Chris Smith

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, the world community has known of the Ebola Virus Disease, more commonly called just Ebola, since it first appeared in a remote region near the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1976. In previous outbreaks, Ebola had been confined to remote areas in which there was little contact outside the villages or areas in which it appear. Unfortunately, this outbreak, now an epidemic, spread from a village to an international center for regional trade and spread into urban areas in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone that are crowded with limited medical services and limited resident trust of government. The unprecedented west African Ebola epidemic has not only killed more than 5,000 people, with more than 14,000 others known to be infected. This situation has skewed the planning for how to deal with this outbreak. In our two previous hearings on the Ebola epidemic, on August 7th and September 17th, we heard about the worsening rates of infection and challenges in responding to this from government agencies such as USAID and CDC and NGOs operating on the ground such as Samaritan's Purse and SIM. The hearing I held yesterday was intended to take testimony from non-governmental organizations providing services on the ground currently in the affected countries, especially Liberia, so we can better determine how proposed actions are being implemented. In its early stages, Ebola manifests the same symptoms as less immediately deadly diseases, such as malaria, which means initial health care workers have been unprepared for the deadly nature of the disease they have been asked to treat. This meant that too many health care workers--national and international--have been at risk in treating patients who themselves may not know they have Ebola. Hundreds of health care workers have been infected and many have died, including some of the top medical personnel in the three affected countries. What we found quite quickly was that the health care systems in these countries, despite heavy investment by the United States and other donors, are quite weak. As it happens, these are three countries either coming out of very divisive civil conflict or experiencing serious political divisions. Consequently, citizens have not been widely prepared to accept recommendations from their governments. For quite some time, many people in all three countries would not accept that the Ebola epidemic was real. Even now, it is believed that despite the prevalence of burial teams throughout Liberia, for example, some families are reluctant to identify their suffering and dead loved ones for safe burials, which places family members and their neighbors at heightened risk of contracting this often fatal disease when patients are most contagious. The porous borders of these three countries have allowed people to cross between countries at will. This may facilitate commerce, but it also allows for diseases to be transmitted regionally. As a result, the prevalence of Ebola in these three countries has ebbed and flowed with the migration of people from one country to another. Liberia remains the hardest hit of the three countries, with more than 6,500 Ebola cases officially recorded. The number of infected and dead from Ebola could be as much as three times higher than the official figure due to underreporting. Organizations operating on the ground have told us over the past few months that despite the increasing reach of international and national efforts to contact those infected with Ebola, there remain many remote areas where it is still difficult to find residents or gain sufficient trust to obtain their cooperation. Consequently, the ebb and flow in infections continues. Even when it looks like the battle is being won in one place, it increases in a neighboring country and then reignites in the areas that looked to be successes. The United States is focusing on Liberia, the United Kingdom is focusing on Sierra Leone, and France and the European Union are supposed to focus on Guinea. In both Sierra Leone and Guinea, the anti- Ebola efforts are behind the pace of those in Liberia. This epidemic must brought under control in all three if our efforts are to be successful. Last week, I, along with Representatives Karen Bass and Mark Meadows of the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations, introduced H.R. 5710, the Ebola Emergency Response Act. This bill lays out the steps needed for the U.S. government to effectively help fight the west African Ebola epidemic, especially in Liberia--the worst-hit of the three affected countries. This includes recruiting and training health care personnel, establishing fully functional treatment centers, conducting education campaigns among populations in affected countries and developing diagnostics, treatments and vaccines. H.R. 5710 confirms U.S. policy in the anti-Ebola fight and provides necessary authorities for the Administration to continue or expand anticipated actions in this regard. The bill encourages U.S. collaboration with other donors to mitigate the risk of economic collapse and civil unrest in the three affected countries. Furthermore, this legislation authorizes funding of the International Disaster Assistance account at the higher FY2014 level to effectively support these anti-Ebola efforts.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, just over two weeks ago marked the second anniversary of Superstorm Sandy's landfall in New Jersey. I toured several areas hit hardest by the storm, meeting with residents and local officials who have been working at the ground level throughout the recovery. Their resiliency is ever-present, and much progress has been made. It remains clear however that as residents and businesses continue to rebuild, the federal government can do more to ensure a full recovery by incentivizing continued investment in the hard-hit communities. Many will never forget the iconic images following the storm of Casino Pier's Jet Star roller coaster standing in the Atlantic Ocean off the shore of Seaside Heights, NJ. Businesses such as Casino Pier would eventually receive insurance payments for their lost or damaged property, a transaction known as an ``involuntary conversion'' under the U.S. tax code. Once the involuntary conversion occurs, businesses have a two-year replacement period, after which time any gain may be recognized and subject to taxation. With amusement rides and other costly business assets, full replacement can be impossible within the two-year period. Accordingly, following past disasters--including Hurricane Katrina, the 2007 Kansas storms, and 2008 Midwest storms, floods, and tornadoes--Congress has extended the replacement period to five years, giving businesses the time they need to reinvest the money in the community. The Sandy Reinvestment Extension Act of 2014 would provide the same extension to those affected in the Sandy disaster area, and would apply only where the replacement property is of substantial use in the same area-- ensuring reinvestment in the affected communities. This legislation complements bills I have cosponsored--the Hurricane Sandy Tax Relief Act (H.R. 2137) and the Mortgage Forgiveness Tax Relief Act (H.R. 2994)--that together provide critical tax relief for homeowners and businesses still struggling to recover from Sandy. As we have learned from many previous natural disasters, recoveries take time, and victims are burdened long after the storm has passed. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to consider the Sandy Reinvestment Extension Act of 2014 and other critical tax relief legislation that will provide homeowners and businesses in the Sandy-impacted region with the assistance and tools needed for a full recovery.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, this week we mark the 20th anniversary of enactment of the Violence Against Women Act, which was signed on September 20, 1994. I supported and continue to strongly support this law. I voted to create the programs in 1994 and helped ensure enactment of the first reauthorization in 2000 by attaching it to my anti-trafficking law--the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Prevention Act (PL 106-386/TVPA). I also cosponsored the 2005 reauthorization, fought to ensure these programs are fully funded to assist the maximum number of victims and voted for seven of the first seven VAWA reauthorization bills offered through 2012. All of these efforts have helped draw national attention to the epidemic of domestic violence and invested significant resources to prevent domestic violence, assist the women and children who fall victim to it, and improve our justice system's response. Millions of victims have been helped by VAWA, but more remains to be done. The release of a video last week of then-Baltimore Ravens runningback Ray Rice assaulting his now wife in an elevator in Atlantic City horrified us all. I, like most Americans, was shocked and disgusted by the unacceptable brutality and violence captured on the video. But regrettably, the violence exposed does not represent a rare, isolated incident but rather an exploitation that remains all too prevalent in our modern day society. VAWA is one component of a solution, but we must work harder and have a more robust national conversation on the culture of violence in America and how we can better protect vulnerable women and children. Of course, acts of violence against women and children are not a uniquely American problem. Around the world, women and children are abused and assaulted, and in many places, unable to receive any form of assistance or hold perpetrators to account. In conflict zones rape is used as a weapon of war and intimidation. Modern day slavery continues as traffickers sell women as commodities. Gendercide, where babies are aborted based exclusively on their sex, is common-place in many cultures, particularly in China. Again, Mr. Speaker, we can, and must, do better. In 2000, when VAWA was up for renewal and there was a concern that it may not pass, I helped secure its enactment by attaching the reauthorization bill in it entirety to my landmark TVPA. The TVPA was a significant breakthrough--for the first time we put significant U.S. resources and the real force of law towards the prosecution of those who sexually exploit and traffic women and children and significant resources towards shelters and treatment for women abused both here in the U.S. and around the world. Simultaneously we reauthorized the VAWA programs; enacted ``Aimee's Law'' under which any state that prematurely releases violent criminals will be forced to reimburse another state if the criminal repeats the crime; and expanded the scope of Megan's Law so that it covered college campuses. The version of VAWA that was signed into law last year reauthorized some of these antihuman trafficking programs but unfortunately gutted the State Department's Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Office. As I stated at the time, these provisions: ``represents a significant retreat in the struggle to end human trafficking.'' The TIP Office is an extraordinary advocacy mechanism and has had a huge impact worldwide. In addition to `best practices' advocacy, the office monitors labor and sex trafficking in every country of the world pursuant to minimum standards prescribed in the TVPA and makes recommendations for whether or not countries should be ranked Tier I, Tier II Watch List or Tier III. Countries with bad records and who fail to make `serious and sustained' efforts to improve are designated Tier 3--the worst ranking--which may result in sanctions. For over a decade the TIP Office has been the flagship in our struggle to combat the violence of human trafficking, and demoting our anti-trafficking efforts, as PL 113-4 did, was wrong and must be addressed. On behalf of the women and children who fall victim to the soulless traffickers every year, we need to ensure these efforts remain a top priority. Accordingly, I authored, and the House passed the Human Trafficking Prioritization Act (H.R. 2283) to raise the profile and influence of the TIP Office by making it a bureau within the State Department. My bill is pending in the Senate. Mr. Speaker, the House has also passed my first of its kind anti-sex tourism bill this year, my International Megan's Law to Prevent Demand for Sex Trafficking (H.R. 4573)--as part of a phenomenal package of legislation that builds on our efforts to end the exploitation of and violence against women and children. H.R. 4573 will combat child sex tourism by alerting countries of destination concerning the travel plans of convicted U.S. pedophiles. And to protect American children, the bill encourages the President to use bilateral agreements and assistance to establish reciprocal notification so that we will know when convicted child-sex offenders are planning to come to the U.S. The legislation is named for Megan Kanka, a 7-year-old from Hamilton, NJ, who was kidnapped, raped, and brutally murdered in 1994. Megan's assailant was a convicted, repeat sex offender living across the street, unbeknownst to residents in the neighborhood. Due to public outcry in response to the tragedy and to the hard work by Megan's loving parents, Richard and Maureen Kanka, the New Jersey State Legislature passed the original Megan's Law to require public notification of convicted sex offenders living in the community. Today, all 50 States and all the territories have a ``Megan's Law'', an important tool in preventing more children from becoming victims. My International Megan's Law takes the lessons we have learned on how to protect our children from known child sex predators within our borders and expands those protections globally. The Senate, thus far, has yet to act on these important bills--as well as the many other anti-trafficking measures we've passed. The Majority Leader has an opportunity right now to send a strong message. On the anniversary of VAWA and as we approach Domestic Violence Awareness month, I call on Majority Leader Reid to bring these bills to the floor. As the nation is focused on the NFL's response to the horrific abuse perpetrated by a few of its players, Harry Reid can set an example of how organizations can act, deliberately and aggressively, to end the culture of violence that harms women and children.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, yesterday, I convened a second hearing in just five weeks on the Ebola crisis in West Africa to underscore just how serious a crisis we are facing--an international pandemic which threatens to balloon unless confronted head on. Earlier this week, I spoke with Dr. Tom Frieden, Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the lead witness at our August 7 emergency recess hearing on Ebola and he said that this is the worst health crisis he has ever seen and that Ebola is at risk of spreading beyond those countries currently affected--Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Since our emergency hearing in August, we have seen a constant movement upwards in the number of cases predicted. The World Health Organization now estimates that we will see as many as 20,000 cases of Ebola in this epidemic before it is ended. One hopes that that number does not increase further, but it may be a conservative estimate. I held yesterday's hearing to take stock of where our intervention efforts stand, particularly in light of the President's decision to commit U.S. military personnel to Liberia to fight this disease. Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, with whom I also spoke earlier this week, has conceded that the Ebola epidemic ``has overwhelmed'' her country's containment and treatment capabilities. A global response, with the United States in the lead, is thus necessary. It is important to note that in in a letter last week to President Obama, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf wrote that ``The virus is spreading at an exponential rate and we have a limited time window to arrest it. Mr. President, well over 40% of total cases occurred in the last 18 days. Our message has gotten out and our citizens are self- reporting or bringing in their relatives. But our treatment centers are overwhelmed. MSF is now running a 160 bed-unit that will expand even further. I am being honest with you when I say that at this rate, we will never break the transmission chain and the virus will overwhelm us.'' I held the follow-up hearing yesterday morning to determine if there is a reasonable hope for vaccines, treatments and detection strategies in time to help with this health emergency. I hesitate to provide figures for the number of people infected or who have succumbed to this virus because even as we hold this hearing, dozens, if not hundreds, of new infections will be documented. According to the latest figures, infections are approaching 5,000 people, and 2,500 deaths. Ebola, which is mostly unknown in West Africa, presents itself early in the infection like usually non-fatal diseases such as Lassa fever, malaria or even the flu. The temperature seen in early stages might even be brought down with regular medicines. Therefore, many people may not believe, or may not want to believe, they have this often fatal disease. If someone is in denial or unknowledgeable about this disease, they may not seek treatment until it is too late--both for them and for the people they unknowingly infect. Families in Africa tend to help one another in times of need, an admirable trait that unfortunately increases the risk of infection. The sicker a person gets with Ebola, the more contagious they are, and never more so than when they die. So burials that don't involve strict precautions to avoid direct contact with highly contagious corpses make transmission of this deadly disease almost inevitable. Burial traditions make avoidance of infection problematic. The porous, lightly-monitored borders in West Africa lend themselves to cross-border transmission, as people go back and forth along well- travelled roads and into marketplaces where hundreds of people, also travelling, make contact with those who are infected. Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian-American, reportedly was caring for his dying sister a few weeks ago. After she died, apparently of Ebola, he left Liberia on his way to his daughter's birthday party in Minnesota. He collapsed at the Lagos airport in Nigeria and died within days. Had he left Liberia a week or even days earlier, he might have made it home to Minnesota, but he likely would have infected people along the way, including his own family. We can say that because Sawyer infected several people in Nigeria, which led to Ebola being transmitted to health care workers and then to dozens of other people. We'll never know now if Sawyer realized he had contracted Ebola and just wanted to go home for treatment or whether he thought his symptoms were from some other illness. Many people are just like him, however, and they are spreading this disease even to places where it had been brought under control. For example, the Macenta region of Guinea on the Liberian border was one of the first places this disease surfaced, but by early September, no new cases had been seen for weeks. Doctors Without Borders closed one of its Ebola treatment centers to focus on harder-hit areas. Infected people leaving Liberia for better treatment in Guinea have once again made Macenta a hotspot for the disease. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has established teams in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria to help local staff do fever detection and to administer questionnaires on potential troublesome contacts. The agency also is helping to establish sites at airports for further testing and/or treatment. Liberia and Sierra Leone are the hardest hit by this Ebola outbreak. This is undoubtedly partly because of the weak infrastructures of two countries emerging from long conflicts. However, post-conflict countries also have significant segments of the population who don't trust the central government. The unfortunate mishandling by the Liberian government of an attempted quarantine in the capital demonstrates why trust has been so difficult to come by. The Liberian government established barriers to block off the West Point slum area after a holding center for Ebola victims was ransacked and contaminated materials were taken. This quarantine was done without informing its 80,000 inhabitants or consulting with health care workers. Not only did this prevent people from pursuing their livelihoods or bringing in much-needed supplies, this move created great suspicions over the motives of the Liberian government. This suspicion was heightened when the official in charge of the area was called to a meeting and was seen leaving just as everyone else was trapped behind barriers. The furor over this quarantine forced the government to abandon it 10 days into its planned 21-day term. Liberian officials assure us they have learned from their mistakes, that the quarantine and has alerted Liberians to the reality of the Ebola epidemic. The human rights of victims and those who live in proximity to them must not be sacrificed by the emergency situation Ebola presents. Despite the fact that the drug ZMapp appears to have saved the lives of Americans Nancy Writebol and Dr. Kent Brantly, one of the witnesses from yesterday, there are no proven, readily available treatments for Ebola. The death rate for this disease, once more than 90%, is now down to 53% despite the number of cases growing exponentially. In Africa, a few patients apparently have been successfully treated with ZMapp, and some others have been saved using other treatment methods, especially when the disease was identified early. Yet there is not now, nor will there be in the short term, large quantities of this medicine or any others. There are several Ebola therapeutics under development, but if this outbreak cannot be brought under control soon, even the most optimistic timetable for the testing and production of these drugs will not be sufficient to meet the ever-expanding need. ZMapp was used with the informed consent of those to whom it was given. But how can we guarantee that the many Ebola victims whose most likely salvation would be to use an experimental drug truly understand the risks of using a drug that has not been fully tested and vetted by the authorities in the country in which it is developed? No drug is 100% effective, so what will other victims think if some people die despite taking experimental treatments? We must protect the rights of those willing to take a chance on unproven treatment when they have no other alternatives. Lack of faith in national and international systems fighting Ebola also has impeded the replacement of the many African health care workers who have died from this disease. For example, even before this Ebola outbreak, Liberia had fewer than two doctors for every 100,000 people. As of late August, 164 Liberian health care workers had contracted Ebola, and 78 had died. African health care workers face an epidemic that threatens to defy control. The lack of diagnostic techniques and insufficient supplies of safety equipment have put these health care workers at extreme risk. These health workers know that the lack of treatment centers and medicines means that those on the front lines of this epidemic are most at risk. Some have asked for insurance for their families should they succumb to Ebola and certain evacuation for treatment outside the hot zone. These heroes deserve all the support we can muster. Ebola not only challenges the collective ability of the world community to meet the demands it poses, it threatens the progress made over the last decade by African countries in overcoming conflict and improving economic development. Even after this outbreak is finally brought under control, its damage will be seen in lowered gross domestic product and diminished foreign investment. So we must be prepared to create effective strategies to help affected African nations recover. A large part of any successful strategy will feature efforts to recreate and dramatically expand health care systems in West African and other countries on the continent. This epidemic has shown that we must not be complacent about weak governance or health care systems. To that end, Ranking Member Bass and I will soon introduce a bill to address the emergency and ongoing needs in the fight to contain the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. We live in a world that is increasingly interconnected, and Ebola has demonstrated that our neighbor's problems can soon become our problems.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Madam Speaker, last week Congressman Trent Franks and I had an important meeting with Reis Emeritus Dr. Mustafa Ceric, the former Grand Mufti of the Islamic community of Bosnia- Herzegovina. Dr. Ceric is internationally recognized and renowned as a man of peace, a leader in interreligious dialogue. For example, in 2008, he led the Muslim delegation to the Catholic-Islamic Forum, and he did that kind of work on many, many occasions. Last week, we talked about Bosnia since the conflict and the genocide of the 1990s, about where Bosnia is today and where it needs to go. I would like to share with my colleagues what Reis Ceric had to say. Dr. Ceric briefed and updated us on Bosnia's struggle to hold itself together, build its economy, and integrate into NATO and the European Union. He talked about a country where, 19 years after Srebrenica and the horrific genocide that occurred there and the Dayton Peace Accords, ethnic divisions remain strong and, in many ways, have hardened as a generation has grown up in a system that classifies people into one of three ethnic communities--Bosniak, Serb, or Croat--and in a system that diminishes the rights of anyone that doesn't belong to one of those communities, including Jews and Roma. In Bosnia today, only ethnic Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats can be elected to the legislature--the House of Peoples--or to the Presidency. This structurally-embedded discrimination is a legacy of the Dayton Peace Accords brokered under American watch. While this design was probably necessary at the time to stop the genocide and aggression, in today's time and expanding Europe, it clearly violates our basic values of freedom and equality. As a result, in Bosnia today, all persons are not equal and--based on race, religion, and ethnicity--entire segments of the population are excluded from full political participation. The Dayton Peace Accords were a tourniquet to end the genocidal conflict in 1995. However, that is all they were really intended to be. Dayton was never intended to operate as Bosnia's Constitution, certainly not for 19 years. As a result of Dayton's severe limitations on its democracy, Bosnia cannot be fully integrated into Euro-Atlantic structures. Without amending the Dayton Accords to respect basic human rights and political rights of one person-one vote, Bosnia will never even be a candidate for the European Union. So a question mark hangs over Bosnia's future, as ethnic activists continue to agitate to partition the country and threaten daily to secede, taking large swaths of ethnically-cleansed territories with them. Such action might lead to a revival of hostilities. What further aggravates the condition is a sustained campaign of mischaracterization and outright denial of genocide by some government officials of the Republika Srpska, the smaller of Bosnia's two entities. Milorad Dodik, the President of the Republika Srpska, is publicly calling for the naming of public squares, roads, and boulevards after indicted war criminals such as Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic; yet Dayton provides no mechanism by which Bosnia, Madam Speaker, can be fully democratized. Significant leadership by Bosnian leaders is going to be absolutely necessary to break through the stalemate created by ethnic interests, and, of course, the United States must do its part to ensure that the Bosnian dream of a robust democracy, respect for the fundamental human rights, and rule of law is reached. I respectfully submit that delay is denial and that the Bosnians deserve better. Madam Speaker, the United States has a special responsibility to Bosnia. We could have done more for them in the 1990s. I know, I was here. I held hearing after hearing, traveled to the former Yugoslavia repeatedly, joined by other colleagues like Frank Wolf, trying to get this country to stand up and assist those who were being victimized by an invasion; instead, we left it to the Europeans in the 1990s, and, unfortunately, it was a train wreck. We could have lifted the arms embargo on Bosnia earlier, which may have prevented the genocide. I would note, parenthetically, that I was the sponsor of legislation to lift the egregiously-flawed arms embargo that hindered both the Croats' and the Bosnians' ability to defend against aggression. Only after the tragic and preventable Srebrenica genocide in early July 1995--and thanks to the leadership of some of us in the House and Senate--did our government swing into action and broker the peace deal. Bosnians, Madam Speaker, of every ethnicity and faith look to the United States to help move the country forward. I agree with Reis Ceric that, without American leadership and help to evolve the Dayton Accords toward a democratic constitution, the situation will likely fester and get worse. Madam Speaker, in the 1990s, throughout the darkness of the Balkan war, Reis Ceric was a powerful, persistent, reasonable, and dynamic voice for peace, human rights, the rule of law, and accountability for genocide. Reis Ceric is a good friend of mine and truly an inspiring man of God. Tax-Payer-Funded Abortion

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Madam Speaker, I would like to address another issue before the House today. Madam Speaker, 5 years ago, about 5 feet from where I am standing right now, President Obama told lawmakers and the American public in a specially called joint session of Congress on health care reform that, ``Under our plan, no Federal dollars will be used to fund abortion.'' That was September 9, 2009. In an eleventh hour ploy to garner support from a remnant of pro-life congressional Democrats absolutely needed for passage of ObamaCare, the President issued an executive order on March 24, 2010, that said: The Affordable Care Act maintains current Hyde amendment restrictions governing abortion policy and extends those restrictions to newly-created health insurance exchanges. It turns out, Madam Speaker, that those ironclad promises made by the President himself are absolutely untrue. Agree or disagree with public funding of abortion--and a significant majority of Americans oppose it--but no one likes to be misled. Today, as I think many of my colleagues know, a growing number of Americans are recognizing that abortion is violence against children and hurts women. Abortion methods rip, tear, and dismember or chemically poison the fragile bodies of unborn children. There is nothing benign, compassionate, or just about an act that utterly destroys a baby and often physically, psychologically, or emotionally harms the mother. At its core, Madam Speaker--and this has been missed by many, especially in the media--the Hyde amendment has two parts. It prohibits funding for abortion, but it also prohibits funding for any insurance plan that includes abortion, except in the cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother. Remember, the President stood here and then, in his executive order, said that the act maintains the Hyde amendment restrictions governing abortion and extends those restrictions to the newly-created health insurance exchanges. That is what the executive order said, and yet, now, we know that is absolutely untrue. A comprehensive Government Accountability Office report released this week documents massive new public funding for abortion in the President's new health care law. Like so many of the President's promises that litter the political landscape, GAO has found that, in 2014, taxpayers are funding over 1,000--let me repeat that--1,000 ObamaCare health plans that subsidize abortion on demand--even late-term abortion--decimating the Hyde amendment that the President said he would honor. Again, if you fund the insurance plan, the purchase of a plan, it is a violation of the Hyde amendment that the President said that he would extend to the newly-created health insurance exchanges. According to the Government Accountability Office, in their findings, every ObamaCare taxpayer-funded health insurance plan in my own State of New Jersey, Connecticut, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Hawaii pays for abortion on demand, every one of them. In New York, a whopping 405 out of 426 ObamaCare plans subsidize abortion on demand. In California, it is 86 plans out of 90; in Massachusetts, 109 out of 111; in Oregon, 92 out of 102; in Washington, 23 of the 34 plans; and so it goes. According to the Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, their April 2014 estimate, Madam Speaker, between 2014 and 2024, taxpayer subsidies to buy ObamaCare health plans will total $855 billion, making taxpayers unwittingly, wherever they live, complicit in abortion. GAO has also found that even an accounting trick embedded in ObamaCare requiring premium payers to be assessed a separate, monthly abortion surcharge is being completely ignored. The surcharge would have added some modicum of transparency so individuals would know whether they are purchasing a pro-life or pro-abortion health insurance plan. Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska summed up the plain meaning--the absolutely plain meaning--of the law when he said that you have to write two checks, one for the abortion coverage and one for the rest of the premium. According to the GAO, none of the 18 insurance companies they interviewed are billing the abortion surcharge separately. None. So much for the rule of law. Last year, Members of Congress and some staff were barred from any further participation in the Federal Employees Health Benefits plan, the FEHB, and compelled on to ObamaCare exchanges. After months of misinformation, obfuscation, and delay, I finally learned that, of the 112 plans offered on the exchange for my family, 103 of those plans pay for abortion on demand, a clear violation of the Smith amendment, a Hyde-like amendment that I first sponsored on the floor back in 1983 and has been the law of the land for all of these years, except for 2 years during the Clinton administration. Madam Speaker, Americans throughout the country have raised very serious questions that they find it nearly impossible to determine whether the plan that they are purchasing finances or subsidizes the killing of unborn children--there is little or no transparency--hence the request by several Members of Congress, including our distinguished Speaker, Speaker Boehner, that the Government Accountability Office investigate. As the November 15 open enrollment approaches for ObamaCare, we have no reason now to believe that the President's promise of this most transparent government in history will give consumers basic information about the abortion coverage. First, we were told it wouldn't be in there--again, a promise made right from this podium, Madam Speaker--and then by way of executive order; and, now, we can't even find out, clearly and unmistakably, which plans include abortion and which do not. To end President Obama's massive new funding of abortion on demand, Madam Speaker, last January, the House of Representatives passed my bill--a totally bipartisan bill--overwhelmingly known as the No Taxpayers Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act. Madam Speaker, when our friend and colleague on the other side of this building, Harry Reid, was a Member of the House, he was as pro- life as Henry Hyde. Now, as a majority leader, he refuses to even allow H.R. 7 and its companion bill offered by Senator Wicker to come up for a vote. With respect to the distinguished Senator and on behalf of the weakest and the most vulnerable, the unborn children and those who will be hurt by abortion--their moms--I respectfully ask that he reconsider and post the legislation for a vote. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, yesterday I convened a subcommittee hearing on the desperate plight of Christians and other religious minorities in Iraq and Syria. As images of beheaded American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff are seared into our consciousness, we would do well to honor their memories by recalling that they saw it as their mission to alert the world to the horrors committed by the fanatical Islamist terrorist group ISIS in Syria and Iraq: Children forced to view crucifixions and beheadings; women bartered, sold, and raped; prisoners lined up on their knees to be shot--this is ISIS' legacy. Today Christians and other religious minorities, such as Yezidis, Shabaks, and Turkmen Shiites are not just facing a long winter without homes. They are not just hungry and thirsty and wandering from village to village in Northern Iraq and Kurdistan. They are facing annihilation--genocide--by fanatics who see anyone who does not subscribe to its draconian and violent interpretation of Islam as fair game for enslavement, forced conversion or death. If the phrase ``Never Again'' is to be more than well moving sentiment we simply give lip service to, then we must be prepared to act when we see genocide unfold before our very eyes. After the U.S. pulled out of Iraq in March 2011 we left in charge a prime minister hostile to political inclusion of all Iraqis beyond simply Shiites. The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL--also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS-saw an opportunity to exploit Sunni resentment at this treatment, and surged to fill the gap. We withdrew, they surged. This is not the ``Junior Varsity'' team of terrorists, as the President dismissively asserted earlier this year. Deputy Assistant Secretary for Iraq and Iran Brett McGurk has described ISIL as having ``unprecedented'' resources in terms of funds, weapons, and personnel. We have seen what ISIS is doing in Syria, beheading and crucifying Christians and political opponents, taking hostages and kidnapping religious leaders, blowing up churches and mosques, and forcing religious minorities to convert, flee with the clothes on their backs, pay an exorbitant tax for infidels--or die. When ISIS overran Mosul in June, Mosul's 35,000 inhabitants not too old or sick fled for their lives. At checkpoints leaving the city, ISIS took the Christians' wedding rings, money, travel papers, and medicines--even their cars. Families walked carrying their children, pushing wheelchairs with elderly parents, mile after mile into the hot, barren, Nineveh Plain. As ISIS continued to gain territory in July and August, the Christians fled further north, joining Yezidi and many other minorities trying to find safety in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region. More than 1.7 million people have been displaced in Iraq this year. Many were Christians who fled the brutal Syrian civil war, now on the run again. Where will they be safe? Kurdistan, a region of 8.35 million people currently hosts nearly 750,000 refugees. The Kurdish Peshmerga militias are underfunded and under-armed, now that ISIS has captured U.S. heavy weaponry across Iraq. Yet they soldier on. I have received emails from Bishops and nuns chronicling the dire needs of their flocks who are being ``exterminated'' and ``expelled'' from regions their people have occupied for millennia. The U.S. has in the last few weeks geared-up for the humanitarian crisis. As of September 5, the U.S. had dedicated nearly $140 million in humanitarian assistance to Iraq--and USAID airlifted more than 60 metric tons of humanitarian aid into Kurdistan's capital of Erbil. We need, however, to make sure that aid gets to people who need it most. This means working with religious leaders who are closest to those in need. We may also need to invest more in our relationship with the Kurdish Regional Government--a regional government which has taken on the aspects of a de facto national government, and one whose brave militia men have stood up against ISIS while members of the Iraqi Armed Forces have folded and fled. It must also be remarked and remembered with gratitude that the Kurdish Regional Government has extended protection to Christians and other victims of religious persecution. While their record has not been perfect, the Kurds appear to be more tolerant of diversity of thought and belief than many of their neighbors. But aid alone is not the solution. The U.S. has already spent $2.4 billion on the Syria humanitarian crisis that rages on. We need shrewd power--a strategy for action that is in touch with reality on the ground. A strategy born of thinking ahead and preparing in advance for contingencies so that we are not playing catch-up while the enemy rapes, pillages, kidnaps, massacres--and amasses wealth and weapons. The reality for religious minorities is that their very lives are at risk as long as ISIS controls territory and continues to gather strength on the ground, drawing funds and fighters from around the globe. As Pope Francis has noted with regard to this crisis, ``where there is unjust aggression . . . it is licit to stop the unjust aggressor.'' This may indeed require the use of force, but it also requires using other means at our disposal. I have called for the establishment of a Syrian War Crimes Tribunal, and introduced H. Con. Res. 51 to hold all sides accountable for the heinous atrocities they have committed. H. Con. Res. 51, introduced last September, calls for the creation of an international tribunal that would be more flexible and more efficient than the International Criminal Court to ensure accountability for human rights violations committed by all sides. With a Herculean diplomatic push by the United States and other interested nations, past success in creating war crimes courts can indeed be prologue. Such a tribunal would also draw upon past experience, creating a justice mechanism robust enough to right the most egregious wrongs, yet nimble enough not to derail chances for peace due to rigidity. The Foreign Affairs Committee approved H. Con. Res. 51 on April 30, and I hope this measure will come before the House for a vote at the earliest possible time. As ISIS does not respect borders, committing atrocities in both Iraq and Syria, the jurisdiction of such a tribunal could and should be expanded to hold ISIS accountable for its evil acts on either side of the border. Today the Black Flag of ISIS flies over vast swaths of northern Iraq and even cities such as Fallujah, which we had won at such great cost. Indeed, ISIS says that they intend to see the Black Flag fly over the White House. Where the Black Flag flies, there is death and misery.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend from Texas, the distinguished subcommittee leader, chair, and doctor. Mr. Speaker, I rise in very strong support today of the Tick-Borne Disease Research Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014, an historic bill offered by my good friend and distinguished colleague, Chris Gibson. From all those who suffer from this hideous disease, thank you, Chris. I would also like to extend my very special thanks to Chairmen Fred Upton and Joe Pitts, as well as their staff, for their tireless efforts to ensure the final bill brought before the floor today establishes a means to address huge gaps that exist and the great unmet need in the Lyme community. Mr. Speaker, in 1992 I met with the two top medical officials at the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control working on Lyme and an extraordinary woman named Pat Smith. We laid out a case. She did most of the talking. They listened. They were responsive. However, 22 years later, far too little has been accomplished. I raised, as did she, the apparent ineffectiveness of a month-long antibiotic treatment for a sizable percentage of people. The CDC says between 15 to 20 percent of the people suffering from this disease don't seem to get better. We call it chronic Lyme. Dr. Richard Horowitz notes in his bestselling book, ``Why Can't I Get Better?'': A patient's journey typically begins with a primary care physician or a family doctor. A maximum of 30 days of antibiotics is the accepted standard of care for Lyme disease. If patients report back that they are not getting better, they are likely diagnosed as having ``post-Lyme syndrome,'' chronic fatigue syndrome, or fibromyalgia. He then described how children are treated for other diseases or disorders, and continues: This may help some of the symptoms yet fail to address the root problem. Unfortunately, without better information on chronic Lyme and how to treat it, we will continue to ``fail to address the root of the problem'' and, in so doing, fail to assist patients in need. Mr. Speaker, I fully understand that there are concerns about the prolonged use of antibiotics. I chair the Global Health Committee and have chaired numerous hearings on multidrug-resistant tuberculosis and many other diseases that increasingly are being treated with antibiotics with less effectiveness. Yet the ISDA, in their final report of the Lyme Disease Review Panel, found: There has yet to be a study that demonstrates comparable benefits to prolonged antibiotic therapy beyond 1 month. There have been far too few studies. There is an engraved invitation. I say to my colleagues, there needs to be those studies. You can fit on half a page the number of studies that have been done over these many years. However, in that same report, they went on to say: This conclusion was reached despite the large volumes of case reports, case series, anecdotes, and patient testimonials reviewed that attest to perceived clinical improvement during antibiotic therapy. Large volumes are just dismissed and laid aside as if they were trivial. It was dismissed and didn't make it into the final report, except for that sentence. Dr. Horowitz has said that: In fact, increasing the dose of antibiotics and/or extending the length of treatment clearly did help a certain percentage of my patients. Their fatigue, headaches, joint and muscle pain, and cognitive symptoms improved. Among clinicians--and I have met with dozens of them--Dr. Horowitz is not alone at all in those findings. So, Mr. Speaker, we need scientifically-based answers and a comprehensive probe that goes wherever the data suggests. And this is especially important for my own constituents. In New Jersey, over the last 15 years, about 55,000 people have had cases of Lyme. This bill before us accelerates the process of helping Lyme patients by establishing an interagency working group on Lyme disease with diverse opinions--which is very important--in a transparent and open manner and creates a strategic plan to guide existing Federal Lyme disease research and treatment programs. Of particular significance, the House bill that we will vote on today for the first time identifies and seeks to address chronic Lyme disease. Mr. Speaker, the CDC says: Approximately 10 to 20 percent of patients treated for Lyme disease with a recommended 2-4 week course of antibiotics will have lingering symptoms of fatigue, pain, or join and muscle aches. I would respectfully submit that they are symptoms of something that has a root cause. The CDC refers to chronic Lyme as ``Post-treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome,'' and many people have been dismissed and told, Oh, you are a hypochondriac. And yet there are so many cases, it can't be dismissed. This bill is a great step forward for chronic Lyme patients, especially those who have suffered for decades with this debilitating disease, again, only to be told that their illness does not exist. Again, I want to thank my good friend, Chris Gibson, for his leadership and for the leadership of our House Republicans and our friends on the other side of the aisle. This is a bipartisan bill, and I do hope Members will support it robustly.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, last month, I convened an emergency hearing, during recess, to address a grave and serious health threat which has in recent weeks gripped mass media attention and heightened public fears of an epidemic--the Ebola virus. What we gained from the hearing is a realistic understanding of what we are up against, while avoiding sensationalism. Ebola is a severe, often fatal disease that first emerged in 1976 and has killed 90% of its victims in some past outbreaks. Since March of this year, there have been more than 1,700 cases of Ebola, including more than 900 fatalities, in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria. This time, the average fatality rate in this outbreak is estimated at 55%--ranging from 74% in Guinea to 42% in Sierra Leone. The disparity in mortality rates is partially linked to the capacity of governments to treat and contain the disease and per capita health spending by affected country governments. There is also concern that, given modern air travel and the latency time of the disease, the virus will jump borders and threaten lives elsewhere in Africa and even here in the United States. In my own state of New Jersey, at CentraState Hospital in Freehold, precautions were taken. A person who had traveled from West Africa began manifesting symptoms, including a high fever. He was put in isolation. Thankfully, it was not Ebola, and the patient has been released. New Jersey Health Commissioner Mary O'Dowd reiterated to me yesterday that New Jersey hospitals have infection control programs in which they train and are ready to deal with potentially infectious patients that come through their doors. She also told me that physicians and hospital workers follow very specific protocols on how to protect themselves as well as other patients, and how to observe a patient if they have any concerns, which includes protocols like managing a patient in isolation so that they are not around others who are not appropriately protected. The commissioner also underscored that the federal government has U.S. quarantine stations throughout the country to limit the introduction of any disease that might come into the United States at ports of entry like New Jersey's Newark Liberty International Airport. As you know key symptoms of Ebola include fever; weakness; head, joint muscle, throat and stomach aches; and then vomiting and diarrhea, rashes and bleeding. These symptoms are also seen in other diseases besides Ebola, which makes an accurate diagnosis early on uncertain. Ebola punches holes in blood vessels by breaking down the vessel walls, causing massive bleeding and shock. The virus spreads quickly before most people's bodies can fight the infection, effectively breaking down the development of antibodies. As a result, there is massive bleeding within 7 to 10 days after infection that too often results in the death of the infected person. Fruit bats are suspected of being a primary transmitter of Ebola to humans in West Africa. The virus is transmitted to humans through close contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected animals. Some health care workers--such as heroic American missionary aid workers Dr. Kent Brantly and nursing assistant Nancy Writebol-- contracted the disease despite taking every precaution while helping Ebola patients. Both of them were treated at Emory Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, in an isolation unit after having been flown to the United States in a specially equipped ``air ambulance.'' While there is no known cure for Ebola, both Dr. Brantley and Ms. Writebol were given doses of the experimental anti-viral drug cocktail ZMapp, developed by a San Diego company called Mapp Biopharmaceutical. Mapp Biopharmaceutical has been working with the National Institutes of Health and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, an arm of the military responsible for countering weapons of mass destruction, to develop an Ebola treatment for several years. The drug, which attaches to the virus cells much like antibodies their compromised immune systems would have produced, had never been tested in humans before Dr. Brantly and Ms. Writebol, who gave their consent to be the first human trials. There will be great hope if ZMapp works on the two Americans who bravely agreed to test its effect. Still, ZMapp is an experimental drug. Those who use it must be given the complete information on its use. Informed consent is vital in the use of any drug, but certainly one that has such limited trials among humans. There is also promising research done by the Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corporation--funded by the U.S. Department of Defense--on their TKM- Ebola, an anti-Ebola virus RNAi Therapeutic. TKM is on clinical hold, yet earlier preclinical studies were published in the medical journal, The Lancet and demonstrate that when siRNA targeting the Ebola virus and delivered by Tekmira's LNP technology were used to treat previously infected non-human primates, the result was 100 percent protection from an otherwise lethal dose of Zaire Ebola virus. Unfortunately, there are other issues that impact on the ability of the international community to assist the affected governments in meeting this grave health challenge. Some of the leading doctors in these countries have died treating Ebola victims. The non-governmental medical personnel who are there say they feel besieged--not only because they are among the only medical personnel treating this exponentially spreading disease, but also because they are under suspicion by some people in these countries who are unfamiliar with this disease and fear that doctors who treat the disease may have brought it with them. The current West African outbreak is unprecedented--and an anomaly. Many people are not cooperating with efforts to contain the disease. Some, such as Liberian-American Patrick Sawyer, refused to accept that they may be infected. His death sent chills through those outside the affected region who feared infected people leaving the area and arriving in metropolitan areas somewhere else in the world. Because of the stigma of Ebola, many people in the affected region are reluctant to acknowledge the possibility of having the disease and don't seek medical treatment. This phenomenon was common in the early days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Traditions also play a role in people not accepting suggested protocols. Many people are handling the bodies of their relatives who died of Ebola and burying them without taking proper precautions, and themselves become victims of this deadly disease. Medical missionaries have given of their time and talent at great risk to their health and their very lives to apply the Christian principles to which they have committed themselves. As we consider what we can do to meet this health challenge, I would suggest we need to reconsider the funding levels for pandemic preparedness. In the restricted budget environment in which our government operates today, funding to meet these pandemics has fallen from $201 million in fiscal year 2010 to an estimated $72.5 million in fiscal year 2014. The proposed budget for fiscal year 2015 is $50 million, and we must not shortchange vital efforts to save the lives of people in developing countries, but also protect the health security of the American people. There are both practical and compassionate reasons to adequately fund pandemic response. Dr. Tom Frieden, one of the witnesses we had, has tried to assure the American public that our government is doing what we can to address the Ebola crisis. USAID; WHO; the World Bank; DFID, the British development agency; the African Development Bank, and many other governments, international organizations and companies are joining to meet this crisis. To those who say there is no plan, I would say that planning is underway to overcome obstacles to effective efforts to contain this virus. We have seen great success in treating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis. Polio has been largely eliminated. Tropical diseases are being treated through a public-private partnership. Still, we must take more seriously the research, surveillance, treatment, and prevention of diseases that limit the lives of people in developing countries. This is why I have introduced the End Neglected Tropical Diseases Act. H.R. 4847 establishes that the policy of the United States is to support a broad range of implementation and research and development activities to achieve cost-effective and sustainable treatment, control and, where possible, elimination of neglected tropical diseases. Ebola is not on WHO's list of the top 17 neglected tropical diseases, but it does fit the definition of an infection caused by pathogens that disproportionately impact individuals living in extreme poverty, especially in developing countries. Ebola had been thought to be limited to isolated areas where it could be contained. We know now that is no longer true. We need to take seriously the effort to devise more effective means of addressing this and all neglected tropical diseases.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, a hearing that I convened recently in my subcommittee addressed a very important humanitarian crisis: the more than fifty million children orphaned on the continent of Africa. Indeed, to put this in perspective, as one of our witnesses, Shimwaayi Muntemba, pointed out, with such a number, the orphans of Africa, if grouped together in a single country, would be the fourth largest country in all of Africa--after Nigeria, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The factors contributing to this crisis are varied, starting with war and civil unrest, which have displaced millions--wars that have led to the deaths of parents and other adult relatives, leaving children to fend for themselves. Or sometimes children are separated from their parents in a mad flight for sanctuary, never learning if their mothers and fathers are alive or dead. They may never know if they are orphaned in reality, or if both parents turn out to have survived and are alive in a refugee camp somewhere else. Such parents, too, agonize over what ever happened to their children. Other children are indirect victims of HIV/AIDS, which has wreaked such devastating havoc on the continent, or other diseases. They could have lost one or both parents to this or some other dread disease. Often being forced into the role of the primary caretaker of younger siblings, their childhood innocence is ended by the burdens of adult responsibility. As with many of the humanitarian crises that confront the continent, there is a big picture aspect to this one, one which we as Congress certainly need to address. There are important strategic implications of so many children and adolescents left without fathers or mothers. We have all heard of the scourge of child soldiers, how orphaned children are recruited and brutalized, themselves turning into remorseless killers. Terrorist groups such as the Lord's Resistance Army, under the rapacious warlord Joseph Kony, actively recruit child soldiers. And if humanitarian reasons are not enough to compel Congress to rally behind the efforts to address the issue of Africa's orphans by USAID and countless charitable organizations, many of them faith-based, then strategic concerns and the effect this has on stability throughout the region, should be reason to sit up and take notice of this tragedy. But behind every statistic about orphaned children, behind the pie charts and graphs, there is also a portrait in miniature: a lonely child who is left without a mother or a father, perhaps dealing each night with the pangs of hunger, or just seeking a place where one can lay one's head down in safety until the morning comes. That child awakes to forage and fend for another day. Behind every statistic, there is a young boy or girl who has to deal with the sense of abandonment, or with the trauma of having seen parents killed before his or her eyes. There is a little soul, a young person, whose inherent dignity has been scarred in a world itself wounded, where there is so much pain, suffering and darkness. These children are in need of love and compassion, of simple needs being met. Those who do find loving homes and families are truly the lucky ones. One remedy for this crisis is inter-country adoption, which sometimes brings children from Africa to our shores to provide them with loving homes. This is, of course, only a partial remedy, because for every child who is given a loving home, there are many more for whom there is never will be such a refuge. At best, they may end up in an institutional orphanage, which is a topic fraught with controversy. While the best ones, again often faith based, help address the developmental and educational needs of children, the worst may abet trafficking. In some cases, such institutions do not even shelter orphans per se, but rather children who are placed there by parents who think that their children will get better education and nutrition than what they themselves can provide. Clearly, such institutions can never provide the type of love that a father and a mother, along with any siblings, can give. An issue that was addressed in the hearing was the role of inter- country adoption in helping address, at least in part, the crisis of orphans. Some of the testimony was critical of the role of our State Department's Office of Children's Issues in the Bureau of Consular Affairs. Such testimony needs to be heard, for we can, and we must, do better. We also heard about an adoption issue that has received a lot of attention on Capitol Hill and was the topic of a resolution authored by my good friend and colleague Collin Peterson of Minnesota, which I am happy to say was passed by the House, after being marked up by my subcommittee and then the Foreign Affairs Committee. Last year, the Democratic Republic of the Congo suspended the issuance of exit permits for Congolese children adopted by foreign parents--impacting hundreds of U.S. families. The suspension means that Congolese children adopted by American parents cannot leave the country to go to their new homes--even though the parents have been officially declared the legal guardians under Congolese law. What's more, despite the exit permit suspension, Congolese courts have continued processing new adoptions, leading to a backlog of adopted children who are unable to leave the country. More than 900 American families are caught up in varying stages of this adoption limbo--breaking hearts. This is a deplorable situation for these children, and for their distraught families. Indeed, we will hear about this from one such family that has been impacted, as well as an advocate for families that have been impacted. Finally, I also want to say a word to those parents who have endured not only burdens that are financial, but ones that are primarily emotional, separated from the children that they have voluntarily welcomed into their lives. Your hardship and pain is deeply noted by my colleagues and I, as well as our staff members, many of whom have worked not only on passing Congressman Peterson's resolution, but also have pushed our State Department and the Government of the DRC to resolve this issue. Please continue to persevere, and do not give up hope! We remain in your corner.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, for weeks this spring, the world watched as Meriam Ibrahim Ishag, a pregnant Christian woman in Sudan, faced flogging and the death penalty because her government would not accept that she had lived her life as a Christian and married a Christian man. Meriam has demonstrated both courage and grace under pressure--giving birth in jail in May while chained and caring for her two children, including her newborn, not only under restraints, but also without the normal amenities that any pregnant woman and nursing mother should expect. The harsh application of Sharia law on non-Muslims was the trigger for a two-decade civil war in Sudan and the eventual secession of the South. Sudan is one of 20 countries in the world who have laws against apostasy--defined as the abandonment by an individual of their original religion. In Sudan, apostasy is effectively considered leaving the Muslim faith, particularly the interpretation of Islam followed by authorities. In Sudan, to leave the Muslim faith is an automatic death sentence. If you are considered an apostate, you cannot legally marry someone of another faith, and for this, Meriam also was charged with adultery and sentenced to flogging. However, this story is not just about harshly applied religious and legal principles in violation of national and international law. Daniel Wani, Meriam's husband, is a Christian who is a dual American and South Sudanese citizen. He has lived in the United States for more than a decade. He married Meriam in late 2011, and they had a son a year later. Somehow, the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum could not find a way to help this American to get his family out of Sudan before a crisis developed, even after she was arrested and released last year in charges involving apostasy. A hearing that I recently convened was intended to examine the facts as we know them to determine how strictly applied rules almost led to the officially sanctioned beating and execution of a young woman who has lived as a Christian all her life, but who has now been told that she has no right to choose her religious belief. This hearing was originally supposed to take place in June, but at the urging of both the U.S. Government and Sudanese officials, we postponed it to allow for quiet diplomacy to take place. However, prior to the hearing, Meriam's legal entanglements seem to be increasing rather than diminishing. A Sudanese court initially ruled that the mere fact that her father was Muslim means that she should have been raised as a Muslim. She was given three days to convert to Islam, but she told authorities she would not abandon her Christian faith. Her refusal to leave the faith she had practiced her entire life led to her being in mortal fear for her life. Fortunately, a Sudanese appeals court believed that she considered herself Christian and overturned her conviction on apostasy and adultery charges. However, members of her family have appealed the overturning of her conviction. Meanwhile, the Government of Sudan rearrested Meriam for using South Sudanese documents in an attempt to leave the country, and while she was released on bail. Fortunately, she was able to leave Sudan last week. We cannot be absolutely certain of the exact chain of events that led to the situation that Meriam was in prior to her release. The Department of State understandably declined to testify last week because of the sensitive nature of the then ongoing efforts to end the matter satisfactorily. Daniel and Meriam were still in Sudan at that point. Daniel was free to leave with his children, but he chose, of course, to stay with his wife, until she too could leave with her family. Since Meriam's conviction in May, a bipartisan, bicameral Congressional coalition worked to undo the harsh penalties for her under the apostasy and adultery laws and secure her family's repatriation to the United States. Contact was made with Daniel, as well as the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum and the Sudan embassy in Washington. Eventually, the headquarters offices of both the State Department and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services got involved. Yet one wonders why this matter had to come to a crisis stage before a means could be found to avoid what now seems to have been an inevitable outcome in this case. Daniel told congressional staff that he sought help from the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum but was told that he should seek an attorney since the situation was mostly focused on his wife, who was not an American. This was the advice he received even when he was arrested and had his passport seized. An American citizen should expect more from his government's representatives in a foreign country when that country's government has taken action against them. Under the principles of natural law, which are the basis of our governing documents and those of countries around the world, there are certain inalienable rights endowed by Our Creator. The decision on how to worship Our Creator is one of them. Elements in Sudan's Islamic clergy and in the government interpret the Koran to give them license to tell people how they will live out their faith whether they consider themselves Muslim or not. In Meriam's case, her father has been absent from her life since she was a small child. Her Christian mother raised her as a Christian. Sadly, Meriam is not the only Sudanese who chose differently on the matter of faith only to be faced with a death sentence for that choice. Sudanese civil activist Mahmud Muhammud Taha was arrested and charged with apostasy in 1984 for his efforts to end Sharia law in Sudan. He was subsequently executed. In some countries, Christian converts have been forced to renounce their faith and conform to the version of Islam favored by the government of the day. Some of these countries have constitutions that ostensibly guarantee religious freedom even as they may also have laws that actually contradict those rights. Except for Malaysia, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the other 15 countries including Sudan, have signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights guaranteeing freedoms for their citizens. Article 18 of that document enshrines ``the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.'' Speaking of the rights of the individual, that article also forbids ``coercion which would impair his freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice. Article 18 also guarantees ``the freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice, and freedom, either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching.'' The current report by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, or USCIRF, cites Sudan as a ``country of particular concern'' due to its government engaging in ``systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of freedom of religion or belief.'' According to USCIRF, Sudan is the world's most violent abuser of the right to freedom of religion or belief. USCIRF's Zudhi Jasser recommended in his testimony that not only should the U.S. Government take appropriate actions against Sudan as detailed in the International Religious Freedom Act, but that our government should also make religious freedom and human rights a centerpiece of U.S.-Sudan bilateral relations. The troubling case of Meriam Ibrahim Ishag should warn of future incidents in which those who do not believe in Islam as defined by a government are persecuted or placed in fear of death or torture.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, Boko Haram has significantly accelerated its acts of mass murder and abduction in Nigeria, requiring a more robust and effective response from the Government of Nigeria and friends like the United States. According to a recent report by the Internal Displaced Monitoring Centre and the Norwegian Refugee Council, there are 3.3 million Nigerian Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs)-- more than every other country in the world except Syria and Colombia. The UN High Commission for Refugees estimates that there are now more than 10,000 Nigerian refugees in Niger and Cameroon. According to the International Rescue Committee (IRC), due to credible fears of abduction as many as one thousand refugees a week--80% women and girls--are fleeing to the nearby country of Niger from Nigeria's Borno State alone. Former U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria Robin Renee Sanders testified before my subcommittee on June 11th that the fight against Boko Haram will be a long war, but that Nigerian military and security forces are insufficiently trained and ill-equipped to meet the challenge of savage, relentless violence. Earlier this month, she told a Capitol Hill forum on Boko Haram that in the vacuum created by delays in training Nigerian forces, vigilante groups have been formed and that now are themselves committing human rights abuses. According to the current State Department human rights report, Boko Haram is responsible for the most heinous human rights violations in Nigeria, but that same report tells us elements in the Nigerian armed forces and security apparatus have committed serious human rights abuses with little or no accountability. Even in the face of serious threats to Nigerian and regional security, the U.S. Government, which has a longstanding alliance with the Federal Republic of Nigeria, has experienced obstacles in providing the security assistance necessary to help our ally address this dire emergency. Laws our Congress created to prevent our alliance with rogue military and security forces are being blamed for making our assistance more difficult to provide. But is the law the problem or rather is it how the law is being applied? Or is the U.S. not attempting to train sufficient numbers of human rights-vetted Nigerian forces? What is the targeted number of trained Nigerians? For this year--and the future-- how many trainers have committed to this task? I believe the Leahy laws are necessary components of a prudent human rights policy, and today's hearing is in large part intended to find out whether there are legitimate obstacles to their implementation. At the outset, I would like to make clear that I have long supported human rights vetting to allow for training of those who pass muster. One example of many: as chair of the then-Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights, I chaired a hearing on Indonesia on May 7, 1998 featuring Pius Lustrilanang, who was tortured by members of the Indonesian military amid deep concerns that those involved may have been trained under our International Military Education and Training Program or IMET program. In like manner, I and others were concerned that U.S.-trained Indonesian troops may have been complicit in slaughtering people in East Timor. On a fact-finding mission to Jakarta, I sought--but never received-- the names of specific individuals, trained by the U.S. including members of the elite Kopassus unit, who slaughtered dissidents as the Suharto government fell. Similar training concerns were expressed by me and others concerning the Joint Combined Exchange Training or JCET program and the Rwandan Patriotic Army during the period of time when the RPA was engaged in the killing of refugees in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Moreover, in 1999, Congress passed my legislation (part of P.L. 106- 113) that suspended all U.S. federal law enforcement support and exchanges with the British police force in Northern Ireland, the Royal Ulster constabulary, until new human rights training programs were implemented there and until programs were established to ``vet out'' any RUC officers who engaged in human rights abuses from benefiting from American training and preparation. The ``vetting'' legislation worked. Exchanges and training at FBI facilities for RUC officers were suspended for more than two years until President Bush certified that the British established a system to vet and block anyone who committed or condoned human rights violations from the program. According to the current Quadrennial Defense Review, we are in a time of increased danger from terrorist forces in foreign nations while shrinking budgets force our military and security forces to become smaller and leaner. The QDR states that: ``The Department of Defense will rebalance our counterterrorism efforts toward greater emphasis on building partnership capacity, especially in fragile states.'' One manifestation of that developing policy is the president's proposal to allocate $5 billion to a new Counterterrorism Partnership Fund (CTPF). I have visited Nigeria twice in the past nine months alone and have chaired several hearings on security in Nigeria in the past two Congresses alone. Just last month, I met with U.S. and Nigerian Government officials to find out why our security assistance has been so difficult to provide when the need is so increasingly great. Is it the process or has the Administration not sought to seriously expand training? You will notice that the Department of State did not testify at the hearing that I convened on human rights vetting earlier this month. That is partly because Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Tom Malinowski was unavailable when we invited him to testify. But it may also be partly due to the abundance of caution surrounding the discussion of difficulties experienced in implementing the Leahy laws. When I was in Abuja last month, I asked our Embassy to provide me with their recommendations for making the Leahy vetting more effective so that we can provide the much-needed aid to the Nigerian government and end the increasing slaughter and kidnapping of innocents, such as the Chibok school girls. Despite initial assurances of cooperation, I have yet to receive the information. I understand that not everything that can be said publicly should be said. Nevertheless, these laws were created in the light of day and so should our efforts to implement them be clear and transparent to all concerned. We refer to Leahy laws because there are actually two: one for the Department of State and one for the Department of Defense. Together, they cover material assistance, including equipment, and training. These laws require investigation of allegations of human rights violations by military and security forces, including police. These investigations, performed mostly by the Department of State, require details on not only individuals, but also military units. Failure to obtain such information as name and date and place of birth can place an investigation in limbo. National government officials may consider such information an invasion of their sovereignty, but to avoid aiding and abetting rogue elements, we must know if a perpetrator of abuse is a man from Jos or a man with the same name from Kano, for example. If individuals or elements of a larger force are guilty of human rights violations, entire battalions or regiments can be tainted unless the guilty are identified and separated out from those forces that are innocent of such crimes. The Leahy laws allow for the re-creation of ``clean'' units. On the surface, it would seem that such a policy is clear and possible to implement. Unfortunately, it seems not to be so simple in practice. Despite the fact that Sarah Sewall, Undersecretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy and Human Rights told the Foreign Affairs Committee on May 21st that at least half the Nigerian military and security forces are clear of allegations of human rights violations, we continue to be told that Leahy vetting is at least slowing the provision of security assistance. According to congressional testimony by Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Robert Jackson, there are an estimated 187 Nigerian military units and 173 police units that have been cleared, but very few Nigerian units have been trained or are in training today. Why? Our Government provides approximately $15 billion in security assistance worldwide each year, involving 158 countries. Yet there are only 13 headquarters staff people handling Leahy vetting, in addition to embassy personnel. Is this a sign that these laws are not being taken seriously enough by our own government? In the current Fiscal Year, the Department of State is receiving $2.75 million to conduct Leahy vetting, which represents only two-one- hundredths of a percent of all military aid. Is insufficient funding for such vetting the major problem? Of the 158 countries we provide with security assistance each year, 46 had some aid withheld in 2011. The typical percentage of global Leahy vettings that don't meet requirements is at most 1-2 percent with just under 10% suspended. In Fiscal Year 2012, according to Congressional Research Service expert Lauren Ploch ``the State Department vetted 1,377 members of the Nigerian security forces--of that figure, almost 85% were cleared to receive assistance, with 15% were rejected or suspended.'' In Colombia, the government rejected the requirements of the Leahy laws before changing their minds and accepting the process. Now there reportedly are more high-ranking Colombian military officers behind bars than in any country other than Argentina, and Colombia is cited as a Leahy law success. In Nigeria, there have been no disciplinary actions against Nigerian military for scorched earth assaults on populations, and few high-ranking Nigerian military officers have been held accountable for human rights violations. We are here today to examine the questions these facts raise, and our witnesses have been asked to walk us through the process, to tell us what works and what doesn't work and to suggest ways to make this process more effective. In more than three decades of promoting human rights adherence in Congress, I have seen far too much brutality and indiscipline among military and security forces that are charged with establishing the peace and protecting their people. The Leahy laws are intended to prevent our Government from supporting such behavior, but if these laws are not implemented properly, they cannot achieve the goals for which they were created. No law is perfect, and we must never stop trying to perfect the laws we create--especially when they are meant to be both practical and aspirational.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, the global incidence of autism is steadily increasing. About 1 in 68 children has been identified with autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, according to estimates from the Center for Disease Control's Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network. ASD is reported to occur in all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups, but is almost 5 times more common among boys (1 in 42) than among girls (1 in 189). Studies in Asia, Europe, and North America have identified individuals with ASD with an average of about 1% of the population. The prevalence of autism in Africa is unknown, but there is no reason to believe that it is any different than other parts of the world. A new study recently found that each case of autism costs $2.4 million over a lifetime, including the expense of special education and lost productivity for their parents. Meanwhile, 85 percent of autistic adults are jobless or underemployed. It is, therefore imperative that people with ASD are empowered to be self-sufficient so that they can not only earn money to meet their own needs, but also so they can utilize the talents they possess to contribute to society at large. A hearing that I held last week examined some innovative strategies to achieve this goal. SAP, a global software company, is working to rectify this problem. SAP partnered with Thorkil Sonne, CEO and Founder of Specialisterne, to develop its highly successful ``Autism at Work'' program. Mr. Sonne, whose 17-year-old son Lars is autistic, realized that, while those with autism might lack the social skills recruiters are looking for, they possess many attributes high on their radar as well: intelligence and memory, the ability to see patterns and attention to detail on repetitive tasks. He reasoned that it would be phenomenal if we could use skills like we see among people with autism in software testing, data analysis, and quality control. He said that there is no reason why we should leave these people unemployed when they have so much talent and there are so many vacant jobs in the high-tech sector. SAP and Mr. Sonne provided further details of their extraordinary program at last week's hearing. In her testimony, Theresa Hussman of Autism Society of America said, ``In school, at work and in the community, people with autism are often faced with segregation, low expectations, impoverished conditions and denial of opportunity that a society committed to civil rights should find unacceptable. Today, if you are an adult living with autism, you will likely be unemployed or vastly under-employed, living well below the poverty level, and denied access to affordable housing and so much more.'' Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Ron Suskind testified in part about success with an ``affinity'' approach, and he says, ``for every visible deficit, there is an equal and opposing strength. This population is just like the rest of us, only less so and more so. The question increasingly is not `if' these `more so' qualities exist, but `where'?'' Autism used to be described as a disorder characterized by delays or abnormal functioning before the age of three years in social interaction, communication or restricted, repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior, interests and activities. More recently, behavioral scientists describe a range of such behavior now referred to as autism spectrum disorder, which includes a more high-functioning version known as Asperger syndrome. It is medically possible to diagnose someone with ASD as early as 18 months or even younger, and a reliable diagnosis can be made by the age of two. However, symptoms might not present themselves until later in life. Those with some form of autism may never be diagnosed at all. This has led to a debate over famous, productive people, often considered geniuses, who appear to have symptoms of autism, especially Asperger syndrome. In the April 30, 2003 issue of New Scientist magazine, writer Hazel Muir revealed the debate over whether geniuses Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton had Asperger syndrome. Simon Baron Cohen, an autism expert based at Cambridge University, and Oxford University mathematician Ioan James speculated that Newton, the noted English physicist and mathematician, exhibited Asperger traits such as hardly speaking, forgetting to eat and giving scheduled lectures even to an empty room. Einstein, the German physicist, was said to have obsessively repeated sentences until he was seven years old and was a notoriously confusing lecturer. Both were highly productive scientists, perhaps because of the kind of focus ASD produces rather than in spite of it. In a February 2, 2005, report on CNBC, anchor Sue Herara presented an interview with 2002 Nobel laureate Vernon L. Smith in which he spoke of the way in which his autism has allowed him to excel. ``I can switch out and go into a concentrated mode and the world is completely shut out,'' Smith is quoted as saying. ``If I'm writing something, nothing else exists.'' During the interview, Smith, who won the Nobel Prize for inventing the field of experimental economics, admitted that he is sometimes ``not there'' in social situations. He said that teaching had forced him to be more social, but it was only because he was talking about issues on which he was already focused. I raise the issue of intelligence and functionality because we too often see people with ASD as victims who must be cared for when the focus their condition produces may allow them to be highly successful in certain endeavors. When we begin to look at people with ASD in this light, we can better see how they can be enabled to contribute to society. It just requires understanding of their potential as well as their limitations. Many fields involving mathematics and science would allow for the intense focus exhibited by many people with ASD to be quite useful. Think also of fields of analysis--intelligence, actuary science, and other positions requiring what we commonly call ``numbers crunching.'' The ability to analyze data and see patterns most people would not recognize would be invaluable in analytical jobs. As Nobel laureate Vernon Smith said, his disconnection from social relationships enables him to think outside the box, as it were, without concern for violating social norms. Smith found his condition to be an advantage in enabling greater creativity. In our increasingly technical world, people with ASD actually are becoming more valuable, if we can help them overcome social disconnection and allow them to find fields in which what we have thought to be their disability is actually their advantage. We hope today's hearing can be instructive in at least initiating a change in perspective on what people with ASD can do to help themselves and to make a contribution to society as a whole. We must not continue to waste the talents of people who could make their lives and ours much better. Finally, I'd like to thank the amazing group of individuals who testified last week who made a historic difference in the lives of those on spectrum. As Michael Rosanoff put it in his testimony ``our mission at Autism Speaks is to change the future for all who struggle with autism spectrum disorders.'' Each of you on the expert witness panel did just that.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. I thank my good friend from Utah. I thank him for his service to our country and for, again, bringing us all together this evening. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to call on the President of the United States to give Israel the robust and vigorous support it deserves. Since the latest round of unprovoked rocket barrages were launched on July 6 by Hamas, Israeli citizens have lived under a relentless rocket attack, mortar fire, even attack from Hamas drone aircraft and a foiled sea raid. Israel itself has lived under a media attack, a calculated campaign to isolate Israel for defending itself. Major articles in international newspapers around the world take a grossly anti-Israeli slant. Make no mistake about it, Mr. Speaker. A major purpose of Hamas' rocket attacks is to provoke counterattacks, thereby to use the inevitable civilian deaths to set up an international media campaign against Israel. Hamas is guilty of sacrificing Palestinian lives and is guilty of using women and children as human shields in a brutally cynical attempt to manipulate world public opinion and isolate Israel. Mr. Speaker, the facts on the ground of Hamas attacks were clear from the start and follow long-established patterns. It is time our government sent a much more powerful and unambiguous message that the U.S. fully supports Israel's right to defend itself. The administration should emphasize that Israel's actions in its own defense are legal, that they are right, and that the U.S. stands with Israel without any ifs, ands, or buts, or so longs or any other qualifiers. As of yesterday, since the start of Israel's Operation Protective Edge, 2,500 rockets have been fired at Israel from Gaza. 1,875 of these have landed in Israel; 495 have been shot down by Iron Dome. Also, as of yesterday, the IDF has uncovered in Gaza 32 tunnels, with more than 60 access shafts, some of which were in mosques and houses. Anyone who has read today's feature in The New York Times, ``Tunnels Lead Right to the Heart of Israeli Fear,'' understand what these tunnels mean. The tunnels are about 50 feet underground, mostly undetectable like this one to my left, and underground equipment cannot even discover their whereabouts. The story quotes Eyal Brandeis, who lives in Kibbutz Sufa, and he says: It is a very pastoral environment. I live in the quiet of the green grass, the trees. It is not pleasant, though, that you sit one day on the patio drinking coffee with your wife and a bunch of terrorists will rise from the ground. That is exactly what happened a mile from his kibbutz at dawn on July 17. Many Israelis are more concerned about the tunnels than the rockets. Perhaps that gives us some insight into the dimension of the Hamas terrorist. I note, Mr. Speaker, that despite these rocket attacks by Hamas and tunnels, Israel continues to permit the transfer to the Gaza of humanitarian supplies and goods. Israel's humanity while under terrorist fire, its continued effort to do everything it can to separate terrorist militants from Palestinian civilians, only underscores the evil nature of Hamas. Mr. Speaker, Hamas was designated a foreign terrorist organization in 1997, and it has adopted its charter, the famous Covenant of the Islamic Resistance. That charter remains its ideological program. Only yesterday, Khaled Meshaal, the leader of Hamas, spoke on the Charlie Rose show in response to a question, ``Do you want to coexist with the State of Israel?'' He said, ``No.'' He said, ``No.'' Hamas doesn't want peace or reconciliation or coexistence. It wants to utterly destroy the State of Israel. I have further comments I will be saying later on this evening about the charter. Please read the charter. It couldn't be clearer. Hamas wants to destroy Israel.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. I want to thank my good friend for yielding and thank him for his leadership and his very eloquent remarks just a few moments ago on Hamas terrorism and the fact that we need to do much more than we have, to try to mitigate, end, and disarm this organization that is committed to the demise of the State of Israel. Hamas, Mr. Speaker, as we all know, is a terrorist organization, and as Netanyahu put it so well, it is like al Qaeda, and it is just like Boko Haram. They kill people, they murder, they rape, they abduct, and they do all kinds of terrible terrorist activities in order to promote their ends. Yesterday, Khaled Mashal, leader of Hamas, spoke to Charlie Rose, who asked: Do you want to coexist with the State of Israel? The Hamas leader said in a completely matter-of-fact manner, ``No.'' It is clear, Mr. Speaker, that Hamas doesn't want peace, reconciliation, or coexistence. Hamas seeks only the total demise of Israel. I would like to quote, Mr. Speaker, briefly from the Hamas Charter, and I encourage Members of this body, Americans, and people around the world to read the Hamas Charter. Article 13 says: Initiatives and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals, and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors. It gets even worse, Mr. Speaker. Article 20 obscenely compares Israeli society with Nazism. Article 28 charges so-called Zionism with massive conspiracy which ``aims at undermining societies, destroying values, corrupting consciences, deteriorating character, and annihilating Islam.'' Article 32 charges that the plan of the so-called Zionist is embodied in one of the greatest libels of all human history, the ``Protocols of the Elders of Zion.'' All of this, Mr. Speaker, recalls Natan Sharansky's ``3-D test of anti-Semitism,'' which he called demonization, double standards, and delegitimization. Sharansky twice testified in hearings that I chaired on combating anti-Semitism and proposed what he called the simple test to help us distinguish legitimate criticism of Israel from anti-Semitism. As he put it, the three Ds are, again, demonization--he said: When Israel's actions are blown out of all sensible proportion; when comparisons are made between Israelis and Nazis, this is anti-Semitism, not legitimate criticism of Israel. Second, the double standard: When criticism of Israel is applied selectively, when Israel is singled out by the United Nations for human rights abuses while the behavior of known and major abusers, such as China, Iran, Cuba, and Syria is ignored, this is anti- Semitism. The third D, delegitimization, as he puts it: When Israel's fundamental right to exist is denied--alone among all peoples in the world--this, too, is anti-Semitism. This, too, is exactly what Hamas is engaged in. From its origins to the present day, the Hamas movement has been poisoned by anti-Semitism, and the murderous nature of this evil has not diminished. It has got worse. Jews today continue to die because of it. Five IDF soldiers were killed yesterday, 48 have died since July 8, and of course, we are deeply saddened by these deaths, as well as all who have died in the conflict, and we must not forget that it is anti- Semitic hatred that is driving this conflict and causing all of these deaths. Today, Mr. Speaker, I call on President Obama to give Israel our government's full support and to make unmistakably clear our government's position that Israel, in response to Hamas' unprovoked attacks, is fully in the right to defend itself, including to search out and destroy Hamas terror tunnels and those who launch rockets at Israel. Again, I thank my good friend, Mr. Franks, for his leadership and, again, for his strong and eloquent statement earlier on, during the Special Order on Hamas.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Affairs be discharged from further consideration of the resolution (H. Res. 562) expressing the sense of the House of Representatives with respect to enhanced relations with the Republic of Moldova and support for Moldova's territorial integrity, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. I have an amendment to the text at the desk.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I have an amendment to the preamble at the desk.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the Speaker's table the bill (S. 653) to provide for the establishment of the Special Envoy to Promote Religious Freedom of Religious Minorities in the Near East and South Central Asia, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the Speaker's table the bill (S. 1104) to measure the progress of recovery and development efforts in Haiti following the earthquake of January 12, 2010, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the Speaker's table the bill (H.R. 3212) to ensure compliance with the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction by countries with which the United States enjoys reciprocal obligations, to establish procedures for the prompt return of children abducted to other countries, and for other purposes, with the Senate amendment thereto, and concur in the Senate amendment.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 2283) to prioritize the fight against human trafficking within the Department of State according to congressional intent in the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 without increasing the size of the Federal Government, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, today is an historic day for the House of Representatives, so I would like to begin by offering my profound appreciation for the extraordinary leadership of Majority Leader Eric Cantor for encouraging and moving through this House this very comprehensive package of antitrafficking legislation. I have been in Congress now 34 years, and I have never seen so many bills that are mutually reinforcing, that send a clear, unambiguous message to the world, as well as to our fellow Americans, that we care and we care deeply about the victims, and we want to put the perpetrators behind bars for a very, very long time. Again, I want to thank Eric Cantor for his leadership. I am very proud to say that the United States continues to lead the world in our trafficking responses at home and abroad. The bills we debate today not only bring relief to trafficking victims, but light the way for the rest of the world to do likewise. One of the greatest and most successful efforts to transmit our best practices to the rest of the world and to ensure accountability for minimum standards that we created in the Trafficking Victims Protection Act is the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons housed in the U.S. Department of State, created by the legislation I authored known as the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. Over the last 15 years, this office has been led by several incredibly talented and dedicated ambassadors who, through their persistence and grit, have turned out the annual Trafficking in Persons Report, laying bare the record of each country for the world to see, and summarizing the country's progress in an annual tier ranking. Tier 1 countries, for the record, are countries that fully meet the minimum standards prescribed by the act. Tier 2 countries do not meet the minimum standards but are making significant efforts to do so. Tier 3 countries do not meet the standards and are not making significant efforts to do so, and those countries can be held liable through a series of sanctions that are imposed by our government. Along with Tier 1, 2 and 3, we also have what we call a watch list. Since the TIP report's inception, Mr. Speaker, more than 100 countries have enacted antitrafficking laws, and many countries have taken other steps required to significantly raise their tier rankings, many citing the TIP Report as a key factor in their increased antitrafficking response. The importance of accurate tier rankings cannot be overstated. Over the years, we have seen countries begin in earnest the hard work of reaching the minimum standards after the TIP Report accurately exposed--with a Tier 3 ranking--each country's failure to take significant action against human trafficking. Whether that country be a close ally or foe, the TIP Report is designed to speak truth to power. And even some of our greatest friends and allies, like South Korea and Israel, have found themselves on Tier 3, only to engage in Herculean efforts to get off Tier 3 and to protect victims and to prosecute the traffickers. The tier rankings were meant to be and in large part have become a very powerful tool in the fight against trafficking. We have found a system that works. But tragically, it is sometimes muffled, misguided, and marginalized by unrelated bilateral concerns and by the internal structure of the State Department itself. In the words of Ambassador Mark Lagon, who from 2007 to 2009 was our Ambassador-at-Large to combat human trafficking: The State Department does a tremendous job in producing a report which tells it like it is, offering objective rankings. Yet at times it pulls punches, typically due to the urging of regional specialists rather than the TIP Office's dedicated experts on trafficking. This problem is what my bill, the Human Trafficking Prioritization Act, H.R. 2283, seeks to remedy. The Human Trafficking Prioritization Act will keep the fight against human trafficking from being lost in the politics of other U.S. interests by raising the status of the J/TIP ``office'' to that of a ``bureau'' within the U.S. Department of State. In the words of Ambassador John Miller, who served from 2002 to 2006 as Ambassador-at-Large: Upgrading the status of the office to a bureau will not create additional bureaucracy, it will simply give J/TIP and the Ambassador-at-Large who heads it equal standing with regional and functional bureaus at the Department of State. That standing is absolutely essential for the issue to remain a priority, especially when multiple U.S. interests are engaged. H.R. 2283 encourages the Secretary of State to upgrade the ``ambassador-at-large'' position to that of ``Assistant Secretary,'' to lead the bureau without adding to the number of Assistant Secretaries the State Department is permitted by law. In addition, H.R. 2283 will make it more difficult for countries and some State Department bureaus to game the tier-ranking system by limiting the time period countries can use promises of action to avoid tier downgrading. Currently, a country can sit on the Tier 2 watch list for up to 4 years with Presidential waivers, effectively stringing the U.S. along with promises to take action without ever actually taking action. After 4 years, by law, the country must be automatically downgraded to Tier 3 and, therefore, subject to sanctions. The law worked very well upon its first implementation in the 2013 reporting cycle. But we discovered a problem this year when China was wrongly and foolishly upgraded from Tier 3 to Tier 2 Watch List. As the law is currently written, China and its enablers at the U.S. Department of State can again game the system for 4 more years. H.R. 2283 will hold countries like China accountable by limiting to 1 year the amount of time a country can stay on the Tier 2 Watch List after the country was previously ordered downgraded to Tier 3. H.R. 2283 builds on the success of the TIP Office for the sake of the 21 million people still living in modern day slavery, and does so without increasing the cost of government. H.R. 2283 will give the TIP Office the integration and voice it deserves within the State Department and ensure accurate accountability for countries failing to meet the minimum standards for the eliminate of human trafficking. I respectfully ask my colleagues to support the bill. I would also like to offer special thanks to Gary Haugen, Holly Burkhalter, Tim Gehring, and the grassroots efforts of the International Justice Mission, which has worked so tirelessly to educate Members of Congress on the importance of this bill. I would note parenthetically that at least two of those people, Holly and Gary, especially Gary when we were first writing the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, was a frequent contributor to hearings as we crafted the bill, and then when we did the oversight as to how well or poorly the U.S. Department of State was implementing the law. You could always count on Gary Haugen to be there to give a very incisive look at the work that was being done or not being done. So a very special thanks to them for their work on this legislation. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time, and I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Meadows) and ask unanimous consent that he may control that time.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to mark 40 years since the illegal occupation of the Republic of Cyprus by the government of Turkey. These forty years have been marked by tragedy for the Greek Cypriots, and by criminal guilt for the Turkish government. In July 1974 the Turkish army began its sneak invasion of the island-- it was the beginning of a tragedy and outrage that continues today. At least one hundred eighty thousand Greek Cypriots were forced to flee the north. They lost all their property--shockingly, even today none of them have been allowed to return to their property. The Turkish government effectively ``ethnically cleansed'' the north of the island, where only a few hundred Greek Cypriots live in small enclaves, and even they are not allowed to worship freely. During these forty years over five hundred Christian religious sites have been demolished, destroyed, or desecrated, for example turned into casinos or warehouses. Eighty stolen churches have been converted into mosques. Artifacts from churches and cemeteries continually show up on the international black market. Mr. Speaker, in the current discussions about reunifying the island, the United States must stand firm on the complete withdrawal of Turkish military forces, respect for universally-recognized human rights for all Cypriots everywhere on the island, and an independent, unified government.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 4653) to reauthorize the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, and for other purposes, as amended.