Dana Rohrabacher

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I would hope that we can discuss issues like that in a spirit of camaraderie, except I will have to note that when people misquote other people's positions, they can expect people to get upset about it. I will say that what I have heard personally over the last year is an attempt that I would believe that many Democrats are making to try to frighten the senior citizens of the United States by using misquotes, by trying to present to them the idea that the Republican Party has some idea of taking away their Social Security and taking away their Medicare. I would say I believe that this is an insult to the senior citizens, in particular, of our country, and I think our senior citizens are much more intelligent and will not fall for that type of tactic. Mr. Speaker, what I would like to speak about tonight with my remaining 3\1/2\ minutes is something that is a major threat to the well-being of every American. That is a battle that is going on that nobody even hears about. What is happening is we are now facing the most severe attack on America's patent system that we have ever had in the history of the United States. Foreigners and multinational corporations have insidiously targeted our patent system and are now, step by step, destroying the patent system of the United States, the patent system which has provided us the greatest source of new wealth creation of any nation in the history of mankind. This has been America's greatest asset, and people are attacking the system. It is being attacked, it is being dismantled, and it is one of the most insidious attacks I have ever seen as a Member of the Congress. The patent system was first changed in the GATT implementation legislation by a provision that was not required by GATT, but was snuck into the implementing legislation because we in Congress had to vote for the entire legislation or against it, and thus, they were sure they would get the vote for changing the patent system because they knew that we would not just totally abandon the world trading structure. What happened in that legislation, Mr. Speaker, was that the guaranteed 17 years of patent protection that Americans have had as a right for the last 130 years was taken away and was replaced by an uncertain time of 20 years. But that 20 years, if it takes you longer, the clock begins ticking when you file for a patent. Seventeen years of guaranteed patent protection meant if you filed for a patent, no matter how long it took after the time it took you to issue your patent, you would have 17 years of protection. Thus, inventors and investors put forth the time and effort needed to keep America ahead of the competition. If we replace that with a system of 20 years, where the clock starts ticking immediately, what that does is the clock is ticking against the inventor, and if it takes 15 years, 15 years for a patent to be issued, only 5 years of patent protection would remain. Basically our guaranteed patent term, the right to a guaranteed patent term, was eliminated for the American people, something that served us so well. The second step in this harmonization process, and what is happening is a process to harmonize American law with Japanese law, is actually a destruction of the Patent Office. H.R. 3460 is a bill that has already passed the subcommittee. This bill, which I call the Steal American Technology Act, would literally destroy the current Patent Office and corporatize it. Here is a conservative Republican, who usually likes privatization, telling you that this would be horrible. We must protect American patent rights and oppose 3460, which would destroy the Patent Office. We can do this in the time ahead by supporting H.R. 359, which is my substitute, to H.R. 3460.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arizona [Mr. Hayworth]. correcting an Inaccurate quote Attributed to Mr. gingrich

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Not only did they support the Russian invasion but during the war Indian pilots, we were told, were actually flying missions in Afghanistan for the Communist-supported government.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. That is correct.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, I would just say this. The questions the gentleman from Indiana asked are very relevant questions. They are: ``What would you do if it was your wife that was gang raped? What would you do if it was your child that was murdered and dragged through the neighborhood as a symbol to the neighborhood not to resist the Indian authorities?'' Why that is relevant is because if we Americans were denied the right to choose our own destiny through a free election, if we were denied that right, we too would resist, and perhaps those people that we were resisting would use the same type of brutality and ugly repression that the people of Kashmir have had to suffer, and we, our families, would be the ones being dragged through the streets and the women raped in such a way. We cannot let this sit. Standing for freedom, standing for human rights, insisting that this $8 million be cut out as a message to India is not only right morally, but will help create a more peaceful world.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Not only are they being built in New Delhi, but we are giving them $150 million in aid, so who is actually paying for that, indirectly?

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr.Chairman, I rise in strong support of the Burton amendment to freeze the foreign aid levels we give to India to last year's levels, which is basically an $8 billion cut. First of all, Mr. Chairman, let us make it really clear; India is not, N-O-T, not an old friend of the United States. The gentleman from Texas, Charlie Wilson, was absolutely correct, and I guess everybody else in this House has amnesia, but throughout the entire cold war India kicked us in the teeth every time they got a chance to do so. When we were down, they kicked us in the gut. When we turned around to protect ourselves, they kicked us in the back, and they accepted our money the whole time; and especially they wanted the money to come from the United Nations, from us to the United Nations, so they would not even have to show any gratitude to the United States for accepting all of our hundreds of millions of dollars of aid while they were kicking us in the teeth and supporting the Soviet Union's aggression in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the world. Mr. Chairman, India receives more aid right now, $156 million, and votes against us more than any other country in the United Nations. That is 83 percent of the votes in the United Nations are against our position. That is their level of support against us, while getting $156 million in aid from us. Indian should not even be getting any aid, much less just a simple little cut of $8 million. They take our aid, our hundreds of millions of dollars; and do Members know what they do with their own money? They are building nuclear weapons. That is what it is all about. We give them humanitarian aid so they do not have to spend their own money on their people, and then they spend it on nuclear weapons. Good deal, is it not? Mr. Chairman, we are being Uncle Saps here if we are giving that type of country money from us so they can build nuclear weapons, and to intimidate their neighbors or whatever. But that is not the question tonight. We are not going to end all aid to India. We just want to send a little message, $8 million worth of message, cutting off aid by $8 million, to say ``Please clean up your human rights abuse in the Kashmir.'' Come on, folks, we can call these people terrorists in the Kashmir, but the real problem we all know is, and no one wants to say it, is that India has refused to hold an honest plebescite, as they were required to do by the United Nations, for the last 40 years. If the people of Kashmir had a right to vote on their own destiny, they would probably vote not to be part of India and there would be no conflict. There would be no excuse for 1 million Indian soldiers to be stationed up in northern India to repress those people who want nothing more than a right to vote as to whether to be a part of India or not, which is what the United Nations required them to do. India has been condemned by Amnesty International, by Asia Watch, by people, honest people who are looking and trying to support human rights around the world. They have been condemned over and over and over again. The examples given by the gentleman form Indiana are only a few examples. These people are trying to fight for their rights in the Kashmir, and as a reaction, the Indians are saying ``we are not going to let them get away with it,'' so they are condoning monstrous human rights abuse against the people of Kashmir. It can be stopped very easily. Let those people in the Kashmir determine their own destiny through the ballot box, rather than through bullets. That is the bottom line. If we do that, if we insist on that, if we send that message tonight with this little tiny cut of $8 million, I will tell the Members this much: The tensions on the subcontinent will subside. We will have done what is right, and in the long run it will create a more peaceful world because the people of Kashmir will have their right to vote and there will be no excuse for the violence that exists there today. Mr. Chairman, I plead with all of the Members, come on, let us get beyond all of this rhetoric. Let us not talk about India as our old friend, or create some false images of how we have to help this developing country. Let us get down to the facts. Let us get down to we must stand for human rights there and elsewhere, because it furthers the cause of peace to do so. Let us send that message to India. Please, end the repression, give those people a right to vote on their own destiny, $8 million. Instead, what we are going to do is send them a message that they can do anything they want to and they are going to get hundreds of millions of dollars of aid from the American taxpayers. That is not the message we should send.

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

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, this is a classic example of the thinking that we sometimes hear from across the aisle. Instead of focusing on the policy goal, they focus on the bureaucratic program. Instead of measuring results, they measure resources and effort expended. Over the past year and a half the Science Committee has witnessed a growing dispute about global climate change. There is perhaps even greater dispute about whether Mission to Planet Earth is the right way to study climate change. But there is 100-percent dispute--nobody agrees--that the original baselined Earth observing system is the most cost-effective way to collect the data required for Mission to Planet Earth. Only the gentlewoman from Texas--plus a few contractors and bureaucrats--seem to think that we should do this project the old and expensive way. Several weeks ago the Space Subcommittee heard testimony from multiple witnesses that using small satellites to collect Earth science data would be cheaper and easier than the larger satellites currently planned for the Earth observing system. We have also heard testimony that the new commercial remote sensing industry should be able to save us a great deal of money in collecting and distributing data. So it seems clear that we can achieve the scientific goals of this program much more cheaply than is currently projected. But only if we allow budgetary necessity to be the mother of programmatic invention and reform. Now it's no secret that I'm not a huge fan of this program, or of the scientific theories it may help to test. But that's not what's at issue here. The issue is whether we do this research affordably, within the context of a balanced budget, or whether we try to do it unaffordably, and break the budget and probably fail to do the science. So why would anyone want to hang on to the old ways of doing things when that's not only more expensive, but in fact not as good? If we followed that logic--the logic of the gentlewoman from Texas--then Houston wouldn't be the hometown of the largest personal computer company in the world because we would all still use giant mainframe computers instead of PC's, we wouldn't have the benefits of using the new technology, and, of course, none of those jobs would exist in Houston.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I plead guilty. I said that global warming at best is unproven, and at worst, liberal claptrap. I plead guilty.

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

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I am very proud to join my colleagues on the Committee on Science in bringing this well-constructed legislation to the House floor. The authorizations for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the EPA's Office of Research and Development will, as they did last year, fund all the vital research services of these important agencies and all the research they need to get their job done. At the same time we get budget savings by eliminating bureaucracy, by continuing privatization efforts endorsed by the administration and by eliminating earmarks that even the Clinton administration does not want. Title IV of this bill will give the National Weather Service Forecast, for example, an increase of almost $20 million from current funding to a total of $626 million. So for those who are criticizing that we have cut the National Weather Service, let us note that there has been an actual increase in funding. This represents full support for the Weather Service modernization program and allows for full funding for the installation and operation of the state-of-the-art Doppler radars. Title IV also authorizes completion of the computer software integration system known as AWIPS at a level the NOAA Administrator stated is sufficient to finish this pivotal component of the Weather Service modernization program. Title IV also provides level funding of both long-term climate research and seasonal interannual climate research. The Committee on Science has supported and will continue to support objective scientific research to improve our knowledge of weather phenomena such as El Nino. What we will not support are programs such as that in the EPA which assumes an apocalyptic global warming and then spend enormous sums on studies that will prove or disprove what the impact of this global warming will have on the planet. In title V of this bill, however, we do continue to support increased funding for research which supports the EPA's regulatory mission. Title V increases funding for research above the President's request for priority programs such as hazardous waste research, drinking water disinfection and air pollution caused by particulate matter. We stick to our balanced budget by eliminating corporate welfare programs such as the environmental technology initiative, research on indoor air which the EPA does not regulate, by the way, and climate programs which are legitimate climate programs rather than trendy scientific programs. Mr. Chairman, before my time is up I would just like to say a few things about the NASA title of this bill. I would like to commend the subcommittee chairman, the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Sensenbrenner] as well as my good friend, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Walker] for the excellent product they have done. Of course, one of my chief concerns in this area is that we fully utilize America's potential in the future in space by making sure that we do the development of the reusable launch system today that will be used tomorrow. I have two concerns about the reusable launch program; first, we have never made an experimental flight test in this program based on only one vehicle, and the reusable launch vehicle program does not have enough money for a second copy for the X-33, and I would hope that we could do that, but obviously we are dealing with scarce funds and we have to set priorities. So I am not happy with that, and I would like to see that corrected, but I recognize that we are operating on the budget where we are looking for a balanced budget in the end. Second, from time to time there have been bureaucratic attacks on the X-33 project basically because we are not doing things the way we used to do them. But the reusable launch vehicle program is so important to our future because it will do what is absolutely necessary if we are to have a space program in the future, and that is to bring down the cost of getting into space. Once we do that, then we can have all kinds of other programs in space and accomplish all kinds of other goals in space because we will have brought down the fundamental cost of getting into space in the first place. So I am very happy that we have supported the X-33 program, which is the reusable launch vehicle program, in this bill. I would hope it would be a little stronger, but we are operating in a balanced budget concept here. Mr. Chairman, H.R. 3322 is a fiscally sound bill, and I submit it is also a scientifically sound bill, and I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' for science and a balanced budget. We are not exempting ourselves on the Committee on Science from making tough decisions and setting priorities in order to make sure that future generations will have their own money to spend rather than having us spend all of their science and research money now.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

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

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, today I would like to begin my talk here with a question of why do we think that America is a great country. I would like people who are listening and the people who are perhaps reading this in the Congressional Record to ask themselves why they think that America is such a great country. Is it because we have a powerful military? No, that could not be the answer, could it, because there are a lot of great countries? There are a lot of countries in the world that have strong militaries, powerful militaries. Yet, they are not great countries. They are not countries that we would wish to identify with. Is it because we have a lot of big companies, a lot of industrial companies in the United States? No. They have a lot of big firms and big companies in other parts of the world that are pretty despicable parts of the world. In fact, there are big companies at different places in the world that no American would want to live? Perhaps it is because we have a beautiful flag, and we have the red, white, and blue, that is sitting behind the podium there. A beautiful flag does not make a great country, nor does a big military or a powerful military make a great country. Certainly one of the factors that make a society a great country is the fact that people have a certain degree of freedom, and that was one of the guiding principles that led to the formation of the United States 200 years ago, when our Founding Fathers struggled for liberty and for independence. But America is not just a free country. America is a prosperous country as well, but it is not just a prosperous country for a few people. It has a prosperity that has impacted on the lives of the common man and woman. Yes, in this country we have freedom. Everyone, every individual, has the right to vote, to speak, to pray; basically, to control his or her own destiny. These things are important to what is great about America. Even our poor people, however, which is another factor, live a decent life. In America, a working person, an average working person, if he or she is willing to work and to try and to live an honest life, they can live a decent life economically. This, too, is part of the American dream, because what we have in America, what essentially makes America great, is our freedom and the opportunity of our people, the opportunity to live in a certain degree of prosperity. And our people have, indeed, lived more abundant lives than anyone else in the history of the world. Here, wealth is abundant enough so that the average person lives a good life. Home ownership in this country is more widespread than in almost any society in the world. People own their own cars. Some of these things are considered miraculous in other parts of the world, where only a chosen elite, a very few people, get to participate in this, the blessings of America. In this country, our people select their own job, even. That is not the case in many other countries. 2145 In our country, what we see is even the most arduous physical labor is assisted by machines, and this is part of the history of our country. Many people say, well, the reason America has done so well is because our people work so hard and they have always been hardworking people. Well, that is not really true. There are hardworking people all over the world. Yet very few societies have prospered and have enjoyed the freedom that we have here in the United States. No, what we have done in the United States is ensure that our working people are assisted by machines and that the work that they do is multiplied, the product of their labor is multiplied by technology. Basically ours is a history of technology being brought to play to help save the backbreaking pain of our working people. I recently came across a story of one of the early patents in the United States. It is not really all that early of a patent. It was issued March 20 of 1883. It was a patent that was issued to Jan Matzeliger and two investors who had invested in his project. What was his project? What was his patent all about? It was a machine that revolutionized the manufacturing of shoes. Most people just take shoes for granted, but before this machine was invented, many people of the United States never wore shoes. In fact, the price of shoes was out of reach. Most people owned shoes, maybe one pair of shoes for their entire life. But within a few years of Mr. Matzeliger's invention being brought to play, the price of shoes in our country dropped by 50 percent. Ordinary people were able to afford shoes for their feet. We just take this for granted today. We also take for granted machines like Eli Whitney's reaper or the electric light bulb, or how about Robert Fulton's steam engine? By the way, Robert Fulton never invented the steam engine. If you look back at Robert Fulton, not only did he not invent the steam engine, he also was not the first one to ever put a steam engine onto a ship. Robert Fulton put a steam engine on a ship and they called him a great inventor. Well, the fact is that the Germans had put a steam engine on a ship long before, but it had never been brought to play in their economy because special interest groups in the German economy refused to permit that steam engine on that ship from being used because it would displace people from work. In the United States we saw it as a means of ending the terrible labor, the painful labor of pushing ships with sticks through the water. Our society welcomed technology and the German society did not. In fact, even the Germans were not the first ones to invent the steam engine. The steam engine was invented by the Greeks in ancient times. Maybe you will remember seeing a picture of a steam engine, an early steam engine which revolved like this over a fire. That was invented by the Greeks, but in the Greek marketplace, relieving the pressure of work and the burden of work on so many people like the steam engine would have done was not something that was thought to be a worthy goal. So the steam engines were passed up by the Greeks and by the German boatmen. But it was Robert Fulton that revolutionized the world and created steamboats which changed the world. Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, so many of our Founding Fathers were technologists because they believed in freedom and technology, they believed that technology would change the world just as democracy would change the world. In fact, creating a patent office was written into our Constitution. Can you imagine that? Over 200 years ago, our Founding Fathers wrote that there would be an office to patent new technologies and that was mandated in the basic law of the land, the Constitution. That is because our Founding Fathers saw ours as a society that would be unlike any other society ever in the history of mankind. They saw that America would be a land of liberty, where the rights of all would be protected, and they believed that prosperity would follow because it would be not just the prosperity of the few but the prosperity of the many. Well, how could that be possible? If they thought they were going to create a free society, how could they think that a free society and a free people could ever compete with slave labor? In fact, we had slave labor in a large portion of our country, so how could freedom work? Well, how freedom could work and compete, and how we could convince ourselves to get rid of the evil of slavery in the United States, was that free people can compete with slave labor. Free people can compete with repressed citizens of other parts of the world, as in China today, if the free people have the technology they need to do the job. The technology was the key to freedom and prosperity. They saw that. Interestingly enough, Mr. Matzeliger, whom I just mentioned, Jan Matzeliger, was a black American, and he invented a machine, as I said, that changed the life of all Americans. He invented a machine that made it possible for Americans to have decent lives because they were able to afford shoes. And at a time when the rights of other black Americans and all black Americans were actually being tread upon, were being attacked, his right as an American to own his patent was not abridged. His patent rights were protected, even though he was a black American and many of the rights of black Americans of those days were not being recognized and not being protected. That is how strongly the United States felt about technology and about our rights to own the technology that we develop, because it is so important for new technologies to be developed and for that incentive to be into the system. It was America's ingenuity as our Founding Fathers foresaw and as we can see ourselves in retrospect, it was America's ingenuity that has proven our most valuable asset. Well, in the middle of the last century, Americans were given a guaranteed patent term of 17 years. That patent by that great black American who invented this machine that provided shoes for all of us, once his patent was issued, he received a guarantee, he and his investors, that that patent would be recognized for 17 years and he would be able to benefit from it. Mr. Matzeliger had lived a life of deprivation before he invented that machine, and he lived a decent life after that in Philadelphia. He lived a life not of luxury, not of opulence but a decent life and he was a gentleman and recognized so by his community and he left a sizable estate to the church when he died, because he had been able to receive the benefits of his invention and this was thought to be so important for all Americans. This was a right. It was a right, a guaranteed right of 17 years to benefit from anything that you invented. It was a right just like any other economic right or just like any other political right or social right. This 17- year guaranteed patent term served us well for over a century. Americans, in fact, have had traditionally the strongest patent protection of any nation of the world. That is why we prospered. That is why the American people have lived well when huge numbers of people in other countries have been living in poverty and living lives of desperation. If we did not have a strong patent system, if we were not the ones developing the shoe machines, our people also would have lived in poverty, would have lived in repression. I am here tonight to warn the American people that the technology laws that have been so vital to our Nation's prosperity and to our standard of living, to the standard of living of all of our people, is being fundamentally changed, it is being changed in a way that they are not aware of and will have repercussions on their standard of living and it is happening as we speak. Patent rights enjoyed by Americans for over a century are being eliminated. The idea of a guaranteed patent term which has been the right of Americans is being eliminated. Americans will find that rights that they have taken for granted, prosperity that they have taken for granted, is changing, that something is being diminished and they just cannot figure out what it is that is happening to their country. Were we not always the leader in technology? What has happened? In the years ahead, Americans will never know what the change was because it is happening today very quietly. And it will have serious and sorrowful consequences upon the people, future generations of Americans and perhaps on this generation of young Americans. It started only a short time ago, right after Mr. Clinton was elected, he sent the head of our patent office, Bruce Lehman, to Japan. There Mr. Lehman signed an agreement, to, quote, harmonize our patent laws with those of Japan. Here you have an unelected official who agreed to change our laws in a way which dramatically diminished our rights, rights that had been Americans for over 100 years, a guaranteed patent term, a right to guaranteed patent term of 17 years. By the way, the Japanese did not have that, of course. That is why we had to change this patent term. We had to eliminate this guaranteed patent term that Americans had, because that is not what the Japanese system is like. The Japanese system is different. So the Agreement that Mr. Lehman signed was an agreement to harmonize our patent laws and instead of bringing their system up to our standard of protection for the individual, Mr. Lehman agreed to bring down the protection enjoyed by Americans to the much lower level of the Japanese. If you might remember, the Japanese are not well known for their many inventions. I remember reading about Admiral Perry landing in Japan. Admiral Perry landed in Japan and brought a little train with him. Do you remember that? He brought a little piece of American technology of the day and the Japanese proceeded to copy it, because the Japanese are known to copy but they are not know to invent. Where we have something like 100 Nobel laureates for scientific achievements, they have 5. That is because in Japan, the system they have established, their patent system, their system of dealing with ingenuity and new ideas was a system that was set up for the, quote, collective good, which, of course, means the big guys who run the system are running it for themselves and they run roughshod over the common people of Japan. That is what we have done. We have harmonized our system to be like that. Is that not wonderful? Does that not make everybody think that is it not a great thing now that we going to have a system like Japan's? Forget it. If we had harmonized our political rights with another country and brought the level of legal protection of our rights down, there would have been a revolt. What would have happened, for example, if we signed an agreement with Singapore saying, well, let us harmonize our laws here and what we are going to do is we will become more like Singapore and that means that we will have certain restrictions on freedom of religion and the press and rights to speak and that will make us like Singapore. Americans would never accept that. They would say, ``That's too important. You can't diminish our rights that way.'' However, what is happening right now very quietly is the diminishing of basically intellectual property rights, the guaranteed patent term, which will have a much more dramatic impact on the life of the American people than what I just described as a harmonization with Singapore. And what will happen is we will turn around and we will never know what hit us. This change is more insidious than anything I have ever seen during my 8 years in the House and during my 7 years before that in the White House, and during my 10 years before that in and out of journalism. The first blow of this underhanded maneuver to quote, harmonize our laws, that protect the patent rights of our people so they will be like Japan came 2 years ago when a seemingly innocuous change about patent term was snuck into the GATT implementation legislation. I say snuck, because there was nothing in GATT that required us to change the length of our patent term the way it was presented. What they did is put something into the GATT implementation legislation that was not required by GATT. Many American people do not understand and say, ``Well, what does that have to do with anything?'' What it has to do with it is the Members of this Congress voted for a thing called fast track. 2200 I voted for fast track. I voted for fast track because I believed that setting up a world trading system was important and that if part of what that would do is that would say that when the President came back to us with an agreement, with his international trading agreement, we would then just vote on that agreement and it would be all or nothing. We could not amend it. Thus it is called fast track. We could not amend and would have to vote up or down on the bill. But part of the agreement that we thought we had by giving the President fast track was that nothing would be put in the GATT implementation legislation on that vote that was not absolutely required by GATT. So in order to achieve this change in the patent law here, which was not required by GATT, they snuck it into the implementation legislation so that in order for us to defeat it, this body would have to vote against the entire world trading system. Well, does that sound like a Democratic maneuver? This was the most underhanded maneuver that I had ever seen, especially for a change that will have long-term implications for the well-being of our country. The change, as I say, seemed innocent enough. In fact, the change in the GATT implementation legislation sounded like it was expanding the length of our patent term. Traditionally, as I have said, when someone applies for a patent, no matter how long it takes them to get that patent, it will be 17 years of protection that they have to recoup their investment and to profit from their invention after the patent is issued. So after that patent is issued, they will have 17 years. That is what we have had for over a century. That is the incentive people have had to invest in new technologies. That is what incentive people have had, like this black gentleman who invented the shoemaking machine, who lived years in deprivation in order to invent the machine, because he knew he would benefit for 17 years of ownership after that machine was put on to the market and he was issued his patent. Well, they changed that. They changed. They eliminated that guaranteed patent term, and, in exchange, what do we have? We were given a patent term that is 20 years from filing. Now, does that sound like they are extending your patent term? Well, no; in fact, what is happening is that the 20-year-from-filing term means that once you have filed for your patent, 20 years later, no matter how long it takes you to be issued your patent, you have no patent rights left. So that means if it takes 10 to 15 years, as many breakthrough technologies have taken, a long time to get their patent issued, because sometimes in these modern technologies they are hard to understand; 20 years from filing means that if it takes them 15 years to get their patent issued, they have only got 5 years left of protection. Five years left of protection. That means that every inventor, then, like in Japan, is totally vulnerable to the bureaucracy and totally vulnerable to big interest groups that might try to interfere with the process; might try to stop the patent from being issued in one way or another. No, what we did in the GATT implementation legislation to the patent term was the most dramatic attack on patent rights, on fundamental right of Americans that I have seen in my lifetime. But because no one could understand it, it just slipped right on by. And as I say, I supported the fast track, and I never felt more betrayed than when I realized what had been put into that GATT implementation legislation when it was not even required by those negotiations. Well, when I began to complain about it, I was promised by the House leadership, by the Republican leadership of the House, that there would be a chance to correct this problem and that we would have a chance to vote on restoring the guaranteed patent term. That was the promise made to me. So I put together a piece of legislation, H.R. 359, that restores the guaranteed patent term, the right of a guaranteed patent term of 17 years to the American people. It has 202 cosponsors. That piece of legislation was bottled up in a subcommittee for almost a year and a half; not permitted to move to the floor for a vote. And it took a lot of hell raising on the part of a certain Member of Congress to make sure that system started to move, because during that year and a half an expensive public relations campaign was launched. Huge multinational corporations and foreign corporations, as well as giant American corporations, have moved into Washington, DC, and started an attack on H.R. 359. This bill, they say, is not in their interest. And many Members of this body have been, actually they have been contacted by huge companies saying, well, Congressman Rohrabacher does not know what he is talking about; this will be in our benefit. Well, what appears to have happened is that corporate America, giant corporate America, that has ties with multinational corporations and loyalties all over the world, and as we know those loyalties often do not extend to their own American people, they would sell out the jobs of American people in an instant in order to get a 10 percent higher profit margin by investing in a dictatorship like China, well these giant corporate American interests signed off on the idea of diminishing American patent rights. In exchange for what? In exchange for a promise that there would be an international system now which will recognize somewhat and somewhat enforce America's ownership of certain technologies and of patents. Sort of a recognition of patents. Well, what is happening now would be very equivalent of when Japan began signing agreements 20 years ago to open their markets to the United States; that if instead of waiting to see if Japan would actually open their markets, instead of just signing pieces of paper, that we went right ahead and gave economic concessions to the Japanese that changed America's ability to compete with Japan. It is absolute nonsense. And corporate America is not, is not, I repeat not, the best group in this country to decide what the rights, economic rights of our people should be. Not to say they do not do a good job, and oftentimes they are, yes, profitmaking companies of world scope, but, quite often they have absolutely no commitment to the freedom and ideals that our forefathers talked about. They are looking at the bottom line. In this particular case their bottom line is very, very shortsighted, and really, in the end, has diminished the rights of the American people in a way that will dramatically hurt our prosperity. Well, the second shoe during this year and a half when my bill was bottled up, the second shoe has fallen. A bill has been introduced, H.R. 3460, which finishes the harmonization, completes the harmonization that we, that our government, that this unelected official, Mr. Layman, has agreed to do, the harmonization of our patent laws. What does H.R. 3460 do? This bill is so transparent I do not understand how any Member of Congress could vote for it. I call it the Steal American Technologies Act. And I hope that Members of Congress are contacted by their constituents about this bill, 3460, the Steal American Technologies Act, because when they hear what this bill does, common sense will tell them what is going on; that we are in the process of seeing one of the greatest acts of thievery from the United States of America in the history of our country. This patent bill, this supposed patent bill, H.R. 3460, says this: that if our inventors apply for a patent, 18 months later, whether or not the patent has been issued to the applicant, all of the details of that patent application, every blueprint, every last piece of information, will be published for the world to see. Now, do you understand what I am saying? This law is an open invitation to the thieves of the world to steal American technology from American inventors even before our inventors have been issued their patent. This is the same mentality at the patent office, which recently led our patent office to give its entire database to the Red Chinese. And what was the excuse when we were asked, well, why did you do that? They said, well, then they will know what technology not to steal. This is beyond imagination, but it should be understandable to the common sense of the American people. I would hope that they know that in this Democratic process they can talk to their Congressmen, who will be voting on 3460 and voting on my bill as a substitute, H.R. 359, because common sense tells you that before you issue a patent to someone you do not disclose all of his secrets. Ironically, when this bill was going through the subcommittee, I was sitting in my office with a manufacturer of solar technology. And I asked him, and this is at the same moment that the subcommittee was passing H.R. 3460 out, I said what will happen if this bill actually goes into law and when you file for a patent after 18 months, whether you have been issued the patent or not, that it gets published for the whole world? And his face reddened and his fist balled up and he said, Congressman, if that happens, that means that my technology, that we have spent so much time to develop and our investors here in the United States have invested in, that means my competitors overseas, the Chinese and the Japanese, or anybody else, will be in production of my technology, making a profit from it, before I am issued my patent and before I can go into production. Which means, if I try to fight them later, they will be using the profits from my technology to defeat me and probably put me out of business. Talk about an outrage. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out what is going on here. American technology is being put in jeopardy. For what? To harmonize our laws with Japan. And in Japan, of course, when a young inventor invents something, or a poor inventor or a small businessman invents something, in Japan over these years, the big companies have run roughshod over those average people and stolen their wealth and stolen their technology, and they know not to raise their head up and to protest. By the way, there are other parts of this H.R. 3460, the Steal American Technologies Act. Know what the other parts are? They are not only going to attacks the rights of American citizens to a guaranteed patent term, they are not only going to take an inventor's rights away from him to have his invention secret until he is issued a patent, but they are going to change the system, the government system itself. They are going to take the patent office and they are going to, what they call corporatize it. Now, I am a conservative Republican. I am all in favor of privatization. Now, you would think, oh, here is an idea where you take something done by the government and take it over to the private sector. Well, I was Ronald Reagan's speech writer. I talked about privatization all the time. You would think I would be in favor of it. 2215 Well, it is just like the foolishness of changing the patent term to 20 years. That did not help us either. What it was was 20 years that ends up with 5 or 6 years of protection for breakthrough technologies. No, this type of corporatization they have in mind would take our patent office, which has been part of our Government since the founding of our Constitution and corporatize it. What does that mean? That means that the patent examiners, the men and women who make judicial decisions as to what our rights are to new properties of technology, they are defining what your property rights are for the new technologies that are being created. Those patent examiners are going to lose their civil service protection. So after all of these years, after 100 years of protection for our patent examiners, they will now be put in a situation where outside pressures will be brought on them because they do not have their civil service protection. This is an invitation to corruption. We have seen an invitation to steal our technology and now we see an invitation to corruption by opening our system up to pressures that it has never been opened up to before. In one fell swoop, our international competitors will have destroyed the edge that we had on the world, the edge that ensured that America would be not only a land of freedom, but a land of prosperity for the common person. This is not just happening on its own. There are powerful forces at work that are behind H.R. 3460, the Steal American Technology Act, and are trying to fundamentally change the patent system. Now, why is this? Why would they want to do that? They would want to do that because overseas they too understand that the development of new technology has been America's greatest leverage in our competition with the rest of the world. What made us competitive? what made our people be able to keep their jobs and have decent standards of living in the past was because we had machines that permitted us to do things that could not be done overseas cheaper with slave labor. And that is ever more true as we enter into a new age where technology is even more important. America is being neutered of the patent protection and the patent system that has kept our people free and prosperous, and future generations, maybe even our own children, will say, well, did we not always used to be the ones that came up with all the new ideas? Weren't we the ones that were ahead of the game because we were on the cutting edge of technology? But that will be a distant memory because we will have changed the fundamental laws that made that so with America, because our edge was not because we were of any particular race or religion or culture. It was because our laws developed around the spirit of individualism and creativity and freedom that were consistent with a prosperous society. And now we are, or at least our leaders are, trying to harmonize our laws with those of Japan. That is not the way that we are going to have a better life for our people. This is a desperate fight. Those who are opposing the Steal American Technologies Act, H.R. 3460, do not have the resources of these big corporations who see themselves as players in the international arena, rather than people who are concerned basically about the well-being of American people. We do not have the resources to fight them. H.R. 359, my bill that would restore the guaranteed patent term, we have got very few resources behind us. And even though we have had 202 cosponsors, we have not been able to move it through the system. I would hope that the American people know that democracy still flourishes here because they can get involved. It is not just the people in this body. It is not just Members of Congress who will make the decision. If people actually talk to their Congressman, if people actually go and ask their Congressman, Hey, how are you going to vote on this Steal American Technologies Act, H.R. 3460? They will find that their Congressman is also listening to them. And I would hope that we can prove that our democracy still functions and it is not just powerful interests in Washington, DC who want to harmonize our laws with Japan that can guide the future of our country. I have every faith in this country. With technology, we will continue to be the land of liberty that our fathers foresaw. We will continue to be that hope of the world, that shining city on the hill where even the average people live decent lives if they work hard and are honest. But this will not happen if in this new age of technology that we have changed the fundamental laws and protections that have assured American progress in the past. This is a desperate fight and it is a fight not that many Americans understand. Patent law seems such a boring subject. In fact, I cannot get on talk radio programs. People, ask you about this and they say patent law? Are you crazy? Patent law, it is a very difficult issue to understand because it takes longer than 10 seconds to describe it. But tonight I am telling you that we are in the midst of a battle that will make all the difference. If this scheme to harmonize our technology laws with those of Japan succeeds, our people will pay the consequences. Now, what is the excuse the other side uses? Obviously, people honestly disagree. Not everybody on the other side is for bringing America down. Most of the Congressmen on the other side of this issue have been told, well, the reason we have to change this law is because there is something called a submarine patent. That this is a big problem. What a submarine patent is that if somebody invents something and instead of trying to get their patent, like almost everybody wants to get their patent as soon as possible, 99 percent of all inventors are struggling, please give me my patent as soon as possible. They want their patent, but some, maybe a few, maybe 1 percent, I do not know, are trying to elongate this. They are actually playing the system so that the patent is not issued right away and so that when it is issued and they have that 17 years, it is actually a much longer period, maybe 20 years or maybe 25 years. This is a very small problem numerically. Only a very few people want this, because most inventors know that technological change is happening so quickly, they have to get the patent issued so quickly because otherwise they will lose out, because new technology will be developed. But we are told that this problem is so important. I would say that I believe this is a small problem and can be dealt with. I have told everyone in this debate, I will support any effort to deal with the submarine patent problem that does not eliminate the guaranteed patent term. And I have been willing to compromise for 1\1/2\ years on this, but yet it is funny. Those proponents of H.R. 3460 were never able to come back to me with what I asked. I said, anything except eliminating the guaranteed patent term we can put into a bill and then that will work on these people who are trying to elongate the process. I, in fact, even put something into my bill that said if someone is elongating the process and not trying to get their patent issued, that after 60 months it will be published whether or not the patent has been issued. And so, I said, okay, if someone is intentionally trying to get their patent so it is not issued, let us clamp down on that. But no one would ever come up with these suggestions. All they would suggest is we have got to eliminate the guaranteed patent term. That is all. That is all we can do. There is no other alternative but eliminate that guaranteed patent term. It is very similar to saying I have got a toe that really hurts me, and so what I am going to do is cut my foot off in order to make sure my toe does not hurt me anymore. And that is the answer I have been getting back. But some people, and many people in this body will never look at this issue with any depth because they are involved with many other issues. The issue we just heard about, the FDA, some Congressmen have spent enormous time and effort to try to get reforms in the FDA. They probably do not know about this patent issue, and they may accept the arguments of these big companies, these multinational corporations saying that in order to stop this submarine patent we have actually got to make this change or we have got to have a harmonization with Japan. Well, we need to make sure that the American people and the American workers speak up. It should be evident to everyone that we are not going to have a better system by eliminating the civil service protection of our patent examiners by opening that up to outside pressures and corruption. That is not going to help anything. We are not going to have a better system if our inventors do not have that guaranteed system because what will happen, if indeed their patents are held up as compared to past patents? For example, you know, we know that no matter how long it takes the bureaucracy to work in the past, they have had 17 years of protection. If they end up with 5 years of protection because it has been held up 15 years and there is only 5 years left, who is benefiting by that? Well, look very closely. That 5 years, instead of 17 years worth of protection, that 5 years is going to result in very few royalties as compared to the 17 years of protection. Those hundreds of millions of dollars of royalties, even billions of dollars of royalties that would have been coming to the United States now are going to be in the bank accounts of huge foreign corporations that will not have to pay the royalty, even if they do not steal American technology and they just pay for it via a royalty. So they, themselves, if they operate totally legally within the new system, will find that the wealth that should be coming here for our ideas and creativity will be staying right in those foreign bank accounts. This is not the way to make it better for the United States, and it certainly will not make it better if every time our people come up with a great new idea--I know some people who have developed a new system that will dramatically bring down the pollution coming out of automobile engines, dramatically reduce this. They have been frightened to death because they are afraid that before they can actually go in the market with their invention, that what will happen is the word will leak out and all over the world, people will be stealing their technology and what they have a right to receive the benefit from developing this, that they will lose the profit from their own invention and never be able to recoup it. Well, under the system that they are talking about, the Steal American Technology Act would say to my friends, You cannot file for a patent unless you are willing after 18 months to let everybody in the world know about every single detail of your invention. Is this going to spur innovation and creativity and wealth creation in the United States? Our people are going to pull back. Investors not going to invest in American technologies. That is not going to make things better. The shortening or eliminating the guaranteed patent term will hurt our major universities. One of the biggest supporters of my legislation, H.R. 359 are American universities, MIT, Harvard, all of these universities that have patents and know that they need a guaranteed patent term for them to have an asset. Also the small business community is dramatically behind H.R. 359, and opposed to the H.R. 3460, the Steal American Technologies Act. We have the little guy versus the big guy. That is what is going on in a very quiet but crucial struggle in Washington, DC, today. The little guy versus the big guy. I believe in the United States of America. I believe the little guy can still win. I believe the small inventor who comes up with a new idea has been the main spring of the progress and the prosperity that we have had in the United States of America. And I know that if the American people can understand what the essence of this issue is all about, that they will insist that their Congressman not support the Steal American Technologies Act, H.R. 3460, but instead, will demand that the guaranteed patent term that we have enjoyed as a right of Americans for over a century be restored to the American people. 2230 This, as I say, is a fight that probably will not even be noticed in the history books; especially if we win, it will not be noticed. People will never know about this fight if we win. The American standard of living and American competitiveness will be what it is. Mr. Speaker, this is something that people have learned to take for granted. We have taken it for granted that young people have great opportunities in their lives. We have taken for granted that they wear shoes, that there are shoe for everybody in our society. We take that for granted. That has not been the history of the rest of the world. If we harmonize our laws and we downgrade our rights so that they are the same as every other country in the world, America will not be America. So tonight, I hope that this battle will not be remembered because, if we win, people will just go right on and take this for granted. But if we lose, someday someone may read this Congressional Record and say this was a crucial turning point and no one ever noticed because the concept of patent law and intellectual property rights was just too esoteric for regular people to understand. This is at a time when we are going into a global marketplace, into a new era of technology, when as never before the standard of living of the American people will be tied to innovation and tied to creativity and tied to the new technologies of the coming age. Mr. Speaker, I hope that those future Americans will not have to look back in the Congressional Record and see this speech and say it is too bad they did not recognize what was going on and complaining about the system. Instead, I hope that they never read that because the freedom and progress that we have is taken for granted and will be the same freedom and progress 100 years from now and 20 years from now that it was when our forefathers, Benjamin Franklin, that great technologist, Thomas Jefferson, these great champions of human liberties, not just for Americans but for all people, when they founded our country 225 years ago.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, 4 years ago President Clinton kicked off his Presidential campaign. His theme was honesty in government, and the example he pontificated about was the S&L debacle that was then costing the taxpayers tens of billions of dollars. The conviction of President Clinton's cronies in Arkansas suggests that while candidate Clinton was making honesty the theme of his campaign, his own gang was engaged in looting a savings and loan institution in Little Rock. We have come to know, unfortunately, that our President, President Clinton, is a politician that has absolutely no shame.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

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

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan] for granting me this time from his 1-hour special order. There are several issues that I would like to speak about today. Perhaps there is one issue that I should begin with, because no one else seems to be speaking out, although I know that it is close to the hearts of both Republicans and Democrats here in the House of Representatives. When we have our disagreements here in the House, one thing that we learn is that although we disagree, we do have some fundamental agreements that keep us together as Americans and that bind us to all of the American people. That is, we do believe in democracy. We do believe in freedom of speech. We do believe in these fundamentals that were fought for by George Washington, whose picture is on our wall here in the Chamber of the House. We believe that we have a commitment to the world, a commitment to the world to stand for freedom because our forefathers were aided by people whose picture is also here on the wall in our Chamber, Lafayette, who came here to help us struggle for our freedom and independence over 200 years ago. Basically he did so because he wanted to express a solidarity with the people of the United States, knowing that we would be the champions of freedom. By our very nature, our country is composed of people who come here from all corners of the world, all parts of the world, every race, every religion, every ethnic group is represented here, and we live together in freedom and democracy. By that very nature, we owe the world something. That is the stay true to those principles of freedom and democracy that our forefathers proclaimed, not just the rights of Americans but the rights of all people. In the last 48 hours, there has been a vicious attack on the cause of democracy in the country of Burma. Burma is a country you do not hear much about. Most Americans in fact probably think that Burma, the only thing they relate to is BurmaShave, they think of BurmaShave. It must be some sort of shaving cream or something. In fact, Burma is a country with 48 million people in Southeast Asia. A country that now is suffering under the heel of one of the world's most vicious dictatorships. And over these last few years, many of us who have been active in the human rights movement have tried to work and do our best to see that perhaps Burma could evolve out of this dictatorship. The military dictatorship in Burma is called SLORC. It is a name that basically fits the regime because it sounds like it is right out of ``Star Wars,'' out of the monstrous regimes that the freedom fighters in the film series ``Star Wars,'' where the freedom fighters are fighting against the evil empire. This evil empire in Burma is repressing the people. But there is, you might say, a champion of freedom, a hero to the world who lives in Burma and has tried to bring democracy to that country. It is Aung San Suu Kyi. Aung San Suu Kyi was of course of Nobel prize winner 2 years ago. She has suffered 5 years of confinement. She was arrested by the SLORC regime. Then last year she was set free and many of us hoped that there would be lessening of the repression in Burma. But what has happened in the last 48 hours is that the military dictatorship in Burma, SLORC, has rounded up almost 200 members of the democratic opposition in Burma and arrested them. Anyone who is meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi, anyone who is involved in the democratic movement is being arrested. Dr. Sein Win, the Prime Minister of the democratic government in exile, testified in the Senate yesterday that the situation in Burma is one of despair and despotism. Today his brother, who is not even a member of the democratic movement, was arrested in retaliation for what Prime Minister Sein Win testified about here in Washington. So I have introduced a piece of legislation hopefully that will discourage Americans from doing business in Burma. It is H.R. 2892, and we would hope that the American people and American businessmen recognize that here is a country that if anywhere we should take a stand for freedom. If anywhere in the world we could take a stand and it will not hurt us and we just show that we believe in freedom, it could be Burma. And there is no excuse for us not to do so. There is no strategic interest there, there is no huge commercial interest, but what is there are 48 million people suffering under the heal of despotism, crying out to the United States for us to take a stand. Take your stand, America. What side are you on? When that cry goes out from people who are being oppressed, never should we say we are on the side of the dictators, we are on the side of the oppressors. This country, this dictatorship in Burma, has financed its war on its own people by selling off its teak forests, which have been decimated, by basically selling its natural resources, its gems, to foreigners who have come in and extracted it, and they put the money, the SLORC has put the money into their own pockets and into their own coffers, and now it is even willing to sell its natural gas resources to American companies. And where do these moneys go? They go into the purchase of weapon systems of military equipment and militarization of this country that is used to repress their own people. Furthermore, this monstrous regime that represses its own people in Burma has taken its resources also by becoming involved in the drug trade. Many people in our country wanted us to actually cooperate with the Government of Burma, with its dictatorship, thinking that we could together stand against drugs. Others of us believed, as I think has been reconfirmed, that the dictatorship in Burma is up to their necks in the drug trade. They have not refrained from becoming involved in growing opium and selling heroin because of some kind of morality. If they had any morality, they would not be murdering their own people, and that was brought home more recently when the drug lord Kung Saw, who was famous in the United States, or I should say infamous in the United States, he was put out of business by the Burmese military dictatorship, and what has happened? Kung Saw, he may have gone into retirement; of course he is not in jail, he is in retirement in Rangoon; but the drug trade and the drug production from his area, which is now under government control, continues at the level that it was. Aung San Suu Kyi, this heroine of freedom, this women who in our time shows an example to the world of what we should be like as Americans, champions of freedom, has asked us to put economic sanctions on this regime because it now has shown its true colors. It does not, the Burmese regime, the SLORC regime, does not want reform. It instead is seeking further repression and will grasp on to power until the last desperate time, what they have, is gone, until they are forced from power by pressure from the outside or by perhaps revolution from their own people. Unfortunately the SLORC regime is being bolstered by a military that is being supplied by Communist China. Communist China has sold Burma the weapons it needs to maintain a dictatorship. In fact, Burma, is becoming a client state of China. The Red Chinese regime is doing all it can to keep its buddies, its gangster buddies, in power in Rangoon. Congress will soon take up the issue, interestingly enough, of most- favored-nation status to China. This is an important piece of legislation. But let us make sure that, as we move forward when we are talking about Burma, that we can make a stand in Burma, and I, as I say, I have introduced H.R. 2892, and I ask my fellow colleagues to join me in basically outlawing any further American investment through supporting H.R. 2892 and opposing any further American investment in Burma. Now, we will make another choice very soon, too, which it comes to most-favored-nation status with China. When it comes to this decision, yes, there are a lot of other factors at play. There are many. China, Communist China, is a strategic country. There are a billion people in China. China has technologies. China has a huge army that can affect the United States. And also economically we are already in an economic relationship that in some way binds us to that country. But just today it was disclosed that Chinese officials themselves have been involved with smuggling fully automatic AK-47 rifles into the United States. These are people that have contacts in the Chinese army. These are not Chinese entrepreneurs, people doing this outside of their own government. These are government officials themselves. The Red Chinese regime is a rogue regime. It is oppressing its own people just like in Burma and every other dictatorship, but the regime also sells nuclear weapons technology to developing countries and arms dictatorships like Burma. It has a Nazi-like policy in dealing with orphans, in dealing with the disabled and dealing with the unborn. It is conducting an economic war against the United States. I mean the bottom line is American companies find it difficult to sell in China unless the Chinese regime permits them to sell their goods there, yet they take full advantage of our market in the United States. So they limit access to their market, and they end up stealing our intellectual property, as is becoming known now. These people are involved with grand theft of our intellectual property rights, our CD's, our entertainment items that are worth billions of dollars to the economy of southern California; they are being ripped off by companies that are owned by the People's Liberation Army, by government officials in China. They have, in fact, a $35 billion trade surplus with us that does not even count the rip-offs, and with this $35 billion in surplus, they buy weapons in order to upgrade their military, to threaten their neighbors, and bully their neighbors and to become a, quote, power in the world. Well, we have seen what that power means. What it means when you have a dictatorship spending money and upgrading its military, it means that it threatens its neighbors even more aggressively. In the Philippines they know what a better armed China means. They have recently had a little confrontation with the Chinese over the Spratley Islands, and what should have been a negotiated disagreement became almost an armed confrontation when a belligerent, hostile and a threatening Red China decided it would have its way, negotiations were not the order of the day. We also saw the results of this when just a month ago the Red Chinese regime sent its military into the Taiwan Strait in an attempt to intimidate the democratic government, the Republican of China, Taiwan, trying to intimidate them into not having a free election. What we saw were missiles being fired at a democratic people, people who were simply trying to have an election, in order to intimidate them and frighten them from their democratic rights. Well, what more, what more I ask you, does a country have to do before the United States says that they will not enjoy the trading status of most-favored-nation status with the United States? What more can a regime do? Do they have to open up gas ovens and begin murdering people exactly like the Nazis did during World War II? This is a regime, a monster regime, on the mainland of China, and this administration, the Clinton administration, has decoupled any consideration of human rights to the consideration of most-favored- nation status for that regime. It is a disgrace. Let us remember that President Clinton 4 years ago was attacking then sitting President Bush for granting most-favored-nation status to the mainland Chinese regime, and as soon as President Clinton became President, not only did he grant most-favored-nation status, but he has decoupled the consideration of most-favored-nation status from any discussion about human rights. It is the ultimate hypocrisy and has been one of the biggest and worst setbacks for the human rights community in the U.S. history, when the President, when President Clinton, not only reneged but did an absolutely turnabout in his belief in supporting human rights on mainland China. Well, who is it up to, then? It is up to us, the American people, to stand for our beliefs in freedom and democracy and to stand up, yes, for the interests of the United States, and what is happening with the most-favored-nation status debate here in Congress is that we find that those companies that are making a profit from their investment in China, a huge profit from their investment in China, have turned around and become lobbyists to us for this dictatorial regime. What we have found is not that what the theory was was that if we permit our people to invest in China they will become emissaries of democracy to that country, but they have instead become lobbyists for a dictatorship to the United States. Well, we are the ones who have to make the decision, not just based on what a very small group of companies are doing, making a profit by dealing with these terribly dictatorial regimes whose hands are dripping with blood. The fact is that when it comes to Burma, we have a right also to tell our people this is not the right thing to do, for your to do, to invest in that dictatorship. We also have a right and obligation to our own people to say we will not permit Chinese goods that are produced in slave labor camps and produced by the army, buy companies that are owned by the army, and produced by a regime that is trying to bolster its weapon systems to threaten its neighbors, we will not permit that country to come into our marketplace and with the same status of other free and democratic countries. I would hope that the American people insist that their representatives in the United States vote against most-favored-nation status for China. There is one other issue that will be coming forth very quickly and that we will find in front of this body within the next 2 weeks. It is an issue that relates to most-favored-nation status and relates to these dictatorships around the world because it is changing our patent system in a way that will permit those thieves, those dictatorships around the world, to steal American technology. Now, most of you probably have not heard anything about the proposed changes in our patent law. Most Americans would not even understand the proposed changes in our patent law. But there is an insidious attempt being made to make fundamental changes in the situation of our patent system, in the makeup of our patent system, so that it will be easier for foreign corporations to steal America's greatest asset, and that is the genius of our people. What will be coming forth before this body is a bill, H.R. 3460, which I call the Steal American Technologies Act. This act, believe it or not, will insist that from now on, if an American inventor applies for a patent in this country, after 18 months, whether or not that patent has been issued, that American inventor's application with all the details of the technology that he has developed will be published for the world to see. This is an invitation to the thieves of the world to steal our most precious asset, and that is the innovative and creative ideas of our inventors and our technology that we will use in the future to keep America competitive. This is absolutely the greatest threat that I see to America's future prosperity, yet so few people will understand what the vote is all about. But it does not take a genius, however, to understand that if we disclose the information of our inventors, even before their patents have been issued, that there will be a line at the Patent Office to get that information and to fax it immediately to the Chinese mainland, where they will set up manufacturing units based on those ideas and that technology even before our inventors are issued their own patent. Ironically, when H.R. 3460, the ``Steal American Technologies Act,'' was going through the subcommittee, and it has passed the subcommittee in this body and is heading for the floor, on the day that it was passed in the subcommittee I had a representative of an American company that represents many patents. It happens to be a solar energy company. He was there in my office, and we were discussing the patent law. I asked him what would happen if his patent applications had been published before he actually was issued the patent. His face turned white, and his fists came together, and he said, Congressman, if my patent applications are published before my patent is issued my foreign competitors will be actually manufacturing the things that I have invented before I can even go into manufacturing them. And do you know what they will do if I try to sue them later? They will use the profits from my own technology to fight me in court and wipe me out. Mr. Speaker, this is a great threat to American prosperity. Every American should contact their Member of Congress, their Senator, to defeat H.R. 3460, the steal American technologies act. But this is only one, just one swing at the American patent system. The American patent system has been under attack, but because it is so hard to understand, the American people cannot see what is going on. Another part of this very same bill would corporatize the Patent Office of the United States. People will say, Dana Rohrabacher is a conservative Republican. Does he not believe in privatization? I certainly do not believe we should take our court system and the court functions of government and privatize them. No, there are certain things government has to do. Those things deal with protecting our rights, protecting our freedom, especially defining the property rights we have in a free society. Part of this legislation would take the Patent Office and corporatize it and turn it into something like the Post Office. That may sound benign but, in effect, that would take patent examiners who today are making decisions, responsible decisions for what are the property rights dealing with new technology in our society, as to who owns those ideas and those new property rights that are being created, and those patent examiners by that process will be stripped of their civil service protection. They will be then put in jeopardy of many outside forces, and even inside forces that might want to influence their decision, forces that have been thwarted up until now because patent examiners know their job is to make the right decision, and they are protected from people making assaults on them or trying to influence them from the outside. Can anyone believe that stripping our patent examiners, the people who will define what is American technology in the future and who owns it, stripping them of their civil service protection, is not going to open the doorway to corruption, open the doorway to foreigners coming here trying to steal our technology, and cut off our people from the rights to control their own inventions? Does anyone believe that that will not happen? No one who looks at the issue believes that, but the fact is most of the Members of Congress will never have any way of seeing the details. They will be told some local company has decided that H.R. 3460, which I call the steal American technologies act, is a good thing because many American companies, what has happened, these big corporations, many of them who are now owned by multinational corporations and outside people, have big shares in those companies; but these big American corporations have decided that they are going to buy into global protection of America's intellectual property. What it is, basically they have decided that for a promise from other countries like Red China, like Japan, and like many other developing countries, a promise from those countries, oh, yes, we will protect our intellectual property rights if you will only conform your system to be like our system. The changes that are brought about by H.R. 3460 are basically aimed at what they call harmonizing our law with that of Japan. We will blink our eyes and in a very short time period, we will see the patent law in the United States totally changed so that it mirrors that which Japan has had over these last few decades. Mr. Speaker, it is very hard for people to understand what the significance of this is. Why is the gentleman from California, Dana Rohrabacher, down here on the floor talking about patent law, these little changes? So what if it is going to harmonize with Japan? Do we really want to walk around like ants, like the people of Japan? Do we want to be suppressed by the business interests, by the big boys that run roughshod over the people in Japan? How many new innovations and how much creativity has come out of Japan in these last 20 years? The people of Japan allow themselves, because they have a different culture, allow themselves to be dominated by big interest groups who control their society. That is not what America is all about. America is about the rights of the individual, the rights of the little guy, the rights of every person to have the same control over his destiny as those people who are more affluent, the rights of every person to direct the course of his Government. Other countries are not this way. But what we have here coming before this body is a stark choice: H.R. 3460, the steal American technologies act, versus a bill that I have put forward and tried to get to the floor of this body for 1\1/2\ years, H.R. 359. H.R. 359 would protect American inventors, and it would restore to American inventors the guaranteed patent right that they have to protect their invention or their idea for a guaranteed patent term of 17 years after they have been issued a patent. Most Americans do not understand, and I am sad to report to those people who are listening tonight that the guaranteed patent term that Americans enjoyed for over 130 years has already been taken away from them, and most Americans do not even know it. What happened is a year and a half ago, in the GATT implementation legislation, an item was snuck into this legislation that had nothing to do with the GATT agreement. It was not required by GATT but it was snuck in there, so that we as a body would have to vote against the entire world trading system, or we would have to vote for the world trading system. We would have to vote against the world trading system in order to get at that one provision. Most Members, of course, were not willing to cut us off from all of the trade regulations of the GATT negotiations. But it was an insult to this body that they had put this provision in in the first place. What did this small provision do, this one little item that they snuck in there? There was an innocuous change in the patent law. It said that the patents now in the United States will now be measured from 20 years from the time the inventor files for the patent. So, 20 years later he will no longer have any patent rights. It almost sounds like, hey, we are actually expanding the amount of time that a patent applicant has for the protection of his patent. But in reality what has happened, what we used to have is that if someone applies for a patent and it took 5 or 10 years for his patent application to be processed, he or she would have 17 years guaranteed patent protection time in order to make that investment back, in order to profit from that technology. But if we started at 20 years and it is over, if we started when the man applied for the patent and it is over in 20 years, if it takes 10 or 15 years for the patent to issue, that patent is almost worthless by the time it is issued. The fact is that three-quarters of the time has already been used up. In other words, the clock is ticking against the individual, rather than ticking against the bureaucracy. That was a dramatic change, to let us harmonize our system with Japan. Mr. Speaker, it seems innocuous, but in the end, it dramatically affects the production of technology in our society, and it also, interestingly enough, affects who receives the benefits of that technology, because if a foreign corporation then only has to pay 5 years' worth of royalties, rather than 17 years, where is that money going? That money that used to be going into the pockets of American inventors, because they had a guaranteed 17 years of patent protection, ends up staying right in the coffers of some big corporation in China or Japan or Korea, or even here in the United States. The little guy ends up losing dramatically. The big guys end up being able to steal legally. They have changed the rules of the game. My bill, H.R. 359, which will serve as a substitute for H.R. 3460, will return the patent rights that the American people lost by the GATT implementation legislation. So we will face a battle in the upcoming weeks between H.R. 3460, which is, as I say, I call it the steal American technologies act, versus my bill, H.R. 359. I believe this issue deserves to be debated, because it has an impact not only on the people of the United States, but elsewhere. We should not permit countries like Red China to steal American technology and legally do so because we are disclosing our very utmost secrets to them by passing such foolish legislation. When it comes to most-favored- nation status, when there is a dictatorship like Red China or Burma, we should not treat them as any other free Nation. Mr. Speaker, I do believe in free trade. I believe that commerce between free people is to the benefit of all free people. But let us as a country stand not for trade with dictators, but instead, let us stand for free trade between free people.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise as a reluctant supporter of the rule before us today because the bill, H.R. 3448, repeals a part of Ronald Reagan's legacy, a tax provisions that encourages the creation of employee owned companies where the employees own a majority of the stock in the company. Employee ownership, I call it workers capitalism, because it turns laborers into employee owners and gives them a stake in the American dream. We are talking about the opportunity of working Americans to share in the profit and success of their company and an opportunity they do not have as hourly wage earners. Employee ownership is a Republican idea. It is a Democrat idea. It is as American an idea as homesteading and homeownership. Years ago President Ronald Reagan teamed up with Democrat Senator Russell Long to craft laws promoting employee ownership. They set aside their partisanship to work together because employee ownership is a great idea. Now we are dismantling part of that great idea. H.R. 3448 repeals the section 133 ESOP lender interest exclusion. This rule denies us the opportunity to change this unfortunate decision to diminish the incentives for employee ownership in our society. I would like to remind my Republican colleagues that we are losing something we fought so desperately to keep only a few years ago. Chairman Rostenkowski proposed with doing away with the ESOP lender interest exclusion in 1989. It was Speaker Gingrich, the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Armey, the gentleman from Texas, Mr. DeLay, and myself and other members of the conservative opportunity society who pounded our fists on the table and said, no. You do not dare, because this is not corporate welfare. It is not pork. It is an incentive to help working people capture a piece of the American dream. It is ironic and more than a little frustrating that a Republican Congress is now voting to repeal an employee ownership provision that we fought so hard to protect only a few years ago. I urge my colleagues on the Committee on Ways and Means to take this issue to heart and rally to the cause of employee ownership. The ESOP community would like to extend the benefits of employee ownership to sub S corporations, for instance. There are more than a dozen sub S provisions in H.R. 3448, but no employee ownership provision. This bill has an estate tax provision but no provision to help smallest States transfer stock to ESOP's. Hopefully the next tax bill will contain such provisions. We should be expanding the opportunities for employee ownership, not eliminating them as this rule and this bill would do. I have a dilemma. H.R. 3448 also contains many small business tax provisions that I support. So I will cast my vote in favor of this rule with reluctance but hope that in the future the Republicans and Democrats can work together to expand the very basic fundamental dream of America, and that is for all Americans to have the opportunity to own their own home and, yes, own part of their own business.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, is the gentleman questioning the motives of his colleagues?

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, the ban means wasting the time and limited resources of our police and courts. The police will spend their time disarming potential victims instead of going after youth gangs who are terrorizing our inner cities. This mentality of the ban would send the authorities after religious eccentrics down in Waco. Let us focus on the criminal. Let us not waste the time and resources of our police on disarming innocent people who just want to defend themselves but have never committed a crime. That is the mentality that burned those people out in Waco, and that is what my colleagues are fostering today.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, who has the right to close?

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, my amendment will close an immigration loophole opened 2 years ago by a rider to the fiscal year 1995 Commerce-State-Justice appropriations bill. This loophole, which was put into the bill by Senator Kennedy, rewards many illegal aliens who are in the United States illegally. Let me repeat that. This only deals with people who are in the United States illegally by allowing them to apply for permanent resident status and remain here while their applications are pending. That was the loophole that was put into that bill by Senator Kennedy. While waiting for their applications to be adjudicated, these illegal aliens are considered PRUCOL, Persons Residing Under Color of Law. Those individuals that we are talking about are here illegally, but they are then eligible for several taxpayer-funded government benefits. This loophole also has serious repercussions for the security of our Nation. Under the Kennedy loophole, certain people who sneak across our border or illegally overstay their visas can apply for permanent resident status at the local INS office. That is right, right here in the United States, in their local communities, at the local INS office. Even these aliens who have flagrantly violated our immigration laws are now able to avoid an examination by the State Department officials in their home countries because they are applying to the INS here locally. In their home countries may be, however, the only place where information such as criminal records or terrorist activities can be found. Thus, the INS does not have the availability of that information when looking at this request, but the State Department would have had that information. Allowing these lawbreakers to apply for permanent status in the United States, rather than having to return to their home countries to do so, circumvents a screening process that has been carefully established to protect our country's security. If the records are in their native countries, how can the INS employees whose job it is to look at this request thoroughly investigate the backgrounds of these illegal aliens? Last year I asked the General Accounting Office to investigate the impact of this new law. During the first 5 months this loophole was in effect, nearly 80,000 illegal aliens used it to stay in the United States. INS officials anticipated that that number would double by the end of 1995. This means that possibly as many as 160,000 illegal aliens now have access to public assistance benefits who otherwise would not have had access had this loophole not been snuck into the law. We must stretch even further our overstrained welfare system to cover these people who broke our law to come here in the first place. This new provision of law is an absolute travesty. To reward those who have consciously violated our immigration law is an insult not only to the citizens of this country but to those persons in foreign countries who have obeyed our laws and are now waiting in line for their turn. I hope Members will join the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Smith] and myself in supporting this amendment to close this loophole which rewards people who have flagrantly violated our laws, people who are here illegally, and also puts our country at a security risk. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, Karenni freedom fighters are in battle today against the hired thugs of the Burma Army. Heavily outnumbered and outgunned, the Karenni are fighting to defend their homes along the Thai-Burma border from the inhuman onslaught of the SLORC regime. The SLORC regime is using air attacks and heavy artillery against the Karenni, a peace-loving Christian nation, who defend themselves with a few rifles. Last year, thousands of SLORC troops attacked the Karen in neighboring territory. Then, the SLORC used brutal methods to systematically terrorize thousands of innocent hilltribe families. That tragic scene is now being replayed in the Karenni State. Over 6,000 SLORC troops are relentlessly attacking less than 1,000 Karenni farmers, fisherman, and schoolteachers. These men and women are desperately fighting an honorable battle to defend their families, heritage, and identity. Although they may think that they are in the jungle alone, our spirit is with them. The heroes in the wilderness should know that we condemn the SLORC regime for its brutal aggression, and that we support their noble struggle for freedom and democracy. In the past, the SLORC regime has justified aggression against the Karenni as a necessary first step before it could control the activities of Khun Sa, the infamous drug thug. Now, the SLORC regime has allowed Khun Sa to retire in luxury, while the aggression continues. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the SLORC regime was lying. Their entire system is based on lies. I intend to visit the Karenni during the upcoming Easter break. Until then, I wish them success against their evil oppressors. Freedom loving people in the United States are on their side, and we will remember them in our prayers. Because they are striving for democracy and justice, they should know, that their victory is our victory.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, we are talking about the United States, the people of the United States, spending $2 billion to educate illegal aliens just in California, $634 million just in New York, $424 million in Florida, and $419 million in Texas. We are talking about $70 million worth of Pell grants being given to illegal alien children. Whose children do we care about? Why are we here? Who are we representing? We are supposed to care about the people of the United States of America. All of these children are wonderful children who have been brought here by illegal aliens. We care about them. But we have to care about our own kids first. That is what this debate is all about. That is why we could never get through any illegal immigration legislation when the Democrats were in control of this body. We care about our children first, and we have no apologies about it. If we keep educating everybody in the world who can sneak across our border and bring their families, anybody who cares about their children throughout the entire planet will do everything they can possibly do to get their kids into our country, and who can blame them? Mr. Chairman, they are wonderful people, they care about their children. We cannot afford to spend all of these billions of dollars, when our own education system is going broke, on educating the children of other people who are not citizens of the United States and have come here illegally. It makes no sense. This amendment that the gentleman from California [Mr. Gallegly] is offering, is a salvation to Americans who want their kids educated, and know that their local communities are lacking the dollars to do so. What makes sense; to keep subsidizing this education of illegal alien children and having more and more and more children come from all over the world? That makes no sense at all. Let us protect the people of the United States of America. Let us protect our own families and our own children. Let us educate those kids. Let us not spend all of our money on illegal aliens' children and then attract more and more here until our system totally breaks down. Mr. Chairman, I support the amendment offered by the gentleman from California [Mr. Gallegly] wholeheartedly.