Mel Watt

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens). (Mr. OWENS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, I am here as chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, and to talk about the bill before us. When I became Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus earlier this year, I encouraged my colleagues in the caucus to refocus their energies, and they agreed to do so, on the basic historical purpose of the Congressional Black Caucus: closing disparities that exist between African Americans and other Americans in this country. That enabled us to develop, in a daylong retreat, an agenda around closing disparities in this country. It enabled us to give that agenda to the President of the United States on January 17 of this year, and to say to the President of the United States, we will not evaluate you on whether you are a Republican or a Democrat; we will evaluate you solely on whether you are proposing an agenda, an appropriation, a proposal that will close or widen the disparities that exist between African Americans and other Americans in this country. It enabled us to come, when we engaged in this debate on the budget and offer a Congressional Black Caucus budget that focused on the agenda of closing disparities between African Americans and other Americans. It enabled us to develop a legislative and an appropriations agenda that focused on that same objective. So why are we here today? Because this bill literally blows up our whole domestic agenda that the Congressional Black Caucus has adopted. In health care, in education, in justice, and in all of the things that we believe are important, we believe this bill moves us in the wrong direction. In our CBC budget, we proposed to roll back the tax cuts on people who make the highest amount of money in our country, people over $200,000 a year, and to get $20 billion, approximately, out of that rollback from which we could do our agenda. That was not allowed. We cannot do what we want to do in the context of this bill because the only thing we could do in this bill, if we offered an amendment, would be to rob Peter to pay Paul. We would be taking from one worthy purpose to give to another. But we cannot sit by and allow this bill, which rolls back adult training grants, U.S. employment services, youth training grants, Job Corps, community service block grants, LIHEAP, No Child Left Behind, and zeroes out a total of 48 programs that would have the effect of closing disparities between us and other Americans. We must stand, and that is why we have asked for the time today. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands (Mrs. Christensen) to talk about the health disparities that this bill will not help close. (Mrs. CHRISTENSEN asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, solely for the purpose of a unanimous consent request, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Al Green.) (Mr. AL GREEN of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, I rise to say to my colleagues, 15 minutes, an hour and 15 minutes, 15 days would not be enough time for us to tell you how bad this bill is and how devastating it will be in opening disparities that already exist wider and wider and wider. When we rise into the full House, we intend to offer a copy of the Congressional Black Caucus agenda, the legislative agenda, and a listing of 48 programs that are zeroed out by this bill. I do not know how we think there is going to be any kind of movement toward a closing of the disparities that exist between rich and poor, black and white in this country if we continue to go down the road we are going. We have drained all of our resources off to war, to tax cuts, and left nothing to address the needs of our own country and our own people. Amendment Offered by Mr. Bradley of New Hampshire

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott).

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, this marks the sixth consecutive term of Congress in which I have engaged in this debate. I actually, when I first came to Congress and the first time I had the opportunity to participate in this, I resented having to go through this. But over the years I have come to believe that this is a healthy debate; and if we conduct it in a dignified way, the debate actually can be good for the entire country, and people can come away with a greater understanding and appreciation of how delicate our Constitution framework is. This is about how individuals in our country perceive patriotism, the rights of free speech, the rights of protecting the views of people who quite often they may disagree with in content, but that is what our country has been about. So I want to start by complimenting the chairman and the ranking member for the dignified way the debate has proceeded up to this point. And I hope that this amendment in the nature of a substitute does not get us off onto a different track, because this is the second or third time I have offered the amendment in the nature of a substitute, and I did it originally for the purpose of trying to get to a higher quality of debate and forcing my colleagues and whoever may be listening to the debate to think about some of these things. What does the first amendment mean? What rights do we owe to people in our country whose views we may disagree with? What rights do we owe to the people in our country who may express those views in ways that we disagree with? And I am confident that everybody in this body would think that desecration of the flag, burning of the flag would not be something that we would be supporting, so that is not what this amendment is about. My amendment simply says if we are going to do a constitutional amendment, it should not just say that Congress has the authority to pass a law that prohibits the physical desecration of the flag. Whatever we do should be subject to the first amendment to the Constitution. And the amendment under my version would read, not inconsistent with the first article of amendment to the Constitution: ``The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States.'' My amendment, I believe, recognizes the long-standing legacy of the Bill of Rights. In over 200 years of history, our Constitution has been amended only 27 times and the Bill of Rights has never been amended, not once has the Bill of Rights been amended; and this proposed resolution would be the first time to do that. I understand that the proposed resolution seeks to uphold the integrity of our flag; but my amendment seeks to ensure that the principles for which the flag stands, particularly freedom of expression and freedom of speech, are also reserved. The first amendment to the United States Constitution stands for the proposition that all voices of dissent should be heard without governmental suppression. Disrespect for the flag is offensive to every Member of this body, but this is not a debate about patriotism. It is not a debate about whether flag desecration is good or bad. It is a debate about the values that underlie our Constitution. And I think former Secretary of State Colin Powell said it best when he said these words: ``The first amendment exists to ensure that freedom of speech and expression applies not just to that with which we agree or disagree, but also that which we find outrageous. I would not amend that great shield of democracy, the Constitution, to humor a few miscreants,'' he said. ``The flag will be flying proudly long after they have slunk away.'' And that is the end of his quote for my purposes today. It is the underlying values represented by the flag, not the cloth on which the stars and bars are sewn that our Constitution protects. Those are the values my amendment would preserve. Mr. Speaker, following the horrific acts of terrorism against our country, our citizens were repeatedly cautioned not to cower in the face of terrorism. Do not curtail our freedoms, we were told, for to do so would be to surrender our way of life, to give up and give in to the terrorists. The terrorists would win. I think if we pass the amendment as it has been proposed, we give in to those miscreants, as Colin Powell has characterized them, those people who we disagree with. We should be protecting their rights also to free speech. I want to put this in context. I started by saying that I used to resent this debate and I would tell you, Mr. Speaker, that I came to Congress thinking that, I guess, I thought I had a monopoly on what the meaning of the Constitution was. And there is a history to that, because I had graduated from Yale Law School, took my constitutional law from Professor Robert Bork, who became so controversial when he was nominated to the United States Supreme Court. And in that class with me was a student by the name of Duncan Kennedy who is now a professor at Harvard Law School and for whom a whole theory of law has been patterned. In that class with me, in that constitutional law class, was a guy named Paul Gewirtz, who is now a professor of constitutional law at Yale University Law School. So it was one of those law school classes that people would die for. And we analyzed the first amendment back and forth, right and left, Bork against Duncan, Bork against Gewirtz. I mean, there were good students in the class and then there were people like me who were sitting in the back of the room hoping that nobody would ever realize that we were there and I could avoid getting involved in that high level of debate. But I was listening and understanding that the Constitution, the first amendment had different meanings to different people. And I thought I got a good balanced view. Actually, I thought I got a good balanced view until I went back to North Carolina and went into a law firm that was generally known as a civil rights law firm. And one day my senior law partner, a gentleman by the name of Julius Chambers, called me in and said, I want you to go to eastern North Carolina to one of the counties in which Native Americans represent a high portion of the population, because a number of the Native Americans in that county have been charged with parading, using tomahawks, parading around; and they have been charged with resisting arrest and various other criminal offenses. And he did not tell me what they were down there demonstrating about. He just told me to go down there and represent them. I went and I started my interviews with the Native Americans, and during the course of my interviews with them, it became apparent that the reason that they had these tomahawks out there and they were demonstrating and parading was that they had a desire not to have to go to school with black people. They thought that the schools that they were going to be sent to with African Americans were inferior, and they did not want to do it. Well, I being an African American myself, swallowed very hard and said, What has my law partner gotten me into? I could not wait until the end of the day to get in my car and race back to Charlotte, North Carolina, and confront my senior law partner. I walked in and I said, Chambers, why would you send me to this county to represent these Indians who were demonstrating against going to school with African Americans? His response taught me more about the first amendment than either Robert Bork or Duncan Kennedy or Paul Gerwitz or any of the discussions that I had participated in in law school. He simply asked me one question. He said, Do you not believe in the first amendment? This is a difficult issue, and this is not about patriotism, and I have come to understand over the years of debate that we have had this amendment under consideration, I started out saying to people on the opposite side, people like the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham) and people who served their country, You are unpatriotic because you do not agree with me about my interpretation of the first amendment; the first amendment was passed to protect the right of people to demonstrate and burn flags and you are unpatriotic because you do not agree with me. But then I started to listen to what the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham) was saying and what my colleagues were saying and studied this issue more. Could it be that Justice Scalia and Justice Rehnquist, two conservative jurists, could be on opposite sides of this issue and it not be a difficult issue from a constitutional perspective? That is, can you imagine the debate that was taking place in the Supreme Court? I cannot imagine that Justice Rehnquist looked at Justice Scalia and said, You are unpatriotic because you do not agree with me. I cannot imagine that Justice Scalia looked at Justice Rehnquist and said, oh, no, you are unpatriotic because you disagree with me. They came down on opposite sides of the landmark case. This is a difficult issue and it is all about what you think ought to be protected under the first amendment. It is not about whether you are patriotic or not. Well, there is one thing I want for sure my colleagues to acknowledge, that this amendment, when it was first offered, started out just saying there shall be no physical desecration of the flag. For a couple of years it said that, but then the more recent versions of what we are considering today say that Congress shall have the power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag. That means that Congress must pass a statute, which must then go to the Supreme Court ultimately to be evaluated. So, at some point, the Supreme Court is going to evaluate whether that statute complies with the first amendment or not. In that sense, the language that I am proposing, I am going to first and foremost acknowledge, is redundant. It just specifically says that whatever we do as a Congress has got to be subject to the first amendment. That is redundant. As my colleagues know, whatever we do as a Congress is supposed to be subject to everything in the Constitution anyway, but I want to remind us that, at the same time, we protect the flag. A principle of our Nation is also to protect speech, whatever that is; is it burning the flag, is it hollering ``fire'' in a crowded theater? Whatever it is, there needs to be some kind of balance. And this Congress, whether it adopts my amendment or does not adopt my amendment, is going to be subject to that anyway. The proponents of this amendment who say that this is going to do something earth shattering or that my amendment is going to undercut their proposal, it is just not the case. I just want to be sure that we acknowledge that whatever we do, we acknowledge it, that the first amendment is just as important as the flag. Just as important. Some people might argue that it is more important than the piece of cloth. My colleagues might argue that it is, that it is equal in value, but we at least need to come to grips with that, and that is what the Constitution, that is what the Supreme Court has been trying to do for a number of years. It is not an easy thing to do. We have heard a lot of discussion about activist judges. This proposal encourages judges to be activists because it says you are giving Congress the right to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag. Do my colleagues think the Supreme Court is not going to exercise its constitutional responsibilities just because we said Congress can prohibit the physical desecration of the flag? It is going to have to. It is going to have to decide what that means. It is going to have to decide how we balance this provision, this statute, statutory authority that Congress gives against the first amendment. We are not going to be able to get around the Supreme Court here. We like to punt these things and pretend that we are doing something earth shattering here, but the Supreme Court, I hope, is still going to be there, and I believe the Supreme Court is going to wrestle with this as they have in the past. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I am going to filibuster because I am waiting for some Members who would like to speak on this. Let me respond to the comments of the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte) that the Supreme Court has amended the Bill of Rights on a number of occasions. It did not amend the language of the Bill of Rights. It amended the interpretation of the Bill of Rights. On a number of those occasions I have been really unhappy about the way the Supreme Court ruled and took away a right that I thought I had. I suspect if there were ever anybody in this institution who would be, should be railing against the Supreme Court, either the current Supreme Court or Supreme Courts throughout history, it might be the members of the Congressional Black Caucus who would have the highest standing and right to do that because in a number of cases the Supreme Court has ruled in ways that were absolutely counter to our interest. I just want my colleagues to understand that this document that our drafters crafted for us has survived so much the test of time, the comings and goings of members of the Supreme Court differing in interpretations, as the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte) said. If you want to look at it, they rewrote the Bill of Rights, but never changed the words. I do not think that every time you get a Supreme Court decision that you disagree with in this country the way to resolve or to express your disagreement is to come to the Congress of the United States and propose that we amend the entire constitutional framework that we are operating under. I do not think that is the way to do it. Sometimes you win; sometimes you lose. Sometimes you have a progressive Supreme Court; sometimes you have a conservative Supreme Court. That does not mean that you do not go back and try to statutorily do what you think that you need to do to amend statutes, but amending our Constitution is an entirely different thing. So one side of me says this is not a good idea to be amending the Constitution in this way. The other side of me really says this amendment has been made out to be a lot more than it really is because by saying that Congress can pass a statute that prohibits the physical desecration of the flag does not give us any more authority than we now have. We can pass a statute right now that prohibits the physical desecration of the flag. The question is what would the United States Supreme Court say about that statute once it worked its way through the process and up to the United States Supreme Court. And if we pass this amendment, having amended for the first time in 200 years our Bill of Rights, gone through the whole process, the Supreme Court is still going to have the same right to do that. This is a great, great discussion vehicle. As I said, I used to resent coming here and engaging in this debate every year or every 2 years. It always comes right before July 4. Somebody is always trying to make a political point. Democrats used to be saying Republicans were unpatriotic. Republicans used to be saying Democrats are unpatriotic. Now people are going whichever way they want to go. This is not a Republican or a Democratic amendment; this is a constitutional amendment. Democrats and Republicans have to exist in our constitutional framework. We have got to operate within our system. That is what I think this is about. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Davis).

Mr. WATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute just for the purpose of responding to this. I do not agree at all with my chair, as much as I respect him, that this codifies anything. What it does is that it codifies and reaffirms and acknowledges the state of affairs that exists right now, that in the final analysis the Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter of the Constitution and laws of our country. After we pass my amendment or the underlying amendment, the Supreme Court is still going to be the ultimate arbiter of that, and so my amendment neither does that or does not do it. His amendment does not do it. If the Supreme Court changes its mind, the composition of the Supreme Court changes, and they decide that burning a flag is prohibited, is not protected under the first amendment, then that is going to be the last word on it. We do not have any way to go on that. So I do not think I can agree with him that I am doing anything different than preserving the state of affairs. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott), my good friend.

Mr. WATT. Mr. Speaker, I offer an amendment in the nature of a substitute.

Mr. WATT. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. WATT. Mr. Speaker, how much time remains?

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time. In the Congressional Black Caucus' agenda that we rolled out on January 27 of this year, one of the things that we said was we cannot take a step back in the employment area, and that one of the important things that we have to have is aggressive enforcement of the employment discrimination laws of the Nation. It was shocking to us when on May 13 of this year, we received notice that on May 16, the EEOC was planning to vote on a restructuring proposal. We immediately sent out a letter to the EEOC saying, please do not reduce the number of district offices from 23 to 15 or downgrade the field offices and reduce the number of attorneys' positions, because that could have a substantial negative effect on the enforcement of our employment discrimination laws. The last thing we need is to take a step back from enforcement. We need to be taking more aggressive steps to provide more employment opportunities, not taking steps backwards. We think this amendment is absolutely critical. On behalf of the 42 House Members of the Congressional Black Caucus, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment and absolutely guarantee that no action can be taken on this restructuring proposal.

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. Mr. Speaker, I am really saddened today, and I am not sure whether I am more disappointed because of the mischaracterization of the amendments in the committee report or whether I am more saddened by the fact that the members of a committee on which I have served now for 13 years would be here on the floor defending the characterization that was put in the committee's report. I would just hope that we can get the committee to file an amended report that clears this up and we can put this behind us and go on. This is saddening, and if we cannot get that, I think it would be a really, really sad commentary on this institution and what our committee has sunk to in this Congress.

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. Mr. Speaker, there are some things in this resolution I agree with, and there are some things that I do not agree with; but the real problem that I have with the resolution is it does nothing. It is just a bunch of rhetoric. Where I come from, we say it is a lot of words with sound and fury signifying nothing. Nothing will be done for small businesses at the end of the day under this bill. Why we need a blueprint or a road map to address something in Congress escapes me. This bill does nothing. The 20 businesses the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Keller) says he talks to obviously did not include any minority businesses, and the number one issue that minority people are indicating to us as members of the Congressional Black Caucus is they cannot even get into business. Mr. Speaker, that is 21 percent of the population, 7 percent of the small businesses, 7 percent of the businesses in this country; and yet when we tried to offer amendments to this bill to address the access to capital needs, 8(a), 7(a) and the things that are important to incentivizing minority businesses, the committee objected to including those things in this bill, and the Committee on Rules said, no, you cannot offer those amendments. We want access to capital. We want the ability to just be able to get into business. We want access to contracts; and while the bill talks about unbundling Federal contracts, nobody on the other side of the aisle has done anything about unbundling contracts. We have met with administration officials time after time after time, and they have done nothing. This resolution does nothing, and I encourage my colleagues to vote against it.

Mr. WATT. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's yielding to me. I just want to be clear on whether this committee considered any amendments dealing with 8(a) or any of the incentivizing provisions and what disposition this committee made and what disposition the Committee on Rules made of efforts to amend this resolution to include some incentives for minority business participation that would close the gap that exists between minority individuals in business and other individuals in business. Did they consider anything?

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

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, those of us who started this process 6 years or so ago in the good faith belief that there were problems with the bankruptcy system, in the sense that people were gaming the system, and felt that there needed to be genuine reform cannot help but be disappointed today because, in the process, we have lost sight of the objective of reforming to do away with the sinister influences and the advantageous corruption that is going on in the system. I have never seen a bill that has violated more principles throughout this process. The first one was that the consumers and the lenders got together and decided that, because the lenders were not sure that they could do bankruptcy reform without reaching a compromise and the consumer groups realized that they might not be able to stop bankruptcy reform, they set up this system called the means test, which effectively exempted from the whole bankruptcy reform system those who fall below the means test threshold. The result is that individuals who fall below the means test threshold can continue with impunity to game the system without any kind of responsibility, and those who fall above the threshold get subjected to a set of arbitrary rules that, even if they are not gaming the system, they are taken advantage of. So we have lost sight of that. The second thing is we have built in a set of perverse incentives for easy credit now. For people who fall below the means test, there is really no disincentive for them to go out and get as much credit as they can. And for people above the means test there is no incentive for lenders to be responsible in their lending practices, because they know now they have this system that is going to protect them from people that they have made irresponsible loans to. The third problem is that, as we have gone through this process, the more we have bought into this means test philosophy and debated this, we now get to a point at the end of the process where it has corrupted even our democratic process. Because we are here on the floor with 30 minutes of debate on our side to tell the public the problems with this bill. This is irresponsible legislating at its worst, and I encourage my colleagues to reject this bill and vote no.

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the rule and in opposition to the bill; the rule because the rule shuts out all amendments to this bill.

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. Mr. Speaker, I just came in on the plane from North Carolina, and I found myself thinking a lot about what we are doing here this evening. Wondering, first of all, what this vote is going to cost the American people, making a mental calculation that probably 4, $5 million we are spending on this one vote this evening, and wondering how many children are going to go to bed hungry tonight and how many we could feed with that amount of money; how many feeding tubes we have withdrawn by our own indifference in this body, by the decisions that we have made in this body that pit one group against another. I found myself wondering where the compassion was last week when we tried to rally the Members of this body behind the Congressional Black Caucus' agenda and budget and pointed out to them that 886,000 more people died over the last 10 years, African Americans, because they did not get the same kind of quality of medical care that white Americans got, just the difference in the qualities. Where was your compassion when we tried to get you to address that issue? The compassion comes out in this one case, but where is the compassion when we point out to you every single day that people are starving and dying and seeking justice and you will not hear it? How do we define compassion here? We have got to look at a bigger global picture, I think. You cannot just react to one person's situation. Where is your compassion when we need you?

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) who prepared this budget, has his imprint on it and knows more about it than anybody.

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, I was hoping that the gentleman would give us a little bit more time.

Mr. WATT. I have two speakers left.

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, does the gentleman have time left that he might be able to yield to me instead of yielding back?

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment in the nature of a substitute.