Jack Kingston

Mr. KINGSTON

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

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, this is somewhat similar to the last amendment which asks the Inspector General's office to come up with a report on what the economic basis for the gas price increase so rapidly was and/or has been, and this is similar to that in that it asks the Secretary of Energy to transmit to the Congress a report on the activities of the executive branch and, of course, the agency, the Department of Energy, does serve at the will, it is an executive agency; and this just asks for a report within 30 days and what activities the executive branch is doing to address the high gasoline prices. I know, having served on the Subcommittee on the Interior of the Committee on Appropriations and having had the Secretary of Energy come before our committee, they have been working on this. So I hope this is not anything new. It should not be expensive for them just to give us the report of what they have been up to.

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

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

Mr. KINGSTON. I yield to the gentleman from Indiana.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I do think that this probably is going to be a lot easier for the Secretary of Energy than the other one was for the Inspector General. We will work with the committee, obviously, and follow their wisdom on it; but we just want to make sure that we in government on the legislative branch, on the executive branch, we are doing everything we can to address this situation. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk to section 607, which would be inserting at line 19, and I am not certain if I am in order now or if the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan) or the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Sherwood) would be first.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Packard) for yielding to me. Mr. Chairman, let me say, first of all, I certainly appreciate the hard work that the gentleman from California (Chairman Packard) and the ranking member have done on this bill. This bill is extremely important to all of the 435 Congressional districts, and we all appreciate their work. I represent coastal Georgia and do a lot of Corps of Engineer-type projects in our area. None of those are easy, they all can be controversial. I appreciate the way, the delicate touch that the ranking member and the chairman have when dealing with this. The amendment that I have deals with the Secretary of Energy's Department, not the Secretary of Energy, but it deals with some of the recent, I am not going to use the word scandal, but some of the recent concern that has gone on at the Los Alamos labs, which this Congress, has on a bipartisan basis, tried to address and do our best to work with it. It appears that there are certain employees who have decided that well, it is good enough to take a government paycheck, the government is not good enough to require that they take a polygraph test. I stress that we do not randomly ask people to take polygraph tests, but when there has been an apparent disappearance of highly-sensitive nuclear secrets, then if there are employees who are not necessarily even under suspicion, but in the category where it is possible they could have some knowledge on it, then it is appropriate for the U.S. government in a highly-sensitive nuclear lab to go out and ask some questions and, unfortunately, some employees are far from that investigation. Mr. Chairman, that is what we will be dealing with on this amendment when the appropriate time comes, and I will be glad to deal with the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews) if he wanted to comment on that, because I know the gentleman has been very concerned about security at Los Alamos.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to change Amendment No. 10 to another amendment that is at the desk.

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

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, this is part of the continuing effort of this House on a bipartisan basis to reign in maybe the loose security or the mistakes we have all made in the security at the Los Alamos lab, and this is not directed at anything. This is supposed to be a constructive amendment. The idea behind it is, we had the situation, as all Members of the House well know and all Members of the House are concerned about, that has to do with the disappearance of two highly sensitive disks, computer disks, that contained nuclear secrets. The disks disappeared and reappeared, and during that period of time, we are not exactly sure what happened. We do know that they searched behind a copying machine, and then later, they researched behind there and found out that they were there. It appears that they were kind of stuck in after the search. What we are trying to do as a Government is to investigate this and yet much to our dismay, I believe on a bipartisan basis, we have employees out there who have refused to take a polygraph test. Mr. Chairman, we have a precedent now. We have a law that can require employees in sensitive areas to take polygraph tests and certainly employees who are dealing with nuclear secrets are in highly sensitive areas, and what this simply says is that if you will not take a polygraph test and you are working in a highly-sensitive area, we are not going to pay you. We are urging employees and have the lawful right to do that. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) to speak on this amendment, who is a member of the Committee on Armed Services.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding time to me. Mr. Speaker, I stand in support of this rule and also the bill, as I have in committee. I know the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Taylor) and the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) have worked very carefully to try to design a bill that takes care of the needs of running the government here, but also at the same time keeping a close eye on the budget and the constraints. I also wanted to mention the question of the lockbox, because I think it is important for us to have this lockbox amendment. The reason why, as a new Member to the United States Congress in 1993, I remember we were trying to put in some fiscal discipline and restraint in our spending. At the time, one of our fellow class members, Mike Crapo from Idaho, who is now across the hall, he had an idea we should do something like this. The reason why is we would debate for hours cutting something from the budget, something that some Members supported, some Members did not support. But the idea behind it was that we would fight for two or three hours in good, honest debate and we would eliminate this item and save $1 million, $2 million, $10 million, whatever. Then we would go home and think, boy, that was good, we cut $1 million out of the budget. But we find out we did not cut it out of the budget, all we did was put it aside. Then the bill would progress through the system, get into the Senate, and they would spend it because the bill did not reduce itself in the amount. Can Members imagine sitting around the table and writing down the grocery list. They go to the grocery store and say, I am going to buy some steak. Steak is say $10. I do not really know the price of that. Number one, I am not running for the Senate, where you have to know the price of groceries. Number two, we do not buy steak in our family. We have four kids. We just cannot do it. But say we are going to buy steak and it is $10, and we go there and say, we really do not have this money. We need to buy hamburger, instead. That is $5. We do not say, obviously, that we are going to buy $10 worth of hamburgers. The point, the purpose of the whole exercise is to save the money and put the extra $5 in our pocket and use that for the car payment, the house payment, gasoline, or whatever. That is what American families do every day. But in the United States Congress, what we say is we are not going to eat steak, we are just going to spend an equal amount of money elsewhere. That is ridiculous. Our whole idea is that when we had a fair debate and an honest vote to save money, then that money should go into a lockbox and be protected for social security or Medicare and no other purpose. For 30 years this Congress on a bipartisan basis raided the social security trust fund and used the money for other expenses. Our idea is to put it in that vault and keep it for our retirements, what private companies do with pension plans. And it makes common sense.

Mr. KINGSTON. I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. KINGSTON. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, the way I look at it is that the intent is to put the money in fact in Medicare as opposed to the NEA or the AmeriCorps or public broadcasting or whatever else. The idea behind it is to say Medicare is a much higher priority, and we are comfortable in making that blanket statement. As the gentleman knows, we can continue in the Committee on Appropriations on the subcommittee and the full committee level to move monies back and forth, and we can have offsets within the title of a bill, or even on the House floor with it. But I do not consider it a big partisan issue. I think now the Vice President has actually endorsed this idea, so I do not consider this a partisan thing whatsoever. But I do think that it is just an idea that would further protect Medicare and social security. That is why I have supported it.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to address something that has been in the paper a pretty good bit lately, the Los Alamos nuclear secrets that have apparently been missing. The reason I want to do this, Mr. Speaker, is because I am very concerned about it, and I just want to sort of retrace the steps. If my colleagues will remember, during the Clinton administration it became apparent that this gentleman named Wen Ho Lee was stealing secrets, very important nuclear secrets from the Los Alamos lab. Because of a number of, I would say, bureaucratic hesitations, he was not investigated for a long time. They finally did investigate him and they found out that, I think he had over a thousand illegal entries on his computer. At that time Congress, in a bipartisan fashion, moved together to try to give the Department of Energy the resources that they need to improve security at Los Alamos. Well, after a long exercise and a lot more funds had been expended, 1 year ago, on May 26, 1999, the Secretary of Energy made this statement to the United States: ``I can assure the American people that their nuclear secrets are now safe.'' A very explicit thing, and it was the right thing for the head person to be saying. And we have felt like, okay, we went through this very bad period, but we have addressed it. Now we find out that two computer disks, which contained information on how to disarm nuclear bombs and how to build nuclear bombs, were last seen back in January. Now, that was verified April 7. Then on May 7 it was apparent that they were missing. So we go from this period of maybe January, maybe April to May 7 finding out that these two vital computer disks on very, very sensitive nuclear secrets are missing. But the Secretary of Energy was not informed for 24 more days. As I understand it, he is supposed to be notified within 8 hours. He was not told from the period of May 7 until June 1, and yet nobody has been fired because of that. There is no protocol. Apparently, it is easier to get nuclear secrets than it is to take a tape out of Blockbuster Video. If my colleagues do not believe me, I challenge them, I challenge anybody within the sound of my voice, to go to Blockbuster Video, there is one in everyone's neighborhood, to see if they can get a tape out. I am certain they will not be able to. Yet our sensitive nuclear secrets, I understand from a hearing, are left unattended for as long as 2 hours a day while the attendant in this vault goes to lunch. Now, if my colleagues feel comfortable with Barney Fife guarding our nuclear secrets, then this is a great system. But if other Members are like me and the majority of Americans, then they are very, very concerned. What are we thinking? How do we lose nuclear secrets? They show up magically behind a Xerox machine, a Xerox machine that has already been searched twice? And everybody is supposed to feel good about the fact that they did not leave the building? Maybe there was not espionage. We do not know that yet. But what we do know is there is total incompetence, and we as Congress cannot have much confidence in the way our nuclear secrets are being guarded. I think it is incumbent on this Congress to put pressure on the Department of Energy and the Secretary of Energy to make some very, very drastic changes to get this addressed, because we simply cannot misplace nuclear secrets. Just think about the time frame: from as long as April 7 to May 7 they were unaccounted for; and then from May 7 to June 1 no one even told the Secretary of Energy they were gone. Yet not one person has been fired because of that. This is an outrage. This is scary. This is not partisan rhetoric. I am glad to say a number of Democrats, including the ranking member of the committee, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), has said the Keystone Kops are guarding our nuclear secrets. The gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) has passed a letter which has been signed by 50 Democrats saying fire the University of California, who is involved in the security of that. I probably would have signed that letter, given the opportunity. So I am glad to see that this is not getting trapped into some situation where it is Republican versus Democrats, because when it comes to the security of the United States of America, it does not matter what party we are a member of; it only matters that our shores are secure and safe. So I just wanted to bring that up, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, is the gentleman from California (Mr. Horn) asking for unanimous consent, or is he amending the Nethercutt amendment?

Mr. KINGSTON. Reserving the right to object, Mr. Chairman, the concern I have is that there has been an insinuation that there was some victory on the floor, and that victory has been snatched. There was a victorious battle, but there was not a victorious war. We can win one battle in legislative bodies and then lose it in the next moment. I do not think there should be apologies or handwringing about that. If the Nethercutt amendment passes, then that is not the end of the road. I am not a big NEA supporter, but I am going to vote for the bill and I am going to get to the resolution in committee, in conference. That is the way life is in the legislature. Mr. Chairman, I object.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I yield to my friend, the gentleman from California (Mr. Horn). Although the objection came it my way, it did not come from my lips.

Mr. KINGSTON. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, I would say to my friend, the gentleman from California, while I did object to the language, I did not object to the gentleman's right to speak and offer it. That is why I wanted to yield the gentleman time. Frankly, from my standpoint, this is just what the legislative process is about. The Slaughter amendment was debated and passed. The money was laid on the table, as was the wording of the amendment. That also opens up a new avenue of danger, if you will, in terms of people coming up with ideas of how to spend that money. I am going to support this. The gentleman can question my motives. I think people are not questioning it, they are probably already tired of my motives. If I was from New York City, I would support it. That is where 70 percent of the money goes. But to me, Mr. Chairman, in the study of choice, it is not a good choice. I do not think the government needs to be in the NEA. We have billion dollars in a tax write-off for arts, we have millions of dollars in art purchasing, we spend millions on art education. My dad is an artist. My daughter wants to be to be an artist. My wife is on a theater board. You can say I am against the arts because I do not support the NEA, but that is not true. I think it is a waste of money. I am satisfied to vote no against it. I voted against it in committee, I will vote against it in the conference committee. It always gets bumped up in conference committee, it always survives. That is just the nature of it. We just have to roll with the punches. I am going to support the Nethercutt amendment. That is only half the reason. I am also going to support it because of what he is doing. He has bumped up Indian health care services $150 million over the time that he has been chairman of this committee. That is very significant. This year we were only able to increase it $30 million, but this gives us an opportunity to put another $22 million in it. It is a sound proposal. Mr. Chairman, I think children on Indian reservations who need health care are a higher priority than elitists who want to hang out at certain art functions. I am not saying they are all artists, but I would say if the people in the NEA are poor and starving as compared to those on the Indian reservations, I do not understand what the definition of the words are. I sat in the committees, I heard the tribes, heard the testimonies. I feel very solidly that that is where the money should go. Announcement by the Chairman

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey), who I served with on the committee and have great respect for, I would ask in terms of just a good relationship here tonight that you may rethink what you had just said, because I am not sure that you meant it the way we may have heard it.

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

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I am concerned about the insinuation of this. What is the direction of the Chair in terms of words being appropriate? I am trying, Mr. Chairman, if you will indulge me, and the House will, I am trying not to go to have the gentleman's words taken down, but I would like my friend from New York (Mr. Hinchey) maybe to rethink what he says. Mr. Chairman, is it not true there have been three opportunities to have words struck down tonight, and is it true that if I was looking for an opportunity, this might be one; but is it not also true that the gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey) may want to rethink what he just said to avoid us from going there?