Dana Rohrabacher

Mr. ROHRABACHER

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

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I was not going to get up until I heard the legalistic arguments against this proposal. Let me just say, my mother passed away recently. She had a major operation. I went to the hospital to visit her. She had lost her appetite, and she was in severe pain. She had lost her appetite because she had been taking pain medicine. When I talked to her and tried to comfort her, I was very grateful that I had voted for medical marijuana in my State when we had the election there, because that is what she needed for her situation where her outlook on life was so bad, and she was in such pain. She needed to regain her appetite and could not survive without regaining her appetite. The people of my county, a very conservative county, voted overwhelmingly for this, or it was a strong majority, anyway. The fact is the Federal Government should not come into a State or to my area where the people have thus voted because of their humanitarian concerns or whatever and supersede the vote of the people. This is a democracy. It is also a Federal system. When we have people at that level voting that a drug should be used for medical purposes, the Federal Government should not supersede that vote.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from California (Mr. Issa), I might add, is one of the great entrepreneurs as well as patriots here in the Congress. I would like to ask him a question. I have no corporate background myself, but I made several times the point that corporations do have responsibility for their actions. Even though it happened a while ago, a corporation would still have legal responsibility for the actions in the past?

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, let me also note, and it is important for us to make this point because not only are we talking today to the Japanese people and to the American people, we are talking about our relations between our countries and I do not want anyone to think that the American people or even this American thinks less of the Japanese people and that this is in some way anti-Japanese. The co-author of this bill, the gentleman from California (Mr. Honda), is one of two Japanese Americans who is a Member of Congress. The gentleman from California (Mr. Honda), during the Second World War, his family was interned during the Second World War here in the United States. The gentleman from California (Mr. Honda) is certainly not anti-Japanese whatsoever, and I do not consider myself anti-Japanese at all. I, in fact, lived in Japan when I was a younger person, and I visited Japan on numerous occasions. My family has many Japanese friends. This in no way is an attack on the Japanese people of today. What we are suggesting in H.R. 1198 is that there is a debt to be paid. Japanese corporations, as the gentleman from California (Mr. Issa) has just stated, have a legal debt to pay and our State Department and our government should not be thwarting these heroic Americans in trying to go to court and receive justice that they deserve for being treated like they were by Japanese corporations during the Second World War. However, the Japanese people themselves did not commit these crimes today. The Japanese people of today did not commit these crimes, and I do not believe that they personally should be held responsible at all. In fact, as I say, over the last 20 years, Japan has worked with the United States to promote democracy. Japan has had a democratic system. We have a relatively free press, and we have had a situation of freedom of religion, et cetera. And Japan has played a very positive role in this world; but during the Second World War and in the beginning decades of this century, that was not the case. Now, many people probably wonder why I got involved in this in the first place. If I do not have a grudge to bear against the Japanese people, which I do not, and I acknowledge they are wonderful people and it is a wonderful country, I acknowledge that today and I have many Japanese friends, why am I doing this? Why am I the author of H.R. 1198? Well, I can tell you, it is a very easy answer, but it requires a little story. I was married about 3\1/2\ years ago to the love of my life, Rhonda Carmony, who is now Rhonda Rohrabacher. Rhonda's father, my wife's father, passed away about 5 years ago of cancer, and at our wedding someone else had to give her away because her father had passed away. You might say the grand old man of Rhonda's family is a man named Uncle Lou. Now, Uncle Lou is a survivor of the Bataan Death March, who was taken by the Japanese to Manchuria and worked and lived in a slave labor camp, in a concentration camp in Manchuria, until the closing days of the war when he was liberated, and Uncle Lou told me the stories, and I met with Uncle Lou's friends who told me the stories of their ordeal. These men, who are probably some of the most heroic people I have ever met, told me of the conditions they were kept in, and then they told me that they were unable to sue these Japanese corporations who had used them as slave labor, and they were unable to find justice through the legal system because our own State Department was thwarting them. My goal is not to humiliate the Japanese or to make the Japanese feel bad, even though in the past they did bad things. The Japanese people did bad things in the distant past, and that was another generation. My goal is to do justice for Uncle Lou and those 5,400 American heroes who survived the Bataan Death March. That is what our goal is. Before they pass away, let us give them justice. We need to pass H.R. 1198. We need to pass H.R. 1198. It needs to come to the floor for a vote, and we need to do justice by these men and give them a thank you, a thank you for what they did for our country. Mr. Speaker, there is nothing that would help Japanese-American relations more than to close this chapter in an honest and honorable way. Nothing would be better for Japanese-American relations than for us to pass H.R. 1198 and to have these Japanese corporations then seek to find a settlement with our American POWs and just close the chapter. Let us finish this. Let us end it in an honorable way before these men die. I would ask my colleagues to join me in requesting our leadership to bring H.R. 1198 to the floor. I would hope that people would talk to their Members of Congress and get them to support my bill, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher's bill, H.R. 1198. Now, when we talk about Japan and we talk about how we reacted and how we react today and are we going to do what is right, those same decisions, we are right now trying to close this chapter, but let us learn from this chapter in history. We need to learn from this chapter in history because some other things are going on in this town that go right back to the lessons that we should have learned by the sacrifices of these men in the Bataan Death March and our soldiers who gave their lives, the men and women who gave their lives and put their lives on the line during World War II. You see, Uncle Lou was captured in the Bataan Death March, but my own father, who passed away 3 years ago, my father was part of the Marine military. He was a pilot during the Second World War who took part in the liberation of the Philippines. So my father helped push the Japanese out of the Philippines, and Uncle Lou was captured there when they took over the Philippines in the first place. That generation is passing away. My father fought during World War II, and during the Cold War, he was in the Marine Corps, and there are a lot of lessons to learn from that generation. We owe so much to that generation. Next week, or sometime soon, I am not sure if it will be on the calendar next week, we may be voting on a waiver that will grant normal trade relations to Communist China. We need to learn from the lessons of history. We need to remember the sacrifices of our brave defenders, like Uncle Lou, and, yes, my father as well. It seems the more things change, the more they stay the same. During the 1920s and 1930s, a militaristic Japan was the primary threat to peace and freedom in Asia, and, yes, as part of its alliance with the Nazis in Europe, that Axis power, that Axis alliance, was the greatest threat to freedom and peace in the world. They were about to usher in a new dark age and destroy or put freedom wherever it was under threat. During the 1920s and 1930s, and, by the way, Japan could have gone either way at the turn of the century, and we did not support the democratic movement in Japan. They were murdered, and the internal politics in Japan, the militarists kept control of Japan and murdered the democratic opposition there, and by the second decade of that last century, in the 1920s, Japan emerged as a militaristic expansionist power in the Pacific, and they emerged as a potential enemy of the United States because of that. The Japanese, as I say, were the primary threat in Asia. They were a fanatical tyranny in the 1920s and 1930s. They were racist. They thought they were racially superior and had a right to dominate all of Asia. As I say, they were militaristic, they were beefing up their military, and they were expansionists. They were taking control of islands and fortifying them all over the Pacific as they built up their own military into an offensive power. Last, which is an interesting comparison, they were also involved with trade with the United States. They were a wealthy power. They had a very strong economy and a high standard of living, and they depended a great deal on trade with the United States. In fact, the Japanese were engaged in a lot of business with American corporations, and we provided them, at a great profit to these American corporations, I might add, we provided them with steel and oil and scrap metal, and, yes, even some of our aerospace companies were involved with working with the Japanese. All of this, if it rings true a little bit when you think about the comparisons about what has been happening with the Communist Chinese, it is rather frightening. Yes, there have been reports of, and we know now that some of America's aerospace corporations are actually cooperating with them, and one of our companies is actually trying to develop a manufacturing unit that would help them manufacture their equivalent of the B-17, a long-range bomber. This is incredible now. What American corporation would do this at a time when the Japanese were the biggest human rights abuser in the world by what they had been doing in China and to the people that they had subjugated, and that they were militaristic and a threat, and they were dictatorial, with no sight of liberalization? Why would we let American corporations guide American policy while that was going on? That is with precisely what was going on then, and that is precisely what happened, and that is what is precisely happening today. The Communist Chinese are the greatest threat to peace and freedom in Asia today, and, in fact, I would say in the world today, because they are allied with the worst and most evil forces in the world, just as the Japanese militarists were during the 1920s and 1930s. The Chinese Communists are a fanatical tyranny. Those ruthless individuals who control Communist China will let nothing get in their way or nothing threaten their power. They are a fanatical tyranny, just like the Japanese militarists of World War II and before that. If you watch the Chinese military marching along, one can only be reminded of the Japanese troops that marched in that very same arrogant fashion. Yes, the Chinese who control Beijing today are racist. They believe that they have a superior race and that they have a right to dominate all of Asia. And, yes, of course, they are militaristic. The worst part of their military expansion, however, is that the United States of America, in permitting the economic rules of engagement in which we interact with Communist China, is permitting the Communist Chinese to have an $80 billion annual trade surplus with the United States. With this $80 billion of hard currency, what is being done by the Communist Chinese? What is being done is they are building up their military. They are acquiring weapons systems that will enable them to incinerate Americans by the millions in terms of their nuclear weapons capacity and their missile capacity. But they are also obtaining weapons that will permit them to sink American aircraft carriers and shoot down American airplanes and to kill American military personnel. They are not only militaristic, however, they are also expansionists, just as the Japanese were expansionists. Take a look at what the Japanese claimed. They had a map of the coprosperity sphere. We have Chinese maps which show they, too, believe there is a coprosperity sphere, and guess who is in the center of it? And it is a far greater area of control that the Chinese have in mind than the Japanese. The Chinese have in mind that they control the entire South China Sea, that they control all the way up to the shoreline of the Philippines and of Indonesia and of Vietnam and Southeast Asia. They have a right to control all of Tibet and the greater expanses of Asia and Southeast Asia, and they have a right to the great Siberian areas of Russia. This is an expansionist power. These are people who are mad with power, just as the Japanese militarists were in the 1920s and 1930s. And just as the Japanese militarists were fortifying islands with their military weapons and their capabilities during the 1920s and 1930s, China is in the process of doing that now. In the Spratly Islands, which are an island chain that are claimed by five different countries and are 600 miles away from China, but about 100 miles away from the Philippines, and also mainly claimed by the Philippines, Chinese Communists are in the middle of an island grab, and what they are doing is sending their warships there, and they have already built fortifications. Let me add that I, this Congressman, Dana Rohrabacher, tried to visit the Spratly Islands. For years I tried to visit the Spratly Islands and was prevented from doing so by roadblocks that were put up by who? Who do you think put up those roadblocks so as a Member of Congress, as a Member of the Committee on International Relations, that I would not be able to see what the Communist Chinese were doing in the Spratly Islands? Who put up those roadblocks? My gosh, the same company that is preventing our POWs from suing the Japanese. It is called the United States State Department. So when I finally got to the Spratly Islands on an old C-130, I might add, from the Philippine military, it was the only one that could fly, I managed to fly out in an old C-130. I had Skunk Baxter with me and a couple of staffers and some folks from the Government of the Philippines. The pilot did not even have a GPS. That is how poor the Philippines are, they did not have a GPS system in the only C-130 flying, and they had a Radio Shack GPS system. But we made our way to the Spratly Islands. We came out of a cloud bank, and there were three huge Chinese military warships, and what we saw in the Spratly Islands was the Chinese fortifying those islands with military fortifications. This is somebody else's country and somebody else's territory, and they are fortifying it, and they have Chinese warships in the lagoon. Those Chinese sailors were rushing towards their guns, and we did not know if they were going to try to shoot us down or what, and they did not, and we finally escaped that international incident. Since that time, guess what has happened? We have let them get away with it. We have let them not only lay their claim, but actually build forts there. Now what have they done? They have done the same thing in the South China Sea, in the Paracel Islands down off of Vietnam. They have also, I might add, since that time begun to send their naval war vessels right up to the coast of the Philippines. A few weeks ago, Chinese war ships were within a short distance from the coast of the Philippines. This is an expansionist power. This is a power that threatens. This is the world's worst human rights abuser. As Japan was the world's worst human rights abuser in the 1920s and 1930s, the Chinese are the same with us today. They are expansionist, they are racist, they are militaristic. Yet we have a trade status with them that permits them an $80 billion surplus. Now, why do we do this? Within the next couple of weeks, why will this body vote to give that kind of country Normal Trade Relations with the United States? I repeat that: Normal Trade Relations. Should a communist dictatorship have Normal Trade Relations? Should a fanatical tyranny that is racist, the world's worst human rights abuser, a country that is expanding its military power, an expansionist in its territory, is this the kind of country that we want to give Normal Trade Relations to? Mr. Speaker, I believe in free trade. I am a Republican free-trader. But I believe in free trade between free people. If we try to do it the other way around, we are doing nothing but bolstering the regime in power in these dictatorial countries around the world. How long ago was it? Just a few short weeks ago that 24 military American personnel that were being held hostage by this very same Communist Chinese Government. They, in fact, forced an American surveillance aircraft that was in international waters out of the air in an attempt to murder those 24 American service personnel. Instead, the plane made its way to Hinan Island, luckily; and then they were held hostage for 11 days. That was not so long ago. And now, within a very short period of time, the elected Members of this body are going to vote by a majority to give Normal Trade Relations to that government. That does not make any sense. Not only were they holding hostage our American military personnel, but we actually have several Americans who are being held right now as we speak, or at least legal residents of the United States, who are being held hostage or being held prisoner by the Chinese, and we are basically talking about giving Normal Trade Relations to a country that is holding Americans, or at least legal residents of our country, holding them illegally, committing torture. There was a young lady and her daughter who came to our hearing of the Committee on International Relations. Her husband, who is a doctor, a Ph.D., is being held by the Communist Chinese, and her daughter and this lady were begging us: please, please, demand that they bring back my husband, and he is an academic. He is an academic. The Communist Chinese today are doing what? They are murdering Falon Gong people. Falon Gong, by the way, is nothing more than a meditation cult. I mean, they meditate and they have yoga; and they are being imprisoned by the tens of thousands and hundreds of them are being murdered in jail, hundreds of them. Many of these women, they are being tortured, not to mention Christians, of course, who, if you do not register like the Jews did with the Nazis, if you do not register, you get thrown in a gulag. What happens in China? What happens in China when you get thrown into the gulag? Yes, right back to World War II. Guess what? Their prisoners are worked like animals. Mr. Speaker, I would suggest that we should not be granting Normal Trade Relations to a country like this. And when those prisoners are executed, and thousands of them are, China is the execution capital of the world, what does this ghoulish regime in China do? It sends doctors, their doctors out to harvest the organs from the bodies of the prisoners that they have just executed. Mr. Speaker, I say it is time that we learn our lessons from history, not grant Normal Trade Relations with China, and to make sure we stand up for the rights of our own people and the freedom and dignity of our ex-POWs.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to pay homage to a very special group of American veterans. As all veterans, these World War II survivors have sacrificed and have suffered for their country. But this special group is different. This group that I would like to call attention to tonight are men who continue to fight for justice even though these many years have passed since the close of World War II. These are men who fought and paid an enormous price for our freedom and for the peace and safety of the world, yet today, I repeat, continuing to struggle for justice to their own cause. Instead of fighting the emperors of Japan which they fought during the second World War, these brave veterans are now forced to fight lawyers, the lawyers of Japanese and international business giants, companies like Mitsubishi, Matsui and Nippon Steel. Instead of battling in the jungles, instead of battling on the islands in the South Pacific, these veterans are battling in the courtroom. Mr. Speaker, the greatest irony about what is happening today about the veterans of whom I speak, while they battled for our freedom in the Second World War, and today, as they say, they are battling lawyers of some of the biggest Japanese companies, the greatest irony is that these American heroes have the United States Government not on their side, but on the side of their adversary. They find themselves arguing against representatives of their own government. Let me make this clear. Some heroic veterans from World War II were trying to find justice for their cause, men who put everything on the line and, as we will find out, were held hostage and prisoner of war by the Japanese, these men now in seeking justice for their cause are having to argue against their own government. Their own government is now engaged in a legal process to thwart their efforts. This is the story of the American survivors of the Bataan Death March in Corregidor. These are some of the most heroic of America's defenders during the Second World War. When they were captured, they were forced to serve as slave labor for private war profiteering companies, Japanese companies during the Second World War. These men, these prisoners of war, these American heroes were deprived of food, medicine and clean water. These large Japanese companies, whose own work force was away fighting the war in the Japanese uniform, these corporations used our POWs as work animals. These Japanese companies, knowing that they were violating the international law, used our American soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines whom they had captured in the Philippines and other places around the Pacific, but mainly the Philippines, they used these people and often worked them to death. The standards they had to endure violated the most basic morality, decency and justice. It also violated international law. Instead of righting wrongs and admitting that violations had been made and violations of law existed, like German companies have done since the end of World War II, and the German companies have tried to close that chapter by giving compensation and recognizing the violation of rights that took place by their companies to the people whom they wronged, the Japanese corporations have ignored the claims of these American heroes. And why should they not? These large Japanese corporations ignore the pleas of American survivors for justice. Why not? After all, the United States State Department has sided with the Japanese and is working against our former POWs that were held by the Japanese during the Second World War. This is a travesty. Mr. Speaker, if the American people knew what was going on, I am sure there would be a wave of protest and indignation that would sweep this country, a wave that would sweep right into the State Department and perhaps sweep out these individuals who are siding in a battle against America's most heroic defenders. Dr. Lester Tenney, a survivor of the death march, a survivor of slave camps, says, ``I feel as if I am once again being sacrificed by our government, abandoned not for the war effort, as in the past, but for the benefit of big Japanese corporations.'' Dr. Tenney is right. In the hours following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese attacked U.S. installations in the Philippines. A U.S. contingent there made up of our military forces retreated to the Bataan Peninsula and made their historic standing. They held off the Japanese military juggernaut while the United States had been crippled in Pearl Harbor, and gave us time to rally America, and gave us time to, and gave us time to organize an offensive to take back the territory that the Japanese had taken. Our defenders in Corregidor and on the Bataan Peninsula bought time for the whole United States, and they bought time at the greatest risk to their lives. Our government at that time was forced to make a heart- tearing decision, and that decision was that they were going to have to sacrifice our brave heroes in the Philippines. MacArthur was pulled out, and our troops were left behind. And they were sacrificed because the planners in Washington, D.C., knew full well that much of our strength in the Pacific had been destroyed at Pearl Harbor, and if we tried to save these brave heroes on the Bataan Peninsula, we would have risked so many other military personnel. If we lost that battle, the entire war would have been lost. The risk was so great that it was impossible for us to go to save them. Yet these men and women, these brave defenders stood their ground and fought a heroic battle. As the song of the day went, their song, the battling bastards of Bataan, no mama, no papa, no Uncle Sam. After the fall of Bataan, after these men were overwhelmed and American-Filipino troops were captured, they were forced to walk more than 60 miles to their places of captivity, to the prison camps and concentration camps in which they were held. That 60-mile march is known in history as the Bataan Death March. They were denied water, beaten; and during the march, hundreds of them, many of them fell, and many of them were bayonetted to death. Some of them were cut to pieces, at least a few beheaded by Japanese officers who were practicing with their samurai sword. Let us remember at that time the Japanese culture reflected the view that any warrior who survived a battle and was on the losing side of the battle, any warrior who survived and surrendered was unfit to be considered a human being. The Japanese treated our prisoners as less than human beings. They treated them as animals and they murdered them. Over 650 to 700 Americans died on that 60-mile march, the famous Bataan Death March. These were truly heroes, and their sacrifice inspired our Nation. The outrage that swept across our Nation gave us strength to fight against the Japanese militarist thrust in the Pacific and to stand up to the Nazis in Europe, because we saw the heroism of these men. And then, after enduring this hell and taken out of sight of the American people, our prisoners of war that were being held by Japan there in the Philippines, many thousands of them were taken from the Philippines in what are called hell ships. These hell ships took our prisoners to Japan and to Japanese-occupied territories like Manchuria, they were packed into the cargo hold of these ships, and our POWs struggled just to grasp a little air in temperatures that reached 125 degrees. It is estimated that over 4,000 Americans died aboard these ships that were transporting them to, as I say, other Japanese-held territories, especially the islands of Japan itself and in Manchuria. Our POWs struggled to survive in the harshest conditions imaginable. These heroes were forced to toil beyond human endurance, in mines, in factories, in shipyards, in steel mills. Yes, they took the place of the Japanese men who were away serving in the Japanese military. This was in itself a violation of international law. But the jobs that these prisoners were given, these American heroes were given by the Japanese and the treatment they received was well beyond just a violation of international law; it was a crime against humanity. They worked the most dangerous jobs, the most terrible conditions, and were treated like animals. They were treated worse than animals. The Japanese would not have treated their animals as they treated our prisoners. Company employees would beat them and harangue them. They were starved and denied adequate medical care. They suffered from dysentary, scurvy, pellagra, malaria, diptheria, pneumonia and other diseases. One of our prisoners of war had his leg amputated because it was crushed in a rock slide, and it was amputated by another American POW, the only doctor who happened to have survived this long, and that doctor amputated that leg without anesthetic. The rations that they were given were unfit for human consumption. Our POWs were reduced to skin and bone, looking very much like the prisoners in Auschwitz and in the concentration camps in Europe. Today, while many of those survivors, of course, died during the war and after the war just from the complications, and today those who managed to survive over these many years have many health problems that relate directly to their slave labor and the conditions that they were kept in during the Second World War. When you hear the survivors tell their stories, it raises the hair right in the back of your neck and sends chills down your body. Frank Bigelow, 78 years old, from Brooksville, Florida, was taken prisoner at Corregidor. Mr. Bigelow was shipped to Japan where he performed labor in coal mines owned and operated by Mitsubishi. Now, this is a name that we have heard. Mitsubishi. ``We were told to work or die,'' Mr. Bigelow recalls. Injured in a mining accident and, as I mentioned a moment ago, it was Mr. Bigelow who had his leg amputated without anesthetic by a fellow POW. At the war's end, though Mr. Bigelow was 6'4", he weighed just 95 pounds when he was liberated. Lester Tenney, 80 years old, of La Jolla, California, became a prisoner at the fall of Bataan in April of 1942. He survived the Bataan Death March and was transported to Japan aboard a hell ship. In Japan, he was sold by the Japanese Government to Mitsui and forced to labor for 12 hours a day, 28 days a month in the Mitsui coal mine. ``The reward I received for this hard labor was being beaten by civilian workers in the mine and constantly humiliated,'' said Dr. Tenney. These are just a couple of stories. The horrors that they suffered at the hands of these Japanese corporations, who were making a profit off the work they were doing for the war, the horrors that these men suffered could fill books; and let us in those books and in this recalling what happened not forget who it was who was doing this. These were Japanese corporations. Many of these same Japanese corporations still exist today. The case of our POWs is clear. These facts cannot be denied. Their claims cannot be dismissed or just simply explained away. And that is why it makes it even more difficult for us to understand why our State Department refuses to assist these American heroes, these veterans of the Bataan Death March, these men who stood at a time when it took such great courage and endured the unspeakable for us, and now our State Department will not stand with them. In fact, it is standing against them. It makes it hard to fathom when you think about this why the State Department is doing this when you consider that in Germany, in Nazi Germany, where so many people were wronged and we know about what happened in the concentration camps there and how horrible that was, the Germans have tried to compensate those people, especially German corporations, have tried to compensate those people who they wronged during the war. They have tried to close the book. That is what should happen. But instead, on the other side of the world, our American heroes have been denied justice by these Japanese corporations. And while our government has encouraged the repayment by German corporations and especially in the case of, for example, Swiss bankers who were ripping off the Holocaust survivors from the deposits that their families had made and the huge German insurance companies, while we have encouraged that and tried to side with those victims, our own State Department and our government are siding against our defenders who were captured by the Japanese and mistreated in a very similar way. The lawyers for the State Department have allied themselves with the war profiteers, these Japanese corporations who made enormous profits in supplying Tokyo's war efforts, and they have allied themselves against the American victims. Let me just say that their excuse for what they are doing is that they are claiming that the peace treaty that we signed with Japan bars our veterans from these claims. Let me note that that is nonsense. It is total nonsense. If any claims are barred, it is claims against the Japanese Government by American civilians. There is nothing in that treaty that bars our heroic POWs from suing the Japanese corporations that treated them like animals, that violated their human rights and committed war crimes in doing so. The argument by our State Department is an argument in which our own government is bending over backwards to try to find an excuse for this great violation of rights of our greatest heroes; they are bending over backwards to try to find an excuse when, in fact, these people deserve us to be doing everything we possibly can to try to find the arguments on their side. These people are not going to be with us for very long. These people might not be with us for another 10 years. They are dying off every day. They are older men. And our government is trying to do its best to try to find arguments, to try to undercut their claims against the people who violated their rights, the Japanese corporations that treated them like slave labor during the war. We should be paying honor to these men, and we should be doing everything we can to help them rather than put roadblocks in their way. The State Department should be ashamed of itself. First, as the State Department has elsewhere conceded, the waiver of claims by U.S. private citizens against private companies of another country is not merely unprecedented in history, in the history of the United States, it is not recognized in international law and raises very serious constitutional and fifth amendment questions. What we are talking about here is that there is no State Department waiver of the rights of private citizens to sue people who have violated their rights and they have a just claim. There is no right of our government to waive that, the rights of our citizens. Now, they maybe can waive the rights against a government, but they certainly cannot waive a claim against a corporation that still exists. By the way, let us remember this: a corporation is a legal entity. If that corporation made mistakes in the past and it is the same corporate entity, it has responsibilities for what the actions of that corporation took in years past. I do not care if it was during the war or during peacetime. A Japanese corporation bears the same responsibility as an individual bears a responsibility. That is why you have corporations. They take upon themselves that legal responsibility. A close look at the history of the 1951 treaty that we have that ended the war with Japan reveals that the negotiators considered treaty language which would have permitted POW lawsuits against Japanese companies, those same Japanese companies that had used them as slave labor. But that reference was deleted in the final draft after a demand by other Allied powers was made to that agreement, to that wording to the U.S. delegation. Now, what does that mean? What is going on here is that we considered actually putting something in the treaty that specifically permitted them. Well, the argument was that we can't constitutionally prevent them from doing it, anyway, so why are we putting this in the treaty that could probably be a cause of concern for the Japanese? And why were we so concerned about the Japanese in 1951? What was that all about? Well, 1951 was another era. And I am afraid that in 1942 when America had to abandon these heroes on the Bataan Peninsula and leave them to their fate and let them be captured and murdered and tortured and worked like slave labor by the Japanese, when we abandoned them to that fate, we abandoned them a second time. That was because again America's security was in jeopardy. America's security was in jeopardy because during the Cold War we needed Japan on our side. And perhaps that was the motive at that time of our government and of the State Department and of people who were concerned about our country, and perhaps these survivors of the Bataan Death March can understand that. Because at that time had the world witnessed a Japan going towards communism, it would have shifted the balance of freedom and democracy in the world and the whole Cold War might have ended a different way. It might have caused the loss of millions of American lives if just that balance of power in Japan would have been shifted. So maybe we needed to bend over backwards to prevent the Japanese at that time, and I just say maybe. There is no excuse like that today. The Cold War is over. We should not be bending over backwards today. If we do not move forward today to permit these American heroes to at least redress their grievances and to receive some compensation and to find justice, if we do not act now, we are abandoning them for the third time. They were abandoned in Bataan. They were abandoned after the war. Are we going to abandon them again? Are we going to watch them slip away quietly without knowing how much the American people appreciated what they did for us? How will they know how much we appreciated it if we are turning our backs on this claim, this legitimate claim they have against Japanese corporations who worked them as slave laborers while all around the world other peoples have been able to sue those corporations that violated their human rights during the Second World War and how other people, in fact, have been able to sue Japan and those corporations for what they did to them. No, the only people left out will be the survivors of the Bataan Death March. This is an insult. It is absurd. It is insane. It does not speak well of our State Department. It does not speak well of us if we let it happen, and we should not and we will not let that happen. The treaty in 1951 also includes a clause which automatically and unconditionally extends to the allied powers any more favorable terms than that granted by Japan in any other war claims settlement. Japan has entered into war claims settlements with the Soviet Union, with Burma, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, the Netherlands and others. These same rights that we are talking about, that we are asking for our own people, have already been granted to the people of other countries. Yet, the State Department in our country continues to work against our heroic Bataan Death March survivors' right to seek justice in the courts against the Japanese corporations that worked them during the war, even though other countries and other peoples have received justice and the book has been closed on their cases. On the public record to date, the State Department simply ignores these people's claims, these brave heroes' claims, or tries to obfuscate the facts. Several weeks ago, Fox News on the Fox News Sunday program, a news program on the weekend, it was probably more like 2 months ago now, Colin Powell, our Secretary of State, promised to review the State Department's erroneous and unyielding stand against the Bataan Death March survivors. He provided a little bit of hope that the survivors may well be able to obtain justice at long last. I have yet to hear, and that might have been 6 weeks to 2 months ago, I have yet to hear from the Secretary of State. I would hope that the bureaucrats over at the State Department get this message tonight. We expect the Secretary to pay attention to this issue, and we expect that our country and our government to be more concerned with these claims than they have been in the past and that we expect them to be on the side of our people rather than the side of these Japanese corporations. We have a Japanese prime minister who has visited this country. We have had exchanges with the Japanese government going on. We have a new ambassador that is being appointed to Japan, Howard Baker. This issue should not go away. This issue should be something that our representatives bring up with representatives of the Japanese government, and that we should change the rules of engagement, so to speak, so that our heroes can at last receive justice. Of the more than 36,000 American soldiers who were captured by the Japanese, only 21,000 made it home. The death rates for American POWs, this is an important statistic, the death rate for American POWs was 30 times greater in Japanese prison camps than in German prison camps. I met recently with a member of the Japanese Embassy staff, and he said that it was unfair of me to compare the Japanese in World War II to the Germans and to the Nazis and that is just not the case. I told him, I said with all due respect, sir, the Japanese militarists of World War II, of which this gentleman's generation he was not part of that generation, committed the same type of atrocities and war crimes as did the Germans, and it is very comparable what the Japanese did to the Chinese people, for example, but also to every prisoner that they captured. Again, I reminded this young man from the Japanese Embassy that his generation does not bear responsibility for this. He was not even alive. But those Japanese corporations that existed at that time and were involved in that behavior do bear legal responsibility, and that the Japanese people today, our efforts to receive justice for these American POWs, we in no way mean it as a slap in the face against the Japanese people of today. The Japanese people of today have a strong democracy and they have around the world proven themselves to be a force for good, but during the Second World War these were not the same Japanese people. They had different values. They had different values and they were a different people. They were told at that time they had been trained from youth to be militaristic and to brutalize anyone who was weaker than them, especially soldiers who surrendered. Even though the Japanese companies profited from the slave labor, these companies have never even offered an apology, much less repayment to our POWs. Today, as I say, there are fewer than 5,400 surviving POWs. These survivors are pursuing justice not just for themselves but for their widows and for their families of these POWs who died prematurely because of the conditions that they lived under during the war. The POWs finally have a chance for justice and we should not, we cannot, abandon them again. The gentleman from California (Mr. Honda) and myself have introduced a bill. It is the Justice for POWs Act of 2001. It is H.R. 1198, and there are over 100 of my colleagues now who have cosponsored this bill which will grant our POWs from the Bataan Death March the right to sue those Japanese corporations that tortured them and worked them as animals during the war. Our legislation gives them that right to seek legal redress against those companies. Mr. Speaker, I would at this time be happy to yield to my friend, the gentleman from La Jolla, California (Mr. Issa), from southern Orange County and northern San Diego County.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. So who would I be able to ask that of?

Mr. ROHRABACHER. During this debate we have had this photo displayed of what has been called a foreign drug lab. Several Members here believe that is a picture of a laboratory in the United States. How would I inquire as to the validity of that evidence that has been presented today?

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the Sanders amendment. We have to take a look at the substance here, instead of trying to be diverted away from the central point of what is going on by scare tactics. I do not know if any Members have had calls come to their office last night, but I had calls. My office was flooded with calls from people who had been told that the Sanders amendment meant that marijuana and heroin and all sorts of drugs would be permitted to flow across the border. That type of scare tactics is unseemly in a debate as important to the health of the American people as the issue that we are discussing today. It appears that the people on the other side of this issue are so afraid of the actual facts that they have succumbed to this type of scare tactic and dishonesty. That should play no part of this debate. Let me note that we are being told that there will be a few Americans who will be hurt if we pass the Sanders amendment because some people will get hold of counterfeit drugs, some people will get hold of drugs that are not exactly regulated correctly and produced correctly. Yes, a few Americans might be hurt, and let us admit that. But what we are talking about is the vast number of Americans who will be hurt if they cannot afford to buy drugs. Certainly the number of people who will be hurt by this is far less than the number of people who are deterred from taking drugs that are important to their health because they just cannot afford them. This bill permits people, American citizens, and especially those who live near the borders of another country, to go across those borders and buy drugs that are being sold at a cheaper rate. Sometimes we have seen it to be half as much, a third as much, sometimes one-quarter or 20 percent the price across that border than what they would have to pay in the United States. It makes no sense for us to talk about globalizing the economy and globalizing the world economy without letting our people benefit from the competitive advantages, the consumers' competitive advantages in dealing on an international market. We believe, okay, in free trade. We believe in a competitive market and a global market. Let us let the American consumer benefit from that. What will happen if we pass this amendment is that there will be pressures, competitive and market pressures, on our own drug producers here in the United States to lower the price of their product in the United States as well. By defeating the Sanders amendment, we are not protecting anybody. What we are doing is keeping the prices high and protecting the pharmaceutical companies from competition. I like the pharmaceutical companies, and I appreciate the good job that they have done for the American people and for the people of the world in developing new drugs. But that does not mean that they should be free of competition. That does not mean that they should be able to have differential pricing in one country versus another. Let us stand up for the American people and also stand up for competition at the same time.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 2131. Mr. Speaker, let me just note that the argument that we must try to preserve our tropical rain forests because the tropical rain forests have a possible treasure house of biodiversity for this generation and future generations I think is a very valid argument. I have lived in jungles in my life. I understand the many thousands, if not tens of thousands, of variety of not only animal and insect and plant life but all kinds of life that is surrounding one in the jungle. And, yes, in future generations we may find tremendous assets that are right in front of our face but we do not recognize it now. The idea of trading debt with some of these countries and getting for that debt a commitment to try to preserve these rain forests, I think, is a very good idea. Let us just remember that in many cases these countries would not be repaying that debt anyway. So this is a win-win proposal. Let me just say, however, that believing in this bill and believing in the biodiversity of the jungles does not mean that one has to believe that the jungles in some way contribute to helping the global warming situation. I have heard that several times in the arguments here on the floor. Let me just say that global warming, if one takes it by the people who advocate that, I believe global warming is a bunch of global baloney myself, but even if one does believe in global warming as precisely presented by those people who are trying to convince the rest of us that it is true, one would not want to preserve the rain forests. In fact, consistent with the global warming theory what one would want to do is to clear-cut all of the rain forests and bulldoze them because the rain forests are one of the major contributors on this planet of CO2 and methane, which are the global-warming gases. Termites eating in the jungles produce more of what they call greenhouse gases than does the internal combustion engine. By the way, I do not believe in global warming so I would never advocate bulldozing the jungles, but if one believes in it that is what they want to do and they, of course, want to also get rid of old growth trees. The older the growth of the trees, the more one wants to cut it down and replant young trees. The essence of global warming is saying that one wants young, vibrant trees and plants to take in carbon dioxide and give out oxygen. Let me just say, our jungles and our old growth trees do just the opposite. They give out more CO2 than they are taking in oxygen. So let us support this effort to try to save the jungles and save those forests and rain forests around the world and let us take advantage of this very commonsensical approach of debt restructuring. Let us not get trapped into using arguments that just do not hold water and are not scientifically viable. There has been enough nonsense on global warming and other areas. Let us just say that the rain forests are valuable and let us save them.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, let me say that means one would clear-cut all of the jungles to get rid of the CO2 buildup if that was true.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to pay homage to a special group of veterans. As all vets, all World War II survivors, they sacrificed for their country. But this is a very special group of veterans, a very special group of veterans from the Second World War. They are special in that their fight for justice continues to this day. They fought for us, but their struggle goes on and goes on. Instead of fighting the militarists of Japan, they today are forced to fight the lawyers of Japanese global business giants like Mitsubishi, Mitsui, and Nippon Steel. Instead of battling in the jungles, they are battling in the courtroom. And the greatest irony is that instead of having the American government on their side, these heroic veterans find themselves arguing in legal battles against representatives of their own government. This is the story of the American survivors of Bataan and Corregidor, some of the most heroic of America's defenders in the Second World War. When they were captured, they were forced to serve as slave labor for private war profiteering Japanese companies. They were deprived of food, medicine, often even clean water. They were used as work animals and treated as animals. The Japanese companies that worked these Americans, they worked them often to death, violated the most basic standards of morality, decency and justice. But most important, these Japanese corporations violated international law. They were accomplices to war crimes. Some of them even committed those war crimes. Instead of righting wrongs and admitting mistakes and putting the past behind them, like many German companies have done, these Japanese corporations have stonewalled efforts to bring justice to those they wronged. And why should they not stonewall these American heroes? The United States State Department has taken their side against that of Americans who fought and gave their lives and put their lives on the line for the United States of America in the Second World War. The State Department has taken the side of our former enemy rather than the side of our defenders. Dr. Lester Tenney, a survivor of the death march in Bataan and of a slave labor camp says, and I quote, ``I feel as if I am once again being sacrificed by our government, abandoned not for the war effort as in the past but for the benefit of Japanese big business.'' I believe Dr. Tenney has a point that deserves to be heard. In the hours following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese attacked U.S. installations in the Philippines. The United States forces retreated to the Bataan Peninsula and made their historic stand. Holding off the Japanese for months, they gave America time to regroup and to rally and to come back. Our government at one point had to make the heart-tearing decision to sacrifice the brave heroes of the Philippines because they knew they could not come to save them without causing the death of many, many, many more Americans in the long run and perhaps a failure of that operation itself. So the decision was made, yes, to abandon those American heroes, tens of thousands of them there in the Philippines. MacArthur was pulled out, he was ordered by the President to pull out, and our troops were left there. They were left there, as the song of the day went, with the battling bastards of Bataan, no mama, no papa, no Uncle Sam. After the fall of Bataan, American and Filipino troops were forced to walk more than 60 miles in the infamous Bataan Death March. These were men that were weakened already, without food, without water, and they were denied any type of help along the way. Some Filipino people risked their lives; not only risked their lives, but gave their lives in order to throw little bits of water or food to these men as they marched for those 3 days of the Bataan Death March. They were beaten, and they were starved as they marched. Those who fell were bayonetted. Some of those who were not walking fast enough were beheaded by Japanese officers who were practicing with their samurai swords from horseback. The Japanese culture at that time reflected the view that any warrior who surrendered had no honor; thus, was not fit to be treated like a human being. Thus, they were not committing these crimes against human beings. The Japanese soldiers at that time, as was mandated and dictated by their culture, felt they were dealing with subhumans and animals. This is not a crime of the current Japanese generation. The Japanese for the past 50 years have had a strong democracy, at least for these last three or four decades have had a strong democracy, and the Japanese people are America's best friends. They have a civilized country, and none of them need ever to feel like any of the talk that is going to go on about these men receiving just compensation for what was done to them at Bataan and Corregidor and then later on in the Japanese Islands of Manchuria, the Japanese people themselves are not the target. We are not trying to make these people feel guilty. This was, after all, the culture of their day, and that culture has changed. America had a racist culture for many years. We had slaves in the last century, and the fact is that Americans corrected that. We paid an awful price. In the Civil War, we paid a price of hundreds of thousands, of millions of our own people who died trying to correct this evil in our society. The Japanese people of today who admit that their country in the past has done wrong need not hang their head in shame, but it will be a shame, and it will be a black spot on the Japanese people if these crimes are covered up and if wrongdoing is not admitted. That is the only accountability the Japanese people of today have. Those people and those corporations that worked these men as slaves, they have a legal responsibility. It is through these men who were wronged and worked as slaves by these Japanese corporations that still exist, by giving justice to these men we can close this book, and we can bring this chapter to a close and close this book and move on. The Japanese people need not feel guilty after that compensation and that apology is made. In the 3 days of the Death March, 650 to 700 Americans died. They died the worst possible death. Then after enduring this hell, many of the thousands of Americans that had survived that Death March, along with other American prisoners who had been taken prisoner in other areas of the Pacific theater, they were taken, thousands of them, in so-called hell ships to Japan and to Japanese-occupied territories. Packed into cargo holds, these POWs struggled for air, for simple air, in temperatures that reached 125 degrees. It is estimated that over 4,000 American soldiers died aboard these hell ships. Again, the Japanese treated them like animals because at that time the Japanese were taught if anyone surrenders, they are no better than an animal because they have no honor. Our POWs struggled to survive the harshest conditions imaginable. Toiling beyond human endurance in mines, in factories, in shipyards and steel mills, often under extremely dangerous working conditions, they were worked like animals. Company employees beat them and harangued them. Of course, the Japanese work force was all off in the army. They used these slave laborers to make sure Japan could conduct its war effort. In doing so, they treated these men, our men, our heroes, like animals, and they starved these men. They denied them medical care. These brave heroes, Americans, suffered from dysentery, scurvy, malaria, diptheria, pneumonia and many, many other diseases, yet they were not treated, and they were permitted to die. With few rations, and many rations that were simply unfit for human consumption, they worked and they were beaten. POWs were reduced to skin and bones. Today, many of those who survived this ordeal still suffer from health problems directly related and tied to that time when they were worked as slave laborers by the Japanese militarists. When one hears the survivors tell their stories, they will never forget how much we owe these heroic individuals. Frank Bigelow, 78 years old, from Brooksville, Florida, was taken prisoner at Corregidor. Mr. Bigelow was shipped to Japan, where he performed forced labor in a coal mine owned and operated by Mitsui. ``We were told to work or die,'' Mr. Bigelow recalls. Injured in a mining accident, Mr. Bigelow had to have his infected broken leg amputated by a fellow POW. That leg was amputated without anesthetic. At war's end, though standing 6'4'', Mr. Bigelow weighed 95 pounds. Lester Tenney, 80 years old, of La Jolla, California, became a prisoner of war with the fall of Bataan on April 9, 1942. He was a prisoner of the Japanese, and he survived the Bataan Death March but was then transported to Japan aboard a hell ship. In Japan, he was sold by the Japanese Government to Mitsui and forced to labor 12 hours a day, 28 days a month, in a Mitsui coal mine. ``The reward I received for this hard labor was beatings by the civilian workers at that mine,'' he said. They worked him, and they beat him, and they treated him like an animal. These are just a couple of the stories. The horrors they suffered at the hands of profit-making Japanese corporations can fill the pages of a book and, in fact, have filled the pages of many books. Their case is clear. The facts cannot be denied. Their claims should not be dismissed or explained away, and their cause should be the cause of all American patriots, and especially should be the cause of the American Government, which they defended with their lives. What makes all of this more difficult to understand is why the State Department refuses to assist these heroic veterans. It is hard to fathom why the State Department was willing to help facilitate the claims of victims of Nazi Germany but not these victims of militarist Japan. Certainly the Germans committed atrocities during the war. Nazi Germany was a place of horrors, and the German people have admitted it and tried to make good and tried to bring justice to these claims, and we have backed them up. We have backed them up because it is the right thing to do. We have backed up those people making the claims, and we have encouraged the Germans to move forward in this way. There is no reason on God's Earth, there is no reason in the cause of patriotism and honor, that our government should not be assisting those Americans that were used as slave laborers by the Japanese corporations. These American heroes who survived the Bataan Death March, these heroes were worked nearly to death by these Japanese corporations. There is no reason that we should not be with them 100 percent. Instead, they fight a lonely battle. The lawyers for the State Department are allying themselves with these war profiteers in Tokyo against the Americans they victimized. The best legalese they can muster is being used to undercut the claims of our American heroes. They are erroneously claiming that the peace treaty with Japan bars these veteran heroes from making these claims against these Japanese corporations that used them as slave labor. It is wrong, and it is utter nonsense, for a number of reasons. First, as the State Department has elsewhere conceded, the waiver claims of U.S. private citizens against the private companies of another country is not merely unprecedented in the history of the United States, it is not recognized under international law and raises serious constitutional issues under the fifth amendment. What that means is that it is unprecedented that the United States is claiming that our own citizens cannot sue another company in another country, especially when there are human rights violations involved and international violations of law. This is unprecedented that we are saying that our people cannot even make a suit. So it might violate the very Constitution, the constitutional rights of these heroic Americans who defended our country, who gave the greatest sacrifice, nearly gave their own lives, but saw many of their friends and loved ones give their lives. It could well be, and I believe that it is true, that this is a violation of their constitutional rights to seek legal redress for acts and crimes against them by these very same Japanese corporations. Let us again remember, these Japanese corporations are the very same corporations that existed in World War II. They are corporate entities. As long as they themselves exist, we are not asking for some type of legal right to sue the Japanese Government, but those corporations have legal responsibilities as corporations. They have the responsibilities, just as individuals do, to pay for their crimes. Second, if we take a close look at the history of the 1951 treaty, it reveals that negotiators considered treaty language which would have permitted POW lawsuits against Japanese companies that had exploited them. That reference, I might add, was deleted from the final draft at the demand of other allied powers who had made that agreement with the U.S. delegation. So that was part of the original language that they were going to get the right to sue. In the end, the bottom line is this: Our POWs do not have a right to sue the Japanese Government. That is true. And the Japanese people do not have a right to sue the American Government, but certainly these corporations are responsible. Just as the individual Japanese who committed war crimes, heinous war crimes, were responsible, and those war crimes, many of them were executed, these Japanese corporations have an obligation to those people who they wronged to compensate them, yet our government is taking the other side. I think it is fascinating to note that many more German war criminals were executed and brought to justice than were their Japanese counterparts. Yet, the Japanese were clearly involved with criminal activity, with war crimes, on a massive scale, and especially against the Chinese people and against the Americans and Brits who fought against the Japanese and were captured early in the war. Why is this? Obviously we felt that Japan might be in danger of instability after the war and during the Cold War might go communist. That is clearly the reason this happened. The Cold War is over. It is time now for justice, at the very least justice for our own people. It is time that the Japanese corporations who committed these crimes at the very least offer an apology and compensation to those Americans who survived the Bataan Death March and were worked as slaves and saw their fellow countrymen gunned down and die of starvation. The very least these heroes deserve is some type of justice for their claims before they die of old age. We deserve to stand with them, and their government should stand with them. It is a shame for our government to be on the side of the enemy which these heroes fought. The treaty we are talking about also includes a clause which automatically and unconditionally extends to the Allied powers many more favorable terms granted to Japan than any other claim settlements. Japan has entered into the war claims settlements with the Soviet Union, for example, and Burma, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden and the Netherlands and others. Thus, what we have here by this treaty we are talking about are other Allied powers, other countries in the world, have a right to sue, and there have been settlements, claim settlements, with the Soviet Union, people from Russia, Burma, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, the Netherlands and others. Yet these same rights to allow the people from other countries to pursue their claims against the Japanese corporations are not being extended to the United States and our nationals. What is that all about? Why is that? There should be no waiver provision that waives the rights of American citizens to use their constitutional rights in court to seek justice when they were treated in this way, when criminal acts were taken against them. We side with other countries' rights, but not with the rights of the heroes of Bataan and the heroes who held the ground, who stood tall and gave us the chance to regroup and to organize and to come back and defeat the enemy that threatened the world. The United States State Department has no answer to these legal questions. On the public record to date they simply ignore them or obfuscate the facts. Two weeks ago, on Fox News Sunday, Colin Powell, our Secretary of State, promised to review the State Department's erroneous and unyielding stand against our heroes, our World War II heroes' right to sue their Japanese tormentors, their Japanese corporate tormentors. He provided hope to the survivors that justice will be served. But I have yet to hear anything else from our Secretary of State. I would hope that Secretary of State Colin Powell, a man of deep feeling, a man of great honor who served in our military, but also served his country so well in so many capacities, I hope that the bureaucrats in the State Department do not get to him and have him analyze this situation with a bureaucratic approach that would just put off and put off and put off any type of action until all of these heroes die of old age and are taken by God. This would be the gravest injustice of all. And those bureaucrats at the State Department, who never want to rock the boat, oh, we cannot rock the boat with Japan, well, the Cold War is over and we can rock the boat anywhere in the world. When Americans who have committed this type of heroism, Americans who are that solid and those people who gave so much for us, when they are being wronged, we can rock the boat anywhere in the world to see that they obtain justice. I hope that Colin Powell, Secretary of State Powell, sees through this bureaucratic maze that has been constructed and been used to thwart justice for these survivors of the Bataan Death March. I hope he sees through that, and I hope he listens to his heart and his patriotism. We have another opportunity. I hope Colin Powell acts, but we also have another opportunity. In a few days a new Japanese prime minister will be coming to the United States. Again, let me say that in no way do I hold the Japanese people of today guilty for the war crimes of their ancestors. However, those corporations that existed in that day, 60 years ago, those corporations that committed those crimes are legal entities that bear the legal burden of what their corporations did 60 years ago. But when we talk to the new Japanese prime minister and we welcome him, we should be welcoming him as a friend, and we should be talking to the Japanese people as our friends. What I say tonight is not meant in any way to be a slap at the Japanese people. For the last few decades, by the way, the only Japanese American in this body, I guess maybe there are two Japanese Americans in this body, but one of the two Japanese Americans in this body is the coauthor of this legislation that I have brought forth to try to bring justice to these American POWs. He is not about to insult the Japanese people, just as I mean no insult, and none of us involved in this do. The Japanese people are good friends of ours. I have many good friends in Japan. I lived in Japan as a young boy. The Japanese people now are an honorable people. Some of them are trying to cover up the mistakes, but the most honorable way to go forward is admit mistakes have been made, bring justice about, make an apology, if necessary, and then just move on. That is the way to handle it. But, instead, our government has been playing a game, playing a game with these very same Japanese corporations that committed these crimes. When the Japanese prime minister comes this week, many people are hoping that this issue does not come up. The diplomats are hoping that it is not to be an issue addressed at the summit. They believe that this issue should be swept under the rug, and we should keep just stirring the pot and trying to keep this situation confused until it goes away. And ``goes away,'' do you know what ``goes away'' means? It means those heroic men who gave their lives and sacrificed so much, those heroic men of the Bataan Death March, who served as POWs, our most heroic soldiers of World War II, that they are dead. That is when this ``goes away.'' That is what our State Department is waiting for. Well, the rest of us perhaps have a greater and a higher standard than that, and a higher appreciation of what that generation, that World War II generation, did for us, and we are not about to stir the pot. We are working now to have justice for these men, and it should be an issue at the summit with a new Japanese prime minister. And it will go away. It will go away when our heroes from the Bataan Death March and the Japanese slave labor camps and the mines and the Japanese war machines and the corporations that worked our people to death, when they compensate our heroes and apologize, it is over, and it will be done, and the book will be closed. But it will not be until then. Of the more than 36,000 American soldiers who were captured by the Japanese, only 21,000 made it home. The death rate for American POWs was 30 times greater in Japanese prison camps than in German prison camps. Let me repeat that: The death rates for American POWs were 30 times greater in Japanese prison camps than in German prison camps. Even though Japanese companies profited from slave labor, these companies have never offered an apology or repayment. Perhaps they were being counseled. Maybe they were being counseled by our State Department. Maybe they were being counseled by lobbyists in this city. Maybe they were being counseled by people whose advice they sought and paid for. Just like with some of the things going on with China today, what we have unfortunately seen is that some Americans, many Americans, can be bought off. Can be bought off? Can you imagine this? Can you imagine someone taking a fee from a Japanese corporation and telling them how not to apologize and not to give compensation to a survivor of the Bataan Death March, to the greatest of America's heroes? Oh, yes, there are people like that in Washington, D.C. Yes, there are. Today there are fewer than 5,400 surviving former Japanese POWs. These survivors are pushing for justice; not just for themselves, but also for their widows and the families of those POWs who died prematurely due to the horrible conditions that they lived under while they were enslaved by these Japanese corporations. The POWs finally have a chance, however, to win justice, but they should not and they cannot be abandoned once again by their government. These men were abandoned in 1942 by a decision by our government that our government had to make, and there were many tears, I am sure by those commanders who had to make that decision and say that these tens of thousands of Americans will be permitted to be taken, captured by the Japanese, and they were abandoned. We will not abandon them again. If we do, if we permit this to happen, shame on us. As I say, the gentleman from California (Mr. Honda), a Japanese American, I might say that he himself was interned during World War II as a Japanese American, he is coauthor of this bill. It is called the Justice for United States POWs Act of 2001. The bill number is H.R. 1198. I will repeat that. The bill is ``The Justice for United States POWs act of 2001,'' and the number is H.R. 1198. My name is Dana Rohrabacher. I am a Republican from California. I am the author of that bill. The coauthor of that bill is a Democrat from California, the gentleman from California (Mr. Honda). The gentleman from California (Mr. Honda) and I have put a great deal of time and effort into this legislation, and I commend my over 100 colleagues who have signed on as cosponsors and supporters of this legislation. I would urge my fellow colleagues to do the same. Mr. Speaker, I agree with those who say that Japan is a great strategic ally of the United States; but a true friendship requires friends to speak out when there has been an insult or an injustice. And friends must join together to address that injustice. A true friendship can only exist when apologies have been made and wrongs have been righted, when the wrongs have been corrected and recognized. We are asking the Japanese people to be our friends, and they are our friends. Nothing damages our relationship with Japan more than the cold-hearted and unjustified refusal of these multinational corporations, acting with the support of the Japanese government, to make sure that our American hero veterans do not receive the compensation and the apologies that they deserve. These POWs have asked for back pay, back pay, for a time when they were used as slave labor, and they are asking for an apology. What American could be opposed to that? I would ask, what Japanese person could oppose that? This would be a sign of good faith, and I would hope that this administration would counsel to the new Japanese Prime Minister, I hope Secretary of State Powell and President Bush counsel the Japanese Prime Minister to take a look at this bill and to reach out to the American people and to close this sad chapter. This issue must be addressed, and our State Department should hang its head in shame if it continues to try to undermine the efforts of these American POWs. Mr. Speaker, I have been asked often why I am personally involved in this issue? Why I, along with the gentleman from California (Mr. Honda), worked and wrote the U.S. POW Act of 2001, H.R. 1198, and it really is a very personal issue with me, a very personal issue. Mr. Speaker, at this time in my life, I am a very happy person. I am serious about the work I do here, but I am a very, very happy person. Three and a half years ago I was married after about 15 years of being a single man, and I found the woman that I love, and it was a wonderful thing. And when we were married 3\1/2\ years ago, my wife's father had passed away, he died of cancer about 6 years ago; and of course, someone had to give her away at the wedding, and her own father had died of cancer. Giving her away at the wedding, my wife, Rhonda's, Uncle Lou, Great Uncle Lou gave her away. That is the first time I ever had a chance to get to meet Uncle Lou. Uncle Lou is not this man's real name, but everyone calls him Uncle Lou. His friends call him Lou. Uncle Lou's real name is Arthur Campbell, Army Air Corps, 1941. Uncle Lou was unfortunate enough to have been stationed in the Philippines shortly before the war broke out and was captured by the Japanese and survived the Bataan Death March, the horrific death march. He was then taken on a hell ship to Mukden, which is a prison labor camp in Manchuria. Every day he would see his fellow prisoners murdered, beaten and tortured; scientific experimentation was conducted on these men and other prisoners. This was what Uncle Lou survived. Uncle Lou was a strapping young man who, by the time he was freed at the end of the war, was under 100 pounds. As I say, we call him Uncle Lou because Uncle Lou was called by his Japanese guards as, this man must be Lucifer, because he is so defiant. He was lucky to have survived at all with a defiant attitude, and all of the rest of the prisoners kept calling him Lou at that point, and he adopted the name. Uncle Lou told me about what happened to him, and I met with some of the fellow prisoners that served with him in the prison camp at Mukden. The stories will just tear your heart out. We cannot permit Uncle Lou and the Uncle Lous of this world to go without justice. Uncle Lou will not live forever. Uncle Lou is in his 80s right now, and he has had a pacemaker put in; and the fact is that when he breathes his last breath and he takes a look around him, I want him to know that his country has done justice by him. I think every American should make that a goal, that the Uncle Lous of this world, that we do right by them, whether they are the survivors of the Bataan Death March or the other people who fought for this country during the Second World War. As Tom Brokaw says, this truly was the greatest generation; and we insult them, we do them a grave injustice, we trash their sacrifice by having our own government involved with legal wrangling to try to prevent their claims against these Japanese corporations that use them as slave labor. This is sinful. We cannot permit it to go on. We must do this before these people leave the scene. We must honor them. My father was also a veteran, a combat veteran of World War II. My father was a Marine pilot. He passed away 3 years ago. I looked into his trunk after he died and out came the Japanese battle flags and the memorabilia from World War II, and it seems that my father too fought in the Philippines. He was one of the pilots, Marine pilots that flew up and down the Philippines during the effort to recapture the Philippines from the Japanese in 1944. He passed away 3 years ago. I remember him telling me quite often about his experiences, and let me just say I am very proud of my father and I am proud of the things he did. But he harbored no grudges against the Japanese. He fought with the Japanese, he had Japanese battle flags in his trunk; but he had many Japanese friends, and I have many Japanese friends as well. Please, no one should take this as an attack on the Japanese people, and I repeat that again. The Japanese people have tried to leave that part of their culture behind that had them treat men and women as they did. They know that heinous crimes were committed against the Chinese people, and they know that men who gave up and surrendered and were treated like animals, they know that; and they have left that behind. They are trying to build a civilized society, a society of technology, a society of tolerance in Japan. They are trying to do that. We should help them do that by getting this behind us. We have our own haunts, our own ghosts in our past; and we too have tried to leave them behind us. We too have tried to say that we are going to not treat people in an unjust way, as we have in our society in the past. So let us not look at this as a condemnation of the Japanese. I am sure the Japanese people, the younger ones in particular, understand that there is no malice in our hearts. We wish nothing but success for the Japanese. Our economies are tied together. America cannot have a strong economy unless the Japanese economy begins to pick up and has a strong economy. We are tied together with the Japanese, and they were our enemies. Perhaps that is one of the greatest aspects of America, is our ability to forgive. But we have got to be asked for forgiveness. The people who have been wronged, the Japanese corporations that did this to our people, have to give some compensation to those men they wronged. This is not an unreasonable request. Finally, let me say this about the Philippines. The Philippines and the Filipino people are perhaps the best friends of the United States in the Pacific, maybe the best friends of the United States in the whole world. They like us, and we should like them. They are in a bad situation right now too. They are in a very bad situation. Just as the Japanese militarists sought to dominate Asia and the Pacific during the 1920s and 1930s, there is another power on the march, another militaristic power that threatens the stability of the world and is an enemy to all free governments. Its militarism and expansion are alarming. Just like the Japanese Government, this government has wiped out its democratic opposition. They are expanding, just like this government of the 1920s and 1930s, this current government that threatens the Philippines and threatens all democratic countries in that region, are trying to expand into island bases in which they will be used as power bases to assert their authority and power in given areas of the Pacific. We can see that now in the Spratley Islands, and we can see it in the Paracale Islands, we can see it throughout the South China Sea. This power that seeks to dominate the world today, or dominate Asia today is as racist as the Japanese were racist back in the 1920s and 1930s. They felt they were racially superior. The Japanese people do not believe that anymore; they want to be part of the family of nations. They have discarded that, but they had to lose the war to discard that. We liberated the Japanese people, just like we liberated the Philippines from Japanese militarism. We liberated the Japanese people the same, but today this other militaristic power is on the march. They too are racist, they are expansionary, they are militaristic, and they too understand that only the United States of America stands in their way, and that the Philippines is a friend of the United States of America. I am talking about, of course, the Communist Chinese. I am talking about the People's Republic of China, which is now engaged today in military naval exercises off the coast of the Philippines. This is an alarming piece of news. The security of the Pacific was won and the peace of the Pacific was won and the freedom of the Pacific was won by the blood and the sacrifice of American military personnel during the Second World War. People like Lou, my father and Uncle Lou. We cannot permit the Chinese Communists to expand their domain and to take over where the Japanese militarists left off. During the 1930s, the Japanese sank a U.S. patrol boat, the Panay, U.S.S. Panay, killing several of the people on board. A Chinese jetfighter knocks one of our planes out of the air several months ago while it was on a routine mission in international waters, knocking it out of the air, and they took 24 American military personnel and held them as hostages for 11 days. Things are getting worse with China and in the Pacific. We must do justice to those people who fought in the Pacific by ensuring that the Pacific remains free, remains prosperous and at peace; and today, there are ominous clouds on the horizon. Yet as things get worse, as they were getting worse in Japan, corporate America still demands on doing business as usual with the Communist Chinese. It is very similar, as we have heard so often quoted, where it is deja vu all over again; and I am afraid that this is a very frightening deja vu. The Japanese in the 1930s were insisting that America continue to sell them scrap metal and oil and aerospace, or I should say aeroplane, because there was not any ``space'' with it in that day, aeronautic technology. Many of the Japanese aircraft that fought against us in World War II actually were designed and were at least partially designed by American manufacturers. The scrap metal and the oil that was used to fuel their war mission can be traced back to the United States. Corporate America was willing to close its eyes to the threat that faced us in the Pacific back in the 1920s and 1930s, just as corporate America is trying to close our eyes today to the threat of Communist China. Mr. Speaker, we do not, we do not do justice to those who defended us in the Second World War by going for short-term profit in the mainland of China, letting these big corporations make billions of dollars off their slave labor, while those Chinese Communists are using their profit from that company to build up their military, which some day will perhaps kill Americans. We have already had, we have already had a transfer of rocket technology to the Communist Chinese that makes our country so much more vulnerable to a possible nuclear attack. It is frightening to think that American corporations, and the Cox Commission outlined how Lorell Corporation was selling technology that improved the accuracy and the capabilities of Chinese rockets. There are American aerospace firms improving the capabilities and accuracy of Chinese rockets so that they could evaporate tens of millions of Americans if we get into a conflict with them. I do not want to have any conflict with the Chinese people. I do not want to have any conflict with China at all. War is horrible. I know. My father had told me and Uncle Lou's tales are very vivid. These people who we are trying to find justice for tonight, they certainly know how horrible war is. We do not want to have that. But the quickest way to have conflict is to seem to grovel before dictators and militarists, and that is what the Japanese knew of the United States before World War II and the Chinese Communists think the same thing of us today. They think that we have no honor, because our own corporate leaders sell out the national security interests of our country for short-term profit. No wonder they are treating us as a degenerate culture. We must stand firm. We must stand firm for the security of our country, and we must stand firm to keep our country a leader, a leader for world peace, yes, but also a leader for democracy throughout the world. We must be the friend of the Japanese people, because they want democracy and we liberated them from their militarists, but we also must be the friend of the Chinese people. The Chinese people live in oppression, we must free them from the militarists that oppress them and are threatening the peace of the world. If we do so, countries like the Philippines who are struggling now, they have no weapons that can deter the Chinese naval exercises that are violating their territorial waters right off their shore. The Chinese grab of the Spratley Islands and the vast mineral resources, under those islands that should belong to the Philippines, but instead the Chinese are permitted to, through aggression and militarism, to steal that from the Philippine person, but they do not have the means to defend themself. We should make sure, and I am very proud that I included in the State Department authorization this year a provision that permits us to provide obsolete weapons and the other type of gear that we would be mothballing from the American military that we can provide it to the Philippines, just as if we are providing it to any NATO ally. So we increased the Philippines to their status in terms of receiving weapons from the United States up to a NATO ally status. We must be strong and stand with the people who love freedom, whether it be the people of the Philippines or the people of Japan or the people of China against their own oppressors. We must insist on truth. There is an old saying, know the truth and it will make you free. It comes from the good book. We must insist on the truth. Yes, if we have to make compromises, if we have to go at problems obliquely rather than straight on, that is what it has to be, but it should not be based on the fact that we are lying to ourselves and lying to the American people. We need a regeneration, a rebirth of courageous leadership in this country of integrity. We had 8 years under the last administration where no one in this world, even our own people, could respect our own leaders. Many of our own leaders were just not respectable. Now we have a chance. This new administration has a chance. I would ask people to call their congressmen and talk about this piece of legislation, helping the American POWs from World War II. I would ask them also to contact the White House and see that the White House brings this issue up of American POWs from the Bataan Death March and to try to see what we can do to get President George W. Bush just to mention this to the Japanese prime minister when he arrives here within a few days. These are the things that we can do and we can do this because by doing so, we honor those 3,000 or 4,000 surviving Death March survivors who are still here waiting for their day, waiting for their day in court and waiting for justice. Tonight, I would hope all of those who are with these American POWs, I hope that they activate themselves, and I hope that our democratic process is working. I know that we are making them proud. My own father's watching down tonight and all of those who gave their lives in World War II and other all other American wars, they will be proud. Let us make them proud of us as Americans and by doing so and having the courage to do what is right, especially for the survivors of the Bataan Death March, America's ultimate heroes.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

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

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this legislation. I would like to thank personally my colleague, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel), for the leadership that he has demonstrated, even though he does have a beard now, like I used to have. The gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel) and I have worked on many causes together, and I would like to just begin my remarks today by reminding people that the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel) was a hero of the Muslim people in the Balkans who were finding themselves under torturous attack, and sometimes being murdered in great numbers, especially the people in Kosovo and other places in the Balkans. So today it is very fitting that the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel) stands up and points out where another group of people are committing repression. This time this is a Muslim group; but in the past, when Muslims have been attacked and their rights have been destroyed, he has been the first one to stand up and speak up for their rights. So this is not a religious determination. What we have today is a determination of principle, that we in this body stand together for human rights and are against the type of fanaticism that is demonstrated by the Taliban regime. The same, of course, is true with the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos). We have worked on many human rights issues. The gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman) and I have, of course, worked on the China policy as well; and the gentleman is one of the most renowned and most respected leaders on human rights in this body. As chairman of the Committee on International Relations, he made his mark. But today this resolution condemns the Taliban regime, not just for what it is doing against Hindus, which is today what we were using as our hook to draw attention, and I will be wearing one of those yellow badges, but this is symbolic of the repression that the Taliban and the fanaticism that the Taliban have brought to Afghanistan. As someone who spent considerable time in Afghanistan, I would say that I am probably the only Member of this body who actually at one point fought alongside with Afghans against the Russian troops during their long war against Russian occupation, and I found the Afghans not to be fanatics. The Afghans were very devout in their religion, but they were not the fanatics that the Taliban portray today. In fact, I would like to let my colleagues know that, by and large, the Taliban were not and are not the Mujahadeen, which is a mistake that many people make. Most of the Taliban leadership, as well as most of the Taliban, sat out the war against Russia in Pakistan. The Taliban means students, and they were in what supposedly were schools, although many of them were illiterate, being financed by the Saudis and the Pakistanis. That is where they were during the war, while many of the people who opposed them today were out fighting the Russians. Many of the people who I was with are now being repressed by Afghans who were not out there fighting the Russians, who now call themselves the Taliban, as if they have some corner on the understanding of God. What the Taliban are doing is using Islam as a weapon for their own power. We have seen this in other faiths as well. We have seen the fanatics and the charlatans use their religion, whether they are Christians or Muslims or whoever, in order to gain their own power. Well, that is what has happened in Afghanistan. It is getting worse and worse, because the Taliban, ever since they have been in power, have allied themselves with the worst elements in the world, people who the Aghan people would have nothing to do with if they had some choice in their government. Of course, as we know, 60 percent of the world's heroin has been growing in Afghanistan all of these years that the Taliban have been in power. The Taliban now tell us this year they are no longer growing any poppies, and the heroin production is down in their country. Of course, how convenient. At a time when they have a massive drought that has been going on in Afghanistan that has killed all of the crops, now they voluntarily are not growing any more poppies. How convenient. We will wait and see what happens when the water comes back whether or not they enforce this supposed edict. Unfortunately, when we are talking about American relations with Afghanistan, what we have found over the last 8 years with the last administration, every time we had a chance to overthrow the Taliban, and I was involved with several organizations whose efforts were in that direction, the last administration, the Clinton administration, rode to the rescue at the last minute every time. That is unfortunate. During the last 8 years while we gave refugee relief supplies to Afghanistan, those supplies, our foreign aid, the foreign aid we have been giving to Afghanistan and those poor suffering people of Afghanistan, they needed some help; but yet, the last administration saw to it that those supplies were only distributed in Taliban- controlled areas. I can tell the Members that I fought tooth and nail, I went time and time again to the State Department, to try to see that those supplies were distributed in non-Taliban areas. But instead, the Clinton administration insisted that those supplies go to Taliban-controlled areas. Why is that? I believe, and I have said this before, the last administration and unfortunately the United States, thus, had a covert policy of supporting the Taliban for a while, perhaps as part of some situation with Pakistan and the Saudis. I do not know. But I would hope that the United States policy has changed, and that indeed our goal be the elimination of the Taliban regime and support for those Afghanis who are struggling for their country and struggling to have a moderate and a decent government. The Taliban had, by the way, rejected all elections as being inconsistent with Aghan tradition. There are a group of people today fighting against the Taliban whose goal and idea is to have an Afghanistan directed by the democratic process. Commander Massoud and many others who fought against the Russians, Abdul Haq and his family who are fighting there, fought against the Russians, Pashtum as well as minority members, were fighting against the Taliban. Our goal should be to be on the side of those people who want to replace that regime and to help those people. If we send supplies to Afghanistan, they should go to the people in need, whether they are with Taliban or not. There is a group called the Knightsbridge organization headed by Ed Artis and Dr. James Law that have $2 million worth of humanitarian supplies ready to go now to the people of Afghanistan, but they do not have the money for the transport, and they have not been given help because it might go to some non-Taliban areas. So I would hope that we do what is right in this country, that we condemn this repression as exemplified by repression against the Hindus, but we put ourselves on the line against the Taliban and their fanaticism and support for terrorism and drug dealing. It is time the people of Afghanistan deserve a break after these last 20 years of struggling.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I will be discussing global warming tonight but I would like to just say one or two words and I would hope that my colleagues in the next presentation about the strategic defense initiative will have a debate. I would be very happy, along with others here, to participate on the other side of that issue. Let me just say I could not disagree with my colleagues more on the issue of missile defense. I am the chairman of the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics and we do have the capacity and the capability of knocking down an enemy missile that might have a nuclear warhead that would murder millions of Americans. Should we have a defense to prevent millions of Americans from being incinerated if the Communist Chinese would launch a rocket at us? I think that it is prudent that we try to develop the system. The answer to many of the questions that were brought up tonight is that if the system does not work and cannot be made to work, we will not buy the system. It is incumbent upon us, incumbent upon us, to spend the money that is necessary to see if that system can be developed. I believe it not only can be developed but we have already knocked out of the sky several missiles that were launched from other locations without a previous flight plan, I might add. What we have today, we knew they were coming but not exactly what the flight plan was. Let me just say this, in the future I would hope, especially the young lady with two grandchildren, that she does not face a situation where an American President is told the Chinese have just launched a missile; there is nothing we can do, nothing we can do but let it incinerate a part of the United States. I hope her children are not there or her grandchildren are not there. We have to look at this as a real possibility. The Communist Chinese have dramatically expanded the capabilities of their missile offense, and mutually assured destruction means nothing to that enemy. Those Americans who are listening to this might think it would be prudent that America in the future would have a system to defend itself in case the Communist Chinese would threaten the United States with an attack that would murder millions of its people unless we give in. I think it is a very prudent course of action. I will be very happy to debate with my colleagues in the weeks and days ahead if they want to have a debate rather than a presentation here on the floor. Now I do have my presentation tonight, which I have on global warming, especially considering that President Bush has come under severe attack for his refusal to bow before the pressure of a very well-organized effort that they are trying to pressure him to accept the idea that the world is in peril because it is becoming more and more warm because of industrialization. It is vital that the public understand that what is going on in this attack against President Bush is about a political agenda; that global warming is not a scientific imperative. It is a politically-driven theory. Those espousing global warming are building on public fear and apprehension. Young people in particular are being lied to about the environment and about global warming. Global warming, of course, is one of the worst falsehoods that they talk about. When I meet with student groups, it is clear they are being told false things about a lot of areas of the environment. In fact, I meet every student group from my district that comes to Washington, D.C. I always ask them the same question: How many of them believe that the air today in Southern California is cleaner or worse than it was when I went to high school in Southern California 35 years ago? Consistently, 95 percent of these students who live in Southern California who are coming to my office say they believe that the air quality today is so much worse than it was when I went to high school and how lucky I was to live in an era, in the early 1960s, when we had such clean air in Southern California. This, of course, is 180 degrees wrong. These young people have been systematically lied to about their environment. They are being told they are being poisoned by the air. But, in fact, the air quality in Southern California is better than it has ever been in my lifetime. They cannot believe it when they hear it. They also cannot believe that the quality of the Potomac River, the water quality around us, is better, even the quality of the soil. Even the number of trees and forests that we have have increased. They have been lied to time and again about the environment, and again the global warming theory is the worst of all. These lies are being used to justify to Americans of all ages, to justify a centralization of power in Washington, D.C. and a centralization of power in global government through the United Nations and other institutions that are run by unelected and unaccountable authorities. Let us get into what global warming is all about. Global warming is a theory that carbon fuel, coal, oil, gas, et cetera, that this carbon- based fuel is putting CO2 into the atmosphere, and CO2 is causing the temperature to rise, which will cause a drastic change in the weather, the ice flows, animal life, plant life on our planet. First and foremost, let us recognize this: All of the recent scientific reports agree that there may, or may not, be a minor change in the planet's average temperature over this last 100 years. There is no conclusive proof that man is the cause of that perhaps minor change. That is not what we are being told. The American public is being told all of these scientific reports are claiming that global warming is absolutely a fact and there is no arguing with it. One reads those reports and they will find that there are weasel words and there are all sorts of caveats in these reports that suggest the scientific community cannot say this. Climate science seems to be a very recent entry into the pantheon of scientific study. Prior to 1980, there was only a handful of climatologists. Now they seem to be everywhere. Try to find a researcher on global warming who is not in some way tied to some sort of research contract by the Federal Government. Now, could it be that the reason for the increase in the numbers of global warming advocates has something to do with the access to government funding for research? Eight years ago, when President Clinton took over the executive branch, he saw to it that there would be no one getting scientific research grants from our government unless they furthered the global warming theory. We were tipped off to this when the lead scientist, and I would say the Director of Energy Research for the Department of Energy, Mr. Will Happer, was precipitously fired from his position because he did not agree with the global warming theory and did not believe that it had been proven. He wrote a little article about it, and Vice President Gore came down on him like an iron fist and he was out of that job. Dr. Happer, I might add, is now a professor of physics at Princeton University. But his removal as the director of research at the Department of Energy sent a message, clearly heard throughout the scientific community, you do not agree with global warming; you are not going to get the contract. This has gone on for 8 years. There does not appear to be much information on global climate change prior to the mid-1980s. What we have been able to find out, prior to that time period, is that generally people in those times, the scientists, were arguing that we were on the edge of a new ice age. It was not global warming. Then it was global cooling. In fact, in the span of 20 years, climate models have gone from predicting our eminent demise by freezing to death in a new ice age, to being baked in an oven to death in a global furnace. Interestingly enough, some of the leading proponents of global warming used to be the same advocates for global cooling. Now, historically speaking we know that the globe and its climate have different ebbs and flows, and there have been ice ages in the past and there have been tropical ages in the past, without interference from man. That is even before man came on the scene. In the last 1,000 years, for example, we have witnessed, even since man has been on the scene, in this last 1,000 years, we have witnessed a huge temperature swing over much of the world. Early in the last millennium, Lief Erickson established a colony on Greenland, and that colony on Greenland was free of snow for over half a year every year. In less than 100 years, 100 years later, that colony had to be abandoned because the climate had grown so much colder and the snow so much thicker that a new ice age appeared and apparently was on the way, a mini-ice age, not making Greenland hospitable to human habitation anymore. I wonder in the current climate of scientific investigation what would have been predicted had scientists been available then to chart the course of what direction the world was going. We probably would have been told then that the Earth was on its way to an environment in which only the Eskimos would survive, and all of this was due to, who can tell? Certainly humankind had very little influence on the weather and temperatures then. No one could argue that. Of course, that trend and lower temperatures reversed itself. Yes, it was getting cooler; but it then reversed itself, because at some point the Earth naturally has a way to adapt to cooler or warmer temperatures. This historical recollection gives us a reason for concern about some of the trend lines. You take a trend line going in one direction and launch it way out into the future to see that that may not be accurate. It may not be accurate because the world can adapt. If, in fact we have a minuscule trend towards warming, it could be that we are in fact emerging. Right now, instead of having the trend line being ominous, all it could mean is a trend line of minuscule warming, 1 degree in 100 years. It could mean that we are just emerging from a cooling period, from a period that is a little bit cooler. Now, none of us should forget our lessons that we learned in sixth grade about those huge glaciers. Remember that? The huge glaciers once covered all of North America. In fact, it happened three or four times. The glaciers would come down, go back, and most of North America and Europe were covered. In fact, the Great Lakes were, if I remember what I was taught, were gouged out by these glaciers; and when the glaciers receded, these lakes were filled with water. Well, when the glaciers moved forward, it represented a major change in the global climate towards global cooling. When the glaciers retreated, and we are now in a time period when the glaciers are retreating, that must mean that the Earth is getting a little bit warmer. Well, to use that as some sort of scientific basis to say that humankind is creating a warming trend on our planet that threatens and puts our planet in peril is nonsense. The one thing that those glaciers going back and forth did not indicate was that human beings had anything to do with the global weather change that was taking place. Nor did human beings have anything to do with the fact that all the dinosaurs were killed off by this global change in weather. It seems to me that to understand climate change, we need hundreds of thousands of years' worth of observation and far more types of data than are currently available. Instead of serious scientific investigation and debate, most of those currently clamoring about climate change are looking at unbelievably shallow evidence and rushing to the conclusion that human beings are the cause of this change. But human beings were not around when these other traumatic changes happened in weather and temperature, which occurred in our distant past. Recently, we have been treated to yet another spectacle of media climate-change hype. As I say, our President is under attack. Our new President, George W. Bush, made it clear that the United States will not be bound by the so-called Kyoto Protocol. The liberal media and academic establishment went berserk. Just think of it, the President of the United States is calling into question the validity of man's impact on the global climate. Again, elitists have arrogantly labeled an American President as some kind of a moron. Well, they did the same thing to Ronald Reagan when he tried to end the Cold War, and they were dramatically wrong then too. George W. Bush is intelligent, and he has common sense. A few days ago the American people were presented something to make them believe that George W. Bush was not so intelligent. They were presented with a National Academy of Science report on climate change. Now, if you read your newspaper about a week ago or saw the network news coverage, you would think that the President had been dressed down by the scientific community and that, once again, the experts had solidly, solidly, rallied behind the contention that global warming is here and it is a result of human action and that that determination is irrefutable. Well, that is what you would believe by the news reports. Dan Rather, let us take a look at Dan Rather's report in particular. Dan Rather on CBS news was perhaps the worst in terms of his bias and inaccuracy of the presentation of that report. His lead to the story stated uncategorically that the report had proved global warming was here and that humans were the cause. How many listeners noted that after 3 minutes of Dan Rather's report, that at the end of that report, Dan Rather's own correspondent stated that the National Academy had not stated that humans were the cause of the temperature increase, and that temperature increase was 1 degree over 100 years? Now, how many people noticed that? You had Dan Rather leading into his report that the report stated unequivocally that there had been the global warming and that humans were the cause. Yet at the end of the report, his own reporter put a little tag on that that they could not absolutely say that it was caused by human actions and human activity. The National Academy of Science report is filled with weasel words and caveats. That was true of many of the other scientific investigations. Almost every one of the scientific investigations, the findings about global warming were not conclusive enough to make any solid statement other than words to the effect that further research is necessary. Just like Dan Rather, it totally misportrayed what that report was all about. Over and over and over again, the American people have heard about reports that global warming is absolutely here, and it has been misportrayed to them. That is not what those reports have said. Sometimes reports have said that, and you go back to who did the reports, just a very small group of radicals who are not respected by the scientific community in those reports. Yet we hear about the reports all the time, and we see these same misquoted reports as being used to justify dramatic headlines and very frightening reports over the broadcast news media. For the record, I will submitting two documents highlighting some of the caveats and some of the weasel words, you might say, in the NRC report that indicates that the NRC is not making that conclusive and unequivocal decision that global warming is here and that humans caused that, which is what we heard on CBS news and read in the newspapers throughout this country and were used to beat our President up. Falsehoods. That is what was used to beat our President up. I will submit this for the record. By the way, the report states that the temperature on Earth, again, let me state this, may or may not be, may or may not be, 1 degree warmer than it was 100 years ago. One degree change over 100 years. Think about that. A 1-degree change? These experts cannot predict the weather one day in advance. How can they predict and calculate and analyze the weather back 100 years ago, when they did not have any of the scientific equipment that was available to them, that is available to them today? How can anyone give credibility and be given credibility claiming a minuscule temperature change that supposedly has taken place across the face of this enormous planet? Remember, 100 years ago they did not have any satellites; they did not even have telephone communications in most of the world. But across the face of this planet, that it was cooler then by a whole 1 degree? Can anyone listen to that with a straight face? Give me a break. Give the American people a break. Well, one remembers just a few years ago President Clinton was so committed to proving this theory that he invited hundreds of climatologists who agreed with global warming to the White House. These were people who he thought were sympathetic to the global warming theories. During that time in the White House, I understand a major storm broke out in Washington and was just drenching the entire area; and well, what happened is that of all those hundreds of climatologists that came to the White House to reconfirm global warming, only three of them thought ahead enough to bring umbrellas. So, what does that tell you? These are the people who are going to decide who can guide us down the path of accepting global warming, which then would lead us to dramatic changes in our lives because we would be giving power and centralization of authority away from what we have it today. What is essential to the global warming theory, of course, is not just that the temperature is on the rise, but that human beings, especially western civilization, and particularly those of us who live in America, we are at fault; the Americans, the people who live in western civilization and human beings in general, we are the ones at fault for global warming. Okay, so let us concede before we get into that that the Earth may or may not be 1 degree hotter than it was 100 years ago. That, however, is not necessarily a catastrophe. If the Earth is 1 degree warmer now than it was 100 years ago, that may be a good thing. It may be baloney; it may be a good thing. I do not know. It may be a good thing, especially if that 1 degree warmer is a nighttime temperature in the northern hemisphere in the fall or winter. That would be a very wonderful thing, to have it a little bit warmer during that time. In fact, some of the people claiming to believe in the global warming theory are in fact saying that is how our temperature increases, it is 1 degree in the northern hemisphere, and I do not think that that is such a big calamity. Furthermore, let us say that the worst calamity comes true, which is we are being told perhaps over the next 100 years we could face a 5- degree rise in temperature. That is their wildest scenario. Well, that may or may not be a bad thing. I certainly do not believe that this is happening, but let us just suggest it is not bad enough for us to give away our freedom and lower the standard of living of our people and do many of the other dramatic things that global warming theorists are trying to push off on us. People in the northern hemisphere, like us Americans, well, you know, we might not be so bad off. Maybe there will be a longer growing period in Canada and places like that. However, do not get your shorts on yet or sell your winter boots. There probably is no global warming. Having said what I just said, the Earth tends to adjust itself naturally, and even if there is global warming, the Earth may just well adjust for it. It may be some water vapor that is warmed off the ocean, and that tends to cool off the Earth. The scaremongers do not want to tell us that the Earth has an ability to adjust if things get a little warmer; that it is affected by different things and then it gets a little cooler. What instead the scaremongers want to do is make sure that we believe their global baloney. That is what I consider it, global baloney. There are a number of reasonable scientific explanations for a situation that would have us a few degrees hotter or a few degrees cooler. It is not that humankind is living too well. The Earth's orbit is elliptical, and there are times when we are closer and sometimes when we are further from the sun. That small difference of several thousand miles equates to a tremendous difference in the amount of energy that reaches the Earth. So where is the data in terms of the analysis of this in relationship to global warming? Where is that analysis? The ancient Mayans and Aztecs observed a 208-year solar cycle where solar activities increase for 104 years, followed by 104 years of declining activity. We have all seen these solar storms. Modern science has confirmed their observations. We are now at a halfway point between the cycles of solar activity. Can we expect, and we maybe can expect, 50 more years of solar activity being on the increase, which would mean a moderate warming trend. That is before the temperatures begin to fall. A one-degree increase in the global temperature, even if that is there, might be explained by these solar storms. We know the ancient Mayans and Aztec observations about this solar phenomenon have been confirmed. But have the global warming alarmists brought this into their calculations? How about water? Water comprises three-quarters of the world. Given the sheer volume of water on this planet, it surely has a tremendous impact on the temperature of the air. However, there are no accurate global ocean temperature readings that go back more than 10 years, and those that do are primarily based on satellite observations of surface temperatures. Those readings do not include deep water. In fact, we have absolutely zero understanding of deep water temperatures, and almost no understanding of deep water ocean currents. How can we possibly ignore that data when trying to calculate something as overwhelming as global warming? Global warming studies did not take into consideration the ocean temperature, and sometimes when they did it did not give them the right facts, so they just went on to something else. It also did not take into consideration the clouds. Much less the oceans, it does not take into consideration the clouds, which are even more important to determining the Earth's temperature. Clouds, of course, have everything to do with cooling things off. Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT has proven that as temperatures rise, more clouds are formed. This is part of the natural way the Earth reacts. If there is a little more warming, there would be more clouds, and it would cool the Earth off. More clouds in turn reflect more heat back into space, and thus it cools the Earth. It is cooler when there are clouds out. If Members do not believe it, I ask them to stand outside on a hot summer day and see what happens when a cloud passes overhead. Let me tell Members an interesting thing that happened to me. I have been in Congress now 13 years, but a few years ago, a Federal administrator of an agency came into my office. He made me promise not to disclose what my source was. He then went on to tell me that all the global warming studies were flawed because they never took into account how cloud cover affected the temperature readings that they were recording. How do we determine whether or not it was a cloudy day when the temperature readings were taken in various parts of the world 100 years ago? Give us a break. They cannot even tell us how those temperatures were taken, who was taking the temperatures. Were they people who were trained? Were the instruments calibrated? Much less they cannot tell us was it a cloudy day that time they took the temperature. Global temperature records either do not exist or are absolutely flawed, and they are flawed to such a degree for 100 years ago that they might as well be useless in trying to calculate something like global warming. Actually, most of the records do not go back any further than 50 years in our urban areas, which of course the urban areas tend to be much warmer than rural areas because they have all that concrete and cement. There are few records that extend beyond 100 years, and there is no way of determining those records. Even the 50-year records are in question, because most of them are in the cities and not spread throughout the planet. And these people who are telling us about global warming, we are going to say they have a scientific basis for what they are talking about? Although we talk about global temperatures rising, that in itself may mean little because the temperature is not the only measure of heat. Humidity is an important measure in terms that are just as important as heat. Southern California is a lot easier to live in at 100 degrees than if we are down in New Orleans in that humid weather. So even when our local weatherman gives the heat index based on temperature, he also gives us one that is based on temperature and humidity. These things are not being calculated by people talking about global warming. Finally, let us talk about climate models touted by global warming advocates. They do not take into account the Earth's orbital change, as we have said. They do not take into account solar activity cycles. They do not take into account the temperature of the oceans. They do not take into account the cloud covers. They do not take into account the accuracy of long-term temperature readings, as I just said, for 100 years and 50 years back. They do not take into account humidity. What they do take into account is a theoretical calculation of manmade CO2 content, and lots of hypothetical data about other manmade pollutants. But most of the sources of CO2, and that is what they are claiming is causing this global warming, that humans are putting CO2 into the atmosphere, well, most of the sources for CO2 and the other so-called greenhouse gases are naturally-occurring and not manmade. Let us make sure everybody understands that. Global warming is a problem, but mankind is actually one of the smaller contributors of CO2. It is overwhelmingly true that the CO2 being put into our atmosphere comes from natural sources. The contributions made by human beings to these gases that are turned loose in our atmosphere are less than 10 percent of the total. Volcanic activity, for example, can add more to the atmosphere in a few weeks than all the internal combustion engines on this planet over the last decade. Termites and other insects, for example, are such a large source of CO2, and it is a larger source of CO2 than all of the industrial plants in the civilized world. Rotting wood is another offender that dwarfs any human contribution to this so-called threat. I do not hear many calls coming from the people talking about global warming to bulldoze the rain forests. If they really believe in global warming, the rain forests, the rotting wood and the insects in those rain forests are the worst contributors. They are the most evil forces in this planet in putting global warming out, so we would want to bulldoze the rain forests. We would also want to clearcut old growth trees and plant new young trees, because the new young trees take the CO2 out of the atmosphere and replace it with oxygen. Mr. Speaker, we do not hear many people who are global warming activists calling for the bulldozing of our rain forests. We do not hear many of them calling for the cutting down, the clearcutting, of old growth trees, or advocating nuclear energy, which is a tremendous source of energy which puts no CO2 into the atmosphere. What is most frightening about the public acceptance of the global warming theory is that the solutions are not to clearcut old growth, they are not to tear down these rain forests. Instead, the solutions we are being offered to global warming are policies that would dramatically reduce the standard of living of hundreds of millions of people, especially the people of the United States. President Bush was 100 percent right in rejecting the Kyoto Protocol and demanding further scientific research for any drastic government policies to be put into place. The most frightening element of the global warming debate is that intelligent people, backed up by so-called experts, are advocating that we Americans give up our way of life, our standard of living, and yes, our freedom. Global warming advocates would have us give authority to unelected international officials. No one who has ever been elected will ever be the one who will be calling the shots if we give up all of our authority and the power to run our lives and our economies to people in the United Nations or other worldwide authorities that are run by unelected environmental bureaucrats. These bureaucrats, government officials, will have power over our lives if these global warming fanatics get their way. That is the purpose of the global warming steamroller that is coming down the political road. They are trying to force us to give up our freedoms in the name of some threat that does not exist. Americans, of course, are the bad guys. We are being portrayed as the bad guys to the whole world. Thank goodness we have a President that is standing up for us, because here in the United States even poor people have a decent standard of living. If the Kyoto Protocol was implemented and is implemented, within a generation we would be living as Chinese peasants, knee deep in sewage and fighting for grains of rice in order to fend off imminent starvation. What is not mentioned by these global warming advocates is mentioned here, that Americans have maintained a higher standard of living in the world for the last century than any other country in the world. That is what they are trying to bring down. That is the enemy, our high standard of living. They have based their analysis on global warming based on units of wealth, and when they do, if they base it on units of wealth, the United States is one of the smallest polluters, because in terms of the amount of wealth we are producing for our people to enjoy a good life, we actually produce so much wealth and little pollution per amount of wealth. But the Kyoto Protocol is based on CO2 emissions per capita, not on given units of wealth. This approach by its very nature is aimed at dooming America's high standard of living by mandating that we give up this high standard of living in order to eliminate the CO2s that are going into the air, when in fact we live in a country that has done more to improve the environment and to bring in cleaner sources of energy than any country of the world, especially third-world countries like China. By the way, the Kyoto Protocol exempts China and other so-called developing countries from the severe regulatory restraints that will be necessary to sustain and to fulfill the Kyoto Protocol. What we will have is manufacturing companies closing up in droves in the United States to move to the Third World. What it means is our children and our grandchildren will suffer tremendously. They will have a lower standard of living. We will have a world market dominated, of course, by WTO, World Trade Organization regulators who come from third-world countries who do not have free elections, who probably are going to be bribed by countries like China. So we are going to give up our sovereignty, we are going to give up our authority, to run our lives as is envisioned by the Kyoto Protocol and the WTO and the rest of these folks? We are going to do that? What will that mean? That will mean the American middle class will be crushed. The working poor in America will see their standard of living go down dramatically. As Ross Perot said, that giant sucking sound is our money, our jobs, and our future going right down the drain. But that is what global warming is all about. They have not proven it. It has not been proven to us that global warming even exists, much less that mankind has caused it. But they have got to keep us believing that that is what these scientific reports claim so we will go along with this plan to give up our rights and our freedom and to lower the standard of living of the American people. The Kyoto treaty never went to the Senate because President Clinton knew he could not even get one vote for this monstrously misguided proposal, but thank goodness, President Bush is standing up for us and against that steamroller. Al Gore, of course, was one of the world's strongest advocates for the Kyoto Protocol and of global warming restrictions being placed on the American people. Now, this is not the first time the American people, that people have tried to frighten us into accepting some kind of cockamamie idea. I remember when I was a kid, I went to Thanksgiving one day, and what do you know, my mom did not have any cranberries on the table. She did not have any cranberries on the table. I said, mom, you know, this is Thanksgiving, where is the cranberries? Cranberries cause cancer. And so for 2 years at Thanksgiving, my family, and I might add hundreds of millions of other families, did not have cranberries for Thanksgiving. Then you know what? We found out that it was all just like global warming, it was all baloney. Those cranberries did not cause cancer at all. But what do those scaremongers manage to do? It lowered this festival. It lowered the festivities and the joyous occasion of having Thanksgiving by taking away cranberries. And, yeah, guess what? It put hundreds of cranberry farmers out of business, drove them out of business. People lost their family farms and their lives were destroyed for many, many years ahead. Oh, sorry, we were wrong. I also remember Dr. Meryl Streep, remember when she came here to Congress to testify that alar in apples was the threat to people's health. And for one year, the apple industry in our country and other countries was destroyed. Hundreds of families who owned those apple orchards were put out of work. Their families gone forever. Their family fortune gone forever. They could not make their payments because for a full year the American people were frightened about that and, of course, what did we find out, no, alar does not cause cancer, sorry. I even remember as a young man when I was told that cyclamates cause cancer. The American soda pop industry had invested hundreds of millions of dollars to develop a new sweetener cyclamates in order to make sure that, number one, we would be able to use it and it would be used in drinks, and we did not have to depend on sugar, it was healthier for you, et cetera, et cetera. But all of a sudden some people began claiming that it was causing cancer. Cyclamates cause cancer. Well, guess what? Canada never took cyclamates out of their soda pop, and then after about 10 years or 12 years of having the cyclamates forced out at a cost of again hundreds of millions of dollars that just evaporated from our economy, what happened is the Food and Drug Administration quietly moved forward and said, oh, by the way we were mistaken, cyclamates do not cause cancer after all. This is the type of nonsense our young people are being fed in their schools every day. They are being told that their environment is getting worse and worse and worse, and they might as well give up because they can give up their freedoms, trust in the government, trust in international organizations, trust in people who have all this hoopla on about global warming, and about how the environment is getting worse. They are being lied to in the very same way. Our young people today, and let me tell my colleagues one other incident that happened to me as a young person. Most people know that I am one of the few surfers in Congress. And, in fact, I am a scuba diver. I am a surfer, and I am an ocean person. I was scuba diving just a few months ago, and I will tell you that 3 days ago I was in the ocean surfing off of my district off of Huntington Beach. It was in the Bolsa Chica area and I was surfing there for 2 hours. It was a great day of surfing. When I was a young reporter and that is how I got into this world of politics, I was assigned to cover Jacques Cousteau who happened to be one of my heroes. I mean I was a scuba diver and I loved the ocean and I went to UCLA, and there he was speaking at UCLA. Jacques Cousteau was speaking to these college students, and he was very pessimistic and I said, gee, I just do not feel right about being so pessimistic about things in the ocean. So when I came up to him afterwards to do a short radio interview, some other students stood around and listened and I said, Mr. Cousteau, is not there some possibility that perhaps the oceans will be used as a source of food for us in the future beyond just catching fish, like aquaculture and growing oysters and clams and things and lobsters, and is that not a possibility? And he just came right up to my face and he said, Did you not hear me? Within 10 years, the oceans will be black goo, totally dead, destroyed. The oceans will be lifeless. Did not you hear me? Of course, I never will forget that, because this guy got right in my face and he was screaming in my face and he put on a pretty good show for those kids. And it has been about 30 years since that happened, maybe 25, maybe 25 years since that happened. And guess what? Jacques Cousteau is dead, but the oceans are alive. I was out surfing a few days ago and I could not help but notice the porpoises swimming by, and when they swim up to you, you can rub the bottom of your surf board and they will come up to you. And it is a wonderful, wonderful experience. The birds were flying and diving into the ocean nearby catching little fish. I was in the water for 2 hours, and I was not covered with black goo. Now, that person, Jacques Cousteau, was a fine man. He obviously is a hero to many people like he was to me. Why did he feel he had to lie to such a degree? Was it that he did not know that he was lying, that he did not know that the oceans were not going to be black goo within 20 years or 10 years is what he said. No. Jacques Cousteau was part of a movement, part of a movement that feels they have a right to lie and they have a right to frighten people, because they have a higher calling; their higher calling is to save the environment. They do not have a right to lie, and they should be honest about it. And there are environmental challenges and the environmental challenges we face can be corrected and could be met with better technology, better machines, better equipment, better energy sources, but, instead, what we have had is people lying to us in order for us to give away our freedom, to agree to things like the Kyoto Protocol, which would have extracted from people of the United States their right to make their own economic decisions. It would have left us vulnerable to a major assault on the economic well-being of our middle class and our poorer people. Yeah, $5 a gallon of gasoline would not much hurt millionaires or people with limousines. It would hurt some of the people who do not have limousines, but it would be a catastrophe to the lower, middle-class and to the working people of our country. The Kyoto Protocol, the environmental restrictions that we have heard from many, many corners quite often are not based on truth, and tonight that is what this speech is all about. This speech is nothing more than saying that we, as a Congress, and as a people and the American people should demand, whether we are talking about the environment, whether we are talking about other potential threats to our national security or our economics, that all we demand is let us talk about it frankly and honestly, and that the environmental movement has not done that. I am out surfing, like I say, a few days ago. There are offshore wells off of my district, and for 25 years, we have had offshore oil drilling in my district. Not once has there been a major spill from those wells. But there has been a tanker, an oil tanker, that split apart and we had a major oil spill in our area. But yet for years, I have been fighting with environmentalists trying to get them to admit that if we do not have offshore oil wells, which are relatively safe, that means we are going to have to get our oil from tankers which are a hundred times more likely to have a spill. Yet, these environmental activists continue to try to negate every attempt to exploit our offshore natural resources. In California today, we have an electric shortage, a horrible electric shortage. It is going to cause a major decline in the standard of living of many of our citizens. It is going to put a lot of our citizens in jeopardy. Our economy in jeopardy. It has already eaten billions of dollars that should have been going into education, our health care, or other places. Instead, what we have is a shortage of energy in our State, even though we have lots of energy, we have not been permitted to utilize it. Offshore in Santa Barbara there is enough natural gas to provide the energy we need to produce all the electricity we would need to make up for our shortage of electric in California. We could make up for that shortage for 2 decades, but, yet, those people in Santa Barbara who own the offshore oil wells that are already there have not been permitted even to slant drill from existing platforms to tap in to the natural gas that is a huge natural gas deposit right off of Santa Barbara. This is the kind of nonsense. This is the type of antitruth that brings down economies, but it exemplifies many of the arguments that have been presented to us about global warming and other so-called environmental challenges. Again, I do not want to end this tonight suggesting that there are no environmental challenges, because there are, and there are ways that we can do it and we can solve these problems and we can make America cleaner. Today's young people have cleaner water, because today when you look down at the Potomac River, when I was a kid, you could not put your finger in that water. It is clean today, people are fishing out there. We have soil. We have ways to clean the soil in my own district. I helped a company develop a system and got them permission and I think it ended up about a $300,000 contract to take soil that had been made toxic because it used to be an old oil sludge pit, 10 acres of this land that was unusable to the citizens of our community, and I got this business going. We went down there, and this new technology, within a 60-day time period, was able to make that soil totally clean and those 10 acres of California real estate perfectly clean and available if they wanted to for houses, instead they are going to use it as a park. They did not have that technology available 10 years and 20 years ago. This is the best time for young people to be alive. They have more chance of cleaning up the environment as long as we let people do it at a profit. That man who built that machine did not want to do it just because he had a social conscience. He did it because he wanted his company to make a profit, and the people that will finance it will be financing him, cleaning the soil because they want that land to be used by families for homes, for their children and they will make a profit in building those homes for those families. This is a wonderful time to be alive. This is not a time for the American people to be frightened by scaremongers and people who are not telling the truth about global warming and other environmental challenges into giving up our freedom and to doing things that will result in a lower standard of living for our people. Again, every time we do, every time we give into this type of nonsense, it is the people at the bottom rung who are hurt the most. It is the people at the bottom rung. So as we are finding out in California, we need to base our decisions on honesty. If offshore oil drilling and gas drilling is going to help our State have the energy it needs, we need to move forward with that. Let me say, I have a new bill that I am proposing and I will be dropping within 2 weeks, a new piece of legislation that will see to it that all new oil and gas reserves, offshore oil and gas reserves that are brought online by offshore oil and gas development, that one half of all the tax revenue from all of this new oil and gas reserves and deposits that are being brought online, half of the tax revenue will be put into a trust fund that will be used just for coastal purposes, for water quality and other coastal projects. Ten percent of that new revenue will go directly to the counties inland from that development. That way we can develop energy and that way we can have cleaner water. All up and down California and all throughout our country, people do not know how they are going to take care of urban runoff. Perhaps my legislation will help provide the resources for that. But let us be realistic. Let us not fight offshore oil drilling because they say, out of some hysterical nonsense, that it is a threat to the ocean, because it is not. I have gone SCUBA diving off the offshore oil wells in my district, and that is where all the fish congregate. Believe me, if there was some problem, those fish would go elsewhere. Their natural instincts would tell them to go. So we have a chance. But what has been happening is we have been prevented from that because, in the back of the mind of these environmental activists, they want the earth to be free from dependence on carbon-based energy, on CO2. That is all based on what? That there is a global warming taking place that is in some way going to jeopardize and put in peril the earth. It is time to quit talking nonsense. Let us talk the truth. I am open-minded. The people here are open-minded. Let us try to find a way to meet the environmental challenges with better technology and in a way that will preserve the freedom of the people of the United States, which is the most important component to developing a better world. Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions The following are the key uncertainties highlighted by the report released by the National Research Council on June 6, 2001. All items are taken directly from the report. Summary The changes observed over the last several decades are likely mostly due to human activities, but we cannot rule out that some significant part of these changes are also a reflection of natural variability. Because there is considerable uncertainty in current understanding of how the climate system varies naturally and reacts to emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols, current estimates of the magnitude of future warming should be regarded as tentative and subject to future adjustments (either upward or downward). Reducing the wide range of uncertainty inherent in current model predictions of global climate change will require advances in understanding and modeling of both (1) the factors that determine atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols, and (2) the so-called ``feedbacks'' that determine the sensitivity of the climate system to a prescribed increase in greenhouse gases. There also is a pressing need for a global observing system designed for monitoring climate. Black carbon aerosols are end-products of the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels and biomass burning (forest fires and land clearing). They impact radiation budgets both directly and indirectly; they are believed to contribute to global warming, although their relative importance is difficult to quantify at this point. The stated degree of confidence in the IPCC assessment is higher today than it was ten, or even five years ago, but uncertainty remains because of (1) the level of natural variability inherent in the climate system on time scales of decades to centuries, (2) the questionable ability to models to accurately simulate natural variability on those long time scales, and (3) the degree of confidence that can be placed on reconstructions of global mean temperature over the past millennium based on proxy evidence. Climate change simulations for the period of 1990 to 2100 based on the IPCC emissions scenarios yield a globally- averaged surface temperature increase by the end of the century of 1.4 to 5.8+C (2.5 to 10.4+F) relative to 1990. The wide range of uncertainly in these estimates reflects both the different assumptions about future concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols in the various scenarios considered by the IPCC and the differing climate sensitivities of the various climate and models used in the simulations. The increase of global fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions in the past decade has averaged 0.6% per year, which is somewhat below the range of IPCC scenarios, and the same is true for atmospheric methane concentrations. It is not known whether these slowdowns in growth rate will persist. In addition, changes in cloud cover, in the relative amounts of high versus low clouds, and in the mean and vertical distribution of relative humidity could either enhance or reduce the amplitude of the warming. Much of the difference in predictions of global warming by various climate models is attributable to the fact that each model represents these processes in its own particular way. These uncertainties will remain until a more fundamental understanding of the processes that control atmospheric relative humidity and clouds is achieved. The full WG I report and its Technical Summary are not specifically directed at policy. The Summary for Policymakers reflects less emphasis on communicating the basis for uncertainty and a stronger emphasis on areas of major concern associated with human-induced climate change. Making progress in reducing the large uncertainties in projections of future climate will require addressing a number of fundamental scientific questions relating to the buildup of greenhouses gases in the atmosphere and the behavior of the climate system. Issues that need to be addressed include, (a) the future usage of fossil fuels, (b) the future emissions of methane, (c) the fraction of the future fossil-fuel carbon that will remain in the atmosphere and provide radiative forcing versus exchange with the oceans or net exchange with the land biosphere, (d) the feedbacks in the climate system that determine both the magnitude of the change and the rate of energy uptake by the oceans, which together determine the magnitude and time history of the temperature increases for a given radiative forcing, (e) details of the regional and local climate change consequent to an overall level of global climate change, (f) the nature and causes of the natural variability of climate and its interactions with forced changes, and (g) the direct and indirect effects of the changing distributions of aerosols. 1. Climate, climate forcings, climate sensitivity, and transient climate change The responses of atmospheric water vapor amount and clouds probably generate the most important global climate feedbacks. The nature and magnitude of these hydrological feedbacks give rise to the largest source of uncertainty about climate sensitivity, and they are in area of continuing research. However, the true climate sensitivity remains uncertain, in part because it is difficult to model the effect of cloud feedback. In particular, the magnitude and even the sign of the feedback can differ according to the composition, thickness and altitude of the clouds, and some studies have suggested a lesser climate sensitivity. 2. Natural climatic variations It is more difficult to estimate the natural variability of global mean temperature because large areas of the world are not sampled and because of the large uncertainties inherent in temperatures inferred from proxy evidence. 3. Human caused forcings How land contributes, by location and processes, to exchanges of carbon with the atmosphere is still highly uncertain, and is the possibility that the substantial net removal will continue to occur very far into the future. About two-thirds of the current emissions of methane are released by human activities. There is no definitive scientific basis for choosing among several possible explanations for these variations in the rates of change of global methane concentrations, making it very difficult to predict its future atmospheric concentrations. The study of the role of black carbon in the atmosphere is relatively new. As a result it is characterized poorly as to its composition, emission source strengths, and influence on radiation. Because of the scientific uncertainties associated with the sources and composition of carbonaceous aerosols, projections of future impacts on climate are difficult. Figure 1 summarizes climate forcings that have been introduced during the period of industrial development, between 1750 and 2000, as estimated by the IPCC. Some of these forcings, mainly greenhouse gases, are known quite accurately, while others are poorly measured. A range of uncertainty has been estimated for each forcing, represented by an uncertainty bar or ``whisker''. However, these estimates are partly subjective and it is possible that the true forcing falls outside the indicated range in some cases. These estimates account for the non-linearity caused by partial saturation in some greenhouse gas infrared absorption bands, yet they are only approximate because of uncertainty about how efficiently the ocean and terrestrial biosphere will sequester atmospheric CO2. The growth rate of atmospheric methane has slowed by more than half in the past 2 decades for reasons that are not well understood. Climate forcing by anthropogenic aerosols is a large source of uncertainty about future climate change. On the basis of estimates of past climate forcings, it seems likely that aerosols, on a global average, have caused a negative climate forcing (cooling) that has tended to offset much of the positive forcing by greenhouse gases. Even though aerosol distributions tend to be regional in scale, the forced climate response is expected to occur on larger, even hemispheric and global, scales. The monitoring of aerosol properties has not been adequate to yield accurate knowledge of the aerosol climate influence. The conclusion is that the black carbon aerosol forcing is uncertain but may be substantial. The greatest uncertainty about the aerosol climate forcing--indeed, the largest of all the uncertainties about global climate forcings--is probably the indirect effect of aerosols on clouds. . . . The great uncertainty about this indirect aerosol climate forcing presents a severe handicap both for the interpretation of past climate change and for future assessments of climate changes. It is not implausible that solar irradiance has been a significant driver of climate during part of the industrial era, as suggested by several modeling studies. 4. Climate system models However, climate models are imperfect. Their simulation skill is limited by uncertainties in their formulation, the limited size of their calculations, and the difficulty of interpreting their answers that exhibit almost as much complexity as in nature. They also exhibit plausible analogues for the dominant modes of intrinsic variability, such as the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), although some important discrepancies still remain. 5. Observed climate change during the industrial era Because of the large and still uncertain level of natural variability inherent in the climate record and the uncertainties in the time histories of the various forcing agents (and particularly aerosols), a causal linkage between the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the observed climate changes during the 20th century cannot be unequivocally established. The fact that the magnitude of the observed warming is large in comparison to natural variability as simulated in climate models is suggestive of such a linkage, but it does not constitute proof of one because the model simulations could be deficient in natural variability on the decadal to century time scale. This result is based on several analyses using a variety of proxy indicators, some with annual resolution and others with less resolved time resolution. The data become relatively sparse prior to 1600, and are subject to uncertainties related to spatial completeness and interpretation making the results somewhat equivocal, e.g., less than 90% confidence. Achieving greater certainty as to the magnitude of climate variations before that time will require more extensive data and analysis. Because of the large and still uncertain level of natural variability inherent in the climate record and the uncertainties in the time histories of the various forcing agents (and particularly aerosols), a causal linkage between the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the observed climate changes during the 20th century cannot be unequivocally established. The fact that the magnitude of the observed warming is large in comparison to natural variability as simulated in climate models is suggestive of such a linkage, but it does not constitute proof of one because the model simulations could be deficient in natural variability on the decadal to century time scale. 6. Future climate change Projecting future climate change first requires projecting the fossil-fuel and land-use sources of CO2 and other gases and aerosols. How much of the carbon from future use of fossil fuels will be seen as increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will depend on what fractions are taken up by land and the oceans. The exchanges with land occur on various time scales, out to centuries for soil decomposition in high latitudes, and they are sensitive to climate change. Their projection into the future is highly problematic. IPCC scenarios cover a broad range of assumptions about future economic and technological development, including some that allow greenhouse gas emission reductions. However, there are large uncertainties in underlying assumptions about population growth, economic development, life style choices, technological change, and energy alternatives, so that it is useful to examine scenarios developed from multiple perspectives in considering strategies for dealing with climate change. Scenarios for future greenhouse gas amounts, especially for CO2 and CH4, are a major source of uncertainty for projections of future climate. Successive IPCC assessments over the past decade each have developed a new set of scenarios with little discussion of how well observed trends match with previous scenarios. The period of record is now long enough to make it useful to compare recent trends with the scenarios, and such studies will become all the more fruitful as years pass. The increase of global fossil fuel CO2 emissions in the past decade, averaging 0.6% per year, has fallen below the IPCC scenarios. The growth of atmospheric CH4 has fallen well below the IPCC scenarios. These slowdowns in growth rates could be short-term fluctuations that may be reversed. However, they emphasize the need to understand better the factors that influence current and future growth rates. On the regional scale and in the longer term, there is much more uncertainty. Changes in storm frequency and intensity are one of the more uncertain elements of future climate change prediction. Whereas all models project global warming and global increases in precipitation, the sign of the precipitation projections vary between models for some regions. 7. Assessing progress in climate science After analysis, the committee finds that the conclusions presented in the SPM and the Technical Summary (TS) are consistent with the main body of the report. There are, however, differences. The primary differences reflect the manner in which uncertainties are communicated in the SPM. The SPM frequently uses terms (e.g. likely, very likely, unlikely) that convey levels of uncertainty; however, the text less frequently includes either their basis or caveats. This difference is perhaps understandable in terms of a process in which the SPM attempts to underline the major areas of concern associated with a human-induced climate change. However, a thorough understanding of the uncertainties is essential to the development of good policy decisions. Climate projections will always be far from perfect. Confidence limits and probabilistic information, with their basis, should always be considered as an integral part of the information that climate scientists provide to policy- and decision-makers. Without them, the IPCC SPM could give an impression that the science of global warming is ``settled,'' even though many uncertainties still remain. The emission scenarios used by IPCC provide a good example. Human decisions will almost certainly alter emissions over the next century. Because we cannot predict either the course of human populations, technology, or societal transitions with any clarity, the actual greenhouse gas emissions could be either greater or less than the IPCC scenarios. Without an understanding of the sources and degree of uncertainty, decision-makers could fail to define the best ways to deal with the serious issue of global warming. The most valuable contribution U.S. scientists can make is to continually question basic assumptions and conclusions, promote clear and careful appraisal and presentation of the uncertainties about climate change as well as those areas in which science is leading to robust conclusions, and work toward a significant improvement in the ability to project the future. In the process, we will better define the nature of the problems and ensure that the best possible information is available for policy makers. Predictions of global climate change will require major advances in understanding and modeling of (1) the factors that determine atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols and (2) the so called `feedbacks' that determine the sensitivity of the climate system to a prescribed increase in greenhouse gases. Specifically, this will involve reducing uncertainty regarding: (a) future usage of fossil fuels, (b) future emissions of methane, (c) the fraction of the future fossil fuel carbon that will remain in the atmosphere and provide radiative forcing versus exchange with the oceans or net exchange with the land biosphere, (d) the feedbacks in the climate system that determine both the magnitude of the change and the rate of energy uptake by the oceans, which together determine the magnitude and time history of the temperature increases for a given radiative forcing, (e) the details of the regional and local climate change consequent to an overall level of global climate change, (f) the nature and causes of the natural variability of climate and its interactions with forced changes, and (g) the direct and indirect effects of the changing distributions of aerosol. Because the total change in radiative forcing from other greenhouse gases over the last century has been nearly as large as that of carbon dioxide, their future evolution also must be addressed. A major limitation of these model forecasts for use around the world is the paucity of data available to evaluate the ability of coupled models to simulate important aspects of past climate. In addition, the observing system available today is a composite of observations that neither provide the information nor the continuity in the data needed to support measurements of climate variables.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Yes.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. If the gentleman will yield once again, the irony of this is that so many of these countries that are sending their people here, many of the people coming here are their educated people and they need them in their own country. Many of the people who come here from other countries are indeed people who believe in our democratic system and are the cream of the crop. And, as such, what we have done is take away the ability of that other country to have progress in their country while at the same time undermining the United States, the people of the United States of America and their standard of living. We are going to keep having shortages in energy, as the gentleman said, in transportation, health care, and especially education. We are going to continue to see the standard of living of ordinary Americans just stagnate unless we get control of this illegal immigration. And if we do not stand true to our principles of keeping English the official language, it will create total chaos and division in our population. I congratulate the gentleman for his leadership he is providing and let us work together on this.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. First of all, Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) for yielding to me. He is a relatively junior Member of the House.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. The gentleman has taken on a tremendous responsibility and has done a terrific job in calling attention to some issues that are vital to our national security and vital to the interests of the American people. Unless we address the problem of immigration, and I would put it, of illegal immigration, and we might have a little disagreement on that, but the fact is that those people who are concerned about immigration, and we have about 1 million people a year who come here legally into this country, which by the way, legally those people entering the United States, if we put the rest of the world all together, it has about the same legal immigration into their countries as we do into our one country. But, on top of that, there still continue to be millions of people, probably 3 million or 4 million people a year, entering this country illegally. It is frightening to see the lack of attention that has been given to this very serious threat by our government, both in the Clinton administration, and we will have to wait to see what happens with President Bush. But even among the Republican leadership, we have not been able to move forward with a program designed to stem this flow. I think it is basically because there is a fear among people who are politically active of being called racist. It is just this basic element, we do not want to be called names, and we are afraid that someone will impugn not only our integrity but our good hearts, so we have shied away from this issue. This issue will destroy this country. This issue will destroy the standard of living of our people, and it is currently doing so. In California we feel this acutely, but again, no one wants to face it. Proposition 187, which tried to hit at some of the real problems caused by illegal immigration, passed overwhelmingly. In fact, it was a landslide, and even right before the vote they were saying it was going to be close. Since that time, those same people who said it was going to be close and might lose have perpetuated the myth that in California we have in some way lost the Hispanic vote by being against illegal immigration. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Colorado is offering the leadership that is so vital to our country and to our well-being, because the people throughout the country understand what a threat this poses. When we talk about education and class size in California, we are talking about illegal immigration. There is plenty of money in California to educate our children and to have a class size that is appropriate so that our children can learn. Instead, because we have permitted illegal immigration to go unabated, our children, the children of U.S. citizens and the children of legal immigrants who are here in this country and who are going to our schools, are being shortchanged. Why are we doing that? Why are we permitting the education standards to drop like a rock, and our kids to not be taught or be given training they need to sustain a good life? Why is that? Because we are afraid to be called racists. Give me a break. What is our responsibility? We have got to step forward and say that we care about those young people who come from another country illegally. We care about their families and fathers and mothers, because they are mostly, and I am sure the gentleman from Colorado agrees with me, 95 percent of all the people who come to this country, even the illegal ones, are good people. But the fact is that we cannot take care of everyone in this country from everywhere in the world who wants to come here.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, we may have a disagreement on the decline on bringing down the legal number of immigrants. I think a million people coming in in a very rational approach and trying to bring in people who can take care of themselves are honest and healthy and is a positive thing. I think we can absorb a million. But what is skewed to me, what has skewed this whole situation and, as the gentleman was saying, even those people who are being seriously affected now is the fact that we have let illegal immigration go totally out of control. While we let a million people in legally, there are 3 and 4 million illegal immigrants into our country coming in through other means. The gentleman from Colorado is precisely correct when he says it impacts those legal immigrants as well as the poor people in our society. For example, and he also pointed out, that it is not just liberal elected officials who are involved with not caring about this issue that is hurting our people, but he pointed out that there are many businessmen who are taking advantage of it. When I said the standard of living of our working people is not increased because of the legal immigration, we have to remember that many of the businessmen will not offer health care and other benefits to their workers because they do not have to. They do not have to. Go down and check the health care departments throughout the United States of America, and one is going to find they are swarming with illegal immigrants who have come here, either people who are sick and wanted to come here and get free operations, or people who came here are healthy people, went to work, and worked at virtual slave labor prices for big businessmen. Big businessmen, if they are going to expect that the market is going to protect them, that we believe in the market, thus we believe they can charge what they want for their goods and services and what they offer for people, the market has got to work when it comes to labor as well. If labor is going to cost more money, business is going to have to pay more money for labor. We expect that because we expect the standard of living of poorer Americans to rise right along with the rest of our society. But if we have a situation where the poor people of this country have joined a liberal coalition that turns its back and permits millions of illegals to come into this country, our poor people will never be offered the jobs that have health care. They will never be offered a raise. The poorer people of this country have been betrayed by the liberal coalition who have made themselves an ally with illegal immigration in our society. Whether it is health care or whether it is good jobs, it is all being undercut by the liberal coalition and big businessmen who are, yes, many of them are Republicans. One last note on that point. The gentleman and I faced an issue here recently just last year. How many times did we hear about H-1B Visas? Right? H-1B Visas. Does the public know what an H-1B Visa is? We were being asked to give hundreds of thousands of jobs to people, basically people from Pakistan and India, in order to come in and get these great high paying or mid level and high paying jobs in the computer industry. At that time, the high-tech industry said, oh, we cannot find Americans to do these jobs. I talked to these businessmen. Oh, you have got to give us these. Yes, they could not find Americans to do it because they were paying $50,000, and now the market value for people that could work in those high-tech jobs was more like $75,000 or $80,000. But how did American business want to deal with that? I will tell you how: by beating American citizens into the ground, by bringing in a hoard of people from overseas to undercut their ability to get a higher wage. Give them H-1B visas. Let us bring in 600,000 people from India and Pakistan to get those jobs. I would say to the businessmen, have you tried to go down to the local high schools and pick out the young kids who do not have the means to go to college but have the skills, the academic skills, and offer them scholarships if they will come and work for you? Oh no, they did not do that. Well, did you go to the disabled community where we have people in wheelchairs who can do work, but maybe they do not have the use of their legs or something? Did you go to try to recruit those people to set your shop up, so they could do the job and pay them a good and decent wage for a change? Oh no, we have not done that. No, what we want to do is bring in these young Indians and Pakistanis who will work for one-third the wage of what our people will work for and let those other Americans go to hell, as far as they are concerned. This is not what this government is supposed to be about. This is not what Republicans are about, at least not these Republicans, because we care about the citizens and, yes, we care about the legal immigrants in our country. And we should not be supporting policies that undermine the ability of our people to have their incomes increase or undermining the ability of our poorer people because of an economic boom to have a better life.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, it should be noted that, in California, there were actual demonstrations by Mexican Americans at the Board of Education against bilingual education. The Board of Education, of course, would not listen to them. It was not until people were forced through a ballot initiative to eliminate bilingual education or at least give these parents a chance to have their kids taught in a nonbilingual setting, which then gave them the ability to compete and have better lives. What a crime against these young people we have seen. I hope the Hispanic community notes this, notes the effect and who caused this, who caused the lowering of the potential of their child by forcing them through this antieducational environment that is called bilingual education. I would like to note something while we are talking now about illegal immigration. A lot of times people will suggest that this massive flow of illegal immigrants really has not hurt anybody in this country. We have already pointed out that in California, at least I think this is true in other parts of the country, that the class size alone shows us that young people in our country have been damaged severely by having an extra, in California I will bet about a third of the class members in most classes in southern California are illegal immigrant children whose parents have come here recently, never having paid taxes, and now their children are immediately enrolled in a school system they have never contributed to. Is that hurting somebody? You bet it is. It is hurting the kids of the legal immigrants and the kids of the citizens. But illegal immigration by being out of control as it has has had a tremendous impact on the standard of living of our people. We have just gone through 10 years of a major upsurge in our economy. This is one of the great times since Ronald Reagan turned the economy around in 1983, we have had one of the longest periods of economic growth in our history. Yet, what is confounding the economists and the others who are analyzing all of the figures from the last Census is, how is it possible that wages have not gone up even though we have had this major increase in the economy and the GNP? All of the models would have had a big increases in wages. In other words, the standard of living of the American people should have gone up of average working people, but it did not. Why did it not? They have figured it out that, instead, our liberal colleagues have been downplaying how many illegal immigrants are in our country. They have been telling us maybe there is 4 or 5 million illegal immigrants in our country. No, the Clinton administration lied to us. There are between 10 and 20 million illegal immigrants in our country. Do my colleagues know what that has done for the average person? All of that money that should be going into the pockets of our own citizens because wages would have increased, that did not happen at all. That did not happen because there were more people there offering themselves at a lower price to undercut our own citizens, our own legal residents. In other words, janitors in our country should be making more money. Guess what? Janitors in the United States of America, if it was not for illegal immigration, would be making a lot higher salary. What about people who work in hamburger stands? What about people who work in parking lots? What about people who work in all those many millions of jobs throughout our country that, yes, they are at the lower skill level, but they deserve to have some of the benefits of an expanding economy? Our poor people deserve to have their standard of living go up when things are good in the United States of America. But what has happened is we permitted ten to 20 million illegal immigrants into our country, and thus the standard of living of the lowest part, the lowest rung of our society, people who are just struggling to get by, their capability of raising their standard of living was undercut by, of course, the liberals who care so much about the poor people. I hope that people in this country realize that this has gone so far that even their labor unions now have turned a corner and are saying that we should permit illegal immigrants to come in and take labor union jobs. When we are doing that, we are undercutting our own people. Our own people will not even get into those unions. This is a terrible crime against the people of our country. I will have to say, the Republican leadership has not stood up to this. I am hoping that President Bush will. But President Clinton and his liberal gang just betrayed the interests of the American working people over and over again, and illegal immigration is one of the best examples.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. We had an initiative on the ballot, and the people overwhelmingly voted to get rid of bilingual education. I might add, even in the Hispanic community they voted to get rid of bilingual education. In our county, in Orange County, we pushed hard to make sure that that law was complied with and bilingual education was eliminated. Does the gentleman know what the results have been in? In the last 15 years, we have had bilingual education in Orange County and the Hispanic kids have been, in the test scores, always at the bottom of the deck, always down there at the bottom of the ladder. The Hispanic kids always came in last in all the tests. Since we have eliminated bilingual education, the Hispanic kids now are getting higher grades, and they have averaged out like every other child in the school district. Bilingual education was a cruel hoax perpetrated on the Hispanic community by liberals who were trying to tell people that they were giving them something for nothing by appealing to some sort of anti- American nationalism when, instead, they should have been appealing to the better instincts of these people and trying to help them learn English, which was a prerequisite to success. We have done a monstrous crime. The liberals have done a monstrous crime against the young people in our Hispanic communities throughout this country in making sure that they did not learn English proficiently by having them taught at a young age in a bilingual setting, which just inhibited them from learning English as we now find they are doing in southern California.