Duncan Hunter

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise to support the Kaptur amendment. A couple of points have been made that I think need to be answered in this debate on this particular amendment. First, publication, the driving theme of the proponents of the bill is that small inventors need them and need their language and need H.R. 400. Whether they like it or not, this is going to help them. Once again the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Goodlatte] pointed out that he thinks publication is going to help small innovators, because once they advertise this creation to the world, money will swoop in, money will come from the four corners of the globe and they will be able to finance their invention with that money. Now, the point is, if somebody wants to publish their invention, they can do it. They can do it under present law. There is a provision under present law so inventors can go out and publicize if they want to.

Mr. HUNTER. I yield to the gentleman from Virginia.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, let me just say that the gentleman's argument is naive. If one goes into a high-technology company today and wants to view some of their technology for possible financing, one has to sign a stack of nondisclosure agreements.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, let us walk through what the gentleman just said. He said these people are protected once they publish. They are not protected, and I will tell the gentleman why. To be able to sue for royalties, and that is not 20 or 30 percent of the action, but if somebody else publicizes what they have, they have to show that their invention, that the invention that came out and was utilized by somebody else, was substantially identical to their initial application. The facts are that when inventors go out and make an initial application, that initial application is often much broader than what is finally patented. So if they make it too broad, if they make the application much broader than the final patent that is awarded and they get that final patent, they cannot come in and sue. The second thing is that they have to come in and show that they actually had notice of what that person was doing, of that publication. When you send out patent ideas, these ideas that are being published, on the Internet, how are you going to prove that the guy had actual knowledge of what you had? Last, the whole point that has been made by all these small inventors is this: To sue and get a part of the action, even if it is a 2- or 3- percent royalty, you have to have horsepower. That means you have to have money. If you have not had some running room, if you have not had the chance while your patent was secret to go out there and line that money up, you are never going to be able to do it. That is a fact of life. That is why these inventors hold this stuff tight to their chests. That is why they have not come on H.R. 400. My good friend, the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde], my fellow consumer of venison, posed this debate as something, as a Japan-bashing thing, where we are lining up the sons of the Mayflower versus the people of Japanese ancestry. I would just say to my friend, I am looking at this list of our Nobel laureates, like Franco Modigliano and many others. This is a country where people of every ethnic origin have come to America, used the protection of the patent system to come up with an idea. My friend, the gentleman from Illinois, almost deterred me from using my poster again. I wonder why it is OK for the gentleman from Virginia to talk about Japan and Europe and why we should look at some of their ideas, but if somebody disagrees with him it is Japan bashing. I still think this poster is instructive. Japan is production heavy. They specialize in production. They need to get creative ideas into the assembly line. That is why they made the agreement with our patent examiner to get our patents published 20 years after application, rather than 17 years after the patent was actually issued. But once again, the small inventors, the Nobel laureates, the guys who invented the MRI, the guys who invented the pacemaker, those guys are not submariners.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, let me just close by saying that the same language that was in the Rohrabacher bill is in the Kaptur bill. CRS has said that both sides, both types of language, would likely end the practice of submarine patents.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, this has been a good debate, a robust debate on the patent system and whether or not we need to radically change the system. I am offering this amendment to move over to the personnel side of the issue and talk about it a little bit. I want you to consider that the proposal, the idea that property rights are extremely precious in the United States and that if you ask the average citizen what his most important right is, he would probably say it is my right to own my house, my farm, my property, and to have a system that ensures that ownership. Now, we often have disputes over property rights in the United States. We have quiet title actions and other types of actions, when you go to court because somebody else or the government disputes your claimed absolute ownership of your property. And what Americans want when their property rights are in dispute is an excellent judiciary with absolute integrity. They do not want to have a judiciary that is contracted out. We went over and had a rent-a-judge program. They do not want to have a judiciary where you may go to a foreign country and contract or exchange judges with them, especially if it is an issue where their ownership of your property may be a part of the particular issue. We want to have judges that are absolutely insulated from politics. Now, I think we need exactly the same thing when we are talking about intellectual property. We have had a Patent Office, I understand, I have done a little investigation, we have not had a scandal regarding undue influence in the Patent Office for 160 years. What does that say about our patent examiners, those Federal employees who work in the Patent Office and basically make decisions that are life or death for American citizens, for inventors, for small businesses, for big businesses? Those people in practical terms award property rights or refuse to award property rights. They are quasi-judges. They are a lot like the judges who make determinations on real property rights, who make the decision as to whether or not you own your house or you own that strip of land that your neighbor may contest. Well, I have offered an amendment that does several things. It says essentially that patent applications, it ensures that patent applications will be reviewed by politically insulated, competent, and plentiful patent examiners. Let us go through that. First, I think the important idea is to have political insulation to make sure that you have an absolutely pristine patent examiner corps and you do that by making sure that they are U.S. citizens and that they are Federal employees. You do not want to contract out judges. These folks are quasi-judges. Second, it ensures that you are going to have good patent examiners. It says that over 5 percent of their duty time must be spent in training. We have a lot of very high technology creativity now that is being pushed through the Patent Office by American innovators. We need to have folks that are up to speed and can apply technical expertise that will allow them to make an efficient review of that patent application. So my bill or my amendment offers a requirement for 5 percent of your duty time being spent in training. Last, it ensures that you are going to have swift patent issuance, that has been an issue today, and office flexibility by lifting a mandated full-time employee cap from the Patent and Trademark Office.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to proceed for 1 additional minute.

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

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

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for staying around to answer a few questions on his amendment. I just want to ask a couple of questions. Let me walk through this thing and make sure I get the right and accurate picture of what his amendment does. This has to do with prior use of a certain technology, and that means presumably, if one has a company that has been using technology, let us say they have kept it as a trade secret so other people do not know what it is, and they end up obtaining a patent for that particular technology, that the prior user, the corporation, can continue to use the technology without having to pay. But if they expand their activity beyond the scope that existed at the time the patent issued for the inventor over here, then they have to pay for the delta, the difference between their present activity and their expanded activity, using what is now patented technology. Is that an accurate description?

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to bring attention to the 81st anniversary of the genocide of the Armenian people. On April 24, 1915 some 200 Armenian religious, political and intellectual leaders were arrested and exiled from Istanbul, Turkey. Over the next eight years, 1.5 million men, women, and children were forced into slave labor, tortured, exterminated, and deported by the government of the ``Young Turk Committee.'' For more than 15 years the U.S. State Department has refrained from referring to the tragic period between 1915-1923 as ``genocide.'' Several former Presidents have issued proclamations on the anniversary of this event, expressing deep sorrow for the massacres, yet stopping short of declaring the tragedy as genocide. The U.S. should, in conjunction with the state of California and some 30 other nations, go on record to clearly and unambiguously recognize the Armenian massacres as genocide, and set aside April 24th as a day of remembrance. Remembering the Armenian genocide is important not only for the Armenian people, but for the future generations of our global society. We must not forget and we must not repeat such tragic history. Mr. Speaker, what happened in the Ottoman Turkish Empire during the years of 1915-1923 was more than a series of massacres in a time of instability, revolution, and war. It was the first example of genocide in the 20th century. Calling this by its proper name is extremely important, both from the standpoint of the historical accuracy, and respect for the victims and survivors. Given the alarming number of conflicts in today's world that often verge on genocide, stating the truth about what happened in the history of the Armenian people, including commemorating this anniversary, can help strengthen our determination to prevent genocide from occurring again.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the gentleman from Georgia, Jack Kingston, for giving me some time here ahead of his 1 hour. Mr. Speaker, I rise to say a few things about two great Americans. One of them is my good friend Bob Dornan, who is no longer with us, but may be back soon depending on the outcome of the election challenge that he has offered; and the other one is Bill Blakemore, a private American citizen who right now is in the hospital, the Methodist Hospital in Houston, TX, who is in pretty serious condition, but who was very, very important to this country in the 1980's when he helped to put together a group of Texas conservatives who rallied the country behind the idea that Central America was worth saving, and particularly that we needed to support the Contras, the freedom fighters who were fighting the Communist-backed, Soviet-backed insurgents or Soviet backed Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and also that we needed to protect the very fragile government of El Salvador, the government of Jose Duarte, which at that time was holding off the Soviet-backed FMLN. When Ronald Reagan came into office in 1980, and I was lucky to be one of the people that came in with him as one of the 54 Republican Congressmen who were elected that year, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua were all under some sort of a military dictatorship. Today all those nations have fragile democracies, imperfect, certainly not totally cast in the image of democracy that we have in the United States, but represented I think by a determination that was manifested in one of those voting lines in the 1980's, when one woman who had been ordered by the FMLN Communists not to go to the polls that day was standing in a voting line with a bullet wound in her shoulder and was asked by one of the reporters if she was not going to leave the line and she said ``no''. Essentially she said ``We fought for a long time to get to this point, I'm going to vote.'' And they had a great turnout that year. Jose Duarte remained the leader of El Salvador and, because of the steadfastness of Ronald Reagan a lot of his supporters and guys like Bill Blakemore of Texas, who was a real leader of the business community, we have a chance for real democracy in our own hemisphere. Let me say just a word, Mr. Speaker, about my great friend Bob Dornan. There will never be another one like him. He was of great value to this House, and I think there is a good chance he will be of great value to this House again. I am just reminded when they had the incident in Somalia and those Americans were killed, Bob Dornan was the only Member of the National Security Committee who went over, flew that long distance, some 40 hours in the air, to Somalia, went over the event in detail, and came back and contacted the family of every member of that Ranger unit who were killed in that debacle. That was Bob Dornan. A heart as big as all outdoors, a keen intellect, a great ability to speak. He has still got it. Obviously we have heard from him across the airwaves lately, but I just wanted to say that Bob Dornan was a great, great asset to the National Security Committee, flew all of the aircraft, knew all of the countries with whom we had treaty relations and knew what the treaty relations were and was a real expert in national security. God bless you, Bob. I hope to see you back soon.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I want to reiterate what I said at the start of this good, robust debate, and that is that I have great respect for the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde], the chairman of the full committee and my great friend, and the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Coble], the chairman of the subcommittee, my other great friend. I want to thank both of them for all of the great work that they have done. I think one thing that we have proved to the world over the last several hours is that this is a fairly complex subject. I think that the area that the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Lofgren] just spoke to is a huge area. It is an area of great importance, because we keep getting up on our side and saying that there is publication after 18 months, that all of these inventors have their secrecy ripped away from them, and then people can come in and unscrupulously flood around them with patents, which the practice of flooding is used in Europe and Japan where that 18-month publication system exists, and then the other side gets up and says, no, we have fixed that, there is an exception for small inventors. They do not have to publish. Let us walk through that. Right now you do not have to publish until some 20 years after you have applied for your patent, and that gives you a long time, especially if you have a very complex piece of technology, to go out and get the money, get the running room that these Nobel laureates who support the Rohrabacher bill apparently want to keep. They do not like the new bill. But under the new bill, you jerk that veil of privacy away from them after 18 months. Now, they do have a choice under the committee bill, but the choice for small businesses is not to be published. They do not have that choice. They either have to publish after 18 months or get out. They have to get out of the patent system and give up their attempt to get a patent and give up forever the chance to get that very important protection. Now, it is true, and I want to hold up this list of people, very bright people who do not want this protection that the committee wants to give them. The gentleman, Nobel laureate, Franco Modigliani who developed management systems; Kary Mullis, Nobel laureate, polymerase chain reactor; Gertrude Elion, Nobel laureate, transplant anti- rejection drugs; the guy who invented the neonatal respirator; the guy who invented the MRI machine. Lots of these very bright people do not want to be published early under the system that exists in Japan. Now, this chart tells you maybe why they do not want to be published. Why are there so few Nobel laureates in the sciences in Japan? Only five. There are 175 in the United States. The reason is very clear. These people get their privacy ripped away after 18 months. That means they do not have the running room to go out and get capital, to get a start-up company, to go out and line up the support that it takes to get a technology into production. In the United States we have a ton of Nobel laureates because we give them protection, we give them some running room. So let us get this straight once and for all. The committee bill says that after you have had two office actions in the Patent Office, that at least a third of the patents go way beyond two office actions, but after you have two office actions, you have 3 months to decide whether to publish to the world or get out of the patent system. Now, let us go to submarine patents for just 1 minute. Submarine patents have been the subject of almost three-quarters of the argument time spent by the proponents of this bill. I am told by the testimony that I read, or the summary of the testimony, by the Patent Commissioner was that over the last 20 years of 2.3 million patents issued, 370 of those patents were submarine patents. That is less than one-tenth of 1 percent. So a lot of these Nobel laureates would probably say, you know what we would go along with? We are not a bunch of phoney submariners, we have good stuff, we just want to protect it. What we would go along with is a provision from the bill that would say, if you do not use due diligence, then the Patent Office should publish you. That will take care of that problem. That takes care of those 370 submariners. That is in the Rohrabacher bill. If you do not use due diligence, you get published. So the guy that hides for years and years and years gets brought out into the open and published. I think one reason these Nobel laureates do not like this is they are saying why do you expose 2.3 million patent holders early, early in the game and let people take advantage of them because of what 370 guys did? It does not make sense. So once again, I want to thank the chairman of the subcommittee, the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Coble], and the full committee chairman, the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde], for bringing this very important bill forward, but I go back to the beginning of the debate when the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Goss] said first do no harm. Folks, we are doing harm with this bill.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding. The theme has been that we should be like Europe and Japan, but the fact is that high technology startups are something that is uniquely American. There are very few high technology startup companies in Europe and Japan. That is because they lose the one thing which is central to their success, and that is secrecy, because once they publish in 18 months, the big companies come in and sweep them off the map by patenting around them, which is called patent flooding. The gentlewoman is absolutely right.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, it is not in the bill, and I would like to ask a question about that. As I read the manager's amendment, there is the opportunity for a small business to opt, if they have had two office actions, to either opt out of the patent system or to delay publication for 3 months, but they still have the publication mandate after 18 months, from the way I read the manager's amendment, and I ran that by the inventors.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding this time to me. I thank all of the Members of this debate, because I think we are starting to frame the debate fairly effectively. Let me say first that the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde], the chairman of the full committee, is one of the giants of this legislature, and I think we all recognize him as such on both sides of the aisle; the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Coble], my good friend, who is the chairman of the subcommittee, one of my finest friends ever in the House of Representatives, and a superb legislator and a guy for whom I have a lot of respect. I know both gentlemen have worked long and hard on this bill. Let me say that as we move along in this body, we begin to realize more and more how easy it is to get up and complain about something that is a work product that other folks have done a lot of work on, and we should not take that role or that opportunity frivolously. Mr. Speaker, I thought one of the last things that the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Goss] said was a very important thing. He said that the first rule of the physician is do no harm. While I think there are a lot of good things in H.R. 400, I think there are a few fatal defects that do some harm. The other thing that I think we have to realize when we go into this debate is that this is an enormous debate because it has a great deal to do with our most important property rights, our intellectual property rights; the centerpiece of America, the idea, the creator of technology, the innovator. And this property is just as valuable as real property that we cherish, the right to have real property; this right of an inventor to go out, come up with an idea, and get paid for that idea. We have a system that accords certain rights and privileges to that inventor. We are changing those rights and privileges markedly in this bill. There are two sides to this debate, I think that is something we need to establish early, two legitimate sides to the debate. I was just going through the list of people who oppose the bill. Dr. Forrest Bird, inventor of the neonatal respirator; Dr. Paul Burstein, the inventor of rocket motor inspection system. Raymond Damadian, inventor of the MRI. He is opposed to the bill. We have several Nobel laureates here: Gertrude Elion, the inventor of leukemia-fighting and transplant rejection drugs, Nobel laureate; the inventor of the Hovercraft, Charles Fletcher; Franco Modigliani, the inventor of the credit management system, Nobel laureate. There are legitimate arguments on the other side of this bill. We are going to lay those out. The one thing that I am going to concentrate on is publication, because every inventor needs a period of secrecy, and there is no substitute for secrecy. I think that is what we are going to find out as this debate goes on. If we publish, if we expose this inventor's secrets 18 months after he has applied, it is going to kill him. I think we can lay that out clearly in the debate. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I like the rule.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. We were told in some previous statements, I think the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Goodlatte] pointed to Japan and Europe and said, why can we not be like them? This poster shows the number of Noble Laureates in science and technology from the United States as opposed to the number from Japan. There are 175 from the United States, that is our broken system; and there are 5 from Japan, that is the good system. Now, why are there so many from the United States and why are there so few from Japan? And I think my colleagues would see exactly the same numbers with Europe. Why are there almost no high-technology startup businesses in Japan and Europe and lots of them in the United States? Secrecy. Being able to keep one's idea under a cloak while one lines up the money and the power to get it into production. You can do that in the United States. You cannot do it in Japan, you cannot do it in Europe. There is no running room. We want to give our innovators running room. Do Members know something? We give it to them. They have some secrecy. There is no substitute for that secrecy, because after two of these office actions, we still are going to publish under the main bill, we are going to publish those folks. That is what we have said. The Patent Office tell us that clearly, more than 30 percent of the patents that are ultimately issued go past two office actions. So that means those folks are going to be exposed. Submarine patents, do Members know how many submarine patents there have been in the last 2.3 million patents that have been issued? Three hundred and seventy. We do not need to expose all of our people to cut out 370.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to ask the House this question. Can an ordinary American citizen cause meaningful national legislation to be written and passed? Mr. Speaker, the answer is yes. Mr. Tony Snesko, a resident of San Diego County, has recently proved that this is possible, provided you possess the dedication and endurance necessary. Tony demonstrated a persistent effort which resulted in the passage of an amendment to section 505 of the Telecommunications Act regarding the scrambling of sexually explicit adult video programming. While the cable television industry has done some moderate scrambling of sexually explicit video transmissions in the past, these acts could still be seen. Additionally, the audio was clear and described the sexually explicit nature of the video. Unfortunately, this programming of slightly scrambled pornographic material was on a channel that was only one click removed from the programming that children normally watch. It was not uncommon that in their attempt to reach their favorite cartoons, children would often accidentally see the pornographic material that was broadcast 24 hours a day on the adjacent channel. Upon learning of this, Tony, the father of two children and a deacon in his local church, protested to the city council of his home town and the city attorney. He was told that there was nothing that could be done to eliminate this blight. The San Diego district attorney, the U.S. attorney, and the Federal Communications Commission had the same response to his concerns. Taking action himself, Tony taped the explicit material, requested that the American Family Association pay for 535 copies, which they did, and brought these tapes to Washington, DC. Already having in mind the type of legislation needed to end the airing of this pornography on television, my office aided Tony in having this language written and introduced. Over the next month, Tony visited the offices of all 435 U.S. Representatives, providing each Member's legislative staff with a copy of the video and the proposed bill. Tony even spoke with then chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee John Dingell. After witnessing Tony's dedication and persistence, Chairman Dingell agreed to include the bill language as an amendment to a piece of telecommunications legislation that the committee was currently considering. In 1994, legislation that required complete scrambling of pornographic material on television, both audio and visual, passed the U.S. House of Representatives. Tony then visited all 100 offices of the U.S. Senate, distributing his material and lobbying in favor of the legislation that had recently passed the House. As a result of this continued effort, Senator Diane Feinstein of California introduced a similar bill in the Senate where it successfully passed and was signed into public law by President Clinton in February 1996. Following this action, Playboy magazine immediately sought legal action against the U.S. Government in an effort to challenge this legislation. The Delaware district court dismissed this lawsuit and Playboy has until April 23, 1997, to file an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Speaker, as demonstrated by Tony Snesko, one citizen can make a difference.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to recognize the outstanding service and dedication of Comdr. Henry J. Brantingham, whose career in the U.S. Navy spanned three decades and which included over eight awards and recognitions. Commander Brantingham recently passed away and I would like to take a moment to commend this individual's exceptional service to our country. Henry began his career with the U.S. Navy 58 years ago with his graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy with the class of 1939. Following graduation, he served on the cruiser Minneapolis and several destroyers, later volunteering for motor torpedo boat training. He was subsequently ordered to duty in the Philippines at the outbreak of World War II. It was here that Henry accompanied Gen. Douglas MacArthur in his historical trip from Manila to the island of Cebu and onto the United States. After returning to the United States, Henry was assigned to P.T. boat training duties at Newport, RI, and was subsequently sent to the South Pacific for the duration of the Solomon Islands campaign where he commanded a force of 1,100 personnel. Henry was also a member of the unit sent to rescue John F. Kennedy and his crew when their P.T. boat had been cut in two by a Japanese destroyer. Following World War II, Henry was ordered to icebreaker duties and served on five expeditions to the Arctic aboard the Edisto. His final sea command was aboard the icebreaker Burton Island, which he took to both the Arctic and the Antarctic. While in the Antarctic, Henry rescued a number of Japanese scientists whose icebreaker had become stranded and led them to open seas enabling their return to Japan. In 1964, Comdr. Henry Brantingham voluntarily retired from the U.S. Navy having earned several decorations that included two Silver Stars, a Legion of Merit with combat ``V'', a Presidential Unit Commendation, and four campaign ribbons for his actions in the Pacific. Henry and his wife, Elaine, had two children, William and Nancy. William served honorably in the Vietnam war with the United States Army and was, unfortunately, fatally injured in an automobile accident after coming home. Nancy currently lives in the San Diego area with her husband David and their 6-year-old son Bill. Mrs. Brantingham lives in La Jolla, CA, where she remains active in community affairs, including the La Jolla Unit of Pro America, the La Jolla Republican Women Federation, and in assisting new citizens with their voter registration. Mr. Speaker, in an era when the U.S. military is often not given sufficient recognition, outstanding leaders such as Commander Brantingham, exemplify the commitment our Armed Forces has to superior performance.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Hamilton], the distinguished chairman of the committee, for yielding to me, and also for his leadership in this area. I would just say to my colleagues that now is the time to tell the truth. We have a law which is on the books that orders us to make a judgment, and it is time to make that judgment, and I think that the anecdotal evidence and the statistical evidence that tells us that a large part of the drug trade in Mexico and the drug trade through Mexico to America's children is large segments of the government in Mexico. The government is heavily involved in the drug trade. Now, if we tell that truth, and that is a truth that is manifested in hundreds of case files, in hundreds of cases that are in the possession of the U.S. attorneys and are on the front pages, if you tell that truth, we cannot in good conscience certify that Mexico has been cooperative in the war against drugs. About 10 years ago, Kiki Camerena, our drug enforcement agent, was murdered in Guadalajara, and Carroll Quintero, who was later jailed for that murder, coasted down the runway before he took off and toasted our DEA agents with a bottle of champagne as they tried to stop him at the Guadalajara airport, and we said, never again. We entered a new series of talks with Mexico and thought we would have a new bright dawn, a new era. We thought that that era would rejuvenate, when NAFTA was passed, over the objections of some of us, but that was supposed to boost cooperation with respect to the war against drugs, and that did not work. Last year, Jefferson Barr was murdered in Texas, and we tried to extradite the killer of Mr. Barr, and Mexico did not give us any more cooperation in extraditing that killer than they did with the killers of Enrique Camerena 10 years earlier. So I would just say to my colleagues, we have a duty, and it is a simple duty, it is an easy duty to discharge, it is a duty to tell the truth. If we erect that fiction that somehow they have cooperated with us when we know they have not, we disserve the people of the United States, we disserve the hard-working people in Mexico and the people who have died in Mexico, the good prosecutors who were assassinated trying to turn this war around, and most of all, we disserve our children. There is no interest more important than our children and their well- being, and there is no way you can make an argument that somehow making this certification helps them. Please support the bill.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, the President's defense budget is now in, and he continues to slash national security. He has cut the Army from 18 divisions, that is what we had during Desert Storm, to 10 divisions. Cut it almost in half. He has cut our air power from 24 fighter airwings to only 13. He has cut air power almost in half. He has cut our Navy from 546 ships, that is what we had during Desert Storm, to only 346 ships. Mr. Speaker, this President wants a legacy, but if we endorse his budget on national security, his legacy will be that he is the President that left us unprepared for war.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak on an issue that is of great concern to many Americans, abortion. Mr. Speaker, approximately 1.5 million innocent babies are intentionally killed every year because of abortion. This represents 4,000 times a day that an unborn child is taken from its mother's womb prematurely and denied the opportunity to live. Section 1 of the fourteenth amendment to our Constitution clearly states that no State shall ``deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.'' I wholeheartedly believe that these constitutional rights should include our country's unborn children. Mr. Speaker, in the landmark case of Roe versus Wade, the Supreme Court refused to determine when human life begins and therefore found nothing to indicate that the unborn are persons protected by the fourteenth amendment. In the decision, however, the Court did concede that, ``If the suggestion of personhood is established, the appellants' case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment.'' Considering Congress has the constitutional authority to uphold the fourteenth amendment, coupled with the fact that the Court admitted that if personhood were to be established, the unborn would be protected, it can be determined that we have the authority to determine when life begins. It is for this reason that today I am introducing the Right to Life Act of 1997. This legislation does what the Supreme Court refused to do and recognizes the personhood of the unborn for the purpose of enforcing four important provisions in the Constitution: First, the due process clause, section 1 of the fourteenth amendment, which prohibits States from depriving any person of life; second, section 5 of the fourteenth amendment, which gives Congress the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this amendment; third, the due process clause of the fifth amendment, which concurrently prohibits the Federal Government from depriving any person of life; and fourth, article 1, section 8, which gives Congress the power to make laws necessary and proper to enforce all powers in the Constitution. The Right to Life Act of 1997 will protect millions of future unborn children by prohibiting any State or Federal law that denies the personhood of the unborn, thereby effectively overturning Roe versus Wade. I urge my colleagues to join me in this very important endeavor.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for those gracious words. But when I compare my brief career in the military in which I went to Vietnam, and basically the best thing that could be said about me was I showed up, when you compare that with Frank Tejeda, who showed such tremendous leadership, it pales by comparison. I want to thank my friend for taking out this special order and all of my friends who spoke. I came from an appointment in my office. I did not get to listen to everybody, but I know what you said, because we all knew Frank. And I know many people have talked about his wonderful accomplishments. But it occurs to me, probably Frank Tejeda's value to all of us and his greatness was reflected probably not in what he did, because a lot of lesser Members of Congress have done some things legislatively, but Frank's greatness I think was in what he was. I reflected back on my times in the service and my time, my service here on the Hill. And over your life, you have certain times when you have a group of people about you when you are working for a common cause when you have a sense of community, a sense of brotherhood, a sense of friendship that is very gratifying. And that is the sense that I always had when I worked with Frank Tejeda, because that is what he inspired. I am reminded that I guess it was Alexis de Tocqueville who in analyzing what made the United States so unusual, is a historian of several hundreds of years ago, finally came to the conclusion that America was great. He said America is good because our people are good and because we have certain people who are just extraordinary. Frank Tejeda was one of those good people. He was a person who was so devoid of prejudice or unfairness or ego, a problem which I think affects all of us at one time or another, that you could always count on him for a good decision. He was an honest broker that people could go to, that they could look to, and what a role model for us in these difficult times when we get a little bit partisan. I have always enjoyed being partisan and the battles we have had on the House floor and in committee, and sometimes we get a little heated. And you know I am glad that my good friend, the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Coble], is in the chair right now. He is one of those people that has a little bit of Frank Tejeda quality that sometimes when we are a little bit heated and when we step over the line a little bit, perhaps become a little bit personal. It would not be bad for us to always remember Frank, a guy who I think it was Silveriuz who said that still waters run deep. What a deep person, what a person who was often still, but so valuable to this body and to us as Members. I would hope that we could follow Frank's example and remember the great modern American portrait role model that Frank was. One thing about Vietnam was that this era of Vietnam did not produce--and I think probably with the help of the American media--did not produce many role models, because the Vietnam war was an unpopular war for the American media and there are not a lot of leaders who were given a lot of publicity. Frank in his quiet way was perhaps one of the greatest role models to come from the Vietnam era. Frank was a man who could have carried a national office with great dignity and with great expertise and capability. So I thank my friend for allowing me to take a little bit of this time, and I thank all of my friends who talked about Frank. Let us all work in his example and in the great light that he shed over this body, which I hope will continue to illuminate us in his memory.