Jerrold Nadler

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I do thank the gentlewoman for yielding. I want to thank her for her leadership on this issue. I am pleased that we will soon be introducing legislation together to provide long-term health care to all the first responders, residents, area workers and students who have become sick as a result of the collapse of the World Trade Center. Our legislation will build on the efforts of the Centers of Excellence of New York City and will extend to people who came from all over the country to aid in the massive rescue and recovery effort after 9/11. When the World Trade Center collapsed on that sunny morning 6 years ago, a plume of poisonous dust blanketed lower Manhattan, and not just Lower Manhattan, but parts of Brooklyn and possibly Jersey City, too. The cloud was a toxic mixture of lead, dioxin, asbestos, mercury, benzene, PCBs and other hazardous contaminants that swirled around the site where the World Trade Center once stood. The cloud blanketed the area as rescue and recovery workers worked around the clock. Many did so without adequate or without any protective gear. Thousands of first responders inhaled this poisonous dust before it settled onto and into countless homes, shops and office buildings in the area. For the past 6 years, we have demanded that the EPA fulfill its legal mandate to protect the public health by telling the truth about post-9/ 11 air quality and by implementing a scientifically sound testing and cleanup program to address indoor contamination. They have absolutely failed on both fronts. While America watched these brave men and women working fearlessly at the World Trade Center site, their government failed them and continues to fail them. As the Nation and the world united in solidarity, our government, this administration, put politics over science and safety. Federal law mandates that when there is a terrorist attack in which toxins are released into the air, both the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration have specific responsibilities. EPA is charged with the cleanup and is the lead agency to deal with the pollution. The American public deserves to know why and how that did not happen. We are getting some answers though, painstakingly. As Chair of the Subcommittee on Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, I chaired a hearing in June on the failures of the Federal Government in responding to the environmental crisis that resulted from the World Trade Center attacks. Senator Clinton held a companion hearing in the Senate. At the hearing we heard for the first time from Christine Todd Whitman, the former administrator of the EPA, who said her agency did nothing wrong, that they were honest with the public and that they listened to their scientists. But we know that EPA lied and to this day continues lying. We know that early tests revealed high levels of asbestos and other toxins and that EPA in statements vetted through the White House misled the public with their assurances that the air was safe to breathe. Independent scientists who testified in the hearing said that no amount of asbestos should be considered safe and that everyone knew that those buildings contained asbestos, hundreds of thousands of pounds of it before the buildings collapsed and released it into the air. Indeed, there is no doubt that thousands of people are sick as a result of the contamination at the World Trade Center. Thousands of people are sick who would not be sick today if they had not been lied to by their own government and worked without protection on the pile for 13 and 14 and 15 weeks. A study by Mount Sinai Hospital found that 70 percent of the more than 9,000 first responders who were studied suffered health problems related to their work at Ground Zero. These health problems include things like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, interstitial lung diseases and reactive airway disease. A recent New York Times article highlighted the clear link between the World Trade Center dust and life-threatening diseases. The article cited the report from doctors from the Fire Department of New York and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, which again confirms what we have known for years, that we are facing a major health crisis as a result of September 11. These studies do not even address the students at Stuyvesant High School and the Borough of Manhattan Community Colleges, schools that sat near piles of debris from the Towers, the nearby residents' apartments still contain poisonous dust or the thousands of people that work in offices that were never properly cleaned. These factors combined present an unprecedented challenge to public health not just to New York City but across the country. In the days and weeks after 9/11, workers and volunteers came from across the country to help. The great citizens of this country came together, but the Federal Government has failed in its obligations. To this day there has been no comprehensive testing and cleanup of the affected areas, and to this day, there is no adequate provision for long-term monitoring of health care of the people who suffered in the aftermath of the World Trade Center disaster. Now we are making, finally, small strides in providing health care to those who became ill. The emergency supplemental appropriations bill passed earlier this year because of the efforts of Mrs. Maloney and myself and other members of the New York delegation included $50 million for 9/11 health needs. The 2008 House Labor-HHS appropriations bill includes $50 million for the World Trade Center monitoring and treatment program. I was also extremely pleased to learn from Senator Clinton that the Senate appropriations subcommittee has included $55 million in their version of the labor appropriations bill. The Senate version of the bill includes funding for residents, offices of commercial workers, volunteers and students. I hope the House will follow suit in making Federal funding available for residents too. But much more remains to be done. The estimates of the costs are not $50 million a year but starting at $198 million and expanding to $400 million a year as more people become sick in the next few years. And we need to develop a comprehensive approach to 9/11 health that includes residents, nonfirst responder workers and school children. We need to secure funding that is not subject to the yearly appropriations battle. We must commit ourselves to act and to help all of those who are still waiting. That is why we are going to introduce the bill that Mrs. Maloney referred to a few minutes ago to provide a long-term comprehensive funding source, a bill that I hope this House will consider. But in addition, there's a second cover-up. I have always said there are two cover-ups conducted here. One about the health care disaster that followed 9/11; that cover-up has unraveled. In the last year with the revelations of the Mount Sinai study, the New York Daily News reports and other reports that have come out, now everybody recognizes that first responders and residents are suffering, thousands and thousands of them, because of the air pollution after 9/11, because of the government lying to them and saying that the air was safe to breathe and therefore they didn't use respiratory equipment or they were there in the first place when they shouldn't have been, not the first responders, but residents who could have gone elsewhere. But that was one cover-up that has now unraveled, and we have been talking about what to do about it and how to provide long-term medical monitoring and long-term care for it, and that is the legislation we are talking about. But there was and is a second cover-up, and that cover-up is the fact that the indoor spaces that were polluted were never properly cleaned up. A GAO report, which Senator Clinton and Mrs. Maloney and I unveiled yesterday, pointed out that the EPA to this day cannot guarantee that any single building, except for its own building which it cleaned up properly at 290 Broadway, other than that, they cannot guarantee that any single building in Lower Manhattan is clean today and does not contain toxins that are slowly poisoning people on and on. The EPA never properly cleaned up, nor did the City of New York, indoor spaces. Nature cleans up the outdoor spaces. The rain washes the stuff away. The wind blows the toxins away. Nothing cleans up indoor spaces. The EPA Inspector General reported in 2003, it is 4 years ago already, that the so-called cleanup the EPA conducted in 2002 was a phony, that it didn't clean up anything adequately. And they said that what had to be done, the EPA Inspector General, was that the EPA should inspect several hundred indoor spaces, apartments, residences in concentric circles going out from the World Trade Center to find out where the contamination is, maybe 3 blocks in one direction, maybe 3 miles in another. And wherever they found the contamination, they had to go in and clean up every single building in those areas. That may cost money, but until that happens, the babies crawling on the rug 10 years from now or today will be poisoned. The people living in those apartments, working in those spaces, will be poisoned, and we will reap the bitter harvest 10 and 15 and 20 years from now with thousands of unnecessary and preventable cases of mesothelioma and lung cancer and asbestosis. Mr. Speaker, it is our job to do two things. If we are going to be true to what we have said to the heroes and about the heroes of 9/11, we must do two things. We must provide legislation and funding for long-term monitoring and health care such as that that Mrs. Maloney and I and others have been talking about in the legislation that we are introducing. We must also prevail upon the administration, by legislation if necessary, to do the proper indoor testing the way the EPA Inspector General said, and then to do proper cleanup. Not a cleanup that the EPA's own scientific advisory panel says is a joke and a fraud, not the cleanup that the EPA's Inspector General says is a joke and a fraud, a proper cleanup that does the entire building, that looks at all pollutants, not just asbestos, that is not limited geographically to below Canal Street, but wherever the contamination went as scientifically determined. These are what we must do. If we do these things, we are true to the survivors and the heroes, and we will learn so that, God forbid, when there is another disaster, natural or manmade, we will do it properly and we will not have thousands of people with preventable illnesses and shortened lives as a result of our malfeasance or carelessness. So I thank Mrs. Maloney for arranging this special order. I thank her for her leadership and in bringing to all our attention the struggle and the continuing health problems caused by 9/11 and in helping to craft legislation to deal with it.

Mr. NADLER. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. I must say that I am from the Upper West Side, not the Lower East Side, although my district does cover part of the Lower East Side, and that is certainly no insult.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. I am withdrawing them.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Ms. Zoe Lofgren).

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, in the interest of our getting home at some reasonable hour, I will be happy to withdraw the truthful and accurate statements I made a moment ago.

Mr. NADLER. Accurate statement I made a moment ago.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this dangerous and ill-considered legislation. Once again, this House is being stampeded by fear-mongering and deception into signing away our rights. If you trust this President and if you trust this dishonest Attorney General to exercise unfettered power to spy on Americans without any court supervision, then you should support this bill. If you still believe in the America our Founders, the Framers and every succeeding generation has fought and died for, then you must oppose this legislation. This bill is not what the Director of National Intelligence told us he needed. That was embodied in the bill that we considered last night and that we should be considering tonight, the House bill. We were told that we needed to fix the foreign-to-foreign intelligence. That bill fixed it. We were told we had to compel electronics companies to do what the government needs to do on properly authorized surveillance. That bill did it. The Director of National Intelligence told us we had to deal with all foreign intelligence, we had to deal with recurring communications into the United States from foreign targets. That bill did it. That bill dealt with everything we were told was necessary for national security. This bill is what Karl Rove and his political operatives in the White House decided they need to win elections. That is not national security, that is political warfare. I do not believe we will soon be able to undo this damage. Rights given away are not easily regained. This bill is not needed to protect America from terrorists. * * * We should stand up for America. We should stand up for our freedoms. We should stand up for our security. We should reject this bill so we can go and do the right thing and pass the bill that we had on the floor last night that did everything necessary for our national security. It gave us all the right to do the wiretapping and the surveillance we need. We should all be willing to stay here as long as it takes. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''

Mr. NADLER. I withdraw them without any reservations; but I retain my opinion.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, we were told by the administration, by the Director of National Intelligence, a couple of weeks ago that they needed two things: They needed to clarify that we didn't need a court order for a foreign-to-foreign communications. This bill does it. They needed an assurance that telecommunications companies would be compelled to assist in gathering of national security information under this bill. This bill contains it. Yesterday, we were told they needed three more things: They needed that we should deal with not just relating to terrorism but to matters relating to our foreign intelligence. It's in this bill. We were told we should eliminate the requirement that the FISA Court adjudicate our recurring communications to the U.S. from foreign targets would be handled. It's in this bill. We were told that we should allow for foreign targets to be added to the basket warrant after the warrant was approved. It's in this bill. The DNI, Admiral McConnell, said that this bill would significantly enhance America's security until he spoke to the White House, and now he changes politically, and he says we need more. This is the bill that gives them everything they said they needed. It's the bill we should pass to protect our civil liberties, and we should go no further.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. I just want to say that I associate myself with the sentiments expressed by Mr. Weiner and Mr. Crowley. The Asian Longhorned Beetle is a serious problem, and we have to devote as much resources as possible to deal with it. I hope the committee will take that into consideration.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I was asking for unanimous consent so the gentlewoman would have 1 additional minute, which I would hope she would yield to Mr. Crowley, Mr. Weiner, Mr. Fossella and myself.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the time of the gentlewoman be extended by 1 minute.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, this bill would restore to employment discrimination victims the realistic chance at justice that the Supreme Court recently took away from them. What is important to understand about the Court's decision is that everyone agreed that Lilly Ledbetter was the victim of intentional discrimination for 19 years. The Court said something truly astonishing, that the only discriminatory act was the initial decision to pay Lilly Ledbetter less than her male coworkers. Once the employer had successfully concealed that fact from her for 180 days, she was out of luck and Goodyear could openly go on paying her less just because she was a woman forever. The initial decision to discriminate was illegal, but the continuing decision to continue paying her less was perfectly okay. This upset 40 years of settled law, 40 years in which the companies of this country went under the rule that this bill would restore. The Court's decision is an open invitation to employers to violate the law with virtual impunity. Once again, Congress must correct the Supreme Court and instruct it that when we said discrimination in employment was illegal, we meant it, and we meant for the courts to enforce it. And anyone who says that discrimination in employment should be illegal but should not be enforceable if the employer can hide the discrimination for 6 months is really saying let the discrimination go on forever. Let the women and the racial minorities and other people who are discriminated against be discriminated against forever. Shame on the Supreme Court, and shame on those who would make employment discrimination victims helpless by opposing this bill. I urge adoption of this bill.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this conference report. The bill contains several critical homeland security improvements that have been mentioned before. I won't mention them because I want to concentrate on the 100 percent scanning that the gentleman from California opposed. I have pushed for the 100 percent scanning for almost 5 years. The language in this bill is modeled on the language that I introduced 2 years ago, along with Mr. Oberstar, in the SOS, Sail Only if Scanned Act, which was then supporter afterwards by Mr. Markey. As we just heard, the Republicans have opposed this. The Republican leadership opposed it, and last year, it failed on practically party- line vote. This year, it passed on a practically party-line vote, and I thank Mr. Thompson and I thank our leadership for making sure that this was included in the conference report. Twelve million containers a year come into our ports. Our risk-based inspection inspects 6 percent of them. That leaves 94 percent of the 12 million containers uninspected, any one of which could have a chemical or nuclear or radiological bomb inside it and we wouldn't know. We must inspect them, or electronically scan them to be precise, before they're put on a ship bound for the United States in the foreign port if we're going to be safe. We can do it. Yes, this wasn't included in the 9/11 Commission report. This bill improves upon the 9/11 Commission report, and I commend the Democratic leadership of this House and of the Senate for doing that. We are told it's impractical. It is not impractical. The technologies exist for doing it. There are three or four different technologies that exist for doing it. When we were told last year that the tamper-proof seals didn't exist, General Electric had a van across the street from the Rayburn House Office Building showing three different models of the tamper-proof seals that sold for $50, $100, and $150 at the same time. This is eminently doable and it must be done. A few years ago, I debated Mr. Rogers who said we will inspect the high-risk containers. I said, wonderful, they'll put the bomb in the low-risk container. The fact is there is no such thing as the low-risk container. The most reliable shipper with the best record, all it takes is one driver on his way from the factory to the port to have lunch and someone replaces a television set with a nuclear bomb or vice versa in the container. This is a great step forward. It will greatly enhance the safety of this country. I urge that we adopt this, and I thank the leadership of this House for their steadfastness in supporting this very essential measure.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Yes. Upon reflection upon the rules, the gentleman is quite correct in his reading of the rules, and I cannot object to his objection. I do express the hope that in the report that the underlying bill demands that they will include the information requested by this amendment.

Mr. NADLER. I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. NADLER. I yield to the gentleman from West Virginia.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I entirely agree with the gentleman from New York. I entirely agree with the purpose of this amendment. The problem I have with this amendment is that, as I understand it, it says no funds may be spent to enforce a court decision. If that is what this amendment says, and I just heard it briefly, then it is the wrong way to do it. We have to put in a bill. I am sure the Judiciary Committee will entertain, I assume would entertain it quickly, to clarify the law and say that that is not what the law is, and that what the gentleman seeks to do we ought to do legislatively. But the idea of saying we will not permit funds to be used to carry out an order of a court destroys, undermines, and subverts the rule of law in this country. We cannot subvert the rule of law in this country by denying funds to carry out an order of the court. If we don't agree with the order of the court, and I agree, I certainly don't agree with the order of the court in this case, it is terrible, we ought to change the law. That is why we have a Congress. That is our job. Let's change the law. If the court interprets the law wrongly, as it has, in my opinion, along with the gentleman, we ought to put in a bill, change the law and clarify it. I think that bill would sail through here pretty quickly in all likelihood. That is the way to do it. But to make an amendment to say no funds appropriated may be used to enforce the court order, what's next? A different court order that we dislike? That subverts the rule of law. It is the wrong way to go. Mr. Chairman, I hope this amendment is not agreed to.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. NADLER. Is your amendment limited to saying you can't use funds to enforce criminal penalties against what the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional, or does it have broader effect against other provisions of the McCain-Feingold bill?

Mr. NADLER. Would the gentleman yield for a question?

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I will be happy to work with the gentleman and anyone else who will try to effectuate this policy. I would hope that the gentleman and others and I can address the administration and urge them for the next few weeks that it may take for the Congress to act, for the administration to withhold action, that they should not engage in deportations. Now, I hope that comity with the administration would allow them to delay a little on enforcing. After all, the court didn't say, ``You must.'' The court didn't say, ``You must deport these people.'' It said, ``You may deport these people.'' It is up to the administration to determine that. So I would hope that the administration would delay for the few weeks it may take for Congress to show our will on this matter and that we don't agree with the court. But, again, I hope this amendment doesn't pass because it sets a terrible precedent. It may even be unconstitutional. I am not sure. But clearly we don't want to start passing bills that say you can't enforce a court order, because once you start down that road, where do you end? But I certainly do anticipate working to make sure that nobody is deported under this. I hope the administration will delay that, and we can move legislation quickly on that.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I commend the chairman of the committee for including in this act a provision that no funds shall be made available to authorize or issue a National Security Letter, NSL, in contravention of current law. That should go without saying, but as we have seen, apparently not with the current administration. My amendment asks for an accounting by the Department of Justice of the FBI's collection and use of information on U.S. persons who are not suspected of being terrorists or agents of a foreign power before we provide further funding for the issuance of more National Security Letters. This amendment prohibits funds from being used to issue a National Security Letter under the provisions amended by section 505 of the PATRIOT Act until the Department of Justice conducts a full review and delivers a report to Congress on the use of NSLs to collect information on U.S. persons who are not suspected of being agents of a foreign power, or terrorists, as that is defined in 50 U.S.C. 1801. The underlying bill asks for the FBI to conduct a report within 2 months on what has been done to implement the inspector general's recommendations with respect to NSLs. This would simply ask that that report be more specific and more inclusive and include the following information: How many National Security Letters have been issued; what standards are used to determine when to seek information on a person who is not suspected of being an agent of a foreign power; the current guidance as to what is ``relevant'' to an investigation when the targets are not suspected of being agents of a foreign power; how that information is stored; how the information is used; whether the information is used; whether that information is ever destroyed; whether that information has led to any substantial leads in terrorism cases; whether that information has ever been used in criminal cases; and whether that information has led to any adverse government action against people not suspected of being enemy agents, agents of a foreign power, or terrorists. Almost limitless sensitive private information from communication providers, financial institutions, and consumer credit agencies can now be collected secretly by simply issuing a National Security Letter on an FBI field director's simple assertion that the request is merely relevant to a national security investigation. These communications and records can be of people who are U.S. citizens who are not suspected of being agents of a foreign power or terrorists. These communications and records can be demanded without any court review or any court approval. Worse yet, the target of the NSL will never know that his communications and records were inspected by government agents because the company, the financial agent, the service provider, the bank is barred by law from telling him or anyone else of the demand. And as we know from the FBI inspector general's audit, this broad discretion has been abused by the FBI, whose agents may have violated either the law or internal rules more than 1,000 times while misusing the authority to issue National Security Letters. This recent IG report heightens the clear need for more adequate checks on the FBI's investigatory powers with respect to NSLs. The FBI has far-reaching compulsory powers to obtain documents in terrorism investigations without NSLs. In criminal investigations the FBI can obtain a search warrant if there is a judicial finding of probable cause or a grand jury subpoena issued under the supervision of a judge and a U.S. attorney. And in international terrorism cases, the FBI has sweeping authority to obtain records under section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, all this separate from NSLs. I intend to introduce this week, with Congressman Flake, the National Security Letters Reform Act of 2007 to address more fully the issues presented by section 505 of the National Security Letters. The bill would restore a pre-PATRIOT Act requirement that the FBI make a factual, individualized showing that the records sought pertain to a suspected terrorist or spy. It also gives the recipient of a National Security Letter an opportunity to obtain legal counsel. It thus preserves the constitutional right to their day in court. Already courts have found part of the NSL authority to be too broad and unconstitutional. The provisions that state that NSL recipients are forbidden from disclosing the demand to the targeted individual and are forbidden even from consulting with an attorney have already been struck down. Another court found the NSL authority to be unconstitutional on its face because it violates the fourth amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. The National Security Letters Reform Act of 2007 would allow the FBI to continue issuing National Security Letters by correcting the constitutional deficiencies in the law. This bill would enable the FBI to obtain documents that it legitimately needs, while protecting the privacy of law-abiding American citizens. I ask that my colleagues vote for this amendment so that we can protect the privacy of U.S. persons who are not terrorists or agents of terrorists before we provide funding for those broad and sweeping powers provided under the PATRIOT Act. I urge my colleagues to vote for this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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