Mel Watt

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. Thank you, Madam Speaker, and I thank my colleague, Stephanie Tubbs Jones from Ohio, for yielding time. I don't think it will take me 5 minutes to do this, but I did want to spend a little bit of time talking about the annual legislative conference that was conducted by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation this past weekend. I heard the comments of my colleague from California, Ms. Diane Watson, and I was fortunate to be able to sit in on one of her issues forums related to the Cherokee Freedmen, and I thought it was a very balanced and productive session, and very informative. I've been privileged to be a part of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's annual legislative weekend for all 15 years that I have served in Congress. And I would have to say that the first 13 of those years I did my piece of the conference by conducting a discussion and issues forum on the Voting Rights Act, access to the vote, and I participated in various issues related to the Judiciary Committee. But last year and the year before last, I was honored to serve as the Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, and I took a different perspective during those 2 years because it gave me an opportunity, as Chair of the caucus, not only to do my own issues forum, but it was part of, I viewed it as part of my responsibility to drop in on all of the issues forums and brain trust discussions that were going on. And I can tell you firsthand that there was nowhere in the world that there were more thoughtful provocative discussions going on about the state of black America, our role in the United States, our role in education, justice, our role internationally, than take place at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's annual legislative conference. That is the place to be to discuss the issues that impact our community, and I saw it firsthand, from issues related to the hip hop generation to the confidence of our African American youth, to the prison pipeline that, unfortunately, has been created, to the disparities that exist in health care and education and even in our international foreign policy. So I'm honored to have been able to have viewed the weekend from a different perspective for the last 2 years. But I will tell you, Madam Speaker, and my colleague, Representative Tubbs Jones, that I was honored to get back to being able to do just my thing again this year. And we had a delightful discussion about the Voting Rights Act in my issues forum. Last year we had just passed the 25-year reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act, and so we took that year to kind of pat ourselves on the back and talk about what we had just accomplished. But we knew the onslaught would be coming immediately. And within that 1-year period, there has been a concerted effort, litigation has been filed, which is a direct frontal attack on the Voting Rights Act and its reauthorization. So the first part of my issues related to that legal attack, which had just been argued in a court of appeals about 2 weeks ago, and I had the lawyer from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund there at my brain trust to talk about that attack and its likelihood for success. And I'm happy to report that we do not believe it is a serious attack, although there will certainly be others to come. That presentation was followed by a presentation by Donna Brazile on the various methods that have been used throughout the country to discourage minority participation in the voting process and what we plan to do about it in the 2007 election and, more importantly perhaps, in the 2008 Presidential election cycle, some of the strategies that we plan to follow to combat those efforts to diminish and reduce minority participation in the voting process. And then our third panelist was a director of a board of elections in Florida who talked about the desirability of creating a paper trail so that people who do show up and vote at the polls can reliably be certain that their vote will be counted and properly assessed. So we just had three panelists. They did outstanding jobs. We had ample time for discussion and participation by the attendees at the conference and at our issues forum. It was a delightful experience and one that I look forward to being around next year at this time to replicate. I again applaud you for convening this Special Order tonight to allow us the opportunity to talk about not only the fun things that happened at the foundation's annual legislative conference but, more importantly, the wonderful substantive discussions that take place around every issue that impact our community. With that I will thank our convener this evening.

Mr. WATT. We did talk about that, and we are watching that case very carefully, as well as another case out of North Carolina, which is an attack on whether the Voting Rights Act protects congressional districts that are not majority minority, such as the one I represent, which is only 40 percent or so African American, and the ones that are represented by most of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus today.

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. I am actually walking into the floor at a good time to pick up on the point that the Chair of the committee is making. This has kind of turned out to be the kind of debate that you hear in politics: Democrats believe in government and government can do everything; and Republicans believe in the private sector, and the private sector can do everything. The truth of the matter is neither one of those things is correct. There are some things that government can do and there are some things, a lot of things, that the private sector can do. One thing I think the private sector cannot do effectively is to insure against the kind of things that are really governmental responsibilities, protection of ourselves, our national defense. When that fails, it becomes a responsibility of government to accept and provide a safety net for our business community, or for our people. It is unfortunate that this debate has deteriorated into that kind of dichotomy. You have to either have all of government or all of the private sector. We think this is an ideal time for the government to be providing this kind of insurance protection so that business and the private sector and real estate development can continue to operate without fear of intervention by foreign powers or terrorists. And I rise in support of the amendment

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, when you practice law for 22 years, as I have before coming to Congress, and served on the Judiciary Committee for 15 years and never even in all that time dealt with patents, you are tempted to think of patent lawyers and the law of patents as a bunch of technocrats and elevate constitutional considerations and criminal law and other civil rights matters to a higher position. It has been an eye-opening experience for me, the first time to serve on this subcommittee and to see how important patent law is to stimulating, encouraging innovation, and to see how difficult and precise the law needs to be and how far behind the patent law has become in adapting to changes. One of the changes that I think hasn't gotten much attention in this bill that I was surprised at as a member of the Financial Services Committee that has so many regulators of the various parts of our financial system which can promulgate rules, it seemed to me when I found out that the Patent and Trade Office really didn't have the authority to promulgate any meaningful rules, that that was contributing to the problem, because innovations and ideas and inventions and communications are traveling so fast that the law can't always keep up with them. It is in that context that meaningful regulation is important. So I wanted to point to that particular aspect.

Mr. WATT

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

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, I am offering this amendment not proudly, unfortunately, but because of circumstances that have arisen that I will describe briefly and create the context for the amendment. In 1866, after the Cherokee Nation, which at that time also owned slaves, had gone through tremendous imposition by the United States and forced off of their land, including the people that they owned as slaves, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma entered into a treaty with the United States under which it agreed to make not only the Indians who were Cherokees, but their slaves, members of the Cherokee Nation. Unfortunately, in March of 2007, the Cherokee Nation decided that it would, in violation of the 1866 treaty, take action to, in effect, rescind the citizenship of the descendants of the African Americans who had been their slaves, the so-called ``Cherokee Freedmen.'' That has created a tension between the African American community and the Cherokee Nation, which can best be described as unfortunate because there is so much common heritage there between the Cherokee Nation and African Americans, and common experience. And this has created a divide which we hope will soon be repaired and restored. I'm in the unique position of understanding both sides of this because I understand when the Cherokee Nation says that in order to be a Cherokee, one has to have some Cherokee blood. And that is a position that is not a racist position. It is a position of establishing their ancestry, their blood lineage; and I have respect for that. And I'm in the unique position of having a great-great-grandmother who was a Cherokee. I'm also in the unique position of being an African American and understanding that the fact of what the Cherokee Nation has done would be exactly the same as if the United States of America, having imported black people from Africa and enslaved them, once slavery had ended, had taken the position that slaves could not be citizens of the United States. So I understand both sides of this argument. And I have tried to walk down the middle of it, but there is no way to reconcile those two positions. And so I reluctantly offer this amendment that would have the effect of denying funds that may be appropriated pursuant to the provisions of this bill, to the authority that is given under this bill, it would deny those funds from the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma until such time that they recognize the Freedmen as citizens of the Cherokee Nation. With that, that's the essence of the amendment, and I will yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, I am not going to oppose the amendment to the amendment that I have offered. I do want to make a couple of points. First of all, some question has been raised about the timing of my offering of the underlying amendment. I did not choose the timing of this. This bill is on the floor today. And if my amendment is not on the bill, who knows when there will be another opportunity to deliver this message and to create an impediment pending the outcome of the litigation. So I am perfectly content with the current status of the events in the sense that the court has said to the Cherokee Nation in a temporary injunction that you cannot exclude the Freedmen from the Cherokee Nation. As long as that court order stays in effect, I consider that we are at the result, which is the appropriate result. But if by chance 6 months down the road, 3 months down the road, 2 months down the road, a contrary set of circumstances exist, either the court withdraws its temporary restraining order or rules in a way that I don't think with any kind of justification it can rule against the Cherokee Freedmen, then this language will be in the bill and would appropriately have been put in the bill today. I can't come back 6 months from now and put it in the bill that is passed today. So I didn't choose the timing of this. I am having to do this in the time frame that this bill is moving. So in a sense, the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Boren) has served a very useful purpose here to basically codify everyone's agreement that as long as the court retains the status quo, allows Cherokee Freedmen to be citizens of the Cherokee Nation, that is an appropriate outcome for the case. And if that ceases to be the case, then this language would then take effect in the bill. Mr. Chairman, for that I think we are indebted to Mr. Boren for clarifying that. I appreciate him and will not oppose the amendment.

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. Mr. Speaker, in North Carolina at 9:35 on a Saturday night, I doubt that there are any people who are worried about what this Congress is doing to their constitutional rights, and probably that is so for people throughout America. I doubt that many of them understand what a FISA court is. But what they do understand is they don't want to entrust their constitutional rights to the Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. They don't trust him, and rightfully so. So when Mr. Issa says that we worry about what the terrorists might be thinking tomorrow, I worry about what they might be thinking tonight, because they must be thinking: You know, we might have won the battle, because we have the United States reacting and giving up its constitutional rights. Vote against this bill.

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment and move to strike the last word.

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, I think we come to the floor not because we feel like Mr. Flake's amendment is likely to pass, but he provides a unique opportunity for us to talk to each other and the American people about some of the problems and stresses that are taking place in our country. There are three points that I want to make. First of all, this is not a local issue for me. The appropriation, the consortium, is of eight leading textile research universities in Alabama, California, Georgia, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and South Carolina. Not one of those universities is located in my congressional district. This is not a local pork barrel request for those of us who are rising. Second, I want to make the point that Mr. Coble and I, on a bipartisan basis, have been the co-Chairs of the furnishings caucus, which the textile industry provides a major base for in North Carolina and in other parts of the country. This is not something that's just about textiles. It is about a broader-based loss of jobs and employment opportunities and a severe impact on our economy and various economies in multiple States that goes well beyond just the textile industry. I hope Mr. Flake recognizes that. The third point I want to make is a broader point, because it is raised by the gentleman from Arizona in a sequence of amendments. He has made the argument that somehow we are better off to let the Federal Government be making these decisions rather than trying to direct these appropriations through this process to local communities. Now, that's an interesting argument for a person to be making who in most cases makes the counterargument that States rights are more important than Federal rights. If anybody knows what the priorities ought to be in North Carolina, Massachusetts, Alabama, South Carolina, it should be the people who are representing those areas, and I would have to say Presidents, administrations, Democrat and Republican, have not paid sufficient attention to the plight of the textile industry, the furnishings industry, the loss of manufacturing jobs that we pay in our local communities. So for somebody to make the argument that we shouldn't be involved in the process when the decisions that are being made are impacting our local communities, I don't understand, especially a gentleman who has consistently and long term supported the notion of States rights. So I think this is an appropriate thing for us to be doing, not only in this amendment context, but in most of the contexts, in essentially all of the contexts. I even supported his Republican colleague's Christmas tree amendment because I thought he knew more about the Christmas tree industry in his local community than anybody was ever going to know on a national basis about the importance of Christmas trees to his local economy. These are things that we are uniquely situated to understand and advocate for, and I would hope that our colleagues would strongly and resoundingly defeat this amendment, for those three purposes and others.

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I wanted to make the point too that when I am in Washington, I live just across the line between Northeast and Southeast. On a number of occasions on Friday evenings, I have had the occasion to be just on the Southeast side of that line down in the area where these maneuvers are taking place. I doubt that the gentleman could imagine the number of visitors that come into Washington for these events, for these maneuvers, along with the families of these service people. We regularly, as Members of Congress, get invited, though we are seldom here on Friday evenings to take advantage. But if you look at the benefit that is probably coming out of these maneuvers and the participation of the public and the support it builds up for our military and for the economy in this area, it is just a dramatic illustration. I just wanted to make that point. Mr. Chairman, this is not my earmark. I wouldn't even be the stereotypical supporter of this. But it is an illustration of the national value that this earmark would play.

Mr. WATT. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I'm going to make it more convoluted, because I've actually read the book that this earmark is titled after. It is a wonderful, wonderful children's book, and I say that with all sincerity. It's unfortunate that the earmark was named after the Perfect Christmas Tree, but the book itself, written by a local author, has produced a substantial amount of employment and funds for this area of North Carolina. And for us to demean the notion of a perfect Christmas tree, which is the title to the book, a children's book, further convolutes this. I find myself kind of defending the Perfect Christmas Tree.

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman of the committee for yielding time. I rise in support of the bill. The bill deserves our support for two important reasons. First of all, it establishes a strong regulator in an area that has cried out for greater regulation, and I think we understand that looking back on what has happened at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over the last several years. Second of all, the bill establishes a trust fund that is very similar to the housing trust fund for which over 200 of the Republicans voted last year. So I really am surprised to find that this year all of the sudden there is all of this opposition to the trust fund. So I want to spend a minute talking about the trust fund. First of all, it is a housing trust fund, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are designed to incentivize more housing for middle income and low income people. So it's absolutely consistent with the purposes for which they were founded. Second, the ranking member of our committee made it sound like this is going to increase the cost of housing for middle income people and low income people. In fact, what we need to focus on is that this money will either go to the stockholders of Fannie and Freddie or it will go to the purpose for which Fannie and Freddie was originally formed. So this is not a choice between raising taxes or not. This is fulfilling the purpose of these two entities.

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I am always reluctant to rise in opposition to my colleague from North Carolina, because he is my close colleague from North Carolina. He is right next door to my congressional district, well, one county removed, I guess. So it's burdensome when I have to rise in opposition to his amendments. But this one I feel strongly about. First of all, I have heard this argument several times today that this imposes some kind of tax on middle-class and low-income homeowners. I think, if you look into this, you will find that this money is either going into a trust fund, which we all support to increase homeownership and affordable housing in this country, or, as has been the case throughout Fannie and Freddie's existence, it is going to the shareholders of Fannie and Freddie. There is no passing along of savings, no enhancement of credit to additional home buyers. This is a choice between whether the shareholders get it or if we were going to finance affordable housing by the government, whether the taxpayers would be paying for it, which this trust fund really shields the taxpayers from having put up this money. That's my first argument. The second concern I have is that this trust fund would sunset in 5 years, and we have, as a Congress, if we pass this bill and it survives through the whole process, we will have legislated this into existence. The effect of this amendment would be to allow the director of this new agency with all these enhanced powers that we have given to him, to unlegislate what we have legislated, which I think is an inappropriate delegation of our authority. Now, it may be that we make a bad decision to legislate it, but we recognize that by putting a 5-year sunset in the provision and allowing ourselves to come back and correct our own decision if we find that the decision was erroneous. It is not good from my vantage point, to say to a director of any Federal agency, we passed this as a policy matter, and we are going to give you the authority to reverse it. Now, if some independent body were making this determination, it were a study, as the gentleman indicated, we agreed to a study by the GAO and put it in the bill. That would be an appropriate mechanism for us to get feedback where we could undo this at the end of 5 years or renew it at the end of 5 years, but that's different than saying to the director, you can go if you determine that A, B or C exists, and you can unwind what the Congress of the United States told you is the law of the land. So if the gentleman were inclined to offer this as part of this study, which we approve, I think it might be an appropriate way to proceed, because it would help to inform us. The GAO would do the study, they would tell us what their results were, and if we agreed with them that it was a big enough mistake, then we could, even before the 5 years, we could go back and correct it. But I don't want any director of some agency to be passing legislation either directly or indirectly. For that reason, I think this is not a good amendment. I encourage my colleagues to defeat it.

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

Mr. WATT. I want to suggest the second step of the dance, from my perspective, is the money goes into the trust fund; housing is built; that generates economic activity and reduces the deficit. So the second step to this dance is a deficit reduction using the trust fund, not under the gentleman's amendment though.

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. I won't take 5 minutes. I just want to remind Members that we've just spent an awful lot of time arguing about something that has nothing to do with this bill, and that there are a number of other amendments. And I fear that at some point tonight, we will regret this detour on which we have engaged. It illustrates, and the gentleman who is in his first term here will appreciate why the rules of the House are constructed as they are. You don't have a provision to transfer this to the debt because if there were a provision in your amendment to transfer it to the debt or to Social Security, this amendment would be non germane to this bill. And without germaneness rules, you can go off and talk about, for as long as you want, as they do in the Senate sometimes, about anything that they want to talk about. But the amendment that you have offered is marginally germane because you didn't do what you say you wanted to do. And you've made the point that, Mr. Chairman, he's made the point that he wanted to make, I'm sure, to his constituents. So I would hope that we could get back to the amendments that are germane and relevant to this bill, and maybe finish this bill tonight. It would be wonderful.

Mr. WATT. Would the gentleman yield just long enough to let me clarify that I'm not arguing about whether this is important. I'm arguing about whether it is germane, and there is a difference. I acknowledge that it is important.

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. I have been reading the amendment. And the first part of the amendment really does exactly what the bill does, it tells the director to set up some guidelines, and that is what the director is authorized to do under this bill. So that's not troublesome. But then you get to page 2 of the amendment, and then you have the requirement that there be a settlement procedure which is duplicative of the settlement procedure that already exists under law. You have the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act already in place. There is going to be a separate set of disclosures now related to this. And then the gentleman has the nerve to say that we are creating a bureaucracy and adding costs to the closing process. I, for the life of me, can't understand why this would be a good idea. The first part of the amendment is fine, because that is what the bill is all about. But it is already in the bill. Why would you have two disclosures, two sets of disclosures? We have had hearing after hearing after hearing about how to simplify the disclosure process at closings. Mr. McHenry from my own State offered an amendment to the bill in committee that tried to put forth a one-page disclosure statement, and here we are now with you all telling us we ought to have a second set of disclosures at a closing under this trust fund. It is inconsistent, and it is obvious what this is about, is to throw every stumbling block in the way that you can to discourage the trust fund. We had an amendment earlier that was defeated in the last series of votes. Mr. Bachus offered the amendment, the ranking member of the full committee, that would have stripped the trust fund out of the bill. You lost that amendment. You lost that amendment. To go every other conceivable way to try to do identically what the overwhelming majority of this House has already said it is not willing to do seems to me to be counterproductive. Let me just address one other issue. Mr. Price from Georgia raised this earlier. We have to at some point say, look, we have had more open rules out of committee under Chairman Frank's chairmanship this year than all of the last 8 years in this House, and at some point the notion that we can continue to bring bills to the floor under open rules when we have 15 different amendments that essentially say the same thing over and over again, and then have one of your Members get up and say, well, because one of your Members was not allowed to amend his faulty amendment it is not an open rule, it is insulting to the Chair of this committee and it is insulting to this institution. So this is yet another example to do what was failed to be done in the ranking member's amendment, and I ask my colleagues to defeat it once again. announcement by the acting chairman

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

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the gentleman a question. Did the gentleman vote for the Bachus amendment that would have not provided any assistance to any of these people? Didn't the gentleman vote for that amendment?

Mr. WATT. Will the gentleman yield once again?

Mr. WATT. Is the gentleman saying that his community is just Texas? He's not worried about Mississippi or Louisiana, in the general context--

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. I object.