Jared Polis

Mr. POLIS

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. POLIS

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

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close. I would like to inquire if the gentlelady has any remaining speakers.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the remainder of the time. First of all, conflating somehow paycheck fairness with compensation of women at the White House is comparing apples and oranges. Nothing that we are supporting or that the Paycheck Fairness Act includes says that women and men should all be paid the same regardless of what their job is. It simply says ``equal work, equal pay.'' There's no evidence in the Daily Caller or anywhere else that for the same job, in the White House or anywhere in the administration, that women are paid less. They are not. Even if you had paycheck fairness--again, we passed our law; it becomes the law of the land in the private sector--it doesn't mean every woman gets the same pay as every man. It simply means that for the same job men and women get the same pay. It is quite possible there could still be a differential either way. There's not a problem with that. It depends on what jobs people have. But for the same job, it should be the law of the land, just as it has been President Obama's policy that men and women receive the same pay. Mr. Speaker, this bill, the ``more work, less pay bill,'' is yet another attempt to roll back workers' rights under the guise of doing just the opposite. I wish we were here talking about things that would benefit American families like the Paycheck Fairness Act to ensure women receive equal pay for equal work; making sure that people can't be fired from their job just because of who they date. It is none of the boss's darn business. But instead of collaborating with Democrats to produce a compromise bill we can be proud of, instead, this House is considering a bill that would weaken over time and is nearly identical to bills that have failed in three prior Congresses. There are many measures that we could be taking up to help grow the economy, reduce the deficit, create jobs, invest in the middle class, replace our broken immigration system with one that works; but this bill is none of those. I wanted to point out and highlight the work of the Democrats on the Educational and the Workforce Committee. The Web site is Democrats.edworkforce.house.gov. They produced a video that shows exactly what this ``more work, less pay'' legislation is. Mr. Speaker, I support giving American workers and families more flexibility. There could be a way to work together; but, again, this body has not done so. It does just the opposite. Instead of having an open rule under which many of us could bring forth amendments to discuss, Democratic Members offered several sensible amendments, which were rejected by the House majority, both in the committee of jurisdiction and the Rules Committee. Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up H.R. 377, Representative DeLauro's Paycheck Fairness Act, of which I am an original cosponsor. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment in the Record along with extraneous material immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. POLIS

Mr. POLIS. I thank the gentleman. This bill, unfortunately, hurts what it purports to help. It's detrimental to job growth, innovation, and privacy. We talked a bit about the process whereby a number of amendments that would have improved it were not allowed to be discussed or voted on on the floor. And there are still enormous flaws with this bill which need to be addressed. Look, to the extent that companies believe that information-sharing is important, it should be done in a way that's consistent with sanctity of contract. If there's something that gets in the way of information-sharing, we need to identify it. That hasn't been identified. Clearly, the answer is not to say whatever a company agrees upon with a personal user, even if explicitly it says we're going to keep your information private, the minute after that's agreed to by a user, the company would be completely indemnified by turning all this information, personal information, credit card information, address, everything, over to the government. Now, why not remove anything? Why not just pass along the parts that are related to cybersecurity? There's no incentive to do so. Had there been a requirement that reasonable efforts were taken to delete personal data, that would have been a step in the right direction. But, again, it's an extra cost with no benefit for the company to delete personal data because they're completely indemnified with regard to this matter without the consent of the user himself. What happens to this information once it reaches the government? It can be shared with any government agency. It can be shared with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the National Security Agency, the Food and Drug Administration. Again, the limitations are so open-ended that anything that relates even to a minor scratch or a cut, issues completely unrelated to cybersecurity, things that could be related to dog bites, essentially any information. Part of the problem here, there are cyber attacks everywhere. I ran an e-commerce site. Tens of thousand every day. I mean, any e-commerce company experiences this every day, so it's a reality every day. Everything is a potential cybersecurity threat. There's people cracking passwords every day. So all information is affected by this, under this bill, in its present form, turned over to the government, shared with every agency relating to any bodily injury or harm, and we haven't been offered an opportunity to amend that. So I encourage my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this bill. We can and we must do better for our country.

Mr. POLIS

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I have three documents to submit to the Record: one from former Representative Bob Barr, one Statement of Administration Policy, and a letter from several tech companies and others opposed to the bill. I quote, in part: Developments over the last year make CISPA's approach even more questionable than before. Former Representative Bob Barr: Congress must take the civil liberties threats created by this bill just as seriously as it takes the cyber threats the legislation purports to address. Mr. Speaker, we should not hurt the Internet to save the Internet; and this bill, in its current form, leaves the language wide open with potential abuse. Again, when we talk about bodily harm, I have learned that in a California statute that includes dog bites. Essentially, anything is included in this information without limitation with regard to how the government can use it. This is a backdoor attack on the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable search and seizures. We have criminal procedures and processes around how information can and can't be used. This is the biggest government takeover of personal information that I've seen during my time here in Congress. Again, I believe, on the balance, it harms what it purports to protect. ``Just say no'' to cybersecurity bill (By Former Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.), Apr. 16, 2013) Anyone who has read or watched any news source over the past year knows President Obama, numerous Administration officials, and many leaders in Congress agree that addressing the threat of cyber attacks is a critical national priority. Based on this threat analysis, the administration and many members of Congress continue to push for passage of cybersecurity legislation that would clarify and expand the government's powers to receive and process traffic from American computer networks. It would, however, be a mistake for Congress to rush to enact legislation that could militarize our computer networks, and pave the way for private companies to share vast quantities of sensitive and highly personal information with the government, all in the name of ``cybersecurity.'' Although a carefully-crafted ``information sharing'' program that includes robust protections for civil liberties could be an effective approach to cybersecurity, the bill about to come up for a vote in the House clearly fails this test. The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), H.R. 624, is set to be considered by the full House of Representatives later this month. Although the bill that emerged from markup by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) includes some improvements in privacy safeguards over the earlier version, CISPA's proponents have overstated the protections incorporated into the bill. As a result, members of Congress should vote against CISPA when it comes to the House floor. Last year, The Constitution Project's bipartisan Liberty and Security Committee, on which I serve, prepared a detailed report on ways that Congress could protect our nation's computer networks from cyber threats, while at the same time preserving the constitutionally-guaranteed rights of Americans. Unfortunately, the drafters of CISPA failed to incorporate the robust safeguards we recommended. Most critical, CISPA's sponsors have resisted all efforts to ensure that the new cybersecurity program would maintain civilian control of our nation's computer networks. CISPA would allow private companies, cloaked with broad immunity from legal liability, to share sensitive information such as internet records or the content of emails, with any agency in the government, including military and intelligence agencies. Sensitive personal information from private computer networks should not be shared directly with the military or the National Security Agency (NSA), the agency that gained widespread public notoriety seven years ago for its warrantless wiretapping program--hardly the agency we want to see tasked with receiving private internet traffic. Sadly, the members of HPSCI voted down an amendment that would have ensured civilian control of computer networks, by specifying that when private companies share information with the federal government, they should not provide it to the NSA or any other military agency or department. This amendment would still have permitted the NSA to share its own expertise on cyber threats with the private sector, but would have protected the information flowing into the government. A second critical flaw with CISPA is that it fails to include meaningful limits on the extent of private sensitive information that companies can send into the government. The HPSCI also voted down an amendment requiring that before sharing cyber threat information with the government, companies must ``make reasonable efforts'' to remove ``any information that can be used to identify a specific person unrelated to the cyber threat.'' A similar provision was included in last year's Senate cybersecurity bill, and witnesses at a hearing before HPSCI earlier this year testified that companies can easily strip out personally identifiably information that is not necessary to address cyber threats. Yet CISPA still lacks any such safeguard. It is true that from a privacy perspective, this version of CISPA is an improvement over last year's bill. Most notably, the bill no longer permits private information to be used for broad `national security uses'' unrelated to cybersecurity. But it clearly is not sufficient. Congress must take the civil liberties threats created by this bill just as seriously as it takes the cyber threats the legislation purports to address. CISPA does not meet this test, and members of the House should just say no.

Mr. POLIS. And there are absolutely no protections with regard to what is done with that information. There are a number of improvements that could make this bill viable, and these are not allowed under this rule. My colleague, Mr. Schiff, has put forward an amendment that would have simply required that reasonable precautions were taken to ensure privacy was protected. That would be a strong step forward. Real limitations about actually tying the use of this information to cybersecurity would be an important step forward with the bill. What's at danger is, yes, civil liberties; but the danger is the confidence in the Internet ecosystem that has driven our economic growth over the last decade. There will be great harm if that confidence is shaken, great harm if people know that the information that they provide and sign up for can immediately be turned over to a government agency--indeed, a secretive government agency--with no recourse and completely exempt from any liability for the company that's done it. It's been noted that this program is voluntary. It may be voluntary for the corporations. It's not voluntary for the individual. It's not voluntary for the citizens of the country who provide that information.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, where to begin? Let's start with process. This, as has been indicated by everyone who spoke thus far, is a critical issue for our country, getting the balance right between protecting American infrastructure and our way of life, with our civil liberties and confidence in the Internet ecosystem. And yet, this rule only allows 1 hour of debate in the House of Representatives on this bill. I might add, the amendments that were talked about in the Rules Committee last night, the amendments that actually address some of the deficiencies which I'll be getting into about this bill, are not allowed under this rule. In fact, out of the 12 amendments allowed, two of them are actually the same. The same exact amendment allowed twice. And yet a number of other amendments are not even allowed to be debated or voted on here on the floor of the House. I hold in my hands many, many amendments that were brought forward by Members of both parties and under this rule were prevented from being debated upon here on the floor of the House, which is why I strongly encourage my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the rule and ``no'' on the underlying bill in its present form. There's no disagreement that cybersecurity is a very real and important issue. Threats come from criminal enterprises, they come from nation states, they come from corporations, they come from 16-year- olds. There's a variety of threats to both the public and private sector both here and abroad. The question is, What's the solution? One of the first fallacies with the premise of this bill at the 20,000-foot level is, Who helps who? Frankly, it is the government that needs to learn and the private sector that leads the way. I've talked to a number of technology executives, having been a technology executive before I got here, and they are frequently ahead of the government. Because everyday they're fighting hacking attempts and they're on the front lines of cybersecurity. Now it's not a doubt whether they want free help. Who wouldn't want free help? Should we in fact as taxpayers subsidize the defense of those who have not invested in their own cybersecurity? Should this be a bailout of companies with poor cybersecurity? But the truth of the matter is most of the learning that needs to occur is from the private sector to the government. And, in fact, we're taking some of those steps. The government and the NSA are using private contractors who are in the forefront of this issue every day, and that's more of the direction we need to go. The notion that somehow the government would be of assistance to companies is laughable to many of the technology executives that I talk to; nor would they expect to call the government for help when they themselves are so far ahead. But to the extent we want to get the government involved with information and with the private sector here, we need to be very careful how this information is used, not just from a civil liberties perspective, which we'll be talking about, but because this is an economic issue; it's a confidence issue. The Internet has been a tremendous engine of innovation and economic growth. And we should be concerned for the Internet ecosystem, concerned for the millions of jobs, concerned for the great value that's been created, the benefits to consumers across the country, the way it's touched our lives in so many ways. What's fundamentally flawed in this approach is it trumps privacy agreements in terms of use that Internet companies enter with their users. So you could sign up for a service on the Internet, it could say explicitly we will not share this information with the government unless required by law, in terms of use--and frequently there are statements analogous to that in there--and the minute you click send and complete it, if this bill were law, the company you gave that information to could then turn around, in violation of their own terms of use, and provide all that information to the government. The limitations on what the government would do with that information are completely inadequate. There is a section of the bill on pages 10 and 11 that deals with those limitations. First, it says that information can be used for cybersecurity purposes. Okay, that's the purpose of the bill: investigation and prosecution of cybersecurity crimes. That's okay. Then it goes far afield into pretty much everything. It talks about bodily harm, danger of death. When we look at bodily harm and bodily injury, that includes things under USC section 18, 365: cuts, abrasions, bruises, disfigurement, including mental pain. So this is anything the government wants to use the information for. Paper that can cause paper cuts. The government can collect who's buying paper, who's buying scissors, who's playing football, who's organizing gun shows, who's a Tea Party enthusiast.

Mr. POLIS

Mr. POLIS. I yield the gentleman an additional minute.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. If we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to this rule that will allow the House to hold a vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act. Here we are in 2013--2013--and yet women make 77 cents for every dollar made by a man for equal work. Equal pay is not just a problem for women, but for all American families who work hard to pay their bills. It's high time that this body took up the Paycheck Fairness Act, which we will do if we defeat the previous question. To discuss our proposal, I would like to yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Mr. POLIS. I yield the gentlelady an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. POLIS. Before further yielding, I am going to yield 30 seconds to the gentlelady from Connecticut to respond.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Delaney).

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, rather than addressing a number of issues that my colleagues have talked about here today, whether that issue is gas prices, whether it's equal pay for women, whether that's equal pay in the White House or equal pay for Main Street America, that's something that's important to American families. Whether it's balancing our budget, whether it's keeping taxes low and making sure that American businesses can go and create jobs, none of those things are being talked about here today. Instead, we are bringing forward a bill that would be a bureaucratic nightmare, all without protecting a single American worker and without protecting a single American business. This bill was reported out of the Education and the Workforce Committee, on which I serve, without a single Democratic vote, and it is being rushed to the floor for consideration at a time when we face record deficits, record gas prices, have a crisis for which we need to create jobs; yet here we are, debating a bill that will go nowhere, and if it did, it would destroy jobs in our country. I'd love to see us spending more time balancing the budget and in training and educating our workforce--preparing kids for the jobs of the future. We have limited floor time here in Washington. Every moment that we have is sponsored by the taxpayers of this great country. We owe it to those who elect us and those who pay for this body to be open as they pay for the very cameras which allow Americans to watch us here today. We owe it to them to invest the limited time we have here wisely, on critical issues of national importance, including making sure that women across our country are paid the same amount for equal work. If we are going to have a discussion of the NLRB, let's at least do it in a serious way rather than trying to enshrine a D.C. District Court decision into law. Let's bring businesses and workers together and have serious discussion; involve Senate Republicans, involve Senate Democrats, involve the administration to come up with a better framework for ensuring that labor and management can work together to promote American competitiveness, to grow jobs and to grow the middle class. That's not what today's process is about, but these are just a few of the ways we could improve the broken process. Unfortunately, again, it seems like the Republicans have chosen none of the above. I urge a ``no'' vote on the rule and on the bill, and I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question. With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. POLIS. I am ready to close, and I yield myself the remainder of my time.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I would respond to the gentlelady that most women in this country don't work for the White House. Most women in this country work for private sector employers, public sector employers, and others. We care about all women. We want to ensure paycheck fairness--same work, same pay. But somehow addressing this among a handful of women in the White House hardly addresses the real needs of American families, where women across our country in Colorado, in California, North Carolina, and Texas are earning 77 cents on the dollar. It's unfair. And as my colleague Mr. Delaney pointed out, it doesn't enhance American economic competitiveness. It hurts us as a country to have pay based on bias rather than merit. It's simply the wrong way to go. President Obama needs this body to act and pass the Paycheck Fairness Act for us to be able to make sure that pay discrimination cannot endure in this country. With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee). (Ms. JACKSON LEE asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. POLIS. I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Texas.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I have one remaining speaker. I happen to have a gentlelady currently working for the Rules Committee sitting next to me here and helping with our research on this bill, and she informs me she used to work for the White House. She's a female. She tells me she was paid the exact same amount as her male colleagues. With that, I'd like to yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur).

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

Mr. POLIS. I thank the gentlelady for yielding the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to both the rule and the underlying bill. The bill is inaccurately named. In fact, quite to the contrary, the bill should be called the Creating Greater Uncertainty in Labor-Management Relations Act, throwing into question actions of this Board, decisions on both sides, as well as agreements that have been reached through the process in the interest of business, as well as working Americans. Two weeks ago, Congress approved a continuing resolution on a bipartisan basis to prevent the Federal Government from closing. There were give-and-takes. There were things in it from both sides that weren't perfect. Nevertheless, the majority and minority in this House, the Republicans and Democrats, worked together in good faith, successfully, to prevent a government shutdown, consistent with what the American people wanted and consistent with any responsible stewardship of the public trust. After achieving that, I was initially optimistic that when the House reconvened this week, we might be able to build on the spirit of compromise, perhaps tackling the difficult issue of fixing our broken immigration system and replacing it with one that works, that restores the rule of law, perhaps dealing with some of the gun safety issues that are being debated across society, perhaps dealing with tax reform and bringing down our rates and broadening the base, perhaps dealing with finally battling our budget deficit. But, instead, here we are back in Congress, picking up where we were before we worked together on the continuing resolution, passing pointless bills for presumably political reasons--bills that have no sign of passage in the Senate, bills that have a direct veto threat from the President of the United States, which is in his Statement of Administration Policy which I entered into the Record last night in the Rules Committee, and just as importantly, a bill that has no positive impact on the most important issue facing our country today--job creation and economic growth. Mr. Speaker, this bill is an attack on American workers; this bill is an attack on American businesses. Pure and simple, H.R. 1120 would effectively shut down the National Labor Relations Board, invalidate all 569 decisions that the NLRB made between January 12 and March of this year. My colleagues claim this is a response to the D.C. Circuit Court decision. But when have we ever enshrined an intermediate court decision into statute? It makes absolutely no sense. This court decision found that nearly all recess appointments are invalid; but the reality is the decision of the D.C. Circuit conflicts entirely with judicial precedent and past practice. President Reagan made 232 recess appointments. George H.W. Bush made 78. George W. Bush made 171. So far, President Obama has made 32--far fewer than his predecessors. In fact, every President since Reagan has appointed a member of the NLRB through a recess appointment. In the absence of legislative action, any responsible Chief Executive takes the prerogative to make our laws and system of government work. If this body fails to pass immigration reform, the President might build upon the deferred action program and try to do what he can for detention reform. We need to change the laws. But failing that, what can a President do besides try to make those laws work? In the absence of taking up ESEA reauthorization, in the absence of replacing No Child Left Behind with a Federal education law that gets accountability right and expands and replicates what works in public education and improves what isn't working, in the absence of doing that, the President and Secretary Duncan have taken the prerogative to grant waivers for States on a statutory framework that we know is insufficient and doesn't work. So, again, it's no surprise that, in the absence of taking up nominees, the President used his recess appointment power to make sure that the important functions of government could continue. When have we ever, as a House, responded directly to intermediate circuit court decisions by instantly making them statutes? Look, the majority of this House of Representatives wasn't so confident in the D.C. Circuit when it said that ObamaCare was constitutional. We didn't see bills instantly to say ObamaCare is constitutional because the D.C. District Court said it was constitutional. What about when the D.C. District Court upheld the constitutionality of civil unions in Washington, D.C.? Was there a bill from my colleagues on the other side to instantly say that civil unions are constitutional? Look, this is in process through the judicial branch of government. We need to wait until the Supreme Court has decided if they will even rule in this case before we decide what to do on a statutory basis. The executive branch needs to make the mechanisms of government work to the best of their ability. The legislative branch makes the laws. The judicial branch determines if either of the other two branches impugn the rights of one another or of the American people. It is a system that has served us well since our founding, and it's one that this bill flies in the face of. Again, despite this bill's title, ``Preventing Greater Uncertainty in Labor-Management Relationships,'' it actually achieves the exact opposite--creates greater uncertainty in labor-management relationships. It throws judicial precedent and nearly 600 NLRB rulings into limbo. American businesses would be severely harmed if this bill were to become law, which, of course, there is no chance of. It won't be taken up by the Senate. The President would veto it. But were it to become law, like many other political measures that have been pursued in this body, it would generate regulatory uncertainty that would hang over business, hurting their valuations, preventing hiring of new employees, hurting the public marketplace, impacting entrepreneurs, employers, and workers to the detriment of our economy, destroying jobs in this country. Without a forum in which to mediate disagreements, labor and management, alike, have no recourse to iron out their differences and less incentive to iron out their differences. Passage of this bill could cause more strikes from workers, damaging businesses and hurting workers. The underlying bill could very well be named the ``Strike Promotion Act.'' Instead of allowing Members and encouraging both sides of labor- management disputes to offer improvements and find common ground, quite the contrary, it destroys the very incentives that they have to reach agreement. Mr. Speaker, it's too bad that the NLRB has become such a political punching bag, because I and many of my colleagues would certainly enjoy the opportunity to debate commonsense proposals to improve the relationship between employers and employees. If we want to have a debate about the NLRB, let us have that debate directly, not through some imposition into judicial prerogative. Let's bring in representatives from businesses and labor organizations. Let's hear from workers and businesses across America. Look, if there's improvements to be made to the process that can lead to quicker response times, that can lead to fairer adjudication, if there's improvements that American businesses and American workers can agree on to make the process work better for economic growth and prosperity, let's do it. This bill does none of that. It leads to more strikes, leads to greater economic uncertainty, leads to destruction of jobs, leads to an interruption in the ability of a Chief Executive of this country--whomever he or she may be--from implementing the law to the best of their ability; and it's a bill that is, frankly, a waste of our time to even debate here on the floor of the House since we know that it has no chance of passage. This bill is purely put before us for political intentions to perhaps satisfy some fringe element somewhere that likes this bill and likes to bash the rights of workers. But there's a lot of important work to be done, work that is too important for us to waste our time on this form of political posturing, which only stands to destroy jobs, hurt the economy, and create greater uncertainty, damaging American businesses and American workers. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. POLIS. Well, it sounds like I agree with the gentlelady on many of our national priorities. For goodness sake, let's reform the Tax Code; let's bring down rates. Gas prices, my constituents are complaining about them; let's take action. Preventing tax increases, balancing the budget, making sure that we have a business climate that's friendly for small businesses, why aren't we talking about any of that on the floor of the House today instead of enshrining a D.C. District Court decision into statute, to the detriment of job creation, to the detriment of American business, against many of those great concepts that my colleague, Dr. Foxx, espoused? So, I mean, I think there's got to be a connection here. I think the American people are smart enough to make it. It's great to pay lip service to all these wonderful things that Democrats and Republicans want to pursue, but what are we doing with our legislative time that taxpayers pay for here in the House? We're trying to prevent the President from implementing the law that Congress has made. With that, Mr. Speaker, I'd like to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews). (Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. POLIS

Mr. POLIS. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt), a member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Mr. POLIS. I have to take a moment to correct the gentlelady from North Carolina, my colleague, Dr. Foxx, who quoted, ``The lady doth protest too much,'' saying it was from Canterbury Tales. It is actually from Shakespeare's Hamlet. I'm sure the gentlelady, upon further reflection, will concur. I will add this bill, like Hamlet, is indeed a tragedy. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin). (Mr. LANGEVIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)