Jim McDermott

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, as we stand out here and argue this sort of arcane piece of tax policy here today, the chairman tells us we are better off than we ever were before. Anybody who has looked at where the national debt is knows that is not true. Whatever this tax policy they are pushing is about, it is driving us deeper and deeper into debt. In addition, today the President presents a budget to us that says nothing about the war and what it is costing. It is probably going to cost us a trillion dollars by the time it is all done, if we ever get out of it, stagnant wages in this country, and 500,000 more people in poverty. Now the chairman says we want to have everybody have a shot at the American dream. Well, let me tell you something, this is a shot like a shot at the moon for most of them with a shotgun. It is not going to come anywhere near it. We do not want any more tax holidays for the rich. The fact that you are trying to get rid of the AMT by letting it drift down further and further and further into the tax-paying people in this country is very obvious. You want there to be an uprising that says let us get rid of the AMT. You know why it was put there. You said yourself. They put the AMT because there were rich people in this country paying nothing. We could have kept it at that level, but in 2001 you decided we have got to balance the budget. Let us not do anything about the AMT. We told you over and over and over again in the Ways and Means Committee that is what you were doing. And yet you now say, oh, well, it is somebody else's problem. You are driving this country over the edge. You think you are sending a market message. You are sending a message to the market with the kind of debt this country is in. If you take the credit card debt and the amount people have borrowed against their homes to keep up their level of income, you have a country seriously in debt. Now you say we do not care who has to figure their taxes twice, we will let it go down to $50,000, $60,000, whatever the number is going to be. That is of no consequence to you at all because you are dedicated to only one group in this society, and that is the people on the top. This whole construction that you put together over the last 4 years, and I welcome you back to the well, I think you might have a couple of things to say to me, but bringing this tax bill to where we are today was a deliberate attack on the middle class. That reconciliation bill that the President signed took away the money that people would use to educate their children. You gave the banks big breaks so they could take more out of the hides of the kids. This is a good motion, and it ought to be adopted.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, this bill is the fox adjusting the lock on the hen house door. I intend to submit for the record before the end of the day an article from 1995 when the then Speaker of the House set up the K Street Project. K stands for kleptomania or kleptocracy. I'm not sure exactly what the K stands for, but this project was set up in 1995; and what is going on today is an absolutely predictable result of what was done in 1995 when the lobbyists were told, Don't hire any Democrats. You only hire Republicans. You only give to Republicans. You don't give to Democrats. For us to come out here today and put a bill up here as though it were going to do anything, when it is proposed by the people who put the K Street Project together in the first place, is absolutely unbelievable. This House is in a delusional state that anything is changing on behalf of the people. The fact is that this is what you get when you have a K Street Project in place. And they are not fixing it this way, and they want to wrap us all around it and say, well, you'll help us fix it this way by keeping some old Member out of the gym from playing basketball with me. Come on, they have all got my phone number. They have got everybody's phone number in this whole building. And for you to think that this silly little piece of legislation is going to do one thing about cleaning up this town is simply nonsense. We ought to be talking about public funding of elections. Then we would be talking about reform. But you are not going to reform it by keeping a couple of guys off the floor or a couple of guys out of the gym or whatever. That is simply not going to work, and it is foolish. Everyone should vote ``no'' on this rule. [From the Washington Post, Nov. 27, 1995] Speaker and His Directors Make the Cash Flow Right (By David Maraniss and Michael Weisskopf) In the annals of the House Republican revolution, a pivotal moment came last April when an unsuspecting corporate lobbyist entered the inner chamber of Majority Whip Tom DeLay, whose aggressive style has earned him the nickname ``the Hammer.'' The Texas congressman was standing at his desk that afternoon, examining a document that listed the amounts and percentages of money that the 400 largest political action committees had contributed to Republicans and Democrats over the last two years. Those who gave heavily to the GOP were labeled ``Friendly,'' the others ``Unfriendly.'' ``See, you're in the book,'' DeLay said to his visitor, leafing through the list. At first the lobbyist was not sure where his group stood, but DeLay helped clear up his confusion. By the time the lobbyist left the congressman's office, he knew that to be a friend of the Republican leadership his group would have to give the party a lot more money. It didn't take long for the word to spread around town about the Hammer and his book. By some accounts--apocryphal as it turns out--DeLay even made lobbyists turn to their contribution totals and initial them, like a report card. Such stories actually make DeLay's job easier. When an aide once asked whether efforts should be made to quell the legend, DeLay leaned back in his chair and said, ``No, let it get bigger.'' Inside the House Republican leadership, the former pest exterminator from Houston is the enforcer. His mission is to ensure that money flows along the same stream as policy, that the probusiness deregulatory agenda of the House Republicans receives the undivided financial support of the corporate interests that benefit from it. His motto is an unabashedly blunt interpretation of the dictums of Speaker Newt Gingrich: ``If you want to play in our revolution, you have to live by our rules.'' The role of money in the revolution has been obscured by the titanic clash with President Clinton and the Democrats over balanced budgets and the reshaping of the federal government, but it is part of that larger struggle. Money is at the center of Gingrich's transformation of the House. With the new alignment of ideological allies in the business and political worlds, there are unparalleled opportunities for both the people who give the money and the people who receive it. It is such an obvious quid pro quo that it goes almost unnoticed. From House Republicans come measures that gratify industry: weakening environmental standards, loosening workplace safety rules, limiting the legal liability of corporations, defunding nonprofit groups that present an opposing view. From the beneficiaries of that legislation come millions of dollars in campaign contributions. ``The Republicans have a wonderful situation,'' said one trade association president, a longtime Democrat. ``They don't have to prostitute themselves. They are ideologically in sync'' with the corporate PACs. ``Every politician dreams of being able to meet your conscience and raise money at the same time.'' Yet money is also the source of increasing tension among House Republicans that could ultimately weaken them, if not tear them apart. The conflict, in essence, is between ideology and populist reform. One wing wants to collect as much corporate money as possible to sustain and expand the revolution. Another wing fears that this will disillusion voters who brought the Republicans to power to change the traditional ways of doing business in Washington. Gingrich stands in the middle aware, people around him say, that his tenure could depend in part on his ability to resolve the conflict. Gingrich, DeLay and their comrades have set in motion a historic shift in campaign giving. As recently as 1993 the National Republican Congressional Committee, the main vehicle for fundraising for House GOP candidates, was millions of dollars in debt. But by soliciting contributions from the corporate world through a combination of tenacity, cheerleading and intimidation--``playing offense'' all the time, as DeLay describes it--the revolution has established a formidable money machine. The turnaround has been dramatic. House Republicans received 58 percent of the money from the top 400 PACs during the first six months this year and their numbers are rising every month. Last year two of every three PAC dollars went to the ruling Democrats. The trend is evident in all industries, including those with traditional Democratic ties. The Transportation Political Education League, for example, gave only 3 percent to the Republicans last year but 42 percent this year. The No. 1 corporate contributor to the GOP in 1995, United Parcel Service, which worked closely with DeLay and the leadership in fighting federal workplace safety regulations, also made a decisive partisan transformation, its contributions going from 53 percent Democratic to 71 percent Republican in one year. The once-threadbare NRCC raised a record $18.7 million from January through June, four times as much as its Democratic counterpart. Its two elite organizations, which offer private sessions with House leaders at the Capitol Hill Club, are suddenly fat and happy: 225 corporations and political action committees have joined the House Council at $5,000 apiece, and 150 are enrolled in the Congressional Forum for $15,000 to $20,000 each. Rep. Bill Paxon of New York, the NRCC's chairman, estimates that he has met privately with ``200 to 300'' chief executive officers of Fortune 500 companies to make his pitch. ``If you believe in the revolution and what's happening, then it's time to follow common sense,'' Paxon tells them. ``Why do you support the enemy? Why do you give money to people who are out there consciously every day trying to undermine what's good for you?'' He often leaves, Paxon says, with a financial pledge. Another $20 million, double the Democratic number, has come to the party in unrestricted contributions known as soft money, used for party rebuilding efforts, voter drives and policy initiatives. Leading the way in the soft money realm this year have been tobacco companies that, concerned about regulation by the Food and Drug Administration, gave a record $1.5 million to the Republicans during the first six months, tenfold what they gave two years ago. Gingrich, DeLay, Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas and Republican Conference Chairman John Boehner of Ohio all have established separate PACs this year with goals of raising millions of dollars more. Gingrich's new PAC, dubbed ``Monday Morning'' in honor of a refrain from his swearing-in speech, has already raised more than $330,000, with pledges of an additional $60,000 since its inception a few months ago. Advised by kitchen cabinets of industry lobbyists, these leadership fund-raising operations will distribute money to Republican congressional candidates, strengthening the bond between the revolution and industry while reinforcing the loyalty of House colleagues to Gingrich and his lieutenants. The freshman class, 73 Republican newcomers who consider themselves the vanguard of the revolution, has proved as ambitious in the fund-raising realm as elsewhere. They have bumped up the average price of a fund-raising ticket fourfold from the previous term to $1,000, hired professional consultants to run their events and solicit contributions, and formed steering committees of lobbyists to advise them. Almost all have liquidated their campaign debts in the first 10 months of their first term, and more than half belong to the NRCC's $100,000 Club, having at least that much cash ready for next year. The average Republican freshman raised $123,000 in the first six months, nearly double the amount of their Democratic colleagues. Even reform-minded freshmen who oppose PACs have pursued them aggressively. Sam Brownback of Kansas solicited Washington lobbyists to contribute to a fund-raising event for him soon after he had returned from Ross Perot's United We Stand convention in August. There he had given a speech denouncing the Washington lobbying scene as ``a domestication process where you bring in new, fresh legislators and then you start to try to tame them and assist them with gifts and meals and trips almost like you would a horse with a sugar cube.'' Several lobbyists who received Brownback's fund- raising invitation angrily turned him down. A few days after the House Republicans took power last January, DeLay turned to one of his most trusted allies in the lobbying community, David Rehr of the National Beer Wholesalers Association, and said, ``I want you to do something with the freshmen just to get them on the right course.'' Rehr was a member of a small group of Washington lobbyists who had remained loyal to the Republicans throughout the long period of Democratic control. His informal duties now included serving as a PAC adviser to both DeLay and the NRCC. Rehr set up a seminar at NRCC headquarters entitled ``Seven Steps in Liquidating Your Debt and Building for the Future,'' and more than a quarter of the freshman class attended. Rehr instructed them to set up steering committees of PAC supporters to be their ``eyes and ears'' in the Washington community. He suggested that they contact the NRCC and House committee chairmen for a list of PACs relevant to their committee assignments. Make contacts personally, Rehr, whose own PAC contributed $144,492 to the House Republicans in the first six months this year, advised the freshmen. If a PAC opposed them during the campaign, they should not take it personally. Those PACs, he said, should now be considered ``additional prospects.'' Rehr is among a new breed of Capitol Hill operators on the rise, fortyish, ideological and fervently committed to the House revolution and its two primary bankers, DeLay and Paxon. The lobbyists span the corporate world, commanding networks of business allies along with large PACs of their own organizations. Dan Mattoon of BellSouth, another lecturer at the NRCC seminar, is the leadership's main link to local telephone companies. Bob Rusbuldt, a top insurance lobbyist, taps the financial resources of the related fields of mortgage banking and real estate. Jim Boland of Philip Morris draws from the tobacco industry and its food subsidiaries. Freelance lobbyists such as former Bush White House aide Gary Andres bring lists of diverse clients and the ability to penetrate new fund-raising channels. The Republican takeover has been a time for ``cashing in,'' as a PAC director close to Gingrich put it, and also a time for ``getting right.'' Lobbyists whose PACs or clients once gave heavily to Democrats have been eager to show they found religion, leading to such scenes as the one late one recent night at one of the steak and cigar restaurants fashionable along Pennsylvania Avenue. ``Man,'' said a lobbyist approaching a GOP leadership aide and pleading to be restored to good graces, ``just want to tell you, we've given like 70 percent to you guys now.'' DeLay, for his part, has launched what has come to be known as the ``K Street Strategy,'' named for the downtown Washington avenue lined with lobbying headquarters, law firms and trade associations. The strategy is to pressure those firms to remove Democrats from top jobs and replace them with Republicans. Headhunters now call DeLay's office in search of recommendations. When one corporation lobbyist sought a meeting with the whip, DeLay telephoned the firm's CEO and complained that his agent in Washington was ``a hard-core libera1.'' If the company wanted to get in to see him, DeLay added, ``you need to hire a Republican.'' The hard-core liberal lobbyist was soon transferred to London. One drug company hired a Democrat to head its office, but after he was unmasked at a DeLay fund-raiser, he called the whip's office the next day to plead that his firm not be scorned by the House Republicans. His position was only temporary, he said, and he would soon be replaced by someone more aligned with the revolution. ``There are just a lot of people down on K Street who gained their prominence by being Democrat and supporting the Democrat cause, and they can't regain their prominence unless they get us out of here,'' said DeLay. ``We're just following the old adage of punish your enemies and reward your friends. We don't like to deal with people who are trying to kill the revolution. We know who they are. The word is out.'' At times, Republican leaders have had to choose between friends, and money may have been a factor. When the Commerce Committee voted on a sweeping telecommunications deregulation bill in May, for example, its legislation appeared to favor AT&T and other long-distance firms over the regional Bell companies. A last-minute amendment by Chairman Thomas Bliley would have complicated entry of the seven regional Bells into the long-distance market. AT&T has a plant in Bliley's Richmond district and a new PAC profile: reversing a past preference for Democrats, it has given 58 percent to GOP lawmakers this year. But the baby Bells, with combined PAC donations double those of AT&T and with influential lobbyists such as Mattoon, appealed the decision. Help came from Paxon and deputy whip Denny Hastert of Illinois, both Commerce Committee members who had voted for the Bliley provision as part of the May bill. But after hearing from Bell lobbyists, they argued for change at a Speaker's Advisory Group meeting in early July, contending that the Bells would be prevented from competing, a participant said. Gingrich directed Bliley to ``rescrub'' the bill, and by mid-July the Bliley provision was deleted. Two weeks before the new bill passed the House, Pacific Telesis Group's chief executive hosted a fund-raiser for Gingrich at his San Francisco home, raising $20,000. Paxon said he was guided by his ``driving passion'' for deregulation, not fund-raising calculations, in siding with the Bells. ``I haven't sat down with a legislative calendar,'' he said, ``and said this is the time to go after this industry group.'' But some fund-raising efforts have been less than subtle. Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Archer lectured corporate leaders not to give to Democrats. In an Oct. 23 letter, signed by the Oklahoma GOP delegation, corporate lobbyists were told that they were expected to support freshman Tom Coburn in his tough reelection race. ``As you are courted by others to get involved in this race, we want to make our position clear,'' the letter read. ``We strongly support our good friend and colleague, Tom Coburn, and we will be unified as we work on his behalf. We trust you will join us in our effort and certainly not oppose us.'' That letter was mild compared with a similar dispatch earlier in the year from DeLay, a no-nonsense missive that helped establish his reputation as ``the Hammer.'' Days before freshman Randy Tate of Washington state was to hold a fund-raiser in Washington, DeLay sent out a letter listing the exact sum each PAC had given to the losing cause of Tate's Democratic opponent in 1994, Mike Kreidler. While he was ``surprised to see you opposed Randy Tate,'' DeLay wrote, ``you now have the opportunity to work toward a positive future relationship.'' The note got more demanding-- ``your immediate support for Randy Tate is personally important to me and the House Republican leadership team''-- before closing with an offer of redemption: ``I hope I can count on you being on the winning team. `` The aftermath of that letter captures DeLay's unapologetic mode of operation. A reporter received a copy of it and called DeLay's PAC director, Karl Gallant. Gallant asked the reporter how he obtained the letter. When he was told it came from a lobbyist, Gallant responded, ``That tells me it's effective. They want you to write a negative story so we'll back off. You just made my day.'' DeLay agreed, distributing the article to his colleagues. ``It had great impact,'' DeLay said later. ``It raised him (Tate) a bunch of money. We know who we sent the letters to and who we got checks from.'' One other result: Kreidler recently decided not to challenge Tate in 1996, citing as one factor his difficulty in raising PAC money. For Gingrich, learning the value of fund-raising has been a gradual process. Staffers at the NRCC in the 1970s and early 1980s would roll their eyes when the small-college history professor with mutton-chop sideburns strolled through the door, knowing they were in for a long day of lectures on the Ming dynasty and a barrage of expensive ideas for promoting his conservative opportunity society. ``In those early days Newt was very naive about money,'' said Steve Stockmeyer, then the executive director of the NRCC. ``He was always coming up with ideas on how to spend it, not raise it.'' But despite his early naivete about the ways of money, Gingrich, more than DeLay or any other figure, was most responsible for turning the revolution into a money machine. Two years ago the financial situation for the Republicans seemed bleak. They were ``walking in the valley of the shadow of death,'' as Paxon, installed by Gingrich as chairman of the NRCC, put it. They were the minority party in the House and Senate and without the White House. Their fund-raising relied largely on a direct-mail list that had become utterly obsolete. Of the more than 1 million names on it, only one in 10 had given to the party in recent years. Many were in nursing homes or dead. But by April 1994 Gingrich had become convinced that the Republicans would seize control of the House that year. He went over to the NRCC and wrote personal appeals for funds claiming that the Republicans would soon be in the majority. ``Gingrich was for my purposes the whole ballgame when we wanted to raise money,'' said Grace Wiegers, then director of fund-raising for the NRCC and now the head of Gingrich's leadership PAC, Monday Morning. In August and September he met individually with more than 150 Republican members, assigning fund-raising tasks and goals to each. Incumbents from safe seats were asked to raise $50,000 for Republican challengers or vulnerable colleagues. Ranking minority members of House committees made pledges to Gingrich to raise even larger amounts traveling for other candidates on the road. When the revolution arrived, Gingrich had a system already in place for maintaining and expanding the money operation. DeLay would be his hammer. Paxon would serve as cheerleader. Majority Leader Armey would position himself as ideological arbiter, attacking corporations for funding nonprofit agencies that opposed the revolution. Conference Chairman Boehner would nourish business coalitions, bringing them in for regular Thursday sessions to plan how the corporate world could advance conservative policy. Committee chairmen Bliley of Commerce, Archer of Ways and Means and Bud Shuster of Transportation would cultivate industries in their turfs. The lines between elected revolutionaries and their business cohorts occasionally blurred. Lobbyists helped DeLay write his regulatory moratorium bill. Shuster raised money for the revolution with the assistance of his former political aide, Ann Eppard, a lobbyist whose clients included Amtrak, Conrail, Federal Express and the Pennsylvania Turnpike Authority, all of whom had issues pending before Shuster's committee. Eppard maintains a close relationship with her old boss. At the same time that she was soliciting money from industry for the ``Bud Shuster Portrait Committee'' which commissioned a painting of the chairman in his committee room, she was also sending out fundraising letters for Republican candidates. One to industry colleagues on behalf of a Virginia candidate ended with the boldfaced assertion: ``This dinner is of personal importance to Chairman Shuster.'' Given the place Gingrich assigned to fund-raising, his handshake agreement with President Clinton in June to form a bipartisan commission on campaign finance reform took his allies by surprise. More than any other act, it revealed the tensions within his revolution. At the next meeting of the House leadership, the tone, said one participant, was, ``Why the hell did you go and do that?'' Armey, responsible for scheduling the revolution's legislative agenda, worried about how he would be able to fit the issue into an already packed calendar. DeLay, and to a lesser degree Paxon, questioned whether the timing was right and whether the Republicans should cede anything to Clinton and the Democrats now that the revolution's money machine was operating so effectively. Gingrich's response was that the handshake ``buys us time.'' He needed to think the issue through, he said. Another wing of Gingrich's House, represented by populist freshmen Brownback and Linda Smith of Washington, along with veteran moderate Christopher Shays of Connecticut, was pushing Gingrich from the other side. If the Republicans did not clean up Washington and prove that they were not continuing business as usual, they said, the revolution would collapse from a fatal flaw of political hubris. If reform did not happen on the Republican watch, said Shays, it would become ``our Achilles'' heel'' While Shays and Brownback took Gingrich's handshake with Clinton as a sign that he supported reform, Smith was skeptical. She said she thought he was just stalling. Gingrich found himself in a familiar position: on both sides of a debate and looking for another way entirely. He understood the call for reform and had a lingering resentment toward PACs for funding the Democrats when they controlled Congress. But he also, he and his aides say, felt equally strongly that the revolutionaries should not unilaterally disarm themselves while they were engaged in a more profound struggle of what he called the ``Information Age.'' The real fight, Gingrich told his aides, was not over money but information and how it is disseminated. Money was one weapon in that struggle and important to the movement as a way to counter the American mass media, which the speaker considered largely hostile to the revolution. Gingrich said as little as possible about the issue after the handshake, promising that at some point he would deliver a white paper on the subject. As months went by, the reformers grew increasingly agitated. At Shays's request, Gingrich met with the reformers in his office late on the afternoon of Sept. 29 just before the Columbus Day break. While Shays hoped to discuss another reform issue involving a gift ban, the meeting devolved into a tense confrontation over campaign finance reform between Gingrich and Smith, who had just planted a story with conservative columnist Robert Novak in which she said that the leadership was not telling the truth about their intentions on reform. ``He got so mad. He kicked the staff out and yelled at them, he was so unhappy,'' Smith recalled. The session was ``testy and pointed,'' according to Brownback. Gingrich was overwhelmed by other concerns that day, including Medicare and Bosnia. He was late for a meeting at the White House, and freshman Smith kept jabbing at him. Noting that Smith was working with Common Cause and United We Stand in pushing campaign reform, Gingrich told her that she had to decide whether she wanted to be an outsider or work with the House leadership. ``Whatever you decide is okay with me,'' he said. ``We just have to know.'' Smith wanted to know why Gingrich needed a time-consuming commission, why he could not just support legislation eliminating PACs, as he had when he was in the minority. She told the speaker that he tried to carry too much of the burden himself and that he should let others take the load on this issue. Then, according to Smith's recollection of the scene, corroborated by others in the room, ``Newt looked at me and said, Nobody can do it but me! I have the most experience. I'm the only one who can do this. I'll just have to take some time this week and write a paper on it.' `` Shortly after that meeting the leadership announced that the Oversight Committee would hold hearings on campaign finance reform starting Nov. 2 and that Gingrich would be the first to testify. One aide took memos from a group of informal advisers, including Stockmeyer, the former NRCC director who now ran the National Association of Business PACs. PACs were invented as a reform in the 1970s, he noted, and another round of reforms doing away with them would probably create a system that was worse. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky sent a letter over to the House noting that the Republicans had killed campaign finance reform before the 1994 elections--``proof positive that this issue is not a hindrance to us at the polls.'' In a handwritten P.S., McConnell added: ``We'd be foolish to throwaway our ability to compete.'' Another Gingrich aide began piecing together his speech. He plunged into a long assigned reading list and followed up on the speaker's request to compare the amount of money spent in political campaigns with what is spent in advertising products. Companies spent $100 million selling two stomach acid pills recently, he discovered, one-sixth of the total amount spent on all congressional campaigns last year. One of the great myths of American politics, Gingrich concluded, was that campaigns are too expensive. He believed that most of the criticism of the campaign system came from ``nonsensical socialist analysis based on hatred of the free enterprise system.'' Smith was sitting one row behind Gingrich and off to his right when he delivered those conclusions at the hearing. She wanted to watch his eyes and his facial expressions as a means of gauging his earnestness, she said, but as he continued to attack the reformers, including some of the groups she had been working with, she became increasingly distraught. ``His anger at the media drove what he said,'' she concluded. She retreated to her office, where she reached a final decision on Gingrich's earlier ultimatum to her. She would work from the outside. Gingrich's lieutenants expressed satisfaction with his speech. If reform is inevitable, they say, it will not involve the elimination of PACs and it will not diminish the role of money in the revolution. DeLay said he would work the system until PACs gave an appropriate amount to the Republicans. ``Ninety percent would be about right,'' he declared. DeLay has a running competition with Gingrich over who can raise more money. There are scores of revolutionaries doing the same thing, but he is not worried that they might trip over each other. ``It's a big country,'' said the Hammer. Parliamentary Inquiry

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I have no doubt that a lot of moderate Republicans wish they were somewhere else today, anywhere where they could escape the embarrassment of voting against the American people one more time in a brand-new year just after that State of the Union last night. Here we go again. The first legislative act of 2006 looks just like the last legislative day of 2005. Republicans call this a reconciliation, but it is really Republican resignation from meeting the needs of American people or addressing the issues that threaten our security. This vote will occur out in the open on the House floor, but the deals were cut in secret behind closed doors with the American people locked out and the Republican Party locked in. Until Republican leaders got what they wanted, and it is not in the best interest of the American people, we have before us today an example of the President's ownership society: you own the problem. This bill removes Federal money from child support enforcement and for caring for abused kids, requiring States to pick up the tab. Republicans will twist arms to pass this unconscionable and unfunded mandate. If you are a middle-class student, Republican reconciliation will have you seeing red because your college education will be awash in high-priced debt. Republican leaders care so much about middle-class America that they are cutting $12 billion in student loans. Want an education? Financial institutions give Republicans a lot more money than you do. Now you get to give the financial institutions a whole lot more money. That is some rabbit-out-of-the-hat trick. By the magic of Republican reconciliation, students will pay more, your parents will pay more when they try to help you, and America will pay more when we deny the next generation the opportunity to get a higher education. Republicans increase the interest rate for their core corporate constituency and increase the failure rate of the Nation investing in a more important asset: our next generation. Republican reconciliation offers dollars that make no sense. That is what happens when Republican Members have to answer to their leadership before their constituents. Republicans talk about security, but there is no security in gutting a student loan program that invests in America's future. There is no common sense either. That is no surprise, of course. Republican reconciliation sacrifices common sense for uncommon greed. Students from solid middle-class families will suffer. So will seniors who use Medicare, because almost $7 billion in Medicare cuts are buried inside this Republican reconciliation. Seniors will pay more so that America's wealthiest can keep more. The Republicans have squandered our commitment to America's distinguished citizens in order to trade need for greed. Part B premiums for some Medicare beneficiaries are going up because the Republicans locked themselves into a conference committee without the Democrats and locked the American people out. On Friday, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office informed us that $28 billion in cuts to Medicaid in this bill would impose new costs on 13 million poor and working-poor recipients. These are the people the President said last night we are taking care of your health care. Brother, you don't want a guy like that taking care of you. By 2015, new fees would end insurance coverage for 65,000 Medicaid enrollees, 60 percent of them children. Meanwhile, the cost of prescription drugs will rise and the number of people helped will fall. It all happened when Republicans gathered and locked out America. Why debate in public when you can decide it in secrecy? That is the way the Republicans like to do it. They hope no one will notice. They forgot that when middle America is floundering in a lifeboat with loss of pensions, loss of health care, loss of jobs, the Republicans capsize the boat. It is hard not to notice. Water is pouring in all around us, just like New Orleans. Remember when the President said, ``Brownie, you are doing a heck of a job.'' He sure did. Rarely have we seen so much lost over so little, dinner. Republicans have raised the bar with reconciliation. As bad as it will be for students and as hard as it will be for seniors, Republicans saved their worst tactics for our most vulnerable and defenseless citizens: Kids in foster care, kids in single parent households, kids in low-income families, and kids in families with a disabled parent. This reconciliation cuts almost $3 billion from programs for America's most vulnerable children. Deadbeat dads, have a great day, guys. The Republicans have given you a head start out of responsibility. Someone may find you eventually. The program to make sure that child support is paid crumbles under this Republican rule. Today Republicans have resigned from their responsibility to take care of America's interests. They say all of these problems are up to the States to solve on their own because that is what they mean by an ownership society: States own the problems. Republicans are now telling States to put more welfare recipients into make-work activities, but they do not provide any resources to achieve that goal. They do not even let child care funding keep pace with inflation. So States may have to cut child care assistance to pay for the new welfare requirements. It is just one more unfunded mandate for the States and one more burden for working families. Now, cash would be nice, but they have drained the Treasury to pay for the President's economic stimulus. Now it is an addiction. Just keep giving the wealthiest Americans more and more money. There is no end to how much money the President is willing to give them, and there is no end to how much money it will take from a host of foreign governments to finance a deficit rising higher than the sky. Reconciliation by Republicans is a one-point program: Make the rich richer. It was crafted in secret. At least now finally it is out in the open. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin), who stopped the attempt to privatize Social Security. (Mr. LEVIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, it probably does not surprise most Americans when Republicans and Democrats have different opinions on a bill, so let me highlight the opinion of a third voice, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Here is what they say about the legislation before us. Our Bishops' Conference is deeply disappointed that the final budget reconciliation conference agreement coming once again before the House of Representatives includes provisions in these areas which we believe could prove harmful to many low-income children, families, elderly and people with disabilities who are least able to provide for themselves. Because of these concerns, we ask you to oppose the budget reconciliation conference agreement. Bishops' President Urges House To Reject Budget Agreement Washington (January 30, 2006).--The recent budget reconciliation bill fails to ``meet the needs of the most vulnerable among us,'' said Bishop William S. Skylstad, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in a January 24 letter to the House of Representatives. Bishop Skylstad said the greatest concerns were over: increased Medicaid cost-sharing burdens; cuts to child support enforcement; changes in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families programs which underfund work programs and childcare; and cuts to agriculture conservation programs. ``We urge you to reject the conference agreement and work for policies that put poor children and families first,'' Bishop Skylstad said. The text of the entire letter follows. January 24, 2006. House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Dear Representative: In December, as President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, I wrote to you expressing serious concerns about provisions in the budget reconciliation bill. The proposed changes in Medicaid, child support enforcement funding, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and agriculture conservation programs, in particular, could have a negative impact upon the most vulnerable in our nation. Our Bishops' Conference is deeply disappointed that the final budget reconciliation conference agreement coming once again before the House of Representatives includes provisions in these areas which we believe could prove harmful to many low-income children, families, elderly and people with disabilities who are least able to provide for themselves. Because of these concerns, we ask you to oppose the budget reconciliation conference agreement. Among the areas of most concern to us are: Increased Medicaid cost-sharing burdens and eroding federal benefit standards which can result in low-income children, families, pregnant women, elderly and those with disabilities not getting the care they need. Cuts to child support enforcement, which will mean collecting billions less in child support for children and families than under current law. TANF-related provisions, including: Immediate and significant changes in state TANF work rules (although additional proposals to increase hours worked per week were wisely abandoned) without providing sufficient additional funding needed to run work programs and provide child care. This will mean states may have to choose between cutting child care for low-income working families, reducing other services for low-income people, or cutting back on cash assistance for needy families; policies that could have the effect of disadvantaging two-parent families and married couples; and failure to restore TANF benefit eligibility to recently-arrived legal immigrants. Cuts to key agriculture conservation programs, which will undermine efforts to promote soil conservation, improve water quality, protect wildlife, and maintain biodiversity. We recognize that the bill also includes positive elements, such as additional funding for victims of Hurricane Katrina and a program to promote marriage and healthy families. We are also grateful that cuts to the Food Stamps program were dropped from the package. However, we believe that, overall, the impact of this bill will be to fail to meet the needs of the most vulnerable among us. Therefore, we urge you to reject the conference agreement and work for policies that put poor children and families first. There are many challenges and much tumult in Washington that demand the attention of our leaders. However, an essential priority of government is to provide for the general welfare of its people, especially ``the least among us.''

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to section 426 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, I make a point of order against consideration of this rule, H. Res. 653. Section 425 of that same act states that a point of order lies against legislation which imposes an unfunded mandate in excess of specified amounts against State or local governments. Section 426 of the Budget Act specifically states that a rule may not waive the application of section 425. H. Res. 653 states that the House hereby concurs in the Senate amendment to the bill S. 1932 to provide for reconciliation. This self- executing rule effectively waives the application of section 425 to provisions in the underlying bill on child support enforcement which the Congressional Budget Office informs us impose an intergovernmental mandate as defined by the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act. Therefore, I make a point of order that the rule may not be considered pursuant to section 426.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, last night we heard the President deliver his State of the Union message from this Hall. By the light of day, today, we know that the glow was artificial and the highlights were inaccurate at best. I will enter into the Record at this point a story from today's Los Angeles Times. [From the Los Angeles Times, Feb. 1, 2006] Bush Stretches to Defend Surveillance (By Peter Wallsten and Maura Reynolds) Washington.--President Bush received a roaring ovation Tuesday for his prime-time defense of wiretapping phone calls without warrants. But Bush's explanation relied on assumptions that have been widely questioned by experts who say the president offers a debatable interpretation of history. Defending the surveillance program as crucial in a time of war, Bush said that ``previous presidents have used the same constitutional authority'' that he did. ``And,'' he added, ``federal courts have approved the use of that authority.'' Bush did not name names, but was apparently reiterating the argument offered earlier this month by Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales, who invoked Presidents Lincoln, Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt for their use of executive authority. However, warrantless surveillance within the United States for national security purposes was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972--long after Lincoln, Wilson, and Roosevelt stopped issuing orders. That led to the 1978 passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that Bush essentially bypassed in authorizing the program after the Sept. 11 attacks. Since the surveillance law was enacted, establishing secret courts to approve surveillance, ``the Supreme Court has not touched this issue in the area of national security,'' said William Banks, a national security expert at Syracuse Law School. ``He might be speaking in the broadest possible sense about the president exercising his authority as commander-in-chief to conduct a war, which of course federal courts have upheld since the beginning of the nation,'' Banks said. ``If he was talking more particularly about the use of warrantless surveillance, then he is wrong.'' Bush's historical reference on domestic spying marked one of several points in his speech in which he backed up assertions with selective uses of fact, or seemed to place a positive spin on his own interpretation. On his headline-grabbing pledge to decrease U.S. reliance on Middle East oil by 75% over the next 20 years, Bush's words seemed to suggest a dramatic new program to reduce dependence on foreign oil. But experts point out that the U.S. gets only a fraction-- about 10%--of its oil imports from the Middle East. In fact, the majority now comes from Canada and Mexico--and Bush said nothing on Tuesday about them. Speaking about Iraq, Bush argued that ``our coalition has been relentless in shutting off terrorist infiltration.'' But he may have left the wrong impression about how far U.S.-led forces have gotten in closing off the huge border areas, especially the 375-mile-long one between Syria and Iraq. Administration officials have often complained that the Syrian government does little to police the border and have said it may not be possible to close it, given its size. Two weeks ago, Rep. H. James Saxton (R-NJ), chairman of a House Armed Services subcommittee, complained in a column in the Washington Times that the border is ``extremely porous'' and called for new steps to cut off the flow of enemy fighters. Bush made a number of claims for his economic stewardship that were technically accurate but told only a part of the story. ``In the last 2\1/2\ years, America has created 4.6 million new jobs,'' Bush said. Although the claim is essentially true, he did not say that the United States lost 2.6 million jobs in the first 2\1/2\ years of his presidency. ``In the last five years,'' Bush continued, ``the tax relief you passed has left $880 billion in the hands of American workers, investors, small businesses and families, and they have used it to help produce more than four years of uninterrupted economic growth.'' But to many economists, the cause-and-effect relationship is not so stark; they credit tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 with helping to turn around a stagnant economy, but now they worry that the resulting deficits may retard it. ``Every year of my presidency, we have reduced the growth of non-security discretionary spending,'' Bush said. True again, but this represents less than 20% of all spending. Including defense and the giant benefit programs such as Social Security and Medicare, spending has risen by about 30% in the five Bush years. The president also seemed to ignore Supreme Court precedent when he called for Congress to give him the ``line item veto.'' But Congress did that once, in 1996, and it was used once, by former President Clinton. But in 1998, a federal judge ruled that it was unconstitutional. That was affirmed by a 6-3 decision of the Supreme Court. Bush praised his administration's efforts to help the Gulf Coast recover from Hurricane Katrina. ``A hopeful society comes to the aid of fellow citizens in times of suffering and emergency, and stays at it until they are back on their feet,'' he said. But Bush omitted any mention of tensions between Gulf State officials and the administration over responsibility for the botched response to the storm. ``There was nothing in terms of new money,'' said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.). Perhaps Bush's most controversial language came as he defended the surveillance program. The president echoed earlier administration assertions that the domestic surveillance program would have been useful before the Sept. 11 attacks. Bush said two Sept. 11 hijackers living in San Diego made telephone calls to Al Qaeda associates overseas, but that ``we did not know about their plans until it was too late.'' However, The Times has previously reported that some U.S. counterterrorism officials knowledgeable about the case blame an interagency communications breakdown, not a surveillance failure or shortcomings of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Point by point, the Times compared the President's rhetoric to America's reality. They are not even close. Here is what the Times said about the President's domestic spying program. Defending the surveillance program is crucial in a time of war. Bush said that Presidents have used the same constitutional authority that he did, and he said Federal courts have approved the use of that authority. Bush did not name names, but was apparently reiterating the argument offered earlier by the Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, who invoked Presidents Lincoln, Wilson, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt for their use of executive authority. However, warrantless surveillance within the United States for national security purposes was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972, long after Lincoln, Wilson, and Roosevelt stopped issuing orders. This led to the passage of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that Bush essentially bypassed in authorizing the program after September 11. The analysis comes from one of America's bedrock institutions of journalism, facts, not spin. Here is the analysis of the President's remarks about the war. Speaking about Iraq, Bush argued that ``our coalition has been relentless in shutting off terrorism infiltration.'' But he may have left the wrong impression about how U.S.-led forces have gotten in closing off the huge border areas, especially the 375-mile border between Syria and Iraq. Administration officials have often complained the Syrian Government does little to police the border, and many have said it may not be possible to close it given its size. Let me mention one other example. The President finally got religion on America's energy crisis. But he needs an atlas and a vision. Here is what the Times said. On his headline-grabbing pledge to decrease U.S. reliance on Middle Eastern oil by 75 percent over the next 20 years, Bush's words seem to suggest a dramatic new program to reduce dependence on foreign oil. But experts point out that the U.S. gets only a fraction, about 10 percent, of its oil imports from the Middle East. In fact, the majority comes from Canada and Mexico, and Bush said nothing Tuesday night about them. I was proud the President used my words in his speech: ``America is addicted to oil.'' But he did not give a proper prescription. But beyond co-opting Democratic philosophy and Democratic programs, the President is an oil man through and through. Today's New York Times said this: ``President Bush devoted 2 minutes and 15 seconds of the State of the Union message to speak about energy independence.'' It was hardly the bold signal we have been waiting for years for about global warming and deadly struggles in the Middle East where everything takes place in the context of what Mr. Bush rightly called our addiction to imported oil. Last night's remarks were woefully insufficient. The country's future economic and national security depend on whether the Americans can control their enormous appetite for fossil fuels. This is not a matter to be lumped in a laundry list of other initiatives, including in a once-a-year speech to Congress. It is a key to everything else that happens. I will enter at this point in the Record the New York Times editorial. [From the New York Times, Feb. 1, 2006] The State of Energy President Bush devoted two minutes and 15 seconds of his State of the Union speech to energy independence. It was hardly the bold signal we've been waiting for through years of global warming and deadly struggles in the Middle East, where everything takes place in the context of what Mr. Bush rightly called our ``addiction'' to imported oil. Last night's remarks were woefully insufficient. The country's future economic and national security will depend on whether Americans can control their enormous appetite for fossil fuels. This is not a matter to be lumped in a laundry list of other initiatives during a once-a-year speech to Congress. It is the key to everything else. If Mr. Bush wants his final years in office to mean more than a struggle to re-spin failed policies and cement bad initiatives into permanent law, this is the place where he needs to take his stand. And he must do it with far more force and passion than he did last night. American overdependence on oil has been a disaster for our foreign policy. It weakens the nation's international leverage and empowers exactly the wrong countries. Last night Mr. Bush told the people that ``the nations of the world must not permit the Iranian regime to gain nuclear weapons,'' but he did not explain how that will happen when those same nations are so dependent on Tehran's oil. Iran ranks second in oil reserves only to Saudi Arabia, where members of the elite help finance Osama bin Laden and his ilk, and where the United States finds it has little power to stop them. Oil is a seller's market, in part because of America's voracious consumption. India and China, with their growing energy needs, have both signed deals with Iran. Rogue states like Sudan are given political cover by their oil customers. The United Nations may wish to do something about genocide in Darfur or nuclear proliferation, but its most powerful members are hamstrung by their oil alliances with some of the worst leaders on the planet. Even if the war on terror had never begun, Mr. Bush would have an obligation to be serious about the energy issue, given the enormous danger to the nation's economy if we fail to act. His own Energy Department predicts that with the rapid development of India and China, annual global consumption will rise from about 80 million barrels of oil a day to 119 million barrels by 2025. Absent efforts to reduce American consumption, these new demands will lead to soaring oil prices, inflation and a loss of America's trade advantage. It should be a humbling shock to American leaders that Brazil has managed to become energy self-sufficient during a period when the United States was focused on building bigger S.U.V.'s. Part of the answer, as Mr. Bush indicated last night, is the continued development of alternative fuels, especially for cars. The Energy Department has addressed this modestly, and last night the president said his budget would add more money for research. That's fine, but hardly the kind of full-bore national initiative that will pump large amounts of money into the commercial production of alternatives to gasoline. When it comes to cars, much of the research has already been done--Brazil got to energy independence by figuring out how to get its citizens home from work in cars run without much gasoline. The answer is producing the new fuels that have already been developed and getting cars that use them on the lots. There are several ways to make that happen. The president could call for higher fuel economy standards for car manufacturers. He could bring up the subject of a gas tax--the most effective way of getting Americans to buy fuel- efficient cars, and a market-based tax on consumption that conservative lawmakers ought to embrace if they are honest with themselves and their constituents. But Mr. Bush took the safe, easy and relatively meaningless route instead. There is still an enormous amount to be done to find new sources of clean, cheap power to heat homes and create electricity. But regrettably, the president made it clear last night that he would rather spend the country's resources on tax cuts for the wealthy. The oil companies are currently flush with profits from the same high prices that have plagued consumers, and the president might have asked the assembled legislators whether their current tax breaks might be redirected into a real energy initiative. Simply calling for more innovation is painless. The hard part is calling for anything that smacks of sacrifice--on the part of consumers or special interests, and politicians who depend on their support. After 9/11, the president had the perfect moment to put the nation on the road toward energy independence, when people were prepared to give up their own comforts in the name of a greater good. He passed it by, and he missed another opportunity last night. Of all the defects in Mr. Bush's energy presentation, the greatest was his unwillingness to address global warming--an energy-related emergency every bit as critical as our reliance on foreign oil. Except for a few academics on retainer at the more backward energy companies, virtually no educated scientist disputes that the earth has grown warmer over the last few decades--largely as a result of increasing atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels. The carbon lodged in the atmosphere by the Industrial Revolution over the last 150 years has already taken a toll: disappearing glaciers, a thinning Arctic icecap, dead or dying coral reefs, increasingly violent hurricanes. Even so, given robust political leadership and technological ingenuity, the worst consequences--widespread drought and devastating rises in sea levels--can be averted if society moves quickly to slow and ultimately reverse its output of greenhouse gases. This will require a fair, cost-effective program of carbon controls at home and a good deal of persuasion and technological assistance in countries like China, which is building old-fashioned, carbon-producing coal-fired power plants at a frightening clip. Mr. Bush said he would look for cleaner ways to power our homes and offices, and provide more money for the Energy Department's search for a ``zero emission'' coal-fired plant whose carbon dioxide emissions can be injected harmlessly into the ground without adding to the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. But once again he chose to substitute long-range research--and a single, government- sponsored research program at that--for the immediate investments that have to be made across the entire industrial sector. That Mr. Bush has taken a pass on this issue is a negligence from which the globe may never recover. While he seems finally to have signed on to the idea that the earth is warming, and that humans are heavily responsible, he has rejected serious proposals to do anything about it and allowed his advisers on the issue to engage in a calculated program of disinformation. At the recent global summit on warming, his chief spokesmen insisted that the president's program of voluntary reductions by individual companies had resulted in a reduction in emissions, when in fact the reverse was true. The State of the Union speech is usually a feel-good event, and no one could fault Mr. Bush's call for research, or fail to applaud his call for replacing more than 75 percent of the nation's oil imports from the Middle East within the next two decades. But while the goal was grand, the means were minuscule. The president has never been serious about energy independence. Like so many of our leaders, he is content to acknowledge the problem and then offer up answers that do little to disturb the status quo. If the war on terror must include a war on oil dependence, Mr. Bush is in retreat. Let me just read one other excerpt, because it is very important. Of all of the defects in Mr. Bush's energy presentation, the greatest was his unwillingness to address global warming, an energy-related emergency every bit as critical as our reliance on foreign oil. Except for a few academics on retainer at the most backward energy companies, virtually no educated scientist disputes that the Earth has grown warmer over the last decades. This is the New York Times talking. Largely as a result of increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels, gas. I read this and wonder how many alarms have to be sounded before the leaders follow. With new eyes in space like the great Hubble telescope, we understand the danger of great meteorites striking the Earth. Some are large enough to be called planet killers. We fear what might come from above, but we ignore what is coming from right here on the Earth. Mr. Speaker, the President could have done better. But he did not have it in him. The extinction of the dinosaurs provided for the extraction of fossil fuel. The addiction to oil could provide for the extraction of mankind from a planet too hot to inhabit. Is it science fiction or a looking glass? Too many scientists know we are looking into the future, and ignoring it. I urge the American people to read today's LA Times and New York Times. Compare the common sense expressed in bedrock journalism against Republican's unlimited access to uncommon hype. You decide. Mr. Speaker, like oil, even Republican hype is a finite resource, and that's the best energy news for America in a decade.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time of the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, at this hour of the night, I am not sure who in the world is listening to whom. Certainly, none of our constituents are awake. They have all fallen asleep, except those who are total insomniacs. But I had the experience last week when I was home of going to the City Club in Seattle. And they have a yearly meeting where they talk about how the year has gone and what they expect for the next year. It is sort of looking forward to the next year and what is going to happen, and they pick out important citizens from our city to put on the panel. And the question was asked of the panel, what is the thing you worry about most in the future? Now, one of the panelists was a guy who some of you may know, his name is William Gates, Sr. He is the father of Bill Gates. He runs the Gates Foundation. And his answer was this: I worry most that people do not realize how close we are to economic collapse in this country. The spending that is going on, and he went on to elaborate, in terms of the issues that we face today, with a bubble of real estate out there, with everybody buying houses on interest-only loans, on the huge credit card debt in this country, on people working full-time and not having any increase in their wages. Now, you can look at certain figures and we have the battle here of the figures. And if you are sitting at home thinking what are people thinking about all those flying back and forth, because their experience is that their wages are not going up. Prices are still going up. Their cable TV is costing more than it did and their gas is costing more than it did. But their wages are not going up. Now, they read that the GDP is going well and that more taxes are coming in. That is not affecting the basic people in this society. And this bill, this so-called reconciliation bill, I do not know whoever thought that that was a good term for it, because we are not reconciliating the people at the top and the people at the bottom. This is a bill directed at the people at the bottom. The people on the top are doing great. There is nobody in this room who is going to suffer for one single minute in the next year. Not one single one of you will be cold or hungry or without the ability to go see a physician or receive a dental appointment when you need it, when you have got a toothache. How many States are there in the United States that still have a dental program for the people on TANF? Practically none. And we stand out here and say that this is a great budget and you are going to cut, it is baloney. It is a sham and we ought to vote ``no'' on it.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, the week before Christmas and here we are gathered, most of the children in their bed even in my district by now, and the elves have been working. So here we are. The Republican Party, since the days of Reagan, have lived by the motto of Mrs. Thatcher, that there is no society, there is only individuals. Now, that is contrary, as you heard from the gentleman from Missouri, to what the Bible says. We all start the story of the Bible, the Christian story, in Isaiah. And in Isaiah the prophet is categorizing what is going on in Jerusalem and why it is failing as the injustice and the materialism and the wealth accumulated. Here is what Isaiah said, verse 23, first chapter. Right off the bat: ``Everyone loves a bribe and runs after gifts. They do not defend the fatherless. The widow's cause does not come before them.'' For us to be here in the middle of the night taking whatever it is, $50 billion, $60 billion, nobody on this floor knows what is in this budget, let us admit that right up front, except about six people who wrote it. We are all taking it that we are going to take $60 billion and we are going to tell the poor people, you know, you are so lucky to live in America. We are going to throw you a little something. In our history, every one of us has been raised with the Christmas story, either the biblical Christmas story or the Dickens Christmas story of the coal and the Grinch. You think about all the stories we have about what happens at Christmas time, and you have the nerve to come out here with a budget at this time of year where you cut child support, you cut food stamps, you cut Medicaid; and then you say to people, Merry Christmas and a happy new year. That takes the height of gall, or else no feeling whatsoever. There is no way you could stand up and talk about these issues if you understood what people at the bottom really have to deal with. Most of us make $150,000 as a minimum. The average income in this country is about a quarter of that, or a fifth of it. Those people are scraping along, and we are doing everything we can to make it impossible for them to live a decent life because of our own, as the prophet says, our own greed and materialism.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably detained earlier today and therefore missed the vote on House Resolution 534. Were I able to vote, I would have voted in support of the resolution.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, as we enter this Christmas season, there will be many children sitting down around the country listening to a story that begins, `twas the night before Christmas. I want to tell you about another night before Christmas that will be going on in the next week and has been going on for the last 20-some years. There is an extraordinarily tragic situation ongoing in a stunningly beautiful country in Africa, Uganda. In recent weeks, a group of Rotarians from my district and surrounding areas went to northern Uganda with one item on their agenda: to advance the common good by providing polio vaccine and other assistance. Ben Abe is a Ugandan from my district. He led this mission by the Rotarians, along with our former secretary of state from the State of Washington, Ralph Munro. They brought back an excruciatingly shocking and painful account of an extraordinary night where they observed firsthand a heinous tragedy that has been perpetrated on children in northern Uganda for years. It is only now beginning to see the light of day in mainstream media in publications like Vanity Fair and the Smithsonian Magazine. It occurs in Gulu in northern Uganda. Each night, a human mass moves through the pitch dark roads of Gulu. These are the night commuters. Not a late shift going to work, but a gigantic mass of thousands of children fleeing their unsafe homes, walking miles in the darkness to retreat behind locked gates in hopes of avoiding abduction, rape, disfigurement and, most horribly, to avoid being forced themselves to become the murderers of children as abducted child soldiers in the Lord's Resistance Army. Over 25,000 children have been abducted over the last 19 years; more than 21,000 children walk miles each night seeking a safe harbor. These young children seek sanctuary in tents, hospitals, warehouses and empty lots. They sleep piled up on each other, sometimes with a blanket but most often without, and they are separated from their mothers and fathers every night. Thousands of those Ugandan kids never make it to a safe haven. Seventeen-year-old Daniel is an example. He is one of the boys abducted from school by the Lord's Resistance Army. One boy escaped but was caught. The rest were then forced to tie him to a tree and stone him to death. Daniel said, ``That is what we did, because if we did not kill him, we would be killed.'' Anna Grace was 11 years old when she was abducted. The Lord's Resistance Army forced her to march and carry someone else's baby. Then they threw a bomb at her, blowing off the baby's head. Anna Grace was raped and gave birth to her own child in 2005. Dave, 10 years old, was kidnapped in March of 2004 and watched as his two brothers were beaten to death with a log. The only chance these night commuters have to reach safe harbor every night is to walk without adults, without protection, without light. The Rotarians from my district walked with these kids, moved with this mass of kids as they set out defenseless, in the deep darkness of night, seeking shelter to stay alive for just one more day. The winner of the 2005 Sidney Peace Prize, Olara Otunnu, recently declared Uganda the worst place on earth to be a child today. Though this despicable outrage has occurred for almost two decades, the Congress and the international community has not lifted a finger about what we proclaim is our duty, to protect children. There has been no dedicated international commitment or intervention to end this abhorrent situation. These Rotarians came back rightly incredulous over the international community's failure to mobilize and blunt this highly visible tragedy occurring every single night. As Americans sit down and read that Christmas story, whether they read the one about the reindeer or the one about the baby Jesus coming to Bethlehem, these kids will be moving through the darkness. These Rotarians ask: How can this continue in a world where we proclaim our love and dedication to all children? They are right to ask these questions. Each night, that savagery hides in northern Uganda. During this season of goodwill, this Congress and the entire national community must combine our collective strength to give some hope to these children, these night commuters, and their families. We can do better than we have. If you believe, as I do that it is our utmost obligation to work toward a world safe for children, this obligation does not stop at our borders or oceans--all children are our children and we must act. The U.S. alone cannot break this outrageous nightly tragedy, but we can and must assert our political will, and insist that we meet it head on.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, in the glow after the election, I come to the floor really to caution this House with the words of an old colleague of mine who says it is always too soon to congratulate yourself. The New York Times on the 11th of December carried an editorial which is entitled Present at the Disintegration. What he says, and he is an Iraqi, is that the government that has been established by the constitution and has now been elected is fatally flawed in three ways, and what we are going to get is continued civil war in that country because it is not possible to resolve the problems, given the people who have been elected. The first is, we have created a parliament that can override the executive. We, secondly, created an executive that is divided between a president and a council of ministers, so there will be constant tension between the two factions that will control the government, the Shia and the Kurds. The Sunnis, everybody knows, are not going to be one of the controlling parties. Finally, it encourages local governments to break off and become sovereign. What we are watching is the disintegration of Iraq. [From the New York Times, Dec. 11, 2005] Present at the Disintegration (By Kanan Makiya) Washington and Baghdad will be tempted, with the adoption of a new Constitution and the election on Thursday for a four-year government, to declare victory in Iraq. In one sense, they are right to do so. The emerging Iraqi polity undoubtedly represents a radical break not only with the country's past but also with the whole Arab state system established by Britain and France after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. But in the larger sense, such optimism is misguided, for none of the problems associated with Iraq's monumental change have been sorted out. Worse, profound tensions and contradictions have been enshrined in the Constitution of the new Iraq, and they threaten the very existence of the state. How did we get here? Much has been said about American failures in Iraq. And rightly so. But, as I've seen as a participant in political discussions both before and after the war, we Iraqis have also failed to lay the ground for a new order. For the new political elite cast into power by the elections last January has been unable even to begin to create a stable and strong Iraqi state to replace the one overthrown in April 2003. The increasing daily casualty rate for Iraqis, from 26 in early 2004 to an average of 64 in this fall, is only the most glaring sign that something has gone terribly wrong, and not for lack of any American effort to turn the situation around. Unfortunately, we cannot expect the situation to change following Thursday's election. There is little chance that the winner will command the authority inside Parliament to reverse the decline, for a simple reason: the Constitution. All signs suggest that this Constitution, if it is not radically amended, will further weaken the already failing central Iraqi state. In spite of all the rhetoric in that document about the unity of the ``homeland of the apostles and prophets'' and the ``values and ideals of the heavenly messages and findings of science'' that have played a role in ``preserving for Iraq its free union,'' it is disunity, diminished sovereignty and years of future discord that lie in store for Iraq if the Constitution is not overhauled. Any government that emerges from the coming elections will be fatally undermined in at least three ways. First, the Constitution establishes a supremely powerful Parliament, which can ride roughshod over the executive. While that Parliament, as it is designed in the Constitution, looks like a democratic institution, it doesn't work like one. Rather, it is an artificially constructed collection of ethnic and sectarian voting blocs. If the experience of the interim government is any guide, the few people who control those blocs are the ones who will wield real power, and they will do so largely through handpicked committees and backroom wheeling and dealing. Because this cabal of powerbrokers also chooses the president and the prime minister and can dismiss them with a simple majority, there will be no check on the tyranny of majorities operating under the aegis of the legislature. Second, executive power is divided between the president and the council of ministers, guaranteeing that major decisions will be met with the same tension and paralysis that have plagued the present government. Both the president and the prime minister (it is assumed, though not explicitly stated, that these two posts will be apportioned out to a Kurd and a Shiite Arab, as they are at present) can separately present bills to Parliament--a sure recipe for conflict. And both the president and the prime minister can be fired after a no-confidence motion endorsed by a parliamentary majority. At a time of civil war and pervasive violence, in other words, no one person or institution can be said to be in charge of the executive branch of the federal government. Third, the Constitution encourages the transformation of governorates and local administrations into powerful, nearly sovereign regions that, with the exception of Kurdistan, have no underlying basis for unity. And while the articles dealing with the functioning of the federal government are poorly worded and intended to dissipate executive power, the 10 articles of Section 5, on the powers and manner of formation of new regions, are a model of clarity and have been drafted with the sole purpose of encouraging new regions to be created at the expense of the federal union. This guarantees that the more Iraqi provinces opt for regional status, and get it, the more the federal state will shrivel up and die. Moreover, with the exception of those who reside in provinces without oil (or in Baghdad, which cannot join a region), it is in the interest of every populist demagogue to press for regional status, because it is at that level that the lawmaking that truly affects day-to-day life will take place. The powers of the new regions will be enormous. Not even the Iraqi Army can travel through one without the permission of the regional Parliament. And should there be any doubt about where the whip hand will lie on any issue not explicitly addressed in the Constitution, Article 122 states: ``Articles of the Constitution may not be amended if such amendment takes away from the power of the regions . . . except by the consent of the legislative authority of the concerned region and the approval of the majority of its citizens.'' An Iraqi wit known only as Shalash al-Iraqi has lampooned this devolution of power in an imaginary constitution, called ``The Federalism of the city of Thawra and its Environs,'' posted on the Internet. Its preamble reads: Congruent with the wave of federalisms that is sweeping Iraq, the city of Thawra and its surrounding neighborhoods have decided to constitute themselves as a federal region . . . For this purpose a Constituent Assembly of the representatives of the most important and influential tribes in the City has been established . . . [and it] has noted that the City of Thawra [is well suited to become a region because it] floats on a lake of oil, and possesses a huge labor force along with an independent army and police force . . . In addition the city is bounded by a canal, which is its water link to the cities of the adjoining sisterly Republic of Iraq . . . ``We, people of the valley east of the canal, . . . have of our own volition and free will decided to separate from the people of Baghdad and all the other irritating governorates like Ramadi, Diwaniya, Tikrit, Darbandikhan, Samawa and all the rest . . . The adoption of this, our constitution, will free us from all the headaches and problems of Iraq.'' There is nothing wrong with having strong regions within a federal union. Unfortunately the new Iraqi Constitution fails to inject the glue that would hold such a union together: the federal government. It sets up a regional system with big short-term winners (Shiite Arabs and Kurds) and big short- term losers (Sunni Arabs). It even allocates extra oil and gas revenues to the regions that generate them, on the implicit assumption that because of the political inequities of the past, the state owes the Sunnis of the resource-poor western provinces less than it does the Shiites and Kurds. But these provinces are not significantly better off than other parts of Iraq. Iraq's Sunni Arabs voted solidly against the Constitution not because they are Saddam Hussein loyalists, nor because they hate the Kurds and Shiites (as some of the insurgents do); they voted against it because by doing away with the central state, which they had championed during the previous 80 years, and penalizing them for living in regions without oil, the Constitution became a punitive document--one that began to seem as if it was written to punish them for the sins of the Baath. What is wrong with pursuing the Constitution to its logical conclusion: the breakup of Iraq? Nothing, if that breakup is consensual and does not entail an escalation in the violence tearing the country apart. But such is not the case. The debate in Parliament over the Constitution was extremely polarized and artificially cut short by the majority. Moreover, if a mere 83,283 people in the province of Nineveh had voted no instead of yes, the draft constitution would have been defeated. Sunni opposition to the new order will continue. Crushing it by force, as some Shiite hotheads in the Parliament's majority bloc are calling for, will be an extremely bloody business. Even if the long-term outcome of an all-out Iraqi civil war is not in doubt, the body count and destruction would make Lebanon's war look like a picnic. No moral person can condone the parliamentary majority that makes this happen. The 2003 Iraq war has indeed brought about an irreversible transformation of politics and society in Iraq. But this transformation has not consolidated power, as the great revolutions of the past have tended to do (in France, Russia and even Iran), nor is it distributing power on an agreed upon and equitable basis, as happened after the American Revolution and as Iraqi liberal democrats like myself had hoped would happen after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Rather, it is dissipating it. And that is a terrifying prospect for a population whose primary legacy from the Saddam Hussein era is a profound mistrust of government in all its forms. By ceding and dismissing centralized power, Iraqis may end by ceding all their power. Iran in the short run, and the Arab world in the long run, will fill the vacuum with proxies, turning the dream of a democratic and reborn Iraq into a dystopia of warring militias and rampant hopelessness. The reaction against tyranny in Iraq was always going to take the form of a new kind of state in the Middle East, one that in the minds of those who struggled against the regime of Saddam Hussein had to be profoundly decentralized. And federalism did not have to entail the dissipation of power. As it was first envisioned, a federal Iraq promised to safeguard against despotism while furnishing a framework both strong and flexible enough to reconcile the competing demands of its citizens. Federalism first entered the lexicon of the Iraqi opposition in 1992, when the newly created Kurdish Parliament voted in favor of it as a way of governing the relation of Kurdistan to the rest of the country. That vote was ratified a few months later by a conference of the Iraqi opposition in Salahuldin, in northern Iraq. Remarkably, the idea of federalism survived the bitter infighting among Iraqi exiles in months before the 2003 war, becoming one of the few common denominators in the discourse of the opposition about the future of Iraq. The fact that there was no literature in Arabic on federalism to speak of, and that Iraqi parties and organizations did not know or agree upon what federalism meant, and that Iraqi politicians did not bother themselves with thinking about what it might mean, did not deter individuals, parties and organizations from continuing to advocate it. I was one of the idea's most ardent Arab advocates. In Salahuldin, I delivered the keynote speech on the subject, not only endorsing the Kurdish Parliament's decision, but presenting federalism as a general solution to the problems of the Iraqi state. A federalism based on Iraq's existing 18 governorates broke the rotten mold of Iraqi and Arab politics, I argued. No Iraqi political organization could afford not to be for it, especially not one that called itself democratic. Without a system of government in which real power devolved away from Baghdad, the autonomous, predominantly Kurdish north must sooner or later opt for separation. And how could any Iraqi expect otherwise, after all the terrible things that had been done to the Kurds in the name of Arabism? Some Arabs argued that one must concede federalism in the interest of getting rid of Saddam Hussein and because the Kurds are in a position to force it upon us. And we must accept federalism, some Kurds said, not because we really want it, but because the regional situation does not allow us to secede. But utilitarian calculation did not lie behind the democratic argument. Federalism in Iraq would both separate and divide powers. Painstakingly negotiated arrangements would distinguish the powers of the parts from those of the center, taking care to leave important functions in the hands of the federal government. We thought it wise to define regions territorially, according to the relative distribution of the population, and to include in the constitution the claim that the country's resources (in particular oil revenues, the only real source of income for the foreseeable future), would belong to all Iraqis equally and would be managed by the federal government. Different ethnicities and sects would almost certainly form majorities in particular regions. The point was not to change such distributions, but to emphasize the equality of citizenship. Such a federalism, Iraqi democrats said, was the logical extension of the principle of human rights. It was based on the notion that the rights of the part--whether that part was a single person or a group--should not be sacrificed to the will of the majority. What people like myself failed to appreciate, or understand, before 2003, were the powerful forces driving toward purely ethnic and sectarian criteria for the definition of the ``parts'' of the new federal idea. The consequence of those forces has been a tremendous weakening of the political idea of Iraq, which the new Constitution has converted into hostility toward central government per se. A decentralized, federal state system that devolves power to the regions is not the same as a dysfunctional one in which power at the federal level has been eviscerated. The former preserves power while distributing it; the latter destroys it. At the moment Iraqis have a dysfunctional and powerless state. The Constitution does not fix this; it makes it worse. What began as an American problem is today an Iraqi one. To steer the country away from anarchy and manage the furies that have been unleashed, the following measures need to be undertaken by the new Iraqi Parliament the moment it reconvenes after the elections: Recognize that at the moment only Kurdistan fulfills the conditions for being a region. Using the Kurdish experience as a model, the Constitution must define the minimum conditions that need to be met by any group of provinces that desire to form themselves into a region. Then set a moratorium of 10 years on the establishment of new regions, this being the time necessary to crush the insurgency, establish properly accountable institutions of law and order and ensure that those applying for such status have met the criteria. Limit the size of any new region formed after the 10-year period to a maximum of three governorates and fix the existing unmodified boundaries of the 18 governorates of Iraq as the basis for the establishment of new regions. Delete Article 109, which allocates extra oil revenues to the regions that generate them. There is no defensible case for imposing special reparations on the Sunni populace for the crimes of Iraq's former leaders. Appoint a committee of expert constitutional lawyers to make the necessary amendments reconciling the legislature with the executive and the different parts of the executive with each other. This is not a matter that can be resolved by the politicians alone. Democracy is not reducible to placing an Iraqi seal of approval upon a situation that is manifestly worsening by the day. The 79 percent of people who voted in favor of a constitution that promotes ethnic and sectarian divisions are unwittingly paving the way for a civil war that will cost hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives. Nothing is worth that. Without the return of real power to the center, the ascent of sectarian and ethnic politics in Iraq to the point of complete societal breakdown cannot be checked. We cannot fight the insurgency, rebuild Iraq and live in any meaningful sense as part of the modern world without a state. There are no human rights, no law, and no democracy without the state; there is only anarchy and a state of insecurity potentially much worse than what Iraqis are experiencing today. For democracy to emerge out of the current chaos in Iraq, the state must be saved from the irresponsibility of the Iraqi parties and voting blocs that are today killing it.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, as we spend our time here talking about Christmas and the war on Christmas, I think we have missed the whole point. At least the Republicans have. My passion since I arrived in Congress has been that every American should have access to affordable health care coverage. It should be a right, not a privilege as it is today. Over 45 million Americans have no coverage at all, and millions more cannot afford to get sick because of inadequate or expensive coverage. Democrats have made health care a top priority, but the Republicans have not. Christmas trees seem to be more in their order. I have repeatedly introduced H.R. 1200, universal health care legislation. My friend and colleague John Dingell has done the same. My colleague John Conyers has done the same. We have many proposals all approaching a universal solution to a problem for this country. Dozens of Democrats have been willing to sign on to this bill. But the majority, the Republicans, have talked but done absolutely nothing. Instead, they have used every opportunity to disparage government and claim that solutions to everything always end in the words ``incorporated,'' ``privatized.'' Whether it is Social Security or Medicare or drugs or whatever, it always has got to be private. Republicans claim government, the one they control, is incapable of addressing America's needs. They proved it down in Louisiana. They proved it themselves. Their tortured logic says that we can wage war, but we cannot solve the health care crisis. Pick up the newspaper, and the conclusion is inescapable. There are no more tomorrows. The health care crisis is real and a present danger to the American people and the U.S. economy, much more than this war on terror. Especially hard hit is the manufacturing sector. Employees throughout the country are bracing for plant closings or wage and benefit cuts. We came out here and did pensions again today. We continue to do it to the workers. Companies like General Motors and Ford cite the cost of providing health care coverage as a major factor in their current financial crises. So quietly behind the scenes here on Capitol Hill, the domestic auto industry has been talking to lawmakers about a bailout. They are looking for tens of billions of dollars next year and say it is required to save the auto industry and thousands of family wage jobs. I am a strong supporter of America's labor movement and a strong supporter of family wage jobs. And if a company treats its employees right, I strongly support them as well. That might make me a candidate for supporting an auto bailout. But it really makes me wonder why Republicans will not join Democrats and fight for its family from within, a health care system that is destroying people, business, and our way of life. Republicans say, let the market fix it. Well, we have done that. And the special interests have said stay out of it because people like me want this Nation to guarantee health coverage for everybody. Lobbyists make a living in this town out of spinning the tale of us against them and how we have to do it individually, and we cannot do it as a country. Well, I will enter into the Record a letter that sets the record straight and give us a chance to finally confront America's health care crisis. This letter was sent separately to the Canadian government by the Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Daimler Chrysler and the union representing auto workers in late 2002. The so-called big three U.S. car companies put their full support behind publicly, publicly, funded health care in Canada. Let me read some excerpts. ``Canada's publicly funded health care system provides essential and affordable health care services for all Canadians, regardless of their income. For both employers and workers in the auto industry, it is vitally important that the publicly funded health care system be preserved and renewed.'' The letter sent by GM, Ford, and Daimler Chrysler, concludes: ``In addition to reinforcing the quality and accessibility of health care for all Canadians, these measures would also help to ensure the long- run success of the Canadian auto industry.'' There is a business reason to do it. That is the U.S. auto industry acting outside the United States. It is time for them to act inside the United States and for us to act. H.R. 1200 provides universal health care with guidelines for Federal Government decisions by local government and health care by the private sector. My Democratic friends have other ideas. There is more than one idea how to do this. We ought to get them on the table. It is time for the Republican majority to make health care a priority. It is time for the auto industry to support a solution that is morally responsible and economically urgent: health care. Every American has a right. Madam Speaker, we have been talking about it, and we have not done anything. It is it time to stop talking about Christmas trees and start talking about health care for all Americans. September 10, 2002. Canada's publicly funded health care system provides essential and affordable health care services for all Canadians, regardless of their income. Publicly funded health care also enhances Canada's economic performance in several important ways. The auto industry is Canada's most important export industry; it directly employs over 150,000 Canadians in high- wage jobs, supports hundreds of thousands of other spin-off jobs, produces $90 billion worth of shipments per year, and generates billions of dollars in tax revenues for all levels of government in Canada. The success of this industry has been crucial to Canada's economic progress over the past decade. Canada's health care system has been an important ingredient in the auto industry's performance. Workers in the auto industry, and in the many manufacturing and service industries which supply automakers, benefit directly from access to public health care services. Thanks to this system, they are healthier and more productive. Employers in the auto industry, meanwhile, enjoy significant total labour cost savings because most health care services are supplied through public programs (rather than through private insurance plans). The public health care system significantly reduces total labour costs for automobile manufacturing firms, compared to the cost of equivalent private insurance services purchased by U.S.-based automakers; these health insurance savings can amount to several dollars per hour of labour worked. Publicly funded health care thus accounts for a significant portion of Canada's overall labour cost advantage in auto assembly, versus the U.S., which in turn has been a significant factor in maintaining and attracting new auto investment to Canada. Canada's publicly funded health care system is now facing demographic, technological, and fiscal pressures. The erosion of publicly funded health care through measures such as the delisting of currently-covered services, the imposition of user fees, the failure of the public system to keep up with the changing nature of health care, and new costs such as prescription drugs and home-care, will impose significant costs on automotive employers and undermine the attractiveness of Canada as a site for new automotive investment. For both employers and workers in the auto industry, it is vitally important that the publicly funded health care system be preserved and renewed, on the existing principles of universality, accessibility, portability, comprehensiveness, and public administration. The system needs a secure multi- year funding base from government, and must be expanded to cover an updated range of services (including prescription drugs and home care services) that reflects both the evolving nature of medical science and the emerging needs of our population. To this end, Ford Motor Company and CAW-Canada jointly urge the federal and provincial governments to take appropriate actions to preserve the public health care system, secure its funding base, and modernize the range of services which it covers. In addition to reinforcing the quality and accessibility of health care for Canadians, these measures would also help to ensure the long-run success of Canada's auto industry. Alain Batty, President and Chief Executive Officer, Ford Motor Company of Canada, Limited. Basil ``Buzz'' Hargrove, National President, CAW-Canada.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take my Special Order at this time.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. No, I am not going to yield. You don't know how to play the game. You have got to learn the rules. When you let the Attorney General of the United States say that torture in certain circumstances is probably all right, man, you have opened the door to disrepute. Parliamentary Inquiry

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, this Congress ought to support Mr. Skeleton's motion because the reason we are here is that the United States Congress has refused to use its power of oversight to look at what we have been doing overseas. Have we had hearings about Abu Ghraib? Have we had hearings about secret prisons in Romania, in Poland, or wherever? The Republican leadership of the House says we are not going to look. We simply will hold our hands over our eyes and we will not look out there to see what is going on. Unfortunately, there is the rest of the world. There is the Guardian newspaper, there are newspapers in France and Germany and all over the place looking at this information, and it is now worldwide known what we are doing. Yet the Congress walks around here, see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. This Congress has abrogated, you have given up your responsibility of oversight. Mr. Skelton brings out a simple amendment that says, let's follow the Senate, which has gotten up on their hind legs and said, let's have some oversight in what we're doing, and suddenly you guys object. It is clear what you don't want people to know. You don't want the people to know what went on in the Vice President's office or in the White House or what was going on when the Attorney General----

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, this bill proves that the Republicans are not just after poor people. This pension bill boils down to one fundamental principle: The Republicans want all Americans, including flight attendants and everybody else out there on a pension, to be entirely alone, isolated from the strength and compassion of American values. I am here to say that this pension bill that forces elderly Americans into solitary confinement is abusive, irresponsible and morally bankrupt. This whole year has been about doing it to people. Get rid of Social Security, privatize it, put them on their own. Medicare: Privatize it, put them on their own. Now we have the pension bill: Privatize it, put them on their own. Take away the union benefit, how will they do it? They are going to Boeing. They squeeze Boeing tight, and Boeing flips into 401(k), and there goes the pension down the drain. Now this raises the question, what is wrong with you people? We decided a long time ago in this country that there was strength in numbers. We had to do things together. That is why Social Security was developed. That is why Medicare was developed. The Republican vision articulated in this bill is that America is a sinking ship, and the shout is for every man and woman, you are on your own. They call it an ownership society. You will still have a pension; it will be a 401(k). But it really is, you are on your own. If you can figure out the market, good luck, baby. There are not enough lifeboats in the water, and we know that, and everybody is jumping off the ship. In 1980, 40 percent of employers provided a pension. Today, only 20 percent do. Now, that is a 50 percent reduction in 20 years, and the pensions that are provided, fewer provide a guaranteed benefit than they used to get. So what do we have left? The stark fact is that half of America's retirees have less than $15,000 income. Imagine living in the United States on $15,000 after working for 45 years. Only 50 percent of American households have retirement savings at all, but if they do not have a benefit from the pension and their Social Security, which has not been ripped away from them, they got nothing. Now, half of the households who have savings have an average $385 a month. So they get their Social Security, $1,800 a month at the maximum, and $385, oh, they are living fat on $2,000 a month. The people without any savings are disproportionately poor, have nothing except Social Security, and the Republicans, as I say, tried to take that away earlier in the year. We beat them on that, and we should beat them on this. This is the definition of financial freedom that Republicans want for Americans: They want riskier pensions and no way for anybody to be sure of anything. I urge my colleagues to vote no on this.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I was unable to be in Washington, DC, yesterday, and part of today. As a result I missed several votes. Had I been able to vote I would have voted in support of H. Res. 487, S. 1047, H. Res. 594, for the motion to recommit H.R. 3199, and against final passage of H.R. 3199. I would have voted against H.R. 3010.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I got up this morning and here is the Washington Post's eminent columnist, David Broder. He begins his story: ``If the House of Representatives were a person, it would be blushing these days. Unfortunately, the House is beyond embarrassment.'' Now, I used this before, but I wanted to bring it out here again because I think we need to demonstrate to people what is going on. We have Christmastime, and we have socks. We have poor people's socks and rich people's socks. And the rich people need $100 billion in tax cuts. The Republicans, for whatever reason, have decided that it is $100 billion yesterday and today, $100 billion. Now where do you get the money for that? Well you have to cut somebody to get it. You have got to cut something, or else you are going to drive up the deficit. So the first thing you do is take child care away from 300,000 children. And you put that in the sock, the stocking of the rich. And then you have Social Security, SSI benefits for the disabled and the elderly. And you take $700 million away from them and put it into the rich folks' stocking. And then you come to child support enforcement. We do not want children who are in divorced families to get money from those deadbeat dads. That is not what the Republicans say. They say, let us save $21 billion. We will take it away from the children in divorces and put it in the rich people's stocking. And Medicaid. Oh, well, they do not need health care. Why, there is $10 billion we can take away from poor people's health care and put it in the rich people's stocking. And then there is student loans, $14 billion from college students. We are going to load it on them. That is the middle class. That is the lower-class people who are trying to get through on loans. We take their loans and we say, no, no, no, no, the rich people need it. And then we have one of the best ones of all: food stamps. Let us take food stamps away from 300,000 people; 300,000 people getting food stamps. Oh, these are the rich. Oh, but we have to cut them. We have to take this away from them. You cannot have food stamps, poor people or ordinary people; we got to give a tax break to the rich people. And then finally we have foster children. Way down here in the bottom of the sock. We have $600 million taken away from the program that we took those children out of another family and took responsibility for. We have taken these children away from a family we have accepted responsibility for in this foster care payment, and we cut it and we give it to the rich folks. Now, you kind of wonder what might be left down here for the poor people. Well, look at that. A lump of coal. The poor people better save that lump of coal, because there is nothing in here for their heating bills, the LIHEAP program has not been expanded, and all they are going to have to heat their house is the lump of coal that the Republicans put in the poor people's sock. Merry Christmas. I certainly hope you enjoy all the festivities. This is a bad bill. Vote ``no.''

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, you say one thing for political cover, and then you do another thing for your friends. That is what we are doing here today. Just last month the Speaker said, ``I will tell you that the most mean-spirited thing we can do is leave our children with a debt they cannot pay.'' That came from the Speaker. That did not come from our side. That is the authority of the majority in this House. Well, the words were right. But, you know, the Speaker knows, and I know him well, he went to a college where you know about the Bible. And there is a Bible verse that says, by their deeds ye shall know them. And it is the deeds out here that really make the difference. Now, the difference between what happened yesterday and what is happening in the gentleman from New York's bill is very simply this. Yesterday you sent a signal. You sent a press release. You sent a message out up into the ether knowing, absolutely knowing, it would not pass, because it is not protected in the Senate. You know that. You know how to run this place. You can confuse the people, but you cannot confuse anybody who knows what is going on in here. The fact is that the gentleman from New York's proposal is one that puts it in law and protects it so that we can do something about the AMT. Let me say something about the AMT. I bet you most people listening to this do not know what AMT stands for. It stands for alternative minimum tax. It was put in in 1986 because there were people at the top of the scale who were not paying one single penny of tax. So it was decided in this body that everybody who benefits from the United States of America should pay some taxes for a civil society. The failure to index that tax has allowed it to creep down to people making $75,000 or $100,000; and suddenly, instead of being a few people at the top, it is now 14 or 20 million, depending on how you want to figure. That was never the intent. From 1994 to the present, you have allowed it to go from covering 200,000 people to 14-plus million people. You want to use that as an excuse for trying to get rid of the tax structure. And we know that it was intended and you know it was intended to tax everybody in this country. The repeal that you tried to put through here under Clinton was an attempt to let the top off taxes at all. You simply wanted to give them an internal tax holiday if they could figure out how to manipulate the tax structure. The average janitor does not have a way to manipulate the system. And that is why the gentleman from New York's (Mr. Rangel) is the only honest way if you want to protect the middle class. I urge your vote for the alternative minimum tax proposal.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, the Bush administration is scaling new heights in political cronyism. Not long ago, America cringed watching on TV as a presidential buddy could only manage to create a disaster, not respond to one in the Gulf Coast. But now we are finding out that political cronies ignored the voting rights of African Americans and Hispanic Americans in Texas. The Washington Post uncovered a 73-page report that says that the Texas redistricting plan illegally diluted black and Hispanic voting in two of the State's congressional districts. The report received the unanimous support of eight Justice Department career employees, but the Republican political cronies ignored it. One Justice Department attorney told the Post it was ``highly unusual'' for political appointees to overrule the unanimous findings such as this. But this is business as usual for the President's political appointees. Just ask the people of Louisiana, Mississippi, and now Texas. It is time for the Republican cronies to go and let the people's votes count.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, at the complicated intersection of housing, poverty and community development issues, one man has shined as a guiding light. Mr. Jim Dion, assistant executive director for Housing Operations at the King County Housing Authority, has devoted his life to ensuring that our low-income neighbors--be they families, victims of domestic violence, seniors or people with disabilities--live in high quality affordable housing. After three decades of distinguished public service in King County, WA, Mr. Dion is about to retire. He is a living testament to the power that a single individual possesses to help provide quality affordable housing opportunities, build communities, encourage self-sufficiency and protect the dignity of people with limited resources, while safeguarding the public trust. The child of a minister father and a social worker mother, Mr. Dion undoubtedly acquired a keen sense of public service from an early age. Perhaps that explains his rise through. the ranks from a property manager overseeing 700 units of family and elderly public housing in 1974 to a senior executive currently administering more than 4,300 units of housing as well as rental subsidies for 8,200 additional households. During his career, Mr. Dion expanded the housing safety net in King County through a number of additional Federal and local programs and by partnering with nonprofit organizations to provide on-site services to residents. Mr. Dion also worked diligently to promote acceptance of low-income housing in several high-cost suburban cities such as Bellevue, Redmond, and Kirkland, areas of the county with excellent job bases. Mr. Dion's involvement in this initiative, along with the well-managed, well- maintained housing he oversaw, paved the way for favorable community response to low-income housing in affluent areas and continues to ensure that living in these cities is a viable option for struggling families. While administering housing for more than 12,500 households is a staggering enough accomplishment in itself, Mr. Dion did so as a model of efficiency and effectiveness. Since HUD has had an evaluation process in effect, Mr. Dion led his staff to achieve HUD's highest ratings for both KCHA's section 8 and public housing programs, reflecting his hard work and his commitment to the families and individuals he served. Awards from industry housing organizations for KCHA programs and properties under Mr. Dion's jurisdiction have been practically commonplace. Mr. Dion also tackled issues beyond the scope of ``bricks and sticks.'' With his strong belief in the ability of people to overcome difficult circumstances with appropriate support, Mr. Dion is credited for laying the foundation of what is now the Resident Services Department at the housing authority. Mr. Dion's commitment to public service did not stop with King County. For most of his 30-year career, he has also been an active member of the National Association of Housing & Redevelopment Officials, serving on its Housing Committee and its Board of Governors at the national level, as well as in various positions of leadership at the regional and chapter levels. His unparalleled grasp of the regulatory process made him a truly respected voice on Capitol Hill. Home is where we raise our children. Home is where we hope to age in the company of our friends and family. Home is where vulnerable individuals and families can maintain their dignity and gain a foothold in self-sufficiency. Through Mr. Dion's thoughtful, compassionate leadership, thousands of people have improved the quality of their lives because they had a good, safe home. As the sun sets on his career, it is only fitting that we acknowledge the 30 extraordinary years of Mr. Dion's dedicated public service. My sincere congratulations to Mr. Dion, whose calm, reasoned approach to ensuring quality housing and services for our most vulnerable residents has forever instilled in his colleagues at the King County Housing Authority and in Washington's congressional delegation the importance of providing the best possible support to families and individuals in need. He leaves a legacy of hard work, compassion and high standards that serves as an example to us all.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I come to the well tonight after a long day of debate on whether or not we should redeploy our troops from Iraq. A careful reading of the gentleman from Pennsylvania's resolution, had we debated it, would have pointed out that the fourth point that he raised was that we have to diplomatically pursue security and stability in Iraq. It is that issue I want to talk about because the question is always raised, If we leave, will it not get worse? Will it not just explode into civil war? We have already got that. And the question must be answered as we talk about deployment from out of the country. At the same time, we have to decide to call on the Arab League or the Egyptians, to call together all the members of the community of Iraq: the Sunnis, the Shiias, the Kurds, the Turkomens, the Assyrians. All of them need to come together in a conference to resolve this. We have the idea that we can go with a Western idea of a constitution and that because it works here, we can just insert it into an Arab culture that has never worked under those circumstances. What we need to do is recognize how Arabs have resolved problems for hundreds, thousands of years, if you will. It is called reaching an atwa. If two villages, and this story was told to me by an iman, a high ranking Iraqi, he said many years ago two villages had a brother and sister and they married across these two towns. One went to one village, the other went to the other village. In one village the wife was fertile and quickly had three children. In the other, the wife was barren and had no children. The village made fun of her. They ridiculed her. They said she was a terrible woman, and the social pressure was so great that she killed herself by throwing herself into the village well. Now under Arabic custom, that village that lost this woman has a right to go and extract blood within 24 hours. As those two villages came together for this bloodletting that was going to happen, they called and got them all to sit down and they decided how they were going to resolve this situation. The decision was made that the village that had had the young woman die in it would give $20,000 to the other village and that there would be no contact between those villages for 20 years. They reached an atwa, A-T-W-A. What that is in the Arabic culture is an arrangement, not a peace treaty. In the West we think of peace treaties where I agree with you and you agree with me, and we sign a bunch of pieces of paper. In the Arab culture where there is honor, people say I will stay here for 20 years and you will stay there. The gentleman who told me the story said I was there 20 years later when the money was brought back from the first village back to its original place. He said within 2 years, there were marriages between the young people from the two villages. Even though they were 6 kilometers apart, for 20 years there had been no contact. Now, Arabs have been resolving these kinds of things for thousands of years in the desert. There is a way for the Sunnis and the Shiias and the Kurds and the Turkomens to come together, but it cannot be driven by the United States. We cannot say you come over here and come to this conference that we are going to have in some hotel somewhere. It has to be called by the Arab League. This same thing could have prevented the gulf war back in 1991. When Saddam Hussein went into Kuwait, the Arab League said before the Americans attack, let us settle this among the Arab community. This is a fight among us. Saddam Hussein thought he had fought in Iran because he was defending Kuwait and the Saudis, and he thought that they owed him something. He said give me some money, and they said no. And so he said all right, then I am going to move in and take Kuwait. It could have been resolved if we had the patience to let this happen and the mentality in the White House that can allow Iraq to develop its own peaceful society. We have removed Saddam Hussein. We are all glad, but we now must let the Arabs resolve the situation in a way that makes sense to them.