Dana Rohrabacher

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, let me just note this. We can make light of the fire that has swept through Chicago and destroyed homes and natural disasters. This is not a natural disaster that is befalling our people, and it is not funny. The fact is our health care system is breaking down in California and people are losing their lives. It is breaking down in other parts of the country. Our criminal justice system is breaking down. People are being murdered. Our citizens are losing their lives because we refuse to deal will illegal immigration. The Social Security System could fall apart in 10 years if this illegal immigration continues to overwhelm us. What are we doing? Why are we permitting our children to go into our educational institutions to have a diluted education? This is ridiculous.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, today I call for a broad coalition of my colleagues to support the Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment to H.R. 4754, introduced by the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr). Over the past 8 years, 10 States have adopted laws that decriminalize the use of marijuana for medical purposes. These States have passed these laws to allow the use of marijuana to relieve intense pain that accompanies several debilitating diseases, including AIDS, cancer, multiple sclerosis, and glaucoma. In seven of these States, such as my own State of California, these laws were adopted by a direct referendum of the people. The Federal Government, however, has made it nearly impossible for these States to implement their own laws, the laws that the people voted for. The DEA has conducted numerous raids on homes of medical marijuana users, prosecuting patients who were using marijuana in accordance with State law to relieve intense pain and other symptoms caused by a variety of illnesses. Despite these State laws, the Justice Department is working overtime to put sick people and those who would help them in jail. It is time for the Federal Government to respect the rights of individual States to determine their own health and criminal justice policies on this matter. A growing movement of Americans from conservative to liberal is calling for the Federal Government to keep its hands off the States that wish to allow their citizens to use marijuana for medical purposes. In my State, the people have spoken overwhelmingly. Both Republican and Democrat counties voted for medical freedom. Our new Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has made it clear in regard to the Federal Government's interference with California's medical marijuana policy in his message to Washington, and what is it? It is ``Hasta la vista, baby.'' Even more poignant, Tom McClintock, Arnold's leading conservative opponent in the recent recall election, has spoken out even more strongly against the Federal interference with California's medical marijuana laws. The Governor of Maryland also, our former Republican colleague, Robert Ehrlich, has signed Maryland's new medical marijuana law and has lobbied Members of Congress on this issue. As a conservative, I am increasingly troubled by the federalization of criminal law that has occurred in recent years. It seems that more and more crimes are being declared to be Federal crimes. While sometimes this is appropriate, for example in immigration law, which is a federally mandated issue by our Constitution, but criminal justice constitutionally is the domain of the State and local government. This is especially true when the people of these many States determine by their own vote the policy concerning this specific personal behavior. It is time for the conservatives and liberals to join together in calling for the Federal Government to keep its hands off. Liberals, moderates, and conservatives should unite in order to protect the freedom of our people. This is a freedom issue, and it is also a humanitarian issue. We should make sure that the local people have a right to determine if the doctors in their community, and that is what we are talking about, the doctors are able to prescribe marijuana for people who are suffering from AIDS and suffering from cancer and other types of diseases. This is not fair, and it is not humane to go the other way; and it is un-American to centralize this type of criminal justice matter in the hands of Federal bureaucrats rather than the people who vote in our specific communities.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, let us note we are not talking about legal immigrants. Over a million people are permitted in this country legally every year. We can be very proud of that. In fact, the people most concerned about illegal immigration in this country are the million legal immigrants every year who obey the rules and stand in line and who we are slapping in the face by permitting millions of illegals to come into our country. Trying to blur the distinction between legal and illegal is not an honest way of presenting the case. The bottom line is we are only talking about illegal immigration. We are not talking about local crime. I am not in favor of having the local judiciary to enforce criminal matters that are made criminal by the Federal Government. I am, however, in favor of the Federal Government presiding over its constitutional authority and obligation to control immigration policy in this country. And if States and cities want money from the Federal Government concerning illegal immigration and the incarceration of illegal immigrants, they will have to go along and enforce that Federal law because immigration is the rightful authority of the Federal Government.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the Tancredo amendment. The gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) stands in front of us today, as he has in the past, as a strong voice to try to gain the attention and support of Members of Congress towards a problem that we refuse to deal with. This Congress is refusing to deal with one of the greatest threats to the well-being of our people. In California, our education system is going down. The health care available to our people is being diluted and people are dying because of this. Our criminal justice system is breaking down. People are being murdered because we are not dealing with this issue. The issue, of course, is illegal immigration. We have to do something about it. In this case, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) is simply saying the cities or States that will not help us enforce the laws that already exist, they should not be getting government money in the name of that enforcement. If we do not handle this situation, our people are going to pay an even heavier price. I can see a day when the Social Security system totally falls apart because we have not dealt with this issue. It is a disgrace that Congress is refusing to act upon this. At least support this issue which is very reasonable.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to this amendment, which would weaken the pressure on Castro's gangster regime. Yes, Cuban families will be suffering. Yes, Cuban families will suffer more than they suffer now. But they are not suffering because of the United States of America. No. It is always America's fault, right? It is always America's fault whether the Cuban people are suffering or any of the people who live under tyranny are suffering anywhere in the world. It is always our fault. No, the people of Cuba are suffering, as they have for the last 3 and 4 decades, because of the Castro regime. It is a brutal dictatorship that has suppressed the people, that has eliminated freedom, that has permitted the economy, that once-proud economy, one of the most prosperous economies of the hemisphere, to go right down the tubes. The people of Cuba know why they are suffering. It is not because of the people of the United States. And, in fact, we should have policies that differ between democratic countries and dictatorships. If we have the same policies, what pressure are we going to be able to put on these dictatorships to change? That leaves us with only the military option. We should have an economic policy that will pressure this hemisphere's most brutal dictatorship, and we should make sure that we do not relieve that pressure at this moment. It is important that the people of Cuba fully understand the consequences of Castro's dictatorship. It is not the fault of the people of the United States, as we have heard here. It is not the fault of this administration. It is the fault of this bearded dictator who has murdered all of his opposition in Cuba. That is why there is no prosperity. That is why the people are living in misery. It is not because of anything we are doing here. Yes, we should put economic pressure on Cuba to get rid of Castro. Castro has not only a dictatorship that oppresses his people, he supports insurgents and terrorists throughout this hemisphere. He uses his territory as a base of operations that is designed to hurt the people of the United States of America. Fidel Castro rules with an iron fist. Yes, you do not grow much food when you have iron fists on your hands. That is right, you do not grow much food and you do not have a high standard of living when you spend all your money subsidizing terrorists and a heavy military regime, as Castro has. That is why the people of Cuba are suffering. The best thing we can do right now is continue the pressure on Castro until he is gone. That is what we can do for the people of Cuba. And if we right now take the measure that is being suggested by the Flake amendment, it will be seen as a weakness on the part of the United States towards this hemisphere's most brutal dictatorship. It will not encourage change for the better, it will encourage intransigence on the part of dictators and terrorists like Fidel Castro. It is time for us to oppose any type of suggestion like that proposed by the Flake amendment today. Let us be for Cuba and the people of Cuba, for freedom and democracy, and say, yes; Cuba, si; libertad, si; Castro, no mas.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H. Res. 691, and I would like to congratulate the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde) for the leadership that he has provided and the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos) for the leadership that he has provided in not only this piece of legislation but in guiding our country through a very delicate moment of history. Mr. Speaker, ladies and gentlemen, and my colleagues, we are Americans. We are not Republicans. We are not Democrats. We are Americans today. Our country is at war with a force, a hostile force that hates everything that we stand for. That the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos) and the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde) of both parties are united in supporting this historic effort to defeat an enemy which would slaughter our people before our eyes and cut the heads off of American citizens and try to intimidate our entire Nation in order to make us cowards, the fact that we stand together is the one thing that gives us strength. H. Res. 691 reaffirms that we Americans are standing together behind the central purpose of the operation in Iraq, which is nothing more or nothing less than providing the Iraqi people the means to determine their own destiny through the ballot box; and by taking this stand, we take a stand for democracy that will be available to those in the Islamic world. It is a strategic move on our part but, yet, something totally consistent with our values as a people, as the American people. Thus, it is fitting today that we stand, as I say, not as Republicans and Democrats, but we stand behind our President and this noble effort in Iraq to get rid of a tyrant who slaughtered hundreds of thousands of his people and help those people in Iraq establish a democratic government so that all our children will live at peace and this evil force of radical Islam that threatens us will be defeated.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

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

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, the American people need to know that the 9/11 terrorist attack on New York and Washington D.C. was not predestined nor was it unavoidable. Unfortunately, the commission investigating 9/11 seems uncomfortable with fixing responsibility, branding such attempts at accountability as the blame game or pointing fingers, or so some of them said, early on in their hearings. So instead of looking for policies that were dead wrong or people who were incompetent, we have heard about all glitches in the system, about a lack of communication, a lack of a shared database. So expect recommendations from this commission and this task force to be consistent with this thinking. Changes will be suggested in flow charts, organizational restructuring, and, of course, you can expect them to recommend the creation of a new central authority and intelligence czar. Sorry. 9/11 represented a dramatic failure of policy and people. A number of insane policies led to the creation of the hostile radical Islamic movement we face today. Policies that enabled weird, feudalistic religious zealots to become a major threat to the Western world, and especially to the people of the United States. Yes, the origins of this frightening reality go back a ways. In the 1980s, for example, the CIA permitted Pakistan to channel America's support to those Afghans who were fighting against the Soviet troops who were occupying their country. Much of that support that we were giving the Afghan freedom fighters ended up in the hands of Pakistan's favorite Muslim fanatics Golbadin Hekmatyar, a fiend who, in his college days, threw acid in the face of young women who refused to cover themselves totally with a burka. During the war, I hiked into the Afghanistan, that is the war against the Soviet's occupation of Afghanistan, I hiked into Afghanistan with a small mujahadeen infantry unit. On our way to the south of Jalalabad, which was the last major battle in which Soviet troops fought in that war, we came across an encampment of Saudi volunteers. In stark contrast to the spartan living conditions of the Afghan fighters, this camp site was complete with large safari-style tents, cots and even SUVs. I was told not to speak English because the Saudi crazy man who led this bunch would rather kill Americans than Soviet troops. His name, you guessed it, was Osama bin Laden. So by the end of the 1980s the presence of a potentially dangerous whack element in Afghanistan was well known. And contrary to leftist cliches, the roots of our current terrorist problem lie not in the support that we gave the Afghan people in their gallant fight against Soviet occupation, but in America's willingness to let Pakistan distribute war supplies and our unconscionable decision after the retreat of the Soviet Army to walk away ourselves and to leave the poor and wounded Afghans to live in the rubble and suffering and to leave them there in their own history. Milton Bearden, a senior CIA officer who oversaw American support, has suggested that his job was beating the Soviets and that he should not have been expected to keep our weapons and our support out of the hands of those who might pose a long-term threat to the United States. Nonsense. Put this man, the head of the CIA operation overseeing our aid to the mujahadeen, put him, the CIA officer, Milton Bearden, on the list of people who helped bring about 9/11. I can assure you that complaints were made at the highest level about America's support ending up in the hands of these crazies. I personally made such protests while I was working in the Reagan White House. Furthermore, it was a policy decision that let Pakistan distribute our supplies and it was wrong. To fix responsibility on this one, I look to the list of senior foreign service officers at our embassy in Islamabad in the 1980s and 1990s. Up to this day, there are State Department geniuses who still tow the Pakistani line, who still seem unable to call Pakistan to task for its transgressions of omission and comission. These State Department pros who ran our policy from Islamabad, Pakistan, in the 1980s and 1990s, these are the ones who also helped give us 9/11. Look at the list of the people who worked there. Furthermore, it was a policy decision to walk away and abandon our Afghan allies even after psychopathic killers like Golbadin Hekmatyar rose up as the Soviets departed. President Bush, father of our current President, has to accept a lion's share of the blame for this cowardly, arrogant, and selfish policy. There would be no Marshall Plan for Afghanistan nor anything else because, like during the war itself, we left post-war reconstruction and assistance up to the Saudis and up to the Pakistanis, which was, again, another indefensible policy decision. These countries predictably had their own agenda which included the creation of a radical Islamic state in Afghanistan. The Saudis and the Pakistanis were not upset that the violent extremists were so well armed. The Saudis and the Pakistanis supported the arming of these violent extremists. Predictably, what followed was a period of havoc and bloodshed. Hekmatyar Golbadin peppered Kabul with American rockets that were stockpiled during the Soviet occupation. Well, thank you, Mr. Bearden. There was a way out of this, of course. We did not need to have our support going to the radicals who hate us and hate our way of life. Instead, there was the king of Afghanistan who had been exiled in Rome for many years he was able and willing to return. King Zahir Shah was, and is, the most beloved man in Afghanistan, a pro-Western force for stability, a moderate Muslim. Instead, our State Department opted to have the creation of a third force, this new force to be made up of religious fanatics educated in the madrases, the so-called schools that were in Pakistan, schools that were financed and built by the Saudis but taught nothing but hatred towards the west. I pleaded with Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki to at least give the old King Zahir Shah a chance to lead an interim government. No way. Again, our State Department let the Saudis and the Pakistanis take the lead rather than having us lead them. Rather than go with a pro-Western alternative we ended up supporting the Taliban, the creation of the Taliban as a means to bring stability to Afghanistan. And make no mistake about it, the Taliban's ascent to power as well as their ability to stay in power was a Clinton administration policy decision promoted by professionals in our State Department. Let me just note that I fought that every step of the way, trying to push to get the king of Afghanistan Zahir Shah recognized as a moderate alternative. Unfortunately, once the Taliban came to power, yes, I gave them the benefit of the doubt for about 2 weeks before it was quite evident that our worst fears would be recognized and would come to reality under the Taliban. Again, who to put on the list of those who blame for 9/11? The policy of the State Department and the Clinton administration in collusion with the Saudis and the Pakistanis to create and support the Taliban control of Afghanistan, there is a huge cause of 9/11. They obviously did not learn, the Saudis and the Pakistanis and our own people, did not learn a thing from the horror that they created by backing Islamic fanatics like Hekmatyar Golbadin, and instead, went with the Taliban over the moderate alternative of the king. Of course, our government's support for the Taliban was never publicly acknowledged. But for those of us engaged in that region, and there are darn few of us that were engaged in that region after the Soviets left, it was clear what our policy was. But what is more poignant is the Afghan system believed the Americans were behind the Taliban. Why should they not? Our aid was channeled disproportionately through the Taliban controlled areas. I remember trying to clear the way for a shipment, private shipment of humanitarian relief for a non-Taliban area in northern Afghanistan only to be blocked by assistant Secretary of State Rick Inderfurth. If there was any doubt about my suspicions, they were laid to rest and my suspicions were confirmed in 1997 when high level executives from the Clinton administration saved the Taliban from total defeat and extinction. This is long after it was clear what type of regime the Taliban had, the Nazi-like fanatics that they were. What happened was this: In April of 1997 the Taliban launched a major offensive aimed at taking control over the northern third of Afghanistan, which to that point had remained free and under the control of regional leaders who were commonly referred to as warlords. One of those regional leaders, General Malick, tricked the Taliban and managed to capture almost all of their frontline troops, along with most of their heavy weaponry. It was an utter disaster for the Taliban. The road to the capital, Kabul, was wide open. The Taliban were totally vulnerable and could have easily been wiped out. I sent a message to Commander Masood and to others that Kabul should be liberated and that the King should be brought back to oversee a transition government, which then would hopefully evolve into a democratically elected government, perhaps like what happened in Spain where the King returned and it evolved into a democratic government; but before the anti-Taliban forces could strike, Assistant Secretary of State Rick Indefurth and American U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson flew to northern Afghanistan and convinced the anti-Taliban leadership that this was not the time for an offensive. Instead, they insisted this was the time for a cease-fire and an arms embargo. This clearly was a statement of U.S. policy. Two top foreign policy leaders in the Clinton administration flew to northern Afghanistan to convince the anti-Taliban forces not to take advantage of their one opportunity to soundly defeat and, thus eliminate, this enemy. These Clinton appointees saved the Taliban; and let me underscore, by this time the evil nature of these Islamic Nazis was clearly evident. Right after the cease-fire and the release of prisoners brokered by these Clinton administration geniuses, the Pakistanis began a Berlin- like airlift to resupply and re-equip the Taliban, obviously financed with Saudi money. If I knew of this massive resupply effort, certainly the Clinton administration officials who had set up this scenario knew about it. So why were the anti-Taliban leaders not notified of this situation? Why did we continue an arms embargo on the anti-Taliban forces, even as the Taliban were rearmed and resupplied? Well, the answer is it was U.S. policy. So add Clinton appointees Assistant Secretary of State Rick Indefurth and United Nations Ambassador Bill Richardson on the 9/11 blame list, and I say that with great hesitation because Bill Richardson is a friend, and I enjoyed serving with him in this House; but this particular action did great damage to the United States of America's security and, as I say, led to 9/11. To be fair, they were obviously carrying out the policies that were made elsewhere and approved higher up in the administration, but how much higher can we go than the Assistant Secretary of State for the region and our United Nations ambassador? Well, I can tell my colleagues, it goes all the way up. Last year, the current foreign minister of Pakistan visited California. Furious by my repeated accusations that Pakistan was responsible for the Taliban, the current foreign minister of Pakistan blurted out, and this was a well-attended event, that America was part of the Taliban deal from the first day it was created. I have been trying to prove that. I have been trying to prove the Clinton administration was covertly supporting the Taliban for a long time. Now, at last, I had confirmation by a nationally and internationally respected leader. As a member of the Committee on International Relations, I have had the responsibility of overseeing such policy. During the last 2 years of the Clinton administration, I made numerous requests with the support of committee chairman Ben Gilman for Taliban-related documents. I wanted to find out what the genesis of our policy toward the Taliban was and try to expose exactly what our policy was. I asked for the cables, for talking points, meeting notes. This was part of my responsibility, as someone who is a senior member of the Committee on International Relations, to oversee the foreign policy of the United States. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright made a commitment to me in an open congressional hearing to provide my office and Chairman Gilman with all the related documents concerning our policy toward the Taliban. Well, to make a long story short, years went by and we kept asking for them. We were stonewalled. They sent us meaningless documents that included innocuous news clippings. Well, this was about as arrogant as anything I had ever experienced as a Member of Congress, and it still is: unelected State Department careerists dismissing the request of elected officials for security-related information. One wonders if the current independent commission examining 9/11 has asked to see these documents. Is it not important for us to know if our government policy actually helped create the Taliban and protected the Taliban in power, even as they used Afghanistan as a terrorist base, which eventually was used as a staging area for an attack that cost the lives of 3,000 Americans on 9/11? In some ways, it is hard to characterize the administration's support for the Taliban as covert. Anyone looking closely would have to assume that that is what it was; but over and over again we were told this was not the policy. Yet something stunk. Covert or overt, it was a disgraceful policy, and that policy led to 9/11 by creating a base of operations for bin Laden and a training base and staging area for al Qaeda. By the way, what we know now is bin Laden is not just some voice in the wilderness. He is from an enormously wealthy Saudi family; and while our petroleum dollars flowed into Saudi Arabia over the years, by the hundreds of billions of dollars, the Saudi establishment not only turned a blind eye but also attempted to buy off this violent, anti-Western, Islamic fringe which included bin Laden. This fringe was in their country. They spent billions of our petrol dollars to try to buy off these radicals. So billions of our petrol dollars now have come back to bite us in a big way. It obviously continues to this very day. The first Gulf War in 1990 did nothing but expand bin Laden's hatred for us. Our presence in Saudi Arabia, he has piously proclaimed, is an insult to his faith. Well, considering that the mass slaughter of unarmed people is perfectly consistent with his faith, perhaps we should quit taking seriously all of this self-righteous, Islamic rhetoric used by bearded, psychopathic killers. Most people who believe in Islam are total opponents to this type of murderous behavior in the name of their religion. It is our job to reach out to those people, those Muslims, those moderate Muslims, who want to live in freedom and want everyone to respect each other's faith, to reach out to them and to make them part of our coalition, to make sure that the radical Islam, just like Communism and every other ism that attempted to murder tens of thousands and hundred of thousand get their way just as we have defeated them in the past. In the mid-1990s, bin Laden and his cohorts began to set up a terrorist underground army for a war that he intended to wage on America and on the Western democracies. In the mid-1990s, he operated not out of Afghanistan but out of Sudan. America's official position was that bin Laden was a terrorist, and he was on our Most Wanted List. In fact, CIA Director George Tenet declared him America's and the CIA's number one target. Inexplicably, while designated as such, the CIA's number one target, the self-aggrandizing monster organized, financed, and implemented attacks that caused tens of billions of dollars in damage and the death of thousands of innocent people, not just in the U.S. on 9/11 but worldwide over several years: the World Trade bombing back in 1993; the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1996; embassy attacks in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998; and then an attack on the USS Cole. All of these were all organized by bin Laden's monsters and bin Laden's conspirators, a man recognized as the number one target of the CIA. Yet with all of the CIA's money and power and technology and other assets, with a track record like that, knowing what they are capable of, the CIA could not thwart 9/11, nor did they warn us of 9/11. So, remember, 9/11 was a major operation, planned and carried out by the CIA's number one target, as well as the number one target, as well as hundreds of others, I might add, who had to be involved in this, with millions and millions of dollars being spent on communication over large areas. Yet we were not warned, and it was not thwarted. If this is not incompetence, then what is? Furthermore, there were mind-boggling missed opportunities to get bin Laden before 9/11. Either intentionally or as a matter of policy or through incompetence, bin Laden was never stopped, even though there were numerous opportunities to stop him. The Government of Sudan, for example, played close attention to bin Laden. That is why he was operating in that country in the early 1990s. I am told they actually cataloged the people to whom he spoke on the phone and the people who came to see him in person. The former ambassador for the Sudan to the United States, Mahdi Ibrahim Mohamed, told me personally that he had offered our government this terrorist catalog which would have been a silver bullet for the total destruction of bin Laden's terrorist network, al Qaeda. Vanity Fair reports that the Sudanese Government's offer to provide us this information was abruptly turned down by no one else other than Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. That is right, the Secretary of State. Vanity Fair reports that she instructed that no one look at a copy of the material. It just reconfirms, I might add, what the Sudanese ambassador has told me personally. So in bold print let us add to the list of those responsible for 9/11 the former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. It should be noted that former President Clinton is denying that he turned down such an offer from the Sudan. Just even last night, I understand, he was being interviewed and denied that he had turned down this offer. Well, it is not unreasonable to assume that the wording of this denial has been crafted so we really do not know what is is, and, unfortunately, we have to look at the words very carefully to see if someone's trying to leave us with a false impression without actually telling a lie. While we are at it, let us add the name Dick Clarke, and look at Dick Clarke. Now, this is a man who got much attention for criticizing George W. Bush when he criticized him before the investigating panel. Clarke was a senior foreign policy official. While all that I have been describing to my colleagues, while all this was taking place, he was a senior policy person in the Clinton administration and even before. He either approved of what was happening, or he did nothing during this period. He either approved it, or he did nothing. Whichever, he is certainly on the 9/11 blame list and has no credibility in blaming President Bush who, as we know, was sworn in as President after the 9/ 11 plot was well under way, and it was well under way and started and conceived of at a time when Dick Clarke was a senior official in the administration of this previous administration. So now we have him attacking our President? From the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 to the bombing of U.S. military barracks in Saudi Arabia, to the attack on the USS Cole and the destruction of our embassies in Africa, the response from the last administration was so tepid, so weak, that the perpetrators thought that we Americans are cowards. That is why they went ahead with 9-11, which was aimed not just at killing 3,000 Americans. Let us remember this. It is God's gift to us that only 3,000 Americans died at the Pentagon and in those towers in New York. Tens of thousands of people could have died. This we have learned. And what we have learned is that that plan to kill tens of thousands of Americans moved forward because the response that we had, our government had to these attacks on us before, during the 1990s, made these terrorists think that we were weak and cowardly. And so those we have captured since have told us that it was the weakness of the 1990s that led to the attacks on us and led to the war that we are in today. By the way, after one attack it is reported that Richard Clarke, who was a White House official at that time, when they were looking for how to retaliate--it is reported that Richard Clarke insisted that the retaliation take the form of a bombing of a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, an aspirin factory which had nothing to do with terrorism. Yet that was the target that he insisted that we use as a retaliation to the attack upon us. This while still helping the Taliban stay in power. Meaning the policy of the administration at the same time was letting the Taliban stay in power, even after we had been attacked. So here we are, we are attacked, but we still have not changed our policy of keeping the Taliban in power. We were still not working with those people who were anti-Taliban in Afghanistan. Something stinks about this whole situation. Then, in an even more personal incident about bin Laden, which again clarifies whether or not we were doing what we needed to do, in April and May of 1999 America had an incredible opportunity to capture bin Laden. I personally was involved in this one. It is, unfortunately, yet another example of incompetence of those we trusted to protect us from an attack like 9-11. In April 1999, a long-time friend, who had been deeply involved in the Afghan fight against Soviet occupation contacted me. My friend was, and is, an American. He has impeccable credentials, and he was widely known and admired among the Afghan people. My friend called to tip me that bin Laden was outside of Afghanistan and could be easily captured. I told him I would pass this on and pass on his name and phone numbers to the CIA. The very next day, I was at a CIA briefing and I passed on my friend's name and phone number; explained his credential and told them we could have bin Laden on a platter. A week passed, I called my friend, and the CIA had not contacted him after a week. So I went back to the agency. This time they were adamant they would contact my friend. There was still a chance to get bin Laden. Another week passed, and the CIA did not call my friend. So this time I went to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. When he heard my story, he immediately went into action and arranged a meeting for me the next day. That next day, at the appointed time, I went to a somewhat secret and heavily guarded part of this Capitol, where there in a secure room I met with not just the CIA but also a representative of the NSA and the FBI. There they were, the bin Laden task force. I complained about my friend's vital information being ignored, and they took notes and apologized for those dunderheads over at the CIA and promised to get it right this time. A week later my friend still had not been contacted. When I mentioned this to Chairman Goss, he was a appalled. The very next day, and I am sure it was based on him reading someone the riot act, a representative from an intelligence agency finally called my friend. The caller's tone of voice, my friend says, suggested that it was an obligatory inquiry. It did not make any difference, because then the trail was cold. It was all very strange and very disheartening to see that the CIA and our intelligence people, and this was back during the last administration, did not seem to want to know how to get bin Laden. Then we end up bombing an aspirin factory after he commits a terrorist act against us. Clearly, however, there was something dreadfully wrong at the CIA. And over at the FBI, it was just as bad, if not worse. It is widely known now that 2 months before the September 11 attacks, Phoenix FBI agent, Kenneth Williams, sent a memo to the FBI headquarters in Washington and New York warning that bin Laden disciples might be training at U.S. flight schools, and asking for a review to determine if this was happening in other parts of the country. The Williams memo was ignored by David Frasca, the supervisor special agent in Washington. David Frasca. One month before 9-11, Minnesota FBI agent Colleen Rowley asked FBI headquarters to issue a warrant allowing agents to search the computer of a would-be terrorist, part of a gang, for information regarding Mr. Massaoui, who we knew was linked to the terrorist groups in the United States. She wanted to make sure we could check his computer. The FBI ignored her warnings. The FBI actually prohibited her from telling anybody else. When she went to the CIA to try to warn them, she was rebuffed for her efforts. There was something terribly wrong with the culture of the FBI when they were upset that one of their people had gone to the CIA to warn them of a terrorist in the United States. Clinton appointee, Louis Freeh, headed the Bureau for almost 8 years. The new director, Robert Mueller, took over just 2 days before 9-11. The Bureau, obviously, needed a major overhaul, as became painfully evident shortly thereafter when the World Trade Towers crashed to the ground before a shocked Nation. The FBI, again like the CIA, had not done its job, for whatever reasons. The troubles in the FBI were not just an organizational mindset but also the restrictions and the mandates that were put upon the Bureau. So individuals there were at fault, the mindset was at fault, but there were also restrictions put on the Bureau, and restrictions that were put on many people who were responsible for protecting us from terrorism. This was put on them by the political powers of the 1990s. A case in point, Jamie Gorelick, who now passes judgment on the Bush administration as part of the 9-11 investigation. In the 1990s, Gorelick was a Clinton administration official who basically oversaw policies for our domestic terrorist law enforcement and intelligence operations. In a memo she wrote, while a Clinton lawyer--in that memo it forbade any cooperation between intelligence organizations and law enforcement agencies. Now, get this. A lady now in the committee investigating 9/11 wrote a memo, and that policy was put in place that prevented the cooperation between our intelligence organizations and law enforcement at a time when there were numerous, numerous terrorist attacks going on throughout the world and even after the terrorists had tried to bring down the World Trade Center in 1993. So right on the 9/11 investigating panel is an example of why we had 9/11. Her presence on the investigating panel represents a massive conflict of interest. This is well known, and she should be removed. The panel is, again, demonstrating the same inflexibility and aversion to corrective action that it is now investigating. Gorelick's directives reflected a hindsight in the last administration, even in the middle of terrorism restricting our intelligence people, even in the middle of terrorism making sure cooperation could not happen. It was a hindsight reflected even by career high-level intelligence officials. The Defense Intelligence Agency, for example, is supposed to provide the Pentagon with the detailed information necessary for it to deal with any and every potential threat. With all that is spent on the DIA, the Pentagon, like the rest of the United States Government, I mean, think about it, all this money we spend; but yet, we were caught off guard and the Pentagon was caught off guard and unprepared for 9/11. The Pentagon's lack of information and analysis had disastrous effects. The counterattack strategy almost implemented after 9/11 would have been to send American military forces to Afghanistan from the southern part of Afghanistan. The goal for that plan was occupying a few major cities after sending in maybe 100,000, 150,000 American troops, but to capture a few cities like Jalalabad and Kabul, leaving the Taliban in charge of the countryside; and then we would negotiate with the Taliban and offer to withdraw our forces when they turned over bin Laden. The Taliban would have us, thousands, tens of thousands of our troops, surrounded in a few cities in Afghanistan on the other side of the world; but the Taliban would be left in power even if they did not give us bin Laden, which of course they would never have given us bin Laden. That is as insane a policy as you can imagine, but that was a plan that was being seriously proposed. That would be the plan that would rely on our troops being supplied out of the bases on the western Pakistani frontier, which we now know is an anti-American stronghold. Now, an alternative plan, based on cooperation with the battle-tested troops of the Northern Alliance, took a long time to develop, because the Pentagon did not know who the players were, much less what the anti-Taliban forces in the north could do. So it almost had disastrous consequences, that we did not know exactly what the strength of the anti-Taliban forces was. My staff ended up providing the Pentagon with the names and strength assessment and the satellite telephone numbers, cell phone numbers of significant Afghan leaders who opposed the Taliban. That the Pentagon was unprepared was no surprise to me, however. In early 1999, a DIA, that is, Defense Intelligence Agency, analyst came to me for help. She was in the process of being fired, and her story tells us volumes of why 9/11 caught America off guard and ill- prepared. Julie Sirrs was one of a small number of Afghan analysts. She took her job seriously, as she should have. She in fact visited Afghanistan, but only in those areas controlled by the Taliban. After returning, she realized that this was a one-dimensional view of Afghanistan and there were gaping holes in the DOD's understanding of the situation. She requested to officially go back to northern Afghanistan, especially to the areas controlled by anti-Taliban Commander Masood, and she was turned down. She was denied the permission to go there, but realizing the danger posed by this lack of information, Julie Sirrs took the initiative and took her vacation, paid her own way, organized her own trip to the Panjeer Valley, which was the bastion of Commander Masood, the last Afghan holdout who was resisting the Taliban. I had met with Masood in one of his mountain strongholds 2 years before. I had dinner with him and strategized with him. He was a friend. He was a hero. He was courageous. But he was not perfect. There is no doubt. All Afghans have made mistakes over their many years of conflict, but he was a wonderful man and a person who would have done great things as a friend of the United States. But what I did was somewhat risky, to go into the mountains and see him, but what Julie Sirrs did was far more dangerous. What Julie Sirrs did was heroic. When she got to the Panjir Valley, she found her assumptions were right. Something vital to America's security was happening, something she was not really able to discover when she visited the Taliban- controlled areas before. Commander Masood told her that he was facing a new enemy in Afghanistan. Masood's militia was finding itself in fire fights with some kind of fundamentalist foreign legion. Apparently, bin Laden, who was making Afghanistan into his base of operations, was importing Islamic radicals from all over the world, training them as terrorists and killers and then sending them up against Masood's troops for combat experience. Masood offered to let Julie or other Americans interrogate the foreign prisoners he had captured. This again was an intelligence bonanza, but a missed opportunity. Julie Sirrs was uncovering the creation and organization and training of bin Laden's terrorist army, al Qaeda. She only had a short time, but she collected enough information for a preliminary report, and she headed home. The minute she got back, she found herself under severe restrictions at the Defense Intelligence Agency and restricted to whom she could brief or show any of her reports. So her report was kept close hold rather than distributed as it should have been, a report that indicated that a terrorist army was being formed in Afghanistan that could and was threatening the United States of America. The commanding officer of the DIA labeled her as insubordinate, he fired her; and when she fought her dismissal, he set out to destroy her. Amidst the fight to save her job, the DIA commanding officer told her what really upset him most was her contact with Masood, who, according to the DIA general, was one of the bad guys. This general was sending his people to be briefed by the Taliban, but any contact with Masood was a cause for dismissal. This was a mind set during the Clinton administration. It was a mind set of the man who headed the Defense Intelligence Agency. Something is terribly wrong with this picture. The vitriol and the attack against Sirrs was shockingly harsh. Patently false charges were brought up against her to overwhelm her defense and intimidate her and force her to go quietly, which she did not do. She was charged, for example, with lying, even though an agency lie detector test, which I have looked at, proved that she was telling the truth. She was charged with misusing equipment, having borrowed an office camera to take with her to Afghanistan. The charge was nonsense. Even her superiors agreed it was a reasonable thing to do; yet they pushed that as if she was stealing, even though she brought the camera back right after the trip with pictures so people would understand what was going on in Afghanistan. The attacks on this sincere and responsible intelligence analyst were arrogant, nasty, malevolent, and loathsome. The brutal treatment of Sirrs sent a negative message to anyone and everyone in the DIA who had any idea of taking the initiative or thinking creatively. Julie came to me because she had no one else to whom she could turn. I was the one elected official with experience in Afghanistan. I requested a meeting with the general in charge of the DIA and right off the bat he insisted to me when he came to my office that she was insubordinate. I told him from my view she was a hero, risking her life and her job, spending her own money, all to get information that she believed was necessary for our country to be prepared in case something happened in Afghanistan. After hearing each other out, I recommended to the general that we compromise. He could give her back her job, and she would end up neither a hero nor a scofflaw and I would back off and he could use political pressure from me as an excuse to bring her back. After the general left my office, he not only reaffirmed the firing of Julie Sirrs but he later stripped her of her security clearance as well, thus eliminating her ability to earn a living as an intelligence analyst. He demonstrated how he could destroy anyone who would deviate from his program or the mind-set of the day or defy his directives. Insubordination was the ultimate challenge to his authority; and in reaffirming his authority, he said it was more important to reaffirm that authority than was the security of the United States of America. A few months later, the general retired. All of this would be a regrettable, but forgotten, incident, except for the resulting 9/11 tragedy, except for how terribly unprepared the Pentagon was for the war in Afghanistan. It is my sad duty tonight to inform my colleagues that the general to whom I am referring is Lieutenant General Patrick Hughes, who is today one of the top officials running the Department of Homeland Security. I am certain that over his long and distinguished career he made many contributions, but his indefensible conduct in the Sirrs case cast serious doubt over his judgment. I have notified Secretary Ridge on this side of General Hughes's character and recommended that he should not hold the high-level position that he holds in the Department of Homeland Security. When George W. Bush took office in January 2000, the 9/11 terrorist operation, as I said, unbeknownst to any of us in government or in the outside, was already under way; but the threat posed by the radical anti-Western Islamic regime in Afghanistan was well known. An aggressive new policy to counteract this threat was needed. After Bush came in, we expected some changes. But having worked in the Reagan White House, I understood that it took time for a new President to appoint staff and set new policy and to begin to take control of government. Nevertheless, during that brief interlude, and it was brief, between Bush's inauguration and 9/11, I met with the new national security staff on 3 occasions, including one meeting with Condoleezza Rice to discuss Afghanistan. There were, in fact, signs noted in an overview story in The Washington Post about a month ago that some steps were being made to break away from the previous administration's Afghan policy. And the previous administration's Afghan policy was a pro- Taliban policy, a policy of not supporting the opposition to the Taliban, even as Afghanistan became the base of operations for bin Laden, who was conducting terrorist activities against us. One thing was certain to me at that time. George W. Bush, unlike his predecessor, would have a bold and unmistakable response to bin Laden's terrorist attacks. As I stated earlier, we know now that those who planned and financed the 9/11 attack did not believe the United States would act forcefully and as unrelentingly as we have. This calculation resulted from the tepid American response to earlier al Qaeda attacks from Africa to New York City. But here again was an example of a rotten policy where we let these terrorist attacks happen and did not retaliate with our full strength that led to 9/11. And, yes, had we retaliated more aggressively, had we retaliated more aggressively when our embassies were blown up in Kenya and Tanzania, the terrorists we have captured now tell us had we done that, had we responded more aggressively, they would have had second thoughts about taking this plan to fly their planes into the buildings in New York, they would have had second thoughts and might have pulled back. I took pride in those days as being one Member of Congress, and this was before 9/11, who maintained an interest in Afghanistan, which I saw even then as a major national security threat to our country. It was an American calamity waiting to happen. Then just a few days before 9/11, the news came that Commander Masood had been murdered in Afghanistan. I felt as if I had lost a close friend. And as I mourned his loss, I struggled to fully understand the significance of his death. Then it dawned on me. It dawned on me why Masood had been assassinated. America was going to be attacked. It would be so monstrous that bin Laden's gang in Afghanistan wanted to cut us off from a means of counterattacking them in their base of operations in Afghanistan. We would have turned to Masood if we were attacked. That is what we would have done, and they were cutting us off from turning to Masood, but now Masood was dead. Perhaps his death was a signal to set the planned attack on our country in motion. So on September 10, after I had figured that out a few days before 9/11, on September 10 I tried to alert anyone and everyone who would listen to me. I tried to give my warnings of an imminent terrorist attack. A few people listened as a courtesy, but for most people their eyes simply glazed over as I tried to warn them. The gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Greenwood) stood behind me in an elevator and overheard me lamenting that something horrible was about to happen and that I could not get anyone to take my warnings seriously. It was like being in the Twilight Zone, I said. And as I got off the elevator, he lightheartedly patted me on the back and with a smile told me not to be so melodramatic and certainly not to be so apocryphal. Undeterred, I called the White House and asked for an emergency appointment with Condoleezza Rice in order to warn of an impending terrorist attack, a major attack. Her office apologized that she was incredibly busy that day but she respected my opinion and would see me the next day at 3:00 p.m. The next day was 9/11. The planes began flying into the buildings at 8:48 a.m. I tell this story for one reason. We must ask how is it that one Member of Congress, with the help of one staff member, was able to analyze the situation and determine that the terrorists based in Afghanistan were about to launch a major terrorist attack on the United States when the CIA and others failed to do so? We spent billions of dollars on our intelligence apparatus. With one staff member, I was able to figure it out. Why were they not? Yes, George Tenet should have resigned a long time ago, and he is certainly at the top of the list of those who should be held accountable for 9/11, for not thwarting the attack or not even warning us of the attack that was coming. On 9/11 there was another incident that underscored this about the CIA. Shortly after the attack, I called King Zhir Shah in Rome. He was now America's greatest asset for any action that would be taken against the terrorist forces in Afghanistan. Masood was dead, but the Afghan people would rally behind the king. Well, if I could figure that out, that the king of Afghanistan exiled in Rome was our greatest asset in this war that we were in because thousands of our people had just been killed before our eyes, the Taliban certainly could have figured that out. So I was shocked to find out that King Zhir Shah in his villa in Rome had no protection. He was totally vulnerable. So I told the king to stay put and went to work. Among others I called the CIA and managed to speak directly to one of Tenet's top lieutenants. I explained the situation, and he acknowledged the importance of the king, assuring me that he would take care of it. A few hours later, I happened to talk to this gentleman again, and I will never forget the response, his response, when I asked if the king was under protection at that moment. This was 5 hours later. ``You don't expect us to act that fast, do you?'' Just like the FBI, there was something wrong with the mindset at the CIA. Yes, we expect them--our people in the CIA--to act at a time when we have long-distance telephone calls and digital communication to act that fast at a time when thousands of Americans are losing their lives and we had no idea how many more would be losing their lives. And that mindset of ``you did not expect us to act that fast,'' that blame must be placed on George Tenet. So his name is to be on that list and underlined. By the way, late in the day on 9-11, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Greenwood) came running up to me when he saw me and said, ``How did you know? How did you know?'' Well, the question is why did any of us not know? Why did we not know? Why did those whom we have hired to protect us not know? It is time for those who made possible the rise of the Taliban, the rise of bin Laden, and, yes, the tragedy of 9-11 to be held personally accountable and for us to understand the policies and the people that caused 9-11. It was not something that was ordained by God to happen. It could have been stopped had we been responsible and had people done their job. The list stretches over both Republican and Democratic administrations. Through the failures of the CIA under Ronald Reagan when the CIA fellow in Islamabad channeled our money to fanatics when there were other people fighting the communists, the Soviets, who would have been happy to get those supplies. We could have built their strength up. So from that failure to the blunders of the State Department under George Bush to the incompetence and disingenuous posturing of the diplomats under Bill Clinton, accountability requires that their names be given. Retired General Patrick Hughes, who as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, fired Julie Sirrs and today holds a high position in the Department of Homeland Security. He must accept responsibility for something he did that was just demonstrably wrong. Former ambassador and now Governor Bill Richardson, a man who was our ambassador to the United Nations, a good person, a good human being whom I personally like, he, under orders from who knows who, saved the Taliban from defeat when they were vulnerable. He personally did, along with Former Assistant Secretary of State Rick Inderfurth. Had the Taliban been defeated as they were in a position of being defeated, 9-11 just would not have happened. There would not have been a staging area for bin Laden to operate out of, and, as I say, the former CIA Officer Milton Bearden, who armed the most fanatic of the Afghan forces who struggled against the Soviet occupation. The former CIA Director George Tenet, whose culpability I have mentioned several times, he resigned. He should have done so long ago. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, she was the point person for the policy of covert support for the Taliban, and she was the one who detailed the opportunity for us to receive information from Sudan that would have permitted us to eliminate bin Laden's terrorist network. Of course it was not the policy. She was doing something that was consistent with the policy of that administration. Then, of course, Dick Clarke, who has criticized this President for the few months he had in power before 9/11, was, along with a few others, in a high level position to argue against, if not to change, the grotesquely mistaken policies of the eighties and nineties, but he failed to do so. In fact, we know a few of the things that he did were exactly in the wrong direction. If another 9/11 is to be avoided, we need accountability. We do not need the rearranging of a bureaucratic organizational chart. There is nothing wrong with our system that brought on 9/11, and there is nothing wrong with our system which will not be corrected by having different policies in place and different people in positions of authority. Let us now, if nothing else, be honest with each other. We have Ms. Gorelick, who is on the panel investigating 9/11, when she herself issued mandates that undercut our ability to fight terrorism back in the 1990s. Let us be honest with each other. Let us have an honest accounting. We can start right there by relieving that person from her responsibilities and looking at that role that she played that undercut the ability of our departments and agencies to do their job. So, let us be honest with one another, have an honest accounting, and then let us join together and let us commit ourselves to defeating this murderous enemy, this enemy that would destroy our way of life, who hates everything that America stands for, and let us defeat this enemy so completely that no one will ever again miscalculate about the power of the American people or the courage of the American people. Today, we have a chance to make a better world for tomorrow. We saw where people and policies of a decade ago have left us in this turmoil and this bloodshed that we face today. But if we have courage, and our President has this courage, and he is unrelenting, and if we get behind him, and if the American people are unified in our commitment, this threat, just like the threat of Nazism and Japanese militarism in the 1940s and 1930s, we defeated that threat to mankind, and then we defeated the threat of communism. But if we are honest with ourselves and we move forward, correcting our mistakes, and there will always be mistakes, there were mistakes in World War II, there were mistakes in the war against communism, but if we correct our mistakes and insist that people be held accountable, we will build a future for our children that is secure, and we will build a country that can live in peace and prosperity and in friendship with others. More than that, we will live in friendship with all people, especially those moderate Muslims who do not share in the hatred and are appalled by the hatred of bin Laden towards the West. Let us build a world where Christians and Muslims can respect each other's faith. But we need to take the leadership. We cannot depend on the Saudis or the Pakistanis or anyone else to provide the leadership. It is up to the people of the United States and our leaders here to lead the way, and I have every confidence that our President will do and is doing just that.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the leadership he is providing on this very important, I would say, issue, but it is not an issue, it is the question of the day, the question of our time. Will the people of the United States stand tall in this time of crisis? Will we meet our responsibility? Will we overcome those who hate our way of life? Will we remain the last best hope for all of humankind for a better world. Let us look back and make sure we understand it. The American people have a heavy responsibility, because we do represent every race and every religion. We are a mixture of all the people of the world who have come here to live in freedom and show the world that there is a better way. That is why groups like the Nazis and the Japanese Imperialists back in the last century knew they had to deal with us. We were attacked at Pearl Harbor because the Japanese knew that we were the only thing that stood in their way to the domination of Asia. The Nazis knew we were the only thing that was going to thwart them from creating a black evil empire over Europe, and much of Asia. Americans of that day stood tall and strong and did what was necessary to make sure that we saved the world from that evil threat. After the war, after that war, when our fathers and mothers, my father in particular, and I know the fathers of many of the people here in Congress today, fought so hard and risked so much, and saw their loved ones lose their lives, they thought they deserved a break. Instead, what we saw was the rise of another menace, another evil force that would have conquered the world, would have turned the world into a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship, the proletariat. They would have imposed on all of humankind their dream, their proletarian dictatorship, and they would have snuffed out the freedom our people had just fought so hard to maintain. Yet, during those days of the Cold War, Americans stood firm. And it was difficult to stand firm during the Cold War. In Vietnam and in Korea, we lost well over 100,000 people, together in those two conflicts, not to mention hundreds of thousands who were wounded, but it was also a matter of hundreds of small conflicts that were going on. Yet our people stood firm. It was difficult, but we had the leadership that we needed there at the end. We just heard last week how Ronald Reagan saved the world from communism. But do not think that that was done without a great cost to him personally. There was no bipartisanship that I saw that helped end the Cold War. Ronald Reagan was ridiculed, he was undermined, he was back-bitten, and there was partisan politics played throughout his administration. Because no one predicted that the Cold War would be over and that our enemy would collapse. But Ronald Reagan stuck to his guns. He was tenacious, he was unrelenting, he was strong, he stood for principle, and he reached out to those other people in the world and put them on our side of the battles against communism. Well, today, we know that communism, yes, collapsed and we thought we were due for a break. There will never be a break for those people who are the champions of liberty and freedom and justice, because there will be evil forces in the future. We face another one today. It is not terror. People say the war on terror. They are trying to be a little bit diplomatic. It is a war with radical Islam which has declared war on the American way of life. Radical Islam believes that we are a sinful group of people because we permit people the freedom to make decisions on their own lives. Radical Islam would make chattel out of our women, out of women everywhere. Radical Islam does not believe in those things that we hold dear in terms of personal freedom. And radical Islam has declared war on us. And let us not make a mistake about it, 3,000 of our people are dead today in those towers in New York and here in the Pentagon because we did not recognize that they were at war with us. Well, we have recognized that, and there is no escaping it. Today, we have the same challenge as our forefathers and mothers did in the war against the Nazis and the Japanese Imperialists, and as we did in the Cold War against the Communists. We have to win this fight or it will be a far worse world. It will be a dark world of chaos and despotism and fanaticism if we do not. Nowhere is that battle more important today than what is going on in Iraq. I say, thank God that we have a President who was willing to take this stand. What we are seeing in Iraq is an historic strategic move to outflank the radical Islamists. We are turning a dictatorship in the Muslim world into a democracy. And we are, thus, pointing to this so that the young people of the Muslim world will have an alternative to radical Islam. We are doing what Ronald Reagan did. We are cutting our enemy off from its source of strength. If we do what is right and we stick to this, our enemy will collapse, just as communism collapsed, just as that other evil force collapsed. Again, we are having to go through the pangs of partisan politics, the back-biting, the nitpicking, the let us cut and run. The people who ask, why should we risk anything; why are we losing these lives, they know if we would leave Iraq as it is today and the radical Islamists, especially the Iranians, then become a dominant force in Iraq, it would be a disaster for the future, not only of that region but for the people of the United States. We would have a future filled with fear, a future of knowing that the radical Islamic creed would have been gathering strength because we had demonstrated weakness. No, we have a President who is just as unrelenting as Ronald Reagan. We have a President who is a visionary, who is taking a positive approach, trying to establish a positive alternative to radical Islam. We have a President who has courage and is moving forward, but we also have a generation of young people who understand that strength and courage and commitment is the way to a better world. Those people who are giving their lives for us in Iraq know they are doing it to build a better world. They deserve solid support from this Congress. We support them because they are risking their lives for us. They are building a better world, just like those people who stormed ashore on D-Day over a half century ago. And just like those young men and women throughout the Cold War, who gave their lives, these are the heroes of our age. We have a President every bit as important to the future of mankind as was FDR when he provided the political leadership necessary to win the Second World War; and Ronald Reagan, who provided the leadership to help us win the struggle against communist tyranny. And now, with President Bush, he is a man who will not retreat, will not cower, will not turn his back and run. We have a man who has drawn the line in the sand and said we are going to win because the whole world depends on us. This is what is happening in Iraq. There is no option in terms of defeat. Defeat is not an option. If we walk away, it will only mean further bloodshed and further aggression, and not only terrorism here, but attacks on our friends throughout the world if we would retreat from Iraq today. We should never dream of emboldening our worst enemies. We should, instead, stand tall. That is what this is about tonight. That is what many of us are committed to here in the House. I hope the American people listen and take a look at the long run, take a look at what happened in the past, take a look at what will happen in the long run unless we have that same sense of purpose and courage that those who came before us had in these same type of challenges. We are building the world of tomorrow and it will be a world where we will be friends with the people of the Muslim faith because we will have helped them defeat the radical Muslims who hate our way of life. We will have a world that does have peace between the religions, whether they are Christians, Jews or Muslims, because we will have a world in which we have not permitted the fanatics of one faith, the Islamic faith, to superimpose their will on the rest of the world by force. We will not be cowards. We will do our duty. And God bless President Bush for the stand that he has made, and God bless the United States of America and those who defend it.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I make a point of order. I would like to inquire of whether or not if someone makes an allegation against a former Member that race is being taken into consideration by his decisions, whether or not that is, in fact, calling another Member a racist and whether or not that is just what our colleague just did to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo).

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, so if our colleague just indicated to that the gentleman from Colorado's (Mr. Tancredo) consideration was because of the way people look and their race, that is a reason to have our colleague's words taken down? Is that right?

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, we have a monstrous threat to our well-being, and it is not just the terrorism that comes in forms of people flying airplanes into buildings. We have millions, millions of people crossing our borders illegally; and if we do not come to grips with this challenge, with this threat to our people, it will dramatically decrease and hurt the standard of living of our own American people. We know that. There is no doubt about it. We are proud to be a Nation where we allow more legal immigration into our society than all the other nations of the world combined. But illegal immigration in the form of millions of people coming into our society, consuming resources for education and health care, making a mockery of our judicial system and tearing down the police protection that we have got for our own citizens is damaging the well-being of the people of the United States. It is out of control; and unless we do something about it, our people are going to suffer. They are suffering right now in California. Their children are not getting as good an education and health care available. This amendment simply says that the law needs to be enforced, and that all Americans, all Americans, especially those in law enforcement in local communities and throughout the country, have an obligation to enforce the law. This has nothing to do with legal immigrants. It has everything to do with people who have broken the law. If people were robbing stores throughout the country and the police were not enforcing the law because local city councils were in league with the criminals, we would say that the local police have to enforce the law. I will tell you this much: the billions of dollars being drained out of our health care system, the billions of dollars being drained out of our education system to take care of people who have not contributed, not contributed because they come over and in the same year they are on those social benefit programs, this is the same kind of crime; and it is a crime against the people of the United States. All people involved in law enforcement should be enforcing that law. Mr. Chairman, I support the Tancredo amendment.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, it is a blessing that Ronald Reagan did not die immediately after leaving office in 1989. In these last 16 years that we have had Ronald Reagan with us, it has given America a chance to take a look at who Ronald Reagan was and what he meant to our country. And now, with 16 years that have passed, we can look back and see what an enormous difference Ronald Reagan made not only to our lives as Americans but to the entire world. Let me note that Ronald Reagan was 56 years old when I first met him, and that was when he was running for the first time for public office. He ran for public office for the first time when he was 56 years old. And all of these things we are talking about, a man who accomplished so much and changed the world for the better, happened after he was 56 years old. He had already had a successful life, a full career. And he did come from a relatively poor family. I know his first job was being a lifeguard. That affected his way of looking at things his entire life. He saved 77 people's lives as a lifeguard. And having gotten to know him as President and also during his campaigns, I think he always had that consciousness, that he was there to save the day for the people who were in some type of a crisis. He was a sports broadcaster, and he was a moderately successful film actor. But all of that seemed to be over when he was 50 years old. And then, when he was 56, he jumped into political life. Now, why did he do that? Because California was a mess in 1966. And he came and stepped forward because he felt he had a contribution to make. He jumped into the political waters to save the day. I was a youth volunteer in that first campaign, and I got to meet him personally, and it was one of the joys of my life. Let me note that years later after I got finished with school, I became a journalist, and I covered Ronald Reagan's last 2 years as Governor as a journalist. I remember that he had a press conference one day, it was near the end of his term, where he was announcing the findings of his law and order task force. One of their findings was an expanded use of the death penalty. And just as I am now, I was then always trying to get to the heart of the matter and ask the tough questions, and I asked President Reagan, who was then Governor, well, how can you be in favor of expanding the use of the death penalty when you are a committed Christian? And, you know, he sat forward, and he leaned forward to the mike, he says, I take that question very seriously. I prayed about this, about using the death penalty more frequently and taking people's lives. I have sought help. I have read the scripture, and I have talked to other people about this, and I have come to the conclusion that if we are executing people for revenge, that it is inconsistent with the principles that Jesus Christ taught us, but if we are executing murderers in order to deter people from killing other human beings, we are doing it then to save people, to save innocent people, and that is totally consistent with Christianity. At that point Evelle Younger who was the attorney general of the State, reaches over and grabs the mike and says, oh, this religious and philosophical stuff does not mean anything. The voters of this State voted for the death penalty, and they are going to get it. Well, my opinion of Ronald Reagan's sword, I knew that he was a man who did not take these things lightly, a man of strong conviction, but a man who deeply cared about people enough to think about it and to pray about decisions like this. He was not just a great communicator, and I worked for him as a speechwriter for 7 years in the White House. He was, yes, someone who understood the fundamentals of communication, but that is not what made him great. He was not the great communicator. He was America's great leader. He had ideals that helped direct his decisions. We have heard about his strong convictions. We know today that most people with strong convictions are not very pleasant to be around. When they talk about people with philosophies, there is a saying that you cannot change somebody's mind, and he will not change the subject. Ronald Reagan was a person who taught me that you can have strong principles and have a solid philosophy, but be a pleasant person and care about people at the same time. It was that type of humane approach that permitted Ronald Reagan to capture the hearts of the American people and inspire us. When our country was in such terrible peril economically and in retreat internationally, and our spirit had been destroyed, people were not even waving the American flag back in the late 1970s, Ronald Reagan dove into the political waters again to save the day. And he saved us. He was the lifeguard who saved us, and he saved the world. Jim Bruelte, a political person in California, noted on D-Day the American soldiers liberated half of Europe. Ronald Reagan liberated the other half of Europe and did it without firing a shot. We live in a more prosperous country, a safer country, and hundreds of millions of people now live in relative freedom than if he would not have been here. We are so grateful to Ronald Reagan for having dove in to save us, and he did. He saved America, and he saved us personally. I am now 56 years old, the same age Ronald Reagan was when he first entered politics. I am so grateful that he spent those years of his life making this a better world for my children. I just had three children just 6 weeks ago today, and I am so grateful that he made it a better world for them.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.J. Res. 83. I support this constitutional amendment not because I believe this is the best proposal or a perfect proposal but because I believe we need a constitutional amendment to assure the continuity of Congress, and the Baird proposal is the only option that we have been allowed to vote on. I agree with the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Baird) that this subject deserves better treatment than it has gotten so far, and I will be voting for his motion to recommit with instructions to the Committee on the Judiciary to hold hearings on several proposals. One of those proposals, House Joint Resolution 92, is mine. I asked the Committee on Rules yesterday to make my proposal in order as a substitute and was turned down. So I am taking this opportunity to explain my substitute to our fellow colleagues today. My amendment would provide for a temporary acting successor, actually, a choice of five in case any of us become deceased or incapacitated. That would go for senators as well. I want to stress this point because there has been some misunderstanding. What we are talking about is the proposal on the floor today or my own proposal. The debate is not whether or not a seat should be filled by an elected representative. We keep hearing that. No. Elected representatives are certainly the best option to go whenever you have that opportunity. The choice that we are talking about today is whether the death or incapacitation of a representative or a senator should result in a State or district going unrepresented for months or whether representation should be continued during this period by someone who has been appointed or been selected by us, by those of us who were elected, and that selection is made known to the voters prior to the selection so that the voters will approve not only the representative or senator but the choice of an alternative in case that senator or representative becomes incapacitated or killed. We are not talking about not having an elected official or elected officials here. That is a bogus argument. I am sorry. We are talking about the 45 days in which, before there would be a special election, whether or not that our country will remain vulnerable because we do not have people representing the people of the United States or, in my proposal, whether or not during those 45 days the American people will have a chance to vote for an alternative when they vote for us to get us elected in the first place. This makes all the sense in the world. We elect a Vice President of the United States that way right now. Is that to say if the President is incapacitated or dies that we have someone who is unelected when the Vice President steps up? No. He is elected even though his name is not on the ballot. There is no reason why we should not have this in the legislative part of the government as well as the executive. This goes to the heart of whether or not we are going to be prepared for an emergency. Let me note that on September 11, when we were in our desperate situation, I remember when we met on the steps, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Baird) and I, I grabbed him and said, look, we have got to sing ``God Bless America'' right now because the American people need this. We are in a crisis, and they need this. Today, the American people need a constitutional amendment to come to grips with this challenge that terrorism threatens to bring upon us. We need to make sure we are ready in case of an emergency. The Republican proposal is to leave us totally at risk for 45 days. That is ridiculous. Let us amend the Constitution and take care of this problem, and the people's right to vote will be taken care of as well.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, today we will vote on H.R. 3722, and we have heard a lot of bogus arguments that are based on just total misrepresentations of this bill. I would hope the people go to the basics of this. We cannot be the HMO of the world and expect to take care of our own people. And if Congress does not act, if H.R. 3722 is not passed, illegal immigrants will have priority in America's emergency rooms because the Federal Government will be picking up the tab for illegals, but not for U.S. citizens. That is a travesty. Furthermore, we all know we have limited dollars here to take care of our seniors and our children. Those limited dollars should not be squandered on illegal immigrants. People have come here illegally and thumbed their noses at our law. Why are we spending billions of dollars to take care of their health care while we cannot provide any medicine to our seniors? This is a travesty. H.R. 3722 will help correct the situation, at least get us back to going in the right direction rather than allocating more and more resources to the care of illegal immigrants. Vote for H.R. 3722.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Culberson).

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, I would ask my colleagues to seriously consider this vote, and I would remind them that there are people all over the United States, especially their constituents, who are looking at this vote as a determinant as to whether or not we believe that illegal immigration is something that should remain uncontrolled and should continue in the years ahead, or whether we should start doing something about it. There is a seething among the American people, among the working class and middle-class people. They know that illegal immigration has had a horrible impact on their lives. It has brought down wages. We actually had a policy that permitted unlimited illegal immigration into our country, and because of that, working class people do not make as much money as they did before. Now we have a situation where illegal immigrants who go for emergency treatment, we are being told that we have to give them unrestricted and unlimited treatment, health treatment, and it is going to be paid for by the Federal Government. But that is not true of U.S. citizens. What about those middle-class, working-class people? They are out of work; they do not have insurance. In this situation today, we have created the perverse priority that our government is reimbursing hospitals and helping illegals, but we will not do it for our own citizens. We have a horrible problem in this country with illegal immigration. It is hurting many people's lives. Yes, rich corporations in the Chamber of Commerce, they get to hire people who are not even paying taxes half the time. They do not have to provide health insurance anymore because there are all these illegals willing to work anyway. That is very damaging to the American people. Also we are spending billions of dollars here already on cancer treatments, organ transplants and genetic problems. We are spending about $10 billion on this every year. This legislation says the only free treatment that somebody gets at an emergency center, illegal or not illegal, is if their life is under a threatening situation. I think even that is very generous of us in the United States. Interestingly enough, if someone goes through the process of being a legal immigrant, they do not get their health care covered, they do not get it reimbursed by the Federal Government. Mr. Speaker, unless H.R. 3722 passes, we have set up the priority of helping illegal immigrants. Do not think that will not attract tens of millions more illegal immigrants to this country who have diseases that need to be treated. That makes sense. Think about it. This is common sense. The American people are waiting to see whether or not we are going to use our scarce health dollars to take care of our senior citizens, to take care of our own people, to take care of our own little kids, or whether we are going to attract tens of millions of new people here and give that money away to strangers. This is not mean-spirited. This is down-in-your-heart. We love everyone in this country. We have a diverse country, every race and religion. It is that love for each other that keeps us together. We have to care more about our own people, and that is not mean spirited, than we do about people that come here illegally. Mr. Speaker, I would ask my friends and colleagues to support H.R. 3722.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Today, Congress has the opportunity to reassure the American people that there are elected representatives on their sides. No vote could be more indicative as to the priorities of a Member of Congress. Is America to have a policy of unrestricted health care for illegal immigrants at the expense of American citizens and legal residents? That is the issue we are discussing today. Voting for H.R. 3722 means that my colleagues are not in favor of spending our limited health care dollars in an unrestricted way to give illegal aliens all the health care that they need in terms of today's standards. Those Members of Congress voting against H.R. 3722 are draining limited health care dollars that should be going to our own citizens and legal residents. H.R. 3722 would put some common-sense controls over the $1 billion fund that was created by a rider that was added onto the Medicare bill that passed just a few months ago. What does H.R. 3722 do? One thing it does not do is add a burden of paperwork to the hospital emergency rooms, and that is a bogus argument. I would warn my fellow constituents that that lie has been spread around this body in order to get people to vote in the wrong way. It is a bogus argument. To be reimbursed, the hospitals will be asking questions. To get part of that $1 billion fund they will be asking questions anyway. This legislation does not add considerably to any major degree to those questions. It simply adds a following question: Who was the immigrant's last employer or his current employer? Plus, the hospital must then take a photo or a fingerprint, which may be required to get that fund money in the first place. This information would then be available to the Department of Homeland Security and the INS. This legislation does not require any reporting by the hospitals or the doctors or anyone else to the Department of Homeland Security. That, too, is a bogus argument that is going around, only we will hear it in the debate, I am sure. The hospitals do no investigating, no reporting; they simply have the information that is given to them when the patient is put into the system and that is made available to government agencies. It is the government agencies, the Department of Homeland Security and INS, that do the investigating, that do the rest of the work. Do not fall for bogus arguments. Our hospitals today feel compelled to provide extensive and even long-term treatment to illegal aliens. That is what our bill, H.R. 3722, does second. It makes sure that our hospitals are relieved of this enormous burden of trying to provide unlimited health care to any illegal that comes into an emergency room. We have been giving heart bypasses, even transplants. A young girl from Mexico had $5 million worth of expenditures in heart transplants just a few months ago, and then when the transplant did not work, her family, who were here illegally and actually had emigrated here with a $5,000 fee to a coyote, then sued the hospital because the transplant did not work. Well, this cost us billions of dollars a year. If someone has a genetic disease or something like that, our emergency rooms should not be treating this in the first place; and the fact is, this bill will alleviate that burden by saying that only if a person's life is imminently threatened by that malady do the hospitals have to focus on that and treat someone whose life is immediately being threatened rather than provide hundreds of thousands of dollars of long-term cancer care, genetic problems, et cetera. This alone will save billions of dollars that should be going to the American people. The doctor will only determine how much treatment is necessary to get this person to a transportation source that will get them back to their home country so their home country can pay for the health care costs, rather than our senior citizens and our young people being deprived of the resources for their health care. Number three. If it is a life-threatening emergency, the illegal alien will be treated. There is no doubt about that. This bill does not change that. But if he has no insurance, the alien's employer or former employer will be given the bill. Businessmen will be given the bill if they hire illegal immigrants who end up draining away our health care dollars. This makes all the sense in the world. Now, the businessmen are coming out against this, saying how can we judge? In 2005, there is a system already being worked on and being established that with one phone call they will be able to determine if they are hiring an illegal immigrant. If a businessman has not made that phone call and has hired someone without checking it out, then he will pay for the health care costs rather than having the taxpayer pay for it. We will hear a lot of people trying to tell us there are a lot of other things in this bill that are not. But it comes down to this: Whose side are we on? Do we care about our own senior citizens more than we care about strangers from overseas? Do we care more about our own people than we care about strangers from overseas? If we keep trying to provide everything for everybody, our system is going to break down, and it is doing so right now in California. I would urge my colleagues to support 3722 and prove to their constituents just whose side they are on. We could have corrected this a long time ago, but we hear people all the time, and we will hear it today, with every excuse for not doing something. But the fact is some people in our country are benefiting from illegal immigration. They are very powerful. But it is hurting American citizens, and this bill tries to put a stop to that, or at least turn that situation around today with H.R. 3722. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, how much time remains on each side?

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. Mr. Speaker, again we hear this bogus argument that this bill is going to create more paperwork. The paperwork and the questions that we are talking about are required by hospitals who are going to be trying to get reimbursement through this billion dollar fund, which was snuck into the Medicare package with a back room deal, I might add. It is not required by my legislation; it is required to get reimbursement. If a hospital does not want to be reimbursed, they do not have to ask any questions, they can do whatever they want. Let me note, all contagious diseases have been exempted by this legislation.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. What is shameful is how shameful some of my colleagues are getting the facts totally wrong and do not know what they are talking about. Someone must have briefed them with the wrong information. This bill does not require our hospitals to gather any significant more information. The information that is being gathered that my colleague is complaining about, what we just heard, the great condemnation of all the questions that must be asked and all the information that must be gathered from this U.S. citizen, who might be an illegal, is already required of the hospital in order to get the funding, the billion dollars, that was set aside for them. It is not required by my bill. It is required in order to get reimbursement. My bill simply says that if they are going to ask those questions, and they are going to expect to get reimbursed, they also have to ask who the employer is and get a fingerprint or a picture, which they are probably going to have to get in order to be reimbursed in the first place. So the gentleman's complaints are not against 3722. His complaints are that the Federal Government is now going to have an unlimited reimbursement for illegal immigrants and they are going to ask some questions for it. Do not blame 3722. And let me note this also: we have had an example given to us of an American citizen who is there, and he is being threatened because he has to answer whether or not he is an illegal immigrant or not. The greatest threat to the treatment of American citizens and legal residents is that we are going to spend all of our available health care dollars taking care of illegals who should not be getting that money. The greatest threat to our senior citizens, to our young people is that we have a limited amount of health care dollars and my colleagues want to spend it on people who have come here illegally. My colleague pointed out this will bring tens of millions of more people here and even a greater drain until the system breaks down. The bottom line is the people who are in favor of spending our limited dollars on American citizens and a very doable system here that is no more complicated than what the hospitals are going to have to go through to get reimbursement in the first place should be voting in favor of H.R. 3722. If they want to spend their money on people who came here illegally, rather than our own citizens, waste those dollars, make sure more illegals get in, go ahead and vote against H.R. 3722. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds and just note that this fund of a billion dollars that was created that we now have to put some controls on, and that is what 3722 is trying to do, creates a perverse incentive. If we let this go through as it stands, what is going to happen is this: people who come to the emergency rooms who are American citizens or legal residents who have no insurance will be put behind and at the end of the line and the illegal immigrants will be put to the front of the line because the Federal Government is picking up the tab. This is a perverse priority. We should be taking care of our own citizens before we take care of illegal aliens. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King).

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. Let me note that if we really want to have the spread of disease in this country, let us set ourselves up as the HMO for the whole world. Let us make sure that everybody in the world knows that if they can get their kids to the United States, we will take care of them, and see how many diseases we are going to get. That is what is happening in California right now. Diseases are beginning to materialize because people have brought their children and brought their seniors as well to come to the United States to be treated. We have got to end that syndrome because the money is coming directly from the health care dollars that should go to our own citizens, and it is luring more people with disease into our country. This is a catastrophe. The best way to prevent it is to vote yes on H.R. 3722. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Norwood).

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, let me first identify myself with the remarks of the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) whose very eloquent and heartfelt remarks certainly touched our hearts, and her actions and her activity and all of the diligence that she has put into this, and the hard work and commitment she has put into this project is to be commended. There are those of us that stand in awe of the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) and all the work she has done for this generation. I take it as a personal favor to my family that the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) has been doing this because my father, of course, is part of that generation, and everything she said about those brave men and women applies to my father, who served in the Marine Corps during the Second World War and who left a poverty-stricken-type of family background in North Dakota to walk off, save the world, save the world from the dread and the tyranny of Japanese militarism and Naziism. Certainly this heroism is something that we owe such a great deal to. So, Mr. Speaker, tonight first let me tip my hat to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) and those who put such a lot of work into this project. Illegal Alien Invasion

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, today the American people should pay close attention to the debate when the House takes up H.R. 3722. If one is concerned about the flood of illegal immigrants pouring into our country, this is the debate to watch. And H.R. 3722 is the vote on which to judge your Member of Congress. There has obviously been a conscious decision made by certain powerful people that massive immigration into the United States, legal or illegal, is good for America or at least good for certain friendly interest groups. This vote on H.R. 3722 is clear-cut. The American people can determine who is on their side and who will channel our scarce health care dollars to illegal immigrants, thus encouraging even more illegal immigration into our country. H.R. 3722, which will come for debate here later today and will be voted on tomorrow, is designed to undo the harm done by an amendment that was slipped into the Medicare bill that was passed just a few months ago. That surprise and somewhat covert amendment established a $1 billion fund to reimburse American hospitals for the emergency care they provide illegal immigrants. The perverse, unintended consequences of this are easy to predict. Americans and legal residents who lack health insurance will be sent to the back of the line when seeking help for a medical emergency because the hospitals will naturally give primary service to those illegal immigrants whose tab is being picked up by the Federal taxpayers. This is a travesty. Anyone voting against H.R. 3722 is voting to put our kids, voting to put our seniors, at the end of a long waiting line moving the illegal immigrant to the front of the line. At this time when we cannot afford the money to pay for prescription drugs for our seniors, we are going to be spending $1 billion to treat people who have come here illegally. Those against H.R. 3722 are voting to spend our limited health care money to make America the HMO of the world. And then they act surprised when even more tens of millions of illegals flood into our country. Watch the vote on H.R. 3722. Listen to the arguments. The other side will claim that the legislation causes hospitals more paperwork. That is a bogus argument. However, the public will decide when they are listening to the debate whether they are hearing legitimate arguments or whether it is simply noise being generated to confuse people so they will not know who is ripping off their health care dollars and giving it to strangers. The flood of illegal immigration has already had horrible impacts on our society, on working Americans and middle-class Americans in particular. Wages are being kept down. Our educational and criminal justice systems are deteriorating. And, yes, our health care system is failing. A government's first responsibility is protecting our citizens and, yes, our legal residents, not to provide benefits and services to anyone in the rest of the world who can get here. Our responsibility is to the people of the United States and the legal residents here of the United States. Our responsibility is not to the rest of the world and to provide any benefits that we can't provide to our American people, to provide them to anyone in the world who can get here. That will break our bank. If we are going to try to do everything for everybody, we are not going to be able to do anything for anybody, even our own people. H.R. 3722 is the litmus test. There is always a good sounding excuse for voting against any bill that tries to come up and tries to come to grips with the out-of-control flood of illegals coming into our country. But the issue is clear in H.R. 3722: Are America's limited health care dollars going to treat illegal immigrants rather than being used to treat our own people? Members of Congress need to hear from their constituents. H.R. 3722 is a first good step in stemming the tide of illegal immigrants into our country. It will be debated here in just a few hours. America should pay attention.