration and enforcement of this system, I would withdraw the amendment if I got unanimous consent and ask the gentleman to be able to work with him if we got to conference. I would urge that.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. If the gentleman will yield further, I have heard complaints. The complaints have been from people who say, frankly, at least in my area, these are part of a restrictive regime which is mandated by conservation, and they do not want to have to pay for more than the cost of administering the system, and I would say to the gentleman, as I read the language on 51 and 52, there is a difference in the current law. If he tells me that is not all that intentional, maybe we [[Page H 10232]] can narrow this. That is, if we are talking about a fee that is to cover essentially the cost of the individual quota system, that is one thing. If the gentleman is saying to me it was not intended this would go to broader enforcement, because it does say fishery management enforcement, but that it would not deal with matters, you could not charge a fee for matters unrelated to the administration of the quota system, that includes people overfishing.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I will be nicer. Maybe the difference is not as great as we think.

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would continue to yield, there is a difference. The existing law says the level of fees charged under this subsection shall not exceed the administrative fees in covering the permits. The Language the gentleman just read allows the fee on the individual quota to include other costs directly related to fishery management and enforcement far beyond whatever you get for the license.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I may have misunderstood it, but as I read the language, the existing statute, which I had understood was not being amended, gives the Secretary the right to recover the cost of administering the system. And as I read this, it seemed that the fee being mandated here could go beyond that, that that linkage was being weakened. If the understanding is that they are not to charge any more than the cost of administering, that is one thing. But it did seem to me that 4 percent of the value of the fish, that would be a pretty expensive permitting process.

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking minority member of the subcommittee for yielding. The chairman has been congratulated and deservedly. This is an important issue that has more complexity than one might think, as we explain it, I think the reaction is, well, gee, this is just so straightforward. But people should understand that there were issues to be resolved, whether this was going to be a change in patent law in general or whether it was better to make it specific to an industry. There were traditional practitioners of patent law who had objections to this. What we are doing today and, as I understand the parliamentary situation since we are taking up the Senate bill, we are sending this right to the President. One of the striking things about the current situation people should understand is that on those occasions, and I say this is clearly in order because it explains why we are doing what we are doing and why we are taking the Senate bill. On those occasions when the U.S. Senate can be persuaded to do anything at all, one then grabs it and takes it and does not take the chance of sending it back. So this will now go right to the President for signature. It is a mark of the successful chairmanship of the gentleman from California that this important piece of legislation will within a few weeks be law. We are not simply passing a bill through the House today, but we are sending it to the President who we know is going to sign it. I can simply say I am not an expert on this as are few of my colleagues but, talking to the people in the biotechnology industry in Massachusetts, this was [[Page H 10097]] very high on their list of things that will help. It is one of these things that does good in a multiplicity of ways. In the first place, it will help produce the products, and this is of greatest importance, that cure people, that alleviate illnesses. We are here doing something that will facilitate better health care for people, and that is of course fundamental. It will also promote jobs in the State that I represent and in other States because it will help the biotechnology industry improve its market. It will help exports. It will help the American economy. So this is something which has all positive and no negative. But, despite that, given the world we live in, it was not an easy thing to bring it here. As I said, this may look to people like kind of a ho-hum thing. It is to the credit of the gentleman from California and his management of this issue that something that had a lot of pitfalls and a lot of potential controversies does come forward in this guise. I also wanted to express my appreciation to the gentleman who spoke just before me, the other Member from California, he has his own very strong interests in patent issues, some of which I agree with him on, and his willingness to collaborate with us in getting this bill through is something I very much appreciate, thanks to the ranking member for her leadership, to the chairman. I think we have shown today that we are able to function in a very positive way to advance a number of goals.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, we have just heard the ranking minority member tell us that, if we spend a little more money now on these satellites, it will allow us to reduce later on. I think this is now the fifth year in a row that I have heard that, and have yet to see the result of it. My amendment would reduce the authorization, which is already a significant amount over the appropriation, and again I apologize for the stupid way in which we will have to carry out this debate because we are not allowed to mention the gross numbers. The American public is not to be allowed to know what the total of billions of dollars is that we are spending, and we can talk about percentage increases, but we cannot talk about how much. This is an effort to reduce from last year's budget rather than increase. The committee's proposal would increase by about 1.7 percent. Now the President asked for 5.5-percent increase. I think both are in error. This would be a 3-percent decrease. It would be about, oh, a little less than 1\1/2\ percent less than last year. The point is, Mr. Chairman, that there has been a diminution in the task of intelligence greater than the diminution in any other government's job. At the maximum we were spending about 10 percent more than this bill calls for because we were confronting the Soviet Union, the nuclear-armed Soviet Union. What we are being told is that we can afford a really slight, a 10-percent, reduction in intelligence because of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and that does not mean we can go to Russia today, but Russia today is a pale shadow in terms of threat that the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact was. We have made significant progress with Ukraine and Kazakhstan. There are fewer nuclear weapons; there are certainly fewer weapons of a conventional sort, and again I want to deal with the silly argument that, well, it is true there is no more Soviet Union, but there is Iraq, there is Libya, there is Iran. Yes, and there were in 1985 and 1990. The argument is that the world is today somehow no safer for us than it was when we had the Soviet Union. It is one of the grossest examples of distorting logic to be in the service of spending that I have ever heard. There is not now the military threat to our very survival that we faced. There are other threats, but there are no qualitative new threats. Chemical and biological weapons, nuclear proliferation, terrorism; these are not things we just invented a year or two ago. We have had them all along. We were 10 years dealing with the Soviet Union and with these other threats. Today the Soviet threat has been very substantially diminished, and the American people are not to be given the benefit. Mr. Chairman, we will be telling students that their student aid will be less. It will cost one more, if they are a middle-income student, to go to college. The Republicans plan to raise premiums on the average Medicare recipient. We are not sure how much, whether they will be going up by $120 a year or $250 a year. I do not know. They are planning their budget to reduce the cost-of-living Social Security, but at the same time we increase intelligence from this year over last year. Mr. Chairman, I want to talk particularly about the CIA, which gets a 5-percent increase, and I am glad we have a new head of the CIA. I hope he [[Page H 8830]] does much better, but if any other Government agency had been found to have made the errors and had the inefficiencies that the CIA had, it would be penalized. Again I want to stress that the justification that we got from the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations' Subcommittee on Labor-HHS is for cutting Head Start. We are giving less money to Head Start. Why are we giving less money to Head Start? Because he said they are not spending it as efficiently as they could, but we are going to give a 5- percent increase to the CIA. The CIA is apparently perfectly efficient. Now obviously, if we were in a different budgetary time, we would like to spend more money on a lot of things, but we are in a crisis. We are making painful cuts everywhere except in the CIA, except in these areas where the threat has diminished. If we had had an increase in child health equivalent to the decrease in the threat in the Soviet Union, we would have cut a lot more at HHS. This budget erroneously says that at a time when we are cutting very important services to middle-income and lower-income Americans, when we are reducing money elsewhere, we are going to spend more here. There are threats to the safety of the average American. Tragically, they occur within the United States. I believe the average American today feels a lot more threatened by the violence that sadly engulfs many of our cities. However, we cut back on money that a public housing authority could use for drug elimination. This House wiped out money for drug elimination grants in public housing, because we want to raise the money for the CIA. Ask the average American: Are you feeling more threatened by what the CIA deals with or by the drug people in your neighborhood, by that crime and violence? However, this House, if we pass this authorization, says no, we are going to cut out money that is used to fight drugs in America's streets, because we are going to increase it elsewhere. Indeed, even terrorism has become tragically a domestic problem. That is the FBI, that is the DEA, that is the BATF. If we want to fight crime, we have a counterterrorism bill reported out by the Committee on the Judiciary, but in part because there is some right-wing unhappiness about it, that is being held up. So please do not tell me that you are going to fight terrorism by giving more money to the CIA and hold up the counterterrorism bill, and cut drug elimination grants and cut other kinds of programs that would help local law enforcement. I hope this amendment is agreed to. Let me just make the last point, that this amendment says that the 3- percent cut is across the board unless the President, in consultation with intelligence officials, decides to reallocate it, and tells us about it. So it is not going to require 3 percent for everything. It sets a target of 3 percent and gives the President, with the Director of Central Intelligence or the Secretary of Defense, the flexibility to apply it as they think best.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I think the gentleman. I know he could not go any further. I would not ask him to. I appreciate his support on this effort.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. That is right. In fairness to the Defense Department, the people in uniform, there ought to be some knowledge. Nobody knows exactly what piece of the defense budget it is. It makes it harder even when people are talking about that. You might have a decrease in one part and an increase in another. By the way, that is one point, we let the gross number of the defense budget be known. Presumably, if there were some terrible problem or even minor problem that would come from the gross number being known, you would know that from the defense budget. I want to reinforce what I said, I do not plan to go any further and would not support going further than the aggregate number. Again, I think the debate we have had in both the authorization and appropriating process in intelligence bear that out. There has been no effort, as I recall, to do amendments that went below the gross number.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I will be offering an amendment to reduce this budget by 3 percent. Of course, we cannot say 3 percent of what, because there is this great fear that someone might find out a number, which everybody who needs to know it, knows it. It is only the American people who do not know what the number is. But it is up some. The proposed authorization is 1.7 percent higher than last year's appropriation. Mr. Chairman, I want to make it very clear to people, because of my respect for the rules, I am allowed under the rules of the House to say that it is 1.7 percent higher. I am not allowed to say what it is 1.7 percent higher than, but it is 1.7 percent higher. It is 1.2 percent higher than what the President asked for. That seems to me a very grave error. Of course, we want to be protected, but there has been a more substantial drop in the task of the intelligence community than in virtually any other area of government. Up until 5 years ago, the intelligence community was engaged much more heavily, than in any other activity, in monitoring the Soviet Union's ability to destroy our society. The Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact were extraordinarily dangerous threats. Mr. Chairman, that threat has very substantially diminished. There is no more Warsaw Pact. Countries that once had troops dedicated to our destruction, against their will, but nonetheless dedicated, they are gone. Mr. Chairman, the point is this. Yes, we have Iran and Libya and North Korea to worry about. But the argument that we cannot reduce our spending on intelligence, now that the Soviet Union's threat to our very physical survival has collapsed, must assume that Libya, North Korea and Iran did not exist 10 years ago. In fact, 10 years ago we were worried about these terrorist nations. We were worried about nuclear proliferation and we were worried about the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union has collapsed. The largest single threat has gone. Yes, we still have these other threats, but we had them 5 and 10 years ago. Yet, Mr. Chairman, the committee now asks us, at a time when we are cutting student loans and about to raise the premium for older people. If my colleagues do not want to vote to raise the premium on older people, if we did not give an increase to the intelligence community of 1.7 percent, we would go a long way of not having to raise the premium on older people living on $15,000 and $16,000 a year, because those are the choices we are making. Mr. Chairman, we are adding 1.7 percent in this authorizations to the budget. The CIA gets a 5 percent increase. Mr. Chairman, any other agency that had behaved disastrously, we would be talking about having to cut it. We were told we were going to cut Head Start. Do my colleagues know why? Because they do not spend the money as efficiently as they could. The Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations subcommittee charged with Head Start said, ``I like Head Start, but they haven't spent the money so efficiently, so let's cut them.'' Why does the exact opposite not apply to the CIA?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. While we are talking about the whole consistency issue--at least I am--I did want to note, I was in agreement with the chairman when he got up and talked about the reductions, because I acknowledge there has been some reduction. But the chairman, when he talked about reductions, talked about 1989 dollars, in other words, a failure to keep up with inflation is considered a cut, and I think that is an appropriate accounting measure. But I do think that when we do that kind of accounting, when we say that a failure to keep up with inflation is a cut, it should not just be to the benefit of the intelligence community, it ought to be relevant to Medicare and everything else. I think talking about it in constant 1989 dollars, that is, saying that a failure to keep up with inflation is a cut, that is a good way to do accounting but it ought to be for the rest of the budget as well.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, yes, that is perfectly adequate. I think if we have the top line number and people can calculate the percentages, that is fine. Mr. Chairman, let me say, as I recall these debates, and the gentleman from Washington [Mr. Dicks] has been in them as well, we never debate more than the top line number, because none of us really think that we ought to be getting into the line items. This is one authorization where I do not remember any line item amendments. The amendments have generally been the overall ones. I think that reinforces the view that is what is appropriate for the House overall is the overall number. In my amendment, I gave flexibility below that.

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

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the Chair personally for the consideration shown me during this debate, and I apologize for being held up a little bit. This amendment would have made the last debate intelligible. I understand that ``intelligible'' and ``intelligence'' are not identical words, but they ought to have a closer correlation than they have today. Mr. Chairman, we have in the law a restriction on the American people knowing the gross number of the intelligence authorization and appropriation. All this amendment would do, and that is why I did not ask that it be considered as read and that the reading be dispensed with. I wanted it read in its entirety, because this does not say that categories or line items or even departmental breakdowns would be legal. It says the overall gross amount. Mr. Chairman, we just had a debate in which we were talking about percentage reductions and I was asked, as I am sure my colleagues on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence were asked by a number of Members, ``Well, how much is this?'' We were able to tell each other, because as Members, we are automatically trustworthy and, therefore, we can know about all these secrets. We can tell each other the number. Others trying to evaluate this debate, American citizens, journalists and others, theoretically, are not to know what we were talking about in the previous amendment. [[Page H 8833]] Mr. Chairman, when I moved to cut 3 percent, 3 percent of what? Was that $100 million; a billion dollars; $10 billion? People have an order of magnitude idea, but especially as we were talking, as we were, about 3 percent versus 1.7 versus 0.5 percent, and the gentleman from Colorado and the chairman of the committee were talking about tens of millions of dollars, not having any idea, it seems to me, a mistake. Obviously, the extent that foreign spies, foreign governments, could benefit from knowing, this, and the argument was, let us not make this total available, because other people could know something based on the total. Mr. Chairman, they know it. No one believes that people who have an interest to malign us in knowing the total, fail to know it. All we accomplish by this foolish restriction of publishing the gross number is to make it harder for the American people to follow what we are doing; to make it harder for Members to vote. I must tell my colleagues that I myself had some difficulty, because in preparing this amendment I had to wait until I could find the time to go to the intelligence room, as I always do once a year to review these things, and I had to read this and make my calculations. Mr. Chairman, I read some calculations in the paper and people say well, everybody knows it. There were some calculations about this budget, in one of the most respected information sources that the House uses, that were wrong. There was a report of a 6-percent increase. Well, that's about a portion of it. I had difficulty in preparing this amendment in final form because of that. There is no justification, whatsoever, for this fundamental deviation from basic democratic principles. Namely, that the American people ought to know the overall total that is being spent. No one can argue, and no one has argued, that knowing the overall total will somehow hurt the national security. So the augment is, Well, if we tell them the overall total, the next thing we know they will be getting the hat size of the chief of intelligence in country X. The answer is no. That simply is not true. We are changing the law. It is a statutory requirement that says we can't give the overall total. We will amend that statutory requirement that says you can give the overall total. Everything else that is now illegal will be illegal. Everything else that is secret by law will be secret and it will take a further statute to change it. And the notion somehow that statutes are like dominos and if you change one, it automatically hits and knocks over the next is out of touch with reality. The American people, at a time of budgetary stress, have a right to know what the total is, instead of trying to guess or looking at newspapers and winking and saying it is illegal, but we do not pay any attention to it.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, for several years now I've had the very distinct honor of sharing with my colleagues a description of the excellent work done by ROFEH International, sponsored by the New England Chassidic Center, at Beacon Street in Brookline, MA. Both of these important institutions are led by Grand Rabbi Levi Horowitz, known reverently by many as the Bostoner Rebbe. In addition to maintaining a vibrant and important institution for Jewish worship, Rebbe Horowitz and his colleagues do excellent work in the field of health. The Rebbe himself is recognized as an authority in the field of medical ethics, and he and those who work with him do a great deal to help support first rate medical care and to make it widely available to people who would otherwise not be able to benefit from it. This year, on November 12, Rebbe Horowitz and many others will join in a dinner in which they celebrate the important work that they do, and honor those who have played a major role in that work. Two men in particular will be honored for the work they have done through ROFEH to benefit others. The 1955 Man of the Year is Milton B. Gray, who has a long family relationship, and is a staunch supporter of the New England Chassidic Center. Mr. Milton B. Gray was born in Fort Kent, ME, and moved to Dorchester, MA, at an early age, where he attended the Boston public schools, graduating from Boston English High. He attended Northeastern University for 1 year after which he enrolled at the Bentley School [[Page E 1751]] of Accounting, evening branch, graduating in 1941. Mr. Milton B. Gray worked part time through junior high, school and college in a variety of endeavors, ranging from selling soda in the stands at Braves Field and Fenway Park, to employment at the firm of Morse and Nizel, CPA and with the U.S. Navy Department in Quincy, MA. In 1943, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy, and was assigned to the South Pacific. In 1948, he became a partner in the firm of Gray, Gray, and Gray, CPA. Mr. Gray is a member of the Massachusetts Society of CPA; the American Society of CPA; Life member of the Temple Emeth's board, and past president of their Parents Teachers Association; Life member Massachusetts Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and past board member. In 1970 he was instrumental in the organization of Chug Aliyah working with David Roizenblit, the Israeli shalliach, at that time. Milton and Shirley Gray, originally from Bridgeport, CT have been married for 49 years and have three married children and nine grandchildren. Joining Mr. Gray as an honoree is Dr. John E. Hall who will receive the coveted Harry Andler Memorial Award. Dr. John E. Hall was born in Saskatoon, SK, Canada. He attended the University of Saskatchewan, McGill University, and received his F.R.C.S. from the Royal College of Surgeons, Canada; and his F.A.C.S. from the American College of Surgeons. Dr. Hall is one of the world's leading orthopaedic surgeons. He is the former orthopaedic surgeon-in-chief, Children's Hospital, Boston, MA; Associate in Orthopaedics, Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, MA; associate in orthopaedics, New England Baptist Hospital, Boston, MA, Dr. Hall is professor of orthopaedic surgery, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA. Dr. Hall holds and has held such positions as associate surgery, University of Toronto; president of medical staff, Ontario Crippled Children's Center, Ontario; chairman, medical advisory board, Prosthetic Research and Development Unit, Ontario Crippled Children's Center, Ontario; appointed chief of division of orthopaedic surgery, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto; and chief of clinical services, department of orthopaedic surgery, Children's Hospital Medical Center, Boston. Dr. Hall is a member of the Canadian Orthopaedic Association; the Pediatric Orthopaedic Society; Examiner for the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery; he is past president of the Pediatric Orthopaedic Society and of the Medical Staff, Children's Hospital, Boston, MA. Dr. Hall is author and co-author of over 100 articles that have been published in leading medical journals and books. Dr. Hall lives in Brookline, MA with his wife Frances and is a devoted father of 7 children. Mr. Speaker, I am proud to share with my colleagues and the country the record of this excellent organization and the biographies of the two men they so justly honor.