Paul Kanjorski

Mr. KANJORSKI

Mr. KANJORSKI. Mr. Chairman, if this is such scare tactics, and, first of all, if this is so innocuous, but opposed by the banking majority, I ask the gentleman, ``Why aren't any members of the Banking Committee here in the majority arguing this proposition?'' I ask a second question: ``If this were just scare tactics, why are all regulators of all Federal institutions, depository funds and all banks, and all markets, opposed to this legislation?'' This is not emergency, and let me go one step further: ``If that's the case, why is it so bipartisan that the chairman of the Banking Committee, a Republican in the Senate, has recognized the possibility of what we are talking about today? Why is the House of Representatives, who represents the people and the depositors of America, failing to recognize that in a bipartisan way Senator D'Amato of New York, the chairman of the Banking Committee, recognizes this as an important amendment, an important factor, as inserted in the bill in the Senate side?'' I have to get the feeling that----

Mr. KANJORSKI. They are doing that because there is a question of whether or not there is sufficient capital to support the extensive amount of mortgage activity in the secondary market.

Mr. KANJORSKI. The gentlewoman from Illinois [Mrs. Collins] is giving me the time. We are not just talking about emergency situations here. We are talking about the normal regulatory process as well. For example, we are about to have a HUD agency issue regulations on capital accounts for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, controlling perhaps three, or four, or five hundred billion dollars. Now they are not going to do that because they want to have activity downtown.

Mr. KANJORSKI

Mr. KANJORSKI. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in opposition, of course, to the amendment of my friend, the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Barton]. I have had the occasion to express my concern on the House floor on past occasions on the balanced budget amendment. I have always, Mr. Chairman, and I say with pride, voted to defend the Constitution of the United States as it presently exists, as opposed to the suggestions that we solve our fiscal problems in this country, and we solve our lack of intestinal fortitude in this Congress, by changing permanently the one instrument that 5 billion people in this world envy the most, the Constitution of the United States. At this point in the history of the United States, more than 10,000 amendments have been offered to the Constitution of the United States in more than 208 years. Of those 10,000, only 27 have been enacted. Mr. Chairman, it is clear to me that as a result of the change of the structure of the House and the makeup of the House today on both the majority side and the minority side, that there will likely be a two- thirds majority of this House for some form of a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Mr. Chairman, I fear the destruction of the Constitution, and I think that, as we learned from Prohibition in the 1920's, we may realize that what we think is a good solution and a fast solution to inject intestinal fortitude into this Congress and into this Government, that we may instead wreck havoc on the Constitution. I think particularly the amendment offered by the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Barton] requiring a three-fifths majority to either raise taxes or to run a deficit is particularly egregious. It indicates the lengths to which we are going to put into place an amendment to our sacred Constitution. The Barton amendment is an irresponsible proposal that must be rejected. I urge my colleagues to vote against this proposal.

Mr. KANJORSKI

Mr. KANJORSKI. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased today to have the opportunity to recognize the accomplishments of a highly respected leader and my personal friend, John M. Randolph, Jr. Mr. Randolph will be honored by the Wilkes-Barre community on February 19 at the prestigious Lincoln Day Dinner sponsored by the B'nai B'rith S.J. Strauss Lodge. Mr. Randolph, a graduate of King's College, is a senior partner in the accounting firm of Parente, Randolph, Orlando, Carey and Associates, which is the 25th largest CPA firm in the United States. It has 10 offices in Pennsylvania, and employs a professional staff of more than 300 employees. A frequent speaker for professional and community service groups, John has often shared his financial expertise with the community. The list of his personal and professional affiliations and memberships is long and impressive. It includes a seat on the board of trustees of College Misericordia where he served as the vice-chairman of the board and chairman of the finance committee. Currently he is serving as trustee emeritus. He has served from 1989 to 1990 as a trustee for Keystone Junior College; he is a current trustee of King's College and sits on the Wilkes University Presidents Council. John came to Wilkes-Barre in 1959 to attend King's College and made the Wyoming Valley his home. He and his wife, Sharon, are the proud parents of two sons, John III, a second-year law student, and Scott, who attends Wilkes University. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join with the Strauss Lodge in honoring John Randolph, Jr., for his dedication to his profession and to his community. I applaud the lodge's choice of John Randolph as this year's recipient of this prestigious award.

Mr. KANJORSKI

Mr. KANJORSKI. Mr. Chairman, so that the record is correct, if the Chair recalls, we had a list of seven or eight amendments which we thought were extremely important to be considered. We went under-- because the committee was trying to mark up the bill that day and get it ready to come to the floor, we had one vote on the Social Security amendment, which passed 39 to 3, if I recall, and the other amendments, at my request, were packaged so that we could work with the majority to see if they could be included in the bill as an en bloc amendment when it came to the floor to facilitate----

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

Mr. KANJORSKI. No.

Mr. KANJORSKI. Yes.

Mr. KANJORSKI. I yield to the gentleman from Missouri.

Mr. KANJORSKI. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I think this is a very important amendment, and we discussed it at the committee markup. However, it points up the very reason that we are here today and that we have been involved in 10 hours of debate, and we have 100-some-odd amendments, because this amendment should have been readily seen as valuable to this piece of legislation at the markup level. If it had, we would not have spent hours of staff time and hours of Members' time preparing for this occasion. Mr. Chairman, I keep hearing, and I just want to refer to the chairman of the committee on the other side, who treats this piece of legislation as if it is only a procedural piece of legislation for a point of order. However, Mr. Chairman, this bill has two particular sections, one affecting the right here on the floor to raise a point of order, and two, allowing citizens of any type for any reason to raise a legal question in a district court throughout America, challenging any rule or regulation by a Federal agency. Mr. Chairman, it is just so clear, I think, by the acceptance of the Committee on Rules, that this should have been put in this bill early on, just as we were fortunate enough when the bill was originally drafted, and it did not have in it an exemption for Social Security, we were fortunate enough to win that single amendment of 40 or 50 amendments offered in committee markup. Social Security did win, I think, by a vote of 39 to 3. Mr. Chairman, I am certain if we had had the opportunity to really sit down and with open minds discuss this legislation, not only this age discrimination amendment but several others that I offered today would have been part of the markup that came to the floor, thereby saving a great deal of debate time. What some Members of the House, and I will not say whether it was on the other side or on our side, seem to indicate is that there is some dilatory action here. However, if a person is over 65 years of age, and if we were not successful in having this amendment made today, their protection as an American citizen could be denied on the basis of the unfunded mandate legislation we are about to pass in this Chamber. That would be criminal to my constituents and criminal to the constituents throughout America. Therefore, Mr. Chairman, I do want to say, joining with the gentleman from California [Mr. Becerra], that I think we have contributed materially to the fairness of this legislation, so that when it is finally adopted by this House, and I have no suggestion it will not be, it will be overwhelmingly accepted, at least we know there will not be an allowance for age discrimination in this bill. Mr. Chairman, further, I would just like to suggest that maybe we could have some cooperation with the chairman and the Majority on the other side to look a little bit more at these amendments that we are about to offer, to recognize that they are not prepared and offered here today to waste our time but are very germane, very important, and are very substantive. For the legislation to pass this House in less than its best form, as we can provide it, says that this Congress is not ready to rise. One further point, Mr. Chairman. The gentleman in the chair and I are probably the only Members of this body that were here in the last Republican leadership of the Congress of the United States. We do not pretend to have been Members at that time. We were lowly back bench pages, but we know that that 83d Congress was very successful because there was a tendency to have open debate, because there was not ducking of issues or questions as we have in this government, and it is not only in the 104th Congress, but it has happened in many past Congresses. Mr. Chairman, what I hope we can eventually come out of this legislation with is recognizing that too often on this House floor we are passing laws that allow for the Secretaries of the executive branch of government to promulgate rules and regulations. It may be one paragraph of legislation and 10,000 pages of rules and regulations. It is time that the Congress of the United States, and particularly the House of Representatives, takes back that we participate to a large extent in the type of regulations and rules we are going to be subjecting our constituents to, and not delegating that away to some unnamed, unknown bureaucrat, and then come back here and argue that we are hypocrites because we did not know what we were empowering some bureaucrat to do in the name of the Congress of the United States. Mr. Chairman, I hope that we can proceed now with a few of these amendments and test them for their viability and for their substance and have them accepted.

Mr. KANJORSKI. I appreciate my friend from Missouri. I know how Missourians are eminently fair, no matter what side of the aisle they sit on and do not delay actions by the House. I want to congratulate the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Clinger], the chairman, that we have acceptance of this amendment and my friend who is cosponsor of this amendment. I think we are having a breakthrough here. I can say I hope over the next several amendments we offer that my friends on the other side recognize that these are not done to delay and pass time but are very substantive in nature and can have dire effects on the American people in the future.

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

Mr. KANJORSKI. Mr. Chairman, as I read section 202, that is not true. Any rules or regulations not presently promulgated fall under this act. It is not like for all present existing rules and regulations, these are yet unpromulgated rules and regulations. Therefore, the crime bill, having the rules and regulations in the database not having been established and the rules promulgated, they fall subject to this act, and what we are doing in statute now is requiring a standard that has to be complied with. Whether it is complied with----

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

Mr. KANJORSKI. Mr. Chairman, if I may respond, if the Attorney General determines that the Executive order in some way impacts upon the promulgation of these rules and regulations, it takes one man with one pen 1 minute to vitiate that. If we pass a statute, and we have points of order that could be raised in future legislation----

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

Mr. KANJORSKI. Mr. Chairman, the way we avoid that problem is merely by exempting out this position in the bill. It goes back to what we earlier argued, Mr. Chairman. If in committee we had had the opportunity to call the Attorney General, or their representative, or law enforcement officials across this country, we could have found and created a provision that would have protected the database and the ability to prosecute sexual criminals. Now we have put that all in question, and some jurisdictions of this country, just as we had with the motor-voter legislation, will take an action in court to deny their duty to comply with the information required for the database. Mr. Chairman, I think that is foolish. This Congress wants to work right. We are going to, and we will try on this side to support unfunded mandates from being improperly imparted on the States and the municipalities of this country, but let us do it right. This is our only chance. If we miss it and for some reason the conference committee does not cover it, it will be the law of this land and all of us here today, regardless of how we vote on this amendment, are going to be guilty of the fact that sex offenders, and rapists, and murderers involving sex crimes will be free in the land, because we failed to take the opportunity and the rationality and the reasonableness to make sure this legislation says what we intend it to say.

Mr. KANJORSKI. Mr. Chairman, if the gentlewoman will continue to yield, what the majority has not paid attention to is because we have not denied judicial review, section 202 sets forth a statement that is required to accompany every promulgation of every rule and regulation by every Federal agency of the U.S. Government. If the Justice Department then promulgates these rules and regulations, even though to the best of their ability they comply with the litany of tests, of costs and all the other matters, it still does not deny every defendant, after a full trial, to go into court and enjoin to reverse his conviction because of the violation of the Justice Department in promulgating the rules and regulations and creating the database that caused his original detention or arrest. We do not want that to happen. Every criminal sex offender in this country will be able to say 2 years, 3 years from now after this database is created that I was caught and my privacy was invaded or my constitutional right was denied me and my statutory protection under this act, unfunded mandate act, was not properly carried out in the promulgation of rules and regulations by the Justice Department that are laid in great detail. We, by inference, by not denying judicial review, allow judicial review to occur in that area. What we are saying is, why do we want to raise that tremendous question out there? Why can we not just--this is a very limited part. I want to say, there are 50 States in the Union, thousands of counties, and 32,000 municipalities. Unless we get compliance of every one of those units of government, this database is useless. We are not going to have voluntarily, as the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Davis] suggested in his debate, every element of government. There are communities in the United States that could care less about the crime problem of Washington, DC, Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania, or Illinois. There are many municipalities in the country that--and I will tell Members, I have dealt with some of the officials--when they get a vicious sex offender, it is a lot cheaper for them to take him down to the bus station, buy his ticket and ship him out of town than to go through the trial, prosecution and incarceration of that offender. I have got counties in my State that because they prosecute the sex offender from New York in Pennsylvania, they incur the liability of incarceration, health care and every other factor that applies to that person. It is much cheaper for them to pay him to get out of town. Now, I wash that were not the case, but that is the reality. All we are asking for is, why do we not write this legislation in such a way with a small exemption that no sex offender in the future could ever raise that defense, could ever go into a Federal court to get an injunction or could ever raise any violations of his constitutional rights propagated on the fact that some regulatory agency did not comply with what some future court may consider the act intended.

Mr. KANJORSKI. So we have no exemption. We have no denial of judicial review here. So anyone subjected under this bill has a right to go to a Federal district court to raise the question of whether the rule or regulation that they are being charged under or arrested under, whether or not that stands. Now, what we are addressing ourselves to here is the question of section 221, the regulatory process. The criminal bill was passed last year. In that bill it authorized the Attorney General and the Justice Department to promulgate rules and regulation to bring about the intentions of that legislation, of which was to establish a national database. They have not promulgated those rules and regulations. First question, that because it follows this legislation it could be contended in a judicial review process that they acted contrary to this legislation because it was promulgating a rule and regulation after the enactment of this act. If that were the case, any information derived from that database would be challengeable as having interfered with the privacy or the rights of that criminal defendant and could have breached his constitutional protection under the law.

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

Mr. KANJORSKI. If the gentleman will yield for a correction----

Mr. KANJORSKI. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, I think the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Burton] has brought up a great point and it is a point I have been trying to make over several days now. If we had taken the time in committee to consider this, we could have considered that last amendment in a matter of 10 minutes, it could have been reported like the exemption for Social Security that I introduced in committee, which was accepted in 5 minutes, and we would have not only not delayed a half hour or 45 minutes here and 20 minutes in debate, but we also would not have delayed the times of our staffs and Members who have been waiting this week to prepare for this debate.

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

Mr. KANJORSKI

Mr. KANJORSKI. Mr. Speaker, I come from the State of Pennsylvania, and we are famous for hunting. I know our chairman on the other side comes from an area not distant from mine, and some of our counties have more deer than people. In Pennsylvania when we have an over population of game, we declare an open hunting season. It seems we may have a lot of hypocrisy and a high population of hypocrits in the House. I hope that does not mean we are going to declare an open season.