Jerrold Nadler

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the substitute to the bill. The gentleman from Wisconsin's substitute would successfully offset the $2.5 billion in supplemental defense appropriations requested by the administration, without eliminating valuable programs which invest in our Nation's future. I am particularly concerned about maintaining congressional commitment for the Penn Station/Farley Building renovations in my district in New York City. Penn Station is the single most heavily used intermodal transportation facility in the country, serving passengers not only in the Northeast corridor, but also to and from points south and west. In fact, 75 million passengers use Penn Station each year. This station is a significant component of our passenger rail infrastructure. A number of regional private and public entities have acknowledged that the current underground facility is inadequate, decrepit, and overcrowded, pushing Amtrak, commuter-train and subway riders into the same space. These entities have committed funding for improvements to the station. So far, the Long Island Railroad has completed its $200 million portion of the project. New York City and State have signed an agreement to fund their $100 million share. New Jersey transit will renovate its portion as Amtrak moves to the Farley Building. Amtrak will fund its portion of the project with revenues from commerce that will be attracted to the renovated Farley Building. Additionally, the Federal Railroad Administration and the Department of Transportation have sited Penn Station renovations as a high priority project, and the administration has proposed a $50 million expenditure for the project in fiscal year 1996. During a time when we are seeking funding based on public-private partnerships, this rescission is particularly short-sighted. Congress provided $10 million in fiscal year 1994 for this project, and should continue its contribution to the public/private partnership which will benefit many Americans throughout the country. The funding which is proposed to be rescinded today is modest compared with other transportation expenditures for projects serving far fewer Americans. In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, the Penn Station project is underway, the State and local governments have committed to pay for the bulk of the project, and Federal support makes transportation. I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of the substitute and vote against the bill.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this legislation because it is written so broadly that our Government will inevitably use it to send political and religious refugees back to their oppressors. As such, it is at odds with our Nation's highest traditions and goes well beyond what is needed to protect the American people from criminals. No reasonable person wants to see criminals go free. No citizen wants to see the United States become a haven for criminals from around the world. No taxpayer wants to get stuck with the tab for the upkeep of criminals who come here to prey on Americans. If this bill provided simply for the detention of criminals, there would be no controversy. If this bill provided simply for the deportation of violent felons, there would be no debate. Existing law already provides for this. In fact, criminals are detained and deported every day. But this bill provides near-summary deportation of people without so much as a hearing to determine whether the individual is a legitimate refugee, that is someone who has fled his or her homeland because of a well founded fear of persecution. This is something that should be of profound concern to each of us. Many of our families came here fleeing persecution and extermination. As the representative of more holocaust survivors and their children than any Member of this body, I can tell you that the memory of people being sent back to die in the Nazi concentration camps by our Government is still vivid and bitter in the communities I represent. People should be punished for their crimes, but do we want to have the death penalty for car theft? That is what this bill would do. A person convicted of trafficking in stolen cars could be deported and could not even have a court hear evidence that he would be persecuted or murdered if deported. Is that really what our constituents want? Send car thieves summarily back to the Nazis? Is that what America stands for? Sure we want to be protected from criminals. I can tell you that I have to walk on the streets of New York and Washington just like my neighbors. I am not immune from crime. My family is not immune. But there is no need for us to behave in such a senselessly barbarous manner. Let us enforce the laws, but let us do it right and let us not lose sight of who we are or what this country is about.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, the exclusionary rule is not, as was just pointed out, written into the Constitution. It was enacted in effect by the courts in a series of decisions starting in 1914. The courts have observed, the Supreme Court has observed many times, it is the only effective means that has ever been discovered to enforce the guarantees against unreasonable searches and seizures that are in the fourth amendment. It is the only means that we have ever found which makes the words of the Constitution guaranteeing the people the right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures to be effective in the real world. Mr. Chairman, the Supreme Court of the United States has said in construing the fourth amendment that the exclusionary rule shall not apply where you have a search warrant and there is good faith asserted. But it still applies where good faith is asserted but there is no search warrant, not even a search warrant. They did not even go before a magistrate to get a warrant to show probable cause why they should search this person's home or possessions or seize his property. This bill would eliminate the exclusionary rule there, too. It would say that even when you have no search warrant, you can go to somebody's house, break into the house, search his papers, seize his effects, seize the papers, and assert that you believed you were in good faith, that you had constitutional right to do that. In effect, it removes any real limits on the power to search and seize. Mr. Chairman, if you look at the history books, one of the chief grievances that caused the Revolutionary War was the issuance by the British authorities of writs of assistance, search warrants, and they were trying to enforce legitimate revenue-collection laws. They issued writs of assistance which said anybody must assist this officer in searching this house or that place for anything. James Otis and Sam Adams and John Adams thought this was tyranny, and what this bill would do is to recreate the same effect as the British writs of assistance. We are, in the name of trying to have law enforcement, so widening the exceptions here that we have no effective protection for our own liberty in our own homes. ``A man's home is his castle'' is an ancient maxim of the English common law which we inherited. The writs of assistance issued by the British authorities were invasions of that. It was felt to be tyrannical, one of the leading causes of the Revolution in this country against Great Britain. We have forgotten all this, and we are recreating the writs of assistance by this bill, except, even with the writ of assistance, you had to go before a magistrate and describe--you did not have to describe what you were looking for, that was one of the problems, but you had to describe why you were looking for something. With this, you do not need a warrant. You do not go before a magistrate, you simply break into somebody's house, seize whatever you want to seize, and then assert that you, in good faith, believed mistakenly that you had probable cause. Mr. Chairman, this restores--it makes even worse what we rebelled against in 1775. The Watt amendment, by putting the words of the fourth amendment into this bill, which the Supreme Court has construed to permit an exception to the exclusionary rule only when there is a warrant, would put back that construction and would limit the exceptions to the exclusionary rule to where it is now, and would prevent it from being so widened as this bill would otherwise do as to recreate even worse the situation that we rebelled against in 1775. For the protection of our liberty, I urge that this amendment be adopted.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague Representative Lynn Woolsey for organizing this special order to bring attention to the urgency and severity of the crisis of the noncollection of child support. Mr. Speaker, before I came to this House I had considerable experience in this area. I am proud to have been the author during my 16 years in the New York State Assembly of 22 State laws that strengthened child support enforcement methods and of being a prime sponsor of the Child Support Standards Act which established guidelines for setting support awards. We enacted laws providing for interception of State income tax refunds, of stock dividend payments, and interest payments owed to defaulting parents. We mandated withholding child support automatically from the obligated payer's salary as soon as the support order was issued. We mandated child support defaults being included in all credit reports. We authorized the State to use every conceivable method to collect support owed on behalf of the custodial parents. Still we failed. We increased collection rates substantially, but they were still woefully inadequate. Why? Mostly for two reasons. First, establishing paternity was still very difficult. Second, because when obligated parents went to another State, as 30 percent do nationally, all our collection methods went out the window, and we had to resort to the very weak interstate enforcement system. Clearly we need a national enforcement system that will strengthen the paternity establishment system and will put in place a uniform national child support collection system. The Internal Revenue Service should be given the job of collecting child support and should be mandated to use all the force and powers it uses to collect taxes to collect child support. Let the Federal Government set uniform minimum child support standards. Let the Federal Government pay every custodial parent a basic child support benefit and then reimburse itself by collecting the money owed from the obligated parents. In this way we would put the obligation on the Government, not on the custodial parent, to chase after the noncustodial parent to collect the funds to reimburse itself. And the child, the children, would have assured support. One thing should be made clear. This is not primarily a problem of the poor. Although mothers and children are often rendered poor by noncollection of support due, we are more often than not talking about middle class or even wealthy families. Make no mistake. Without seriously addressing the collection of child support, there can be no real welfare reform. That is why it is so shocking that the so-called Personal Responsibility Act barely deals with child support and seeks instead to punish poor mothers. Welfare reform must begin with child support enforcement measures. That would save the taxpayers money, make the lives of children and custodial parents much easier and teach the lesson that fathers too have responsibilities. Then we can reform the welfare system to deal with the much smaller problem that would then remain. Mr. Speaker, I call on this Congress to take on the challenge of making child support orders real and enforced and so to improve the lives of millions of our children. Again, I thank Congresswoman Woolsey for organizing this special order.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I oppose this amendment, because we should not write fiscal policy into the Constitution. Of course, we want balanced budgets most of the time. But it is nonsense to speak of a balanced budget without separating out a capital budget. Every State, every local government, every business has a capital budget and an operating expense budget. The operating budget must be balanced, but the capital budget enables long-term investment, highways, bridges, tunnels to be financed by borrowing. Any family borrows to buy a car or a house. This amendment would prohibit the Federal Government from ever borrowing except in wartime. This is nonsense. Second, budgets should be balanced over time, not every year. In good times, the operating budget should be balanced or have a surplus to pay down the debt. During a recession we should prime the pump, cut taxes, increase expenditures, run a deficit to stimulate the economy, to put more people to work, and to get out of the recession. This amendment would force the Government to violate all we know of economic policy and cut spending during a recession to offset the lower tax receipts generated by the recession. This is a good way to turn a recession into a depression. That is why the Owens amendment which I support would suspend operation of a balanced budget amendment when there is high unemployment. Third, the proposed three-fifths rule would require a 60 percent vote to pass bills to improve enforcement of the law against tax cheats, to close special-interest tax loopholes, or to revoke most-favored-nation status of countries that violate human rights. A minority of the House would be able to block any of these actions. Finally, our large national debt and the Republican decision to increase substantially defense spending means inevitably that a balanced budget amendment would force us to gut spending on Social Security, Medicare, and other vital programs. Mr. Chairman, we do not need this dangerous amendment. In the last 2 years we have cut the deficit almost in half. We need to continue a prudent fiscal policy. We do not need to rewrite the Constitution.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I rise to comment on some remarks from my distinguished colleague on the other side of the aisle, whose name I do not yet know. He commented that opposition to the bill on unfunded mandates arises from distrust of the capability or wisdom of State governments, that they cannot make decisions and, therefore, we must make the decisions for them. The fact is, Mr. Speaker, that in many cases the Federal Government must come to the aid and assistance of State and local governments because they are unable to protect themselves, either because rivers know no State boundaries and a polluter in one State causes pollution in a second, a third, and a fourth, and it demands Federal legislation to protect States because they cannot do it themselves, or, second, a State may wish to regulate an economic activity which harms its people but is told, ``You cannot regulate that activity because if you have that regulation, the large corporation will move and take its jobs and taxes to another State,'' not because the regulation is not a good and fair one but because they have the power to do so. The Federal Government must protect the States in that instance.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. The second half of the statement of the distinguished gentleman made reference to the hypocrisy of the Democrats. The context clearly indicated that it was the Democratic Members of the House that he was referring to. My parliamentary inquiry, therefore: Since the rules prohibit the impugning of motives of Members of the House, and the gentleman impugned the motives of a group of Members of the House, just under half the Members of the House; so is it not permitted under the rules then to impugn the motives of an individual Member of the House, but to impugn the motives of a group of Members of the House is permitted?

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I demand that the gentleman's words be taken down.