Dana Rohrabacher

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. The best surfer in Congress. But, I might add, the second best surfer in Congress is here as well.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. If we send a message to the people of the world, which we have, ``Come on in, come on in, because you will get the benefits if you can come to the United States, legally or illegally.'' One of the things that concerns me the most is that we have seen this incredible flood of illegal immigration into our country at a time when this administration is trying to speed up the process of naturalization. In the last 12 months there have been more immigrants naturalized than in any other year in the history of our country. In fact, it is three times greater than the year before. This administration is intentionally speeding up the naturalization process in order to make voters out of foreigners, many of whom came here illegally and were given amnesty back in 1986. What is happening, then, is that in a speedup of the naturalization process, thousands upon thousands of convicted criminals, of felons, are being given U.S. citizenship by a President of the United States who is hell-bent to try to gut our ability to come to grips with this challenge to the people of not only California but of the entire country. Who do we care about? Why are we here? Who are we supposed to represent? We are elected by the people of the United States to care for them. We have different philosophies and people with different philosophies can disagree. There can be honest disagreements. But we must always keep in mind what is the benefit to the people of the United States I am afraid that what has happened is there is a political power block in this country that sees that they are losing their power. The liberal left that controlled the news media and communications and controlled the political apparatus of this country for decades is losing their grip. The political liberal left thinks that there is one way they can keep hold, and they look at millions and tens of millions of people coming illegally and legally into our country as a potential voting block to save them from the political oblivion of a time when the American people are rejecting their liberal left philosophy. This is a threat to the Democratic process, it is a threat to the well-being of every American. I would hope that those people reading the Congressional Record and those people who watch over C-SPAN will pay close attention to the negotiations that are now going on. Why would a President of the United States insist that we provide tens of billions of dollars worth of benefits to foreigners at a time when we are having to cut down on programs for our own people? Why is that? Why would the President of the United States be willing to close this Government, to close the U.S. Government and to prevent our widows, our orphans, our own veterans from receiving their benefits in order to insist, to add pressure on Republicans to gut a welfare reform bill that protects our own budgets from being looted by foreigners? Something is going on here. Something terrible is going on here. Every American should be aware of this. Thank goodness for talk radio, and thank goodness for the fact that we have a Congressional Record that is distributed to libraries throughout the United States and a C- SPAN that is seen by the American people throughout the country, because the news media is not doing their job. It is very easy to see that the news media is not doing their job. Does anyone remember, for example, we have talked tonight about the commodities, the tens of thousands, if not $100,000 made in the commodities market by Hillary Clinton before she became First Lady? Not many people talk about that anymore. We talked about the details, the horrible details of the Travelgate scandal where some civil servants, their lives were destroyed for just trying to protect someone's political career. Well, what about the FBI Filegate scandal? That was just a few months ago, and already we do not hear anything about that. That is not in the media. Already people are sort of ignoring that. In fact, just yesterday and the day before there were dramatic revelations that the logbook that was kept on the people who saw these FBI files that were being illegally kept by the White House, that there is a logbook that has a 6-month gap, and that they do not know who looked at the FBI files during this 6-month period. Well, let us remind the public what the FBI Filegate scandal is all about. Church Colson, during the Watergate scandal, showed one-half of one FBI file to one person and was sent to prison for 2 years because this was considered and is considered today a horrible personal assault on the privacy rights of those individuals who the FBI has gathered information on. When that scandal broke, the President first announced that it was 35 files. Then, if you remember, it became 50, and then 100, and then it became 900 FBI files. Then, if you remember, the President mentioned something about, oh, this was just a low-level detailee from the Defense Department. Only later did we find out that what we were really talking about, was what? We were talking about a man who had been engaged, a professional opposition researcher who worked in several major Democratic campaigns, who just happened to have the FBI files land on his desk. My goodness, a detailee from the Defense Department becomes an opposition researcher, or vice versa, and 35 files become 900. Well, that is sort of miraculous but I think that there is even a better answer than thinking that this is a miracle, of how these things happen. If you remember, Bob, there was recently also what we have, and by the way, we would have none of this information except for the fact that the Republicans took control of this House and began to subpoena this information from the White House. If we would not be in control, this would have all been covered up, this arrogance of power, the fact that people have illegal possession of FBI files and have violated the privacy of people throughout Washington, DC and people throughout the country, in fact, political activists, and we have not gotten anywhere near the bottom of this yet. But we would not know this except for the fact that Republicans got this control and subpoenaed this information. Right after the Republicans took control of this body, the legal counsel's office at the White House did a study and they created what they call a task list. What it is, is what I call a blueprint for coverup. I think there is no other really more reasonable description of this list. What it is, it was a list that was developed by the White House, and it basically said these are the areas of a potential scandal within the administration. That is what basically they were saying in this memo, this long memo. They tasked various people to look into and investigate all of the possible scandals. Now, this happened two years ago. This happened right after the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives, because the White House understood at that point they were vulnerable to being asked under oath questions and being subpoenaed. Who was on that list? Mr. Livingstone, the man in charge of the FBI files, had his hand on the FBI files, was on that list of potential scandals. Two years ago this White House asked people within the White House structure to go to Mr. Livingstone and look at this matter so they would be prepared to handle the scandal. Now, was their instructions after they interviewed Mr. Livingstone and after they developed the plan of how to handle this problem once it becomes problem, that there has been an abuse of problem, was part of the plan that the first statements to come out of the White House were to try to act, one, confused, like there were only 35 FBI files, or act confused that the President did not know, that maybe it was just a low level Defense Department detailee, as if the President did not know that it was really a opposition researcher who had been involved in major democratic political campaigns? Was this part of the plan that was developed by whoever it was in the White House, who was asked to go and see Mr. Livingstone? Well, we do not know that. But the public deserves to know, because they deserve to know when the President of the United States is speaking to them, whether or not the President of the United States is speaking truthfully, or whether he is involving himself in a straegy intentionally aimed at deceiving people. Now, when the President came to California and promised to help us stem the flood of illegal immigration, people took his word for it. And the fact that today we see that the President is threatening to close down the government unless we gut our immigration bill, well, some people in public office, I think all people in public office, deserve a little bit of leeway, and they deserve to be given the benefit of the doubt. It has happened a lot with this President, and I think it is becoming very difficult for people to give him the benefit of the doubt. We have seen it in the FBI scandal. But I will say this: When it comes to the liberal news media, they seem to have a ceaseless reservoir of patience and are giving the President the benefit of the doubt, time and time again. They do not even feel they have to follow through on many of these things we have talked about today, much less ask follow-up questions that would be done to any Republican, especially Newt Gingrich. So, with that said, I am pleased to be with you here tonight, because I know that Bob and I share Orange County together, and we have seen what has happened to Southern California because of this flood of illegal immigration. It is destroying the infrastructure of our State. It is a horrible, horrible burden, that people who have worked all of their lives, all of their lives, trying to build up a decent place for the Amercian people, for their children to live, and now they see it is all being destroyed because we do not have the courage to set the policies that will prevent foreigners from coming into our country. They may be good people, they may be very good people, but our allegiance, again, who are we here for? We are here to protect the interests of the American people.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. If I could mention, as we get into this illegal alien issue, which is one of the reasons I am here tonight and I am so concerned, is that President Clinton has repeatedly promised the people of California that he would be helpful on that issue and that I am sorry to say tonight that what we see happening in Washington, DC today is that not only is the President not trying to help us on the illegal alien issue but the President is using all of his powers, all of the threats that he can make in terms of the legislative process and the Presidential involvement in it to try to prevent us from passing a meaningful immigration bill. It has reached the point today that during our negotiations, what President Clinton is doing is basically threatening to shut down the entire U.S. Government if we refuse to gut the immigration bill that passed with a substantial margin here in the House of Representatives. Those things that apparently are upsetting the President are that, he claims it is our restrictions on legal immigrants that he is upset with. The American people should understand, and I believe for the record that we should state that the restrictions on legal immigration that are now being discussed by the President and which he adamantly is opposed to deals with SSI, welfare, and Medicaid. The President of the United States is threatening to close down the Federal Government unless we take out our immigration reform bill provisions that prevent people who come here and never contributed to the system from immediately getting on the SSI. He is also worried about, for example, that we have restrictions to prevent people who come here from other countries, now, they are supposed to be healthy when they come here, they are supposed to be, and the idea is if someone comes here, that they do not become a ward of the State and that they do not drain money that is meant to be for the American people themselves. But the President wants us to take out a provision that permits people who come here from every other country, legally or not, from receiving Medicaid. We are talking about $20 billion of Federal expenditures. The President is threatening to shut down the Government, prevent the widows and orphans and veterans of this country from getting their benefit checks from the Federal Government, in order to protect foreigners who come here and who are now currently draining money out of our SSI system and out of the health care system that was meant for American citizens. This is totally contrary to the promises that he made the people of California. But the people of California should not be the only ones that are upset. The people of the entire country are the ones who are having to pick up this bill. If our social infrastructure in California breaks down, our education system and our health system and we go belly up financially, this is only a harbinger of what will happen to the entire country.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I believe that the President said that the Gallegly amendment was a nutty idea, which was something that got quoted, and that ``nutty idea,'' of course, passed overwhelmingly in the House of Representatives.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Actually in the news media as well. It seems to me you actually have to be carrying a gun and trying to kill someone to be an extremist on the left. And on the right you basically have to be someone who, even if your views are parallel to, let us say, 75 or 80 percent of the American people but opposed to what the liberal news media believes is a standard, basically the standard belief in our news columns, then you are an extremist if you are a conservative.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. If the gentleman would yield, I do not ever remember someone on the left being referred to as an extremist.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. If the gentleman would yield, the fact is that when things are just permitted to happen and the proper attention is not paid to them by the press, other things that are worse happen. People get arrogant because they can get away with things. For example, right off the bat we heard that the First Lady had been involved with some kind of commodity scheme that permitted her $100,000 profit. Now, if that had been any Republican President's wife, this would have been examined, and today, every time there would be a press conference during the election, you would be having people ask questions about it. But that is just a distant memory now. It is a distant memory, and the fact that she got away with that, then we have--who hears about the Travelgate scandal now? Is the President being asked about this? The fact is, if we were not bringing it up, the press would not be following through. And, my dear friend from Pennsylvania, you are talking about something and comparing it to the Watergate scandal wherein a third-rate burglary, which was wrong, which was a wrong thing for President Nixon and his staff to have gotten involved with during a political year, the incredible time and effort that was taken by members of the media to follow up, to dog it, to get every detail, to follow through every bank account was just something that they would not let go. That sent a message to a lot of people. That was a good message: We in government cannot be arrogant and we cannot abuse power. But what has happened with the current administration is that they came here believing that they could get away with things that no other administration could get away with. I am afraid that the news media, the news media is verifying this terrible fact.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I think the President's action concerning the Travelgate affair does indeed show the character of the individual we are now talking about who happens to be President of the United States. I worked in the White House for 7 years and knew Billy Dale very well, and the public should understand whom we are talking about here. We are not talking about a political appointee, who was appointed by the Republicans, who happened to be a holdover. No. Billy Dale is a civil servant. He is a veteran who ran an office in the White House that had served President Carter as well as President Ford and as well as Ronald Reagan, a man who is just a civil servant like other civil servants, whose patriotism is demonstrated in the hard work and long hours that he takes in a job that is different than other civil service jobs, because he had to travel with the President, he had to make sure things are done. Sometimes they work until midnight, but as a civil servant, he does not get overtime pay. This is someone whose patriotism was expressed in the fact that he was doing his very best job for those who held the office. And that is the way it was with all those folks down in the travel office; we knew that. They were regular human beings, they were people that, you know, spend their times with their family and churches, and they are totally nonpolitical. You could always go to them with a problem, and they were there to help. Well, these people were fired precipitously when President Clinton became President. Now why were they fired? Well, we know now that they were fired because the President had some cronies that he wanted to put in the office. One was an attractive female, and one had to do with a crony who basically was engaged in a travel company that wanted to get contracts, that had something to do with who was handling the travel office. Well, before we can do that, of course, we have to get rid of these just average Americans. But who cares about them? Who cares about these civil servants? What is significant is not only the President was off base and that the White House was off base in this matter, but that once that act happened, once it happened, it was a wrong thing to do. Instead of admitting that they made a mistake, the White House set out to destroy these people, to destroy them, not just to fire them, but to charge then with improprieties and illegalities and to actually bring legal and criminal charges against them to utterly destroy them. In order to what? In order to make sure there was no political damage for the President for making a wrong decision. This is the nature of the person who is occupying the Presidency of the United States today. This is wrong. This indicates an arrogance; it indicates an absolute disregard for other human beings. How can you look at another human being and treat them in that way? I would not treat my enemies in that way. I would not charge my enemies with crimes that they did not commit in order to gain some type of upsmanship in a political match. I would not do that. This is even worse than that. This is charging a civil servant with crimes in order to give yourself a political advantage, someone who is not even your political enemy. Let us just note that this wrongdoing was recognized almost immediately by the jury, and within 2 hours, as we said, Billy Dale and these loyal civil servants, these loyal Americans who had worked their lives out in this particular spot in the White House, they were totally exonerated, and then what was the President's action? When we tried to ensure that these people would not have to sell their homes, that these people would not have to have all of their life savings drained away because they had to have such legal bills, what then did the President do? Do you remember? The President at first agreed, OK--well, through his spokesman--well, yeah, we will sign the bill if the Congress passes a bill to take care of their legal fees, and then he took it back. And then he took it back because he says he wants the legal fees of these people who were charged with criminal activity themselves to be paid by the Government or we cannot take care of these people who were just absolutely victims of his own misdeeds.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, in 1992, when then-Governor Clinton was kicking off his presidential campaign, I have a distant memory of that event. And recently someone called my attention to the subject matter that he used to kick off his presidential campaign. I am not sure if my friend from Pennsylvania is aware of what the central theme of the President's first campaign speech was, but it was honesty in government. And he used as an example of the terrible dishonesty that was going on in the Federal Government, he used the savings and loan scandal as the basis for his charge of the corruption that was going on in Washington, DC. I believe that it is ironic at best, it is ironic today for us to be confronted with stonewalling and roadblocks being thrown into the path of a special prosecutor who is attempting to come to grips and to follow the leads that are necessary to bring to justice those people who were involved with the looting of a savings and loan institution that cost the taxpayers tens of millions of dollars. Some people have said that the President, that this President, President Bill Clinton, has more chutzpah in the history of this country. There are a lot of reasons for saying that. He did have enough chutzpah, for example, to try to change the language when he tried to say that taxes were contributions and Federal spending all of a sudden became investments. It took a lot of chutzpah to be able to try to face the American people and try to say that, convince them that taxation is really contribution and Federal spending is really investment and in some way fool them into the reality that that was different. It takes a lot of chutzpah for a President who began his presidential campaign on the theme of honesty in government and attacking this savings and loan scandal to now be engaged in the type of tactics that you have just outlined, to try to basically thwart an investigation into the savings and loan scandal that was taking place right in Arkansas. Of course, he would suggest that it was happening right underneath his nose but he did not know anything about it and that his wife, although deeply involved in the law firm that had some of these accounts and dealt with people who were dealing with the savings and loan, that she of course knew nothing about it as well. This does take some chutzpah. It also takes some chutzpah, as they say, for the same President to simply shrug off miraculous happenings that have been going on during this investigation. For example, most people have probably forgotten by now the miraculous appearance of Hillary Clinton's billing records for the Rose Law Firm that just were, had disappeared for about a year and then like a miracle appeared in the living quarters of the first family in the White House. These things were either a miracle or someone consciously did these things. It just seems that the press is willing to ignore that, but if a Republican like Richard Nixon would have been involved in something as blatant as this, it would not be a matter for a chuckle, it would be a matter for questions and follow-up questions and a dogged investigation from that moment on.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my friend from Pennsylvania, perhaps he could explain, perhaps he could explain for the record exactly what the Whitewater investigation is all about. Some people who have heard Whitewater do not fully understand that what we are really talking about here is the looting of a savings and loan institution in Arkansas. Basically a clique, a small political clique in Arkansas who ran that State are basically being accused of looting the savings and loan that was guaranteed by the taxpayers. Once that savings and loan, Madison Savings and Loan went belly up, then we got stuck, the American taxpayers got stuck for tens of millions of dollars that then were needed to pay off the debts of the bankrupt savings and loan. All of the activities that are going on concerning Whitewater, basically the roadblocks that are being put up and the stonewalling that is happening and the various attempts to attack the special prosecutor and to prevent people from getting evidence, that basically is happening as part of an attempt to thwart the investigation of the looting of a savings and loan, is that not correct?

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. It was a secret operation. He wouldn't be telling any one. Do any of the allegations being made, and obviously there are some very bad characters involved with drug dealing on various sides of various issues, but did any of these drug shipments go through Mena Airport at a time when President Clinton was Governor of Arkansas?

Mr. ROHRABACHER. If the gentlewoman would yield for a question, was the gentlewoman clear that Oliver North was noting that to move against it?

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I am just so angry tonight that I am almost beside myself, so it is hard to contain my anger. When the people of California find out the betrayal that has happened to them, they too, I believe, will be so angry that it will overflow and be at least reflected in the upcoming election. The President tonight had better start worrying about the State of California, because they are not going to elect a man that has betrayed them and lied to them so blatantly as what the President of the United States has been doing on this issue of immigration. I would like to congratulate the gentleman from California [Mr. Gallegly]. It has been a long, hard battle for the gentleman from California on this issue. When I first came here in 1989 he pulled me aside to talk to me about this issue. He has been struggling all these years. Until we had a Republican majority in this House, we were unable to get any type of meaningful immigration reform through this body. He has struggled so hard. Mr. Speaker, we fought and we have worked for the last 2 years under a Republican majority to come up with a good bill, to come up with something that the Democrats would not block, because it would be so reasonable to the people of this country. Now we have the President of the United States threatening to close down the Federal Government if we pass a meaningful immigration bill, the same President of the United States who went to California and proclaimed, promised the people of the State of California, that he would do everything he could to confront this challenge to our well-being.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. He was not only in San Diego but he was in Los Angeles and he was throughout our State telling people, I am going to work with Congress and we are going to try to protect you from this flood of illegal aliens that is draining all the money from our health care. The health care system in California is breaking down. The education system is breaking down. We have illegal immigrants coming to our country and immediately going on SSI, draining billions of dollars which should be going to our own senior citizens. Instead, it is being drained away. Believe me, a few years from now, if this President has his way, we will find the Social Security system is in a crisis, and he will be like, oh my gosh, it is in a crisis, and he will not relate it back to this decision today. He promised us he would help us solve this problem. Tonight he is telling us that he will shut down the government unless we agree to give welfare payments to illegal immigrants into our State. He will shut down the Government unless we agree to let people who have never paid into the system receive Social Security benefits, that he is going to shut down the government unless illegal aliens get the same tuition as local residents. Whose side is he on? What he is doing tonight is adding injury to insult. The insult is that he lied to us in the first place. The injury is that we have a wonderful immigration bill, something that will come to grips with this terrible problem that is threatening the well-being of our citizens, and he is threatening to close down the Government unless we trash that bill. The people of California had better understand what is going on here. We have a Democratic process. This is still a democracy. The news media has not been doing their job in getting the word out, but tonight this act is so blatant I do not even believe that the news media ignoring it is going to be able to cover up this wrongdoing that the President is involved with. As I say, Mr. Speaker, I am a little bit upset, people can see that, but my people are hurting, as the gentleman from California [Mr. Bilbray] said. In San Diego, in Orange County, in Los Angeles County, all throughout California, people are sending their kids to school and their kids are not getting an education, because we have $2 billion a year that we have to spend on kids who just came from a foreign country. They might be good kids, but we have to care about our own kids. Mr. Speaker, here we have a chance to come to grips with that, and the President is threatening to close down the Government unless we back down. It is just absolutely a terrible thing. Elton Gallegly who has worked all of these years to accomplish this, you probably feel worse than I do, Elton. It is just beyond me.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this conference report. Today when this bill passes, the American people will be able to judge for themselves who is on their side and who is for draining dollars meant for our people, draining those dollars away from American families and taking them and giving them to foreigners who have come to this country illegally. We have had to fight for years, first through a democratically controlled Congress and now this administration which has fought us and dragged us by the feet every step of the way but we have finally got a bill to the floor. Giving illegal aliens benefits that should be going to our own people is a betrayal of our people. People who are sick, they come to our borders. Yes, we care about them. I do not care if it is AIDS or tuberculosis. But if someone is sick and illegally in this country, they should be deported from this country to protect our own people instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars that should go for the health benefits of our own citizens. The question is, To whom do we owe our loyalty? Who do we care about? The American people should come first.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the rule and the conference report. Mr. Speaker, millions of illegal aliens have been pouring into our country, and we have heard year after year after year a reason of why we should not act. There is always going to be a reason that the other side will prevent us from acting. In fact, for years those of us on the Republican side have begged for an immigration bill, and we have been prevented time and time again from having any type of legislation where we could come to grips with this problem. In California, our health facilities and our schools have been flooded with illegal aliens. Our public services are stretched to the breaking point. Tens of billions of dollars that should be going to benefit our own citizens are being drained away to provide services and benefits to foreigners who have come here illegally. Who is to blame? Certainly not the immigrants. We cannot blame them if we are to provide them with all these services and benefits. This administration and the liberal Democrats, who have controlled both Houses of Congress for decades, have betrayed the trust of the American people. We are supposed to be watching out for our own people. When we allocate money for benefits, for service, SSI and unemployment benefits, it is supposed to benefit our citizens, the people that are paying taxes, who fought our wars. Instead, when we have tried to make sure these are not drained away to illegal aliens, we have been stopped every time by the Democrats who controlled this House. This bill finally comes to grips with the problem that has threatened the well-being of every American family. And, yes, we are going to hear a little nitpicking from the other side of why it is not a perfect bill. But the American people should remind themselves, it is this type of nitpicking that has placed their families in jeopardy for decades and permitted a problem of illegal immigration to mushroom into a catastrophe for our country.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my fellow Californian, Congressman Elton Gallegly. He has fought a long and hard battle to get this issue to the floor and to have our Government come to grips with a major threat to the well-being of the people of the United States of America. This Congressman, when I first came here in 1989, took me aside and we spoke about the illegal immigration problem, and that was back in 1989. We have worked together diligently ever since, and he has provided enormous leadership on this issue. We were never able to get this to the floor for a vote. Why is that? Because when the liberal Democrats controlled the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, they were not about to let any honest debate on this issue take place. Perhaps it is because there is an alliance, a political alliance somewhere that someone wants to maintain that is costing the American people the right to run their own country and the right to educate their children and the right to actually control our own borders. The fact is that, until the Republicans took control of the House, the liberal Democrats put us down every time we tried to discuss this issue. We could never get a vote. Thank God that at last this problem is being confronted. Since Mr. Gallegly and I talked in 1989, millions upon millions of illegal immigrants have flooded into our home State of California and across the country as well. Those millions of illegal immigrants that have come here, they may be fine people, but they are consuming resources and benefits that are meant for the people of the United States of America. In California, we see our health care system breaking down. We hear and see our education system breaking down. We know something must be done, but we have been prevented from doing so because the people who ran this House for all of those years refused to let Mr. Gallegly present a bill and get it to the floor of the House of Representatives. I applaud Congressman Gallegly and the others who have worked so hard on this, because we care. We care about the people of the United States of America, and we know that the people are not going to buy the line that this is antieducation because we want education dollars to go to the benefit of our children rather than foreigners that have come here illegally. That is antieducation? Nobody buys that. That is the type of arrogance that has been rejected by the people of this country. I hope that when they go to the polls a month from now that they realize that type of arrogance is a thing of the past and put it to bed forever. The fact is the people of the United States expect the tax dollars that are being taken from them to be used for their benefit. The Gallegly amendment basically focuses on education, which is of major concern. For us to say that those people coming from other parts of the world do not care about their children, are not coming here to give their children a free education is ridiculous. All the Gallegly bill now does, and I do not think it should have been compromised before, I mean the fact is it was much stronger before, saying illegal aliens who are here should not get the benefit, but this bill now before us just says future illegal immigrants should not get this right of education. Let us end this attraction to illegal immigrants. This bill at least cuts off the attraction to future illegal immigrants from taking away those limited tax dollars that we have available for education.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. If the gentleman will yield, to answer the gentleman's question, I remember the 1986 bill. That is the one that granted amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants and sent the message out to all the people in the world, ``Come to the United States because if you get in, eventually they're going to wear down and they're going to give you amnesty.'' That bill precipitated this flaw.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. We know what happened after that bill passed.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. If the gentleman will yield, I am not suggesting these are bad economic times.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the rule and strong support of the Gallegly amendment. In California alone we spend $2 billion, that is $2 billion every year, educating illegal alien children. That is $2 billion that is equal to what we spend on the entire University of California system. Is this right? No, it is absolutely wrong to spend $2 billion on the children of foreigners who have come here illegally. That $2 billion should be going to benefit the children of the people of the United States of America. That is what this vote is all about, it is to determine what our priorities are. Our priorities should be what is in the interest of the people of the United States. We can care for the children of foreigners, we can care about their well-being, but we must first care about our own children, our own families. It is very clear to me that the people on the other side of the aisle who are opposing this and have opposed us every step of the way, and in the Clinton administration, have their priorities all screwed up.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. If I could reclaim my time for a moment?

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I think we should. Mr. Speaker, I asked for this time to report to theHouse on a field briefing and site visit that was held on August 8, a hearing and field briefing that was hosted by the Energy and Environmental Subcommittee which I chair. Joining me at that field briefing were four other members of the Committee on Science: Mr. Schiff, the distinguished chairman of the Basic Research Subcommittee, Mr. Calvert, Mr. Foley, and Mr. Stockman. The field briefing could well have been called: Free Enterprise Works. Each of the sites that we visited gave us a firsthand look and a better understanding of the private sector's response to environmental challenges. We found that in southern California new technologies are emerging to clean and purify the environment and to make a profit, to boot. We began the day by attending a ground-breaking for C-launch. This is an innovative project of the Boeing Corporation which will launch commercial satellites from platforms based at sea. I am particularly pleased that Boeing has chosen the site of the now closed Long Beach Naval Station for its home port, bringing much-needed jobs to the area. We next visited the Long Beach headquarters of Gridcore. Gridcore is a company that has commercialized technology originally developed at the Department of Agriculture research lab in Wisconsin. They are a proud example of a public-private partnership. The result of this cooperation is a remarkable product. They are panels with the strength of plywood at half the weight made from 100 percent recycled material, primarily fiber from old corrugated cardboard containers. It is keeping our landfills from overflowing while at the same time producing a building substitute for trees. Even more, this technology allows the production of Gridcore products without the use of toxic resins or binders. Not only is Gridcore made from recycled materials, but the product itself is also recyclable. So what we have here, a product of a basically public-private partnership, is the development of an environmental technology that will keep our landfills from overflowing, but at the same time save trees, and at the same time, of course, make a profit for those who are engaged in the enterprise. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to enter Gridcore's specification sheet at this point in the Record.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, as part of its commercialization agreement with the Government, Gridcore is paying royalties on its profits. As a result, the taxpayers will get more back in terms of what Gridcore is giving them through royalties than it costs us in the original investment. Well, I have been somewhat skeptical of developing a partnership-type relationship between government and private companies. In this case it has obviously worked, and certainly these royalty arrangements by which private companies commercialize government-developed technologies, certainly this should be encouraged, and in this case, Gridcore has developed a product which is a win for the taxpayers, a win for the consumers, and a win for the environment. From Gridcore, our field briefing went on and we visit the headquarters of Simple Green in Huntington Beach. Simple Green began in the family workshop of Bruce Fabrizio and his father, Joseph. They successfully developed an alternative to toxic cleaners used to remove tannic acid that results from coffee roasting. Twenty years later they have developed an all-purpose cleaner that degreases products marketed around the world, and these products are nontoxic nonflammable, nonabrasive, and even biodegradable. One of the greatest obstacles to this success, to the development of an environmentally friendly product, a cleaner that went well beyond anything that was on the market at that time, one of the greatest obstacles they had to overcome was the high taxes, high interest rates and double-digit inflation during the 1970's. This was the time during the late 1970's when, as entrepreneurs, they struggled to establish their new company to offer this environmentally sound alternative to the cleaning products that were already on the market. But with high interest rates and a killer inflation they were almost kept off of the market simply by the general economic conditions. So let us never forget that when we are talking about cleaning the environment or any other very laudable goal that we must insure that the fundamental economic factors that are at play in our society are conducive to entrepreneurs developing new products and creating jobs and basically bringing about the progress that will make this a better world. Well, once they were successful, Simple Green did not stop at just making a good product and making a profit. In fact, the product itself, of course, is beneficial in that it is more environmentally safe than the other cleaners that are on the market, but they did not stop at just making a profit at doing that. They went on to establish the Egbar Foundation which stands for: everything is going to be all right, which is, of course, in stark contrast to some of the pessimism that we hear from other people who claim to be interested in the environment but basically are so pessimistic and are making such outlandish claims that the world is going to end and that we all are going to be consumed in our own waste that it actually decreases the amount of activity, of human activity, that is aimed at solving the problems because they are so pessimistic. Well, the Simple Green people established this foundation, everything is going to be all right, in order to stimulate new ideas and to get people active and personally mobilized to try to make this a better planet environmentally. Using 1 percent of the company's annual sales, the foundation sponsors an environmental education program which involves over 200,000 California students. While onsite we learned that Simple Green has recently begun research on using its technologies to improve bioremediation techniques. They now have developed a method to reclaim land despoiled by oil and other toxics in a more effective and more efficient way than the currently alternatives. Again they are making money by building a better more effective product that will be better for the environment as the product is being used. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to place a statement from Simple Green, on its bioremediation research, into the Record.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Let us just hope, I happen to believe that we should try to explain in a very heartfelt, way, those of us whose eyes have been opened, that honestly, there is no other, once you conclude that life begins at conception you cannot have any other belief. Even the most strident person who is pro-choice that I know, if they believed that it was a baby that we were talking about, they would not believe that there should be an abortion.