Jeff Flake

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Yes.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I have a great deal of respect for the gentleman from New York. I tend not to be as concerned as he is at this point. I share many of his concerns about the overall PATRIOT Act, and we have worked to put many of the amendments in place to put ourselves at rest. I thank him for his involvement. We have had great involvement from both sides of the aisle here. These amendments that I am offering today, virtually all of them, are offered with Democrat support and cosponsorship. My name is not even at the top of some of them. We have had good cooperation. I feel good about this amendment, about the protection we have offered here, and also to ensure that in cases where it is needed, we offer additional tools for compliance with these requests as well. I am pleased with the amendment. I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. FLAKE. I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.

Mr. FLAKE. That is correct.

Mr. FLAKE. The bank can make the challenge itself. The bank can challenge the scope. They are the recipient of the national security letter.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, part of what we have done in this amendment is offer individuals the opportunity to challenge the scope of the request. So whether or not it applies to them or additional people is challengeable through this amendment. That is part of what we are doing here.

Mr. FLAKE. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would continue to yield, we are offering in this amendment additional protections. We are ensuring that those who receive these letters, and we have in other amendments as well, have access to counsel, not only to respond to the inquiry, but also to challenge in court.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Issa), another member of the Committee on the Judiciary.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. I just wanted to say that the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence) brought up the point that the buck stops here, and that is what we are really trying to do with the FBI Director, to ensure that that person is in charge and there is less likely to be a fishing expedition by a lower-ranking official. When you combine that with what we already have in law, which is a requirement that the FBI Director report to Congress every 6 months about the use of this statute, you really have a strong provision and strong protections. Think of it: you have the FBI Director himself, or herself, saying, I want to use this authority for this specific purpose, and then having to report that every 6 months to Congress. I think we really have curtailed the possibility for abuse. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the sponsor of this amendment. It is important. I think that we need to do all we can to make sure the feeder documents, the primary documents upon which passports are issued, are safer than they are today. I think it is important that the Secretary of State and those in responsibility have a more thorough reporting process to us as to how these can be made safe. So I want to commend the gentleman for bringing this forward. It is a good amendment, and we ought to support it.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. This amendment, contrary to what has been said on the floor earlier, in fact, a Dear Colleague just went around that somebody brought my attention to that says that this project would prevent this critical piece of infrastructure modernization from going forward, this amendment would do nothing of the sort, unless the tonnage requirements that the corps has actually put forward on its own are not met that would justify the project. This simply says that this project only goes forward if the benefits outweigh the costs. It will not go forward under this amendment if the costs outweigh the benefits. It is a simple amendment. I would encourage my colleagues to support it. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. Let me just say, again, I am sympathetic to the needs, and I have seen the locks. In fact, last week I was in Keokuk, Iowa and saw a lock not unlike the ones that are going to be funded by this project. And they are old. They do need maintenance. We are providing a lot of money for that now. We have been ongoing for the past several decades. But this is new dollars, new money for new locks. And it seems to me that if we are fiscally conservative, we ought to say there ought to be a justification. There are ways one can justify it. They could say it is going to create a lot of jobs, a lot of people are going to be working on that project, but that all makes sense if we are all Keynesians now, and I hope we are not. I hope that we believe that taxpayers ought to be protected, and they spend their money best, unless there is a justified need. And here all we are saying, as the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) said, this is a carefully constructed compromise saying that it should move forward if there is an economic justification for it. If there is not, then it should not move forward. That is all we are saying here. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I appreciate the debate that has been had on this topic. Again, we have this year over a $300 billion deficit. It is better than we thought it was going to be, but it is still over $300 billion. We have a debt near $8 trillion now. If we, as stewards of the taxpayers' money, cannot step in and when a project does not meet its own goals to move forward, if we cannot step in and say we are not going to do this, we are not going to spend the taxpayers' money on this, we are going to wait and get a project that is justified, then who are we as Members of Congress? We will never get a handle on this debt or deficit. I would say that, if one is fiscally conservative, this amendment is a lock. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman for yielding me this time. I did not plan to come and speak before the amendment was offered, but hearing the debate on the floor now, I am wondering which amendment is being described. Surely it cannot be the one we are offering, because the one we are offering does not scrub the project and does not say it cannot go forward. It simply says it should go forward only if the minimum requirements that have been laid out are met in terms of it being economically viable and useful. That is all we are saying. It is a pretty darn low bar. We are saying, let us take the bottom standard that the corps, the National Academy of Sciences, CRS, and other groups have said is feasible in order to make the project go forward. If it is not, it should not be built. If it is met, it should be built. I heard some discussion about, well, we would not go to your district and say you should not build that road or should not build that waterway or whatever if it is something you want. Well, if I say I need a road and it is going to carry 1,000 people per day, and over the next 3 years we find out it is only going to carry 800 per day or 500 per day, I hope my colleagues vote against it. They ought to. That is why they are here. That is why we are all here in this position. We have a near-$400 billion deficit this year; a nearly $8 trillion debt. If we are not willing to husband our resources better than that, what hope do we have of getting ahold over this debt and deficit? Our amendment, again to be clear, does not say this project should not go forward. It simply says it ought to meet the requirements that have been laid out by those who are advocating the project itself. So this amendment that has been spoken of, I can assure all of my colleagues, it is not being offered. The amendment that is being offered, the Flake-Blumenauer amendment, says that the requirements simply need to be met. It needs to be economically viable and feasible. Mr. Chairman, we need to protect taxpayer resources and make sure that they are spent prudently. That is what this amendment is all about; and I would urge my colleagues, when it comes time, to vote for the Flake-Blumenauer amendment.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds. Again, I am going to sound like a broken record by the time this is through. All this amendment says is that based on the corps' own assumptions, river traffic is going to have to reach 35 million tons. That would be required to justify the project. If that is not met, the project will not go forward. If it is met, it will go forward. We are simply saying that the corps' own assumptions need to be met, need to be satisfied, in order for the project to go forward. Again, this is not scuttle the project. This simply says it needs to be justified by their own figures.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to issue a challenge to my colleagues, those who have criticized the comprehensive immigration reform that has been offered as legislation. In the last Congress, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe) and myself and Senator McCain in the Senate offered comprehensive immigration reform. We have offered a similar bill this year. There have been a lot of critics who have taken the floor and have said that we should not do this; what we need to do rather than have comprehensive immigration reform is to simply secure the border and enforce the law, enforce the current law. Let me just run down what that actually entails. If we were to enforce the current immigration laws that we have, it would mean that we would literally round up between 10 million and 15 million illegal aliens who are here presently, uproot them from their jobs, often from their families, and ship them home to their home country where they would be subject to a 10-year bar from reentry. After that 10 years, then they would get in line to go through the legal orderly process, which would probably take another 20 years. Now, when I explain that to those who are critics of our immigration bill, they often say, well, we do not mean to enforce the current law as it is. Let us selectively enforce it. Let us go after the criminals, not after those who are legally law-abiding here. Well, that is called selective enforcement, and some will actually use that term. We need to selectively enforce the law. I ask the critics of comprehensive immigration reform, how is that any less of an amnesty than what has been proposed? Under our legislation, anyone here illegally, who has broken no other law than crossing the border illegally, would be required to register, pay a fine, and wait as many as, at least 6 years until the current backlog of those going through the legal orderly process in their home country is complete. Then they would be forced to pay another $1,000 fine. How is that an amnesty, when simply selectively enforcing the current law is not? Please explain. For those who are criticizing comprehensive immigration reform, how are you going to secure the border and enforce the law without a temporary worker program? Our legislation realizes that there are many here, probably around 8 million, that are in the workforce currently. Unless we are willing to uproot them and send them all home, then we have to have a temporary worker program or a guest worker program before we can enforce the law. That is why we have to have comprehensive immigration reform that says we need the rule of law. In order to have the rule of law, we must have a law we can enforce. That is what this is all about, and that is the challenge I issue to those criticizing the comprehensive immigration reform that has been offered, the McCain-Kennedy-Kolbe-Flake-Gutierrez bill. Please come up with your own. Explain how we are going to enforce the current law unless we have a temporary worker program. People say, let us secure the border first, enforce the current law, and then see if we need a guest worker program. I have already explained what it means to enforce the current law. If you believe that is what we need to do, please proffer a bill. Write legislation. If that is what we need to do, then, please, stand here and suggest it. Otherwise, join us. Join us in our quest to actually have a law that we can enforce. Let us have the rule of law. That is what this country was built on. That is what we need to return to. It is not a healthy situation to have 10 million to 15 million people here illegally who are below the law, who work in the shadows. That is not healthy for national security. It is not good for our economy, and it is not humanitarian either. We simply need to change the law. So I invite my colleagues, please, submit legislation. Join this great debate that we have, but do not criticize unless you are willing to offer legislation yourself.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Chairman, believe me, given the history of this issue, the last thing any of us worry about is for those who oppose changes on the Cuba issue to liberalize or to allow more religion and more religious travel, because every effort is to restrict, is to tell people we know better than you. We apparently can define whether you are really religious or not or whether you really believe in that faith. That is what this is about. We are simply trying to protect it. I would love the President to say, hey, let us open it and I would sponsor legislation to do that certainly. I have. But the last thing we are worried about here is for religion to be opened up because every effort by those who oppose the freedom to travel to Cuba has been to restrict people's freedoms and rights and religion.