Scott Garrett

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I appreciate the comments, and if we can be provided with some evidence that the Department is, in fact, complying with the law, that would be greatly appreciated. It is our understanding that currently aliens who are in this country under this program who have a sponsor are, in fact, receiving food stamps under the current law and that there has been no effort whatsoever, ever, in any cases to go after and reclaim those funds from the sponsor in the case. So I would be appreciative of that information at a later date or now if the gentleman has it.

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Today I rise to support an amendment that hopefully will be seen as a common sense amendment. It deals with H.R. 2744, more specifically with the Food Stamp Program aspect of it, and simply says that we should be complying with the Immigration and Nationality Act when we pass this legislation. The amendment is common sense because it simply says that we should always abide by current Federal law. As it stands right now with regard to current Federal law, 8 USC 1183(a), it states that an affidavit must be filed by a sponsor of an alien who is in this country legally today. This affidavit of support is a legally binding guarantee on the part of a sponsor that the immigrant that is in this country that they are sponsoring will not become a public charge of this country. That is, that they will not become dependent on welfare. And it is limited for a period of 10 years or until that person becomes a citizen, whichever comes first. This ``public charge'' requirement is nothing new. It goes all the way back to our immigration policy way back in 1880. Secondly, with regard to current law, current Federal law states that this affidavit is enforceable against the sponsor of the immigrant by any Federal Government or State, or political subdivision thereof, or any other entity that provides any means-tested public benefit. This means that the sponsor and not the U.S. taxpayer is to be the individual that is responsible for the alien. It also requires providers of these benefits to seek reimbursement from the sponsors and even allows the government to sue for noncompliance. Just a side note here of interest, there is another law currently on the books in this country, 8 USC 1227, and it makes it clear that aliens who are in country who do become public charges within 5 years of their entry into this country that they are actually subject to deportation in some cases. The amendment that is before us simply says this: It simply states that no funds appropriated in this Act under the Food Stamp Program will be spent in noncompliance of current Federal law. This amendment is simply about enforcing current law. If one does not like the current law that goes all the way back to 1880, they certainly have a right to try to change that, but that should be done in another piece of legislation and not through this vehicle. So by not supporting my amendment, they are publicly admitting on the floor in the United States that our laws elsewhere on the books are not to be complied with. I will just end with this: Yesterday, a group of constituents was in my office from a group called Bread for the World, and they came to emphasize the fact that people in this country are going hungry and that there is not quite enough money in the Food Stamp Program today, in their opinion, that it is not adequate to provide all that is needed. So, under such circumstances, we should not be adding to the incentive for other people to become part of this program and become public charges to the taxpayer. I, therefore, conclude by saying I urge of all my colleagues to support this common sense amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, the seminal question that we address is, should Americans be using their tax dollars to fund research that kills a living human embryo? My answer to that is an emphatic ``no.'' It is our duty to ensure that we spend our money on things that work, and there are no therapies in humans that have ever successfully been carried out using embryonic stem cells. And that is really what this whole debate is about, paying for what works and paying for it in a way that is consistent with the morals of our taxpayers. Look, even the President and CEO of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, a group that is a strong supporter of destroying human embryos for research, he said, ``There have been more promising results in adult stem cells than there have been in embryonic stem cells.'' He predicted that their foundation would soon be spending more on adult cells research than embryonic research. Private organizations like these are choosing to use their research dollars on what works, adult stem cells research. Washington must also spend its money efficiently on what works, while representing the values of the taxpayer. I urge a ``no'' vote on Federal funding for killing living human embryos.

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman for accepting the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, the one question that I get when I go back to my district is, what is it that the Federal Government and Congress spend all their money on, and some of the things that we hear about sometimes is excess of spending in various areas. One of the things that raises the ire of a lot of people is when they hear about trips by Members of the executive branch and others going overseas for maybe notable and worthwhile causes, but in excess of the number of people that we really need to send there. We have heard examples in past Congresses, and we have raised this amendment in past Congresses when we heard about 100, 150, 200 members of the executive branch going over for various causes. We present an answer to this problem by saying that whenever an agency decides to send someone overseas for a trip, we should limit the number of Federal employees that go. My amendment will do that very simply. It will limit the number of Federal employees that are sent to international conferences funded under this bill to 50.

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, as we approach the 60th anniversary of the United Nations, it is appropriate that we look at its original mission and evaluate whether the United Nations has accomplished what it was set out to do. The U.N. charter states in part that its purpose is to maintain international peace and security; to develop friendly relations among Nations; to achieve cooperation; and to promote and encourage respect for human rights. But, unfortunately, if we look at the U.N.'s record on these issues, we see that they have failed on every account. Firstly, the U.N. has not maintained international peace and security. In fact, since 1945 there have been over 300 wars and over 22 million people have died in those wars. The only two times that the U.N. has ever supported intervening to stop hostilities was the Korean War, when the Soviet Union had boycotted the Security Council meeting, and the first Persian Gulf War. In fact, the biggest threat to the civilized world today is terrorism, and the U.N. has failed throughout its existence to develop a clear definition of what terrorism is even. Another main mission of the U.N. is to promote and encourage human rights and equal rights throughout the world. The U.N. Commission on Human Rights is the primary body to get that job done. However, such countries as Cuba, Sudan and China, all of which have long histories of violating human rights, sit on that commission. In fact, several years ago, Libya, with its terrible human rights record, was selected to serve as chairman of that human rights commission. In regards to the U.N. fulfilling its mission of solving international problems of an economic, social and cultural character, recent reports by the Heritage Foundation, the Freedom House, and The Wall Street Journal all indicated that a majority of the nations that are in the U.N. are neither politically nor economically free nations. These general problems with the unaccountability of the U.N. lead me to one of the biggest problems and biggest scandals in the history of the U.N. and that is the Oil-for-Food scandal. Right after the first Gulf War, this was put in place. The Oil-for- Food program was created to help those people in that country get the food and supplies that they needed. However, Saddam Hussein used the money to advance his own weapons and military programs as the poor people continued to be plagued by starvation and disease. By allowing the corrupt Saddam Hussein regime to manipulate the Oil- for-Food program and bribe officials from other countries around the world, more than $21 billion was stolen by Hussein at the very expense of the people that the program was designed to help, the Iraqi poor. The U.N. has continuously denied access to the papers that would help us to get to the bottom of this. That is perhaps one of the most troubling problems with the Oil-for-Food program, the lack of cooperation by the U.N., lack of cooperation to help us all get to the bottom of what really went on. They have denied us access to papers, and they have also denied us access to the people who were involved and shielded them from responsibility. The U.N. claims to be addressing these concerns by establishing the Volker Commission to investigate the allegations. However, it has been stated by a member that Volker has close ties to the U.N. and also to Secretary General Annan, as well as other conflicts. He has been accused of down-playing Kofi Annan's involvement in the scandal in his most recent interim report, and it was just 2 weeks ago that two of his top investigators on that very commission resigned because they felt that the report was too soft on Annan. Volker is continuing to block congressional investigations by demanding that those committees return relevant documents and not allowing the investigators that resigned to testify before Congress. I think that this behavior by the U.N. and its investigating committee is totally indefensible and cannot be tolerated. Kofi Annan's complete lack of humility, contrition, and acknowledgement of any wrongdoing should be disappointing to the entire world; and it is for that reason that I support suspending all U.S. funding to the U.N. until they agree to cooperate fully with the ongoing investigations into the Oil-for-Food scandal. Another ongoing scandal at the U.N. that has not received as much press is the human rights violations in the Congo. U.N. peacekeepers in the Congo stand accused of committing 150 major human rights violations. They are accused of raping and forcing prostitution on hundreds of refugees, many of them children. These barbaric acts raise serious questions of the ability of U.N. oversight on their very own peacekeepers. The United States has contributed over $750 million towards that Congo peacekeeping mission since 2000. So the U.S. taxpayers at home, I believe, should know where their money is going and should know that the U.N. is doing its job to make sure that the people over there are protected. All these problems that I have mentioned just now lead back to the very point that I am trying to make here tonight, that there is a lack of oversight and accountability by an international body that claims to represent the moral conscience of the world, and this should not be tolerated. As the largest financial contributor to the United Nations in the world, the United States is the one country in the best position to demand these reforms. Tomorrow, we are expecting an extremely important vote to take place on the other side of the Capitol. A vote ``yes'' there will be a vote for U.N. reform, but a vote ``no'' will be a vote against U.N. reform. I certainly hope that that other body will vote in favor of U.N. reform.

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, Social Security is in major trouble, hundreds of thousands of Americans still I need the opportunity to obtain health insurance, and much more work must I be done to secure our ports and borders. Yet the Democrats must have all those important issues solved because they are wasting all their time playing politics and making unsubstantiated accusations against United States House Majority Leader, Tom DeLay. Like their stance on most important issues, facts seem to matter very little to most Democrats. They have done nothing to help create jobs in this country. Nothing to help lower the cost of health care, nothing to help root out waste, fraud and abuse of the people's money, and to date, have not presented one plan to save Social Security. Yet they make politically motivated, unsubstantiated accusations without any evidence against Majority Leader DeLay and because they know that an investigation would clear his name, they are now putting up road blocks for the Republicans on the Ethics Committee to do their job. My friends on the other side of the aisle, your constituents need more from you than this. Voters sent you here for a purpose; I don't think these childish games are what they had in mind.

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to acknowledge and remember the 90th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, the mass killings and forced exile of countless Armenians in the final days of the Ottoman Empire. The suffering that befell the Armenian people in 1915 is a tragedy for all humanity, which the world should not forget. In the years since, descendants of Armenian immigrants have clung to their identity and have prospered across this nation and throughout the world. The United States is fortunate to be home to an organized and active Armenian community, whose members contribute and participate in every aspect of civic life. By properly recognizing the atrocities committed in 1915, we honor America's historic leadership and remind the world of the democratic and humanitarian values on which our country is founded. In this period of heightened international conflicts, this message is most timely. The United States must never allow crimes against humanity to pass without remembrance and condemnation. As U.S. efforts to aid victims of genocide continue, it is imperative that we pay tribute to the memory of others who have suffered and to never forget the past.

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, today I extend congratulations and thanks to Ms. Peggy Stewart, a teacher at Vernon Township High School in Sussex County, New Jersey. Ms. Stewart, who teaches and resides in the Fifth Congressional District, was selected from nominees across the state to receive the 2004-2005 New Jersey Teacher of the Year award. This week, Ms. Stewart and other distinguished teachers from around the country are in Washington to be recognized. Since she began teaching at Vernon Township High School in 1991, Ms. Stewart has received numerous awards and citations for her excellence in the classroom. She's been noted in ``Who's Who Among America's Teachers,'' and was recognized as a premier humanities instructor by the New Jersey Council for the Humanities. In selecting Ms. Stewart for this honor, the New Jersey Board of Education cited her individualistic approach to her students and her persistence in creating well-rounded experiences to develop her students' sense of citizenship. I want to congratulate Ms. Stewart of Vernon Township High School for being selected for this prestigious honor. She is a credit to New Jersey and a credit to our many outstanding educators. Historian Henry Adams said, ``A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.'' We know that Ms. Stewart's work to engage young adults and encourage their development as informed, involved and thoughtful citizens will benefit our community for generations to come. Today, I am honored to join in the applause for one of the Nation's great teachers--Ms. Peggy Stewart. We are grateful for your dedication to providing New Jersey children with an outstanding education.

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, today I extend congratulations and thanks to Mrs. Ashley Rothbard Berk, a teacher at Travell Elementary School in Ridgewood, New Jersey. Mrs. Berk was selected from among 600 nominees to be a recipient of the prestigious 2004 Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. The Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching was established in 1983 to recognize the outstanding science and mathematics teachers, kindergarten through 12th grade, in each state and the four U.S. jurisdictions. Today, the White House award is recognized as the Nation's highest commendation for elementary and secondary math and science teachers. After an initial selection process at the state level, a national panel of distinguished scientists, mathematicians and educators reviews the extensive application packets of the state finalists and recommends the teachers who will receive a Presidential award. Mrs. Berk is the sole awardee from New Jersey. Mrs. Berk was recognized for teaching her students fractions, decimals and percentages using a technique to reach different types of learners: the visual, auditory, verbal and kinesthetic. She developed the method in an effort to make sure students in her fifth-grade class were operating at their optimum learning ability. Mrs. Berk says she fell in love with teaching right away, and her devotion to ensuring her students are learning is evidenced in this award. The award also brings more than prestige to the winner; as an awardee, Mrs. Berk also receives a $10,000 grant for her school. I want to congratulate Mrs. Berk of Travell Elementary School for being selected for this prestigious honor. She is a credit to New Jersey and a credit to our many outstanding educators. To paraphrase Oliver Wendell Holmes, the greatest teacher makes others believe in greatness, and they leave a lasting mark on the lives around them. Today, I am proud and honored to join in the applause for one of the nation's great teachers--Mrs. Ashley Berk. We are grateful for your dedication to providing New Jersey children with an outstanding education.

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, before I begin, let me just say that in addition to rising in support of this amendment budget, I also rise to support the efforts of the gentleman from Iowa (Chairman Nussle) that he has done to move us in the right direction with the budget that he has released. It was just a short time ago that I had the opportunity to finish reading a book by Chuck Colson which is entitled ``How Now Shall We Live''. And it is a title that is an intriguing title. It is a question that we really should all ask ourselves all the time. How shall we conduct ourselves in our private lives, in our lives with our families and our lives in our community, in our lives in our society, and it is really a question that every Member of Congress should be asking ourselves every day as we come down to the floor. Now, with families, how shall we live. Well, we ask our families to do a simple thing, to live within our means. Families have many ways that we can be spending our money, on trips, on schools, on property, on houses and fancy cars. But at the end of the day, a responsible family knows it has to spend no more than it takes in at the end of the year and must live within its means because if it does not what will the family be doing but simply passing that financial burden on to their children and their grandchildren. So Congress really has to set an example, and I guess you could say in a way we have been setting an example for years. But we have been setting a terrible example for families for years, and it is about time that we set a good one. I serve on the Budget Committee, and if you ever come to those meetings you will see, from the other side of the aisle especially, their ways to live within our means is to increase the means by increasing the revenue by raising taxes, and they just did it last week again. I have never had anyone explain to me how we improve the economy by taking more money out of the family budget and sending it down here to Washington so that we can spend it. So raising taxes obviously is not the answer to living within our means. It is spending less. Just like families who have lots of things that we can spend money on, Congress has lots of things that we can spend money on and if you come to the budget meetings you will see. Every agency, every department, every program that comes before us, they all say the same thing basically, that they want more money to spend. As a matter of fact, if you sat on a budget hearing last year you saw the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht), who, where we put charts up on all the time of these various things, spending requests and what have you, the gentleman from Minnesota asked a question. He said, could you put up a chart behind us of all the agencies, all the programs, all the departments that have ever come before us to ask for their program, for their department to spend less money. And we all looked at the chart, and there was nothing on the chart, because no one ever asks for less money in Washington because we know we always spend more. So I am rising in support of the bill sponsored by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling) because it moves us in that right direction. It moves us in the direction of spending within our means. And how does it do it? Not really hard at all. One of the things it does is it limits our spending on nonsecurity discretionary by reducing the spending by 2 percent. 2 percent. Many families have to do that all the time. It is not a heavy lift to reduce our spending in that area. We should be able to do the same thing. The second area is by reducing the growth in mandatory spending from 6.4 to 6.1 percent. We are still increasing spending there by almost twice the increase in the inflation rate, but we are just lowering the curve a little bit. So how now shall Congress live? We shall live as families have to live, within their means. And this bill sponsored by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling) does do that.

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the New Jersey State Law Enforcement Officers Association. Since 1938, the New Jersey Law Enforcement Officers Association and its members have worked to keep New Jersey safe from criminals and have sought to recognize those officers who go above and beyond the call of duty. Our law enforcement officers risk their lives daily by placing the safety of others before themselves. We must never forget the sacrifice of our fallen officers who have given all to protect our families and communities. Our local law enforcement officers are now a part of the front line in the battle to keep America safe from terrorist threats and on a daily basis confront the specter of further attacks. We must recognize the crucial role our local law enforcement plays in the War on Terror and provide them the support they need to keep us safe. The New Jersey State Law Enforcement Officers Association, in recognition of the importance of coordinating law enforcement, numbers Federal, State, County and Municipal Law Enforcement agents in its membership. By working together professionally and with the association, our law enforcement officers can easily share information about criminal threats. Our thoughts and prayers are with our law enforcement officers and with their families. We owe a great debt to those who work to keep us safe and it is only fitting that Congress recognize the work of these guardians of peace.

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, the question before us today, I believe, is how now shall we live within the confines of the budget that we have to deal with? Shall we live within the boundaries that we have set for ourselves and set an example for our generation today and the future, or should we ignore those boundaries that we have imposed upon ourselves and spend in excess? Right now we are in the process, as we know, of doing the budget for next year, the 2006 budget. We are setting up the framework of what we will be spending for next year. And so I think it is fitting and appropriate that we look at the supplemental today and the amendment that I have presented to see whether or not we will fit within that budget confines, whether or not we will fit within that area or, instead, will we exceed it and say that a budget really is nothing more than a charade and not explain exactly what we will be spending for any point in time. Let me just say that I applaud the chairman, and I applaud the members of the committee for doing what they said they would do as has been reported in the paper. To use the chairman's own words, they have taken the President's proposal and scrubbed it thoroughly for many points that they thought appropriate to remove from that spending proposal. My question, though, is, can we do a little bit better? Can we go a little bit further? Can we do exactly what we ask families to do back at home? Think for a moment. What would a family do today if they faced emergency expenditures like we are looking at in the supplemental right now, families who maybe have to see extra car payments or medical expenses? What would a family do? A family would probably have to do what we should be doing right here, and that is limit our spending elsewhere, reduce some other unnecessary spending so that we have that money for the emergency spending. If we look in the supplemental, there are a number of points in there that have already been raised by others. I will just point to one of them, the aid for tsunami victims. That started at $35 million, went up to $150 million, then $350 million, and now we are looking at $950 million. Some would question whether we can even spend all that before the end of this fiscal year. As a matter of fact, I spoke with people from the World Bank and they said that they are not even sure where the money would all be going to. They do not have an exact figure as to what we should be spending on long-term needs, so we can question whether or not we should be spending that money. But given that we can argue that back and forth, let us take that as a given that we should spend the entire $950 million for tsunami relief. I would ask this, as we stand here before the world as a body saying that we are going to do the charitable thing and give money to the tsunami victims, are we really exercising any charity there when we, in fact, say, we're not going to be paying for it, we're asking our kids and our grandkids to pay for it in excessive spending and deficit spending in future generations? Again, I applaud the chairman for the good start that they have done in this committee by scrubbing the budget and trying to find some offsets. I would simply say, can we not do a little bit better and find completely all offsets for all of the spending that we are doing, aside from the military defense spending, for all the excessive spending in the bill? It is around $4 billion. How much would it really come out to be? If you are looking at the budget that we have right now that we are living under, $2.5 trillion, and you are trying to find savings or offsets of around $4 billion, that is only two- tenths of 1 percent. I would ask, can we not find two-tenths of 1 percent of waste, fraud and abuse in the entire fiscal budget that we are operating under right now? I think we can. We ask families to do it for their budgets, we ask businesses to do it for their budgets, I think we can find that entire amount of approximately $4 billion of waste, fraud, and abuse in the entire budget, offset it, and then we can truly stand before the world and say that when we are making charitable contributions to the tsunami relief victims, that it is truly coming from this generation and not being passed on to future generations. I shall end where I began. How now shall we live? We shall live within the means, by the parameters that we have set down upon ourselves. We shall live within the budget that we have set for ourselves and not outside that budget. Point of Order

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Mr. Chairman, I am sorry, I should have stepped in before the gentleman stood up to say, in light of knowing the rules of the House, that I was about to withdraw the amendment.

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, it is expected that the People's Republic of China will enact its ``anti-secession'' law this March. Aimed at eventual reunification with Taiwan, this law will give China a legal basis to invade Taiwan. Clearly, this is a highly provocative law and will change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait. With the enactment of this law China claims jurisdiction over Taiwan and threatens to use force against Taiwan if Taiwan is found not actively working toward eventual unification with China. China will be Taiwan's sole arbitrator of any dispute between the two. Mr. Speaker, by enacting this law, China is also challenging the letter and spirit of the Taiwan Relations Act, which says that ``any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means'' is ``of grave concern to the United States.'' Indeed, any unilateral effort by the PRC to determine the future of Taiwan challenges America's will to defend the Taiwan Relations Act. We must let the Chinese know that our commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act is total and unwavering. We will not allow China to change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait. By imposing its form of government on the 23 million people of Taiwan, China tramples on the Taiwanese people's human rights and democratic ideals. Once again, we must not allow this to happen. In the Taiwan Relations Act we read, the ``preservation and enhancement of the human rights of all the people on Taiwan are . . . reaffirmed as objectives of the United States.'' We must let China know that we take human rights and democratic ideals seriously. It is vitally important that the Bush administration, the U.S. Congress and the international community voice opposition to China's proposed ``anti-secession'' law. It is a vicious law that will adversely affect Taiwan and the Pacific region. It will upset peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and bring economic ruin to the whole area. Mr. Speaker, I join my colleagues in voicing my strong opposition to China's proposed ``anti-secession'' law.

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, it is with profound sorrow that I rise to recognize the loss of a New Jersey resident who served with dignity and honor as a soldier in Iraq. I join his family, friends and members of his community in mourning this great loss. On Saturday, February 26, Army Private First Class Min S. Choi, 21, of River Vale, New Jersey died in Abertha, Iraq when an explosive device detonated near his military vehicle. Choi was assigned to the Army Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 6th Squadron, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Georgia. A resident of River Vale, N.J., Choi attended Pascack Valley High School. PFC Choi and his family emigrated to the United States from South Korea seven years ago. Following graduation in 2003, Choi enlisted in the Army because he wanted to serve his new country, and aspired to become a military officer and a United States citizen. His commitment to his adopted country and home humble us, and underscore how much we must treasure and protect the freedoms and democratic ideals of our great nation. This loss causes us to reflect on the bravery demonstrated by our men and women in uniform as they carry out their obligations in the face of danger. When their Nation called them to duty to preserve freedom and the security of our neighbors, they answered without hesitation. Mr. Speaker, it is my sincere privilege to recognize the life of a proud soldier and heroic representative of the State of New Jersey. Army PFC Min S. Choi was an honorable defender of liberty and he deserves our gratitude and respect. We remember those who have fallen not only as soldiers, but also as patriots who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. May we keep their loved ones in our thoughts and prayers as they struggle to endure this difficult period and mourn the heroes America has lost.

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, it is with profound sorrow that I rise to recognize the loss of a New Jersey citizen who served with dignity and honor as a soldier in Iraq. I join his family, friends and members of his community in mourning this great loss. On Sunday, January 16, Army Spc. Alain L. Kamolvathin, 21, of Blairstown, New Jersey died in Baghdad, Iraq as a result of a vehicle accident. Kamolvathin was assigned to the Army National Guard's 1st Battalion, 69th Infantry Regiment, New York, New York. A resident of Blairstown, N.J., Kamolvathin attended North Warren Regional High School. Following graduation, Kamolvathin enlisted in the New Jersey National Guard to serve our great nation while also seeking out new educational and travel opportunities. His friends described him as a hardworking, intelligent person with a deep love and commitment to his close-knit family. This loss causes us to reflect on the bravery demonstrated by our men and women in uniform as they carry out their obligations in the face of danger. When their Nation called them to duty to preserve freedom and the security of our neighbors, they answered without hesitation. Mr. Speaker, it is my sincere privilege to recognize the life of a proud soldier and heroic representative of the State of New Jersey. Army Spc. Alain L. Kamolvathin was an honorable defender of liberty and he deserves our gratitude and respect. We remember those who have fallen not only as soldiers, but also as patriots who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. May we keep their loved ones in our thoughts and prayers as they struggle to endure this difficult period and mourn the heroes America has lost.

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, it is with profound sorrow that I rise to recognize the loss of a New Jersey citizen who served with dignity and honor as a soldier in Iraq. I join his family, friends and members of his community in mourning this great loss. On Saturday, January 1, LCpl. Brian P. Parrello, 19, of West Milford, NJ, was killed in Al Anbar Province, Iraq as a result of hostile fire. Lance Corporal Parrello was assigned to Small Craft Company, Headquarters Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, NC. Parrello was attached to a Marine Swift Boat unit that patrolled the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. A resident of West Milford, New Jersey, Parrello attended West Milford High School where he was a member of both the football and hockey teams. Following high school, he was so deeply affected by the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon that he proudly enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. His teachers, coaches and peers have called him a real leader and a role model, someone who always gave 150 percent, a person who led by example and with a big heart. This loss causes us to reflect on the bravery demonstrated by our men and women in uniform as they carry out their obligations in the face of danger. When their Nation called them to duty to preserve freedom and the security of our neighbors, they answered without hesitation. Mr. Speaker, it is my sincere privilege to recognize the life of a proud soldier and heroic representative of the State of New Jersey. LCpl Brian P. Parrello was an honorable defender of liberty and he deserves our gratitude and respect. We remember those who have fallen not only as soldiers, but also as patriots who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. May we keep their loved ones in our thoughts and prayers as they struggle to endure this difficult period and mourn the heroes America has lost.

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I thank the Speaker for the opportunity, I think, to be the last speaker of the 108th Congress, if I am not mistaken. I want to take this opportunity before I begin just to reflect back, to reflect back on the 108th Congress, to think where we began at the beginning 2 years ago, all what seemed at the time insurmountable issues that this Congress would have to address. And we overcame them, addressed major issues, and passed significant legislation for the benefit of the people of this United States. And as we wrap up this 108th Congress now and look forward to the 109th Congress, here, this evening, we were actually able to pass the intelligence bill, to hopefully reorganize and restructure the Intelligence Community in this country for the benefit of the people, for the benefit of the liberties of this Nation as well, and the free world for that matter. It is a daunting task that lies ahead for us, but it is one that we can look back with great accomplishment that we have already achieved in the 108th Congress. But as we do this, as we reflect back, we have to remember one problem that was just beginning to rear its head at the start of this session, and that grew out of the corruption, anti-Americanism, the inefficiencies of the United Nations and what we know now as the United Nations's food-for-oil scandal. And as the photo to my left shows, a steady diet of corruption, the U.N. oil-for-food scandal, oddly we see with Saddam Hussein on one side and the oil container on the other side, leaving out, of course, of the picture the very people of his nation that the food-for-oil dollars were supposed to benefit. The U.N. Food-for-Oil Program was a program that was poorly structured from the very beginning. Basically it was one that was set up to allow for the egregious abuses that came. The nature and scope of this scandal is turning out to be, what I believe to be and what others have already said, the greatest financial scandal in the U.N. history, and actually the greatest theft in the history of the world. The United Nations created a program that, if we think about it for a moment in retrospect, was doomed for failure from the very beginning at best, and, at worst, for corruption; and apparently what we got was the worst, corruption along with the failure. I just want to take a moment to reflect back how this all began. It was back in 1990, 1 week after Iraq invaded Kuwait, that the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 661. That established a worldwide embargo on the exportation of oil from Iraq. Well, obviously, that was put in place to make sure that he would not be able to use those oil dollars for his own benefit. Due do Saddam Hussein's continued defiance and disregard of the U.N. weapons inspectors, we recall that we were trying to find out what was going on in his nation; but due to his defiance of those U.N. weapons inspectors after the war, those sanctions remained in place throughout much of the decade of the 1990s. Now the critics at the time that those sanctions were put in place argued that they were placing an extraordinary burden on the general population, the regular people of Iraq. And by not allowing the Iraqi Government to export oil and derive the money from that, the government was faced with a significant decrease in revenue, and, therefore, they were unable to, it was said, to provide humanitarian assistance, basically food and medical supplies for their own people. In fact, back at that time it was UNICEF that was saying that 1 in 4 children in Iraq at the time were malnourished, that 4,000 children were dying every single month due to the sanctions being in place. The U.N. responded to that sort of argument that UNICEF and others were saying and the critics were making, and so, in 1996, with the Iraqi people honestly suffering at the hands of their government and no end to the sanctions in place of being lifted because Saddam Hussein was not allowing his weapons inspectors to come back into the country, the Iraqi regime agreed with the U.N. to set up the program that we now know as the Oil-for-Food program. If there was ever a way to set up a program that could have been more set for failure, I cannot think of one. Why do I say that? Because it allowed for Saddam Hussein to have all the decision-making in his hand and the U.N. basically to have none, and in addition to that, the U.N. had very little oversight. Saddam Hussein was able to say who he wanted to sell the oil to under the Oil-for-Food program, which became a scandal, and in addition to that, he could basically set the price. So he could say that he was going to sell the oil to the companies or countries of his choice at a price that he would determine, that the U.N. would be able to look over those transactions at that point, but the U.N. was not given any ability to make further inspection when that company or that country was able to then sell the oil probably at a much higher price, a handsome price, a price that enabled that company or country to then do what it is entirely possible for it to do and what it did do, kick back that money to the Iraqi government and Saddam Hussein. Likewise, Saddam Hussein was able to and was given the power by the U.N. to decide who it would be who would provide this humanitarian aid for his people. What was this doing? This was saying that Saddam Hussein was able to choose this company or this company or this country or this country to be the ones that provide the humanitarian aid, and of course, if he was rolling out literally hundreds of millions of dollars of program payments to them, what was occurring under the table in form of kickbacks only became realized later on. The Oil-for-Food program only stayed in place, of course, until April of 2003, when his regime was toppled. Many investigations have begun and have proceeded over the last several years to try to explore exactly what occurred during that, what fraud and abuses came about due to this program that was so poorly set up from the very beginning, and what, of course, is found out? It has found corruption and bribery. It has found literally billions of dollars being taken from the starving people of his country and given to himself and for other purposes. In the area of bribery, investigations revealed that Hussein's regime bribed numerous foreign officials, companies and others, to curry favor to have the sanctions imposed on them lifted by the U.N. This is just not wild speculation. It comes back from Charles Duelfer, the top American weapons inspector in Iraq at the time, he testified, Mr. Hussein was successfully using illegal proceeds specifically from the Oil-for-Food program to undermine support for the sanctions that the U.N. imposed after the 1990 invasion of Kuwait. So some of the very money that was supposed to be going to the people was going to U.N. officials. The first report came out in the spring of early last year, the GAO report, and that report cited that Saddam Hussein had generated over $10 billion, that is with a B, of illicit revenues by gaming the system since 1991. Recent reports we may have seen have more than doubled that estimate to around $21 billion. Where was the money going besides bribery? To weapons. Further corruption was exposed after allegations surfaced that Saddam Hussein used a large portion of the money to purchase weapons for his regime, and so now, it is widely believed that those very same weapons are the weapons that are being used by the rebels over in Iraq to kill and attack American soldiers. Where else did the dollars go besides bribery and weapons? There are also reports that Saddam Hussein used the money he acquired from the program to pay families of Palestinian suicide bombers who killed Israelis and Americans to the tune of $35 billion, and this was done through Jordanian banks. I think we have a chart that in a not too complicated manner puts this one example in play, just gives a little idea how he was able to do it. On the top of the chart, we show three different areas. The first two are really the main ones of where the money came from from these illicit purposes. Ten percent, kickback payments from companies in Oil- for-Food programs. Those are the humanitarian programs that I spoke to just a moment ago, those companies that he was able to say that I would only pick this company or this company or this country to do business with so long as they were kicking money back to them. The other is a fee for oil. In this one example, $3 per barrel fee for oil paid by the Jordanian government as part of their program of getting oil from Iraq. So these were basically, if you want to use the vernacular, kickbacks that were coming for every barrel of oil that they were able to export at a very low price, and the Jordanian government was able then to sell at a higher price, they were required to kick back to his regime around $3 per barrel. That money then went into the Rafidain Bank in Amman, Jordan, into a Central Bank account in that bank. Item number four shows that came out of the account, and in this one example that we show in this chart at least, to the families of suicide bombers in the amount of, as this chart is showing around, $15- to $25,000 per family for suicide bombers. So, for anyone out there who is still believing that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do prior to 9/11 and prior to the toppling of his regime, that he had nothing to do with terrorism, let this evidence now dismiss that thought of innocence by Saddam Hussein from their thoughts today. So, instead of his using dollars to help starving people in his own country, Saddam Hussein used the money to bribe, buy weapons, support terrorists and, of course, to further his lavish lifestyle as a dictator. I will just say as an aside, earlier this year I had the opportunity to travel to Iraq to visit with the American troops that are over there, see the great job that they are doing, that many of these men and women are so proud of the accomplishments that they have already achieved and what they want to do in the future. While we were traveling about Iraq we had the opportunity also of seeing the palatial mansions that Saddam Hussein had not only for himself but other leadership in his government, for his generals, for the lakes that he had made for himself, man-made lakes and palaces around the country. That is where some of the money from the Oil-for- Food oil was going to instead of the starving people of his own country. There is also speculation or evidence that is coming out to say that not only did the money go to other countries and to other companies, for the purposes I have already cited, but also to members of the U.N. itself, to the executive director of the Oil-for-Food program it is asserted that received dollars back from Saddam Hussein's regime from the Oil-for-Food program. Each one of these examples is an example of corruption by this regime that is becoming more and more apparent as the facts begin to present themselves. The fact that this such an ineffective body in the Oil-for-Food program, the U.N., really should not come as a surprise to any of us who know a little bit about the history of the U.N. It is really just another example of the long-running inefficiencies of the U.N. I mentioned before that UNICEF was blaming the sanctions on the fact that 4- to 5,000 Iraqi children were dying every single month; that one in four children in that country were malnourished during that period of the sanctions. What these facts really reveal is that it was not the sanctions that were causing the malnourishment of his population, but rather, it was the corruption and complicity of men like Saddam Hussein and Kofi Annan and other U.N. officials who allowed this to go on year after year after year. The fact that the U.N. is inefficient as an organization really has to look at their overall purpose. What their major overall purpose, of course, is the prevention of war. There have been over 300 wars since 1945 and over 22 million deaths resulting from these wars. So we have to ask, how efficient was the U.N. in preventing them? The U.N. has authorized military action to counter aggression only twice really, in North Korea's invasion of South Korea and Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. So how efficient was the U.N. in doing what it was really set out to do? It was not. Today, the most urgent threat to international peace and security today is terrorism, and yet, the U.N. cannot even agree upon a definition of what terrorism is. That is really in large part because it counts terrorist-sponsoring States and countries among its own membership. They are not going to define terrorism in the same way that their country is established. How about finally human rights violations? The U.N. counts the world's leading human rights violators and repressive government among its membership. Worse, those members are disproportionately represented among the 53 countries elected to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, with Libya as my colleagues recall serving as chairman just last year. Coming back to the issue then of Oil-for-Food and what the U.N. says they should be doing about it, well, the U.N. and the leadership says they are looking at the issue right now. The most troubling fact, however, is the lack of cooperation that we are receiving from the U.N. to get to the bottom of the most recent scandal involving Oil-for-Food. The United Nations has continuously denied U.S. government access to papers and internal records that concern the Oil-for-Food program, and they have repeatedly in addition to that shielded their officials such as their executive director of this program from ongoing investigations. How about audits? There is something like 55 internal audits that the U.S. government has requested from the U.N. so we can see exactly what was going on with this program, and the U.N. leadership has denied turning those audits over. I will point out that the U.N. does continue to claim that they are addressing this problem by the establishment of the Volker Commission, and I think most people would agree that Paul Volker is beyond question as far as his integrity is concerned, but that is not the issue here. The issue is the way the commission was set up by the U.N. in order to investigate the Oil-for-Food scandal and basically was set up just as the other program was, totally ineffective. It is ineffective due to his inability to gain any significant results. For example, Paul Volker has no subpoena power, and so, therefore, he is clearly open to U.N. manipulation as to the documents that he needs to get. In addition to that, he has no power of contempt, and by that I mean he cannot, like a court can, order someone to testify, bring forth documents, and if they do not, file contempt charges against them and force them to do so. So, without those abilities, the Volker Commission really is an empty shell and will not produce any results that are verifiable or that this Congress can rely upon. I mentioned before that the U.N. leadership has failed to allow people to testify. The U.N. failed to allow Benon Savan, executive director of the Oil-for-Food program, to testify before Congress, and Volker Commission's has rejected requests to make them available for us. I will point out something to make sure that our whole focus on this issue remains focused where it should be in light of my comments so far. The Washington Times today, Tuesday, December 7, headline is House Republicans call for Annan to step down, Kofi Annan to step down. This followed a press conference that we held here in the House with the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake) and others who have sponsored a piece of legislation that I will speak to in just a moment, and we sort of worried that the take on that press conference would be just the one that it is in the paper, and that is, the focus is on whether or not Kofi Annan should step down or not, as far as the headline is concerned. While that is certainly an issue that should be discussed and debated and finally come to grips with as to whether or not we want to have someone in power, in charge of the U.N., that it was in place and overseeing the Oil-for-Food scandal the entire time that it was operating, and also now is stonewalling and blocking the U.S.' ability to get to the bottom of it, that is one issue. But the real reason that the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake) and others here had the press conference yesterday to address this issue was not so much who is at the leadership today, who is going to be at the leadership, at the helm of the U.N. tomorrow, but overall whether this scandal existed, and of course, the evidence shows that it did; to what extent that scandal existed; and who was involved; and basically to just get to the bottom of it. Until we get to the bottom of it, we owe it to the American public, and here is the point, to say to the U.N. that they cannot continue operating as they have operated all these many years and doing it on the American dime. And the American taxpayer is not going to be subsidizing the scandals that continue to go on in the U.N. We are going to withhold payment to the U.N. until we get to the bottom of these facts. So to that end, legislation sponsored this year, H.R. 4284, in the 108th Congress, is a piece of legislation that would do just that. It would say that we are going to withhold 10 percent of American taxpayer dollars going to the U.N., 10 percent of America's responsibilities to them, and that number is around $340-some-odd million a year. So 10 percent of that, obviously, is $32 million or $34 million this year. That would go up to 20 percent next year, so around $72 million next year, until the U.N. becomes more forthcoming, provides the documentation, provides the audits allowing the President of the United States to certify that the U.N. is cooperating with all investigations so we can get to the bottom of this and find out who is responsible in each one of these instances. During the course of the year, or just recently, I should say, some Members, myself, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake), and others, have sent around what is called a ``Dear Colleague'' letter to encourage our colleagues to sign on to that bill during this session of Congress. As we go into the 109th Congress, we will be encouraging other Members to sign on to that bill as well, the focus, of course, being that tax dollars should not be going to such a scandal-plagued organization as the U.N. until they begin to clean up their act. The fact that this evidence is all coming to a head now, or coming more to light now, may be an explanation as to why earlier in this session, when some of us moved an amendment to an appropriation bill that basically did the exact same thing that this bill would do, and that is to say when we had a spending bill going through this House earlier in the 108th Congress, we said let us do it right then, let us withhold some or all of our funding to the U.N. until we get this information, that, unfortunately, all the information was not out and we did not have enough Members in the House to support this legislation. So in the spending bills this year, we completely funded the U.N. But now the information is coming out. It started early enough, of course. I honestly believe there was enough evidence at that time for us to withhold funds earlier this year. It started way back in a report dated June 20, 2003. An article appeared that said, ``The now defunct program, the Food-for-Oil Program, allowed Iraq to buy food and medicine with its oil proceeds under U.N. supervision. Although the oil proceeds were legal and approved by the U.N., several observers say the system involved kickbacks and was used to buy political support and to finance intelligence activities and even terrorist activities. That is going back to reports in June of 2003. Of course, there is the one I mentioned earlier, the Food-for-Oil minister, Benon Sevan. At that time he was granted an allocation of 7.3 million barrels of Iraqi oil. By that, I mean that under this program, Saddam Hussein decided that Benon Sevan, the Food-for-Oil administrator, the person in the U.N. who is overseeing the entire program, would be able to buy 7.3 million barrels of Iraqi oil from its regime. But he was able to do so at an artificially low price that Saddam Hussein set. So he was then able to resell that oil, and he could expect to receive $3.5 million in profit. As somebody else said, not a bad deal. Who else was on that list, besides officials at the U.N.? Well, reports also show that three countries were involved, and these probably should not surprise any one of us here. Overall, 248 companies purchased through the Oil-for-Food program, but three countries go to the top of the list: First, Russia. Maybe that should not surprise us. Russia has had a vested interest, as related in some of the reports, for the last 15 years in Iraqi oil production. But what may be interesting is one notable recipient of one of those lucrative oil contracts was the director of the Russian President's office. Now, we are trying to get information from Russia to what extent that was going on, and why someone within the President's office in Russia was receiving those dollars. So far we have been unsuccessful. A second country that should probably also not be a surprise to any one of us is our old friend France, also involved in the Food-for-Oil scandal. France's oil vouchers account for 150.8 million barrels of oil. And the people involved in that reportedly include the French interior minister and also close friends of Chirac and others. So what this means is that people close to Jacques Chirac and the interior minister were able to get the ability to buy 150.8 million barrels of oil from the Saddam Hussein regime, again at an artificially low price, and again able to resell it at whatever price they could, which would be market prices, and then make a killing in that market deal. The third and final one, Syria, again just like France and Russia, should come as no surprise that they were also part of the deal with Saddam Hussein as far as getting oil at a low price. How much? 116.9 million barrels of crude oil that they also got at an artificially low price and that they were able to sell and get back at a much higher price. So the examples of abuse and fraud are complete. The people who are involved in it is a growing list of some of the countries that we always suspected may have had a reason for trying to undercut us in the U.N. with regard to sanctions, countries that had a reason to undercut us with regard to the war in Iraq. The people involved were the very people who were involved with implementing the program at the U.N. So it now is incumbent upon this Congress, as we go forward into the 109th Congress, to do all that we can to shine the light of day on this program, to make sure all the facts come out, and to hold all guilty parties responsible. But the only way we are ever going to put pressure on the U.N. is by putting pressure in the area they respond to, and that is their funding. So as we go into the 109th Congress, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake) and myself will be supporting legislation to withhold U.S. taxpayer dollars going to the U.N. until they open up their books, provide the audits, allow the people in that organization to testify before Congress and to let all the information come out so that the American public knows exactly where their taxpayer dollars are going. With that, Mr. Speaker, as we close the 108th Congress, I look forward to the challenges ahead in the 109th Congress. I know that, as Franklin said, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Well, this Congress has been vigilant in the past, and I am sure we are going to be ever vigilant with the taxpayers' dollars and the American public's interest as we go through the next 2 years as well and we get to the bottom of the Food-for-Oil scandal.

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey

Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.