Jerrold Nadler

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this dangerous and unnecessary legislation. Dangerous because it threatens the fundamental rights all Americans hold dear, and unnecessary because the sponsors appear to believe that freedom is the enemy. The right to engage in surveillance of communications is not at issue today. What is at issue is the right to spy on Americans in the United States without a warrant from a court. Nowhere under current law is there any requirement that the government stop listening to terrorists until they get can a court order. Existing law gives the government 72 hours after it has begun surveillance to get a warrant from the secret FISA court. Our colleagues, the gentleman from California (Mr. Schiff) and the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake), have proposed to extend that time so the government has more time to make its case; and they have proposed to update the FISA law so as to make it unnecessary to get a warrant to tap a conversation between two persons outside the United States, even if the conversation is routed through the United States. That proposal solves all the legitimate concerns with FISA. It is so reasonable a proposal that this Republican rubber-stamp Congress refused to let us even get a vote on it. It is not surprising that the process of taking away liberty should trample on democracy as well. What the President wants, and the Republican Congress is prepared to give, is unrestrained authority to spy on anyone, without having to answer to anyone. Once again, the President wants to be above the law, and this House appears ready to oblige him. The power to use every tool we have to gain as much intelligence on the terrorists as we can is a vitally important power, and we support that power as long as it is constrained by law. It is also a dangerous and easily abused power. We have plenty of experience with the abuse of that power. Remember J. Edgar Hoover wiretapping Martin Luther King, for example. That is why we have a Constitution. That is why we have courts. That is why we have checks and balances. That is why we have legal controls on the executive branch, not to protect the bad guys but to protect the rest of us from abuses of power. Unchecked power, no matter what the purpose is dangerous. It is also unnecessary. History will judge this Congress harshly when this inevitably bad bill is approved. Do not be stampeded into signing away our freedom. Let us insist that this be done right, by rejecting this very wrong and dangerous bill and considering the very reasonable alternative given to us by the bipartisan gentlemen, Mr. Schiff and Mr. Flake.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to an extraordinary advocate and organizer, Michael McKee, who has worked tirelessly on behalf of New York City tenants for over three decades. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the reception honoring him, so I hope to honor him now. A veteran housing activist, Mr. McKee has made fighting on behalf of tenants his life's work. His combination of committed leadership and innovative organizing has grown the tenant movement into the important force it is today. Few activists have proven as forward-thinking and savvy as Mr. McKee. When the state legislature began phasing out rent control and rent stabilization in 1971, Michael joined with housing activists statewide to begin a lobbying campaign on anti-tenant legislators. The groups called not only for the restoration of rent laws that would protect tenants in New York City, but also for reforms that would benefit tenants in parts of the state without rent regulation. The tenant movement became firmly grounded in legislative action, and gave birth in 1974 to Tenants & Neighbors, an advocacy organization that has been at the forefront of tenants rights since its inception. Under the leadership of Mr. McKee, the leaders of Ten ants & Neighbors focused on the warranty of habitability law and the Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption. They urged passage of the Emergency Tenant Protection Act, which restored rent control and rent stabilization. Later, they led the fight to elect tenants to public housing boards outside of New York City, and helped pass the Disability Rent Increase Exception. Mr. McKee soon joined other advocates to create the People's Housing Network, a program to develop tenant leaders across the state. As a tenant organizer for the Metropolitan Council on Housing and the Brooklyn Tenants Union, Mr. McKee taught thousands of New Yorkers how to fight for their rights in a meaningful and lasting way. When Tenants & Neighbors began a major overhaul in 1994, membership increased 16- fold in response to Mr. McKee's direct mail and phonebanking programs. This new grassroots approach brought tenants together to pressure elected officials and create a fundraising base. Mr. McKee is now building on the voter education efforts of Tenants & Neighbors by pouring his energies into political organizing. All too often, tenants lose when their needs are weighed against the financial interests of landlords and property owners. Mr. McKee has successfully encouraged tenants to take an active part in the political process, and has helped to make tenants rights organizations a powerful force in pushing government officials to address tenant issues. Michael McKee has been not just a key strategist in many of the battles New York City tenants have faced over the past 30 years, but also a graceful public face. On behalf of tenants throughout the five boroughs, I commend his work on behalf of thousands of New Yorkers, and look forward to another 30 years of successful activism.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in reluctant opposition to H.R. 6143, the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Modernization Act of 2006. The Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act is the centerpiece of the federal government's response to the HIV and AIDS epidemic. H.R. 6143 woefully under-funds the HIV/AIDS resources the CARE Act provides; this bill is a deeply flawed shadow of what it could and should be. The Chairman has argued here today that the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic has shifted, and that the number of AIDS cases is on the wane. Therefore, he says, fewer resources are needed to fight the disease, and those funds can be spread around. I don't know where he gets his figures, Mr. Speaker. The Chairman is flatly wrong. The fact is that New York State has the most HIV cases and the most AIDS cases of any other state in the nation--almost 17 percent of HIV/ AIDS cases nationwide. More than half of people living with HIV in the United States reside in five states--New York, Florida, Texas, California, and New Jersey. The fact is that New York City has the oldest, largest, and most complex HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States. New York City accounts for one of every six reported AIDS cases in the United States, and each year reports more AIDS cases than Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, and Washington, D.C. combined. And the fact is that the number of people who so desperately need the services in this bill has been and continues growing. But the funding has not. The programs the CARE Act covers have been level funded for years, despite increases in healthcare costs and inflation. And this bill unfortunately continues that trend. Under the flawed funding formula in this bill, three of the highest prevalence states in the nation--New York, Florida, and New Jersey--will lose significant funding. The City of New York predicts a $17.8 million loss in the first year alone, and more losses in each of the remaining 4 years of the reauthorization; New York State anticipates a loss of $118 million over the life of this bill. This will be unspeakably detrimental to the state's ability to care for the HIV/AIDS population. The reductions in funding will require cost containment measures, including deep cuts in covered drugs and services. In the first year alone, this will translate to the elimination of nutritional, housing, mental health, and transportation services, as well as increased out-of-pocket costs for participants. This will also lead to a major reduction and/or removal of entire classes of drugs from the state's pharmaceutical formularies. We have a choice. We can go back to the table and negotiate a compromise. My friend from New Jersey, Representative Pallone, has introduced legislation (H.R. 6191) that would temporarily reauthorize the program for one year to allow Congress to continue working on a bill that would not unfairly reduce funds for any state. Additionally, H.R. 6191 would increase authorized appropriation levels for all titles of the CARE Act so we can get the services and treatment to people who need it while we craft a bill that works. This is the bill we should be voting on today. Mr. Speaker, my district has been on the frontline of the fight of this epidemic for over 20 years. I know a good approach when I see one, and the bill we are debating on the floor today isn't it. I urge a ``no'' vote on H.R. 6143.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, this is how a nation that has become fearful loses its moral compass, its identity, its values, and, ultimately, its freedom. It is ironic that the people who use the word freedom with reckless abandon, in everything from fries to a global vision, should come before the American people today advocating for the suspension of habeas corpus, secret Star Chamber tribunals, unlimited detention without review and, yes, torture. I know, we've been told it's not really torture, but I am sickened by the quibbling, legalistic hair splitting on something so basic to our nation's fundamental values. Have you forgotten? We are America. Let me say that again: we are the United States of America. We have stood as a beacon to the world. People have aspired to our way of life, our values, our example, our leadership. We are told that our enemies do not respect the rules of war or the rights of their captives, but do you really believe that ``somewhat better than al Qaeda'' is how we should measure our conduct? I don't. And now, with scant deliberation, in an election eve stampede, we are urged to throwaway our values, our honor, our constitution, and our standing in the world as if it were yesterday's newspaper. Yes, we must be vigilant to keep our nation safe, but we must not stand by while the honor and values of our nation are permanently stained by this detestable legislation. It is beneath us. It is not what we stand for. Benjamin Franklin once said ``they that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.'' He was right. Perhaps if this administration had the minimal competence necessary to make us safe, we might have a debate about the wisdom of Franklin's and the Founders' commitment to liberty. But this administration has demonstrated beyond any doubt that it is not our values that place us at risk, but its own incompetence, and the willingness of a rubber- stamp Republican Congress to follow the President over any cliff. What are we being asked to do here, and why are we being asked to rush to judgement? There are many infamies in this bill, as others have pointed out. I will concentrate on just one. This bill would allow the President, or any future President, to grab someone off a street comer in the United States, or anywhere else in the world, and hold them forever, without any court review, without having to charge them, without ever having to justify their imprisonment to anyone. This bill is flatly unconstitutional, for it repeals the Great Writ-- Habeas Corpus. Not a statutory writ, but the Constitutional Great Writ. Read the bill. I know we're not supposed to do that in the Republican Congress, but, just this once, for the sake of our nation, please read the bill. Turn to page 93. No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination. ``Awaiting such determination?'' That says it all. Nowhere in this new law is there any time limit for making this determination. In fact, it could be never. We are told that these procedures are only for those who the President has called ``the worst of the worst.'' How do we know they are the worst of the worst? Because the President says so, and the President, and federal bureaucrats, as we know, are never wrong. Some people held as ``unlawful enemy combatants'' may be put before a military tribunal, but they need not be. They can be held forever without any hearing. A person designated as an ``unlawful enemy combatant'' can challenge his detention only if he is brought before a military commission, or a Combat Status Review Tribunal, and only after the military commission and all the appellate procedures are finished. Then he can appeal to the D.C. Circuit, but only to review the legal procedures. The court can never look at the facts. That's on page 56. So, let's review: The government can snatch anyone who is not a U.S. citizen, anywhere in the world, including on the streets of this city, whether or not they are in a combat situation, whether or not they are actually doing anything, and detain them forever, out of reach of our constitution, our laws, and our courts. It also says that a court can never review the conditions of detention, which is an elegant way of saying no court can hear a claim that the detainee was tortured. Ever. Who is subject to these rules? Well the President wants you to think this is only about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Bad guy. Dangerous guy. Deserves to be locked up. We all agree on that one. But it could also mean a lawful permanent resident. Someone like my grandmother while she was waiting to become a loyal American citizen, which she did, and which is why I am fortunate enough to have been born in this great country. It would apply to the relatives of anyone in this room who is not a Native American. We rebelled against King George III for far lesser infringements of our liberties than this. This bill makes the President a dictator--for the power to order people jailed forever without being subject to any judicial review is the very definition of dictatorial power. The President wants to live in a law-free zone. He does not want to be bound by the law of war or by our treaty obligations. He does not want to be answer to our Constitution, to the Congress or to the Courts. If someone is in this country and he commits a crime, we have laws to stop him and lock him up. If those laws, including the Classified Information Procedures Act, don't work, we can improve them. That's how we put Zacarias Moussaoui in jail. Anyone remember the 11th hijacker? We caught him, tried him in a regular court, and now he's in jail. Perhaps if this administration hadn't been asleep at the switch, we might have caught him before September 11th, and saved our nation from that terrible crime. We could also hold people as prisoners of war if we catch them on the battlefield. That's worked pretty well in all our wars. We can set up new rules that actually sort out the bad guys from the people we just grabbed, or who were sold to us by a rival group, as happened in Afghanistan. We already know that some of the people in Guantanamo have been there for years for nothing. Some of them have been released and some of them are still there. How does that make us safer? And then there's torture. When is torture not torture? Apparently whenever the President and his team of legal scholars says it isn't. This bill would write that dangerous practice into law. It would also allow statements extracted under torture to be used as evidence. See page 17 of the bill. Is it really hard, as the President and some members of Congress say, to understand the difference between legal interrogation and illegal torture? The people who wrote the Army Field Manual, and the people who train our troops, have never thought so. It only became a question when this President decided he was above the law. Now the President wants to have us grant him immunity, in advance, for whatever he might have ordered. That's a neat trick, and it's in this bill. Mr. Speaker, rarely in the life of a nation is the question so stark. Are we going to rush this complete repudiation of all we stand for through the Congress to give the Republicans an election issue? I hope we are not as cynical as some here seem to think we are. There is nothing we are doing today that we can't do properly with some care and deliberation. There is no danger that someone is going to be released from custody. This administration has certainly fiddled for the last few years without accomplishing anything. Perhaps, just perhaps, this time we can do it right. Let's try. That's the oath we took when we became members of this House. That's the responsibility we have today.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, this is how a Nation loses its moral compass, its identity, its values and, ultimately, its freedom to fear. It is ironic that the people who use the word ``freedom'' with reckless abandon, in everything from fries to a global vision, should come before the American people advocating the suspension of habeas corpus, secret star chamber tribunals, unlimited detention without review, and, yes, torture. Yes, we must be vigilant to protect our safety. But we must not allow the honor and values of our Nation to be permanently stained by this detestable legislation. It is beneath us. It is not what we stand for. There are many infamies in this bill, as others have pointed out. I will concentrate on just one. This bill would allow the President, or any future President, to grab someone off a street corner in the United States, or anywhere else in the world, and hold them forever without any court review, without having to charge them, without ever having to justify their imprisonment to anyone. This bill is flatly unconstitutional, for it repeals the great writ, habeas corpus; not, Mr. Sensenbrenner, a statutory writ, the statutory great writ. Turn to page 93, ``No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.'' ``Awaiting such determination''? That says it all. Nowhere in this new law is there any time limit for making this determination. In fact, it could be never. We are told that these procedures are only for those the President has called ``the worst of the worst.'' How do we know they are the worst of the worst? Because the President says so. And the President and Federal bureaucrats, as we all know, never make mistakes. Some people held as unlawful enemy combatants may be put before a military tribunal, but they need not be. They can be held forever without a hearing, without a military tribunal. So let's review. The government can snatch anyone who is not a U.S. citizens anywhere in the world, including on the streets of this city, whether or not they are actually doing anything, and detain them in jail forever, out of reach of our Constitution, our laws or our courts. We rebelled against King George, III, for far less infringements on liberty than this 200 years ago, but we seem to have forgotten. This bill makes the President a dictator for when someone can order people jailed forever without being subject to any judicial review. That is dictatorial power. The President wants to exist in a law-free zone. He does not want to be bound by the law of war or our treaty obligations. He does not want to answer to the Constitution, to the Congress or to the courts. Mr. Speaker, rarely in the life of a Nation is the question so stark: Are we going to rush this complete repudiation of what we stand for through the Congress? I hope we are better than that.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. NADLER. Reclaiming my time. I can understand that particular concern if this bill made it a crime to transport a minor across State lines for the purpose of getting an abortion, et cetera, et cetera, for money. If that person transporting that young girl were being paid to do it, then I think that there might be something we would want to do about that. But we are not talking about that. Well, we may be talking about that, but the bill is certainly not limited to that. The bill applies to the situation where the person, quote, unquote, transporting her may be her boyfriend, her brother or sister, her grandmother, her uncle, her aunt, her best friend or clergyman or a teacher. Anyone who is doing it with the best motives to help her, with whom some of us here may disagree that that is the best motive, but it is not a predatory motive. So if you want to write a bill against a predatory person, write a bill against the predatory person. Write a bill against someone who does it for a commercial reason, for pay, but not against all these other people. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to close. Mr. Speaker, as I said before, some States have chosen to enact parental consent and notification laws, others haven't. There is a case against parental notification laws and consent laws because basically there are a certain number of parents, certain families where you can't ask the young girl to confide in her parents because they may subject her to violence. Or she feels she can't. But you do want a young woman to confide in somebody, not to be alone in this time of great strain for her. You want her to be able to confide in a brother or sister or clergyman or priest or rabbi or uncle or aunt or grandparent or a teacher. And those people want to be able to help her. Now, as I said before, there may be room for legislation to say that you shouldn't take people across State lines for the purpose of getting an abortion for commercial purposes. But to make a criminal out of anybody who is trying to help a young girl, as they see helping her, as she sees helping her because she cannot confide in her parents, and especially if that helper may be the grandparent or the brother or the sister or a clergyman is simply wrong. So this legislation is far too broad. It will place young women who need help in a situation where they cannot get help. It doesn't serve any useful purpose, and it should be defeated. I urge my colleagues to vote against this bill, again. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott).

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee). (Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, this legislation, which we have already considered in this Congress, poses a real threat to the lives and health of young women. It would require a minor who is pregnant, possibly as a result of parental abuse, incest, to carry the parental notification laws of her home State on her back to another State and hold doctors, grandparents, clergy and anyone else who tries to help her a criminal. The sponsors, not satisfied with extending State laws into other States, now want to enforce those State laws in other countries. Not since the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 have we used the power of the Federal Government to enforce the laws of one State on the territory of another. This latest crazy quilt of restrictions obviously has but one purpose, to impede the practice of medicine, to ensure that young women will have as few options as possible, to make criminals of relatives and adults, or minors, for that manner, who try to help them, and to teach those States, such as mine, that do not believe that these laws promote adolescent health, that Congress knows best and our citizens and our States do not. Often, that adult assisting the minor is a grandparent, a sibling or member of the clergy. In some cases, the young woman may not be able to go to her parents because the parents are a danger to her. We all agree that, ideally, a young woman faced with a choice of having abortion should go to her parents. But in some cases she may not be able to. That is what happened to Spring Adams, a 13-year-old from Idaho. She was shot to death by her father after he found out that she planned to terminate a pregnancy, a pregnancy caused by his own act of incest. But, under this bill, anyone who helped her cross the State line to get an abortion without telling her father so she could get shot would be guilty of a crime. This bill also uses a narrow definition of medical emergency that seems to have been lifted from one of Attorney General Gonzalez's infamous torture memos. The prohibition ``does not apply if the abortion is necessary to save the life of the minor because her life was endangered by a physical disorder, physical injury or physical illness, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself or because in the reasonable medical judgment of the minor's attending physician the delay in performing the abortion occasioned by fulfilling the prior requirement would cause a substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the minor arising from continued pregnancy, not including psychological or emotional condition,'' so long as the physician notifies the parent within 24 hours. The bill now also excludes ectopic pregnancies and the removal of a dead fetus, for which I suppose civilized people should be grateful. It is progress, although it still falls far short of the protection for a woman's health required by the Constitution, which the courts have ruled requires an explicit exception to protect the life or health of the woman, not just those few conditions a few extremists find acceptable. No mental health exception? That is the only justification for helping a young woman who has been raped by her father. There is certainly no physical risk, yet this bill would require a doctor to seek that father's permission. There are many things far short of death or a substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function that can endanger a young woman. She deserves prompt and professional medical care, and no matter how much some people don't like it, the Constitution protects her right to receive that care. In a perfect world, loving, supportive and understanding families would join together to face these challenges. That is what happens in the majority of cases, with or without a law. But we do not live in a perfect world. Some parents are violent. Some parents are rapists. Some young people can turn only to their clergy or to a grandparent or a sibling or some other trusted adult. And this bill would turn those people into criminals. If a 16-year-old girl was accompanied across a State line by her 16- year-old boyfriend for an abortion, this would make the boyfriend a criminal. If a rabbi or priest or minister helped her across the State line, knowing that her father or mother were violent and therefore they couldn't dare ask for parental notification, this would turn them into a criminal. The same thing with a grandfather or a brother or a sister. We should not be turning people who are helping people in distress into criminals. That is wrong. This bill, although slightly modified, is as wrong and as dangerous today as it was when this House considered this last time. There is another thing, too. We believe in 50 different States in this country. We believe in State sovereignty within the Federal limits. We call the States laboratories of democracy. Many States, I think more than half, have chosen to have parental consent notification laws. Other States have chosen not to. We ought to respect the States that have chosen not to, as well as those that have chosen to do so. And to say that because someone comes from a State with a parental notification law, if she goes to a State without a parental notification law, someone who helps her to go there is committing a crime, I think that is unconstitutional and is a violation of the right to interstate commerce, to interstate travel. But it also, as I said before, is an attempt to say to New York, which does not require parental notification and consent, that the law of some other State which does must prevail in your State as long as the person comes from that State. She can't escape it. She carries it with her on her back. We have never tried to enforce the laws of one State in another like that since the Fugitive Slave Act of the 1850s. It is not a good precedent. This bill deserves to be rejected. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I have two questions about this bill that are completely aside from the merits. One is, why are we doing this bill? We passed the bill earlier. We passed essentially this bill earlier this session, the Senate passed a bill, and now we are passing a bill that isn't the same as the Senate bill. Why? So that no law, so nothing becomes law this year. So I would like to ask the chairman, the distinguished chairman, why we are not passing the same bill the Senate passed? Because, otherwise, there is no possibility, as I see it, of getting an agreement before we leave. I will yield.

Mr. NADLER. Then why are we passing a bill again that we already passed earlier this year if the Senate bill is not the same and is not satisfactory?

Mr. NADLER. Reclaiming my time. In other words, we pass the bill, the Senate passed a different bill which the distinguished chairman thinks has many loopholes, and may have, I haven't read it, and so we are coming back. Here we are, the last week before we adjourn, we haven't passed any of the appropriations bills into law, not one, and we are spending time on this bill when we have already passed it. And if the Senate has not passed it and they want to, they should negotiate with the Senate, they should have a conference committee. Instead, we are passing it again. And I have to assume that the real reason we are doing it is just for political reasons, to rev up the troops of the antiabortion people for the election, and there is no real intent to pass a bill. I have another question. This bill says in the key line: Whoever knowingly transports a minor across a State line with the intent that such minor obtains an abortion, blah, blah shall be fined or imprisoned. My question, sir, and I will yield to you, is what does ``transport'' mean?

Mr. NADLER. Well, then reclaiming my time, I think that this bill is simply not very well drafted in that case, because in the Mann Act certain things are obvious. Let's assume that you have a young woman and a young man, her boyfriend, who jointly go across State lines to get her an abortion. She is driving. She is transporting him, not the other way around. Should someone be guilty or not guilty depending on who is driving and who is not driving? That doesn't seem to make sense. Mr. Speaker, the arguments against this bill are manifold. Number one, the arguments against parental notification and consent are where you have a violent parent or where you have a parent that the child cannot confide in, you shouldn't require that. Ninety percent of the time there is no problem, it is fine. Sometimes there is, and you risk the life or the health of the child to require that she tell the parent that she is pregnant. Number two, in such a situation, the child may confide, hopefully, there is someone she can confide in, her brother, her sister, her best friend, her clergyman, her teacher, and we would make them criminals if they help her. The gentleman from New Jersey talked about the abortionist conspiring to take her across State lines. It is not the abortionist. It is a friend or a colleague or a clergyman or a grandparent. You shouldn't make criminals of them. Nor should we seek to enforce the law of one State in another State.

Mr. NADLER. And. Finally, and after this statement I will yield, this law also says that if someone is asked to perform, if a doctor is asked to perform an abortion on a young woman, on a minor from another State, he must notify the parents in that State whether or not that State requires parental notification. So we are expanding, we are now putting the Federal Government and saying to a State when only two States are involved, neither which have a parental notification law, you must because we say so. There is no justification for that. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith).

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, it is growing very tiresome to hear Republicans rewriting history and blaming all the ills of our society on the 1990s and the Clinton administration. The gentleman from Oklahoma said the Army was too small, that in the 1990s it was reduced from 15 divisions to 10. Maybe so, but, you know, we have had 6 years of the Bush administration and 6 years of the Republican Congress to fix that if that is the problem. I have not seen any proposals to change that. I have not seen any proposals from that side of the aisle or from the administration to increase the Army to 11 or 12 or 15 divisions. The real problem is that we are wasting the Army. The real problem is that Secretary Rumsfeld thought we could fight a war on the cheap. He sent the troops into Iraq with not enough troops, dismissed General Shinseki when he told him we need twice as many troops as you may think; otherwise, we will have a long-term war on our hands, and he was right. We sent the troops in without the proper body armor and without the proper equipment, and Americans died because of that. The other real problem is that we are wasting our funds, $300 billion so far, not just funds, 2,700 lives in a foolish, counterproductive war in Iraq, a war started by the Bush administration under false pretences, after misrepresenting facts and intelligence to this Congress. We were told that we had to go war to prevent the imminent development of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons, the mushroom cloud by Iraq. That was not true. We were told about the connection of Iraq to al Qaeda. That was not true. If the President had told us the truth, that Saddam Hussein at that point in history, not 12 years earlier, at that point in history presented no real threat to us, there was no likelihood of weapons of mass destruction, there was no connection to al Qaeda but we should invade Iraq in order to make the Mideast democratic, would this Congress have voted for war? Would the American people have supported starting a war? I do not think so. I am not going to get into a debate whether the intelligence was wrong or misrepresented. That is a question the American people can decide eventually on whether the Bush administration was a fool or an ape, because that is the question. Either they had it wrong or they misled us. I think it is the latter, but, either way, the fact is, as the gentleman from Ohio said, this war has not made us safer. It is to the contrary. The national intelligence estimate says the war in Iraq has hurt our efforts in the real war, the war on terrorism. It is a cheap recruiting device of Islamic Jihadists all over the world; and, not only that, this war, the downfall of Saddam Hussein has done one other thing, it has liberated Iran to be the real menace, a far worse menace than Saddam Hussein ever could have been, a real menace to us and to liberty in this world. The fact is, the foolishness, the stupidity of Iraq aside, we are fighting a real serious war, a very serious war on a much larger scale against the Islamic terrorists. That is the war we must fight and win, but the Bush administration, the Republican Congress does not take that war seriously. We get a lot of rhetoric about the war on terrorism, but they will not up put up the money, they will not put up the effort because they do not take it seriously. The biggest threat that we are faced with is not Iraq. The biggest threat we are faced with is that al Qaeda or some other Jihadist group gets nuclear weapons. The knowledge is all over the place. The barrier to nuclear weapons is where do you get the nuclear material, where do you get the fissionable material. I tell you where. You get it in the former Soviet Union where there is enough material to build 40,000 nuclear bombs lying around, not properly guarded. We have a program to get it out of there to protect ourselves from the Osama bin Laden nuclear bomb. We will get it out of there over 30 years. We removed more nuclear material from the former Soviet Union in the 5 years before 9/11 than in the 5 years since. For 15 or $20 billion, we could get it all out and would not have to worry about nuclear explosions in American cities as we must because of the stupidity of the Bush administration in not getting our stuff out of there. Twelve million shipping containers a year come into this country. They are not inspected. We had a party-line vote on this floor against the Democratic proposal to insist on electronic screening of every container to make sure it does not have an atomic bomb or a radiological weapon in it, but they say we cannot do it; we will have a study of it. This is 1942. In 1942, we built aircraft carriers. We did not have studies of weather to build aircraft carriers. And all the chemical and nuclear plants are unprotected which, if attacked or sabotaged, could kill hundreds of thousands of Americans. They do not want to spend the money because they do not take the war on terrorism seriously enough. We do.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from California.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I now yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen).

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Texas has a complaint, but his complaint is not against the American Civil Liberties Union, nor is it against section 1983 of the Code. His complaint is against the first amendment of the United States Constitution. The authors of this bill do not like the protection the courts have given to plaintiffs who allege that their constitutional rights against the establishment of religion in the first amendment have been violated. So he says let us be punitive for winning. The law says that anyone who brings a lawsuit against the government, Federal, State or local government, and alleges that that government, under color of law, is violating their constitutional rights, if that plaintiff wins, if the court says, and it is not just one judge because it is appealable up to the Supreme Court, but if the court says, yes, Mr. Plaintiff, that government official, mayor so and so, police commissioner so and so, or whatever violated your constitutional rights, you can get damages if you have, in fact, been damaged, monetary damages as you can in any civil lawsuit. You can get an injunction, stop, do not keep doing it, do not keep violating constitutional rights. And you can apply for attorneys' fees. That is a very important provision. Because these lawsuits can be expensive, and if you cannot get attorneys' fees, it is very difficult to sue, even if you have a very well-established violation of your constitutional rights, and these attorneys' fees are only if you win the lawsuit. So what does his bill come along and say? Only for establishment cases. We do not like establishment cases. We do not like the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. Only for Establishment Clause violations, you cannot get damages if you prove the government has violated your rights. Only for Establishment Clause cases, you cannot get attorneys' fees if you prove the government has violated your rights. For any other deprivation of rights under law, violation of the free exercise clause of religion, violation of freedom of speech, freedom of press, whatever, you can get damages; you can get attorneys' fees. This puts at a disadvantage in enforcing the law one class of people, religious minorities, basically, people who will sue the government for violating their rights under the Establishment Clause. In more than a century, nothing like this has ever been done. We have always expanded rights under section 1983, our Nation's oldest and most durable civil rights laws. We have never curtailed them. Just to be sure, I checked with the Congressional Research Service; and I place their memorandum to that effect in the Record at this point. Congressional Research Service, July 25, 2006. To: House Judiciary Committee. From: Kenneth R. Thomas, Legislative Attorney, American Law Division. Subject: Scope of the Proposed Public Expression of Religion Act of 2005. The memorandum is in response to your request to examine the scope of H.R. 2679, the Public Expression of Religion Act of 2005, which would limit the relief available and the payment of attorney's fees for cases brought under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 when the underlying case involves the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution. Specifically, you requested an analysis of whether Congress had previously limited the types of damages available under 1983 as regards particular constitutional provisions. Second, you requested an analysis as to whether the bill would be limited to the public expression of religious faith in a governmental context, or whether this bill would also affect other Establishment Clause issues. 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 addresses a broad array of rights and privileges protected by the United States Constitution. It provides that: ``Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress, except that in any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer's judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable. For the purposes of this section, any Act of Congress applicable exclusively to the District of Columbia shall be considered to be a statute of the District of Columbia.'' The proposed Public Expression of Religion Act of 2005 would appear to limit certain litigants from receiving either damages or attorneys fees. Specifically, the proposed Act provides that ``[t]he remedies with respect to a claim under [42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983] where the deprivation consists of a violation of a prohibition in the Constitution against the establishment of religion shall be limited to injunctive relief.'' The bill also amends 42 U.S.C. 1988(b) to provide that no attorney's fees shall be awarded with respect to a claim under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 regarding the Establishment Clause. 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 was first passed in 1871. Although it has been recodified and relatively recently amended, it has not been substantially altered since 1871. It does not appear that it has been amended so as to limit the type of damages available to litigants who choose to utilize its provisions regarding particular constitutional issues. Whether such a limitation is constitutional is beyond the scope of this memorandum. The provisions of the proposed Public Expression of Religion Act of 2005, despite its title, would appear to include both the public expression of religion under governmental auspices and a variety of other issues. The types of cases which the bill would cover would appear to include, among other things, cases involving financial assistance to church-related institutions, governmental encouragement of religion in public schools (prayers, bible reading), access of religious groups to public property, tax exemptions of religious property, exemption of religious organizations from generally applicable laws, Sunday closing laws, conscientious objectors, regulation of religious solicitation, religion in governmental observances, and religious displays on government property. It is especially ironic because my friends who today are supporting this bill only yesterday brought forward a bill that would expand the rights of real estate developers, garbage dumps and adult bookstores under section 1983. So the rights they would give to adult bookstores, we would take away from people whose religious freedom rights are violated. That is, I guess, what has become of the party of Lincoln. That is their civil rights agenda in 2001. This bill is aimed at people who have proved in court that the government has violated their religious liberty protected by the first amendment. By denying them their normal relief for monetary damages and the bill to petition for attorneys' fees, we will deny them not just their day in court, we would also be telling government officials everywhere that Congress thinks it is okay for them to violate people's religious liberty with impunity. It is especially galling after everyone here, well, almost everyone, has taken a victory lap for reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act, in which we actually enhanced the attorneys' fees provisions by adding a right to be awarded the cost of expert witnesses in addition to the right to be awarded the cost of lawyers. As the Judiciary Committee stated in its report on the Voting Rights Act, ``The committee received substantial testimony indicating that much of the burden associated with either proving or defending a section 2 vote dilution claim is established by information that only an expert can prepare. In harmonizing the Voting Rights Act of 1965 with other Federal civil rights laws, the committee also seeks to ensure that those minority voters who have been victimized by continued acts of discrimination are made whole.'' But here we want to say that people with minority religious views who are victimized by government breaking of the Establishment Clause, they shall not be made whole because we do not like them. I would warn my colleagues that starting down this path will only lead to depriving other unpopular groups of their civil rights remedies. It wasn't so long ago that attacks on unelected judges and ACLU lawyers, as we heard a few moments ago, stirring up trouble, was the common language of the militant segregationists. It is distressing, and sadly ironic, that today that language is being used to gut the Nation's oldest and most durable civil rights law. It is all chillingly reminiscent of the infamous 1963 inauguration speech of Alabama's Governor George Wallace who said, ``From this day, from this hour, from this minute we give the word of a race of honor that we will tolerate their boot in our face no longer, and let those certain judges put that in their opium pipes of power and smoke it for what it is worth.'' I think the Governor would feel right at home in this House today. Or consider the notorious ``Southern Manifesto'' signed by Members of both houses in defiance of the Supreme Court's school desegregation decision several decades ago: ``We regard the decisions of the Supreme Court in the school cases as a clear abuse of judicial power. It climaxes a trend in the Federal judiciary undertaking to legislate, in derogation of the authority of Congress, and to encroach upon the reserved rights of the States and the people.'' Does any of this sound familiar? I would observe that abuses of judicial power are in the eyes of the beholder. This is not to suggest that any Members of this House are segregationists. Far from it. I only recall the overheated rhetoric of a half century ago to urge Members to take care with their words. Unpopular minorities and decisions defending the rights of unpopular minorities against the will of the majority have always inflamed passions. People have always questioned our system of checks and balances, and especially the role of the independent judiciary. Recourse to an independent judiciary is a bulwark of our liberties. We recognize this by allowing people to go to court and sue the government and force the government to respect their rights. We recognize this by allowing people victimized by the government to receive damage awards when the government has done damage. We recognize this by ensuring, just as we have done with the Voting Rights Act, that people who can prove their rights have been violated can get attorneys fees paid so that people with valid claims will be able to afford to go to court to vindicate those claims. I would remind my friends that this legislation is not limited to religious symbols in public places. This legislation applies to any violation of the establishment clause. This would include forced prayer. If government forcing your child to say a prayer of another faith is not the establishment of religion, then the phrase has no meaning. If government at some locality decided that that locality was Hindu or Muslim or Wicca, or whatever, pick another unpopular or less popular religion, and all children in school must start the day by saying the profession of faith for that religion, you could go to court. It is a violation of the establishment clause. But under this, you couldn't get damages. You couldn't get attorneys fees. You would have to bear the burden of that lawsuit by yourself. I want to lay to rest right now the red herring, the lie, that was put into this bill when its title was changed from the Public Expression of Religion Act to the Veterans' Memorials, Boy Scouts, Public Seals, and other Public Expressions of Religion Protection Act of 2006. I know that many sincere people have been misled into believing the ACLU, for example, wants to use section 1983 to force the removal of religious symbols from the individual gravestones of thousands of veterans across the Nation and around the world, hence the new title, hence the citation of these specific instances in this bill. We received testimony from the American Legion to this effect and Members have received a great deal of mail on the subject because people are spreading misinformation. This assertion is a myth. If you are voting for this bill because you are concerned about national cemeteries, don't bother. Neither the ACLU nor anyone else has ever brought such a lawsuit. As a matter of fact, I have a letter here from the ACLU taking the opposite position: that individual veterans have a first amendment right to have a religious symbol of their or their family's choice on their gravestones. American Civil Liberties Union, Washington, DC, July 25, 2006. Re the Public Expression of Religion Act (H.R. 2679). House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Washington, DC. Dear Representative, On behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and its hundreds of thousands of members, activists, and fifty-three affiliates nationwide, we urge you to oppose H.R. 2679, the ``Public Expression of Religion Act of 2005.'' This bill would bar damages and awards of attorneys' fees to prevailing parties asserting their fundamental constitutional rights in cases brought under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. H.R. 2679 would limit the longstanding remedies available in cases brought under the Establishment Clause under 42 U.S.C. 1988, which provides for attorneys' fees and costs in all successful cases involving constitutional and civil rights violations. H.R. 2679 Shuts the Courthouse Doors If this bill were to become law, Congress would, for the first time, single out one area protected by the Bill of Rights and prevent its full enforcement. The only remedy available to plaintiffs bringing Establishment Clause lawsuits would be injunctive relief. This prohibition would apply even to cases involving illegal religious coercion of public school students or blatant discrimination against particular religions. Congress has determined that attorneys' fee awards in civil rights and constitutional cases, including Establishment Clause cases, are necessary to help prevailing parties vindicate their civil rights, and to enable vigorous enforcement of these protections. The Senate Judiciary Committee has found these fees to be ``an integral part of the remedies necessary to obtain . . . compliance.'' The Senate emphasized that ``[i]f the cost of private enforcement actions becomes too great, there will be no private enforcement. If our civil rights laws are not to become mere hollow pronouncements which the average citizen cannot enforce, we must maintain the traditionally effective remedy of fee shifting in these cases. Unfortunately, H.R. 2679 would turn the Establishment Clause into a hollow pronouncement. Indeed, the very purpose of this bill is to make it more difficult for citizens to challenge violations of the Establishment Clause. It would require plaintiffs who have successfully proven that the government has violated their constitutional rights to pay their legal fees--often totaling tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars. Few citizens can afford to do so, but more importantly, citizens should not be required to do so where there is a finding that our government has engaged in unconstitutional behavior. The elimination of attorneys' fees for Establishment Clause cases would deter attorneys from taking cases in which the government has violated the Constitution; thereby leaving injured parties without representation and insulating serious constitutional violations from judicial review. This effectively leaves religious minorities unable to obtain counsel in pursuit of their First Amendment rights under the Establishment Clause. H.R. 2679 Denies Just Compensation Despite proponents' assertions to the contrary, attorneys' fees are not awarded in Establishment Clause cases as a punitive measure. Rather, as in any case where the government violates its citizens' civil or constitutional rights, the award of attorneys' fees is reasonable compensation for the expenses of litigation awarded at the discretion of the court. After intensive fact-finding, Congress determined that these fees ``are adequate to attract competent counsel, but . . . do not produce windfalls to attorneys.'' H.R. 2679 is contrary to good public policy--it reduces enforcement of constitutional rights; it has a chilling effect on those who have been harmed by the government; and it prevents attorneys from acting in the public's good. The award of fees in Establishment Clause cases is not a means for attorneys to receive unjust windfalls--it is designed to assist those whose government has failed them. H.R. 2679 Favors Enforcement of the Free Exercise Clause Over the Establishment Clause Among the greatest religious protections granted to American citizens are the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause. The right to practice religion, or no religion at all, is among the most fundamental of the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. Religious liberty can only truly flourish when a government protects the Free Exercise of religion while prohibiting government-sponsored endorsement, coercion and funding of religion. H.R. 2679 creates an arbitrary congressional policy in favor of the enforcement of the Free Exercise Clause, while simultaneously impeding individuals wronged by the government under the Establishment Clause. Through the denial of attorneys' fee awards under H.R. 2679, plaintiffs will be able to afford the expense of litigation only when they are seeking to protect certain constitutional rights but not others. This bad congressional policy serves to create a dangerous double standard by favoring cases brought under the Free Exercise Clause, but severely restricting cases under the Establishment clause. Proponents of this bill have been spreading the urban myth that religious symbols on gravestones at military cemeteries will be threatened without passage of H.R. 2679. The supposedly ``threatened'' religious markers on gravestones has become a red-herring--indeed it is an urban myth--that has been invoked as a reason for the denial of attorneys' fees in Establishment Clause cases. It should be noted--in light of the wildly inaccurate statements that have repeatedly been made--that religious symbols on soldiers' grave markers in military cemeteries (including Arlington National Cemetery) are entirely constitutional. Religious symbols on personal gravestones are vastly different from government-sponsored religious symbols or sectarian religious symbols on government-owned property. Gravestones and the symbols placed upon them are the choice of individual service members and their families. The ACLU would in fact vigorously defend the first amendment rights of all veteran Americans and service members to display the religious symbol of their choosing on their gravestone. If the Constitution is to be meaningful, every American should have equal access to the federal courts to vindicate his or her fundamental constitutional rights. The ability to recover attorneys' fees in successful cases is an essential component of the enforcement of these rights, as Congress has long recognized. The bill is a direct attack on the religious freedoms of individuals, as it effectively shuts the door for redress for all suits involving the Establishment Clause. We urge members of Congress to oppose H.R. 2679. If you have any questions, please contact Terri Schroeder, Senior Lobbyist. Sincerely, Caroline Fredrickson, Director. Terri Ann Schroeder Senior Lobbyist. Mr. Speaker, it is an election year, and the months leading up to elections have long been known as the ``silly season.'' We all understand that. But get an earmark for a bridge to nowhere or something, and leave the first amendment and our civil rights out of it. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott).

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I reserve my time.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, we have heard a lot of rhetoric that is really beside the point on this bill. We all agree, I hope, that the United States Constitution governs. We all agree, I hope, that the Bill of Rights confers certain rights on Americans, whether citizens or not. We all agree that freedom of religion, freedom to exercise religion, and freedom from establishment of religion are among those rights. We all agree, I hope, that the courts are there to enforce those rights. And then the disagreement begins. This bill would seek to put a thumb on the scale and say, and we heard this rhetoric: We don't like the ACLU. We don't like what they are doing, even if the courts say they are right in a given case. Because we don't like what they are doing, because their winning court decisions violates our concept of what the Establishment Clause means, we are going to put a thumb on the scale and say that people who win lawsuits, who establish to the court's satisfaction that the government has violated their rights under the first amendment, the Establishment Clause, they cannot get damages, they cannot get attorneys' fees. We are going to put a poll tax on the Establishment Clause. Only people with a lot of money had better sue to enforce their first amendment rights. If you don't have a lot of money but the government is violating your rights under the Establishment Clause, you can't sue. Because even if your attorney tells you you have got a 99 percent chance of winning because these people know they are wrong, it may still cost you a couple hundred thousand dollars. And they paint the picture of these poor cities and towns and governments having to kowtow to an organization, but the fact is, who generally has more money for a lawsuit? The City of New York, the City of Galveston, the town of whatever, or an individual? You are putting a means test on protecting your rights to freedom of religion. I don't think that is what this country ought to be about. Because, after all, someone has got to pay for that lawsuit. Someone has got to pay the attorneys' fees, and that is either going to be the plaintiff who alleges a violation of his rights, or it is going to be the government that allegedly violated his rights. The law says, current law, that if you prove that the government violated your rights, the government should pay the cost of that lawsuit, not you. This bill says that, for most things, that is still true; but for the Establishment Clause rights, it no longer true, and you have got to pay for the lawsuit that the government made you bring by willfully, or perhaps not willfully, violating your rights. They say, well, look at the City of San Diego. It is costing them hundreds of thousands of dollars. Well, if they listened to their attorney who said, gee, what you are doing may very well violate the first amendment or does violate the first amendment, then maybe they wouldn't have had to pay those hundreds of thousands of dollars. With this bill, there will be no financial incentive to obey the Establishment Clause. Second, this bill does not, as I said before, cover only the cases they are talking about; it covers all establishment cases. And let's think of an establishment case. Let's assume, and we know that throughout the history of this country different ethnic groups, different religious groups have different political weights at different times. Let's assume that in some town the Sunni Muslims became a majority, and let's assume that they decided in that town that everybody, Christians, Jews, Muslims, in school had to recite every day on pain of expulsion from class there is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet. Pretty clear violation of the Establishment Clause in the first amendment. Now, somebody who is not a Muslim in that case, someone who is Jewish or Christian or something else, decides to sue and wins the lawsuit; and they say you can't do that. You can't get attorneys' fees. He has got to bear the cost of that. Why? Because of hostility on the part of the sponsors of this bill to the Establishment Clause of the first amendment. Because they think that only the majority religion is ever going to be in the position to dominate a local government or any government. Maybe so. But the real reason we have the first amendment is that you can never be sure. It may be that in the future some group that isn't the majority now will be the majority in some local area; and if you make it difficult to enforce the Establishment Clause of the first amendment, you or your children could be the ones imposed upon. Now, we heard about this horrible situation, about the challenge to this or challenge to that. But, as I said before, the real complaint is not with the attorneys' fees, the real complaint is with the first amendment. You think you ought to be able to do whatever it was and what the courts have said, no, you can't. Well, maybe you shouldn't or maybe we should amend the Constitution. Which I wouldn't suggest, but that would be the right way to do it. Or maybe we should get different judges or whatever. But if the courts say you are violating the first amendment, you shouldn't continue to do it. You should be able to get damages if you continue to do it. And the plaintiff, vindicating his own constitutional rights, should be able to bring a lawsuit without having a lot of money. Now, we heard also that, well, the various organizations say that even if you pass this bill, they will still sue. But that is not the question. The first amendment does not belong, the Constitution of the United States does not belong to the American Civil Liberties Union or to Americans United for Separation of Church and State or United Americans Against the Separation of Church and State. It is the individual right that you are violating here. It is an individual's right, or maybe a whole class of individuals, that you are violating when you violate the establishment clause of the first amendment, and any individual should have the right and the ability to go to court and if he wins, to get attorneys fees. We have made a decision, we have made a decision in this country, and maybe you want to challenge that decision, but this bill doesn't do that. That decision is that when your constitutional rights are violated and you can prove it to the court, that the government violated your constitutional rights, then the government should pay for the cost of your vindicating the Constitution and vindicating your rights against the government that broke the law by violating your rights. That is a general principle. Maybe you want to say no, we don't care that much about individual rights any more, first amendment, second amendment, whatever. From now on you want to sue the government because they violated your rights, you pay no matter what, even if you win. Okay, that is a different bill. I would oppose it, but that is a different bill. That is not this bill. This bill says we think all rights are important. If you think that the government violated your second amendment right to own a gun and you go to court and you prove it, the government pays for that lawsuit, and properly so. But if you think the government violated your right to practice your religion by violating the establishment clause, and you prove it, the government doesn't pay. You have to pay for it because your right to own a gun is a heck of a lot more important than your freedom of religion, apparently. That doesn't make sense. Mr. Speaker, if we believe in the individual rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights, if we believe in the first amendment and the freedom of religion in this country, and if we believe we shouldn't single out freedom of religion and say that freedom is less important, that freedom if you win, and forget the merits of these cases, if you lose, you don't get attorneys fees or damages. We are talking about where you are right and the government is wrong. The government is violating your rights, and this bill says you shouldn't get damages or attorneys fees anyway because we don't like your point of view. That is wrong. It is demeaning to this Congress, and if we believe in freedom of religion and the Bill of Rights, we will defeat this bill. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. NADLER. I now recognize the gentleman from Virginia for a unanimous consent request.