Dana Rohrabacher

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. So, if the people of Puerto Rico really wanted statehood, that could be demonstrated by a ``yes'' or ``no'' vote on statehood, for which my amendment would have provided; but the sponsors of this legislation don't want an up-or-down vote on statehood, apparently because they don't think they can get that outcome in a fair vote. So they want to set up the scenario, the only scenario by which they can win--a popularity contest between statehood, independence, and free association. The people of Puerto Rico have a right to have an up-or-down vote on whether they want statehood right now as compared to their own status. This is a skewed poll, and it is stacking the deck. We should vote against this attempt to misrepresent the people of Puerto Rico.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise to draw attention to the ongoing plight of the people of Burma, now referred to as Myanmar. Shortly after the Second World War, Burma was granted its independence from Great Britain. With democratic institutions in place, rich natural resources and an educated population, it was expected that Burma would become a wealthy, stable and free country. Sadly, that country, with so much potential, has been dominated by corrupt tyrants. And despite its vast natural wealth, its people suffer in abject poverty. Even worse, the people of Burma are actually losing their country to a foreign power. A Chinese power grab is not only depleting and stealing Burma's natural resources, but slowly and surely, Burma is being turned into a subservient province of Beijing. China is literally stealing Burma from its own people, and it is accomplishing this monumental crime with the assistance of Burmese Government officials whose lust for power is greater than any loyalty to their own national homeland. The patriots and freedom-loving people of Burma will either join against tyranny and foreign domination, or their country will be lost for generations to come. If Burma is to be saved, there needs to be reconciliation between the Burmans and those ethnic peoples who make up half of that country's population. In a decades-old insurgency, the ethnic fighters have been the primary source of opposition to Burma's iron-fisted dictatorship. Urban democratic leaders like Aung San Suu Kyi and other patriotic Burmans have been beaten down and repressed and imprisoned. These two elements must come together, the Burmans and the ethnic groups that are fighting the Burmese dictatorship. They must come together as one under a banner promising respect for the rights and traditions of various people, those various people who make up the wonderfully diverse nation of Burma. An opposition coalition must be joined also by patriots in the military, professional soldiers who seek to remake their army into a respected defender of the nation, not a tool of corruption and foreign domination. It is time for leaders in the army to join the people and build a new, prosperous and free and, yes, independent Burma. In the blink of an eye, Burma--Myanmar--can reclaim its sovereignty and can be put on the path to national reconciliation, democracy, and, yes, prosperity. The military in a new Burma, as our professional armies throughout the democratic nations of the world, will be a respected institution, not a tool of foreign domination, repression, and corruption. The time has come to choose. Let the Burmese, the ethnic people of Burma, the business and military leaders who long for a legitimate and honest government, and all of the other patriots there, let them have the courage to step forward and join together and retake their country. The time is now. This is a great moment of opportunity. People of Burma, do not let this moment pass by. The world will celebrate with you as you recapture your nation. We are on your side, to the people of Burma.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, today I rise in honor of an American patriot for his service and his sacrifice to our country, Major Charles Robert Soltes of Irvine, California, the son of Colonel Soltes, who is now retired. Major Soltes had a distinguished career in the United States Army as well as in the city of Irvine, I might add, where he practiced medicine. It was in Irvine where he entered into private practice as an optometrist and set down his roots to raise a family. Dr. Soltes subsequently joined the Army Reserve and was deployed to Iraq in 2004. He worked tirelessly as a public health officer in the 426th Civil Affairs Battalion building and upgrading hospitals for the Iraqi people. On his way back from a hospital visit, his convoy was attacked by an improvised explosive device, and Major Soltes was killed on October 13, 2004. He was the first Army optometrist to be killed in action while on Active Duty. As such, it seems fitting that we honor him and his family by naming a soon-to-be-completed Veterans Affairs blind rehabilitation center in Long Beach, California, at the veterans hospital there, which is in my congressional district. Once this facility is completed, the blind rehabilitation center, it will work to deliver the same compassion and care that Dr. Soltes dedicated his entire career and gave his life for. This new 24-bed inpatient-outpatient facility, which is expected to be completed this year, will be the first purpose-built blind rehabilitation center in the national Veterans Administration, and as I say, it's located in my district, for which I have great pride. Dr. Soltes was a graduate of New England College of Optometry. He entered the U.S. Army Medical Service Corps in 1994 and treated members of the military here in the United States as well as abroad. He was well liked and respected by his colleagues. One of his superiors, Colonel Adams, whom he met while he was going through officer basic training at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, said of him, ``He was a tremendous young man. He volunteered to go into Civil Affairs, and every email he sent was upbeat and positive, and he felt he was making a real difference in the lives of the Iraqi people.'' Today, by naming this new facility after him, we are ensuring that Major Soltes' spirit lives on. Every time a patient's quality of life improves, Major Soltes, his dedication to service, will be continued. To Major Soltes and his family, we salute you. And with this act of Congress, we forever remember the sacrifice Major Soltes gave. Whether giving their most vibrant and youthful years of service to their country or laying down their lives so that we and our children can sleep safely at night, we must remember all who gave some, and some, like Major Soltes, who gave all. I appreciate my colleagues' understanding in this issue in bringing it up today. Thank you.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, as the vote on health insurance reform approaches, I've become increasingly troubled at the things that this bill fails to do. Despite claims to the contrary, the Democrat bill fails to decrease health care costs. We keep hearing about how people are being cost out of the market; they can't afford their health care, but it does not decrease health care costs. In fact, the bill would increase the cost of health care in the form of higher premiums and exorbitant new taxes on families. Furthermore, it will not prevent funds from going to illegal aliens or abortions. So that's what it doesn't do. What does it do? Well, this legislation will make sure the American people are more addicted to socialism because we will be more dependent on the Federal bureaucracy. What it will do is create a $1 trillion new program, even when we can't afford the current programs. Well, what we need to do is to make sure that we come up with a list of reforms that is a bipartisan list. The Democrats have actually ignored what Republicans have offered to reform the system in order to transform it. Well, they're transforming it by making backroom deals. That's not what the American people want. Let's come forward with what we believe in and how to make the system better and work together. But we have to start by voting ``no'' on this legislation.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, tonight I rise to discuss technology and freedom. Unfortunately, we Americans can no longer rest assured that our freedom is secure and that the genius and creativity of our people will bring forth the innovation that in the past has enabled us to deter or defeat our enemies and has given us the ability as a people to overcome economic adversity and has provided the means to elevate the standard of living and general well-being of the American people as a whole. America's greatness has been measured not by the wealth and power of our elites, as in other countries, but by the unbounding opportunity that has permitted all our citizens to live a decent, prosperous life. Now we see a great threat to that promise which until now has been taken for granted by generations of Americans. Unless we change our course, our children will not have the opportunity to live freer and better lives than what we have enjoyed. They in fact may be condemned to a dismal existence of national decline and personal deprivation. This, unless we have the wisdom to understand what needs to be done, unless we have the responsibility to commit ourselves to getting that arduous job done, unless we have the character to accept the temporary self- sacrifice needed for long-term progress and the courage to take on powerful interests who profit from current policies. Ronald Reagan used to say, and I quote, ``The phrase status quo is Latin for the mess we're in.'' Even the rest of us, the American people, suffer hurtful blows to our economic well-being. But of course that is most of the American people are suffering these blows. But there are those who enjoy great benefits from the current policies that are having such a negative impact on the rest of their fellow Americans. Our country and our people cannot much longer endure the current assault on our livelihood and personal financial stability. Yes, we will survive, individually and as a people. But Americans deserve more than survival. Ours should be the freedom and prosperity, paid for by the blood and labor of those brave souls, those patriots, who over our Nation's 234 years stepped up and met the challenges every time to the dream of 1776, the dream that was threatened quite often in our country's history from within and from without. But now, of course, it is up to us, the United States. That is us. It is us versus them, the patriots versus the establishment clique, or perhaps best described as the globalists. In the last year, we have watched in horror as hundreds of billions of our people's dollars have been channeled to a clique of Wall Street and financial market elites, many of whom put their companies at risk with irresponsible business decisions and then rewarded themselves with huge bonuses. Humble individuals would step forward to give back bonuses in such situations. No, not this crew. They didn't learn that at their Ivy League schools. Not one has expressed remorse nor gratitude, much less expressed a willingness to pay back the personal gains, huge personal gains made while driving their companies' solvencies into the dirt. All of these bailouts, stimuluses, and giveaways have done nothing but put our country in further jeopardy. The Federal Government is now spending over $1.5 trillion more than it is taking in. We are now facing a mammoth liability that should never have been ours in the first place. We are at risk, and it is not a result of a natural calamity or an uncontrollable business cycle. It instead is based and has come to us because of bad policies and bad decisions. It is a crisis we must confront and we must deal with or it will destroy the America we have known and loved. Yes, we are facing a threat of that magnitude, a magnitude of something that could destroy the country as we know it. Yet so many decisionmakers, from city hall to Capitol Hill, and yes, to the White House act as if we can operate with business as usual, or even worse, we can put in place policies that will turn this crisis into a catastrophe by adding an even greater burden onto the shoulders of our people and onto the shoulders of those people and those productive businesses throughout our country. They think that they can even give more power and add more resources to the Federal Government. They think that the Federal Government can co-opt even more of the national wealth at the expense of the productive and wealth-generating workers and enterprises in our country. They think they can do this and we will still turn around and go up even as they are strangling those forces within our society that are necessary in order for us to succeed as a Nation. I remember a few years ago there was a story about a New York politician of probably a century ago who was giving a speech at city hall who said, ``The sword of Damocles is hanging right over Pandora's box.'' Well, there is obviously something wrong with that observation, but the bottom line is there is a sword of Damocles hanging over our heads. There is a huge threat that is present throughout Washington, DC, and yes, throughout our country. And how did we get here? How did we become so vulnerable? Well, let's all remember as we look at this, we got there because of bad decisions and bad policies, which continue. My colleague Dan Burton just went through this incredible proposal to institute what they call health care reform, which is really transformation of our health care system at the expense of billions if not trillions of dollars at a time when that expense will drive down our economy even more. As we are trying to strengthen the economy, we are going to drain it even more. It is the equivalent of bleeding patients in order to make them feel healthy, as used to be the practice. How did we get in this horrible situation where our country is so weak? Well, to start with, when we talk about bleeding resources from our country, we have sent a trillion dollars overseas in the last few decades in order to buy from foreigners energy that we could have produced here. Yet over the last 30 years we have incredibly limited our own domestic oil and gas production. We have built not one new oil refinery. We have built no hydroelectric dams. We have had no new nuclear power plants. And even as we speak, the Bureau of Land Management continues to block the construction of solar power facilities in America's deserts. This official obstructionism is aimed at protecting the habitat of some desert lizard or insect. The end result of this nonsense, all of this nonsense, of not trying to produce our own energy, not trying to develop even nuclear power or hydroelectric dams, the end result of this is that to meet America's needs, a trillion dollars or more has been drained from our economy. This has been the policy of our government, a policy pushed forward by radical environmentalists, the same ones who are probably influencing the Bureau of Land Management not even to let us have solar power plants in the desert because they care so much about lizards and insects. These radical environmentalists, who are deluded enough to believe that they are helping us by depriving us of energy and deindustrializing our country, have had a horrible influence, but no one has been willing to step up and say, ``You're wrong.'' No one has been able to confront this force because it has been politically correct. It has been popular. It has been promoted in the press as if these people are idealists. Well, they are extremists. Everyone in their right mind believes in trying to set a plan for the future and believes in clean air and a clean environment and clean soil. I have three children at home, Christian, Annika, and Tristen. Three little children. They will be 6 years old within a few months. I want these young people to have a clean environment. Of course we all do. We don't want them to be affected in a negative way, or any children in our country or around the world affected in a negative way. But the environmental extremists who dominate the majority party in this Congress are preventing us from developing our own energy resources and preventing us from having the economic progress we need to come out of this crisis. At this moment they are preventing massive amounts of fresh water, runoff from the snow melting in the High Sierras, from being channeled in California to the agricultural areas of our State. As we speak, at this moment, millions of gallons of fresh water are flowing into the ocean instead of being permitted to be used in the agricultural part of our State. All of this to protect a little fish at the demand of radical environmentalists, radical environmentalists who obviously have the ear of the majority of people who are in this body. This little fish that they are protecting, the delta smelt, is not even big enough to be used as bait. A fish that is not even indigenous to California. Yet the well-being of this little fish has been put, by the powers that be in Washington, D.C., on a higher priority by these political decision-makers than the price of food for the rest of the population, including all of our children. It has been put on a higher priority than the jobs and well-being of farm-related workers throughout California, and yes, throughout the United States. Crops are withering in California. They are withering because water is not being permitted to go to them and it is being channeled into the ocean. That is the policy. Billions of dollars of wealth as we speak are being lost forever. And one asks why our economy is on the verge of collapse? Why we haven't been producing the revenue so we end up with $1.5 trillion of deficit? Well, policies in Congress like putting wildlife and their well-being over the well-being of people actually have brought us to this situation and actually are making things worse, and are making it more difficult to work our way out of this economic challenge and this economic crisis. And it goes on and on. With these higher energy prices, which are destroying the family budget, I might add, and pushing our country into an economic crisis, it's destroying--the local people, our ordinary people, their personal budgets are just destroyed, and they have no faith. They're losing hope because they can't see their way out of this pileup of debt because the economy is being strangled, and they can't see a way they can prosper in the economy. That's what's happening to all of our people individually. But as a whole, our country is in such an economic crisis. And what does Congress do? Because these energy prices are, as I say, draining the family budget and draining the national budget, what does Congress do when it comes to energy? We pass a job-killing, energy- suppressant legislation, the cap-and-trade bill. This bill, which has passed this body in the midst of this economic crisis and as the energy crisis loomed, this bill, which passed our body, will make it even more difficult to produce the energy that we now depend on. And the excuse? Well, this time it's not saving a little fish. The excuse for passing this economy-killing, anti-energy legislation is what? Saving the planet. We can understand how they might want to save a little fish at the expense of all of us. But how are they going to save the entire planet from manmade global warming? Well, more and more evidence that this theory is bogus surfaces every day. The public and decision makers for 10 years were inundated by phony science, altered numbers, and outright fraud. Scientists who disagreed with the manmade global warming theory were cut from research grants and prevented from publishing peer-reviewed dissenting opinions. It's all coming out. Everyday we see stories verifying that this is fraud, and what's been going on, the lies that have been told, the altering of numbers and statistics, the cherry-picking of actual information that would be put into computers to come out with solutions. All of this is coming out more and more every day, yet the Congress ignores all of that, as do the science advisers of this administration. They ignore this evidence. They belittle it, claiming that the case--No, no, this is inconsequential, but the case is closed. How many have heard that expression? ``The case is closed.'' Well, that means they won't listen. That means that they won't even permit disagreement or permit an honest debate of the issue. This is what the proponents of manmade global warming have been doing for the last 2 years to stifle debate and prevent the American people from getting a balanced view of the positions, of the various positions that are taken on the proposal that mankind is changing the climate of the planet and making the planet warm up. Well, even as we wade through the snow and the freezing weather that really is gripping large parts of our country and the rest of the world, I might add, even as experts now confirm that there's been a lack of warming for 15 years, economy-killing legislation passed in the House has been put forth in the name of stopping manmade global warming. Well, at least that little fish that they were trying to save and all the hardship on regular people to save that little fish is real. That little fish is real. Manmade global warming is a hoax. I would point out there are many prominent scientists from around the world, major scientists, heads of universities, science departments, et cetera, from around the world who have taken a position that manmade global warming, as it has been presented to us, is false. Well, we've had cooling and warming cycles in the Earth's climate for millions of years. These cycles are tied to solar activity, just like temperature trends that we've identified on Mars and other bodies in our solar system. By the way, what does solar system mean? Solar, the sun. The sun is the greatest source of energy not only for our planet but for the other planets. And we see on Mars the same type of temperature trends. I guess they must think there is some sort of SUV or something being driven on Mars that creates the temperature change on Mars. Well, global warming should not be the issue because it's a fraud. What should be the issue is global pollution and the preventing of global pollution. But this distinction between global pollution, which is the pollutants that hurt human beings, versus carbon, CO2, which is something that actually is beneficial to the planet. Actually, it helps us grow more plants, and it is not harmful to human beings. The fact that they are focused on CO2 rather than pollutants hurts us in our efforts to stop the pollutants that are hurting people and at the same time is costing us billions of dollars with no payback whatsoever. In fact, we are spending billions of dollars unnecessarily in order to justify the research which has been done in order to justify the accusation that it is mankind and not the sun that is creating changes in our atmosphere. The temperature of the planet is not manmade. We can't do anything about it. But the energy shortage, the energy shortage is manmade, and we can do something about that. And that is costing us billions of dollars as well. Billions, perhaps trillions of dollars. Global warming is a fraud that has made the job of dealing with the energy crisis almost undoable. It has hampered our ability to solve the energy crisis, and we have made it worse--much worse--by legislation that was passed in this Congress in the middle of an economic crisis. For years, it has been a costly drag on our economy, this concept that we're going to try to outlaw CO2 rather than getting to pollutants. Well, now with a horrendous crisis looming, with a sword hanging over our heads, not producing domestic energy is no longer acceptable. The economic consequences are too damaging and too painful, painful to our people. We should be aggressively looking for ways to produce more energy here rather than searching for reasons to prevent increases in domestic production because that's what the powers that be in this Congress now are doing. That's what happened with the cap-and-trade bill. They are looking for reasons to prevent domestic production of the current energy that we depend upon. The end result has been, yes, a hampering of domestic production and has thus resulted in a decline in wealth generation in our country. So imagine that: We aren't being permitted to develop our own energy. Thus, the amount of wealth that's being generated in our country has been declining. And because there is less wealth, people are beginning to suffer. A transfer of wealth to those countries when we are purchasing energy that we could be producing ourselves is impoverishing our country. That's right. We could produce it ourselves, but yet we're buying it from overseas, and we have less wealth here. This, as I say, has cost our economy trillions of dollars, trillions, and we are expected to continue our economic woes even as Congress passes more restrictions on domestic energy production. Then, of course, when it comes to wealth transfer, one needs to look closely at America's trade policies, another major cause for an economic decline. We have been betrayed by wrongheaded idealists both when it comes to the environment as well as when it comes to trade policy. We have also been betrayed by powerful special interest groups in our own country who have global goals in mind, both environmentally and economically--at least that's what they say. The American people, as trusting as they are, have expected their government to represent their interests in trade negotiations. Instead, our representatives have focused on long-term global goals. And time and again, our interests as a people have been a secondary instead of a primary consideration for those with authority who are supposed to be protecting our interests. You know, when people representing the other countries sit down with us to negotiate, their people know that they're supposed to be negotiating what is in the interest of their people. We expect them to do that. The people on our side of the table have something much more majestic in mind than just the self-interest of our own people, as if there's something wrong with a Democratic government representing the interests of people who elect them. And we have gotten a short end of the stick. We have been shortchanged in these negotiations, trade negotiations, because we haven't had anybody there aggressively demanding what's in the interest of our people. But instead, we want to create a global system, and we want to convince these other people to sort of inch over in this direction so we can be part of a global effort. Now don't get me wrong, I believe in international trade. I believe really, actually, in a robust trade between free people, and I believe such a trade between free people is a benefit to both parties. Especially if the ground rules are fair and equal and negotiated out between the two peoples, a trade between democratic countries is a win- win. Well, there is obviously something seriously wrong when our economy is sputtering to a halt while our trading partners are going into high gear. Free trade between free people, which is my motto, should not be blamed for this because the problem is not free trade between free people, it's free trade on one side and controlled on the other. Free trade with a controlled and autocratic government is inherently not free. If permitted to do so, which is what our negotiators have permitted, the power of economic activity will be directed by these tyrannical governments, like China, to bolster the power of their elite, and it will be done at the expense, yes, of their own people's freedom, but it will be done at the expense of the economic well-being of our people. Under this guise of free trade, which has not been challenged-- because it isn't free trade if you're dealing with a dictatorship like China--we have had policies aimed at creating a global system. That's why we're permitting the Chinese to get away with this because we want them to be a part of a global system which includes everybody and, thus, will have a positive influence on all of these other countries. Well, the global system will supposedly include everybody--dictators, rogue regimes, countries where people are treated like serfs by gangsters, and criminals, and tyrants. Sorry, we don't need free trade or to be in a binding relationship with those types of regimes, and we don't need to be controlled by a global trading establishment that will result from all of this planetary organization of commerce. And you can bet that that global trading establishment, the systems that will be set up, will be eventually dramatically influenced, if not dominated, by nefarious regimes and self-enriching elites. This, the WTO--which is what they're trying to create as a global system--will be and is becoming more like the United Nations. The United Nations, which was a theoretical dream but in reality, a nightmare for free and democratic peoples. The U.N. is an organization that gives China, the world's worst human rights abuser, a veto, and it provides General Assembly votes to the likes of Burma, Iran, Cuba, and North Korea. Oh, that's a good gang on which we should depend upon. We should make sure we're a part of an organization that gives them an equal vote in the General Assembly to ours or gives China a veto over anything the U.N. can do. And speaking of China, here, too, is an explanation of why our country is on the verge of an economic calamity: We have permitted Communist China a one-way free trade policy for the last 20 years. And yes, when it was democratizing and opening up, such a strategy might have been justified at least for a time. During the Reagan years, we saw a liberalizing China. Reagan made it clear, and I know this because I worked with him on his speeches when he went to China, he made it clear that as long as progress toward openness and freedom continued in China, our generous trade and commerce policies would continue to be in place. Then came Tiananmen Square. Unfortunately, Reagan was not President when this historic atrocity was committed. The Tiananmen Square massacre was not something that needed to happen, but it did happen. I believe had Ronald Reagan been President, it wouldn't have happened. He would have sent a telegram to those Communist dictators and said, If you slaughter the democratic movement and end democratic reform in China, we will withdraw your credits. There will be no technology transfer. There will be no investment in your country. There will be no open market for your goods. Don't do it. That is what Reagan would have done. Do you know what the telegram was that President Bush, the father of our last President, sent? Do you know what it said to those Chinese Communist bosses about to make the decision to slaughter democracy in their own country? It didn't say anything because he never sent the letter. He never sent the telegram. In fact, there was no communication and no repercussions that the Bush Presidency used against the Communist Chinese atrocities committed in Tiananmen Square. Yet it changed history, and we let them get away with it because, you know what? There was an elite in our country that were making money by making deals with the Communist Party leadership in China. For 20 years, we have let the policies that we put in place to encourage democratization stay in place even as these brutal Chinese dictators consolidated their hold. All along, the dictatorship has been strengthened by its position and strengthened in its position by exploiting America's wealth and technology which we have heaped upon them even after Tiananmen Square. We strengthened them at our expense. Our China policy has decimated manufacturing in America and drained trillions of dollars from our economy. Note that. Again, more trillions of dollars drained from our economy. No wonder we are in an economic crisis. The regime in Beijing murders dissidents. It prosecutes and persecutes religious believers, whether they be Christians, Muslims, or Falun Gong. There is no freedom of speech, no freedom of association, no opposition parties, no free press, no independent judiciary. Yet we treat China better than we do some democratic countries, or countries that have at least made reforms, like Russia, that have made dramatic reforms, although they are imperfect. Over the years, our elite has been encouraged to make deals to set up manufacturing in China. So factories and production have been shut down in the United States, and some companies have opened up new factories. Some of those same companies have opened up new factories in China. Over and over again, it has taken its toll on us. Not all of us, of course. The corporate elite gets a substantial short-term profit by some of these forays into the Chinese market, enough to warrant big bonuses for the short term. It is our Achilles heel. Our corporate elite will sell out the well- being of their grandchildren for a quick profit next year. China, on the other hand, has long-term interests. In the long term, they get our assets and our wealth-generating technology. The bosses get rich quick selling out their employees. American consumers get cheaper products in the short term, but in the long term they and their children don't have any good-paying jobs. Not even enough to buy those cheap products. Even Congress wouldn't be stupid enough to buy that deal. Oh, but there was a sweetener to that deal, of course. The sweetener was, if we let the one-way free trade keep on, it would bring about world peace, especially peace with China. Now, isn't that something that we have heard over and over again, just like the mantra of global warming. Oh, we are going to have a democratizing China and world peace if we just continue to allow this one-way free trade policy, which is obviously not working in the interest of our people. Well, if there is one thing that liberals might like even better than stopping man-made global warming, it is world peace. And on top of that, on top of feeling good about a nice slogan, our really rich guys here in America are making a lot of money to boot, and they are friends with all of these policymakers. Well, policymakers promised political liberalization in China would result in more personal contact and more prosperity in China. To get them to do business, basically they promised us that because that is what we needed in order to keep these trade policies in place. Well, the promise that there would be a liberalization in China because they are having more interaction with us, it is what I call the ``hug a Nazi, make a liberal'' theory, and it hasn't worked. There has been no liberalization. We have created a Frankenstein monster that now threatens us militarily, and as our subject is here tonight, this gang of thieves now has leverage to drag us down and destroy our prosperity and the prosperity and well-being of our people. We are now vulnerable to a corrupt dictatorship in Beijing, and after Tiananmen Square, we have ended up not just having most-favored nation trading status, but under Bill Clinton, he made most-favored nation trading status permanent. Bush allowed after Tiananmen Square for the policy to continue; Clinton made it permanent. One of the most disturbing aspects of this unholy relationship has been the transfer of American technology to China, technology used against our remaining manufacturers and against our defenders, and technology that advances Chinese military power and threatens our safety. Technology has flowed over there. Much of the technology to which I refer was a product of R&D paid for by the American taxpayer. Letting such American innovation be used to bolster and strengthen such a monster regime in China is sinful and an incredible betrayal of the American people and a disservice to the freedom loving people of China. Let us note that I believe the Chinese people are our greatest allies. They are the ones who will rid themselves of this tyranny and save the world from this threat. We must do everything to reach out to the people of China who are our friends by fighting, by confronting, not fighting in terms of military, but confronting the Chinese dictatorship just as we should be doing in Iran. But there is a deal between our corporate elite and the Chinese hierarchy. Our corporate elite wins. Our people lose their jobs. Freedom loses. Our government has foisted this upon us. Our government permits the Chinese to keep their currency value artificially low, which makes China even more able not just to compete but to overwhelm our manufacturers. They have been keeping their currency artificially low so they can obliterate domestic manufacturing in the United States, and we have permitted the limited access of our products to their market while at the same time we have opened up our market totally to Chinese-made products. They limit our access to their markets while they have unlimited access to ours. Their currency is kept at a low level to make sure that the flow of wealth is coming in their direction by manipulating currencies. We have permitted technology and investment to go there even though it is a dictatorship. So what we have seen is trillions of dollars have been drained out of our economy. So wages in the United States have been depressed. Our manufacturing infrastructure has been nearly obliterated. We must deal with this situation or America will continue to slide down even as the power of Beijing ascends. It will continue to affect our prosperity and freedom, and we will become more docile and more subservient, even as the arrogance and the maliciousness of the Beijing regime becomes apparent. China trade policy must be on the list if we are to get ourselves out of the downward economic spiral that we are in. Trillions of dollars of wealth are being drained from our people, yet we hear no such proposals about China trade. In fact, there is legislation making its way through Congress that would make the situation worse, surprise, surprise. It would result in even more American technology and know-how ending up in Chinese hands and being used against us. There are proposals in Congress to weaken export control laws that control the flow of American technology. I agree that with free nations, our entrepreneurs and enterprises should be free from the heavy-handed restrictions they now face. This, of course, as long as the final destination of the people we are dealing with is not a transaction that will end up delivering products to threatening nations like China or Iran. But the American business community insists on one set of rules for all. Rather than a two-tiered system, free trade with free and democratic countries being on one tier, with continued controls over the technology transfer to countries which are controlled by dictatorships and belligerent regimes, no, they can't have that two-tiered system. It makes sense, but not to a businessman who thinks of himself as a citizen of the world, not as an American patriot or not as someone who is associated with just Americans. He is a citizen of the world. Of course, yes, he is a citizen of the world just like all people around the world, they want a fast buck. Well, it is our job to protect the interests of the American people, not the interests of an elite who want to make a fast buck in dealing with dictators. Interestingly enough, one of the issues of contention in this debate deals with the launching of U.S. satellites on Chinese rockets. The last time this was tried I thought it could be done as long as safeguards were in place to prevent transfer of technology. It turned into a national security nightmare. The safeguards were promised by the Clinton administration, but they were never enforced. When I realized this, I immediately changed my position on the issue and, in fact, conducted a personal investigation that turned out to discover a damaging transfer of rocket technology to China. Later, the Cox Commission verified our national security had been severely damaged. Now the same arguments are being made. Now current Chinese rockets, however, have benefited from the technology they took from us and were given 15 years ago. Well, if we permit them to launch our satellites on their rockets, we will be undercutting our own rocket industry. You can kiss our aerospace industry goodbye. If our major companies like Boeing and GE start outsourcing aircraft and rocket parts to China, kiss our aerospace industry goodbye. Give them even more access to our technologies, and we will not be able to recapture the economic momentum that we need to weather our current crisis. If our manufacturing and our know-how goes to China, we lose. China is and should be treated as America's adversary both in economics and an adversary to our democratic system as well. But the move to relax our restrictions and controls on the transfer of technology to China is moving forward here in Washington, as is the proposal to launch U.S. satellites on Chinese rockets. All of this is part of a trade policy that has obviously worked against us, us, the United States, the people of America. It has worked against us. Yet instead of being advocates of democracy to the Chinese leaders, as we were told would happen, our businesspeople will go there and interact with these Chinese leaders and they will become more democratic. They will learn to trust us and be more benevolent. Well, instead our business community, instead of lobbying the bad guys, is here lobbying us on these policies in order to support their buddies in Beijing. Just as disturbing, another windfall may be handed to China as well, as well as to other foreign competitors of the United States as part of a so-called patent reform bill that is making its way through the legislative process. For two decades, those very same corporate elites, especially in the electronics industry, who have been shipping jobs to China have been pushing hard for fundamental changes in America's patent system. Pro-inventiveness rhetoric has masked their attempt to dramatically diminish and even destroy the patent protection that has been enjoyed by Americans since the founding of our country. Well, our only chance of getting back from an upward economic path is to increase our efficiency to produce more wealth through innovation and to use the creative genius of our people to build the machines that will enable American workers to compete and to beat foreign adversaries. One of America's greatest assets, the bulwark of our freedom, that is the irreplaceable testament to the economic strength and wealth production in our country has been a strong patent system. It's been the right of our people, specifically written into our Constitution in article I, section 8, that guarantees the right of ownership to inventors for a given period of time in order to stimulate innovation and progress, and, yes, lead to general prosperity. And it worked. That's why Americans have had such a high standard of living. People work hard all over the world, maybe harder than Americans, but we've had the tools and the equipment and the technology and the machines to out-compete those people throughout the world and build a standard of living of ordinary people. That's what we're proud of. Other people work hard, as I say, but we produce the wealth, as never dreamed of before for normal, ordinary people, because we have the tools and the machines. And when threatened, our genius saved us from foreign despotism and tyranny, from hostile ideologies like fascism and communism. Our technological superiority is even more useful today when we are in a life-and-death struggle with radical Islam--not Islam in general, not the 1.5 billion Muslims on this planet who we have to reach out to just like we reach out to the people of China--but to the radical Islamists who would hurt us, who would kill our people as they did on 9/11. Some foreigners would like to use the product of our creative genius against us. Unfortunately, there are those in the corporate elite who are willing to let that happen. The mega-electronics industry has been investing huge sums of money, campaign donations, for 15 years to accomplish this insidious goal of diminishing or destroying America's patent protections. They are the last ones you would think would be the enemies of patent protection because they are the biggest names in the electronics industry. But why should such companies do this? Why would companies that appear to depend on innovation want to destroy the patent system? Because they produce products that contain multiple elements. Each one is a separate invention. Whether it's a cell phone or computer or other technology, there might be 20 elements that someone else invented, and they must use that capability in order to stay competitive. The big boys don't want to pay royalties to the little inventors, so instead they're negotiating an agreement that will undercut America's independent inventors, little guys, as well as other industries. It will permit these mega-tech multinational corporations to steal because they're going to make it legal. They're going to change the way the law works. They're going to diminish patent protection. Well, the fact that this will also enable other gangsters around the world and other people around the world to steal America's technology, just like they're trying to steal it from America's little guys, that's of no concern to them because these corporate elites also are global thinkers. Many of them, as I said, consider themselves citizens of the world. Yeah, globalists. For 15 years, they have tried time and again to ram through major fatal changes to our patent system, and each time they have been thwarted by a small band of patriots. That's right, the patriots can still beat the big guys. We can beat the globalists. Just last week, a bill made its way through the Senate Judiciary Committee. Chairman Leahy is looking for floor time to bring it to a vote. Once it passes, it is likely to make it through the House. The Senate's legislation will not destroy the patent system as was the case with all of the past legislation that these mega-tech industries have tried to foist upon us, but the fact is that it will undermine and diminish the current levels of protection as a compromise with these big businesses. Why should we compromise with mega-tech companies that want to diminish our rights? They say they want to harmonize our laws with the rest of the world--again, a globalist approach. No, Americans enjoy more freedom and more rights than the people of the world. If they want to harmonize their laws with us, let them increase the protection that they give to average citizens rather than diminish it. The bill right now is going in the wrong direction even though there has been compromise. It still is taking us in the wrong direction even though the mega-tech companies, some of the major players who have been calling for this bill to be passed actually helped mold the first bill that was passed through this House, these people now say they don't support the legislation. We need to just say that bill contains compromises that are doing no favor to anybody, not the big guys, the little guys, not to American competitiveness, not to those people who are inventors, not to anybody. We should just simply wait until next year. We can then build a strong coalition for patent protection with biotech, small and medium electronic firms, pharmaceuticals, colleges and universities, small inventors, all the people who actually are the mainspring of human progress for America. We can strengthen them by giving them more legal protection for their inventiveness. Of course, compromise is not good enough for these mega-electronic firms, so they actually are opposing the bill too. Let us all work together then in making sure this Leahy compromise legislation does not pass and that next year we pass a bill--not for the mega-tech companies that are trying to destroy the patent system, but for the American people who depend on innovation. The fight could go either way on this bill now, but let's hope that we can basically thwart their efforts because there are people in China and overseas right now waiting for us to change the rules in order to make sure they can get the technology and steal it from the American people themselves. By the way, since 1996, these mega-tech companies, these electronic companies, which have sent thousands and thousands of jobs over to China, have been sued by little guys in 730 cases of patent infringement. These megacompanies, they don't want to suffer those cases. They just want to be able to take that intellectual property, even though they didn't invent it, and not pay for it, and benefit and profit from it themselves without giving royalties to the inventor. That kind of dynamic put into our system will undermine American progress and bring us down. Thanks to our independent judiciary, these infringements have cost the big guys $4 billion in judgments. We need to keep in place a system in which if big guys are trying to steal from the little guys, the little guys can win, the patriots can win. But the big guys, they want to change the rules, let's see if we can do it. We need to have the American people alerted to this. To get out of this crisis, this is what we need to focus on. The American people are becoming focused because their whole way of life, their specific standard of living of their family is being threatened and they understand that. We're going to get out of this and get back on a path of economic growth. If our children are to live in peace and enjoy prosperity, we must produce our own energy, we must have trade agreements that are done not at our expense, but are mutually beneficial trade agreements, and we must protect our freedom, especially the rights of technology ownership that have served America so well. An innovative surge will give us the edge. It will give us the ability to produce more wealth, create more jobs, and keep America competitive. We can produce and grow our way out of this crisis, but the challenge will not be met by wishful thinking. Patriots must act to save the day. We can rely on freedom and technology, but only if the patriots act to ensure that freedom and technological progress are not undermined by counterproductive policies and changes in the law that have been foisted upon us by powerful interest groups or ideological zealots, or just plain idiots with influence. Patriots have to step forward, or things will continue to go haywire and the standard of living of the American people will go down. We will not sit idly by. Patriots can and will win. We will not give up our freedom. We will not give up the dream. With freedom and technology, there is no limit to what we as a people can accomplish, no limit to how far we can go, no barrier to progress that we cannot bring down. Ronald Reagan used to say there's nothing wrong with our government that cannot be fixed with one good election. Well, I would amend that by saying there is nothing wrong with our country that can't be corrected by patriots working together. And with freedom and technology, we will overcome the economic challenge and crisis that we face, and we will ensure that our children are given the freedom and the opportunity and the decent standard of living that we have enjoyed as Americans over these last few decades since the great generation of Americans stepped forward and saved the world from Nazism and saved the world from communism and saved the world from fanatics who would murder and terrorize decent people throughout the world. We have a very special role to play. Americans come from every race, every religion, every ethnic group. We have come here to show the world there is a better way, that we can live together in peace and respect each other. As this conglomerate people, we represent an ideal, not a territory, that we have to reach out to those people throughout the world and provide leadership as an example. That is what this fight is about. The patriots will win because we are doing so for the cause of all freedom and humanity. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, I rise to speak briefly about an initiative by MagTek, a company from California's 46th District, which I represent. This initiative is aimed at eliminating credit card fraud which funds gangs, crime syndicates and global terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda. I would include in the record a short excerpt from a speech describing the initiative, and I ask all of my colleagues and the American people to join us in wiping out credit card fraud. Excerpt From a Speech to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Payment Security Conference (By MagTek Chief Security Officer Tom Patterson) Billions of dollars are being stolen every year from thousands of banks, hundreds of thousands of merchants, and millions of consumers--and it's being used to fund gang activity, organized crime, and terrorist plots. And it's got to stop. Our identities and credit card information are being stolen across America, by waiters and waitresses in our restaurants, by clerks at our stores, and even our ATM machines and gas pumps. In fact, every time we hand over our credit or debit card, Americans are taking a risk that our critical information could be stolen. Last year, over $4 billion dollars was stolen from us with these methods and others like them, and many of these thefts are being perpetrated by people and machines that have been co-opted by criminal gangs. Gangs in America, like the ``Bloods'' and the ``Crips'', have now moved aggressively into the counterfeit card business, providing the devices (called skimmers), and paying out $20 for every card number stolen. In fact, counterfeit card fraud is now the third largest revenue source for many of our largest gangs, moving ahead of extortion. They make their money by selling blocks of these freshly stolen identities up-stream, to foreign organized crime. A 2009 United Nations report has identified Russian organized crime as the world's largest source of counterfeit card fraud, just ahead of the Chinese triad gangs. The largest of these, known as the Russian Business Network, is well known for purchasing these aggregated lists of identities and card numbers, combining them with near-perfect looking fake cards and then selling them on underworld- sponsored auction sites to the highest bidder. One of the largest bidders for these counterfeit cards this past decade has been Al Qaeda, who repeatedly purchases them for use in funding their terror plots around the world. The horrific bombing in the nightclub in Bali, which killed 202 people, was funded in large part by recently skimmed cards. A captured Al Qaeda handbook describes in great detail how to fund their plots, including the transliteration ``obtain credit card numbers and use them to fund the struggle.'' The security of our citizens should be paramount, especially in light of its negative effects on merchants and banks, and its role in funding of US gang violence, transnational organized crime, and global terrorism. It's time for our financial services industry to put a stop to this, by working together to allow merchants to tell the difference between our real cards, and these fakes that are plaguing our way of life. It's now possible for banks and merchants to easily and economically completely eliminate counterfeit cards from our world, and they can do it today. By adding a simple ``card authentication'' check to the credit and debit process, which works with the same 3 billion cards we already have in our wallets and the same ``swipe'' that we've come to trust over 10 trillion times per year, we will allow our retailers to simply decline counterfeit card charges and thus wipe out counterfeit card fraud around the world. All it takes to make this a reality is for the banks, processors, and merchants to agree to share the ``magnetic fingerprint'' inherent in the magnetic stripe of every card we use, and rather than arguing over costs we can be sharing the savings that come to all of us by saving billions of dollars of fraud every year. Already, we have the initial commitments to register the first 100 million cards, and make this check available to the first 250,000 merchants. But we need the rest of the players to take this step. I am here today to urge you to join the coalition to wipe out counterfeit card fraud (www.NoCardFraud.com), and to do your part in protecting the identities of millions of Americans, improving the financial health of millions of retail stores and banks, shutting down a key criminal activity of gangs and organized crime, and disrupting the funding of global terrorists.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, I would like to bring to the attention of my colleagues the following press release, which tells the story of Wes Bannister, who succumbed to cancer earlier this month. As the first Vice President of the Orange County Water District, he advised me on water issues for many years, and gave me his personal direction. He was a leader in the community and the state, and he will be missed. I know firsthand that his contributions will be enjoyed by Orange Countians for generations to come. Water Industry Loses a Great Leader The Orange County Water District Board and Staff Mourns the Untimely Loss of First Vice President, Director Wes Bannister Fountain Valley, CA (Dec. 11, 2009).--In the late hours of December 10, 2009, the water world and Orange County lost an important trailblazer and public servant, Wesley ``Wes'' Mastin Bannister lost his battle with cancer. Wes Bannister was elected to the Orange County Water District (OCWD) Board of Directors in 1991 representing Division 6, which includes Fountain Valley, Huntington Beach and parts of Westminster. He was re-elected to four consecutive four-year terms in 1996, 2001, 2004 and 2008. He was elected in 2007 and 2008 by his fellow board members to serve as the District's 1st Vice President. ``The Board and staff of the Orange County Water District have lost an incredible leader who lived and breathed water,'' stated OCWD Board President Stephen R. Sheldon. ``Those who had the privilege of working with Wes know that he had the tenacity to get to the core of critical issues and drive and inspire others to do what was right and economically sound. He stood true to his principles and convictions, like no other person. We are truly sorry for his family's great loss.'' During his tenure as a Board Member, the District celebrated many important achievements including the building and operation of the Groundwater Replenishment (GWR) System, the largest water purification project of its kind in the world, and a state-of-the-art Advanced Water Quality Assurance Laboratory. In addition to serving on the OCWD Board, in 1993 Director Bannister was appointed Director to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) representing the Municipal Water District of Orange County. In 2004, Director Bannister was elected as Chair of the MWD Board of Directors, for which he served until October 31, 2006. ``Wes was a principled leader and committed advocate for Orange County and its water interests who also worked faithfully to address the water challenges facing the entire southern California region,'' said Wayne Clark, President of the Municipal Water District of Orange County (MWDOC). ``We were honored to have had Wes represent MWDOC as one of our appointed representatives to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and we are going to miss our good friend.'' Director Bannister devoted over 23 years to serving the communities of Orange County. He served on the Huntington Beach City Council from 1986 to 1990, including as Mayor in 1989. ``I had the distinct honor of serving with Wes on the City Council'', stated Assemblyman Jim Silva (R-Huntington Beach). ``If it weren't for his encouragement and support, I would not be serving in the Assembly today. Wes was invaluable to me and many of my colleagues when it came to solving state water issues. He was a mentor and a true friend who genuinely cared about the people in his community and gave of his time and energy to making a difference.'' Director Bannister was also the Republican nominee for California Insurance Commissioner in 1990 and was nominated to the Electoral College by President Bush in that same year. He also served on the West Orange County Board from 1986 to 1990 and on the Orange County Sanitation District Board of Directors, District 11, from 1988 to 1990. In 1986, Director Bannister was appointed by the Governor to the California FAIR Plan Board of Governors and continued to serve on this Board until his untimely death. Since 1993, Director Bannister had represented OCWD on the Board of Directors of the Association of California Water Agencies Joint Powers Insurance Authority (ACWA-JPIA). While serving, the Board elected him to the Governing Committee and to serve two years as its Vice President. Following his two-year term, the Board elected him President in 2005 for a three-year term. Active in local affairs, Director Bannister served on the boards of the Boys and Girls Club and YMCA, as Charter President of the Huntington Beach Sunrise Rotary Club and as an advisor to the Huntington Beach Search and Rescue Post 536. Director Bannister was born in Houston, Texas in 1936. He and his wife Elizabeth (Betty) Ann Rogers Bannister were married at Fort Sill in Oklahoma in 1959 where he was stationed and recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. Director Bannister and his wife Betty have lived in Huntington Beach since 1969. Together, the Bannisters welcomed three children Catherine (Cathy) Ann, Alice (Lisa) Elizabeth and Douglas (Doug) Mastin. In addition to devoting much of his time to serving the communities of Orange County, Director Bannister founded Bannister and Associates Insurance Agency in 1974, from which he retired in 2003. The family business continues to flourish under the leadership of his two surviving children Alice (Lisa) Elizabeth Bannister and Douglas (Doug) Mastin Bannister. Director Bannister is also survived by two grandchildren Kaitlyn Michelle and Brent Douglas.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Let me agree with the distinguished ranking member that global warming is something other than what has been presented. He said it's a theory. I would suggest that as we go on with my speech, you will learn that it is a fraud. Madam Speaker, not too long ago I stood here on the floor of the House and remarked that I have expected Rod Sterling to appear from behind a curtain and announce, ``This is the twilight zone.'' Well, since then this body has continued on an agenda fit only for the most bizarre episode of that program. In the last month, Congress has passed bailouts, rescues and stimulus packages, dumping trillions of dollars of debt onto the backs of the American people and, yes, onto our children's backs, and their children's backs. Congress passed a massively expensive and economically destructive cap-and-trade bill, moved toward a government takeover of our health care system, and now Congress appears ready to support President Obama's request to dig ourselves even deeper into the mire of Afghanistan. Optimism over the election of a new President promising change has turned into despair as the American people are realizing what kind of changes being imposed on our country. It's going from bad to worse. This week marks the beginning of the United Nations framework convention on climate change in Copenhagen. It started yesterday, December 7, Pearl Harbor Day. How very appropriate. President Obama and Democrat leaders of Congress are planning to attend. This conference could well bind the American people to a series of international agreements that will be a boon to globalist bureaucracy, and, yes, their power-elite allies, while at the same time picking the pockets of the American taxpayer and shackling us to restrictions, mandates, and controls inconsistent with our free society and enforced by governing bodies we have never voted for. According to the conference's Web site, the conference in Copenhagen is a turning point in the fight to prevent what they claim will be a climate disaster, and I quote. ``The science demands it, the economics support it, future generations require it,'' proclaims the Web site. Well, Madam Speaker, I am here to explain why that aggrandizing postulation is complete and utter nonsense, and to warn of the danger that lurks behind this high-sounding rhetoric. The Copenhagen conference is the culmination of efforts that began in earnest back in 1992. That was the year our ``New World Order'' President, George H. W. Bush, submitted the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change to the Senate. It was quickly adopted by a voice vote. For the most part, that 1992 framework treaty was filled with grandiose yet vague principles. It asked for long-term CO2 reductions from the 192 nations which signed that contract, yet few of the obligations were spelled out, and there was no enforcement or penalties written into that treaty. It stated objectives, and that was step number one. Step two came in 1997 when the Kyoto Protocol established enforceable mandates, mandates stating those objectives that were started in the earlier network agreement that was sent on to the Senate by President Bush. The 1997 protocol was different than the earlier one because it had enforceable mandates to meet the objectives that were stated earlier. This clearly would have meant a fundamental altering of our economy, with a dramatic negative impact on the lives of our people. With the Republicans in control of the Senate at that time, President Clinton never submitted the Kyoto treaty for ratification. Then in 2001 President George W. Bush said that we would not sign the Kyoto treaty due to the enormous cost and economic dislocation associated with complying with the Kyoto mandates, and that was the end of what would have been step number two. Here we are at step number three, and while a Kyoto-like agreement is not likely, Copenhagen may well lay the foundations for the future that the globalists who are pushing this agenda envision for us, what they envision for the United States, U.S., us. The threat to us is there, and it is real. A few months ago, H.R. 2454, the so-called cap-and-trade bill, passed the House and is now awaiting action in the Senate. That far-reaching legislation seeks to put in place taxes and regulatory policies that exactly parallel what the Copenhagen crowd would mandate and can be traced back to that same alliance between our domestic, radical environmentalists and a globalist elite. This unholy alliance has already had an impact. It is no accident that for over the past 20 years America has built no hydroelectric dams, no nuclear power plants, no oil refineries and has brought into production a pitifully small amount of new domestic oil and gas. In essence, our economy has been and is now being starved of traditional energy development. Even the much acclaimed solar energy alternative has been strangled in its cradle. The Federal Bureau of Land Management, which is unduly influenced by radical environmentalists, has prevented the building of solar-powered electric generating facilities in America's vast deserts. This supposedly to protect the habitat of lizards and insects, which are obviously more important to these elitist decision-makers than the quality of life of human beings. Our quality of life, us. Again, the forces behind the undermining of America's domestic energy development know exactly what they're doing. Treaty obligations or not, they want to change our way of life to remake America whether we like it or not. This isn't about green power; it's about raw political power exercised over our lives. A few decades ago, the globalist radical environmental alliance latched onto an apocalyptic theory to justify their power grab. The theory is that the world is dramatically heating up because of how we human beings live, especially us Americans. So controlling us must be the answer to saving the planet from heating up and up and up. When they geared up their crusade, our planet was in one of its many warming cycles. But the illusion that they were trying to create began to disintegrate about 9 years ago when the Earth quit warming and now may be in a cooling cycle. Undaunted, the fanatic claims and their predictions of global warming have now been transformed into a new, all-encompassing warning. So ``global warming'' was the phrase that was yelled and screamed at us for almost a decade, but now that has miraculously been changed into ``climate change.'' Do they think that the American people are stupid? Do they think that we'll just forget about their predictions of rapid rises in temperatures and that those predictions have been proven 100 percent wrong? Even the much-touted melting of the Arctic ice cap has reversed itself in the last 2 years and is now refreezing and enlarging. The warming has ended, but the power grab continues. What we now are finding out is exactly how ruthless and, yes, how deceitful this power grab has been. It is becoming ever more apparent that during the 1990s, many scientists who refused to go along with the global warming paradigm were denied research grants. Prominent scientists like Dr. William Gray, former president of the American Meteorological Association, found themselves repeatedly rejected for research grants despite their careers of distinguished research excellence and accomplishments. The liberal press ignored those transgressions, ignored that repression of opposing views. Yet the same press made it a huge controversy when during the Bush administration NASA asked Richard Hansen, who was NASA's most vocal global warming activist staffer, simply to note when being published that the opinions that he was publishing were his opinions and not necessarily endorsed by NASA. Well, the press made that into a horrible attack on his rights. This was censorship. There were hearings in Congress about that, simply asking this man to acknowledge that it was his opinions and not the official opinions of NASA. Well, how does that compare with the coverage and the outrage over outright repression and denial of research grants to prominent scientists? How does that compare with Vice President Gore's firing of Dr. William Happer as the lead scientist at the Department of Energy? This because Happer was open minded on the issue of global warming. Not that he opposed it, but that he was open minded about it. The double standard in the reporting of this issue has been appalling. Zealots can usually find high-sounding excuses for their transgressions. This abusive attack on Happer and so many others, so many other prominent scientists, of course, was perpetrated in the name of protecting all of us from a climate calamity: man-made global warming that we were repeatedly warned was going to fry the planet. We can still hear alarming claims of a disastrous upward jump in temperatures, rising sea levels, Arctic meltings, forest fires, hurricanes, acid seas, dying plants and animals. Every climate-related disaster that a Federal research grant can conjure up we're hearing about because that's how they get their government grants. That's how they qualify. Professional figures in white coats with authoritative tones of voice and lots of credentials repeatedly dismissed specific criticism of what they were proposing by claiming that their so-called scientific findings had been peer reviewed, verified by other scientists. Rather than honestly discussing the issues that were being raised, they portrayed themselves as beyond reproach. They've been peer reviewed. So why even discuss any specific criticism? Just dismiss it. They gave each other prizes as they selectively handed out research grants. Those who disagreed no matter how prominent were treated like nonentities, like they didn't exist, or they were personally disparaged, labeled deniers, you know, like Holocaust deniers. How much uglier can you get? But such tactics won't work forever. It's clear their steamroller operation is beginning to fall apart. We know that, because we hear scientists who have been clamoring for subservient acceptance of their theory of man-made global warming, we now can find out and we now understand that those very same scientists, they themselves were making a sham out of scientific methodology and were indeed repressing dissent and destroying peer review. I'm speaking, of course, about the over 1,000 emails and 3,000 other documents that were purloined from one of the foremost global warming research institutes in the world, the Climate Research Institute at East Anglia University in the United Kingdom. Let me acknowledge, yes, a hacker or possibly a whistleblower may have been responsible for making this information public, but contrary to the frantic attempt to distract attention away from the clear wrongdoing and arrogance that was exposed in these communications, contrary to that, how those documents were obtained is not what's relevant. It's the truth of these emails that counts, not how the information was obtained. What do these formerly private and now exposed communications say? One email is from Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. In it he describes his utter frustration with studies that reach conclusions contrary to his clique's predictions of a looming global warming disaster. Even more frustrating, the temperatures being recorded, contrary to his august observations and predictions, contrary to them, things were getting colder, much colder than usual. And here, folks, is the clincher: Trenberth laments in this email, in this formerly secret communication, ``The fact is we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can't.'' Rather than reconsidering his position, he is complaining. He can't find a cover thick enough to hide his errors. So what do you do if those gosh darn numbers show that there is no warming? Well, you fudge the numbers of course. There is a 1999 email from Phil Jones, the center's director, talking about a ``trick'' in the presentation of data intended ``to hide the decline.'' What does ``decline'' mean when he says ``hide the decline''? A decline in global temperatures, of course. These people who are touting global warming are talking about hiding the decline in temperatures that would prove that there is no global warming going on at this time. To those who have followed this issue closely, this is nothing new. We have seen it before. There was a famous graph produced by Michael Mann, one of the most prominent global warming advocates. His famous graph, as well as his highly touted lectures, deleted the existence of a warming period in the Middle Ages and the 500-year decline in the Earth's temperature, which ended in about 1850, known as the Little Ice Age. Those very real temperature cycles were left out of his graphs. And many of the newly revealed emails detail that this was intentional deception. Mann's graph indicated centuries-long stability instead of two distinct climate cycles going up and down. And then after presenting a graph that just had centuries-long stability, then we were shown a jump in temperature that looked like a hockey stick, the end of a hockey stick. Stability and then a big jump forward. That graph was a fake, and the jump in temperature he predicted didn't happen. So now the climate elite has simply deleted the hockey stick graph from their presentation even though it was a distinct part of their presentation for years, just as Mann had deleted the preceding warming and cooling cycles when he analyzed modern temperature trends and put them into his graph. As more honest and level-headed scientists from around the world raised serious questions, well-funded global warming alarmists were hard pressed to answer critics. So what is a true believer to do when you hear criticism? Well, shut up the opposition of course. No, don't consider what the opposition is saying. Don't try to have an honest dialogue. No, shut them up. Here's Phil Jones again, this time about censoring criticism: ``I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report.'' Let's stop right there. So here he is trying to leave out of the IPCC report papers that were contrary in view; yet they tout over and over again that the IPCC is the basis for their credibility. It's all the time talking about the IPCC report. Yet here we have a quote talking about how they're trying to censor what goes into that report. Quoting further: ``Kevin and I will keep them out,'' meaning this information out of the IPCC report, ``even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is.'' And these are the same people who were proclaiming that their credibility came from the IPCC and peer-reviewed research. Well, let's look at what happened next when an editor of an academic journal does not buckle under to this kind of pressure and actually publishes the work of a skeptical scientist. Here's what Jones says: ``I will be emailing the journal to tell them I'm having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.'' This guy is conspiring to get the editor of a research publication fired. And what was it for? For publishing a contrary review. Is this science? These emails are filled not with answering critics but with the effort to stifle the right to question what these people were advocating. Significantly, man-made global warming alarmists have continually countered criticism by arrogantly dismissing tangible questions and asserting that peer reviews backed them up. Well, now we can see the evidence that these self-righteous snobs who saw themselves as above criticism were manipulating, if not destroying, the peer review process so no one with other points of view could actually participate. Get that? They say you can't question our material because ours has been peer reviewed and your criticisms haven't, but they themselves were undermining the ability of those critics to have their criticisms published in a peer-reviewed publication. Have they no shame? But there's more than this. Jones again, this time to Professor Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, the same guy with the phony hockey-stick graph, is talking about hiding information from critics: ``If they ever hear there is a freedom of information act now in the U.K., I think I'll delete the file rather than sending it to anyone.'' Let's read that again: ``I think I'll delete the file rather than sending it to anyone.'' Madam Speaker, this is not only arrogant, it's criminal. We have been and continue to be the victims of outright lies, and victims of an effort to focus our people on some kind of created and mythical scientific findings in order to scare and force our people into accepting draconian economic and regulatory policies. Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma has called for an investigation in the Senate. There should be one in the House as well. Certain scientists receiving Federal research grants are betraying the standards of their own profession. And, yes, as I say, perhaps breaking the law. Countless numbers of our own people will suffer job losses and a decline in their standard of living if policies based on phony science, bad practices, the suppression of dissent and outright lies are put in place and enforced. Before any action is taken by this Congress on cap and trade legislation, a full inquiry into this horrific abuse of science should be conducted. Wake up, America. They are trying to steal our freedom with lies and scare tactics. The Good Book says, ``The truth shall set you free.'' A caveat might be, ``And a lie can destroy your freedom.'' Perhaps the most perplexing of all, the global warming elite continues to herald their projections of man-made gloom and doom. They try to ignore the uproar that we've had with these emails. They ignore it, or they just change the subject. But this recent revelation of these emails seriously calls into question the basic science that these man-made global warming fanatics claim to be irrefutable. Well, let's look at this so-called ``irrefutable science'' that is the basis of the man- made global warming advocates. I in fact--and I would make this very clear at this moment--would challenge any Member of Congress to come here and debate me in the future on the science of this issue. Let me make that clear. This Congressman, I am a senior member of the Science Committee, I challenge any of the advocates of man-made global warming to come here and debate me on the science of the issue. We shouldn't be dismissing our opposition's arguments any more than those scientists should have been. We are here to make policy and to determine truth. Let's have an honest debate on this. First, let's talk about the so-called global warming cycle that's being used as an excuse, or as a reason to look at human activity, the global warming cycle that's being caused by human activity. That's fundamental to this whole issue. We know that there have been weather and climate cycles throughout the long history of our planet. That's going back to prehistoric times. There has been cycle after cycle. One of the more recent of these cycles, the one ignored by Dr. Michael Mann, a cooling cycle that reduced temperatures on this planet for 500 years. That was between 1300 and about 1850. It's called the Little Ice Age. Amazingly, with a straight face, the global warming alarmists are using the low point in a 500-year cooling cycle as the baseline for determining if humankind is making the planet hotter at this time. Get that. We should declare an emergency because, according to the alarmists, the Earth is a tiny bit, perhaps 1 degree warmer than it was at the bottom of a 500-year decline in temperature. Professor Mann can't wipe that out. He may try to delete it from his graphs and pretend it didn't happen, but this has been well documented. I remember there was a History Channel report going through the entire time of this mini Ice Age. Our current climate cycle is no different than the other numerous cycles that preceded it. It is dishonest to create hysteria by using the end of a cycle known as the Little Ice Age at a 500-year low in the Earth's temperatures as a baseline for apocalyptic claims that it is now getting extraordinarily warmer. On top of that, as people, the alarmists are claiming that it's our fault. It's the people's fault. It's us. We're the bad guys. We're the ones making the climate go up so much warmer than it normally is and they're using as a baseline a 500- year low in the Earth's temperatures. So science question challenge No. 1: Are man-made global warming advocates using an unrealistically and unreasonably cooler moment as the baseline for their analysis? Question No. 2: What are the causes of the climate cycles that we've been talking about? The alarmists claim it's us. It's people. There were such cycles, of course, in the Earth's temperatures and climate even before prehistoric man existed. If there were such cycles, then there must be some explanation other than human activity, because this was before humans existed, there must be some other explanation for the weather and temperature trends of those days. Well, then what is the other explanation? Many scientists believe cycles of climate have resulted from solar activity. After all, the sun is the biggest source of energy on our planet. The biggest. Everything else pales in comparison. Some of the revealed emails are specifically aimed at debunking this explanation by altering graphs and distorting data. The solar explanation is consistent with the fact that climate cycles on Earth parallel cycles taking place on other planetary bodies. That's right; like Mars, or the moons of Jupiter which have similar and simultaneous cycles to those on our Earth. But the global warming gang is intent on blaming us. In recent years, for example, human activity has been declared the culprit causing the melting of the Arctic ice cap. Who hasn't seen pictures of sad-looking polar bears stranded there on an ice floe, obviously a victim of man-made global warming? Such nonsense plays on our emotions, but it is presenting a distorted and dishonest picture of reality. Yes, until recently the Arctic ice cap has been retreating. There is no doubt about that. But what about the ice cap on Mars? Yes, at the same time our Earth's ice cap was retreating, the ice cap on Mars was retreating; mirroring, paralleling what was going on on Earth. Does that indicate that the cycle that we're talking about might have been caused by the sun and not by too many people driving SUVs or using modern technology? So maybe it's the sun that has affected the habitat of the polar bears, just as other cycles have affected the habitat of the plants and animals living in the time when those cycles kicked in. By the way, there's something to keep in mind when one hears for the umpteenth time that the polar bears are becoming extinct. The polar bears are not becoming extinct. In fact, the number of polar bears on this planet has dramatically expanded. There are four to five times the number of polar bears in the world today than there were in the 1960s. And I have spoken before groups of students and they have been given this lie over and over again and they are crestfallen to hear that maybe what they've been told are lies. Yes, lies. The extinction of the polar bear is about as real as the film footage of dissipating ice caps in former Vice President Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth. That, too, was a scam. A special effect made of Styrofoam was presented to us, especially to our impressionable children, to create the illusion that this was documenting the melting and breaking off of the Arctic ice cap. It was Styrofoam. Styrofoam. It was phony, just as many of the arguments presented in that movie were phony; were false. So here's another scientific challenge, challenge No. 2: If there have been many other cycles and if the ice cap is melting on Mars just as it is here, how can this climate cycle be a result of human activity rather than solar activity? Which brings us to the theory of just what man does that supposedly creates global warming. Well, this allegation is based on the well-promoted theory that greenhouse gases--and according to the alarmists CO2 is by far the worst culprit-- these greenhouse gases and, thus, CO2, the worst one of all, are trapping heat in the atmosphere and the increase of CO2 levels is thus leading to a disastrous jump in the Earth's temperature. So let's look at this theory. I don't dismiss it. Let's look at it. Let's answer it. I wish the American people and the rest of us were paid an equal amount of respect by those people, the alarmists, who are advocating the man-made global warming theory. So let's look at this. Let's look at their theory now and give it an honest look. With all the hoopla about CO2, nonscientists might believe that it is a huge part of the atmosphere. I want everyone here, my colleagues and everyone listening, to ask themselves: What percentage do you think that CO2 is of the atmosphere? Well, most people think it's a huge part. Some people I've asked have actually suggested it was between maybe 40 and 60 percent of the atmosphere. Well, that's wrong. Wrong. People have been given a false impression. CO2, carbon dioxide, is a minuscule part of our atmosphere. And, as I say, most of the people I've talked to, even the highly educated ones, have thought that CO2 makes up maybe 25, maybe 40, one guy even said 60 percent of the atmosphere. In reality, CO2 is less than .04 percent of the atmosphere. So CO2 is not even one-half of one-tenth of 1 percent of the atmosphere. Not even one-half of one-tenth of 1 percent. This is a minuscule part of the atmosphere that we have been led to believe is having this dramatic impact on weather patterns. And where did the minuscule amount of this CO2, even though it's as small as it is, one half of one-tenth of 1 percent of the atmosphere, where did that minuscule amount come from? With all the hoopla, one would assume that most of the atmosphere's CO2 can be traced to human activity. No. At least 70 percent of the CO2 in our atmosphere has a natural source and has nothing to do with human activity. I have been in Science Committee hearings where very prominent scientists have suggested that it might be 80 or 90 percent of the CO2 in the atmosphere coming from natural sources. But let's say, okay, at least 70 percent. So the part of the atmosphere that is CO2 generated by man is even less than miniscule. It is a minor part of a miniscule component, and if we suppress our standard of living enough to eliminate even one-tenth of man's contribution, then one big volcano, or maybe some forest fires could totally undo this supposed reduction in CO2. And to get a 10 percent reduction means a dramatic attack on the standard of living of our people and the reallocation of trillions of dollars. We are to give up our own freedom and prosperity, and hand over such power as I have just mentioned to a global government or even to a centralized Federal Government here in the United States? All for that, for something for a step forward that could be erased by a big volcano or perhaps a series of forest fires? That's insane. Well, undaunted, the alarmists point to increases in CO2, which they label as alarming, of course. That's why they're alarmists; they call it alarming. Starting from such a miniscule level, however, it's like using a phony temperature baseline, like they did with the end of the mini ice age. But using that as their baseline, with the miniscule level of CO2, this can distort the importance of, when someone says that there's been a rise in the amount of CO2, because it's, to begin with, it's a very, very, miniscule amount or part of our atmosphere. So if there's an increase in that, it's not going to have the same impact as what most people have led to believe, the people who believe that it's 40 percent of our atmosphere. But this increase, of course, no matter, has been described to us in such sinister terms that we are supposed to believe that it is making the world hotter, and so it's mankind, by increasing CO2, making the world hotter. When trying to pull this off, they don't mention that in recent times, CO2 levels, yes, have increased, but contrary to the alarmists' theory, the Earth's temperatures have gone down. Remember, we are being told that the rise of CO2, which is a miniscule part of our thing, but the rise of the CO2 in our atmosphere is causing the atmosphere to warm. Again, there are clearly times when CO2 has been going up but the temperature has gone down. So science challenge number 3, if manmade CO2, which is a miniscule part of a miniscule element of the atmosphere, if that causes warming, then why is it that when mankind has been emitting more and more CO2, like in the 1940s, the fifties and the sixties, and at a time, at that same time when CO2 levels in general were rising, why was there an actual cooling going on in our climate? This is true today, too. We have an increase in CO2, but there's been a cooling going on, or at least there hasn't been a warming for the last 10 years. Remember, no matter how they've tried to hide it--and that attempt to hide it is very clear in the emails that have just been exposed. No matter how they try to hide it, global temperatures have not gone up for almost a decade. It should be noted that scientific ice core specialists now tell us that historically, over a course of 500 years, CO2 increases followed temperature increases. It would appear that when it gets warmer, the Earth produces more CO2. The alarmists have it totally backwards, and they're using that as an excuse to dramatically increase their power to control our lives. It is a flawed theory. It is the warmer Earth that creates the CO2 increase, not the other way around. But that would mean, of course, human beings, if they accept that it's the Earth and it's the warming of the Earth that creates more CO2, that would mean that us human beings, that we're off the hook, and the globalists would have no excuse for their power grab and no excuse to control us, to tax us, and to regulate away our livelihood. Well, it's not getting any warmer, and contrary to those trying to frighten us into giving up our freedom, CO2 is not a threat to the planet and is not a pollutant. It is not harmful to human beings or animals. It is food for plants which then give us oxygen. Throughout the world, greenhouses, sometimes they're called hothouses, are growing vegetables by pumping CO2 to feed the plants. And they end up, after pumping CO2 into these hothouses, they end up with bigger, juicier tomatoes, berries, and other crops. CO2 is not a threat to human health or a threat to the planet. During ancient times, before human beings, there were much higher levels of CO2 in the air, and life on this planet flourished. Even in the oceans, which were, yes, more acidic, ocean life was robust and abundant at that time. All of this makes the announcement yesterday that the EPA will treat CO2 as a pollutant all the more astounding and, yes, repugnant. It is an example of the heavyhanded power grab we are up against. By declaring CO2 a pollutant, a threat to human health, they have empowered the EPA to issue orders, mandates, regulations, controls, and fines which will be put in place and enforced even without a vote of Congress, unelected officials declaring themselves as having this enormous power over us. This bypassing of the authority of Congress is a manifestation of tyranny. I don't care if they think that they are saving the world. This is tyranny. If there are changes in the law that are required by some climate theory, let us debate them, have an honest debate. Let's not impose this on the American people without having elected officials be held accountable for that decision. And, of course, we know now the theories that we're talking about are all based on the cooked books and phony science, which makes it all even worse. So now on to challenge number 4, which focuses on the accuracy of the statistics being used to justify manmade global warming. Importantly, the alarmists who are raising all of this ruckus, they're doing it about less than 1 degree of an increase in the global temperature. So we hear all of this ruckus, but it's only increased, even by what they're claiming, less than 1 degree, or just about 1 degree over 150 years. So small inaccuracies can have huge implications to this process. Well, an investigation has found accuracy problems with 80 percent of America's National Weather Service stations which collected the data here in the United States. And worse, our system, even with 80 percent of the stations not meeting reliable standards, we've been heralded as the best in the world. But what about the statistics gathered in the rest of the world, in the developing countries and in other countries? What about the statistics that were gathered here and abroad 100 years ago or 150 years ago? Does anyone have faith in those figures? Remember, that's what was fed into the computer. Let's remember also, garbage in, garbage out is a truism when it comes to computers. The whole basis for this so-called irrefutable evidence of global warming rests on computer models that were based on data collected from faulty systems. Perhaps just as troubling, the data fed into these computers is no longer available for reassessment. Yep, the data was deleted by the research institutes. Deleted, just like they talked about in these hacked emails. And a close reading of the recently exposed emails reveal that alterations were made in the raw data being fed into computers. They were called adjustments of the data. In short, they cooked the books, and that data is no longer available. It was deleted by the research institutes and can not be looked over again for accuracy. Oh, well, I guess we should just trust them. Fortunately, the ground-based sensors that fed those infamous computer models are not the only source of temperature data. Information is also available from research and observation satellites and weather balloons, and, you guessed it, that source is in conflict with the ground-based data. Of course, no one is certain of that, because all of this we're talking about was the data before adjustments were made and before it was all deleted. So how is this for a scientific challenge? Defend the scientific integrity of the manmade global warming data collection process. It's got more holes in it than a spaghetti strainer. And this manmade global warming theory is the greatest scam in history. This, of course, is only one of many scams designed to frighten us into draconian solutions for fictitious problems. I remember when I was a kid, they said cranberries cause cancer. Two years later, after the cranberry industry was decimated, Oh, sorry, we made a mistake. Then you remember cyclamates were supposedly causing cancer. That cost the American industry hundreds of millions of dollars. It destroyed a sugar substitute which was perfectly fine, and it ended up getting America and perhaps the rest of the world hooked on high fructose corn syrup, only to be found out later on that cyclamates are not carcinogenic at all. And, in fact, Canada never banned them at all, and now its cyclamates are free to be consumed here in the United States. Well, then we remember Dr. Meryl Streep, a prominent scientist and movie actress who warned us about Alar, only to find out that that was fictitious. We remember Three Mile Island and Jane Fonda, a presentation which stopped the building of nuclear power plants and made us even more dependent on foreign oil. So what did we do? We now depend more on oil and coal for our electricity because Jane Fonda created the impression that nuclear energy was not safe. And then during the Reagan administration there was a furor about acid rain, which was presented to us, again with a phony baseline. They said that the lakes in the Northeast and everything were becoming more acidic, and they used as their baseline the time immediately in the years that were after a massive number of fires in that area turned those lakes into a base and, thus, the acidity was not the natural acidity that they normally were at. And they were going back to the natural acidity. It was a phony baseline, and it totally distorted the so-called problem. The topper of them all, many of the very same gang now agonizing over manmade global warming, they were the same people who were warning us with similar intensity about the coming ice age. And then, of course, we have to remember, there's a big price to pay for all of this, big price to pay for lies. Like, for example, the report that bird shells were thinning, which resulted in a global ban on DDT. Millions of children in the Third World have subsequently lost their lives to malaria because of that ban. Apparently, birds were more important to those who made policy than those millions of poor and struggling children in the Third World who lost their lives to malaria, a disease that we had controlled before we banned DDT. The cap-and-trade bill, rammed through the House by deceit and alarmist propaganda, awaits the U.S. Senate. If it becomes law, as I said on the floor, the debate, our economy will go to hell and our jobs will go to China. And yes, it will affect all of us big time. And that's what this is all about, changing our lives big time. What are some of the long-term changes these steely-eyed fanatics behind cap-and-trade and global warming and behind the Copenhagen gathering want to make in our lives? It's a long run, but here's some of the things they want. They want gas to at least double in price, probably triple, maybe more. Parking prices need to go up. Parking permits need to go way up. Air travel will be out of reach for ordinary people by elimination of frequent flier miles and discount tickets and simply dramatically raising the price of airplane tickets. Only the rich and powerful in their private jets and limousines will be free to travel as they please. Yes, and there will be restrictions on our diet. Embedded in the manmade global warming movement is a contingent of power freaks who want to restrict our meat consumption by limiting production. This is based on the idea that methane from cow flatulence threatens the stability of the planet's climate. This is insane. So hamburgers are out, much less backyard barbecues. The prices of electricity, just like every energy source, would be pushed sky high, as will the price of almost everything that we consume because everything manufactured or farmed depends on energy. The goal is to put limits on human activity, especially human consumption. To these fanatics, anything used or consumed that is not essential is a waste of resources. Ronald Reagan used to say about this crowd, They won't be satisfied until we're all living in a bird's nest. So why is Congress on the verge of passing this monstrous legislation which will bolster the competitiveness of China and India while undercutting our own economy and our way of life? This is a product of a radical environmentalist-globalist coalition. They want to build a whole new world based on benevolent control by people like themselves. They have a vision of a harmonious and balanced world, and they don't mind scaring us into accepting it or imposing it upon us. And that is where the real threat comes in. This is not just the EPA pushing democracy aside to centralize power and controls in Washington, D.C., which is, in and of itself, contrary to what America is supposed to be all about. This is about centralizing power into the hands of global government. That is what Kyoto and Copenhagen are all about. That's what the radical environmentalist and globalist alliance is all about. Wake up, America. We still have time to turn this around. We must fight the globalist clique that is trying to shackle future generations of Americans to a burden of economy-killing debt. They are chains that will be hard to break, but we must have the strength and the commitment to do so. We will not give up our freedom, and we are not powerless. We will stand together, Americans of every race and religion, of every ethnic group and social status. We will fight as united patriots, and we will win. Members of Congress need to hear from angry constituents, and I predict they will. Yes, we need to overcome this power grab. We need to overcome this alliance between radical environmentalists and the globalists. But most of all, in order to win, we need to overcome apathy among the American people. It is when the American people rise up in a righteous rage that our freedom will be secure. This is a power grab that is aimed at destroying our freedom. Wake up, America. We should not be giving more power to United Nation panels or anybody else or any other institution internationally that is composed of governments that are controlled by gangsters and thugs that we would never dream of electing here in the United States, countries that don't have any freedom of press. We're going to give authority to enforce environmental laws and rules that we've never voted on to bodies like that? Or we're going to go along with the EPA and push the Congress aside and elected officials aside and let that be imposed upon us by people who have never been elected to anything? No. We must stand up and defeat this power grab. Wake up, America. Your freedom and prosperity are at stake. I have three children at home: little Christian, Anika and Tristan. We owe it to them and the children of this country to pass on freedom and opportunity that has been passed on to us. The sacrifice, the sacrifice of generations of Americans to provide us the democracy that we have, the democratic way of fighting these battles that we have. We will not see that destroyed. We will instead use the democratic process in this fight and hold true to the principles, and what was passed on to us by generations of Americans, and we will also be true to future generations of Americans. But now it's up to us. If we don't act, this conspiracy of lies, of distortions in the scientific community coupled with an alliance with a globalist who would centralize power in global government. No. We must defeat them, or we will not be living up to our responsibility, not living up to what we should be asked to do as Americans, and that is to pass on this freedom. We are united patriots, and we will win. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. President Obama will soon make a decision that will chart the course for America's involvement in Afghanistan for years to come. I personally am not upset that it has taken President Obama this long to determine his response to General McChrystal's request for an additional 35,000 U.S. combat troops to be sent to Afghanistan. This is a monumental decision, and it comes when the radical Islamic Taliban and al Qaeda movements seem to be gaining momentum. It also comes when our troops throughout the world are stretched to the breaking point and when our economy is frayed. It comes when the debt that America is piling up is not just alarming but suicidal. This is not the time for business as usual, nor is it the time for brash decision-making. A decision to send U.S. troops to Afghanistan will cost money, lots of it; and it will cost lives. In the past, powerful nations were humbled in the rugged terrain of that desolate country. Yes, a desolate country, dotted by thousands of small villages, populated by tribal people so independent and so ferocious that they have never been conquered. Throughout history, attempts to conquer Afghanistan have met with bloody failure. War there is not defeating an enemy; it is conquering a people. And these people have never been conquered. British writer Rudyard Kipling once wrote: ``When you lie wounded on the Afghan plain and the women are coming to cut the remains, roll to your right and blow out your brains and go to your God like a soldier.'' The British Army dominated vast expansions of India for two centuries, but it was never able to subdue the Afghans. Thousands of British troops lost their lives trying to do just that. In 1842 a British force of 16,000 withdrew from their fortress in Kabul. That force was then beset upon by Afghan tribesmen who cut them to pieces. Only one member of the original contingent of 16,000 made it to the city of Jalalabad. That one person who survived was the regimental surgeon, Dr. W. Brydon. It was thought that perhaps he was permitted to survive. Russia too has had its comeuppance in the hostile Afghan countryside. It was one of the Soviet Union's most telling chapters, and it was also one of the Soviet Union's last chapters. After America's inglorious conclusion of its military operations in Vietnam, our Soviet global adversary was emboldened. Then with the fall of the Shah of Iran, a power vacuum was created that the Soviets hoped to fill. They were then engaged in a post-Vietnam War offensive throughout the world. So when chaos and volatility erupted in Afghanistan as a result of a blood rift between two Afghan communist factions, Soviet leaders sent in the Red Army. They did that to unify the communist factions and to pacify the countryside in Afghanistan, which was already hostile to the communist ideology and very hostile to foreign troops. Perhaps as a payback for the massive Soviet aid provided the North during our conflict in Vietnam or perhaps just as a means of weakening the Soviet global military power, during Ronald Reagan's administration, during his Presidency, our government provided weapons and other support for the Afghan insurgent forces who were battling Soviet occupation troops. As compared with other 20th-century Presidents, Reagan rarely depended on a policy of deploying U.S. troops to solve problems and to combat enemies. I know that goes against what a lot of people think about Ronald Reagan. U.S. forces under Ronald Reagan, yes, were sent in to the small island nation of Grenada, which was in the throes of a Marxist military clique's murderous rampage. Grenada was a limited operation, but it was significant because it proved America was willing to use its military forces after suffering a demoralizing national malaise which is best remembered in history as the ``Vietnam Syndrome.'' Another deployment President Reagan agreed to make was sending marines into Lebanon, which resulted in a catastrophic attack on our marines which left 290 of them dead and many others severely injured. After that, Reagan was reluctant to deploy our troops. And during his administration, if you take a look at the records, he deployed troops into combat many fewer times than most other Presidents did during the last century. Yet, he is portrayed as a Cold Warrior and is branded, and was branded then, by the liberal left as a warmonger. Yet, he deployed our troops fewer times than most other American Presidents. Yes, Ronald Reagan, more than any other leader, was one who we should basically praise for the defeat of Soviet communism. That enemy threatened our security and the freedom of our people and the freedom of people throughout the world, yet he did not send our troops into hostile action after the Beirut debacle resulted in the death of so many of our marines. Well, if he didn't send in our troops to various places, how, then, was our country so well defended during that time, and how was the evil power of Soviet communism defeated? Well, the answer is what is called the ``Reagan Doctrine.'' This strategy was based on the concept of helping others fight their battles when their foe was our foe. Rather than sending U.S. troops into Central America, for example, when the Soviets armed its stooges who were in the process of establishing a Marxist dictatorship in Nicaragua, and the Soviet Union sent a billion and a half dollars worth of military equipment to back up that Marxist regime, no, Reagan didn't send U.S. troops down there to fight the Sandinistas. He armed those Nicaraguans who were resisting that regime, the so-called ``Contras.'' In Africa, America helped arm Jonas Savimbi and his Unita group as they fought a Soviet-backed regime in Angola. And neither of these two groups were perfect. They had many imperfections. These were flawed allies. But they were fighting for their own country, and they were fighting their own countrymen. We did not rely on sending in U.S. troops. We supported those people locally who were fighting their adversary as long as their adversary was our adversary as well. And, of course, most importantly, we armed and we supported the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan who directly took on the military might of the Soviet Union. Again, many of the Mujahedeen were people who were totally inconsistent with our outlook and our views on respect and on freedom and individual rights. Many of them were, by the way, very, very supportive of treating people decently and were not radical Muslims in that regard. But they were flawed people who we supported to fight the Soviet Union that we brought down. That's how the Soviet Union was brought down, not by sending in U.S. troops, but not trying to be perfectionists in who we would then support, but to try to defeat our primary enemy. During those years, I worked in the Reagan White House as a senior speech writer and, yes, as a special assistant to President Reagan. I worked with a small cadre of patriots who made the Reagan Doctrine real. In fact, the speech-writing department is actually given credit by many to actually have developed that doctrine and made it into a doctrine rather than a loose strategy. Well, those people in the White House who made it real and turned it into a policy, into actual strategies that were being put in place and put to use during the Cold War were a very, as I say, small group of patriots; Constantine Menges, who came from the CIA and then over into the National Security Council, Bill Casey of the CIA, Colonel Oliver North, Admiral Poindexter, Dr. Paula Dobriansky, Vince Canistrano, Ken DeKrafenty, all of those on the White House team, on Reagan's team, the administration team, who played a crucial war role in defeating Soviet communism, not by orchestrating moves to send more troops here or more U.S. troops here, but instead to try to support those people throughout the world who were fighting against Soviet tyranny themselves. And, of course, we had support, and we had an initiation of such ideas and concepts and support of the policy by Dr. Jack Wheeler, who is also a person who worked with us in the White House but was independent and went into these various places around the world and met the leaders of various anti-Soviet insurgencies throughout the world and reported directly back to us and the White House as to what was going on in those insurgencies. Yes, of course, we need also to thank Members of Congress who were supportive of those efforts. Let us note that Ronald Reagan has often said that it was bipartisanship that ended the Cold War. But I remember very clearly Ronald Reagan being called a warmonger. I remember very clearly those efforts to defeat the expansion of Soviet power in Central America being undermined directly by people in this Congress who wanted to label Ronald Reagan as the problem rather than communist tyranny as the problem. But there were other people on the other side of the aisle and on the Republican side of the aisle who were active in support of the Reagan Doctrine, the concept of helping freedom fighters throughout the world instead of sending U.S. troops. The most prominent name nowadays is Charlie Wilson. Yes, Charlie Wilson as an appropriator, who helped get the money for the Afghan freedom fighters, played a significant role, as his book and subsequent movie suggests. But he was not the only one. Charlie deserves credit, but so do those other people, some of the ones I just mentioned, and others, people who made sure that those people who are fighting for freedom in various countries did get those supplies and that the Reagan Doctrine, the concept was implemented. We made sure that the Russians learned the lesson that we learned in Vietnam. The introduction of U.S. combat troops in Vietnam did not work. And it was that war that tremendously weakened us. But it was the introduction of combat troops, I believe, into Vietnam that weakened us because the dynamics were changed. Having massive troops deployed in a totally foreign culture did not work for our side in Afghanistan. And here we had our troops in a totally foreign land on the other side of the planet, and by introducing those troops, rather than focusing perhaps on helping the people in Vietnam to fight their battle, we set up a dynamic that worked itself out, yes, and as it worked itself out, it defeated our efforts and left the United States with 50,000 dead, a world humiliation and a country in retreat. I spent some time in Vietnam in 1967, although I was not in the military. Part of my experience was in the Central Highlands, where I hooked up with a special forces unit that was operating out of an old French fort near the Vietnamese city in the Central Highlands by the name of Pelku. It was there that I first saw a strategy that worked. Our special forces teams had turned the montagnards, Vietnams's indigenous mountain people, into an American ally in this bloody, elongated conflict. Yes, our military forces in Vietnam were never defeated--our military likes to say that. They were never defeated on the battlefield, not in one major battle. But we lost the war. The strategy was wrong. In the Central Highlands, the montagnards were with us. In fact, I felt very secure, and I knew the montagnards would put a high priority on protecting me while I was with them, even though I was an American. Yes, in the Highlands, the montagnards were with us. Those were the people that occupied the Highlands in Vietnam. And had the war been decided there, with those montagnards and those people, our enemies would have been defeated instead of an American defeat. In Afghanistan, America gave the people of Afghanistan the weapons they needed to fight the Soviet Army. And when we provided them Stinger missiles, we gave them the means not just to fight, but to win. By the way, we also promised to help rebuild their torn country as we encouraged them to fight, bleed and sacrifice in order to defeat the Soviet Army. The Afghans paid a monstrous price for their victory: 1 million killed, even more wounded, and devastation throughout their society. These brave and heroic people stood up and defeated our mutual enemy. I was blessed with not just meeting the leaders of the anti-Soviet Mujahedeen when they visited Washington back in the 1980s. I actually went into Afghanistan with a Mujahedeen combat unit and participated for a short time in the battle of Jalalabad, which was the last major battle in which Soviet troops were present. I do not recount these moments in history to bring praise upon myself, but instead to lend personal authority to the battles we endured then and to the issues that confront us today. That weeklong exposure to that Afghan battle gave me a lasting admiration for these unconquered people. It was the courage of the Afghan people, more than any others, that broke the will of the communist leadership in Moscow and, yes, brought about the collapse of the Soviet communist threat that had loomed over our heads for decades. When Soviet troops moved out of Afghanistan, instead of fulfilling our promise to help rebuild their war-torn land, we left those brave people to sleep wounded in the rubble. We did not even provide them the resources they needed to clear their country of land mines that we had given them during their war against the Soviet Army. Thus, we left them with a country in which, for a decade, the legs were blown off their children as they walked through the countryside. We didn't even provide them the help to clear their mines at that time. Now that decision to walk away from Afghanistan was the decision not of Ronald Reagan, but of President George Herbert Walker Bush. And, of course, as we walked away, the anti-Soviet Mujahedeen broke into warring factions. The chaos and misery was predictable. But, of course, we just walked away. We let them just go down into the depths of misery and of conflict and of self-mutilation of that society. Eventually, during the Clinton years, our government made a secret pact with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to end the chaos in Afghanistan by introducing a new force called the Taliban. Now I had seen the strategies before of assisting forces in Afghanistan who are radical Islamists. I, in fact, spent considerable time in the White House pounding on people's desks saying, why are we providing military support for people like Hekmatyar Gulbuddin, Sayaff and others of the radical Islamists, who were fighting, yes, the Soviets, but who were also killing other elements within the anti-Soviet Mujahedeens, killing them because they were not as radical in their Islamic tradition? That backfired on us then, and, in fact, during the gulf war, the first gulf war, it is significant that the Mujahedeen radicals that we had supported, Hekmatyar Gulbuddin in particular, sided with Saddam Hussein. This after we had provided him with more than a mountain of weapons. No. I argued against this stupid strategy based on empowering religious fanatics. It was totally unjustified, especially when there was a moderate alternative. During the war with the Soviets, there was a moderate alternative in that we had groups of Mujahedeen fighters who were not the radical Islamists that eventually became the Taliban. It is a mistake many people make. They think the Mujahedeen were the Taliban. The Taliban came later. But I could see that empowering religious fanatics when there was a moderate alternative was not the right way to go. And after the Soviets had been driven out, there was a moderate alternative. The moderate alternative was King Zahir Shah. He was an exiled king right before the Soviets took over. The fact is he had ruled that country for 40 years. He was the only leader who ever gave Afghanistan a time of tranquility and progress. And he did that by not trying to impose his rule on the rest of the people of Afghanistan, but instead ruled as a monarch, as a symbol, as a father of his country. Well, he was available. He was living in exile in Rome. I argued that case that he should be the one brought back to unify the country, not some radical Muslim sect like the Taliban, but the Saudis and the Pakistanis were insistent. They thought they could control the Taliban and they would use the Taliban--control of the Taliban to control Afghanistan. Of course, America just went long with it. President Bill Clinton and his administration signed on to that deal. Well, it is was an easy way out. We're going to provide so much money and assistance, and the Pakistanis were there. Of course, then people didn't realize that the Pakistani military and the ISI, who we have since proven were actually radical Islamists themselves, they were the allies of the worst anti-American radicals in that region. So, in reality, America, in the mid-1990s, was covertly supporting the Taliban. We covertly supported its creation and we made sure that our aid was channeled into those areas that supported the Taliban, but we shortchanged all the other nonradical Islamists like Masood and others who were there and didn't get that same level of aid. Most importantly, the people of Afghanistan believed then, as they do now, that the United States helped create and was behind the Taliban. If they believed it, and they are living with it, the American people should know this as well. Well, the fact that the Clinton administration was covertly supporting the Taliban did not stop a number of us from doing something else, from trying to create another alternative. Ben Gilman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, along with a small team of activists--and I'm very proud to have been one of them--struggled to change U.S. policy and went out to support those who opposed the Taliban. I was in and out of Afghanistan personally. Our team was working to build an anti-Taliban coalition by uniting ethnic and tribal leaders, especially those in the non-Pashtun areas of Afghanistan. It should be noted that we also worked with Pashtuns who are anti-Taliban; leaders like Abdul Haq, who was a terrific leader and one of the great leaders in the Mujahedeen effort to fight the Soviet army during their occupation. He was a Pashtun leader that we were working with. Yes, there was King Zahir Shah, who was also Pashtun, but by and large we were trying at the very least to get those in the northern part of the country and those ethnic groups other than Pashtuns, because in Afghanistan, yes, not all Pashtuns are Taliban, but almost all Taliban are Pashtuns. During that time, during the 1990s when we were working trying to create that coalition, I met with General Dostum, Commander Masood, Ishmael Khan, and many others. Our team brought together all the leaders of the ethnic groups of the Afghan ethnic groups and the significant tribes. We brought them together in Frankfurt and Bonn in 1997, and Istanbul in 1998. Then, in December of 2000, I and Chairman Gilman brought the key Afghan players right here to Washington, D.C., to our Foreign Affairs Committee room in the Rayburn Building. As a result of that meeting, organized by Chairman Gilman and myself, what resulted from that meeting was a phone call made during that meeting from the participants here, who were anti-Taliban people that we brought here. That telephone call was made to King Zahir Shah, who was then living in exile in Rome. During that phone call an agreement was reached that the king would return to Afghanistan into Masood's territory and lead a loya jirga, which is a gathering of leaders of Afghanistan, in July of 2001. When that agreement did not bear fruit, when that meeting did not occur, Ben Gilman and I dispatched committee staff in late August and early September of 2001 to Rome and to Pakistan to find out why that loya jirga had failed to materialize. So whatever the Clinton administration was doing, whatever their tilt to the Taliban, there were others of us trying to do what was right, and, yes, all of that activity paid off. Eventually, after 9/11, the Afghan tribal and ethnic leaders on our team and basically those people that we had been encouraging to get together and form a coalition, that coalition emerged after 9/11 as the Northern Alliance. Most important for Americans to understand now, it was the Northern Alliance--Afghans themselves, not U.S. combat troops--that drove the Taliban out of Afghanistan after 9/11. Many people now are very loose in their words when they discuss how the Taliban was defeated and driven out after 9/11. When we drove them out. You can hear that over and over again. Well, it was a magnificent victory, but America only had 200 troops on the ground, Special Forces, when the Taliban were driven out of Afghanistan. So when you hear people say, Oh, well, the only thing wrong in Iraq was we didn't come in with enough boots on the ground, we only had 200 boots on the ground in Afghanistan, and, in fact, those 200 boots gave us a tremendous victory, and it also gave us a tremendous opportunity to rebuild that nation and to demonstrate the benefit of being America's friend. It gave us the opportunity to make up for breaking our word after the war with the Soviets and to regain the trust and admiration of moderate Muslims throughout the world. We had that chance. Afghanistan, which, by the way, is about the same size as Iraq, we had driven out a force of tens of thousands of Taliban soldiers and their al Qaeda allies, not by U.S. troops--only 200 U.S. troops were there--but instead by providing air support and supplies and communications to those people in Afghanistan who were fighting against this radical Islamic gangsters who had oppressed them. Well, after the Taliban was defeated, instead of focusing on Afghanistan, instead of keeping our promise, going back to keep our word, which we had given so long ago--and, I might say, we renewed that promise when we asked them to drive out the Taliban--instead, President Bush rushed the United States into an invasion/liberation attack of Iraq. The battle for Iraq, however, was fought by U.S. combat troops, a totally different strategy from what had worked in Afghanistan. By the way, we could well have implemented a similar strategy in Iraq by arming the Kurds and the Shiites, by making deals and cutting deals with Shiite leaders, by reaching out to different people in their military and in their government. Instead, no, we sent in large numbers of U.S. troops in combat units. Only when we pulled our forces back and used our financial resources to buy the goodwill of people in Iraq did the Iraq war turn in the right direction. We have heard a lot about the surge. I voted for the surge and I have tried be as supportive as I could, realizing a defeat in Iraq would have been a horrible and demoralizing event for the people of the United States, and it would have emboldened terrorists and radical Islamists throughout the world. I tried be supportive, but we were obviously doing the wrong thing. We obviously used the wrong strategy. The competence of the last administration in carrying out that war and building peace was abysmal. We could have done what we did in Afghanistan and let the Iraqis liberate themselves from Saddam Hussein's tyranny. The human and financial cost of the Iraq liberation and how it was accomplished, all of the incompetence that went with it, will be the subject of scrutiny for years to come. However, we have moved forward and there are some signs or every sign of success in Iraq. That success--it's clear that that success was brought about not necessarily by large numbers of U.S. troops, but instead, not just the surge of troops, but General Petraeus's ability to use financial resources to win the loyalty of Sunnis and other tribal leaders in Iraq. But what is also clear is that our Iraq focus after the defeat of the Taliban prevented us from doing what was right by the Afghan people. And there is a cost to that as well. There is a cost that we will pay for not doing what was right to the Afghan people and just rushing off to commit our treasure and our troops into Iraq by stretching ourselves too thin so we couldn't do the right thing in Afghanistan. Now, what is that price that we're paying? Now, after years after the initial success of driving the Taliban out, the Taliban's radical Islamic threat is growing. And the response to this threat? Send in more U.S. combat troops. Whenever that's been tried as just a simple answer, it's failed. Whenever there's been unconventional warfare that we have had to deal with, that strategy of sending in more U.S. combat units has not worked, whether in Vietnam or Afghanistan or anywhere else. Foreign troops in a foreign land fighting as combat units will almost always end up in hostile territory, and even those locals inclined otherwise will eventually turn against foreign troops to side with their own countrymen. That dynamic is very easy to identify. President Obama is being asked by General McChrystal, who I deeply admire, to send 35,000 more U.S. combat troops into Afghanistan. If my experience tells me anything, it is that the introduction of more U.S. combat units into Afghanistan will be counterproductive and perhaps disastrous. And the likely downside to sending more U.S. combat troops is recognized by our own U.S. Ambassador, General Eikenberry, who is now our U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan. General Eikenberry is a career military officer with impeccable credentials and an exemplary record. He has told President Obama that more U.S. troops will mean that the Afghans will remain dependent on our military rather than stepping forward and fighting their own battle. By sending more U.S. combat troops, we will encourage exactly the wrong behavior by the Afghans. And, obviously, the Afghans have proved time and again that they are willing to fight. They're willing to fight for their families, for their villages, for their way of life. And, yes, they're willing to fight for Afghanistan. Well, that is so obvious. Yet the easy answer for America's decision- makers is to send more U.S. combat troops. Well, easy answers have a great deal of appeal to power brokers, but easy answers usually don't solve the problems. Yes, sending more U.S. combat troops sounds less complicated than having to deal with Afghan ethnic, tribal, and village leaders on the ground. Sending more troops sounds a lot easier and less complicated than undoing the horrendous strategic mistakes our State Department has made in forcing a foreign structure onto Afghan society since 9/11. In short, our government has tried to force the people of Afghanistan to accept centralized rule from Kabul. And even if that government wasn't corrupt, even if Karzai's brother wasn't a drug dealer, the centralized power and decision-making that we have tried to force on the Afghan people--or at least supported that being put on them--is totally contrary to the Afghan history and culture. These people are brave. They will not be subdued and pacified by a Kabul army or especially by a foreign army, even if it's our Army. No, we must make allies of the brave people of Afghanistan, not send in more U.S. combat troops to fight them. Even if our troops fight against their enemies, it is still wrong because even if we're fighting against the Taliban, who are our enemies, it is still wrong because it creates a dependency of the other Afghans on us to do their fighting. And in the long run, the brave, courageous people of Afghanistan will not appreciate that we have made them dependent upon us. That will not be appreciated. They are a people of tremendous integrity. I walked through Afghanistan that one week that I spent at the battle of Jalalabad, and I remember seeing these people. If they got wounded, if they were wounded, they were gone. There was no medical evacuation there. If they stepped on a land mine, they were gone. And when they were wounded, they didn't cry out in pain. You had young people there fighting right alongside elderly people. These people were a country, a brave and courageous country. I remember as we walked through the countryside, the southern part of that country had been blown asunder by Soviet airplanes. People were living in caves, and they would come out. They didn't know that I wasn't an Afghan. They didn't know that I was American. I had a beard and an AK-47 strapped across my shoulder, and they came and they would say, Please let us, Mujahedeen, our brothers, let us give you some tea and bread. The people would come out of their caves where their families were living to give us tea and bread. And as we left, some of the Mujahedeen leaders that were with me said, You know, that's all the bread they had. Their family is not going to have that bread tonight. What kind of people are these? These are wonderfully courageous people of integrity, sharing their bread because they were part of this national effort. We do not want that power and strength and integrity turned against us. We want them on our side, and we must be on their side. Sending more U.S. combat troops will not accomplish that mission. U.S. Army Major Jim Gant has written a booklet entitled ``One Tribe At a Time.'' In it, he details his account of being embedded with Afghan villagers, and he lays out a strategy to defeat the Taliban from the bottom up, not from the top down. Certainly we will defeat them not by sending in more American combat units to do the fighting but, instead, let these ferocious people do their own fighting with our support. It's a cost-effective plan; and even though it's more complex than simply sending more troops, it's the only plan that can succeed. It's focused on sending our teams, combat teams, to live with the Afghans in their villages, helping them build their militia structure, providing them guns and ammo and, yes, buying goodwill of their leaders and perhaps helping them rebuild their country's infrastructure. Perhaps a clinic in a region, perhaps helping them get a clean water supply. Afghanistan has the third highest infant mortality rate of any country in the world. Yet we want to spend our money sending troops. After we promised we would help them rebuild their society, they still lose their children not just to land mines that weren't cleared off but to dirty water that destroys their children's lives, makes them sick and makes them die of diarrhea. It's a terrible, terrible thing. And what is the cost of the 35,000 troops that is being suggested that we send to Afghanistan? Already I am saying that the strategy doesn't work. But what is the actual financial cost? The cost is $35 billion, $1 billion for every 1,000 troops annually. We can buy all the goodwill we need, and we can help rebuild Afghanistan for far less than it will cost for just 1 year's worth of 35,000 combat troops. For $1 billion, we could buy the goodwill of the tribal and ethnic leaders. For a very small amount of money, we can help them build up their own militias by which they can then defend themselves and not worry, Is the U.S. going to go away and leave us vulnerable? Americans cannot patrol, subdue and pacify every area of the globe where hostile forces lurk, especially in Afghanistan. It will break our bank. Our young men and women in our services will be unnecessarily killed and maimed; and in the end, the same thing will happen to us that happened to the Soviet empire: it will break our bank, and the American people will not be willing to shoulder responsibility anywhere in the world because of the horrendous complications that have arisen from our jumping in to doing the battle for everyone in Afghanistan and other places of the world. Yes, we do need to use our military forces in places; but if we do this, if we send them off to missions that can't be accomplished, we are not doing our duty by them. And how do we know that? If there are two military truisms, history lessons that should have been learned in the last century, they are: Don't march on Moscow, and don't invade Afghanistan. Afghanistan will not fall to the Taliban if we support those brave people who defeated the Taliban. Our State Department, in their rush to centralize power in Kabul, actually organized the effort and pushed the policy of disarming the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance after their initial victory. They have then pushed not to develop the militias. Every village in Afghanistan, every male child is considered to be part of the militia and is expected to learn how to use the weapons of the day. Now through that militia, we can mobilize that. And when they say to us--and I have read these accounts over and again. They are afraid that America might abandon them again. Well, why are they afraid? Because we haven't given them the means to defend themselves. We should not only give them the means, but we should help them, support them, provide them the air support, give them the financial resources, the communication gear so that they will win a victory against radical Islam. That is the only way that radical Islam will be defeated--not by sending U.S. troops all over the world and especially into Afghanistan. Yet our foreign service continues to rely on more U.S. troops and, yes, on building a national army in Afghanistan that will be controlled by the government in Kabul, a corrupt government that is not trusted by the people of Afghanistan and is not even trusted by our own leaders. This is exactly the wrong approach. Instead, as I say, we should arm every village militia which will align with us. Any village militia that will align with us, we should be on their side. We should give them guns, ammo, supplies, and communications gear. We should back them up with air support, and, yes, let's have Special Forces teams embedded in the villages, like Major Jim Gant has told us would be an effective strategy. That strategy and buying the goodwill of tribal leaders, people who were there leading their--this is a naturally democratic society from the bottom up. By the way, our country would have failed had we insisted that all the political power in our country would have been decided by the central government. It's the States in our country that control the education. It's the States that basically control the police and the justice of our people. Had we not had that policy from day one, our country would not have succeeded. Yet we've been trying to push on people who are even more protective of their rights to make their own decisions for their own villagers-- we're trying to push a simple government on them which they don't even know. Well, that strategy of buying the goodwill of tribal leaders will carry the day. We can go in and identify with these leaders there, work with them, work with their people. That is the strategy. Yes, as Major Gant says, there is risk in this; but the greater risk is a strategy of sending more combat units which rumble through the countryside. I met with a group of Afghan veterans just last week, and they told me that what they were told to do by their commanding officers was, you just take hikes through the countryside until they get shot at, and then they start firing back. Or they drive their trucks and their vehicles through the Afghan countryside and through Afghan villages until they are either shot at or they run over some kind of an explosive device, and then they retaliate. That is not a strategy for victory, and that's what happens when you send major combat units into a country rather than trying to defeat the enemy in that country from the bottom up, rather than inserting something from the top down. Such a strategy of helping the villagers there in Afghanistan who have lived under the Taliban--they hate the Taliban. They have seen their schoolteachers beheaded. They have seen their young girls being treated like dirt and like animals. They do not want to live that way, and they will not submit to the Taliban--unless, of course, they aren't given any chance to defend themselves. The strategy of helping those people who are willing to fight against that form of radical Islam that they know and despise, that is a cost- effective way of dealing with the challenges that we confront in Afghanistan. It will cost less in blood. We won't be putting our people in harm's way. And, yes, some teams that go there--yes, some of these teams that will be embedded with those villagers, some members of those teams will lose their lives. But I would dare say, and Major Gant says so as well, that far fewer American military personnel will lose their lives that way than if we continue the strategy, which is basically alienating the people of Afghanistan who eventually will rise up against us because the strategy is not something that takes into account their own needs at the village and tribal level. It will cost us less in blood. It will cost us less in treasure than sending more combat troops to use Major Gant's strategy and a strategy of working at the bottom level rather than just sending in more troops. And to help them rebuild their country at long last. Rebuild their country after we promised them what we would do after they defeated the Soviet Army and after they kicked out the Taliban. But we owe it not only to the Afghan people to look very serious about this; we owe it to our troops not to send them on a mission that they cannot accomplish. We have an opportunity at this time to do the right thing and not just to place ourselves in a position to end up with a military, diplomatic, financial, and human embarrassment that we will have lost so many people and so many lives for nothing, for an outcome, another quagmire. I have one last story that I would like to end my speech on tonight, and it is a story that I want to make sure people understand. What I am saying today is not in any way a bad reflection on our military. The fact is, I met with our veterans from Afghanistan last week in my office. They support this strategy. Just because I'm saying they can't do everything and fight every battle doesn't mean that I don't respect them. In fact, I believe they are heroes. Every one of those people willing to put their lives on the line, they are heroes. They are willing to risk their lives for us. We owe them our best judgment not just an easy answer of sending more military people into a conflict. My family was a military family. I grew up in a Marine family. My father was a lieutenant colonel in the Marines. We were stationed in Marine bases until I was 16. My brother graduated from Camp Lejeune High School in 1963. His best buddy, his very best buddy, graduated from high school with him and immediately joined the Marine Corps when he was 17 years old, David Battle. David Battle joined the Marine Corps right after he graduated with my brother, and he was my brother's best friend. Well, years later, when I went to the White House with Ronald Reagan, I went to the inaugural ceremony, and then I had off for about a week before, or a couple of weeks before, I would actually start on the payroll in the White House. My family, my mother and my father and my brother, came to the inauguration in 1980, and then we rented a car and traveled down to Camp Lejeune to see where we used to live, to see if we could remake old acquaintances. And we found my brother's best and dearest friend, Sergeant David Battle. He was well on his way to retirement. He'd already bought himself--only a couple of years away, and he'd bought himself a boat that he was going to dig clams and mussels out in the inlets in North Carolina and sell it to the local fish markets. He would have his retirement. He had served two tours of duty in Vietnam, a wonderful man with a wonderful family. His parents were there. His lovely wife was there with their two children, and we had an evening that I will never forget, a great North Carolina evening. And then the next day my family drove to Washington, and I entered the White House and took my place on President Reagan's staff. President Reagan, as I have mentioned, sent the marines, deployed our American marines, into Beirut. It was not a good decision. It was something that was a risky proposition and had very little chance of success. I knew that, and I actually mentioned it to a lot of people. But what especially caught my eye when I was looking at that was that the State Department had initiated a policy, a rule of engagement, that was accepted by the military, forced on them by the State Department, that the marines would not be permitted to have bullets in their guns. Their clips would not be in their rifles, would be in pouches because the State Department was so afraid they might get trigger happy if they were shot at. Yeah. So we sent our marines in. I went around to offices in the White House and I pounded on the desk and I said, what are we doing here? How could we send our people in to try to defend us and tell them they can't, our soldiers, our marines, can't have bullets in their guns? This is insane. And I was told over and over again, don't worry, Dana. Don't worry. Bud McFarlane, George Schultz, Jim Baker, they're all former marines. They're going to take care of this. And it didn't get taken care of because after I left and was assured it would be taken care of, that piece of paper ended up on the bottom of the stack, on the bottom of the stack, and our troops, our marines continued for weeks to be in harm's way, without bullets in their guns. And again, I assumed that these people were going to handle it. I was told that they would. And then that horrible day when an Islamic terrorist drove a truck filled with explosives through the guard gate outside our Marine compound, and the Islamic terrorist smiling because he knew our guards could not stop him because their guns were unloaded, and he drove that truck into the Marine barracks and blew 290 marines to hell--290 marines. And I looked desperately. I looked to see who it was, and the first name on the list of casualties was Sergeant David Battle, my brother's best friend. I went into my office and wept that day. And then I stopped crying because I said, I'm going to make a resolution right here and now that I will never cease to be pushing and pushing and trying to correct a situation that I know is wrong. If it takes me being obnoxious, I will do that, because we owe it to the people who defend us, the Sergeant David Battles, they salute and march off and put themselves in harm's way. They are doing their duty. It is up to us to do our duty by them, and not send them on a mission that they cannot accomplish, and not send them into harm's way to lose their lives for nothing. Today, we have a major decision to make in Afghanistan. It is up--I would call on all of my colleagues to stand up and be counted on this issue, seriously consider what the chances of success are, and if they agree with me that the approach being taken of sending more troops in, that we stand up and we prevent this policy, like the policy of sending our troops into Beirut without bullets in their guns. And we should not assume that just sending those guys there will be accomplished because other people will watch over and make sure the job's done correctly and that our troops are safe. It is up to us, each and every one of us, to insist that this strategy of simply sending in more troops, at $35 billion, a strategy that's more likely to work and accomplish what we want to accomplish, is put into place, a strategy that will keep faith with the Afghan people, instead of just simply relying on Americans doing more of the fighting, help them rebuild their country, rearm them, arm them so they can do their own fighting. We owe it to our troops. We owe it to our marines, we owe it to the Sergeant David Battles who have given their lives over the years for our country, to make sure we do our duty by them as they do their duty by us.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, this attempt at sliding Americans into dependence on a government-controlled health care system brings bait-and-switch to a new low. We have heard about the flaws of our current health care system: high cost; lack of portability; lose a job, lose insurance; and discrimination against those with preexisting conditions. Yes, many of the heart-wrenching stories we are hearing to justify this legislation are real. But correcting those maladies only requires specific reform. It doesn't require transforming health care in America into a bureaucratically managed health care system that will cost hundreds of billions of dollars more, including billions to provide health care for illegal aliens while at the same time cutting Medicare by hundreds of billions of dollars. This so-called reform will destroy the freedom of the American people to make health decisions with their doctor and the doctor of their choice. It will transform our system rather than reform it, and what we will end up with is a system that is massively more expensive, less effective, and will be based on government controls and rationing, rather than the patient-doctor relationship.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I oppose this bill that will take hundreds of billions of dollars out of Medicare and give billions of dollars of health care to illegal immigrants. Mr. Speaker, this attempt at sliding Americans into dependence on a government-controlled health care system brings bait and switch to a new low. We have heard about the flaws of our current healthcare system, high costs, lack of portability, lose a job--lose health insurance, discrimination of those with preexisting conditions. Yes, many of the heart-wrenching stories we are hearing to justify this legislation are real. But correcting those maladies requires specific reform, not transforming healthcare in America into a bureaucratically-managed system that will cost hundreds of billions, including billions to provide healthcare for illegal aliens, while at the same time cutting Medicare by hundreds of billions of dollars. This so-called reform will destroy the freedom of the American people to make health decisions with a doctor of their choice. It will transform our system, rather than reform it. And what we will end up with is a system that is massively more expensive, less effective, and will be based on government controls and rationing, rather than the patient-doctor relationship. You can touch our hearts with the stories of suffering brought about by defects in our current system, but it doesn't follow that we have to buy into this monstrous federal power grab. It is too benign to call this scheme bait and switch. Wake up America!! This bill cuts healthcare for our seniors by hundreds of billions of dollars while providing subsidized health care of illegal immigrants, which will draw more illegals into our country. Wake up America!! This bill is structured so that private companies will find it profitable to dump employees into the government-run option, rather than continuing to offer private health insurance. Wake up America!! This ill-conceived power grab will bankrupt our country as it destroys our freedom.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, we've heard lots of stories today, and it has touched our hearts. We know there are people out there suffering because we've got some major problems with our health care system. We know that there are uninsured people because the costs are just too high, they're priced out of the market, or they've got a preexisting condition. We know that, for example, there is not interstate competition that goes on that boosts up the cost, along with the fact that we have excessive litigation in our society. We could have fixed these issues so that everybody could be covered. The Republicans were willing to do it, but we were frozen out of this whole system because the Democrats didn't want to reform the system; they wanted to transform our current health care system into a government-run, bureaucratic Federal program. And they are doing that at the expense of seniors, where $400 billion is being taken out of their Medicare funds at the expense of small business and, yes, at the expense of all those people who are currently insured who will be thrown into this government-run system which will be inferior to the ones they have now in the private sector. This is a travesty. We should have worked together on this, but the Democrats wouldn't do it.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, there are 20 million uninsured Americans who just can't afford insurance, others who have lost insurance when they lost their jobs. Still others have a preexisting insurance condition and have been frozen out of the insurance market. Then there are frivolous lawsuits which drain very limited health care dollars. Of course, we find that our best insurance providers can't sell their insurance across the country. They are frozen out. There is no competition. These are problems that Republicans are anxious to work with Democrats on. I plead with my Democratic colleagues, don't hold health care reform hostage, dependent on the enactment of some socialistic experiment with government-run health care. What's going to happen? What's being demanded here is a transformation of our system rather than a reform of our system. That transformation of our system will hurt seniors. It will take people who now have insurance in small business and put them out of a job as well as with no insurance. Of course, it will not improve the situation but will be very costly for the American people.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, I would like to bring to the attention of my colleagues the inspirational and uplifting story of Brian Taylor from the November 2009 issue of SLAM magazine. Brian Taylor is a true modern hero and example to the youth of America. Brian was a superstar basketball player at Princeton University and in the ABA and NBA. He had a great 10 year professional career, after which he became a teacher. He is now Head of Schools for View Park Schools, a charter school network in the inner city of Los Angeles, CA. View Park graduates 100% of its high school seniors, all of whom go on to college! Brian's personal story and the success of his charter school is a real life example of what can be accomplished with hard work, perseverance and commitment to excellence. I salute Brian Taylor and I urge my colleagues to read and be inspired by this tremendous story. Higher Learning: Former ABA Star Brian Taylor Is Now Committed to Educating the Youth of L.A. (By Chris Warren) Brian Taylor creates a stir when he walks the halls of View Park Prep Middle School in south Los Angeles. One young teacher's face lights up when he spots Taylor and, making his way through the throngs of African-American students changing classes, he crows about a Laker's narrow Playoff win. As he continues down the hall, Taylor--who at 6-3--towers over the young kids who attend this charter school located in an area known for its deep-seated problems with gangs, violence, and failing schools--is approached by a succession of students. Some just say hi, some want to talk about their classes and others angle for a pat on the shoulder or a hug. One subject that isn't broached, at least on this day, is Taylor's highly successful career in the ABA and NBA. Not that there isn't a lot to talk about. After a standout tenure at Princeton, where he led the Pete Carril-coached Tigers to the NIT Tournament and wins over Bobby Knight's Indiana and Dean Smith's UNC tar Heels (``Bob McAdoo is still in denial,'' he says), Taylor was lured to the pros after his junior year in 1972, one of the first athletes to make the jump early--so unusual at the time that Howard Cosell did a story about it for ABC Sports. In a decade-long career in the pros, Taylor rolled up a Rookie of the Year award and two ABA championships with the New York Nets, where he played great D and dished the ball to Dr. J, Larry Kenon and John Williamson, before going on to stints with the Kansas City Kings, Denver Nuggets, and the San Diego Clippers in the NBA. Taylor isn't interested in rehashing past glory, though sometimes he can't avoid it because zealous fans still track him down and send him items to autograph. These days, Taylor, who is head of View Park Prep Schools and senior vice president at the Inner City Education Foundation (ICEF), which runs 13 charter schools in south L.A., including View Park Prep Middle School, would much rather talk about the challenges and triumphs of providing a top-notch education to minority students who typically have few, if any, good options when it comes to schools. Taylor certainly has a great story to tell. Since their founding in '94, ICEF schools have emerged as an educational powerhouse in an area of Los Angeles where only 9 percent of freshmen who enter public schools eventually graduate from college. By stark contrast, ICEF schools have not only routinely registered top scores on California standardized tests, often besting much wealthier areas, but have a goal, so far attained, of sending 100 percent of their graduates to college. Taylor needs to tell this story as a way to drum up support amongst parents, politicians, donors and neighbors, because their support is vital for ICEF to flourish and expand; their goal is to eventually operate 35 schools in south L.A., ultimately serving 10,000 students and producing 2,000 college graduates per year. ``My job is to help the outside world understand what we're doing and why and how we are achieving at a high level and get their support and their understanding,'' Taylor says, ``Us being here has affected people's lives--there are more kids and more traffic and it has affected people's lives in the community--and my job is to have them understand that it's worth it for the kids.'' By experience and connections, it's hard to imagine a better spokesperson. Not only is Taylor a Princeton grad, which speaks volumes about the value he places on education, but he was one of the founding board members and treasurer when ICEF was nothing more than an idea and later left a position at one of L.A.'s most prestigious private schools to become principal of View Park Middle School before starting his current job. Taylor's network is wide and he uses it well; he has coaxed former professional ballplayers to come work at the school and got Laker's great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to speak to the kids about black history; while I'm with him, he misses a call from President Obama's Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan. Given all that, it's still Taylor's temperament that is arguably his most effective tool in garnering support for ICEF's mission to provide an elite private school quality education to traditionally underserved, forgotten African- American children. ``Brian is the most modest person I've ever met,'' says ICEF founder Mike Piscal. As Taylor, whose playing days were ended by an Achilles heel injury in '82, leads a tour around the school, he is continually deflecting attention away from himself. Introducing Dwight Sanders, View Park's current principal, Taylor calls him one of ICEF's ``rising stars,'' and says that students already like Sanders better than him. Every teacher we meet is doing something extraordinary, he says, and I really should be talking to them, not him. Taylor would be the first to say that he's in a position today to make a huge difference in thousands of young lives largely because of basketball. Growing up in the housing projects of Perth Amboy, NJ. Taylor had two distinct advantages over his peers who were never able to rise above their tough environment: family and sports. His father, ``Big'' Steve, a former semi-pro football player and the family disciplinarian, worked as a laborer at the Raritan Copper Works, and his mother, Maude, was a homemaker. ``Even though we had a small place, it was the place to go to get home cooking and a lot of loving from my mom,'' he recalls. Along with a secure and loving home life, the Taylors were also awash in athletic talent. Big Steven was a skilled athlete and Brian's older brother, Bruce, was a standout football player who went on to become a Pro Bowl cornerback for the San Francisco 49ers. For his part, Brian excelled at everything he tried--he says baseball was his first love-- becoming a three sport letterman all four years of high school, leading his basketball team to one state championship and a second-place trophy. Fortunately for Taylor, he also had a football coach, Bob Estok, who stressed education. ``After my freshman year in high school, he says, You're a good enough student, you have a profile here that if we get you moving in the right track, you'll have tremendous opportunities to go anywhere in the country for college,'' Taylor says. For Estok, that track meant making sure Taylor spent two summers taking academic enrichment courses at an elite private school and maintaining an A-minus average in his regular courses. It also meant making sure that Taylor knew the dangers faced by talented athletes, so Estok gave him the book, The Black Athlete: The Shameful Story. ``It's a cautionary book, talking about how athletes are exploited for their physical abilities and don't take advantage of the opportunities they have as students,'' Taylor says. That was never a possibility for Taylor. Even though he was heavily recruited out of high school--UCLA, Cal-Berkeley and Rutgers were among his suitors--it was Princeton, located just 30 miles from home, which eventually won out. ``We didn't recruit him that hard, I guess his mom, the last thing she said was that I was the only honest guy he talked to,'' laughs Pete Carril, who coached the Tigers from 1967-96. ``He had his sights set on a good education and that really helped us.'' Taylor flourished at Princeton, using his blazing speed and strength to break down defenses and shut down the opposing team's best players. ``Brian was a terrific shooter and he had great quickness and he could defend,'' says Gary Walters, Princeton's current athletic director, who played point guard on the school's 1965 Final Four team. ``He was one of Pete's all-time most talented and gifted players.'' During the summer, Taylor would train with another of Princeton's all- time greats, Bill Bradley. Taylor remembers how Bradley would come to the gym each day clutching a notebook in which he'd jotted down all the drills he wanted to do. After each was completed, Bradley would methodically go back to the notebook and check it off--a powerful lesson about the importance of preparation and hard work in pursuing one's goals. Taylor's focus on academics waned when, after a wildly successful junior year, the ABA came calling. ``I was like, wow, I've got an opportunity to play with the great New York Nets in the beautiful Nassau coliseum and they're going to pay me to do it? Or I'm going to have to write a 100-page theses?'' When Taylor's father was interview by Cosell, the sportscaster asked him what his son should do: take the money and run, Big Steve said. Brian did just that, although he eventually went back to Princeton and earned two degrees. Taylor quickly established himself in the pros, not only winning ROY honors in the ABA, but helping lead the Nets to championships in his second and fourth years in the league, when the team came back from a 22-point deficit to best the Denver Nuggets. The way Taylor saw it, his job was to do two things: shut down the opposing team's best player and get the ball to a certain future hall of famer. ``My responsibility was making sure I got the ball to Dr. J in the right position,'' he says. Night after long night he had to try and slow the prolific scoring of the likes of David Thompson, George Gervin, Norm Nixon, and Pete Maravich. It was no easy task. ``They hated me because the only way I could slow them down was to do anything possible: grab them, hold them, trip them, bite them,'' he says with a laugh. Ron Boone, who played for numerous ABA and NBA teams and is now color commentator with the Utah Jazz, used to hate it when Taylor guarded him. ``He was just one of those guys you wanted to get off of you because he was there all of the time,'' Boone recalls. In the '76 Playoffs, Boone grew so frustrated with Taylor's defense that he punched him in the mouth, but the next year, Taylor and Boone were roommates on the Kansas City Kings and became good friends. Although undersized, Taylor had plenty of other tools. One was speed: he was known as the BT Express. ``He was the fastest guy I had seen in the league up to that point, and I'm not sure if people of the ilk of [Allen] Iverson are faster,'' says Kim Hughes, an assistant coach with the L.A. Clippers, who played with Taylor on the Nets. Hughes says Taylor and Dr. J were the smartest teammates he ever had, and that Taylor duped people into making ill-conceived passes. ``I heard how Bill Russell used to taunt people into blocking shots. Brian was lurking, waiting for the cross-court pass and he would get it almost every time.'' Although Nate ``Tiny'' Archibald is better known than Taylor, Hughes says it was a ``terrible deals'' when the Nets traded Taylor for Tiny. ``I thought Brian was a much better player than Tiny, even though Tiny was a much better offensive player,'' he says. ``Brian was such a good rebounder, defender and overall player.'' Taylor's leadership also set him apart, remembers Eric Money, a former Pistons point guard. As Money recalls, Taylor didn't lead by shouting or hogging the ball, but by quietly making everyone else better. ``He was always the floor general,'' says Money, who Taylor lured to ICEF schools to become a PE teacher and to help him coach the high school basketball team. ``he was a great complementary player to let guys like Dr. J have the spotlight. The leader sometimes has to defer that was one of his stronger qualities.'' Taylor will need to draw on every bit of those leadership skills in his current role. Education, especially in California, has been hit hard by the economy, with massive state budget cuts decimating teaching staffs, increasing class sizes and dimming prospects of academic progress. The challenge is particularly acute for charter schools, which already don't receive as much funding as regular public schools, even though their test scores and achievements are often far superior, most markedly in predominantly minority areas. Taylor has to work extra hard to try and drum up financial resources from foundations, individuals and the federal government, whatever it takes to keep the ICEF schools performing at a high level. Taylor's motivation is intensely personal. His two youngest children attend ICEF schools (an older child, Bryce, was a standout player at the University of Oregon and, after playing a year in Italy, is looking to sign with an NBA team), the symbolism of which is not lost on anyone. ``It does send an important message, because it tells you he has faith in us and the system,'' says Sanders. ``That says a lot about what he's building and what his belief is in our system.'' In fact, Taylor says he got into education after 10 years as a successful businessman in larger part to emphasize to his kids how important it is. Even if his weren't here, it seems clear that Taylor would be. He says he sees himself in the children who attend ICEF schools, growing up in the inner city where bad influences are all too common. What he wants them to understand is that academics lead to a better life and that it's within their grasp. But the job gives him plenty in return, including an opportunity to coach his son, Brendan, who is developing into an excellent player himself. It might not match the immediate thrill of a roaring crowd, but it can be far more gratifying, he says. ``What can you do that is going to give you the thrills that you had as a ballplayer? Probably nothing, but what is my purpose thereafter?'' he says. ``I feel coming here I found my purpose in life. And my purpose in life is to give back.''

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, tonight I rise once again to draw the attention of my colleagues and the American people to Afghanistan. I say ``once again'' because over my 20-year career in Congress I have spoken many times and at great length about that distant and desolate country. My interests and involvement in Afghanistan in fact date back before I was elected to Congress. During the 1980s, I was a special assistant to President Ronald Reagan. While I was primarily a speech writer, I soon learned after arriving at the White House with Reagan's team at the beginning of his administration that the President's words, once spoken and in the Record, become the policy of the executive branch. As a speech writer, I not only would write the words, but would help determine what would be said. When I realized the influence I would have, I was in awe of where my life had led me. I had worked hard in Ronald Reagan's gubernatorial campaigns when he first ran for Governor back in California. Later on, I worked on Presidential campaigns when Ronald Reagan ran for President in 1976 and 1980. And when he won in 1980, I went with him to the White House. I am still honored that President Reagan brought me to the White House with him and that he trusted me enough to hold such a position of writing his words and working with him on his speeches. And I really appreciate the fact that often enough President Reagan backed me up when the remarks that I wrote were a little bit tougher than the policy statements that most of the senior staff of the White House wanted the President to say. But I worked for President Reagan, I knew that. I didn't work for his staff; I worked for him. And I understood that he wasn't there to be President. He was there to make things happen, to change the course of our country, to redirect the confidence of our people from a downward spiral at that time to an upward thrust. Those of us who worked for him knew firsthand that an unmistakable goal to which President Ronald Reagan was committed was to bring about a more peaceful world. That lofty goal was not going to be achieved by ignoring or downplaying threats or by sincere expressions of a desire for peace or by holding hands and singing kumbaya. Yes, part of Reagan's strategy to obtain a more peaceful world was rebuilding our military forces, this to deter aggression. But let us look back and note that he rebuilt our military forces, but only on rare occasion did President Reagan send our troops into troubled spots in the far reaches of the world. He was hesitant to give the green light to use the military in such actions. He did so sparingly. He had a sense not to get us trapped into a prolonged conflict or a no-win situation. He sent our marines to Lebanon for a specific mission. They were there to accomplish that mission, and they were supposed to leave within days. Then President Reagan was convinced, over his better judgment, to keep the marines in that war-torn city, Beirut, as a stabilizing force--get that, a stabilizing force in the most volatile region of the planet. The result was, of course, 295 dead marines, a setback for our country, but a catastrophe for 295 American families who lost loved ones. It was especially hurtful to me. I grew up in a marine family. My father was a lieutenant colonel in the United States Marine Corps. I went to school and lived at Camp Lejeune and Cherry Point, North Carolina, when I was in eighth, ninth and 10th grade. There my brother, who was also going to school with me, met and befriended a man who became his best friend, in fact, David Battle, who shortly after graduating from Camp Lejeune High School joined the Marine Corps. He was still 17 years old. Sergeant David Battle remained my brother's best friend. And as Ronald Reagan was being inaugurated, right afterwards we went to Camp Lejeune and we visited with his family and with David Battle. He was a sergeant at that time. He had been in the Marines all that time, two tours of duty in Vietnam, and he was looking forward in a few years ahead to retiring from the Marine Corps. And there he had a small boat which he was going to be working the rivers and estuaries in North Carolina, collecting seafood and oysters and clams. He had his life picked out for him. It was going to be a fine retirement. We were very close to that family. Then I went up and joined the White House staff. A few years later, when the bomb went off in the Marine barracks in Beirut killing 295 of our people, I immediately sought out the list of casualties and Sergeant David Battle, his name was the first on the list of those who had been killed. I went to my office in the White House and I wept. At that point, I pledged to myself that I would never, ever cease to step forward and try to make sense of something that didn't make sense and that would put our people in jeopardy. President Reagan learned a bitter lesson; and to his credit, against the advice of some very aggressive national security advisers, President Reagan decided not to reinforce the decimated marine force in Lebanon. Instead, he pulled them out before we got stuck in a quagmire that would have been exploited by our major global enemy at that time, the Soviet Union. He took great care not to get us into a fight that we wouldn't be able to get out of. Let me note, for all the name-calling suggesting Ronald Reagan was a warmonger for building up our Nation's military, Reagan's predecessors, both Republican and Democrat, sent our military into action far more often than did President Reagan. The liberation of Grenada from a bizarre and murderous Communist takeover--and that was just a very small, short operation--and in Lebanon, which turned out so badly, that's about as far as it goes in terms of Ronald Reagan ordering U.S. troops into harm's way. So sending American combat troops into battle was not how Ronald Reagan succeeded in making the world a safer place, a world where universal peace would have a chance. Well, number one, to accomplish that, Ronald Reagan built up our military might in weapons, quality of personnel, and advance technology. For example, his famous commitment to a missile defense system, which even today looks like such an important investment to protect us against missiles from Korea or Iran, or perhaps China. He improved our intelligence, which had been gutted in the 1970s. And, lastly, and most importantly, by implementing a strategy that became known as the ``Reagan Doctrine,'' he helped end the reign of Communist tyranny and made the world a safer place. It was Charles Krauthammer who first identified that Reagan's words and actions were part of a comprehensive strategy being brought to bear against Soviet communism, a strategy that had been outlined in his speeches. The Reagan Doctrine had nothing to do with sending U.S. troops to far-off lands and defeating an enemy. Reagan instinctively knew there were limits to what the power of government, even the Army, could accomplish; but he also understood the mighty power of people who loved freedom. Ronald Reagan understood that struggling against tyranny, especially Communist tyranny, were America's greatest allies. They would be our brothers and sisters throughout the world of people who were resisting tyranny, especially Communist tyranny. The Reagan Doctrine, in short, was to achieve our goals of a safer world and a more secure world and a safer and more secure America by supporting those brave souls in various countries who were resisting or fighting pro-Soviet Communist dictatorships, which was our enemy as well as their oppressor. In Poland, we covertly helped the Solidarity Movement. We bolstered our broadcasting to captive nations in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. We provided funds and resources to the anti-Sandinistas insurgents in Nicaragua, which eventually forced that Marxist gangster regime to have a free election; and when they did, those Sandinistas, those Marxist Sandinistas lost overwhelmingly. The implementation of the Reagan Doctrine, not just rebuilding U.S. military strength, was what broke the will and the bank account of the Soviet Union. Nowhere was it more effective and harder fought than in Afghanistan, which in the mid-1980s was in the front lines of the Cold War. A few years into the Reagan administration, I was approached by an old friend, Dr. Jack Wheeler, who, interestingly enough, was the chairman of Youth for Reagan in Ronald Reagan's first campaign for Governor in California back in 1966. That's where I met him. After that, Dr. Wheeler had gone on to earn a Ph.D. in philosophy and had been earning his living as a tour guide which took people on adventure tours into some of the world's most dangerous territories. He was a real Indiana Jones; but more than that, he was a real patriot. Jack Wheeler wanted to be part of President Reagan's historic effort to reduce communism's influence on this planet and to relegate it to the ash heap of history. Dr. Wheeler's plan was to travel to some of the most inhospitable locations in the world and to contact the leadership of various anti-Communist insurgencies who were there in those far-off places engaged in taking on Soviet military power. I agreed to receive his reports and documentation as he traveled, and after 6 months it began to arrive. He was on the road and into the front lines. I started receiving information, pictures and notes and descriptions and audiotapes and videotapes in my office in the White House; much of it came through diplomatic pouch from far away embassies. When Dr. Jack Wheeler returned from searching out the leaders of the various anti-Communist insurgencies, he came directly to the White House where I arranged for him to brief about 30 national security- focused staff members at the White House. What they heard was electrifying. There was a very real opportunity to defeat the Soviet Union and to usher in a new era of world peace. The Soviet empire was vulnerable, and that's where the Reagan Doctrine started at that particular briefing. Everybody knew it could be a strategy, and we went to work putting it in place and presenting it to the President. This strategy of the Reagan Doctrine was implemented by men like Dr. Constantine Menges, who had been in the CIA. He was a great academic as well. At that time, he was working with the National Security Council of the White House. Yes, CIA Director Bill Casey was also significant in the success of the Reagan Doctrine--and yes, we have to admit Ollie North as well. President Reagan, of course, was the real hero of this particular policy. He approved a strategy that defeated the Soviet Union without sending our troops into action against Soviet troops or even coming into direct confrontation with Soviet military forces. We feared a nuclear war for decades. Reagan ended that threat, that nuclear war with the Soviet Union that we all felt someday might happen and obliterate most of mankind. Reagan ended that threat. Communist tyranny was advancing when Ronald Reagan became President. He turned it around and laid the foundation for a collapse of the Soviet Government in Russia. Afghanistan was the tip of the Reagan Doctrine spear. So, our assistance to the Afghanistan resistance escalated, and as it did, I became more personally involved in this historic effort. In those days, Jack Wheeler would send us firsthand accounts of the frontline fight in Afghanistan. At times, he would bring Afghanistan warriors to my office in the White House. Other times, these rugged fighters--the Mujahedeen as they are called--would come to Washington for secret meetings, and I would end up taking them for lunch at the White House dining room or introducing them to specific people in the bureaucracy and in the power structure who could help them. So I got to know and admire these brave people. In the late 1980s, the Soviets upped the ante, unleashing Hind helicopter gunships which ripped the Mujahedeen, and they were just destroying them at will. At this moment of desperation, there was a major debate in the White House over the proposal to neutralize the helicopter gunships by providing Stinger missiles, which are shoulder- held missiles that can take out airplanes or helicopters. There was a debate as to whether to provide them to the Afghan resistance. Ronald Reagan personally made the decision, and the anti-aircraft weapons were sent. It changed the outcome of that battle in Afghanistan, and it changed all of history. Yet it was not just weaponry or even U.S. financing or material support. It was the courage and sacrifice of the Afghan people that carried the day. A million of them lost their lives. It was an overwhelming loss for every family of Afghanistan. Several million were displaced, but all of them stood tall and stood up to the Soviet empire. We were proud to stand by such people. Yes, Charlie Wilson, who used to be a Member of Congress and a member of the Appropriations Committee, played an important role in getting the money allocated to help these brave people, and other people in Reagan's White House can be proud of what was done to support these Afghan freedom fighters. I would have to say, for as much as we did-- Charlie Wilson and those of us in the White House and other people-- it's the Afghan people who thoroughly deserve the credit of not only defeating this Soviet Army in Afghanistan but of breaking the will of the Communist Party bosses who controlled the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Army retreated from Afghanistan, Soviet confidence crumbled, and a new world emerged free from the threat of a Russia controlled by a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship--a Russia committed to Communist world domination. It was an historic achievement which can be traced to the Reagan Doctrine but also to the blood and to the sacrifice of the Afghan people. How did we repay this enormous sacrifice that made all of us safer, this tremendous gift that we still enjoy? How did we repay it? We walked away and left a crippled and wounded Afghan population to sleep in the rubble. We didn't even provide them with an ample level of support to clear land mines that were planted all over their country, land mines that we had given them, mines that to this day continue to blow the legs off of Afghan children. To say America was guilty of ingratitude is to put it mildly, but President Reagan was gone by then. His term of office was over, and George Bush, Sr. was President--George Bush, Sr., the same President who sent American troops all over the world and sent a huge number of deployments of American troops into battle, the same George Bush, Sr. who walked away not only from the Afghans but from the democracy movement in China, leaving them to be slaughtered both in Afghanistan and in Tiananmen Square. No, George Bush, Sr. was no Ronald Reagan. As time passed, chaos reigned in Afghanistan. During the Clinton administration, our government took steps to do something about the mayhem in that country. Unfortunately, President Clinton's team did exactly the wrong thing. What do I mean? One of the reasons for the continued bloodletting in Afghanistan after the Soviets left and their puppet regime collapsed--what brought that on and continued that bloodletting was that, during the war, the American Government had agreed to let the Pakistani Intelligence Service--that's the ISI, the equivalent of our CIA--dole out our supplies, American supplies, to the various anti-Soviet Afghan factions. The ISI--that's the Pakistani CIA--was then and is now a hotbed of radical Islam. Much of our military supplies, which were being channeled right through this group, ended up in the hands of radical, radical, the most radical Islamists--people like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Sayoff and other murderous Islamic radicals. We could have and should have insisted on the direct delivery of U.S. supplies to the insurgent groups, and we would choose the insurgent groups. We did not insist on that. Instead, our own CIA punted. Even to this day, they say, Well, we couldn't have looked at things for the future. You know, how do you expect us not to have a battle in the future when we've got a battle right now to determine? No. You could make a determination of not giving weapons to the worst radicals in Afghanistan. They could have made the determination that, in the long run, it wouldn't have been in our interest, because there were many other moderate Afghan Mujahedeen groups who needed that support and who didn't get anywhere near as much as these radicals did from the Pakistani CIA, the ISI. Basically, the CIA is giving the ISI leverage, which was then used to promote Islamic fascism. It was also used to secure the Pakistani dominance of Afghanistan, which has been one of the major reasons, dynamics, that has kept Afghanistan in turmoil for decades. So what happened? The situation got worse and worse. The chaos got worse and worse. During this time, I was one of the few who did not turn my head and walk away. I kept looking for a way out of the insanity and chaos. Yes, there was a way out, but it was a path the Saudis and the Pakistanis did not want to take. There was one man revered by almost all of the Afghan people of every faction and every tribe. It was King Zahir Shah, the king who is in exile, who had led his country for 4 decades through peace and stability. When he was overthrown, Afghanistan ended up in decades of chaos and bloodletting and invasions on a massive scale. During that time, King Zahir Shah, as he was deposed in a coup, ended up living in exile in Rome. I met with him there on a number of occasions in the 1990s. He was the obvious leader to bring peace and stability to his bloody and torn country but not so obvious to the Pakistanis, who wanted to dominate and control Afghanistan, not so obvious to the Saudis who were doing the bidding of the most violent and anti-Western manifestations of Islamic fascism, and not so obvious to the Clinton administration, whose goal was to go along with the Saudis and the Pakistanis. I, personally, argued my case to Prince Turki, then the head of the Saudi CIA. Prince Turki had been very involved with supporting the anti-Soviet Mujahedeen during the war against the Soviet occupation. I begged with him and pleaded with everyone else who would listen. King Zahir Shah was a moderate Muslim leader who would bring peace and stability. No. What the Saudis and the Pakistanis wanted was a radical Islamic force that would supposedly unite the devout Muslims of Afghanistan but, more importantly, would be a Pakistani and Saudi ally, an ally who would be willing to do their bidding. What did the Clinton administration do? What did the Clinton administration want? Well, what they wanted was to make the Saudis and the Pakistanis happy. So, in the mid-1990s, the Taliban emerged. They are not the same as the Mujahedeen. Many Americans mistakenly believe that the people who fought against the Soviet Army, who were named the Mujahedeen, later became the Taliban. By and large, it was the Mujahedeen later on who drove the Taliban out of power. It was the Taliban which had been kept as a reserve force, you might say, going to these moderate schools in Pakistan until after the Soviets had been defeated. The lion's share of Mujahedeen leaders, who fought against the Soviet troops, were not part of the Taliban. Well, I hoped for the best after it was clear that the Taliban was anointed by the Clinton administration, by the Saudis and the Pakistanis, and they took over Kabul, the capital city of Afghanistan. I hoped for the best for about 2 weeks. I was just hoping. People told me maybe they'll come through, and maybe they'll start moderating, but my worst nightmares began to come true after just a few weeks. A brutal fundamentalist, Islamic movement that hated the West was taking control of Afghanistan, supported by the United States Government in the name of stability. That was it. In the name of stability, we're going to support these radical fundamentalists and other tyrannical forces. For several years, at this time in the 1990s, I was a voice in the wilderness here in the House, warning that the creation and support of the Taliban would come back to haunt us someday. I had no idea how true these warnings were, and how much it would hurt us. During that time in the 1990s, I met with the leaders of Afghan tribes and ethnic groups in and out of Afghanistan in an effort to forge an anti-Taliban coalition. The core of the plan was to bring back Zahir Shah, King Zahir Shah, as the focal point for dislodging the Taliban--someone everyone could rally around, who would treat people fairly and create a peaceful, more democratic country. At the end of the year 2000, after a Herculean effort, there was a meeting that had been arranged of all the Afghan factions except for the Taliban. After that meeting, King Zahir Shah agreed to return to Afghanistan to hold a Loya Jirga in July of 2001. The Loya Jirga, let me note, is a convention of tribal elders which was to take place in the territory that was controlled by Commander Masood. Commander Masood is a man who was never beaten by the Soviets. He was also never beaten by the Taliban, and he was one of the last commanders who held any part of territory in Afghanistan. The rest was controlled by the Taliban. Considering this agreement of Zahir Shah to go to Commander Masood's territory and have a Loya Jirga to talk about the future governance, the governance of Afghanistan, this was a great step forward, and this agreement was forged despite the opposition of the Clinton administration. It was a great accomplishment just to get that agreement. Those involved in making this happen included International Relations Committee Chairman Ben Gillman; Tom Lantos, a senior member of the Foreign Affairs Committee; as well as a few others but just a few. After George W. Bush was elected, I was able to meet several times with his new National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, whom I knew from the Reagan days. Well, we discussed Russia, and we talked extensively about Afghanistan. I pitched the idea of overthrowing the Taliban using the coalition that I'd been building--the anti-Taliban coalition. Well, the idea wasn't rejected, but no action was taken, at least until 9/11. The 9/11 slaughter of 3,000 Americans was planned and set in motion by bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network, then allied with the Taliban, which was headquartered there in Afghanistan and was operating freely in that country. On 9/11, I was given an incredible opportunity to utilize the knowledge that I had gained and the relationships I had built in that region over the many years. It was the opportunity to make a significant difference for my country at a time of great chaos and crisis. Only a few days before, al Qaeda/Taliban assassins had murdered Commander Masood. I had met with Commander Masood in Afghanistan in one of my several forays into Afghanistan during the 1990s. I visited him in a mountain hideout, his retreat, or his fortress you might say, and we talked for a long time. We had been in contact ever since the time in the Reagan White House when he sent his brother to see me. And we had negotiated and kept in touch verbally, but that was the first time I met him. Our friendship was already in existence, and by that meeting, it really was solidified. And then Commander Masood in the days before 9/11--and we'd been looking forward to having this meeting in his territory with the King, Commander Masood was blown apart in an assassination scheme--of course, Taliban and al Qaeda scheme. And I remember then how much despair that I had that this great man who held such promise to be a leader of his country, like others who were killed during a war against the Russians and now the Taliban, so many young leaders killed in Afghanistan--a brave man, Abdul Hawk, lost his life. But Commander Masood, I sat down in my office in total despair and I said, I gotta get control of myself. Why did they kill him? Why did they do that now? I thought it out, and I realized that they had killed Commander Masood in order to prevent the United States from having an avenue to counterattack against them for something that they were going to do to us. It made all the sense in the world. They were going to have a major attack on the United States, and it must have been something that was going to be humongous and cause much loss of life or they wouldn't have gone out of the way to kill Commander Masood because we wouldn't have wanted to try to retaliate against them, to use him to retaliate against them for something they did to us. Well, yes, that was exactly the case. And I realized there would be a monstrous attack on the United States, so I immediately called the White House. I called the White House. I called for National Security Adviser Condi Rice, and her assistant came on the phone and said, Congressman Rohrabacher, what is it? And I said, I've got to see her. I've got to warn her about an imminent, major terrorist attack that is going to happen very soon in our country. There will be a huge terrorist attack. I need to talk to her about it and give her some details of what I think is going to happen. And the aide said, You know, Congressman, she's talked about Afghanistan before. We know you're an expert on that, but she can't see you today. She's a busy person. But if you come over tomorrow at 3 o'clock, she will talk to you, and I will put you on the schedule. So I was on the schedule at 3 o'clock to talk to Condoleezza Rice to warn her of an imminent major terrorist attack. That's what the schedule says. The day that I was supposed to meet her was 9/11. That day, the planes began flying into the buildings at 8:45. So on that horrible day, 9/11, I understood what was happening, and I immediately began to provide information and contacts to the CIA, Defense Department, and National Security Council. The team who had helped me during the years organizing an anti-Taliban coalition was now brought to play to help America plan its counterattack. Charlie Santos, a confidant of Afghan Uzbek leader General Dostum, was a treasure house of information and direction for our government and part of my team during the years before. Al Santoli on my staff ended up talking directly via satellite cell phones to village and tribal leaders. One of them, for example, was so-called warlord Ishml Khan, thus paving the way for the injection of our special forces troops. Paul Berkowitz, who now works for me, then working for Chairman Ben Gilman, opened doors throughout the administration. Paul Behrends, a Marine major, a former member of my staff who had been in Afghanistan with me and knew the players in the territory, was there to help. And Dusty Rhodes, an expert from the intelligence community, he was on my staff at the time and had very special skills that were incredibly important to helping us determine how to proceed. I have never sought much credit for the small but significant contribution my team made after 9/11. It's like that saying Reagan had framed on his desk: ``There is no limit to what a person can accomplish if he doesn't care who gets the credit.'' Well, our military originally wanted to send in heavy American Army divisions into Afghanistan; basically, what we did in Iraq. They would be supplied by depots located in the northwestern provinces, provinces of Pakistan where that invasion would have been staged from. It would have been a disaster had we done that. The northwestern provinces are the most anti-American territories in the world, which, right now, people are struggling against Taliban control over those areas. Our team managed to convince America's decisionmakers to come at Afghanistan from the north through Uzbekistan, and most importantly, to let our Afghan coalition do the fighting. Most of those making this decision on which way to go--whether to send in the big heavy divisions or not--had never even heard of Tarmez, which is an Uzbek city on the Afghan border that later served as our staging area. They had, of course, never been at the northwest provinces, nor did they know about the strategically important Afghan city of Mazar-e- Sharif, which later turned out to be pivotal in the defeat of the Taliban. I had been to those cities. I had been to those places, and our little team knew the territory and the forces at play. And luckily, some high-level decisionmakers at the DOD and the CIA and, yes, the National Security Council listened to us. Too many Americans don't fully appreciate the fact that it was an army of Afghans--that was called the Northern Alliance--that defeated the Taliban and drove them out of their country. Only about 200 U.S. military personnel were there at the time. Only 200 men, boots on the ground, yes. Only 200 men were there of American military personnel. And we gave the Northern Alliance the financial support and supplied them the arms and the ammunition and, most importantly, the air cover they needed to defeat the Taliban. We also promised to rebuild their country, and that's how the Taliban--who were immensely more powerful than they are today--that's how they were defeated after 9/11. So 7 years have passed, and it appears now that America is pulling defeat out of the jaws of victory. American political restructuring and military firepower has not been working, and it should be of no surprise that it's not working. We can defeat any army and dislodge any tyrant or regime. We cannot conquer or subjugate a people. Once we are viewed as occupiers and not liberators, we lose. The people of Afghanistan are devout Muslims. Yet after 9/11, large numbers of them came to our side and fought against and defeated the Taliban and al Qaeda Muslim extremists. Oh my, how history repeats itself. After promising to rebuild their war-torn country, after the victory over the Taliban, we then, instead of keeping our word, moved on and committed ourselves to freeing Iraq from the Saddam Hussein dictatorship and helping those people. That commitment dramatically undercut our ability to make the kind of effort and expenditure of resources that the brave Afghan people had a right to expect at that time. Well, they fought the Russian Army and helped end the cold war, and it was an enormous price that they paid to do that. Then after 9/11, they joined us again to fight radical Islam's grip on their country, which had been used as a base camp for the 9/11 attack that slaughtered 3,000 Americans. The Afghans are brave and honorable people. We have to do justice by them. We have to yet pay back this debt that we still owe them. Instead, over the years, we have sent our military with its incredibly sophisticated weapons into Afghanistan. When the Taliban were driven out, 90 percent of the Afghans loved us and they were doing the fighting against the extremists. Now, years later, our troops are doing the fighting and the hearts of the Afghan people are turning against us. Afghanistan is a country of 4,500 villages. Each has a militia. Either the villages are with us or they're against us. We've made the age-old mistake of thinking this society of villages and fiercely independent people can be pacified and controlled by our forces or those of a central authority in Kabul. Trying to impose centralized government power on these villages rather than approaching them as friends who are there to help has turned friend into foe, ally into enemy. We can defeat a foreign army, be it a German or Japanese military power of World War II or Republican Guard of Saddam Hussein. We cannot defeat the country of Afghanistan. We cannot occupy or control its people. We can be their friend, and if we do so, we will win. If we attempt to use our military might to force an outcome based on control and pacification of a vast and inhospitable countryside, we will eventually lose. The 4,500 villages will be with us or against us. They will be with our enemy, radical Islam, or they will be against it. Just as I was in a position to influence enormously important decisions after 9/11, I believe I am here at this moment to try again to influence a decision that will have horrendous negative consequences if not made with an understanding of Afghanistan and its people. Today we are facing a decision to send or not to send 35,000 more combat troops into Afghanistan. Thirty-five thousand more troops, by definition, means Americans will do more fighting. It is a wrong strategy, a strategy that will not work and will cost too much financially and cost too much in terms of the lives of our military personnel. A better plan is to re-earn the loyalty of these brave and long-suffering people. Afghan children are the most beautiful kids in the world, but this country has the world's highest infant mortality rate. It tears at the heart and soul of these people that they're losing their children. Let's help them change that. The money needed to finance sending 35,000 more combat troops into Afghanistan is a mind-boggling 35 billion--that's ``billion''--dollars per year. A commitment of even a small portion of this would bring life-elevating progress throughout that land of 4,500 villages. It would win the goodwill of those villages and their militias. After that, they could become a real asset. They would be a real force against radical Islam. And yes, we need to re-earn the loyalty and gain the loyalty of our Afghan allies. After 9/11, we disarmed the Northern Alliance. We need to re-arm them, and we need to rebuild a solid friendship with those people. Building a central army, however, in Kabul is not the way to defend against Taliban insurgents. Sending in more U.S. combat troops is not the answer, nor is just building up a central army in Kabul. Reaching out to the villages and tribal elders and establishing local militias, perhaps buying their goodwill if need be, these are the things that will work. And it will cost a pittance compared to $35 billion more per year for 35,000 more troops who may end up turning off the people of Afghanistan rather than enlisting them to our side. Opposing our enemy by arming and financing local and village leaders was a strategy that worked against the Soviet Army, and it worked against the Taliban after 9/11, and it will work again. Let us admit that our goals these last 7 years, that the goals that we have actually tried to put in place these last 7 years were wrong. The goals were wrong. Not just the implementation. The goals were wrong. Honest and decentralized government in Afghanistan should have been the goal. Decentralized. Honest and decentralized, perhaps representative, government in Afghanistan should have been the goal, not creating a central power, the fallacy that you can't have a real country unless you really have a government in charge in the capital that then controls the rest of the country. That was a total illusion, and it was wrong. It was never something we could have accomplished. Instead, what we wanted to do instead of a decentralized government, we wanted to establish a national power, and we wanted to have national power wielders with whom we could do business. Karzai was never someone who had any loyalty of the Afghan people. He was not a political force in that country. We forced Karzai on the Afghan people after 9/11, and we forced the king into a more subservient role when he returned rather than a role where he could have selected true Afghan leaders to help rebuild their country, leaders that would have been honest instead of what we have now in the Karzai administration, which is nothing more than a kleptocracy, gangster regime. In the United States our schools are run locally. Remember this. Our schools are run locally. Our police are run locally. The criminal justice system is run at the State or local level. What would have happened if somebody had come into our country during the American revolution and said, No, we have to reconfigure it so that all the power's in Washington and all the appointees are going to be in Washington D.C., and that's where all the power is going to be and you're going to have to have a centralized government. Our Founding Fathers would have revolted against that, because that wasn't consistent with how we knew that freedom was going to be preserved; it wasn't consistent with representative government and democracy. No, we wouldn't have done that. Well, let me just note, what we've got there in Afghanistan and what we've tried to establish in Afghanistan is a Kabul-based centralization of authority. How can we expect the people of Afghanistan to accept something--centralization of power--which is totally contrary to their own decentralized society which they have had for thousands of years, especially when the centralized authority that we're trying to foist on them has been corrupt and in no way reflects the consent of the governed? Members of parliament there are elected in a slate. The people there in that country don't have individual districts that represent them, individual congressmen who are elected from individual districts. They aren't even elected at specific villages. No, there is not one person in that government who most people in Afghanistan can identify as someone for whom they voted for to represent them, not in the parliament, not in the Kabul government, because there's no congressmen that are elected. They're elected at a province-wide level which means it's a slate and almost all of the villages, nobody knows anybody on the slate because the slate is dictated politically from Kabul which, of course, is a corrupt center of power. Do we expect the Afghan people to just accept orders from people who they haven't voted for, whom they don't know? And the corruption and the ineptitude of that central authority, of course, which we have foisted upon them is not an acceptable alternative. We're not giving them an acceptable alternative. No wonder why the Taliban is being considered. All this means is that local people have no honest system to settle disputes, to determine rights or to organize the effort that's needed to elevate the condition of this suffering and poverty- stricken people. These people are devout, but they're not fanatics. But they will acquiesce again to the Taliban Islamic fringe if it is at least honest at its core as compared to visiting crooks who are claiming the right to make decisions that have the finality and power of law but people whom they don't even know who they are, much less have voted for them. What we do now is what we should have done originally. Let the local villages appoint their own elders to positions of local authority. Let them pick a wise person who they know to be a judge and make decisions for them locally. Let the village militias become part of a National Guard. Give them uniforms, give them guns and ammunition, give them communication gear, and use the central army to back them up, not to disarm them for fear of their sympathies. Yes, the U.S. can remain a major military force in Afghanistan, but we cannot and will not succeed if we believe our military forces, foreign fighters in a foreign land, can bring a recognizable military victory. Adding more troops feeds the illusion that we can win some kind of victory if we just exercise more power and send more military personnel. Alexander the Great left the bones of his entourage there as did the British and, yes, the Russians. The sword has never conquered these people. It may for a limited time give an appearance of stability but, instead, will feed a simmering antipathy that will not cool but only grow hotter and more ferocious. Again, we can defeat any army. We cannot conquer and subdue the nation of Afghanistan. Only Afghans, from the bottom-up, can control and pacify their countryside. There is still time for our action in Afghanistan to end with honor and success, for the Afghans and for Americans. They can still have a great ending to all of this. The first step towards that is to signal to the whole nation of Afghanistan, send them a message heard in every corner of those 4,500 villages, and that is that the United States is not trying to foist upon them a corrupt central government. To accomplish this, we must recognize the travesty of this last election. While we cannot have an entirely new election, we can insist on a runoff between Messrs. Karzai and Abdullah. In this runoff election, a respected international organization, perhaps the OSCE, could be given a free hand to correct problems as they appear and throw out illegal ballots if necessary. After the elections we should commit ourselves to a new course, a new course that respects the traditional village structure and reaches out with assistance to improve health, water, education and agriculture in Afghanistan. Yes, at first the risk of such a plan will be great for the individuals who are willing to go to the front lines with our helping hand offensive. But this approach, a helping hand, will be far more effective than a mailed fist approach. It will take money. We may need to begin to buy goodwill. Maybe we need to offer to put some people on consulting fees at the local level, some of these local leaders and village elders. Well, that can be done; and we can also do things like, for example, some expenditures that prove our good faith, like setting up clinics or schools or economic projects that will improve the life of those villagers. It may take courage and we will lose some people. But in the end the expense and the loss of life will be far less than a warrior-focused alternative. And, yes, fighting will be necessary. The Taliban are evil. They are inseparable from al Qaeda because they are the same radical extremists. We know that. Anybody who is a dreamer, who thinks that, well, we can bring back the Taliban but we can separate them from al Qaeda, that is just so much nonsense. But the Taliban need not come back. There is opposition to the Taliban if we offer a tangible alternative. Let us build up the militias in the towns and villages across that desolate country and let these militias do the fighting. We can and should help establish a militia system and back them up, from the air or even on the ground if necessary. But it will be the Afghans, not the Americans, who are on the front lines of this effort. How much will it cost us to deploy 35,000 more troops? $35 billion. What I'm talking about is a strategy that would cost a minuscule amount of that and have a much greater chance of success. Let's stand down these troops. Let's let these 35,000 American military personnel stay home with their families. And let's send to the Afghans a portion of what that additional troop cost would be. Every time in the past we got to this situation, it was either send those troops and spend the money for them or not give them anything, or just give them a little bit. No, let's give them a substantial infusion into their society of wealth and expertise that can help build that society. That will be so much cheaper and more cost effective, and with a billion dollars, yes, you can buy the loyalty of a number of Afghan leaders at the village and provincial and tribal level that can get us over the hump. Now that's certainly better than spending money to send people over there to kill more Afghans. We can be their partners in building and improving the life of the Afghan people. And it will bring change to that country and have a much greater chance at success. Let me end this tonight with one last story, which I didn't mention. Before I came to Congress, I actually went into Afghanistan with an Afghan military unit, a mujahadeen unit, who were fighting the Soviet Union. And I had met so many of these leaders, I told them one day that I would join them in a great battle if I had left the White House. And so I went to the battle of Jalalabad as part of a small military force. All we had were AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. I had a beard. I was in Afghan garb. I was just one of the team, one of that unit. Our job was to protect and to work with a rocket unit that was about to attack and give them protection, about to launch rockets into a Soviet position outside the city of Jalalabad. As we marched to the battle of Jalalabad, it was late at night and the bombs and things were going off, you could hear the explosions and see them; and I was with about 120 Afghans by that point, worming our way through the hillsides toward the battle. A young Afghan lad, perhaps 16 years old, an AK-47 over his shoulder, came up to me and said, ``I understand that you're in politics in America.'' I said, ``Yes, I am.'' He said, ``Well, are you a donkey or an elephant?'' I said, ``Well, I'm an elephant.'' He said, ``I thought you were.'' And as we talked, I said to him, ``What do you plan to do once this war with the Soviets is over?'' And as we marched toward that battle, he said, ``I want to be an engineer or an architect. I want to rebuild my country. I want to rebuild my country. And I know, with you Americans, we can do that.'' I don't know whatever happened to that young man. He may never have survived that battle. I left after a week and I was back here in the safety of our country. I only could have died of diarrhea or by drinking bad water. He could have stepped on a land mine. A Russian plane napalmed one part of the group that I was with. He could have died in something like that. But that young man, 16 years old, is now probably 40 years old. We owe him a lot. We can only hope that he is still that idealistic, that he wants to work with Americans to rebuild his country and to see that his family has a better chance even though life now has passed his generation by. Life didn't have to pass his generation by. We should have done our duty by them. We have a chance to do that again, to remake that, to redo that and to do what's right, and it will be successful for us as well as for the people of Afghanistan. Let us not send more combat troops there. Let us not put more of our people at risk or have our people killing more Afghans in the name of obtaining some illusionary victory. Let us reach out and win the loyalty of these people who have shown their loyalty to us time and again. We can do that now with just a minor expenditure. Give us $5 billion to rebuild that country and to help build a militia system so they can protect themselves. That is what America is supposed to be all about. That young man had a dream. That young man now is 40 years old, hopefully somebody who still has faith in us, we need to reach out to him and the other young people of Afghanistan and say we can make this a better world. We are willing to work with you to do that. We respect your society and structure and your traditions, and it's not in any way contradictory to what America believes in local government and democracy, and people choosing their own government and those people who make laws for them. It's time for America to stand for principle. I hope that my Republican colleagues will understand that every time someone in the military--and I respect General McChrystal. Just because he is in the military, he does not have ``the plan'' that will necessarily bring about the type of change in a society or another kind of dynamic rather than a military dynamic. Many times military officers don't understand that. We should stand up after thinking about it and doing what is right and listen to those of us who have been in Afghanistan over these years to try to have a policy that's a positive policy that can succeed, and not just looking for an illusionary military victory that will always be out of our grasp. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to discuss America's dependence on NATO, our relations with Russia, today's threat of radical Islam, and tomorrow's looming threat of an ever-more-powerful Communist China. In other words, tonight we will examine America's long-term strategic positioning in the world. It is always valuable to look at history as well as the present before considering the future. So let's start with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It made sense, NATO made sense when it created it. It made sense to strengthen the NATO alliance during the 1950s while the Soviet Union was forming its Warsaw Pact and while the fall of China to Communist tyranny and the Korean war halted the vision of a peaceful world that we had been dreaming of in the aftermath of World War II. But in the 1950s, that was a threat. But the 1950s are ancient history. The cold war is over. This is the 21st century. NATO no longer serves its purposes and is, in many ways, counterproductive. Ronald Reagan's visionary leadership, coupled with the unrelenting commitment and courage of the American people, brought an end to the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. The people of Eastern Europe were freed from a hostile occupation and puppet Marxist governments. In the 1990s, the Russians dramatically moved away from domestic tyranny and away from a belligerent foreign policy. Freed from its Soviet shackles, Russia expected to be embraced. At least if they weren't embraced, they certainly expected to be accepted as the Russians moved their troops out of occupied nations and opened up its political and economic system. It was perhaps the greatest peaceful resolution of a hostile confrontation between major global powers in history. NATO played an important role in bringing us to that point in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The armed might of NATO deterred aggression and Soviet adventurism that could have resulted in a world conflict. NATO, with American leadership, won for Western civilization a new chance at building a future of progress, freedom, and tranquility on a global scale. In the last 20 years, there's been a change on a massive scale, most of it for good, in the former Soviet Union. Certainly, elements of this transition have been counterproductive and short of expectations and disappointing to the people of Russia, as well as peace-loving people in the West who had such high expectations. But by and large, enormous positive changes have taken place in Russia over these last 20 years. It is in vogue now, in some circles, to suggest the current leadership in Russia is similar to the Communist thuggery of those who not so long ago ruled that country with an iron fist and threatened world peace. Let this Cold Warrior shock you by suggesting that the Russian government's flaws, and they have many flaws, do not reflect a fundamental, malicious nature, as was the case under communism. And while there are examples of heavy-handedness, there is ample evidence of freedom of speech, religion and enterprise. Within this context, the vilification of Russia by old Cold Warriors, my friends, most of them, has been unconscionable and unrelenting. The fall of communism, the restructuring of its society, and Russian forces, of course, withdrawing from Eastern Europe, this was breathtaking. These were breathtaking events. Clearly, the Russian people and the Russian government wanted to be part of the Western community if they were willing to take such dramatic steps. The door was open, and the Russians were not only willing but anxious to leave Cold War hostilities behind. They were naive and so were we about the transition. This historic opportunity has almost totally been squandered. During the transition, rotten elements in the West allied themselves with nefarious Russian elites, and together they took advantage of their country's weakened and vulnerable condition. Russia was looted, and much of the loot ended up in Western banks. Vast natural resources ended up in the hands of a few power brokers. Billions of dollars of Russian wealth, basically mineral wealth, was transferred to private hands for a pittance. The Russian people, rejected and isolated when they expected to be partners in building a new world, sunk into despair. Adding to their sense of helplessness, Russia was frozen out of the world market and relegated to the fringe market, like Iran. Let us note that today we are suffering because of that effort to isolate Russia from the global economy. I remember shortly after the Communists fell in Russia, I went to my own aerospace industry leaders and said, We've got to let the Russians compete with us. This is the one area, high technology, where they can compete. And of course, the reaction with our major aerospace companies was, no way. And for 7 years after the fall of communism, Russia, which had invested enormous resources in rocket technology, was not permitted to sell their launch services to the West. That was the one area they could have really raised some hard currency, and we denied that to them. While, at the same time, what did our friends in Europe do? Of course, Europe, by its very nature, the European Union is a cartel, excluding other countries like Russia. But instead of utilizing Russian missile and rocket technology to launch satellites, our European allies rushed forwards to spend hundreds, maybe $150 billion, in developing their own launch capabilities. Again, instead of letting Russia be part of the world market, they were frozen out. And how does this relate to Iran? Their scientists were earning $50 a month, people with Ph.D.'s, the top level of their society, the cream of the scientific crop, starving, seeing their families suffering. They were looking around, so they were relegated to the fringe, and they went to Iran, and Iran agreed to hire them to build a nuclear reactor. I remember this very well. During the Clinton administration, I went to top people in the Clinton administration and explained, This will eventually be a horrible catastrophe, a threat, a huge threat to the United States and the West if we permit this nuclear power plant in Iran to be finished. I said, but we shouldn't be threatening the Russians, which is what we did. Our government policy was, don't do it, or you're going to suffer, instead of saying, look, we know your people are unemployed. We'll get you a contract, financed by the World Bank. It wouldn't have cost us anything to build two power plants, maybe one in Turkey, maybe one in Malaysia, maybe one in another country that needed electric power. Instead, we just threatened them, and of course they had no other alternative. We didn't give them that alternative. And so now, we face this problem. By the way, shortly after George W. Bush was elected, I went to see Condoleezza Rice. Made the same argument, We've got to act now--if we act now we can give the Russians an alternative in which they do not have to build this nuclear reactor for the Iranians. But let's give them the alternative. Again, it was only threats and talk about punitive actions but no willingness to offer the Russians a positive alternative. So, of course they had to get their people employed. We're going to find out a lot about that in the months and years ahead as our own experts find themselves unemployed. And we care about them, just like the Russian people cared about their people. But we did not at that time reach out to help the Russians, and we are paying a price for that now. It's important to look back at the end of the Cold War, and to recognize the mistakes that have been made, and it has become clear that there were many, many mistakes that were made, by the Russians, yes, but also by us and our European allies. Now, however, is not the time to just lay blame. I didn't relate that story to blame the Clinton administration or the Bush administration or anyone else. But realizing what that mistake was, we now should move forward to try to see what we can do to make up for that and to try to establish better relations. This is not the time to place blame. Now is the time to set things right. And as President Obama has said and Secretary of State Clinton has said, this is time to push the reset button with the Russians. And I would add, probably, yes, let's push the reset button with Russia and, at the same time, we should think about pulling the plug on NATO. So let's look at the future. Let's take actions today that will overcome past mistakes and look to a future when Russia and America, which share common challenges and common enemies, will be a source of strength to each other. We have, over the last decade, inexplicably drifted toward a renewed adversarial relationship. Let us now take a serious look at what happens and recognize Russia to be an invaluable potential ally, an alliance that would be far more significant and viable than our current NATO alliance, which costs us far more than what NATO member states contribute to the international security operations and other type of activities that are vital to our country. Reagan gave us 2 decades of peace and prosperity because he did the right thing. The consequences of our actions since Reagan, however, are becoming more evident and more alarming each passing day. We must have the wisdom, courage and political will to reconstruct our efforts rather than rely on diplomatic and military structures of the past. And let us note, Ronald Reagan did have the vision. I remember Ronald Reagan, I worked in the White House with Ronald Reagan. I remember him quite often making a stand on missile defense, which he believed in, but making it very clear to people that this wasn't something that should be seen by the Russians as a hostile move. Instead, he said that we should offer, if the Russians were willing to pull back their forces from their forward belligerent positions in Eastern Europe, that we should be willing to have missile defense as a joint project with the Russians. It would save us both money, and it would cover security for both of our countries. Ronald Reagan believed in that. That was not rhetoric. That was something he thought we could do. Instead, what we have done is move forward with missile defense and put it on Russia's border, not as something in cooperation with the Russians, but instead, something that the Russians naturally view as a hostile act towards them. Now, this is not the way we should go. Ronald Reagan understood that. Ronald Reagan stood firm, but he stood firm with a dictatorship in Russia, not with a Russia that was longing to be part of the Western world as it is today, and at least as it was 10 years ago. We are confronted today with enormous foreign policy challenges and tasked with prevailing over those forces which will, if they can, destroy America and our way of life and murder our countrymen on a massive scale in the process. 9/11 was only a taste of the potential mayhem radical Islamists can and are willing to commit. By the way, we lost 3,000 civilians on 9/11, 3,000 people slaughtered before our eyes. That wasn't the intent. The intent was to murder everybody in those buildings and perhaps in all of the nearby buildings, as the World Trade Center buildings were going to collapse into a busy New York. Yes, this was a plot to kill tens of thousands of Americans, and we'd better realize that that is the type of evil force we are up against. The national security threats before us are real and did not materialize out of thin air. But contrary to the dominant paradigm of our era, our ongoing relationship with NATO, since the end of the Cold War, has not worked to our benefit, nor has it made peace, stability, or our Nation's security more likely. NATO has recently engaged in a number of operations around the world, from fighting the Taliban to combating pirates. But whether one views these missions as relatively successful or a failure, one can hardly look at them and not realize that the cost of our continued involvement in NATO certainly outweighs the benefits. In Afghanistan, the other 27 NATO countries sent a combined force of fewer than 5,000 troops, many in noncombatant positions. These 5,000 troops are there as part of a coalition. While a certain number of these fighters from our NATO partners are heroic, and we salute them and they are helpful, yes, and many of them do take risks, they are dwarfed in comparison to the number of American boots on the ground. 68,000 Americans serve in Afghanistan, and the number is rising. All of our allies in NATO: 5,000. And it has not escaped our attention that many of our NATO partners don't permit their troops to be placed where they might see combat. So this contribution, while appreciated, in no way justifies the tens of billions of dollars that we pour into the NATO alliance. And now, as NATO expands to such countries as Albania, Croatia and Bulgaria, it raises other serious questions. One of the primary tenets of NATO and a NATO membership is that any member will come to the defense of another member if that member is being attacked. But realistically, is the United States going to come to the aid of these other countries at any time, these slew of small countries, each of whom might have a border dispute with another country? And, is the reverse proposition, the reverse of that proposition worth the cost to us? Do we really need Albania and Croatia to come to our aid if we're attacked? The answer is obviously, no. NATO's existence may be unnecessary for our interests. Let's also admit that NATO can be counterproductive. It's counterproductive to the peace at times. For example, by convincing the governments of new or potential member countries to aggressively and uncompromisingly deal with territorial disputes, we must realize that those disputes won't be settled by diplomatic negotiation. The government of Georgia is a perfect example. The United States' discussion about NATO with the government of Georgia made it less willing to make compromises that were absolutely necessary for peace and stability in that region. Not only did Georgia not make the compromises, these talks about NATO emboldened them to take aggressive action. Breaking a 7-year truce with its regional adversaries, the Georgians launched a brash, ill-conceived military attack on the two breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and Ossetia. The Georgians started it. They attacked first. All the while, the people of the United States were told over and over again, using the most sinister words, that Russia was the aggressor. It was the Russians' fault. We heard that over and over again. ``We are all Georgians today,'' Senator McCain proclaimed. Again and again we were told that Russia was doing something evil and villainous. However, in a detailed second look at what happened in Georgia, a recent NATO report confirmed that it was Georgian troops that broke the truce. It was the Georgian troops that started this fight and brought on the confrontation. The point is that the Georgian government was emboldened by talks with them about NATO. They were the ones that broke the agreement that had kept the peace in that area after we talked to them about NATO. They invaded those two breakaway regions, which resulted in a considerable loss of life in Osettia and Abkhazia, and it also brought on a counterattack from Russia, who had made agreements to maintain the peace with the people of Osettia and Abkhazia. And the counterattack that was what? A reaction to the Georgian invasion. NATO's role was counterproductive, clearly. Furthermore, do we believe that the American military forces should have been involved in that distant conflict? Should they have been involved as part of a NATO commitment to Georgia? My goodness, that doesn't make any sense to me. That's all the way across the world. Yes, it's in Russia's backyard so you know that they would be very involved and interested. But the United States is going to engage in a military confrontation with a power like Russia over a dispute, territorial dispute, between Georgia and some regional governments that don't want to be part of Georgia? By the way, the people of Georgia, I think they didn't have to be part of the Russian federation. I sympathize with their demand after the end of the Cold War to be an independent country. They have a right to self-determination. But so do the people of Abkhazia and Osettia. These two peoples had never been part of Georgia. Joseph Stalin, in his dictatorship, put them as part of Georgia. Well, does it make sense for us to use our armed might in an agreement with the Georgian Government to make sure that we enforce their vision of what the world should look like? It doesn't make sense also to sour a relationship with Russia, which is a country concerned, just as we would be in Mexico or Central America or in Canada. It doesn't make any sense to sour a relationship with Russia by implementing a NATO alliance with little countries all around it. In contrast, treating Russia as a friend would be enormously valuable to the security of both of our countries. By expanding NATO with tiny countries and, of course, we are; these are countries that are right around Russia. How can that not look like we have a military alliance, which is what NATO is, threatening Russia? Of course, we would think same way. Instead of an alliance with Russia, we are seeking an alliance with weaklings and Lilliputians rather than forging a strategic relationship with a giant. So if Georgia and the other countries like Albania and Croatia, countries that I'm very sympathetic with--and, as I say, I'm sympathetic with Georgia. I want it to be independent of Russia because that's what they want. But if they want to be in NATO, let's let them in. But if they're getting into NATO, we should be getting out. Because it is not in our interest to commit our military forces to battle all over the world in disputes that have nothing to do with our security or the overall global stability of the world. I'm not suggesting, however, isolationism. That's what people say: oh, well, you're an isolationist. Nowhere am I suggesting that we should not have bilateral defense-related agreements. I certainly believe in involvement and in bilateral defense agreements as well as bilateral trade agreements. At the outset of the Cold War we saw a clear and present threat in the Soviet Union, and we went to work strengthening our existing relationships with friendly countries and building new relationships with other countries. Well, we should do that today. We should create alliances, but we need to be realistic and honest in our assessment of the challenges we face and the factors that are in play. There are serious challenges to be overcome in the world today, and even more serious threats in the future. Radical Islam today, China soon. What we built to deter a Soviet invasion of Western Europe will not meet our needs of today. And I suggest that structure is, in many ways, counterproductive in dealing with today's threats. In short, an alliance with Russia and a few other powerful nations is in our interest more than a continuance of an obsolete coalition or expanding that coalition to a large number of small countries. Twenty years ago, I journeyed to Afghanistan. I stood alongside Afghan warriors, the mujahadeen, who were engaged in battle against the Soviet Army, which was then occupying their country. I was personally engaged in combat operations against Soviet troops during the Cold War. Very few people can say that. My chest swelled with pride every time Ronald Reagan proclaimed our goal to be freedom for all subjugated people, including the Russian people. I was Ronald Reagan's speech writer, one of them, for 7 years. And when the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, pleaded with Gorbachev to tear down the Wall, I was part of the team that broke through the foreign policy establishment's blockade that would have neutered that great historic statement even before Ronald Reagan gave it. And I cried with joy in retrospect when that wall finally came crashing down, hammered and chiseled down by freedom-loving people on both sides of that grotesquely evil barrier. I despised the Soviet Union because I loved freedom, freedom for all people, including the Russian people. The Communist government in Russia was our worst enemy. Times have changed. We need the Russians as trusted allies, if not our best friends. I recently visited Russia, and over dinner with a counterpart I explained, as I just did, that I had been his worst enemy during the Cold War, and he stopped me right in the middle of the sentence. No, no, you weren't the Russian people's worst enemy. You were the enemy of Communist tyranny. And thank God for that. That's what he said. There are many Russians today that fully understand that they have left Communist tyranny behind, but when they look around them and look forward, they see hostility and they hear Russia vilified for acts of natural self-interest. How many times have we heard Russia vilified for charging the market price for its resources, namely, natural gas? Over and over again, as if charging the world price instead of subsidizing the price for the countries around it was a hostile act. Would we be expected, our country be expected, to charge well below the market price to other countries for our natural resources? Over and over again, Russia was described as committing a hostile act when it did that. And after all the reform, all the military and strategic withdrawals, that hasn't made any difference to us that Russia has done this. We have kept them isolated and we have magnified every shortcoming that we could find in the new Russian Government. And all governments have shortcomings. Look, Turkey has human rights and democracy problems on par with Russia. In terms of the actual level of human rights problems, Turkey and Russia are probably at about the same level. Yes, we should stay vigilant in our insistence on an accounting and correction of violation of human rights. And that's whether it's Russia or Turkey or any other country. But does anyone really want us to treat Turkey as a hostile power, try to make them into an enemy just because they do have imperfections? And are there some examples of heavy-handed use of power and some really questionable incidents there in Turkey? Well, yes, there are. That doesn't mean we're going to turn them into our enemy and vilify everything they do. The Turkish people are wonderful people. They've been our friends for so long. But so are the Russians. The Russians are wonderful and creative people. They share many personal values with us: their sense of humor, love of children, of fun, of drink, and dance and, yes, their reverence for God and faith that was never beaten out of them by the decades that they suffered under atheistic communism. There was openness and vulnerability of these people as the Soviet Communist system collapsed. They made mistakes and had societal and governmental problems, no doubt about it. All of those mistakes and all of these problems weren't all corrected. They needed support. They were vulnerable. And even as we applauded the implosion of the Communist Government, we did not do what was right by the Russian people. Even as they chaotically implemented massive changes and reforms, they were forced to, for example, forced to pay off the debt that was built up during the Communist dictatorship. What country could develop with that huge millstone around their neck? In fact, how ironic it was. We went to the Russians and asked them to forgive the debt of Iraq that Saddam Hussein had run up when that dictatorship controlled Iraq. How ironic we went to the Russians to ask them to do what we had pressured policy not to permit them to do. With that millstone around their neck of that debt, no wonder there was economic chaos. How could they have pulled together and averted such mass suffering with having to pay the entire debt of a dictatorship they did not vote for? In the years since, we have been growing apart from Russia, into hostile camps, even though our cooperation is paramount to the future of both of our countries. As I say, the Russians and the Americans share more than cultural traits. We now share some very real common threats. And those are radical Islam, which is upon us, and a totalitarian China, which is rapidly becoming a negative and tremendously powerful force in the world. As we have continued to treat Russia as unworthy and with suspicion-- even as they have reformed, we have done this--how is it that we have treated China, which has had no political reform, no liberalization, with such generosity? The totalitarian Government of China is the world's worst human rights abuser. Those Chinese Communists in power in Beijing see us as their natural enemy. They unmistakably are also a threat to Russia. Yet, we still embrace that Chinese Government, the world's worst human rights abuser. We fueled their economy, the Chinese economy. We have built their manufacturing base. We have enhanced their technological capabilities, even while simultaneously finding ways to continue hostility and noncooperation with Russia with one-way free trade policies with China and credits and investment in technology transfers. We have run up a massive trade deficit with China. A trillion dollars has shifted from the American economy into Chinese coffers, and all this while there hasn't been one opportunity for us to even get done the smallest bit of reform with our economic relationship with Russia. We weren't even able to bring ourselves to officially end the Jackson-Vanik restrictions which were placed on Russia during the Cold War--the Cold War, 30 or 40 years ago. It is an insult and a sign of our own incompetence that we have not been able to lift the Jackson-Vanik restrictions on Russia, much less giving a reformed Russia a free trade agreement or Most Favored Nation status, which we bestowed upon the world's worst human rights abuser, China. Again, restrictions and hostility on Russia, all of this while we give China every benefit: Most Favored Nation status, tech transfers, capital investments. Well, this relationship with Russia, as well as our relationship with China, has been wrongheaded, and gravely so. China, in stark contrast to the great changes in Russia, where there's been very visible political reform, where religion is not suppressed, where there are opposition political parties. And, yes, there are imperfections in Russia and shortcomings and some heavy-handedness. But you go there and you hear talk radio shows complaining about the leadership in Russia. In Russia, you have opposition parties. There were two elections. And even the most critical of people who criticize Russia concede that those two major elections represented the inclination of the Russian people. Others were on the ballot, but they weren't elected. They lost. Well, there has been reform in Russia. And although it's far from perfect, great progress has been made, and it is evident. Otherwise, I would not suggest drawing closer to that country. There has been reform. That gives us a reason to try to work closer with them rather than holding them off. But remember, while we hold them off and we treat them in a hostile way, there has been no political liberalization at all in China. We've let them profit from one-way free trade that has drained our financial resources and destroyed our manufacturing base even as we built their manufacturing base. When President Obama spoke here a short time ago, he noted as of late, we've been losing 750,000 jobs a month. We've been losing 750,000 jobs a month, millions of jobs have been lost, and where did they go? They went to China, which is perfectly understandable when you look at our policies which created that type of outflow of capital and jobs as a small corporate elite--yeah, a very small corporate elite--benefited from this China trade and how it was structured. But the American people lost, and it's going to get worse. Remember who has been paying for months and years now the price for the crazy policies that were not in the interest of our people in China. How did that come about? I've been in Congress now for 20 years. I was very proud to have led the floor fight with Nancy Pelosi on the other side of the aisle with me, leading the floor fight on that side of the aisle to oppose most favored nation status for China. Look back, find out who was behind most favored nation status for China. Who was it? It was during the Clinton administration that provided China should have permanent most favored nation status, so we didn't even get a chance to vote on it every year. Now, it was a bipartisan betrayal of American interests here. Who was watching out for the American people? Instead, we established a trading system with China. I can tell you how it works. I represent the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. You go right down there, and you can see it. Of all the containers, the massive numbers of containers that come in every day, tens of thousands, 90 percent are coming in and only 10 percent are going out, and almost all the ones coming in are coming from China. Well, China is not an economic partner. It's exploited us. It's taken advantage of our weaknesses. It's not a partner for peace nor is it a partner for world stability. China has no reform and has not made reform of its political structure, and it is, unfortunately, our most likely future enemy. Those words are very hard for me to say. They are not our enemy now. They are our adversary. But it is clear that unless there is a significant political reform in China, a liberalization of their system, a recognition of fundamental rights, the dictatorship will continue in power and grow stronger. America's most likely future enemy we treat with special privileges. The Russians we treat like a pariah, even as they reach out to us even after they have had incredible reforms and restructuring in their country. China is already a deadly economic competitor of our people and is openly hostile to the basic values which make us Americans: a respect for human rights, religious freedom, the environmental stewardship that we have taken upon ourselves in recent years. Our current relationship with China has resulted in an economic and security disaster for the United States of America. It is time to have the courage to admit this fact, and it is time to reverse poor decisions and bad policies. If the policies that have led us to this point are not reversed, the result will be national and, yes, global catastrophe. A world dominated by an authoritarian-controlled China will be a far different world than the one we live in today. Again, we are talking about the Government of China, a specific regime, not the Chinese people themselves. The Chinese people are hardworking, family-oriented people. I have tremendous sympathy and respect for them. They are, in fact, freedom's greatest ally, our greatest hope, potentially our greatest friends who can help us avert a conflict between our countries. The Chinese Government, however, is a loathsome tyranny, a dictatorship, a dictatorial clique that has enslaved their own population, intent not just in controlling China but also in dominating the rest of the planet. It is a government that, as I speak, is shooting down Muslim Uyghurs in East Turkistan, which is in the far regions of western provinces of China. Similarly, they are conducting a slow motion genocide on the people of Tibet. It's a government that arrests and murders Falun Gong religious practitioners. And who are they? Who are the Falun Gong? Pay attention, America. Who are the Falun Gong? The Falun Gong want nothing more than religious freedom that they hold so dear. They are pacifists. What do they believe in? They believe in yoga and meditation. Yet thousands of them have been picked up by the Chinese Communist dictatorship and thrown into prisons, and oftentimes, they never come out of those prisons. And too often we find that what is coming out of those prisons--the prisons where the Falun Gong members have been deposited--what do we see coming out of those prisons? Body parts. Body parts sold to Americans and other people as organs to be transplanted; kidneys and other organs of the body that have been extracted from people who are put in jail for their religious convictions, and then they were murdered. That is the type of ghoulish regime that now controls the country of China and the Chinese people. In China, there are no unions, no workers' rights, no democratically elected environmental standards. There are no concerns about human rights or consideration for the inherent dignity of all humankind. There is no liberty, no independent judiciary, no freedom of the press, no rule of law, no opposition parties, no right to criticize the nature of their government or to criticize the clique that rules their country. A billion people are being held in bondage so that goods can be manufactured cheaply in China in an unholy relationship between very wealthy American and western capitalists and the ghoulish dictators that control China. And with one-way free trade that we've established, to which we have acquiesced, and the short-term profit desired by America's corporate elite, our country has been a partner. Considering those factors, our country has been a factor in building the Chinese economy into a monstrous threat while at the same time weakening and destroying our own manufacturing base. Millions of our people are being put out of work. We're going through a huge financial crisis. One of the major elements that has brought us to this financial crisis has been a one-way free trade policy with Communist China. The fact that they now have $1 trillion worth of our wealth and our manufacturing base has been destroyed should be of no surprise. It was predictable. Those of us who fought most favored nation status and said we've got to have some political reform, liberalization before we give such enormous economic power to a government, we were just bypassed and treated as if we didn't matter because the business elite of our country wanted to have those massive short-term profits. Then they could give themselves bonuses, and they could retire here, leaving the stockholders and leaving their own employees far worse off in an intolerable situation, and now the whole country is in a horrible situation. Over the last two decades, we have built China from a relatively backwards economy into a Frankenstein monster. When I say ``we,'' I mean the policies of the United States Government have lifted the economic capabilities of a country that has had no political liberalization, no political reform of their dictatorial system, and a country, yes, that is also engaged in rebuilding its military. Now this Frankenstein monster is slowly turning on its creator, turning on us. Well, there is a China-related issue that is emerging. Not all bad decisions were made in the past. We're about to make another bad decision by reversing one of the good decisions that we made that has really saved us from an incredible potential harm. The issue that is surfacing in Washington is both symbolic and a very real threat to America's security and our economic viability. What is the issue? It is whether or not America should loosen its controls on the exports of our technology. The issue, which will be determined shortly, deals specifically with U.S. space technology, satellites, and Chinese rocketry. About 15 years ago, the Clinton administration and American satellite manufacturers were permitted to launch their satellites on Chinese rockets. It was a position that they hadn't been permitted before. At the time, I talked to our aerospace industry. They thought it might be a good idea. This, of course, after being assured by the Clinton administration there would be no possibility of a technology transfer. Controls and security walls, I was promised, would prevent the Chinese from obtaining any space technology that had been paid for by the American taxpayers. Of course, American taxpayers had paid billions of dollars to develop space technology, like gyroscopes on a chip and all kinds of things that permitted rockets to be successful. Well, I have to admit I accepted the Clinton administration's word. I swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. But within a very short period of time after that policy was opened up, I recognized the horrendous results of permitting that business relationship with Chinese rocket companies, which, I might add, those Chinese rocket companies then and are now owned by the People's Liberation Army. The Long March Rocket Company is a People's Liberation Army company. In short, American aerospace companies ended up perfecting Chinese rockets in order to send up our satellites at a cheaper rate. By the way, what's the difference between a missile and a rocket? The difference between a missile and a rocket is the color of the paint on the outside of the projectile. So if it's in camouflage, it must be a missile, and if it's white or a different color, it must be a peaceful rocket. In the end, after we were launching our satellites at that cheaper rate, in the end the viability of our own missile and rocket industry was undermined. Our own aerospace base, the base of our economy, our aerospace jobs and expertise were put in jeopardy. And at the same time we improved the Chinese rockets and missiles, we improved their ability to launch military as well as civilian payloads. Our transfer of technology and know-how thus enabled the People's Liberation Army rockets to carry more than one nuclear warhead. They couldn't do that before. Our technology. Our people went over there, and now they have the technology of having three warheads instead of one warhead, which means obliterating all of southern California instead of one part of southern California. We provided them the ability to MERVE. That's what it's called. It was insane then, but now the issue is coming back. And without even blushing, the China lobby, the Big Business community that has been making all kinds of money off the China trade even as it has hurt our own economy, are pushing for us to open up the China rocket industry again. To make this clear, I am part of the team that is trying to move forward legislation to permit our high-tech industries to export to and to cooperate with friendly democratic countries. I believe in free trade between free people. But I have personally insisted on legislation opening up that free trade with free countries, and we have worked with other Members of Congress to ensure that this tech trade legislation will not loosen the restrictions on using Chinese rockets to launch American satellites. We know that launching American satellites on Chinese rockets will result in technology transfer and the upgrading of those Chinese rockets. It happened before; it will happen again. If we open up to the use of Chinese rockets, it helps them and it hurts us. What will it do to our aerospace industry, like Boeing and Northrop Grumman, who are already hard pressed in the production of their own rockets and missiles? How about Sealaunch, a Boeing partnership with the Ukraine which launches things into space from a floating platform which is based in southern California? Well, it recently declared bankruptcy, but if we allow the Chinese to undercut everybody's price, it will be permanently out of business. It will be permanently out of business, of course, if the People's Liberation Army is permitted to sell rocket launchers on the cheap until all of our companies go bankrupt. Space X and other entrepreneurial U.S. space transportation companies that have invested hundreds of millions of dollars of private capital in creating a private U.S. launch industry will be mortally wounded if we permit the Chinese to come in with their subsidized system and their controlled economy and undercut the price until our guys go out of business. And then, of course, they'll be in complete control of what gets into space. The whole debate on this issue and the maneuvering on Capitol Hill reflects an insidious manipulation of our system by a foreign power and, yes, the total absence of any type of moral consideration or patriotic consideration on the part of America's financial and corporate elite. They have had one-way free trade and a multitude of economic building concessions, and it has been American policy to give it to them. Over the years we have been told over and over again to justify such a power that we were giving this monstrous regime, and we were saying, if we just get involved with them, let's get more involved with these people, let's uplift the economy of the Chinese people, and their government will come around. By making their country more profitable and making sure their country is more prosperous, we will actually bring forces about that will liberalize that country. That's what we were told all this time. And has that happened? There has been no liberalization in China. I call this theory that's been foisted upon us by America's economic elite, which are making profit from that thuggery and that dictatorship and the control of the Chinese people--yes, those people gave us that ideal, that if we just keep going, keep making China more prosperous, they will come around and become more peaceful--I call that the ``Hug a Nazi, Make a Liberal'' theory, and obviously it has not worked. So why have we had this bad policy? I would draw the people's attention to this. They are unapologetically trying to implement the same policy that failed 15 years ago, the same policy that was a tremendous detriment not only to our economy and to our high-tech industry but to the security of our country. These same forces now are trying to make sure that the legislation going through Congress takes out the language that I and other congressmen have put in it to make sure that we do not loosen the restrictions that we have on American satellites being used in Chinese rockets for launch. By the way, what we see in Washington today is perhaps, as I say, some of the most insidious examples of some of our own weaknesses. What we've got here is tens of millions of dollars being pumped in by China and some very elite financial interests in our country to lobby Congress to try to change the rules of the game so that what was so severely damaging to us 15 years ago, as we improved Chinese rockets, which are now capable of launching nuclear weapons into our cities, because of what we did for them, they want to go back to those policies which nobody can deny will most likely result in even more improving the Chinese rocket system and the destruction of America's own homegrown rocket and missile industry. Yet our corporate elites have enormous influence on policy. They have hired the best lobbyists in town, former Members of Congress, former Members of the Senate, people who have been inside and outside of government. These people have signed on. One Senator who was high up in the committees overseeing the Department of Defense, overseeing the security of our country, who opposed permitting Chinese rockets to launch American satellites over the years, now has been hired by the Chinese. To do what? To make sure that the rules and the regulations restricting that are lifted so that they can accomplish what he was opposing. It doesn't get any lower than that, does it? Americans willing to accept large financial gains for themselves even as they put the rest of us and their children's children in jeopardy. Today this isn't going to be turned around unless we have the courage to make some very strong choices and tough choices. One is to make sure that we call those people to task that are willing to sell out the long-term interests of their country for the almighty buck, and especially when that buck is coming from the world's worst human rights abuser. And then finally we need the courage to walk away from the past and try to restructure our position in the world. We need to make friends and make sure that Russia is our friend because China and that radical Islam threaten both of us. There are other countries in the world that share our values and share this common threat: Russia, India--and how about Japan? Japan, which has been targeted by China, and they know they're targeted by China. An alliance between the United States, Russia, India, and Japan would soon be joined by most of the other free countries of the world. This is a type of relationship that will bring about a more peaceful world. And if we are going to succeed and our country is to be prosperous, if we're going to turn around this economic crisis, we have to have a long-run view, and we can't leave the decisionmaking of policies up to the financial elite in our country that only has short-term profit in mind. That is our biggest vulnerability, and the Chinese have played us like a fiddle. They know that the American corporate leaders have no loyalty to the long-term interests of the United States of America. We must make the policy, and we cannot let China and this business elite manipulate these votes in the House of Representatives and the Senate of the United States so that policies are put in place that will not serve our interest. We have not been diligent in the past, and that is why we are suffering today. We are suffering because of bad judgment, but also because the American people expected us to stand up and fight and we did not. We instead let these powerful interests run all over us. And as I say, this is a bipartisan talk. I remember Nancy Pelosi here, and Dana Rohrabacher here, I remember Barney Frank there, and Chris Cox over here fighting Most Favored Nation Status for China, saying that we would regret the day when these economic policies come back and hurt our country, and they have come back and hurt us dramatically. And they are now moving on our satellite and our rocket industry to make us even more vulnerable and to take away even those advantages, that technology advantage that we have. Mr. Speaker, I would hope that the American people and my colleagues pay close attention to the overwhelmingly financed, heavily financed lobbying campaign that is going to try to change the rules that are now protecting our launch rocket and missile launch industries from being destroyed by cheap Chinese rockets that will in the end destroy our industry. And only then when they have us at their mercy will we feel the repercussions of the decisions we're making and the repercussions of allowing the financial elite with short-term profit in mind to make the policies for the United States of America. America, we are the only hope in the world. We must stand strong. Democracy works if we work at it. We must stand together, and this has been the way it has been for 250 years. There would be no hope for anyone in the world today or in the past 150 years who longed for freedom, who suffered under tyranny. They would have no hope except for the courage and conviction of the United States of America. We marched out and defeated Japanese militarism and communism. We fought the Nazis. Well, since the end of the Cold War, we've made some very bad mistakes after the fall of communism. Let's look at our decisions. Let's have the courage to recognize some bad decisions, correct them; and let's create a new alliance in this world that will serve the interest of peace, prosperity, and freedom for our people and all the peoples of the world.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to spending billions more of our people's money and sending it to Pakistan. As the bill states: ``The United States has contributed more than $15 billion since 2001 in military and economic assistance to Pakistan.'' The bill before us commits the American people to another $15 billion. That is $30 billion, $30 billion that we don't have. The Federal budget this year is $4 trillion, and $2 trillion of that is deficit spending. We are borrowing in order to cover it. President Obama right here in this Chamber said that we are losing an average of 750,000 jobs a month. Our economy is as weak as it has ever been. Our people are in need. The debt we are creating will break their backs and destroy our economy. The proposition before us today would have us borrow another $15 billion from China in order to give to Pakistan. We need to focus on the jobs for the American people, not for the Pakistanis. We need to have the discipline to be responsible, and borrowing billions more from China to give to Pakistan is not responsible. What we have here is $15 billion that we have already spent. Well, where has it gotten us? After 9/11 and spending all of this money, our military reports right now indicate that the ISI, that is the Pakistani intelligence service, still provides support for the Taliban. We have given aid to Pakistan in the past, and they have used their money to build nuclear weapons. And when we complained about it, President Musharaf from Pakistan said his people were willing to eat grass in order to have a nuclear weapon. Pakistan's government still works hand in glove with the enemy factions in Saudi Arabia and in China. American soldiers still die every day because our diplomats won't face reality, and they keep telling us that Pakistan is just coming around, while it's clear they are just playing us like a fiddle. We've heard this for years. Pakistani and Chinese leaders, however, during that time transferred nuclear technology to North Korea, Iran and Libya. And to this day, Pakistan won't give our intelligence services a chance to actually talk to that nuclear conduit, Dr. Abdul Khan, who actually transmitted nuclear secrets to these other countries. The Pakistani Government buys its weapons from China with money that they borrow from us. It is a twisted, ludicrous logic for us now to borrow money from the Chinese to give to the dictators in China who will then sell weapons to the Pakistanis. Pakistan was with us in the Cold War. We remember that. But the Cold War is over. Pakistan is now with China. And both governments, Chinese and the Pakistanis, plot and maneuver against our interests all the time. Well, the threat of radical Islam is real, but it's not going to be solved by our being irresponsible with $15 billion of taxpayers' money.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, pursuant to the requirements of the Republican Conference of the House, I am submitting the following information regarding earmarks I received, which were included in the reported version of H.R. 3293, the ``Department of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2010.'' Requesting Member: Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (CA-46) Bill Number: H.R. 3293 Name of Project: Vanguard University Teacher and Nursing Program Expansion Account: Department of Education, FIPSE Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Vanguard University Address of Requesting Entity: 55 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa, CA 92626 Description of Request: Vanguard intends to use this funding for its program expansion and improvement for Vanguard's teacher training in science/math and nursing education/training with Hoag Hospital, and modernization of equipment and technology infrastructure. Program funding would help jumpstart Vanguard's teacher and nursing training programs, which are critically needed in California to prepare students for teaching careers in science and math and for the increasingly sophisticated and technologically-based workplace. Vanguard has partnered with Hoag Hospital to offer a quality Bachelor of Science Degree in Nursing (BSN) to develop and launch an accelerated RN-to-BSN program and to develop a BSN-to-MSN program within their School for Professional Studies. Requesting Member: Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (CA-46) Bill Number: H.R. 3293 Name of Project: Equipment Needs for the New Vanguard University Academic Center for Science, Nursing, and Technology Account: Department of Education, HRSA Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Vanguard University Address of Requesting Entity: 55 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa, CA 92626 Description of Request: Vanguard University is developing an Academic Center for Science, Nursing, and Technology which will help address the significant problems facing California by training teachers in science and math, and by developing a Nursing School with an accelerated RN to Bachelor of Science in Nursing Degree Program to help address the nursing crisis. The center will include the development of smart classrooms, the nursing school, and research laboratories to train existing teachers and nurses, and will deliver the study of science, math and technology that will prepare students for teaching careers in science and math. The nursing school will partner with Hoag Hospital of Newport Beach in providing students and nursing rotations. Requesting Member: Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (CA-46) Bill Number: H.R. 3293 Name of Project: Accelerated Baccalaureate of Science in Nursing at CSU, Long Beach Account: Department of Education, HRSA Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Cal State Long Beach, Department of Nursing Address of Requesting Entity: 1250 Bellflower Blvd., Long Beach, CA 90840 Description of Request: The Accelerated Baccalaureate of Science in Nursing at California State University, Long Beach (ABSN-CSULB) for which funding is being requested is for the programmatic expenses of the Baccalaureate of Science in Nursing (BSN) portion of the Accelerated BSN/ELM (Entry Level Masters) program for second degree students with the goal of stabilizing the program for a minimum of the next five years, preferably, the next 10 years. If funded, the project will entail the admission of 48 BSN second degree students every fall semester (once a year), and hire the necessary teaching faculty, an administrative assistant who will serve as the admissions coordinator and secretary, modest infrastructure support such as providing one computer and a printer for 50 percent of the faculty (total of 5 computers and printers), and an operating budget for program activities.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, pursuant to the requirements of the Republican Conference of the House, I am submitting the following information regarding earmarks I received, which were included in the reported version of H.R. 3288, the ``Transportation, Housing and Urban Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2010.'' Requesting Member: Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (CA-46) Bill Number: H.R. 3288 Name of Project: San Diego Freeway (Interstate 405) Improvements Account: Federal Highway Administration, Interstate Maintenance Discretionary Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Orange County Transit Authority (OCTA) Address of Requesting Entity: 550 South Main Street, Orange, CA 92863 Description of Request: I received $750,000 for the Orange County Transit Authority's (OCTA) San Diego Freeway Improvements project. OCTA has successfully completed a major investment study (MIS) and Project Study Report for the Interstate 405 (I-405) Freeway. Funding is requested to support capacity improvements in each direction of the facility, adding up to two lanes from Euclid Street in Fountain Valley to Interstate 605 (I 605) near the Orange County/Los Angeles County border. Prior federal funding has fully supported the environmental phase of this project, which is currently underway. This request is to secure a portion of the funding needed to complete the final design, which is the next phase of the project. This project is included in both the regional and federal Transportation Improvement Program. Commuters and goods movement carriers alike are currently experiencing severe peak period delays on the San Diego Freeway (I 405) corridor. Implementing these improvements to the I 405 will reduce travel delays, increase employee productivity and facilitate the movement of goods while reducing emissions to improve air quality. The project will not only provide significant congestion relief through one of the major interstate highways in Orange County, but also subsequent congestion relief benefits to Los Angeles County as well. Requesting Member: Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (CA-46) Bill Number: H.R. 3288 Name of Project: Schuyler Heim Bridge Replacement and SR-47 Expressway, CA Account: Federal Highway Administration, Surface Transportation Priorities Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority Address of Requesting Entity: One Civic Plaza, Suite 350, Carson, CA 90745 Description of Request: I received $500,000 for the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority's Schuyler Hem Bridge Replacement and SR-47 Expressway project. The Schuyler Heim Bridge Replacement and SR-47 Expressway project is one of the leading regional transportation projects affecting goods movement in Southern California. The project is a joint partnership between the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority (ACTA) and the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) to replace the State's seismically deficient Commodore Heim Bridge over Cerritos Channel and add a four lane elevated roadway to by-pass intersections and railroad crossings. The project will replace one of the seismically deficient bridges listed on the Department of Transportation's list of structurally deficient bridges. ACTA's $2.4 billion Alameda Corridor was designated as a Project of National Significance by Congress in 1995. The SR-47 Expressway is a project that will enhance the Alameda Corridor by improving the efficient and secure movement of international trade at the nation's largest port complex. Over 40% of the nation's imports flow through these Ports generating 3 million jobs nationally.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, pursuant to the requirements of the Republican Conference of the House, I am submitting the following information regarding earmarks I received, which were included in the reported version of H.R. 3183, the ``Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Act of 2010.'' Requesting Member: Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (CA-46) Bill Number: H.R. 3183 Name of Project: Long Beach Desalination Research and Development Project Account: Bureau of Reclamation, Water and Related Resources Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Long Beach Board of Water Commissioners Address of Requesting Entity: 1800 E. Wardlow Road, Long Beach, CA 90807 Description of Request: I received $100,000 for Long Beach Water's Desalination Research and Development Project. Long Beach desalination represents the federal government's national interest in making desalination of seawater a viable, cost-effective and environmentally responsive option for supply reliability along the coast of California. Seawater desalination will not be seen by The Congress, the California State Legislature, regulatory agencies, private sector interests or the public as a viable, cost effective and environmentally responsive option for municipal water supply reliability in the United States until advances are made and existing processes optimized in on-going research and development, funded through programs like the Long Beach Desalination Project. The project is a constructed, large-scale, fully operational seawater desalination research and development facility located in urban/coastal Southern California. The research conducted at this facility is the most important and advanced analysis being conducted anywhere in the nation at this time, to include facility design and construction, permitting, operations, water quality, distribution system integration and alternative, sub-ocean floor intake and outfall systems. It is my understanding funds will be used for Ultra Violet & Chlorine Dioxide research; post-treatment corrosives testing and analysis; under ocean floor intake and discharge demonstration system research, and site restoration. It is my understanding a 50% match share will be provided by the board of water commissioners. Requesting Member: Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (CA-46) Bill Number: H.R. 3183 Name of Project: Santa Ana River Mainstem, CA Account: Army Corps of Engineers, Construction Legal Name of Requesting Entity: County of Orange, CA Address of Requesting Entity: 300 N. Flower St., Santa Ana, CA 92703 Description of Request: I received $52,193,000 for Orange County's Santa Ana River Mainstem project. The Santa Ana River Mainstem Project including Prado Dam (Project) was authorized under the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) of 1986, and Section 309 of WRDA, 1996. The Project involves construction, acquisition of property rights, relocations, environmental mitigation and enhancement in Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties. The flood control districts of these counties are the Local Sponsors who are responsible, with the Department of the Army, for implementing the Project. The Corps considered the Santa Ana River as the worst flood threat west of the Mississippi River. In 1980s, the Corps estimated that 3 million people and 110,000 acres would be impacted, with potential loss of 3,000 lives and $15 billion in economic losses (1987-8 price level). Estimated impacts and loss (without the Project being constructed) would be much greater with current population growth and value of land and structures. In addition to protecting a large, highly populated and rapidly growing area of Southern California, the Project has/will improve protection of major transportation corridors. It is my understanding the non-federal contribution will be 37.5% of the project cost. Requesting Member: Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (CA-46) Bill Number: H.R. 3183 Name of Project: Orange County Regional Water Reclamation Project Account: Bureau of Reclamation, Water and Related Resources Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Orange County Water District Address of Requesting Entity: 18700 Ward Street, Fountain Valley CA 92708 Description of Request: I received $100,000 for Orange County Water District's Regional Water Reclamation Project. This project will increase the region's water independence from expensive and declining imported water resources from the California Delta and Colorado Rivers and supplement the existing water supplies by providing a new, reliable, high-quality source of water. The GWR System is the largest water recycling project of its kind. The Enhancement Project would expand the capacity of the current plant by an additional 18 million gallons per day. With the enhancement, the Project would expand the capacity of the current plant to 88 million gallons per day for a total of approximately 32 billion gallons per year. It is my understanding matching funds have been provided by local grants and other funding sources. Requesting Member: Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (CA-46) Bill Number: H.R. 3183 Name of Project: Westminster, East Garden Grove, CA Account: Army Corps of Engineers, Investigations Legal Name of Requesting Entity: County of Orange, CA Address of Requesting Entity: 300 N. Flower St., Santa Ana, CA 92703 Description of Request: I received $900,000 for Orange County's study of the Westminster, East Garden Grove channel. Flood damages along the East Garden Grove-Wintersburg Channel affect residential, commercial, and industrial development located in an 81 square mile watershed, impacting eleven cities in Orange County. Over 20,000 property owners are currently required to participate in the National Flood Insurance Program, while aging levees jeopardize thousands of additional property owners. The study will investigate innovative methods to provide flood protection in combination with improved ecosystem functioning and water quality. Over 20,000 property owners are currently mandated by the Federal government to pay flood insurance because of inadequate flood protection in this watershed. Taxpayer funds are used to rebuild private property and public infrastructure every year that flood damages occur. This comprehensive study is developing innovative, sustainable solutions to flooding, water quality, and environmental problems in this watershed. Those solutions will provide more cost- effective approaches than currently exist, and contribute to the National Economic Development as well as National Ecosystem Restoration Plan. It is the mission of the Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) to provide flood protection, navigation, and ecosystem restoration in meeting these criteria. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers found that there was federal interest in this project during their reconnaissance study. It is my understanding funding will be used for salaries and professional services for the army corps of engineers investigation.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, as I stand here on the floor of the House tonight and after hearing this fine presentation and thinking about all the things that are going on in Washington right now, I am reminded of the television series ``The Twilight Zone''. These days, I half expect Rod Serling to appear from behind a curtain and announce that ``This is the Twilight Zone.'' Well, yes, there's almost a bizarre sense of unreality here in the Nation's Capitol--the transformation of private liability into public debt on a massive scale; the unprecedented level of deficit spending, debt piled upon debt; borrowing from China in order to give foreign aid to other countries; enacting Draconian restrictions and controls on a national economy and on the lives of our people in order to stop the planet from going through a climate cycle. What? The Earth has had so many climate cycles in the past, and now it's being used--the one we're in, which is very little different than any of the other cycles we have been in--it's being used to justify economy-killing and freedom-killing controls, taxes, and mandates, and putting power in the hands of international bodies that should be the power of the people of the United States to run their own life. Our Nation's borders leak like a spaghetti strainer. Millions of people illegally continuing to pour into our country to consume limited health care, education, and other social service dollars. And, yes, to take jobs away from our people and, in some cases, to commit crimes against our people. Our government just lets it happen. We can't even build a darn fence. And we have had a one-way free trade policy with China that has all but killed medium- and large-scale manufacturing in our country and which has relegated our own people to low-paying jobs and sent trillions of dollars to Communist China. No one has even suggested a change in that obviously rotten policy if, for nothing else, just to give our economy a little boost. Instead, we begged the gangster regime that runs China to loan us even more money--money that they accumulated because of a trade policy that has been monstrously counterproductive to the long-term interests of our own people--a one-way free trade policy. And that's not the only counterproductive policy which has brought our economy to its knees. Our people are suffering high energy prices needlessly. There are dollars being siphoned off from our pockets and deposited in the coffers overseas--the coffers of rich foreigners. Some of these rich foreigners who are now receiving all of these dollars which we have to spend to buy energy, some of these foreigners hate us. And while what little money we have goes to buying foreign oil, massive domestic deposits of oil and gas worth trillions of dollars are left untouched, untapped, and unused. Off the West Coast, huge caverns of valuable oil and gas are sitting there, unused, even as California sinks into an economic abyss and public services are cut back or canceled. Trillions of dollars sent overseas for energy, while at home no new oil refineries, no hydroelectric dams, no nuclear power plants. We are told of course, You have to rely on solar, only to find out that radical environmentalists in the name of protecting the habit of insects and lizards are blocking the building of solar plants in the desert. We can't even build an aqueduct in California because of a tiny fish--the delta smelt. So our people will suffer because of concern over a worthless little fish that's not even good enough to use as bait. People are beginning to suffer in the Central Valley for lack of water. There's no water for the crops. There's just about enough water for them. So they don't have a job and they can't pay for food. Water prices are going up for tens of millions of Californians in southern California, taking even more money out of our pockets, further undermining our people's ability to pay for their basic essentials. Yet, with all of this, just a few weeks ago Congress voted not to help our suffering people and move forward with water production, but to protect that damn little fish. Well, then on top of it all, last year, in the name of preventing economic calamity, Congress was stampeded into giving away trillions of dollars. Much of it to--well, nobody knows really who did get all of that money. We have provided hundreds of billions to the financial industry, fat cats who have been giving themselves bonuses even as they drove their own companies into the ground. Well, I would rather spend the money on lizards than on that bunch. And here we are facing an economic crisis, and even after all of these mind-boggling giveaways, we still face the same economic crisis. And those mind-boggling giveaways of trillions of dollars, which we are now going to have to pay the interest on because it is now debt that is owed by the American people, this may well have made the situation worse and more damaging and elongated our economic hardship. As I say, it is all a bit bizarre. But if we are to pull our country out of this, we need to mobilize and activate our people. It is time not to give up, but to buck up and to stand up. With all that is facing us, let's not forget that Americans have an inherit resilience. We have met and overcome great challenges in our past. The fundamentals were, of course, in the right place in those days. Our people were strong and had a culture of self-reliance. Our leaders, I dare say, had more courage, common sense and even perhaps integrity than today's bunch. Our freedom was our greatest asset. It was intact, yet to be eroded by decades of Federal expansion of our government into areas that it was never meant to go. Our Constitution was once revered. That, more than anything else, kept America on the right track, our Constitution and the rights it incorporated. One of the constitutionally protected rights that is often overlooked was key to the success of our country, helping us overcome hard times and ensuring the well-being and safety of our people. Protecting this right is essential if we are to turn around the economic decline that we are now suffering. It is this right and the efforts being made in Congress to undermine it that is the subject of my speech tonight. That little recognized, but immensely important, fundamental right is the specific protection provided in our Constitution to America's innovators, creative citizens and free thinkers, and to every person with a new way of approaching a problem or getting the job done or making a system just a little bit more efficient. Article I, section 8 of that great document, the U.S. Constitution, states that ``Congress shall have the Power to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.'' Significantly the word ``right'' only appears once in the body of the Constitution, and that is in article I, section 8, which I just read. That word ``right'' was in place even before the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution, which suggests these economic rights were believed to be as vital to the future of our country as were the other rights that were protected: freedom of religion, the rights of speech and assembly. Our technological genius and the laws consistent with the intent of the Constitution which was protecting and promoting that genius, accomplished what they were intended to accomplish. It has been America's technological edge, flowing from that fundamental legal protection, that has permitted our people to enjoy the highest standard of living in the world and allowed our people a level of opportunity, which gave common people the chance to live decent lives and to control their own destiny. It has provided the technology needed to defeat tyranny and keep our people safe from foreign armies and terrorists. Technology and freedom go together; our Founding Fathers knew this. It is also true of technology and prosperity. It is not just hard work that built America. People around the world work hard, and so many of those people who work so hard live in abject poverty. But when coupled with technology, and, yes, freedom, that hard work produces vast amounts of wealth, even while easing the burden on the working people themselves. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and others, all of our Founding Fathers, were not only people who believed in freedom, but they were people who also believed in technology and the potential genius of the American people. By the way, Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, was also the first head of our country's patent office. As our Founding Fathers wanted, we have had the strongest protection of patent rights of any country in the world. That is why in the history of all humankind there has never been a more innovative or creative people. It didn't just happen. It happened because our Constitution and our Founding Fathers saw to it that our law protected the ownership of one's intellectual creations. Americans led the way in uplifting humankind's quality of life and giving average Americans the opportunity to prosper and enjoy life. Who created the American Dream? Our people who worked hard. But also our inventors who gave them the technology they needed to do their job better than ever before. That is how highly paid people were able to outcompete large numbers of lowly paid people. America's goal was to build a country where all of us, not just the elite, could have a wonderful life and could live in prosperity. Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. He also invented interchangeable parts for manufacturing. How did that change America? How did it change the world? Ordinary people had clothes and jobs thanks to Eli Whitney and the American Constitution that encouraged and protected his genius. Cyrus McCormick invented the reaper. Before that, farm workers had to carry heavy tools and work themselves half to death. The amount of harvest was limited, and it was all based on human strength and not the strength of the machine. With the invention of the reaper, ordinary people, farmers and laborers, had better lives and lived longer lives and stomachs that were filled with an abundance of food. Samuel Morse invented the telegraph, tested right here in this very building, the Congress of the United States. And from it came, of course, Alexander Graham Bell's telephone. And then there was Thomas Edison who invented the light bulb, and so many other inventions that uplifted the life of ordinary people. These were not just accidents. These creative people were able to flourish under a system of constitutional protections that were superior to any other such protections anywhere in the world. Perhaps the epitome of the little guys who, with freedom, accomplished greatness, were the two fellows who owned a bicycle shop in Ohio, the Wright brothers. These two very ordinary Americans ended up inventing something just a little more than 100 years ago that changed the world forever. They were told 110 years ago that what they sought to create was impossible. Yet with limited resources and protected by our robust patent system, they took humankind with its feet planted firmly on the ground and sent us soaring into the air and then into the heavens, just two ordinary Americans, the Wright brothers. One segment of our population, Black Americans, have been prolific inventors, men like Jan Matzeliger, a former slave who invented a machine used in shoe manufacturing. It was Matzeliger who, protected by a patent, brought down the cost of shoes for an entire population. Before this man made his invention and put it to work in the shoe industry, most Americans had one pair of shoes for their entire life. There is also George Washington Carver, a world-respected scientist and inventor, and so many more Black Americans. Why? Because in that era, when Blacks were discriminated against, we actually respected the rights of technology ownership of Black inventors. Thus they excelled when their rights were protected. And America and the world were better for it. Our technological superiority provided us with prosperity that has also kept us safe. We cannot match the tyrants and the gangsters man for man because they don't care if they lose their own people. We must beat down our competitors and our enemies with superior technology, or we will lose, and our people will suffer as a result. Bad policies put us in our current economic crisis. Tonight I warn of a huge policy shift that is making its way through this twisted legislative path into law. If the legislation I am warning about tonight passes in both Houses of Congress and is signed into law, the legal protections for our innovators and innovations that have made such a difference in America will be greatly diminished, if not destroyed. So take this as a fellow patriot sounding the alarm. Tonight I would like to speak about something that would be devastating, another awesome threat. Yet there is a blase attitude here, and one would think that this is just a minor, if not irrelevant, issue. The fundamental changes being proposed in our patent law will have a huge impact on our lives and will dramatically alter the lives of our children for the worst. Tonight I seek to alert my fellow Americans just how significant this issue is to their jobs, their prosperity and, yes, their safety. The so-called Patent Reform Act of 2009, H.R. 1260, is a bill that is not new to these Halls. It is nearly duplicative of legislation that has been introduced time and again. Each time a small group of patriots, and I'm proud to have been among them, has managed to defeat the multinational corporations who are behind this legislative lunacy. But they keep coming back. They have got deep pockets. So here we go again, to fight the same fight over nearly the same bill. But if we lose it just once, the fundamental protections of our technology rights will be lost forever. There is no going back if we lose because this is an attempt to tie us, we, the American people, to ``international commitments'' rather than to constitutional protections. Stick with me on this. America's economic adversaries are engaged in a systematic attack on our well-being, and thus they have noticed one of the strongest and most important elements of our country's success has been the patent protection enjoyed by our people. That is what this so-called patent ``reform'' is all about. It is not reform, but it is about the destruction of our basic system which has served us so well. This crime in progress is being pushed by huge multinational corporations with little or no loyalties to our country or our people. The justification for this attack on our patent system, as I say, a patent system that has served us so well, the justification, the proponents claim, our patent system is so different that it must be harmonized with the rest of the world. Get this: we have to weaken the protection of our technology ownership rights to harmonize our laws with the rest of the world. Our laws are, in fact, substantially different. So harmonization means dramatic changes in our system. In the end, that will change the lives of our people. And the change will be for the worst. The corporate elitists who are pushing this consider themselves globalists. They are not watching out for us. In this battle over so- called patent ``reform,'' their goal is not reforming, but diminishing the legal protections for Americans, for American inventors. This in the name of harmonizing with the rest of the world our inventors will be made vulnerable to those who would rob them and thus rob America of the advantage that we have been given due to this strong patent protection. This is what gives us the advantage, our technological advantage, against overseas competition. That will be taken from us. If America is to be prosperous, if we are to be secure in the future, we must take on our own corporate elites who would change the rules to our detriment but perhaps to their short-term gain. Those playing the sinister game are, of course, not saying that they are out to destroy the patent system. Well, they act aghast when confronted with this suggestion. But from a distance, it is clear. Here is an article in the China Intellectual Property News about last year's legislation that, as I say, is a bill that almost totally mirrored the current bill that is going through Congress. They are almost the same bill. This analysis was written by a former senior judge and deputy presiding judge, two of them, of the intellectual property division of Beijing's High People's Court, whom I now quote: ``The bill is friendlier to the infringers than to the patentees in general as it will make the patent less reliable, easier to be challenged, and cheaper to be infringed. It is not bad news for developing countries which have fewer patents.'' Then the authors who are writing this article asked, Why is it that the United States is making it easier to violate the intellectual property rights of our people while at the same time trying to convince China and others to respect the intellectual property rights of Americans? He asked that question in this article. Now, that is from a senior Chinese scholar about the legislation that we stopped last year, and that legislation was almost the same as what we are facing this year. Certainly none of his criticisms are different for this year's bill than what they were for last year's bill. Mr. Speaker, it's estimated that the U.S. economy loses $250 billion a year from global intellectual property theft, and that does not take into account the jobs that are lost here when China and other countries steal and use our technology to compete with our own companies and put our own people out of work. That loss is billions and billions more. Now, that's under current law they're able to steal that and use our technology against us. That's not under the watered-down system which will result from the so-called reform bill which is now being considered here on Capitol Hill. This at a time when our country can ill afford such a drain. We are trying to change our laws so that it will make it easier for foreigners to steal our technology and use it against us. Yet, those pushing the so-called patent reform legislation are making our innovators and research industries even more vulnerable to such blatant theft, even though we are now in a time of economic hardship. Foreign firms in India and China and elsewhere are getting ready to pounce. When looking at the general state of America's patent system, and that's what we're doing tonight, we need to admit, and I will fully admit, there are lots of flaws in our patent system and, yes, there are problems in our patent system that need to be addressed. We hear of horror stories concerning companies that are tied up for years in court. We hear about examiners who are undertrained and overworked, and that's absolutely true. They aren't getting the training they need and they are not getting the pay they deserve. There are delays and our innovators could use some help in protecting themselves from foreign thieves and infringers. So we have got some problems with our patent system that need to be addressed. But that has nothing to do with H.R. 1260, the bill now making its way through Congress. Everyone assumes that a bill entitled Patent Reform would be doing that, would be correcting the problems of the patent system. The title of this bill is so fraudulent that if it were a product, it would be banned from the market for making false claims. This bogus reform bill has visited us before. As I say, it's come before. We've had these same multinational megacorporations trying to undermine the patent system. We've seen it time and again. But if it ever passes once, we're never going to be able to get these rights back. A similar one was beaten back a dozen years ago, as well as another just a year ago. The same crowd that was behind those inventors' nightmares is behind this year's anti-inventor foray. Let's put it this way: They are powerful, multinational electronics companies with no allegiance to Americans or America. Let me just note that some of these companies, for example, have had situations in China where they ended up working with the Chinese dictatorship utilizing their computer systems to track down dissidents and to stamp out people who are struggling for freedom in that country. On our side--so that's the people who are trying to reform America's patent system. On our side, well, we're just a ragtag group of legislative insurgents trying to stop this incredible change to the fundamental rights of our people. Marcy Kaptur, a Congresswoman on the other side of the aisle and a fine friend and a wonderful Member of Congress, with little help from Steny Hoyer, again, now a leader on that other side of the aisle, along with Don Manzullo and John Campbell of California and myself and just a few others, we were able to fight that good fight over the years. But no one thought we had a chance because we didn't have any of the big money behind us. We didn't have these multinational corporations. We didn't have the high-priced lobbyists who go to the Judiciary Committee year after year giving donations to the members of the Judiciary Committee in order to get this bill out in the form they want. No one thought that we had a chance because they already laid the foundation with all of their campaign donations and all of their influence in Washington. Well, so we were told even before it was brought up, you don't have a chance. Forget it. We labeled their Trojan horse legislation, this antipatent legislation, we labeled it the Steal American Technologies Act. Again, it wasn't--these bills that we have defeated in the past are not that much different than what we have before us today. Well, that Steal American Technologies Act, that label stuck, and it worked, with a little help from talk radio. And then, also confirming that democracy really works, David beat Goliath. Yes, we, the small group of independent Members of the House, working together on both sides of the aisle, we won. And that means the American people won. Clearly, by the outcome, this wasn't a Democrat or a Republican issue. It was an American issue. The patriots beat the globalists. Now, we have another attempt, very similar to the ones that we have beat in the past is being made now. It's working its way through the system in the name of harmonizing American patent law with the rest of the world. It's still here. We defeated it in the years past. If we don't win this time, all of these patent rights we've enjoyed will be lost forever because they're trying to tie this in to international agreements rather than the U.S. Constitution. But, as I said, when they come back, the big companies that were pushing this have deep pockets and they're able to come back, but we who opposed it need the support of the American people if we are to win this battle with Goliath this year. So here we go again. It's H.R. 1260. People should remember that number. It is the son of the Steal American Technologies Act. It contains all of those provisions that we hated so much. That bill has already passed through the United States Senate. It should be considered a primary threat to our freedom at this moment. The globalists, the corporate thieves and the looters behind this bill are intent to get it through and they will not give up. They must be defeated instead, and that won't happen on its own. Those of us who are fighting the battle here in the House and in the Senate, we must act in coordination with the American people. The American people need to get involved or we lose. What are some of the specifics that back up my charge that this bill undermines patent protection rather than reforms the system, as we are told? Well, this first glaring issue is that the bill changes a fundamental concept that has always been part of American patent law which is differentiated from the other patent laws around the world. And that one element, the most important concept, is that it is the person who actually invents something who is the one who will get the patent and have the rights of ownership of that technology. The one who actually invents something. Other countries have patents that are based on who managed to file for a patent first; in other words, who got to the paperwork, who could hire the lawyer, who managed to bribe the official or managed to understand the deadlines better, not who invented the technology, who filed the paperwork first. And this is as compared to our system where people who actually invent new technology have the right to own it. The legislation now making its way through Congress changes our current system from first to invent, which is what it's been all these years from our country's founding, to what is called first to file. If put into law, any new application or action will be needed every time there's a little step forward in research. Any time one is going towards an eventual goal, even one step, there's going to be new paperwork demanded, new action, new applications to be filled out, rather than waiting for the goal to be achieved, waiting for the entire invention to actually be complete, so that it can be incorporated into a patent. Well, because so many more patent applications are required now, if we make this change, to provide exactly the same protection, there will be a major new cost of getting a patent. Well, the little guys aren't going to be able to afford that cost. Well, the big guys can afford it. The major companies who have lots of lawyers working for them, they'll be able to afford that. The little guy will be frozen out. That's the intent of the legislation. That's what they want to do. The massive new flood of paperwork into the Patent Office is also a doomsday scenario that is bound to make the Patent Office less effective in doing its basic job, which is protecting the patent rights of our people. That is the intent of the legislation, to basically make the Patent Office less effective, not more effective. So the little guy will get frozen out and the system becomes less manageable because you have all kinds of new paper to be dealing with. Those powerful interests pushing this so-called harmonization know very well what the results will be. This isn't a mistake in communication. They know what they're doing. They already steal what they can from the little guys, and this will make it easier for them to steal from the little guys. It looks benevolent. It sounds benevolent, patent reform, but this is a sinister, sinister bill. It will destroy rights that the American people have had since the founding of our country and have had so much to do with our prosperity and our security. Well, then, in this legislation, there is a pre-grant and post-grant review section. The bill opens up new avenues of attack before and after a patent application has been acted upon. For example, a patent applicant has applied for an overseas patent, and if he does, it opens him up to attack even before his patent is issued here in the United States. This pre-grant opposition helps only the big guys, only the infringers and the looters. It hurts the little guys. And that's the intent of the law. That's why the change is being proposed. That's why they're pushing this law, because it hurts the little guys, and the big guys are pushing the bill. Then the bill also contains a newly invigorated post-grant review, which means yet another avenue to challenge patents after they've actually been granted, bogging down the system, increasing inventor costs, undermining legitimate inventors, and opening the door to foreign and multinational corporations who are all ready, they're ready to pounce to take advantage of yet another post-grant review of the patent. For those of you in the know, the post-grant review is a totally unnecessary change, a nonlegislative reform in the interparties' reexamination, a reform that has already taken place, has taken care of any problem that this new legislation claims to address. So the problem that they were suggesting that would take care of has already been addressed through several court cases and internal reform. So the need for a post-grant review change is moot, unless, of course, your goal is to complicate the system, to bog it down so it doesn't work, which is the intent of the bill. Reform that enables large companies, foreigners, and other infringers to attack our inventors again and again and add horrifying costs to the process is not reform. And it is not just foreigners who are licking their chops. As I say, there are multinational corporations that are ready that may be headed by Americans who think of themselves as citizens of the world. They're ready. But also, we've got, actually, companies that are ready to assist people who try to violate the little guy's patents rights. ``Patent Assassin,'' that's a quote, ``Patent Assassin'' is a California company that is ready to help potential infringers, and I quote from their Web site. ``You can easily infiltrate an existing patent while greatly reducing your company's patent infringement risk.'' H.R. 1260 will only provide more tools for organizations like this and foreign companies, as well as major international corporations, to destroy the rights of inventors that they have enjoyed in this country since the founding of our country. You know, when you look at the patent bill, much of it is not changing the way the patent system works, but, instead, changing litigation, so the way litigation is. This will be a tremendous boost for lawyers who are seeking to use their skills to take something away from someone who owns a little piece of property that he thought that he put his whole life into. So, through H.R. 1260, we will add all sorts of new ways to attack America's inventors. The big guys don't care. They've got lots of lawyers working for them. The big guys will be able to beat down the little guys, Americans, just like the little guys in Japan are beaten down by the economic shoguns. By the way, in Japan, that's why there are so few really groundbreaking inventions. Japan has a totally different system than ours. Their patent system favors the mega-corporations at the expense of the little guy. In fact, the Japanese system is what they want to harmonize our system with. Those rights are protected here in the United States by our Constitution and by the way our system works. In Japan, their people are vulnerable. Do we really want to be like those people in Japan? No, we don't want to harmonize the strong legal protections of our citizens with the weak legal protections in Japan and in other countries of the world. We don't want Americans to be like the Japanese. We want Americans who are individuals, who are proud of their individual rights, not people who cower before powerful interest groups as they do in Japan. Foreign companies and American-run multinational firms are ready to squash the little guy. That's what this bill is all about, and we've got to stop them. Another example of the real threat of H.R. 1260 is it would make it more difficult for a patent owner to get triple damages against an infringer who brazenly ignores the patent owner's rights and uses his invention, even knowing he is stealing it, without offering to pay a royalty. Without triple damages, which is what someone gets now--the inventor will get triple damages against a big company that just willfully takes his patent rights and refuses to pay him a royalty. Without triple damages, these little guys won't be able to get the lawyers to work for them on a contingency, which is the only way that someone who is a little guy and who has been wronged by a huge multinational corporation, is going to be able to have any chance of winning. Only big companies with lawyers on staff will be able to protect their patents. Nobody else will be able to because the little guy, without triple damages there to help pay for the lawyer, won't be able to get a lawyer to work with him. Giant foreign and multinational companies versus individual American inventors: If they win, we lose. If this bill passes, America loses. Eliminating the right to triple damages is still in the House version of this so-called reform bill. This absurdly bad provision is not in the Senate bill, but until that bill appears in a final form from the conference committee and is voted for on the House floor and on the Senate floor in its final version, that provision can stay in. We have no idea whether that provision will stay in, as is in the House version, or will be taken out, as is in the Senate version. It's not just triple damages, but it's also how the damages themselves will be calculated, which is yet another avenue of attack on the little guy by the big guys in this so-called patent reform bill. The electronics industry is arguing that any payment for patent infringement, which is the only penalty that can be paid--meaning if they stole somebody's idea and put it into their computer--must reflect what percentage it is of that which they have stolen of the entire device or end product. Thus, a mega-corporation will intentionally infringe because stealing is going to be a lot easier than will negotiating a price with the inventor. If someone is stealing someone else's invention, it basically eliminates someone's right to negotiate that price, and if the damages can only be equal to a small percentage of the device in which it's placed, the corporation will do that--will steal it--rather than negotiate a royalty agreement. This is an invitation to steal. This totally destroys the inventor's right to negotiate the price for his property. Combine that with the increased difficulties in claiming what ``willfulness'' is in that they're trying to make it more difficult to prove that someone has intentionally stolen someone's property. This means that the infringers who have intended to steal technology and who have done so with an arrogant disregard for the small patentholder will get away with their crimes, and the patentholder will be left with a minuscule award, so minuscule that he won't be able to hire legal services to help him assert his rights to the properties that he has created. This is in total violation of what our Constitution was all about. Our Constitution was about protecting that man's right to his inventions and to his discoveries. That's what it says in the Constitution, but this bill is going through, and it will have a dramatic impact on our way of life. If made law, this will kill any chance for individuals to hire legal muscle needed to enforce one's patent rights against corporate or foreign theft. So, yes, we've got mega-corporations run by people who don't consider themselves patriots, but foreign corporations will have that same power. They'll use our technology against us. The inventor who may have struggled for years to discover and to develop the invention, who might have even invested his life savings, will be at the mercy of foreign and corporate thieves. Punishing the large multinational corporations for malfeasance, or for intended theft, which is what happens today when these companies steal from the little guy, will be a thing of the past. That's what the big guys want. They don't want to get away with murder, but they want to get away with just about everything else. That's what this so-called patent reform is all about. It is clear the so-called patent reform bill is designed to help the law breaker-- the big guns--and to hurt the little guy. It helps foreign infringers and it hurts Americans. It's the patriots versus the globalists. All of this--the shift to first to file, pre- and post-grant review, changes to basic willfulness, and calculable damages--really amounts to more than harmonization, doesn't it? We're not just talking about harmonizing with the rest of the world. When you put all of this together, what do you get? The electronic mega-companies behind the scurrilous legislation have labeled themselves the so-called ``coalition for patent fairness.'' What do they want to do? It's very clear. They don't want patents at all. They would be much better off if we rid our country and the world of the idea of patents all together. It's just too bothersome for them, and so to hell with all the others--the inventors, the green-collar jobs, the biotechnology, the pharmaceuticals, our university research programs--all of which have a profound dependence on a strong patent system. These high-tech and mega-electronics corporations say they can just go to hell. All of these will suffer by this so-called reform legislation. So big electronics is thumbing its nose at America, and it thinks it can get away with it. All of the rest of us, all of these other interests in our society-- the universities and the biotechs and other interests which rely on patents and the pharmaceutical industry which pumps so much money into research--will just have their research stolen from them by foreign corporations. Look at the main proponents of H.R. 1260. Now, I won't name who the main proponents are of H.R. 1260. I won't name them--they're these mega-electronics companies--but they are made up of only one narrow sector of the entire American industry. These companies got to the top by using aggressive business models that, at best, put them into the gray area. Now that they are on top, they want to change the rules so they can stay up on top by keeping others down. Let me say that just a few more than a dozen of these companies that are behind this legislation--a few more than a dozen--have faced hundreds of lawsuits for infringement in the past decade. From 1996- 2008, these very companies that are at the heart of the coalition, who are pushing for this destructive legislation, were defendants in 730 patent infringement cases and paid out almost $4 billion in patent infringement settlements during the same period. So no wonder they want to change the rules. No wonder they want to destroy the patent system. By coming here and giving people campaign donations and by spending all of this money in promoting this monstrous bill, it costs them a lot less money to change the law than it does for them to have to pay for the infringement and to have to pay for the crimes against these small inventors. They want to make sure that, actually, they will be able to steal the product of other people's work, of these small inventors in our country. Actually, it will pay them to do so rather than to try to work out an understanding of where that person could be paid a royalty, which is what they should be paid when they own a piece of intellectual property. Well, we don't work for these big companies. We work for our families, for our communities, and we work for America. We are the patriots. We are not the globalists. Most of the corporate elites of those mega-firms see themselves as citizens of the world, while we are Americans. The changes in this bill are designed to help a few hugely rich companies, and it will devastate hundreds more. Dozens and, indeed, hundreds of organizations have expressed outright opposition or deep concern with this bill. They are telling Congress do not favor one narrow industry simply because it has been so active and has been involved with pushing this legislation. Do what is best for America. We need the American people to tell that to their Representatives and to let their Representatives know that they are watching what goes on with patent law. The big corporate thieves are depending on us to be so bored with the issue. ``Oh, I'm just going to tune it out because it sounds like it's boring, and I couldn't understand it.'' That's what they're relying on. Well, it's not too boring, and people can understand it. People should understand how important it has been that our country has had the strongest patent protection of any country on this planet, just as we have had the same and strongest protection for the other rights--for our freedom of speech, for our freedom of religion and for other rights. What would happen if, in order to harmonize the freedom that we enjoy with the rest of the world--the freedom of religion and the freedom of speech--we were told that our protections of these freedoms would have to be diminished because we would have to diminish the protections of freedom of speech, of assembly and of religion because they need to be harmonized with the rest of the world? Well, the uproar would sweep across our country, but the deletion of this right, the diminishing of patent protection, seems so esoteric to most people that they won't even listen. But if we don't listen and if we don't get involved, the big guns will think that they can slip it over on us. They've been trying to do that for 15 years. Only a small group of us has been able to stand up, but we need the help of the American people. We need the American people to speak up. We need people to call talk radio. We need people to confront their own Members of Congress. We need to tell the powerful infringers, You are not going to diminish the rights of the American people in order to harmonize the law internationally. The patriots in this country are not going to see their rights diminished in order to create a new world order where we can all live in harmony with the rest of the world, which, of course, is run by gangsters and thugs--half of the rest of the world. We're not going to act like people in the rest of the world where we let the elite tell us what to do. We have constitutional rights. We are Americans, but it's up to us to protect those rights. Wake up, America. Our freedom is being threatened. Every generation has met the challenges, and now it is up to us--us, United States, U.S. It is up to us. Well, we are on the edge right now. We are on the edge on a lot of things. Our economy is going down. This could be the nail in the coffin. If this bill passes, it will have dramatic, negative, long-term effects on our economy and on the well-being and prosperity of our people. We need to act. Wake up, America. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, I submit the following: Requesting Member: Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (CA-46) Bill Number: H.R. 2997 Name of Project: Smart Time Irrigation Controller Installation Program Account: Conservation Operations Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Municipal Water District of Orange County Address of Requesting Entity: 18700 Ward Street, Fountain Valley, CA, 92708 Description of Request: I received $134,000 for the Municipal Water of Orange County's Smart Time Irrigation Controller Installation Program. The application of smart irrigation controller technology will help Orange County and greater-Southern California manage its existing water supplies more efficiently. It will also help take pressure off our imported water supplies from Northern California and the Colorado River. Additionally, it will demonstrate for other areas with water supply challenges the effectiveness of these devices in achieving significant water savings. Finally, there are environmental protection benefits as the devices help reduce urban runoff, which is responsible for transporting pollutants and sediment into natural waterways and eventually to beaches and the ocean. The application of Smart Irrigation Controller technology will help Orange County and greater-Southern California manage its existing water supplies more efficiently. It will also help take pressure off our imported water supplies from Northern California and the Colorado River. Additionally it will demonstrate for other parts of the county with water supply challenges the effectiveness of these devices in achieving significant water savings. Funds will be used for labor, professional services, and printing and marketing. It is my understanding that local and regional funding will contribute approximately seventy percent of the FY2010 cost.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, I rise tonight on the return of President Obama from his perhaps groundbreaking visit to Russia. I, as well, have recently returned from Russia. I was there just prior to President Obama's visit, and I rise tonight to discuss America's relationship with Russia, as well as our continued involvement in NATO, as well as today's threats of radical Islam and tomorrow's looming threat of a powerful Communist China. First and foremost, I think it's important for us to take a look at history, take a look at the present, and take a look at the future concerning America's exact positioning overseas. First and foremost, that would mean today that we need to look at NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. This organization, of course, if we are honest with ourselves, should be looked at not as an institution we should be relying on today but, instead, a relic of the cold war. Not only is it strategically irrelevant today, but it may be actually making the world less stable and our country less secure. Of course the United States needs to cooperate with other countries, and as such we need to reach out to potential friends in every part of the world, but when a relationship with another country or a group of countries no longer serves the goals of freedom, security and prosperity, when we no longer share those interests that bind us together as a people, we need to dissolve those relationships and seek different ones. We now have reached a point with NATO where we should take a second look at NATO and perhaps think about what type of relationships we can have in the future that would better serve our country and the cause of peace. NATO was a vital component to American security and world peace efforts in the late 1940s. In fact, in 1949, it was what an international relations theorist might call a tenet of realistic theory that we should form a powerful alliance to counteract the hostility of the Soviet Union and the threat of the expanding realm of communism, tyranny and militarism. That was in the late 1940s. It made sense to strengthen our NATO alliance during the 1950s while the USSR was forming its Warsaw Pact and while the fall of China to Communist tyrants and the Korean Wars halted the vision of a peaceful world that we had hoped for in the aftermath of World War II. But it is no longer the 1950s. The cold war is over. This is the 21st century, and NATO no longer serves its purposes and is, in many ways, counterproductive. Ronald Reagan's visionary leadership and the unrelenting courage of the American people brought an end to the USSR and the Warsaw Pact and also to the Berlin Wall. Eastern Europe was freed at this time. And in the 1990s, the Russian Federation, freed from its Soviet shackles, had a real opportunity to partner with the West, to embrace classical liberalism and free market economics. And we, of course, created this relic. NATO had a major impact in defending the peace and deterring a war with Russia up until this point. And let this cold warrior, who was very deeply involved in the cold war and supported cold war policies to the hilt, let me shock you by suggesting that Russia, after the fall of communism, attempted to embrace classical liberalism and free market economics. The Russian people and the Russian Government wanted to be part of the western community of nations. The door was open, and the Russians were not only willing but anxious to leave the cold war hostilities behind. Well, we squandered this historic opportunity. Worse than that, we let rotten elements in the West ally themselves with looters there in Russia who were there taking advantage of Russia's weakened and vulnerable condition. The Russian people, rejected and isolated when they expected to be partners in building a new world, sunk into deep despair. Now, it's easy, in hindsight, to look at the end of the cold war and to point out the mistakes that have been made since the end of the cold war. And it's easy to do that now because it has become clear that many, many mistakes were made by us and by our European allies and friends. Now, however, is not the time to lay blame. Now is the time to admit what has been wrong and to try to set things right and to push, as President Obama has said and Secretary of State Clinton has said, to push a reset button with the Russians. And, I would add, probably push the reset button with Russia and pull the plug on NATO. So let's look to the future. Let's take actions today that will overcome past mistakes and lead the world to a bright and prosperous future. Ronald Reagan used to say that the Oval Office was not his office; he was just a caretaker, a temporary occupant. Well, Americans today, all of us who are fortunate enough to live in this great country of ours, are merely caretakers of this place for a relatively short period of time. We have inherited this country from those brave freedom-loving souls who came before us, and we will pass it on to our children and our grandchildren just as it was passed on to us because that was the right thing to do, and those who came before us took those stands that were right and courageous. The stand today meaning, for me, that I'm making a new world for my children, my three small children, Anika, Tristan and Christian, who are now 5 years old, and will live in a country that will ensure liberty, justice, security, and hopefully prosperity, to its entire people. The decisions we make now will have long-term effects and be affecting my children and all the children of America today. Reagan gave us two decades of peace and prosperity because he did the right thing. The consequences of our actions since Reagan, however, are becoming more evident and more alarming with each passing day. We must have the wisdom and the courage to confront the enormous foreign policy challenges facing us and prevail over those forces which would, if they could, destroy America and would destroy our way of life. The national security threats before us are real and did not materialize out of thin air. But contrary to the dominant paradigm of our era, our ongoing relationship with NATO since the end of the cold war has not worked to our benefit, nor does it make peace, stability, or our Nation's security more likely. NATO has recently engaged in a number of operations, for example, around the world, from fighting the Taliban to combating pirates, but whether one views these missions as relatively successful or a failure, one can hardly look at them and not realize that the cost of our continued involvement in NATO certainly outweighs the benefits. In Afghanistan, the other 27 NATO countries sent a combined force of less than 5,000 troops, many in noncombatant positions. These 5,000 troops are there as part of a coalition force. While these fighters from our NATO partners are heroic and are helpful, they are dwarfed in comparison to the number of American boots on the ground. The original members of NATO were the Americans, the French, the U.K., the Canadians, the Turks, and other European countries. Well, now add to that list Albania and Croatia, and others, and there is also talk about expanding NATO membership to other countries, smaller countries with little military relevance to the modern world. One of the primary tenets of NATO membership is that any member will come to the defense of any other member if attacked. But realistically, is the United States going to come to the aid of these other countries at any time, and is the reverse of that proposition worth the cost to us? Do we need Albania or Croatia to come to our aid if we are attacked? The answer is obviously no. And let us note that NATO's existence is unnecessary, and there is no strategic reason for us to stay in the alliance. And let us also admit that NATO can be counterproductive to the peace by, for example, convincing people with territorial disputes, like the Government of Georgia, the United States--I think that an impartial analysis of what happened in Georgia is that the United States, through our discussions of NATO with that government, emboldened that government, the Government of Georgia, not to make compromises that were necessary for peace and stability in that region. But not only did they not make the compromises, they perhaps were emboldened to conduct a military operation. And while the people of the United States were told over and over again that Russia had done something horrible in that part of the world and confronting Georgia and that it was all the Russians' fault, and all kinds of language that was used that would make it look like Russia was doing something evil and villainous, but the fact is that once you took a second look at what happened in Georgia, Georgian troops broke a truce that had been carried on for 7 years. And when it broke the truce and invaded two parts of what had been part of Georgia--let me note, the Osselians and the Abkhazians, who are the two areas that did not want to be part of Georgia, they had never been part of Georgia historically until Joseph Stalin made them part of Georgia. And the Georgian Government, of course, emboldened by our talks with them about NATO's support, broke an agreement, a truce agreement, and conducted a military invasion of those two breakaway regions, which ended up, of course, in a major loss of life and a counterattack by Russia on Georgia. Now, do we as Americans believe that we should have been involved in that? Does anyone believe that the United States should actually have Georgia as part of NATO or any of these other smaller countries in that part of the world as part of NATO so if there is a territorial dispute that we will send American troops into this far-off area and fight a battle perhaps with a country like Russia? Considering that this, of course, is in Russia's neighborhood and on the other side of the world from our country, that doesn't make sense. But it doesn't make sense at all for the United States to be in an alliance that might drag us into such conflicts that we have nothing to do with. So if Georgia wants to become part of NATO or other countries like that, if Albania and Croatia, countries that I am very sympathetic with, and, by the way, I am sympathetic with Georgia. I am sympathetic with Georgia's wanting to be a separate country from what was then the Soviet Union and later became Russia and broke away. They had my total support in that, just as the Kosovars in Kosovo had a right not to be part of Serbia. But does that mean that we are going to enter into agreements with Kosovo or with Georgia or any of these other countries saying that we will use U.S. troops as part of a NATO agreement to guarantee the borders that they claim? That's ridiculous. If Albania and Croatia, two good countries, countries I like and support, if they do want to become part of NATO, well, that's okay with me. But in this case, perhaps, if they're getting into NATO, we should be getting out of NATO. Because Americans are an open-minded people, we are more than willing to enter into relationships with other countries. And I am not suggesting isolationism, nor am I suggesting that we should not have bilateral agreements, perhaps even defense agreements with other countries. We are by our very nature networkers. Even at young ages people are using Facebook and Twitter, perhaps talking to friends who are on the Internet all over the world. And it is that sort of a sense of building alliances and relationships that is natural to Americans. We do this sort of thing at the government level too. At the outset of the Cold War, we saw a clear and present Soviet threat, and we went to work strengthening our existing relationships with friendly countries and building new relationships with other countries. Well, we should create alliances, as I said, but we need to be realistic and honest in our assessment of the factors that are in play. For whatever reason, perhaps just the lingering of Cold War attitudes and predispositions, Russia, which should have been a natural friend, Russia faces the same adversaries that the United States faces, but Russia has been positioned as our adversary. As I say, maybe that's a lingering of the Cold War mentality on our side, or maybe it's a lingering of the Cold War mentality on both sides that have brought us to this point, or maybe it's simply that we do not understand the Russian people and are wary about becoming their friends. But that would be contrary to America's personality. We are proud, and sometimes arrogantly so, but we are a friendly people. Whatever the reason, let this Cold warrior proclaim that the Russian people are a good-hearted people and they have the potential to be great friends to and allies of the United States of America. And that's us. There was no more fierce opponent of the Soviet Government and of Marxist-Leninist tyranny than I was during the Cold War. During the Soviet war in Afghanistan, I went there to Afghanistan and fought briefly along the side of Afghan warriors, the mujahideen, who were engaged in battle against a Soviet Army occupying their country. I personally was engaged in combat operations against Soviet troops during the Cold War. Very few people can say that. My chest swelled with pride every time Ronald Reagan spoke about the freedom for all subjugated peoples, including the Russian people, and I helped prepare some of those speeches that he gave as President. I was Ronald Reagan's speech writer for 7 years. When the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, pleaded with Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, I was part of the team that broke through the foreign policy establishment's blockade that would have neutered this historic freedom statement even before Ronald Reagan gave it. And I cried with joy and retrospect when that wall finally came crashing down, hammered and chiseled down by freedom-loving people on both sides of that grotesquely evil barrier. I despised the Soviet Union because I loved freedom. Freedom for all people, including the Russian people. I was just in Russia and I met a Russian who had been active in his government and active in fighting for his government during the Cold War, and I told him, I had been your worst enemy during the Cold War. And he stopped me and he said, No, no. You weren't the Russian people's worst enemy. You were the enemy of communist tyranny, and thank God for that. There are many Russians today that fully understand that they have left communist tyranny behind and it is a wonderful opportunity for them now. But the Cold War was not a war between our people. We didn't have a fight with the Russian people. It was a conflict of ideologies. The Russian people were victimized by communism just as the people of the West were threatened by communism. But the Russians are a wonderful and a creative people. They share many personal values with us, their sense of humor, their love of children, of fun, of drink, of dance, and, yes, their reverence for God and faith that was never beaten out of them by atheistic communism, which held them in its grip for five decades. There was openness and vulnerability of these people as the Soviet Communist system collapsed. Yet they were vulnerable, and yet we did not do what was right by them. The Russians and the Americans share more than cultural traits. We now share very real common threats to our countries. And those are radical Islam, which is upon us, and a totalitarian China, which is rapidly becoming an enormously negative power in the world. The totalitarian Government of China is the world's worst human rights abuser. It is a natural enemy of the United States. It is also an enemy and a threat to Russia. Yet we embrace that government, the world's worst human rights abuser, Communist China, and we build their economy. We build their manufacturing base and their technological capabilities even while simultaneously at the same time we find ways to continue hostilities and noncooperation with Russia. With open trade policies, credits, investment, and technology transfers, we run up massive trade deficits with China, and we haven't even been able to bring ourselves to officially end Jackson-Vanik economic restrictions on Russia. These are holdovers. The Jackson-Vanik restrictions on Russia are holdovers from the Cold War days. It is an insult and a sign of our own incompetence that we have not been able to lift the Jackson- Vanik restrictions on Russia. It's a joke, a cruel joke, when we even mention it to the Russians now after two decades of promising that these restrictions would be eliminated. All this, all this while we give China every benefit. Well, this relationship with Russia as well as our relationship with China has been wrongheaded and gravely so. China, in stark contrast to the great changes in Russia, where there has been political reform, where you have opposition parties and, yes, there are imperfections, but you go there and there is talk radio show complaining about leadership in Russia. In Russia you do have opposition parties, but, of course, the current party that's in power by its very nature is more popular because it won the election. And there were people on the ballot, but they were not elected. Well, there has been reform in Russia, although it's not perfect. It's far from perfect. But there has been no liberalization in China. China is not a worthy trading partner. China is not a worthy trading partner in any respect of the word, not an economic partner; and it's not a partner for peace nor is it a partner for world stability. China has had no reform of its political power structure, and it is, unfortunately, our most likely future enemy. Those words are very hard for me to say. They are not our enemy now, but it is clear that unless we have political reform in China, liberalization there, and the dictatorship there continues to grow stronger, it will be and it is today America's most likely future enemy. It is already a deadly economic competitor of our people, and it is also openly hostile to those basic values which make us Americans: a respect for human rights, religious freedom, the environmental stewardship that we have taken upon ourselves in recent years, treating each person with common decency. These things are not part of the Communist Chinese Government's agenda. In fact, they see these things as contrary to their basic concepts of what government should be all about and what their society should be all about, while we see these things as positive elements that should be fostered and nurtured in our society: human rights, religious freedom, environmental stewardship, prosperity, openness, opportunity. Because of the irreconcilable differences between the United States and the Communist Party apparatus in China, our current relationship with China has resulted in an economic and security disaster for America. It is time to have the courage to admit this fact, and it is time to reverse the poor decisions and bad policies that have made the world that we live in and led us to this point. If these are not reversed, if the policies that have led us to this point are not reversed, the result will be national and, yes, global catastrophe. Again, we are talking about government, a specific government, not its people. The Chinese people are hardworking, family-oriented people, and I have all the sympathy and respect for them in the world. They are, in fact, freedom's greatest ally, our greatest hope. The Chinese people, America's greatest hope, the American people's potentially greatest friends. The Chinese Government, however, is a loathsome tyranny, a dictatorial clique that has enslaved their people in that country and is intent on dominating the rest of it. It is a government that, as I speak, is shooting down Muslim Uyghurs in East Turkistan, which is that far region in the western provinces of China. A government that arrests and murders Falun Gong religious practitioners. The Chinese Communist Government arrests and murders these Falun Gong, and who are they? Pay attention, America. Who are they? The Falun Gong want nothing more than the religious freedom that we hold so dear. And what do they believe in? They believe in yoga and meditation. Yet, thousands of them were picked up by the Chinese Communist dictatorship, thrown into prisons. And oftentimes they never come out of those prisons. And too often we find that what is coming out of those prisons where Falun Gong members have been thrown, what do we find is coming out of those prisons? Body parts being sold to Americans and other people as medical body parts. Kidneys and organs of the body that have been extracted from people who were put in jail for religious purposes and murdered. That is the type of ghoulish regime that now controls the country of China and the Chinese people. In China, there are no unions or workers' rights, there are no democratically created environmental standards. There are no concerns about human rights or considerations for the inherent dignity of all humankind. There is no liberty; no independent judiciary; no freedom of the press; no rule of law; no opposition parties; no right to criticize the nature of their government or to criticize the clique that rules it. For these reasons, a billion working people are held in bondage so that goods can be manufactured in China for far less than in the United States. And with the one-way free trade that we have permitted and the short-term profit desired by America's corporate elite, our country has been partners in building the Chinese economy into a monstrous threat, while at the same time weakening and destroying our own economic base. Over the last two decades we have built China from a relatively backwards economy into a Frankenstein monster. When I say we, I mean the policies of the United States government have lifted the economic capabilities of a country that has had no political liberalization, no political reform of their dictatorial system, and a country that, yes, is also engaged in rebuilding its military. And, yes, we have built this Frankenstein monster. And that monster is slowly turning on its creator. It is turning on us. We find ourselves today in an economic disaster. It is a severe recession. We can all feel it. It is around us. Our friends and neighbors and even our families are suffering. It is a Depression-- perhaps not as dire as the one in the 1930s, but it might get there. It is devastating. People are losing their jobs and their houses. And who is to blame for this horrendous situation and what can be done about it? The blame, dear Brutus, lies with us. We gave China Most Favored Nation status even though they have had no political liberalization. Despite our better judgment and despite the fact that China is a brutal dictatorship, we permitted them this advantageous economic relationship. We gave them this trading status because America's corporate elites wanted to make a quick buck for themselves with lots of good bonuses for the corporate elite and then to sell us goods--us, the American people--goods at a cheaper price. We should never have realistically expected to get goods that cheap, but at the same time there was a price to pay that was not on the pricetag. What have we gotten? What was that price that we paid? It's called economic ruin of the United States of America. We have given China everything and we are left wanting now, begging for favors. Small and mid-level manufacturing bases in the United States, our mid-level manufacturing base--small and mid-level--have been virtually destroyed. Our small and medium-sized and even large industry is gone. Our manufacturing jobs have gone. And where have they gone to? They have gone to China so their people have the jobs. And their country is accumulating the wealth. And because we have had this Most Favored Nation status and had a relatively one-way free trade agreement, the Communist bosses have been able to set the rules and to manipulate the trade so that it benefits their power structure. We were told that if we had Most Favored Nation status with China and that we had trade and we embraced them economically, there would be political liberalization. For 20 years, for 30 years we were told that. And that has not happened, but just the opposite has happened. What we have now is with China a massive debt that can be purchased and is now being purchased by China. We have a massive debt here. Actually, just even this year's debt is going to be $2 trillion higher--$4 trillion budget, $2 trillion in debt. And the Chinese are very happy to buy it because they are holding it over our head and grabbing us by the throat. We have given China everything, and we are left with nothing but ruin and cheap, poorly manufactured goods, poisonous toys and, all too often, poisonous food. We need first and foremost to demand that our policymakers who are negotiating trade agreements with foreign governments, that their primary concern be--and I say this emphatically--the primary concern of our negotiators should be what is good for the people of the United States and that those negotiators be patriots in their perspective and not globalists who are tied to some notion of what is good for the world or some philanthropist who wants to help other peoples and other countries at the expense of our own people, the American people. We have not had that. We have permitted a trade policy with China and other countries that have drained our country of resources with basically one-way free trade agreements. In China, we could only export our manufactured goods if they were made in China. So our capitalists were anxious to go there. But they could certainly export everything they wanted to into our country. That one-way free trade doesn't work, and it has been a major factor in the economic crisis we face today. And that policy was permitted to continue. Because people were telling us if we just do this with China, they will liberalize and become a liberal democracy. I call that ``hug a Nazi, make a liberal.'' That's the theory. Hug a Nazi, make a liberal. No. We can get as close to them and do favors for them all we want, but we should have demanded the political liberalization, which would have opened up a two-way free trade relationship rather than a one-way. Proponents of liberalization of trade, as I say, frequently claim that even the one-way trade, even the liberalization of trade as it existed, would create jobs in the United States, create U.S. exports, and improve the trade deficit with China. That's what we heard. Not only just that it would liberalize China, but it would be good for us in the meantime. President Clinton claimed that the agreement allowing China into the World Trade Organization, which was negotiated during his administration, and I quote President Clinton, ``creates a win-win result for both countries.'' Well, has it been a win-win result? Our country's, as I say--our country's small and mid-level and even large manufacturing units have been decimated. People who had good manufacturing jobs now have low- paying survival jobs. Their children have no really great aspirations to be industrial leaders or great entrepreneurs and businessmen because the lifeblood has been sucked out of our country as our manufacturing jobs have gone to China. And while it's true that exports support jobs in the United States, as we were told, we must now recognize that it is equally true that imports destroy American jobs. Yes, that's right. Exports create American jobs, but imports do what? I know that because in my two harbors, two ports that I represent, 90 percent of all the commerce coming through those ports are containers coming in from China and the East, and only 10 percent are going out. We are destroying jobs of our people, those jobs that are necessary for people to live in homes, for people to have decent standards of living. The net result of the trade flow on unemployment, it's very clear when you see the trade imbalance that exists, why we have an increasing level of unemployment. And those people who are employed and have been employed over the last 10 years are getting jobs that are far worse and not as uplifting and not as socially mobile upwards as those jobs that their parents were getting back in the fifties and in the sixties. China's economy and China's as military capabilities have been growing and expanding even as our country has been declining. But the trouble of it is when you look at the economic and the military capabilities that are growing in China, it quite often is based on the utilization of technology that came from the United States. In fact, some of this technology was actually developed by American taxpayers, not even by these big corporate giants who go over there and set up their manufacturing units. They end up taking technologies that we have paid for, for the research, and doing what? Manufacturing it over in China. Right now, there's a big issue. What is that issue? It's whether or not we should loosen some of the controls on our technology exports. Well, I have been insisting we do that only to Democratic countries-- and we especially do not loosen the technology controls on China. It was just about 15 years ago during the Clinton administration when they permitted American satellites to be launched on Chinese rockets. At the time, I thought it was a good idea. I will have to admit that. I thought it was a good idea. But within a very short period of time I recognized what a horrendous reality was being created. What we were doing were perfecting those Chinese rockets in order to send up our satellites at a cheaper rate. Thus, we undercut the development of our own missile and rocket industry, our own aerospace jobs, and at the same time we perfected the Chinese rockets and missiles so that they could more easily what? Carry military payloads as well as civilian payloads. No, we shouldn't be loosening any of our technological restrictions on the transfer of technology to China. And even to this day, as we want to loosen them to democratic countries, there are moves here in Washington to try to take the exemption of China out. I will make this very clear. I am part of the team that's trying to move forward legislation to permit our high-tech industries to export to friendly democratic countries. But I have personally put into and worked with my other Members of Congress to ensure that part of the legislation restricts that loosening of controls to China so that they won't be able to launch American satellites on Chinese Long March rockets, because we know that will result in a technological transfer and an upgrading of those rockets. For example, we have developed a chip that serves as a gyroscope. Costs us hundreds of billions of dollars to develop that chip. That was 15, 20 years ago. Today, of course, because of what happened 15 years ago, all of the Chinese rockets have a gyro on a chip. It didn't cost them a cent. And all of these other manufactured goods that are being shipped over here, the Chinese haven't had to pay for the development costs. We've paid for it. The taxpayers and the corporations. And when a corporate leader sends his company to China, guess what? Yes, he gives himself a bonus for a few years and then disappears with tens of millions of dollars of bonus while his own company, the stockholders, and especially the workers of that company, suffer the damages when their jobs are eliminated and actually when the company is taken over by the Chinese. Well, ironically, we have liberalized our trade with China, but China has not even liberalized its own government. In fact, China has been getting worse over these last two decades, not better. It was Tiananmen Square that was the turning point. Up until Tiananmen Square, there was a legitimate reason for us to build the economy of China to create closer ties because there was a movement on to create a new and democratic China that would be friend of ours and the world. There was a positive evolution going on politically and economically in China. When it reached its tipping point at Tiananmen Square, the United States didn't stand tall. If Ronald Reagan would have been President, I can assure you he would have sent a telegram to the leaders, I'd say, to the gang who controls the Government of China. And he would have said, if you turn loose the army and slaughter the democratic movement in Tiananmen Square, all of the economic understandings we have, all of the capital investments and technology transfers, it's off. Reagan would have done that in a heartbeat. But George W's father, George Herbert Walker Bush was President. He did not share that same commitment, and there was no message sent to the Chinese, which was the worst message of all, because they now understood they could manipulate even the highest level of people in our government and of industry for short-term profit and that our elite does not give a damn about democracy or any of the other values that we, the American people, hold dear. So we let our corporate elite dictate to us, and our government, under George Herbert Walker Bush, took the easy way out. We acted like Tiananmen Square didn't count, and we let the corporations continue to make their quick buck so the corporate elites could give themselves their big bonuses. And in the end they were sending more jobs and more technology transfers and more capital investment to China, even though they had just slaughtered the democratic movement in Tiananmen Square. And now look at us. When we do something immoral, we come back and we pay a price for it. Part of the reason we are in such economic hardship today can be traced right back to the immoral decision that I just mentioned. We've permitted this China, an authoritarian, totalitarian China, to have an open free-trade policy with the United States. But it was only free trade in one way, and there was no liberalization going on whatsoever. China should never have been given most-favored-nation status, and of course, we look at it now. China's been given that. Russia can't get anything. Russia can't even get the Jackson-Vanik restrictions to be taken off. The tipping point in Russia came in 1991, which obviously caused a massive economic dislocation in Russia as it moved out of its socialist economy. So, in 1991, the great reforms were happening in China. The democratic movement wasn't slaughtered like it was in Tiananmen Square, but the Russian people were suffering hardship. The Russian economy collapsed, and there was a national despair in Russia, of course, and we watched this. While we built and fueled and invested in the Chinese economic machine, we said ``No thanks'' when it came to broadening our relationship with a liberalizing Russia. Russia's not a little country. Russia is not insignificant. On the contrary, in the long term and in the grand scheme of history, we need Russia just as much as the Russians need us. If we are to confront the menace of radical Islam and the terrorist threat, we are going to have to stop the rogue states that are trying to acquire nuclear weapons. We're going to do that or combat radical Islam. If we're going to combat, as I say, Iran or North Korea, we need to work with the Russians. We need to be partners with the Russians, not antagonists, and we certainly should not be looking at them as an enemy at a time when they have been trying to liberalize their country and have had great strides of liberalization since the Stalinist days of the Soviet Union. To be scrupulously accurate, we did, indeed, start a number of Russian-American partnerships in the 1990s. In 1992, Senators Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar pushed us to work with the Russians to secure and dismantle nuclear weapons arsenals in and around the former Soviet Union, a project that would make everybody safer. It was brilliant, and eventually it evolved into the Cooperative Threat Reduction program. This program, the CTR, was a joint exercise between the United States, Russia, other former Soviet states and various military contractors. For a while, it went very, very well even though it had its ups and downs, and it's still going well. Despite the fact that certain people in the United States are complaining about it, they complain about the costs, but mostly they complain about working with the Russians to secure the Russians' weapons. Well, that makes all the sense in the world to me that we work with them to dismantle weapons, nuclear weapons, and that gets to the heart of the problem. The type of people who are now deadly against us even trying to help the Russians dismantle their own weapons. We have a chance. And President Obama--I will have to say I've been very critical of him in his dealings with countries like Iran and elsewhere where he's not being tough, but he's trying to reach out to the Russians, and I applaud that. What he's trying to do is to find something that is mutually beneficial to us and that would be a reduction in the number of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons cost a lot of money to both of our countries, and we are building them so that they can't be used. We are praying they will never be used. So if we are going to have money for the military, which we have to use to defeat radical Islam and to confront China, we need to make an agreement with Russia to bring down the level, not to eliminate nuclear weapons but bring down the level of those weapons that we believe should never be used so that we can afford to pay for the defense that we need to use. And why aren't we doing that? I mean, Obama has laid the groundwork, but already we have people on my side of the aisle raising their voices with an ingrained sense of hostility towards Russia on any idea of reducing nuclear weapons. Well, how come we don't have that same antagonism towards China, who we are sending hundreds of billions of dollars to? The United States did withdraw from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty. I supported that, and I still do, even though I know the Russians didn't like that and thought it was a hostile act. I believe in missile defense. That's why we withdrew from that treaty. I believe we should reduce our number of nuclear weapons and build a missile defense system, but I disagree with how the Bush administration rushed forward to deploy a system in the Czech and Polish Republics right on Russia's borders. We should have done what Ronald Reagan advised, and that is, if the Russians would withdraw from Eastern Europe and give up this Communist attitude of dominating the world, we should make the Russians partners in designing, building, maintaining and operating an antimissile system. So, instead, we set up this system that we knew would be considered a hostile act and would antagonize the Russians even at the same time as we were inviting Chinese military observers to observe our own military operations. We've got it totally backwards. The country with no liberalization whose government hates our way of life and imprisons people for religious purposes, that government we're inviting to observe our military operations and cooperate with their military while Russia, which has had every liberalization, even though they're imperfect, that country which wanted and would love to work with us on missile defense, we set up a system which is aimed at Russia. Well, if we keep expanding NATO and inching around Russia, you can expect them to think that we're doing this as a hostile act. We do this even as we try to open up our relations even further with China. We chastise Russia for its imperfections, but we have not bothered to make demands on China even as we have invited the Chinese military to observe our military operations. We keep expanding NATO, as I say, inching around, but we always have a negative word for Russia; yet, in China, there has been no reform of its tyrannical and repressive practices. So what else have we done? We haven't even offered support for those elements in China that do believe in reform and democracy. We can't get ourselves to have strong condemnations of the brutal massacres going on now with the Uyghurs, the Muslims or the Tibetans or the Falun Gong. We can't get our government to actually condemn China for the brutality, the massive brutality that they are perpetrating on their own people, much less, I might add, condemn them for their continued insistence on territorial claims. China is not only an economic threat, but China is a massive threat to us as it builds its military, its rockets and missiles, in particular, as it claims huge territories of Russia and India and huge areas of the ocean right up to the shores of the Philippines. These are claims that China is making; yet the United States is not counteracting those claims even as we are antagonistic towards Russia. If we are to have a free world, if we are to combat radical Islam, we need Russia on our side. If we are going to combat those rogue nations in Iran and North Korea, we need Russia on our side. And if we are to live at peace and to thwart these desires by China to dominate the world, we must have Russia on our side. So far, American policy has been totally upside down in terms of Russia and China. We need to make sure that we enter new relationships. Instead of taking NATO and expanding it, we should now show Russia that we want a new coalition in this world and that Russia will be part of it. I would suggest that as we leave NATO, that we instead form a new coalition, perhaps not formally, but a coalition of interests, of security interests with countries like India, Japan, Russia and the United States. They are the four legs to the table that will create stability for humankind. Other democratic countries will join with us. But we need to have a relationship, a viable relationship with those countries in order to combat those challenges that are upon us with radical Islam and that threat that looms over us, which is an ever-more increasingly powerful Communist China. The future's up to us. We've got to be realists, but we've also got to remain true to our principles as Americans. And when we are not true to those principles, when we close our eyes to the repression going on in China, even as we speak at this moment, where Muslims are being shot down in parts of China because they are not willing to accept the repression of their own culture and the repression of their faith, or the Tibetans who have suffered the same, or the Falun Gong who want nothing more than to meditate and have yoga exercises, if we do not speak up for these persecuted people, we will be persecuted, and we will suffer as a result. The economy is suffering because of incredibly stupid policies, economic policies, and the China trade policy has been one of the worst. Our country will suffer in the future if we do not have a rational policy of security and cooperation with Russia, with India, and with Japan. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.