Hal Rogers

Mr. ROGERS

Mr. ROGERS. Thank you, Congressman Duncan, for the time, and thank you for taking this special order. Madam Speaker, I rise as well as the others to pay tribute to this great man. In this age of candidates and officeholders blown dry and buttoned down, much of us looking alike, Jimmy Quillen stands out. He is of the old school, and I say that in a very complimentary way. He is of the old school. Jimmy Quillen is a character. Jimmy Quillen is himself. He does not try to be anybody else, and I am glad that he does not. He has lent advice and leadership and guidance for all of us as we came along. I represent a district in Kentucky just across the line from Tennessee, my district boundaries being on Tennessee. In fact, my old district before the reapportionments of the 1990's, my district boundaried that of Jimmy Duncan's father, John Duncan. In fact, he was born and raised in Oneida, TN, in Scott County, which is just across the line from where I live. So Jimmy Duncan and his father, John, and Jimmy Quillen and that bunch were all of the same attitude and same ideas. So when I came here in 1981, January of 1981, Jimmy Quillen, of course, had been here by that time a long, long time, as had John Duncan. And those were two people that I just sort of fell in with because we talked the same language, and we had the same ideas, and we came from the same roots and identified with people who did not speak with an accent. So Jimmy Quillen became sort of a mentor for a lot of us. And in this seat right down here, I am sure it has been mentioned in the special orders tonight, this second seat from the end on the second row in front of the leader's table, the Jimmy Quillen seat, is the place where we sort of headquartered around. We all knew that when you tried to occupy that particular seat, when Jimmy Quillen came along, he simply stood there until you got up and left. This was his seat. Now, people that are not Members of the House may not recognize that we do not have assigned seats in this body. We can sit wherever we want to, and you are entitled to sit where you want to, except that seat. That is Jimmy Quillen's seat. It does not have his name on it, but it has his imprint on it. We all knew this was where he sat. When he came, we all got up and left and let him have his seat. But we all hung around him, we still do, and for the reason that Jimmy Quillen embodies intelligence and custom and tradition and leadership and stability and the continuity of this great institution. Madam Speaker, we are going to miss his stalwart--I mean, this is an institution in and of himself inside this institution, and those of us who over the years have gone to Jimmy Quillen for advice on how to vote on a given issue or what he thought about this position or that position, we are going to be bereft without his guidance. We wish him well in his retirement. Fortunately, Jimmy Quillen has his good health and he has good intelligence, superior intelligence, and he is going to fare well whatever he may choose to do, if anything. But we hope that he will come back here and from time to time give us his advice on the issues that confront our country, as he has over these years. The service this man has rendered to his Nation over these decades is going to be hard to judge. It is going to be hard to comprehend because he served so long and so well. His tenure has spanned that of many Presidents, of great eras in our country. He has, above all, represented his people so well. Here we talk about great issues and we talk about great movements in the Nation, but all of us represent people back home. Jimmy Quillen did that better than anybody I know. His first interest was that of his people back home. What do they think about this? What should I do about this issue as it affects them? And so his example for the rest of us, I am going to say, is almost unexampled because Jimmy Quillen is one of a kind. His example for the rest of us is going to last a long, long time. I thank the gentleman for taking this time to honor our friend and our leader and our mentor and colleague and our friend for life. We wish him well in his retirement, and we hope that he will come back here and give us his sage advice every moment that he can. I am just as sure of this, whenever he comes back, whoever is sitting in that chair is going to get up and leave so that Jimmy Quillen can sit there as long as he wants. I thank the gentleman.

Mr. ROGERS

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Speaker, obviously, I stand here in support of a good, fiscally sound bill that provides for the national security, as well as for important comfort to small forgotten communities that are flooded routinely. I support the bill very strongly. Mr. Speaker, I rise for a much more, I think, important reason. That is to personally state, and I think I speak for all Members of the body when I say this, how much we owe a debt of gratitude to Chairman John Myers and to his very able ranking member, Tom Bevill. This subcommittee has truly worked in a very nonpartisan way under Chairman Bevill earlier and now under Chairman Myers. Yogi Berra said you can observe a lot just by watching, and I have been watching the operation of these two men in that subcommittee for a number of years now. I have never heard a partisan word spoken in that subcommittee, never. Every member of the subcommittee, regardless of party, is given equal standing to say or do whatever they think is best. And the chairman, Chairman Myers, and before him, Chairman Bevill, always gave us the opportunity to speak, to make our case and, whenever possible, when they could find the money, they were always there to try to help their colleagues help their part of America. They say that the only place where success comes before work is the dictionary, and I can say that on this subcommittee that certainly is true. The big success of this subcommittee has been the tremendous hard work that goes into it. There are literally thousands of projects and programs that this subcommittee has to go through every year, many of them extremely complicated. The Nation's nuclear laboratories, for example, and the nuclear programs the subcommittee has to oversee, many of them top secret military matters which have to be heard behind closed doors, you get no glory for that type of thing. These men sought no glory, certainly, in their work on the subcommittee. I stand here mainly to thank John Myers and Tom Bevill, two Members obviously, of course, who are choosing to retire. TheHouse and, more importantly, the Nation will be at a great loss because the accumulated and cumulative experience and expertise of these two men on all the projects covered in this very important bill will be sorely missed. It is going to be really tough for the rest of us to try to pick up the slack that is laying there, really tough, because none of us have the experience nor the expertise that these two gentlemen have accumulated over the years. They have both been here quite a few years, not long enough but quite a few. But they have been here just long enough to pick up a vast amount of knowledge and expertise that we are going to sorely miss. Mr. Speaker, they say that duty makes one do a job well but that love makes one do a job beautifully. I have to tell my colleagues that the job these two gentlemen have been doing for their Nation has been beautiful, and we appreciate their love of Nation and their love of their work more than we can every say. They were also able to keep their eye on the horizon. They had to realize they have a finite number of dollars to spend and an incredible amount of work to do. They were always able to keep their eyes on that larger picture. The larger picture was something so important to our Nation that in its very earliest days it was given the highest of priorities by one of my favorite people in all time, and that is Henry Clay from my beloved State of Kentucky, who had what he called the American plan. Henry Clay the conservative, the fiscal conservative, believed that one of the most important things that we had to do as a nation was build its canals and its roads and its infrastructure. And this great conservative led the charge to defend the American plan and promote it. And these two gentlemen have picked up that cause and have carried it to a new height, in my judgment; that is, protecting and building the infrastructure, the important things that make our Nation work for all of us. And that is their modern day American plan, one that we support. They have kept their eyes on that horizon. I will close with this. Two stonecutters were asked the same question: What are you doing? The first one said, why, I am cutting this stone into two blocks. But the second one said, and these would be the answers of both John Myers and Tom Bevill, the second stonecutter said, I am on a team that is building a cathedral. Gentlemen, you have built a great America in large part and we thank you for that.

Mr. ROGERS

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Speaker, this morning I pay tribute to Ralph Gabbard, a friend and a servant to Kentucky. Ralph passed away Tuesday night at the young age of 50. Ralph was a radio and TV broadcaster all of his life. And from his teenage days as a radio disc jockey in the 1960's, Ralph grew to serve our State, and unintentionally made a name for himself, like no other media person of our time. Unassumingly, yet with tenacity, he went about the task of being the best broadcaster he could be, and succeeded. He redefined what we call the broadcaster's public service obligation. His commitment to news, his commitment to community, his commitment to industry excellence, was unsurpassed inside or outside of the TV stations and boardrooms where his legacies will live.

Mr. ROGERS

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding this time to me. Mr. Chairman, I support this bill because it protects our fighting men and women from incompetent leadership at the U.N., military leadership. I am chairman of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and State in the Committee on Appropriations that funds the U.N. contributions that we make, as well as the peacekeeping contributions that we give to the United Nations. We have been working to limit U.S. support for additional so-called peacekeeping operations and to reduce the U.S. burden, the share that we are required to pay for those missions. During the last 3 years we have seen this phrase, aggressive multilateralism, carried to an extreme, run amok, if my colleagues will, because we were involved at one time in around 18 U.N. peacekeeping missions around the world simultaneously, and I found out at one point in time--it has been improved somewhat--but at one point in time there were some 40 people at the United Nations attempting to manage 18 worldwide military operations in extreme circumstances in some instances. It just would not work. They were not working on weekends; they were working only regular hours. If one got in trouble in Somalia or somewhere else where we were involved in a peacekeeping operation after 5 o'clock New York time until 8 o'clock the next morning, ``Sorry, we are out of business,'' the phones did not answer. On weekends, the same thing. How can we run military operations in that fashion? I do not want American forces exposed to that kind of incompetent leadership as we saw in Somalia, the results of that and the deaths of several beloved United States soldiers, and so I support this bill. They have incompetent leadership; they have incompatible communications gear, among other things. I urge the adoption of the bill.

Mr. ROGERS

Mr. ROGERS. These steps are in addition to the funding we already voted out of the House for antiterrorism in fiscal 1997. We voted for an additional $210 million as a part of our bill just last week including $171 million more for the FBI alone. This House has been consistent and single minded. We have been consistent and single minded since Oklahoma City, since the World Trade Center, and since the most recent tragic events in taking steps necessary to move the war against terrorism forward. Today this bill, a part of a four-part initiative, is moving forward to ensure that the resources and authorities to fight terrorism are in place. We expect that they will be used by the administration effectively for the first time in a long time.

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding this time to me. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this antiterrorism legislation. It contains many important provisions to step up the fight against terrorism including aviation security, criminal penalties for terrorist activities, and measures to combat international state terrorism. This bill, important as it is, is only the first part of a four-part initiative we are undertaking today in the fight against terrorism. This is a comprehensive initiative to provide necessary laws, funding, and action to do what is necessary to mobilize as a country against the lawless criminals--foreign and domestic--who seek to wreak havoc on the innocent men, women, and children of this country. Here is what the four-part initiative consists of. First, passage of this all-important piece of legislation, put together in less than a week to mount a frontal assault to the tragic events of the last few weeks of TWA Flight 800 and Atlanta's Centennial Park. Second, demanding today that this administration put aside its inaction and immediately spend the money Congress has already provided to exponentially increase its efforts to fight terrorism. Third, we provide the funding in the 1997 appropriations bill which the House passed last week to further expand funding for the FBI and for the Justice Department to increase their resources. Fourth, as chairman of the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, State, and Judiciary of the Committee on Appropriations, I am announcing this minute that I am approving reprogrammings in the Department of Justice directing the administration to use $54 million in surplus funds to add to existing antiterrorism efforts. This Congress has been extraordinarily responsive in providing tools to this administration for the war against terrorists--tools the administration has failed to utilize. In response to Oklahoma City and the World Trade Center bombings, the Congress provided $359 million to the Department of Justice in fiscal 1995 and 1996 for counterterrorism, $239 million for the FBI alone. As of July 27, 5 days ago, the FBI had spent 24 percent of that, $58 million out of $239 million. As a result, the FBI Counter-terrorism Center, designed to anticipate and prevent terrorist incidents that the President so proudly requested and we approved on July 17, 1995, does not exist. It is not functional. The money is laying there. Critical upgrades to the FBI Command Center for terrorism, meant to coordinate responses during multiple events--which would have been useful for Atlanta and TWA Flight 800--have not been made. About 400 technicians, engineers, and analysts, desperately needed to support agents and tactical operations and surveillance activities for counterterrorism, have not been hired. The money is there, has been for 2 years. That is the posture that we have come to expect of this administration: All talk, no action. Calling on the Congress in 1995 to provide resources against terrorism--which we did--and then sitting on the money, not following through, and claiming every bureaucratic reason in the book to explain why the moneys have not been spent. I hope to God that no terrorism event that has occurred or will occur could have been prevented had this money that we gave been effectively used. We have asked the administration to come up and explain to us why these moneys have not been put to use, and we put the administration on notice that the failure to use existing resources is inexcusable. And so today, as a third part of our initiative, we are going to go one step further. Today, as chairman of our subcommittee, by letter I am directing the FBI to move forward on 54 million dollars' worth of counterterrorism initiatives. To combat international terrorism, $3.5 million to open four new FBI overseas offices; $4 million to combat Middle Eastern terrorism; to provide the capability to intercept digital communications; $6 million to establish the FBI telecommunications industry liaison unit; and $0 million as the initial funding of the new digital telecommunications fund which we approved as a part of our bill last week. These steps are in addition to the funding we have already voted out of this House for antiterrorism funding in fiscal 1997. parliamentary inquiry

Mr. ROGERS. We are.

Mr. ROGERS

Mr. ROGERS. I yield to the gentleman from Oklahoma.

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Obey], the ranking member of the full committee.

Mr. ROGERS. I do, Mr. Chairman, but pending that, I seek time to oppose the amendment.

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order against the amendment.

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, this is a noncontroversial amendment. I am offering this amendment to address concerns raised by some coastal Members on both sides of the aisle. The amendment would make some minor internal shifts within NOAA in order to restore funding for endangered species recovery programs, primarily for salmon recovery in the Pacific Northwest. Funding for these activities would be offset from within NOAA. It would cost no extra money. I know of no objections. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Oregon [Ms. Furse].

Mr. ROGERS. I yield to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia.

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California [Mr. Dooley].

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. McCollum], chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime of the Committee on the Judiciary.

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to my colleague, the gentleman from West Virginia [Mr. Mollohan].

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/4\ minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Roth].

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I reluctantly rise in opposition to the gentleman's amendment due primarily to the strong opposition of the chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. McCollum] whose authorization committee has oversight of the Federal prison industries program. Here is another instance, Mr. Chairman, where I have a chairman of the appropriate authorizing subcommittee saying to me, ``Do not put authorization language in your appropriations bill.'' I do not know the merits particularly of the gentleman's proposal, but I am objecting on procedural grounds, primarily because the authorization committee wants this considered in this subcommittee, not in an appropriations bill. Mr. McCollum has asked that I raise his concerns with regard to this amendment because he is detained at this moment in an important hearing in his subcommittee and simply cannot get away. I am speaker more or less in place of the gentleman from Florida [Mr. McCollum]. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman's amendment, as I understand it, seeks to ensure that the Federal Prison Industries consider 20 percent of the Federal market for new products that they produce as the reasonable share and, thus, the limit of the market they shall obtain. As the gentleman knows, the Federal Government is the only consumer of products that the Federal Prison Industries produces. According to the authorization committee, the amendment would have the following impact: One, it would effectively prevent Federal Prison Industries from even bidding for a significant number of Government contracts by severely narrowing the definition of ``new product''; Two, it would undermine the statutory process passed by Congress to decide what products the Federal Prison Industries sells to the Federal Government and in what amounts; And three, it would drastically limit any growth of Federal Prison Industries. It would severely limit Federal Prison Industries from giving work skills and real job experience to the overwhelming majority of inmates incarcerated in the future. In addition, the Bureau of Prisons is opposed to this legislation being added to the appropriations bill. They believe the changes to Federal Prison Industries requirements should be completely vented and hearings held and dealt with in the full authorization context. I also understand the authorization committee plans to begin extensive hearings on the future of Federal Prison Industries after the August break. I am told that the chairman of that committee, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. McCollum], has agreed to consider this proposal as part of a planned overhaul of the entire Federal prison industry system. While I understand that the gentleman may not agree with the impact of his legislation that the authorization committee is asserting, I believe that this disagreement and lack of true understanding of the impact is cause to object to this language on an appropriations bill. This is another complicated issue, Mr. Chairman, that we could debate the impact of, but once again, this is not the process that we do that. There is a reason why there is a rule of the House saying legislation shall not be placed on an appropriations bill, authorizing legislation, because we need to have hearings and study and think and have all input from all angles in a sustained period of time, not in a 10-minute burst of time on an appropriations bill where we do not simply understand the impact of what we may be doing. It deserves the attention of the authorization committee, and the chairman of that committee has asked that the process be respected, that we not legislate on this bill will a matter subject to his jurisdiction. For that reason, Mr. Chairman, although I highly respect the gentleman and his amendment, I have to urge a ``no'' vote on his amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ROGERS. The gentleman's language is, in fact, included in the bill under title VI. amendment offered by mr. collins of Georgia

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, in concluding, let me thank the Members who have spoken for their nice compliments, but the gentleman from Oklahoma [Mr. Watts] makes a very strong case. He puts a strong arm on a person, as well as the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia [Ms. Norton], and of course our colleague on the subcommittee and ranking member, the gentleman from West Virginia [Mr. Mollohan]. We are all of one mind on this, and we had of course the amendments yesterday which sought also to increase, but we were able to find a modest increase instead of the one sought, and we were able to find a place where I think we can take money from another account without harming that other account or, certainly, the war on crime, drugs, or control of our borders. So I congratulate the parties for hard work and making a very strong case, and with that, I am prepared to yield back, hoping we can get to a final conclusion. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. ROGERS

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Speaker, last night I offered a unanimous-consent request that was agreed to for the further consideration of H.R. 3814. There was an inadvertent error in that request that I would now like to correct. I ask unanimous consent that the earlier agreement be modified so that the gentleman from Iowa [Mr. Ganske] may offer an amendment regarding the patenting of medical procedures for 20 minutes instead of amendment No. 16 printed in the Record that is on the same subject. Mr. Speaker, I understand this has been cleared with the minority.

Mr. ROGERS

Mr. ROGERS. I yield to the gentleman from Indiana.

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, this amendment deals with a project in Missouri's Eighth Congressional District, which has been represented, as we all know, by the late and great Bill Emerson. The St. John's-New Madrid project was authorized in the Water Resources Development Act of 1986, but was delayed due to disagreements between the Corps and the local sponsor over cost-sharing issues. Those issues I am told have now been resolved. This amendment would provide money for the project, allowing the Corps to complete its planning work and to sign formal agreements with the sponsor and begin construction. This project is a priority in this district because of the flooding that it would prevent. It provides levee protection for 400 acres of prime farmland in a three-county area and it will protect three townships, two of which have suffered flooding this year. It will also prevent flooding on two major U.S. interstate highways. This amendment provides a relatively small amount, $250,000 for the project, so that the Corps can move it along. Mr. Chairman, I want to say as vice chairman of the subcommittee what a pleasure it has been working with the gentleman from Indiana, John Myers, and the gentleman from Alabama, Mr. Bevill, two stalwart giants of this body whom we will all miss very much. It has been a great pleasure working with them, seeing them work from the inside. It is as pleasurable as seeing them work from the outside.