Louise Slaughter

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Let me take my remaining time, then, to close. Mr. Speaker, let me end as I began, deploring the process. This is the third legislature that I have served in. I am always proud to have been elected by people to represent them and their interests. We cannot take care of their interests any more, Mr. Speaker. We can only stand here in the middle of the night, when obviously I am beginning to think that is the plot, because we know that nobody is going to be listening to this, not even those who love us most. But a lot of harm is going to be done here. Not the least of it is the fact that the process was so flawed that even after the conference report was signed, 45 more pages were added to do harm. I deplore that. I look for better days for the Congress of the United States for it to get back to the rules, and that once again, Mr. Jefferson's Manual, and not a Senate and House conference, will rule this House. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time. May I inquire how many requests my colleague has?

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the minority whip, to make a good point.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I recall the last time ANWR was debated that major oil companies said they had no interest in ANWR and it was purely speculative whether there is oil there or not. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich) for a unanimous consent request. (Mr. KUCINICH asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Let me take just a second to say I agree with Mr. Burton, and also it does not just include vaccine. It is some other medical devices as well that are indemnified. Mr. Speaker, I yield for a unanimous consent request to the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller). (Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee). (Mr. INSLEE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I want to do something I have never done before and that is talk about the process in the Rules Committee. I listened to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), and I really am astonished at the deterioration of process in this House. I want it strictly on the record for this debate today that those of us in the Rules Committee, the four Democrats, all voted to expunge from this bill the matter of the 45 pages of liability added after the conference was over. I realize that we waive everything in Rules, but I did not think that all the rules of the House back to Jefferson's Manual had just been waived. We are very distressed about it. The process has been awful. We have been here for 2 days doing suspensions, for heaven's sake. What we are doing here, this is so critical, and I can guarantee every Member here that you are going to spend your whole time home in January and I understand we are working 6 days in February, so we are going to be around the district a lot, you are going to be explaining what was in this bill and why you did not know it and why you did not do something about it. In doing so, I have to say that probably two of the the nicest people in the House of Representatives, Chairman Young and Chairman Lewis, I think have their names attached to this. I feel badly for them as well. This bill determines how we as a Nation will spend our resources, at home and abroad, and in order to do the best to protect our fellow Americans, our shared values and our common interests. And in doing so, people around the world will rightly view this legislation as a testament to the values our Nation has chosen to embrace and promote, how we have chosen to define ourselves at this critical moment in history. Our international credibility and the moral weight of our words continues to be damaged by every new allegation of detainee mistreatment at the hands of our forces and our government. With every new revelation of secret detention facilities operating beyond public scrutiny, we take a perilous step toward that which we wish to defeat. Stories of undisclosed domestic spying and wiretaps approved by this White House and carried out by our top law enforcement agencies, without congressional knowledge or judicial review, force citizens, here and abroad, to question this Nation's commitment to its own ideals. How determined are we to create an open world ruled by clear and established laws if we are abandoning them at home? The creation of clandestine CIA facilities beyond the oversight of Congress and the world community, the troubling misuse of American power, undermining the goodwill born of the sincerest efforts of our fighting men and women, that is not the work of my America. My America won two world wars and faced down fascism without resorting to torture. My America survived those troubling times without abandoning the civil and personal liberties which made us different and made our way of life so worth fighting for. My America practices what it preaches. I applaud the fact that Senator McCain's torture amendment has been added to this appropriations bill. Mr. McCain understands that torture is not just morally reprehensible. It also gives us bad intelligence, undermines our credibility and endangers our troops by providing their enemies with an excuse to mistreat them if they are captured. I am relieved that most of my fellow Members in this House see the wisdom in Senator McCain's words. At the same time, there have been reports suggesting that the Army Field Manual, enshrined by Mr. McCain, is being quietly amended in a way which threatens to undermine his efforts. If this is true, this Congress must vigilantly monitor what is added to the list of acceptable interrogation procedures given to our troops, and we must further guarantee that our Nation continues to exemplify the kind of society we hope to encourage. Today, we fund continued operation of the defense community and all those who are part of it. We do so gladly because we believe, as we always have, that ours is the way of life that should not perish. But to change the values of our society at the moment we are fighting to preserve them at home and champion them abroad would not just be the height of irony, Mr. Speaker, it would be the height of tragedy. We have many questions to answer about how the United States will define itself in the years ahead and how we will interact with the world. I hope that we will use the upcoming holiday to reflect on what kind of America we in Congress wish to create for future generations. I hope we take that question seriously in the second half of this session. I have faith in this body just as I have faith in this Nation that we possess the wisdom to do what is right and the courage to right what is wrong if only we will use it. The very nature of our democracy depends on it. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. (Ms. SLAUGHTER asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, due to a technical error my vote was not recorded for rollcall 618. I should have been recorded as voting ``yes.'' Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that my statement appear in the permanent Record immediately following this vote. H.R. 4440, on Motion to Suspend the Rules and Pass, rollcall No. 618, ``yes.''

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Baird).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, just 2 weeks ago, the majority forced a budget vote by two votes to cut $50 billion from education, from health care, from foster care, child support, and a host of other vital programs. They claimed that they were simply eliminating waste and promoting fiscal responsibility and, most importantly, curbing our national debt. But today, they want us to agree to a tax cut for $56 billion. If we take away the $50 billion in the budget tax cuts, but we add $56 billion in tax giveaways, we end up with more debt, not less. In fact, we end up adding $6 billion to the largest deficit in our country's history, the one created by this Republican Congress. Now, if reducing the deficit is not a priority, what has made the majority's agenda? How we control the purse strings in our hands reveals who we work for. Of the proposed $56 billion in cuts, 50 percent, that is, $28 billion, will go to the superrich, those among us who need it the least. This bill is for them, the men and women among us who earn more than $1 million a year, a mere fraction of 1 percent of Americans. At the same time, the middle class will continue to be squeezed, while workers who make $40,000 or less, in other words, those who need help the most, will receive 1 percent of today's cuts. That is what this is about. Does the Republican Party really think the American people do not see what is going on here? What this bill shows us today is that Republicans care about entrenching privilege, the work of a corrupt and inefficient government, all while talking about tough choices and cutting government waste; but their rhetoric does not add up. If they were serious about making government work better, they would fulfill their responsibility to conduct proper congressional oversight and ensure that the money we do spend is spent efficiently. They would look for the $9 billion misplaced during Iraq reconstruction, and we have tried time and time again to have amendments approved that would do just that. Now, the loss of $9 billion in Iraq is what I call government waste, but there is not a court in this country which could find Republicans guilty of enforcing accountability in government. There would not be the evidence to convict them. Instead, they cut social services for the needy and send the savings to the rich. Have tax cuts for the rich become the sole agenda of the majority party? Sadly, in the face of numerous challenges from both abroad and home, this increasingly seems to be the case. Their solution to rehabilitating the lives of those devastated by natural disasters? Cut taxes for the rich. Their solution to curbing an out-of-control national debt? Cut taxes for the rich. My friends on the other side of the aisle talk about the agenda of reform, but they have controlled the Congress for over 10 years, and now they are the status quo. As much as they may want to say they are the solution, we know that they have become the problem. If they were committed to solutions, they would not funnel money to the rich while they leave the working middle class to fend for themselves, all while cutting education and health care programs and adding billions to the massive debt that is crushing this Nation. Let me point out that the 400,000 persons who lost their food stamps in the budget cuts and over 300,000 children who lost their breakfast programs, that money is being used today to finance these tax cuts. The pursuit of such an agenda violates the trust our constituents have invested in their elected representatives, and it is an abdication of the most fundamental responsibilities of this Congress. America can be better than this. We can do better than selling out the vast majority of our citizens so that Congress can give another tax cut to a tiny minority. We can do better than increasing our staggering national debt and calling it fiscal responsibility. This leadership has forgotten what made America great. It has forgotten what made the 20th century the American century, which was investment in the middle class, investment in society, investment in education, investment in opportunity, investment in the future, not investment in the rich. It is time for a new direction. Together, America can do better than what this leadership is proposing here today. I urge my colleagues to defeat this bill and defeat this rule. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. (Ms. SLAUGHTER asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Baird) to explain AMT.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I have one remaining speaker. May I inquire if my colleague is about ready to close?

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. As it happens, I have extra time, and I yielded to Mr. Rangel to respond to your comments.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. I would like to urge a ``no'' vote on the rule, a ``no'' vote on the bill, and say to every Member of the House of Representatives if they want the AMT fix protected, the only way in the world they can do it today is to vote for the Democrat substitute. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.