Mel Watt

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, what I would like to do with the gentleman's permission is perhaps come back during the debate on the main bill and actually have a colloquy so that at least we can create a legislative record that specifically indicates that the gentleman's interpretation is that this bill does not cover this Blackbird system, because their interpretation is entirely different than the gentleman's, and I think it would be helpful at least to have that legislative record developed. I am not sure we can do it as a part of the rule. So if the gentleman would be so kind.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the rule, and I am going to try to shield as best I can my absolute disappointment, indeed outrage, at the process by which this bill has come to the floor and at the rule under which it is coming to the floor. And if the Members would just kind of put themselves in my position, perhaps they will understand the outrage that I feel about the process. I am a member of the subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary that considered the House bill for bankruptcy. I sat through almost all of the hearings, discussions, the markups in the subcommittee. The bill then went to the full committee, and I sat there and dealt with the bill. Then the bill came to the floor, and it passed the House. Then all of a sudden, yesterday afternoon conferees were appointed who never met and out of the shadows of the back room, a bill emerges and gets substituted in the place of a State Department authorization, so that a bill where we thought we were going to debate American embassy security and State Department matters ends up being a bankruptcy bill, and then the Committee on Rules then turns around and waives all points of order against the bill. What are we as members of the committee supposed to think under those circumstances? Notwithstanding the substance of the bill, we cannot even get to the substance of the bill when the House is being operated in such a sinister and backhanded way, when the authorizing committee and the committee that is supposed to consider the substance of the bill gets cut out of the process. The conferees never get an opportunity to meet to discuss what is going to be brought to the floor. How should we as members of the committee feel other than disappointment and outrage? And I think we ought to send a resounding message to the leadership here that this process is unacceptable. We ought to vote this rule down, and then we can talk about the substance of the bill, which I have some reservations about, too. But right now, we are talking about the process by which this bill got to the floor, and we should all be outraged. We should not be here considering a bill that brings itself here as an embassy security matter, as a State Department authorization bill and ends up being a bankruptcy bill which has nothing to do with the title of the bill that we are considering. We should be outraged by this, and we should not conduct this body like this. Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to oppose the rule and let us at least send this bill through the regular process and get some regular order in this House.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Michigan for yielding me this time. I had really intended not to participate in this debate, but it sounds like I got injected into it whether I was in it or not because I am the one vote who voted against the bill coming out of committee 22 to one. My name is one, I guess. This bill reminds me of a neighbor of mine who, when I was growing up, had a dog who used to chase his tail. He would run around and around in circles chasing his tail. It seems to me that that is what we are doing with this bill. Because if, as my colleague from Florida has indicated, the bill does nothing to change the law, then why are we doing it? There is no compelling reason to pass a piece of legislation that does not do anything, and the sponsors of this bill submit that the bill does not do anything. So at the end of the day, what we have done is add to the litany of terms in our statute; that litany being person, human being, child, individual, and another term which has no definition either, that term being born alive. The concern that I have about it is the concern that has been expressed by the Congressional Research Service in its letter to the House Committee on the Judiciary. In that letter it says, ``A computer search indicates that there are 15,000 sections in the United States Code and 57,000 sections of the Code of Federal Regulations that make reference to these various terms that are used; human being, child, individual, and now, born alive I guess is the new term, and nobody has made an assessment of what impact this bill has in those 15,000 sections of the United States Code or those 57,000 sections of the Code of Federal Regulations because nobody cares. All this is about is politics, and so we should be like my friend's dog, chasing his tail around in a circle. I am going to vote against this bill again, not because I am not sympathetic to children who are ``born alive,'' but because I have no idea what implications this bill has in the other 15,000 sections of the United States Code and the 57,000 sections of the Code of Federal Regulations. And if, as my friend submits, the bill does nothing anyway, we will be no better or worse off as a result of my negative vote.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Reclaiming my time, I think the gentlewoman from California makes an exceptionally good point that in addition to the human rights argument, there are actually public safety and criminal law administrative reasons that we should not have this cap, because we want to have in place an incentive for these women and children to be able to come forward and break out of this sex ring and slave ring and come forward. The primary incentive they have is to seek to be able to stay in the United States, and if they cannot do that, then we provide no protection to them as a Nation. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I yield to the gentlewoman from California.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. My colleague from Texas (Mr. Smith) would have us believe that this is about fraud. It is not. Regardless of how many people come in having been imported into our country as slaves or as sex objects, there still has to be an application to stay, and that application has to be evaluated, so the fraud is taken out in that context. It may be that if the gentleman is worried about fraud, it would be 4,000 in the first 5,000 who have engaged in some fraudulent activity. That is not the issue here. The issue is would we send a woman or child who has been sexually abused and put into slavery in this country back into another country where that kind of activity was going on, so whether the victim is the 499th or the 4,099th, or the 515th or the 5,015th should not be the issue. The issue is what should our policy be, and we should open our arms to these people. Mr. Speaker, I keep hearing these estimates and the statement that there was some bipartisan agreement. Let me be clear that there was no bipartisan agreement about this number. The bill came out of the committee, but there was substantial disagreement. There was an effort to revise the number in the committee, and I am looking at a report here from the Central Intelligence Agency briefing in April of 1999 that estimated that the number of women and children who are trafficked annually into the United States primarily by small crime rings and loosely connected criminal networks is between 45,000 and 50,000. Now, the estimate, the guess, about how many of those people will come forward and present themselves is no more than conjecture. One- tenth of them might come forward, in which case we would have a number between 4,500 and 5,000; but if 20 percent of them came forward, you would have a number at 10,000, and would it be in our own conscience as a Nation to deprive that extra 5,000 or that extra 100 by some arbitrary cap that really is just an arbitrary figure? Our policy is to welcome people in, who have been abused, into other countries, and that should continue to be our policy. Mr. Speaker, I yield as much time as he may consume to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers). (Mr. CONYERS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I want to comment on the point that my colleague from Texas (Mr. Smith) has raised. I am reading a report from the Center for the Study of Intelligence, and I am reading verbatim from that report. It says, and I quote: ``An estimated 45,000 to 50,000 women and children are trafficked annually to the United States.'' Now, that might be worldwide being trafficked into the United States, but that is what this bill is about. How many of them are we going to allow? How many are going to come forward and seek to stay here once they have been trafficked in? If the figure is wrong, it is because the report is wrong; it is not because I have misstated the record. I am stating it in good conscience. I cannot verify it. I was reading from a report. Maybe the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lofgren) will have some clarification.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to instruct conferees.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I am offering this motion to instruct conferees at the request of the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers), who may show up here at any moment and participate in this discussion, but in the interim I am trying to carry his water for him. Of all the human rights violations currently occurring in our world, the trafficking of human beings, predominately women and children, has to be one of the most horrific practices of our time. At its core, the international trade in women and children is about abduction, coercion, violence and exploitation in the most reprehensible ways. H.R. 3244 is a modest effort to eradicate forcible and/or fraudulent trafficking of persons into prostitution or involuntary servitude. Among other things, the bill increases penalties and provides some protection for victims who would otherwise be deportable if identified by law enforcement, by creating a new ``T'' visa category for eligible victims. Unfortunately, the bill reported out of the Committee on the Judiciary and approved by the House is much more restrictive than the bill originally introduced by the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) and the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Gejdenson). Instead, a much narrower bill was substituted by the Committee on the Judiciary markup to satisfy unrealistic concerns that the bill would somehow enable persons to fraudulently obtain a lawful status by claiming that they were a victim of sex trafficking or involuntary servitude. Most significantly, the bill unnecessarily caps at 5,000 per year the number of victims who can receive a nonimmigrant visa and caps at 5,000 per year the number of victims who can become permanent residents. Because estimates of the number of trafficking victims entering the United States are greater than 5,000 per year, I see no reason not to provide protection to the 5,001 and the 5,025 victim who have been the subject of such terrible acts. As a result, my motion to instruct instructs the conferees to recede to the Senate provision which contains no such cap. We have no arbitrary limit on the number of refugees who can enter this country. We have no arbitrary limit on the number of asylees who can enter this country and, in my judgment, it is beneath our dignity as a nation to use an arbitrary cap to shut our doors to victims of slavery and sex trafficking. The Members should know that this motion is supported by the Catholic Conference, the National Organization for Women, Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the National Immigration Law Center. I urge the Members to support this common sense and compassionate motion to instruct. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lofgren).

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I have been in this body 8 years almost now, and I think I have never seen a bill come to the floor that I thought was a perfect bill. Sometimes we have 99 percent terrible things in a bill and one good thing that tempts one to vote for it. Sometimes there is 99 percent good in a bill and one very bad provision that tempts one to vote against it. That is the situation we are in in this case, because the overwhelming balance of the argument about this bill is favorable. It is a magnificent bill that will help to stimulate inner city communities, rural communities in need of employment and revitalization. It will bring private funds back into our communities and extend the empowerment zones and provide bonding capacity. And so this is certainly one of those bills where 99 percent of the bill is just a magnificent bill. There is 1 percent of the bill that causes some serious problems. And, unfortunately, they are constitutional problems that the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) has described eloquently in his comments. They involve the ability of religious institutions to discriminate against applicants for employment who may not agree with their religious tenets. And what I am trusting is that as I vote for this bill and support the 99 percent favorable, that the Court will see fit to right the legal and constitutional wrong with this bill. I appreciate the gentleman from Virginia yielding me this time for me to voice my support of the bill.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman from California for yielding me this time and for bringing this important issue to the floor of the House. We have made a substantial amount of progress in our country in dealing with AIDS and HIV. Unfortunately, that same kind of progress has not been evident in Africa where 10 percent of the world's population resides, but nearly 70 percent of the worldwide total infected AIDS cases exist. A number of countries in Africa are beginning to make progress such as Senegal and Uganda, and we need to do what we can in this country to assist in meeting this crisis, not only here in our country, but worldwide. I cannot think of any other issue that is more important to address than the HIV/AIDS crisis in the world. Therefore, I rise in support of the gentlewoman's amendment.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. Mr. Speaker, it is always difficult to address issues of this kind in the context of legislation because there is a tendency to think that people who oppose a piece of legislation because of concerns about the public policy applications or the cost or the bureaucracy that is created as a result of passage of the legislation are unsympathetic to the victims of crime. So I want to start by emphasizing that nobody can be unsympathetic to the victim of a rape or sexual abuse, especially one of the kind that has the violence and animus associated with it that was directed at Aimee. We need to go out of our way to express regret and support for families. There are parts of this bill which are actually very good, and I want to applaud the sponsors of the bill for parts of the bill, although I think there are some other parts of the bill which cause substantial concern and which all of us ought to pay attention to and be concerned about whether we vote for or against this legislation. Let me talk about two parts of the bill that I think are very valuable. One of those is the requirement in the bill that would provide for collection of data regarding recidivism. It requires the Attorney General to seek and obtain information for each calendar year, starting in 1999, about the number of convictions for murder, rape, or any sex offenses in the United States where the victim has attained the age of 14 years, and subsequent convictions. This is the same kind of model that a number of us have tried to construct in racial profiling cases, for example: Let us try to collect data that better informs the legislative process so that we know whether there are repeat offenses and the extent to which there are repeat offenses taking place, and if there are repeat offenses taking place and that is a significantly higher problem in this area, then that will help inform what kind of legislative approach we ought to be using going forward. That is a good thing in this bill. I want to applaud the Members who have supported this bill for bringing that part of the bill forward. The bill also makes a kind of a half-hearted attempt at establishing a victim assistance fund by transferring up to $100,000 from one State to another of the first State's funds to help the victims of rape. Many of us are supporters of victim assistance funds, although I would submit to the sponsors of this bill and to my colleagues in the House that doing it in this way and requiring the kind of paperwork and bureaucracy that would be associated with administering the transfer from one State to another State, and having the Attorney General of the United States monitor that kind of funding, is kind of a dumb way, really, to set up a victim assistance process. If we are going to have a victim assistance process, let us go ahead and set up the victim assistance process and fund it, and say that that is what we are doing. But at least that part of the bill starts to move in the right direction. But there are some parts of this bill that are just dumb and unworkable, and set up a bureaucracy at the Federal level that does not justify the existence. And ironically, my friends on the Republican side who are always railing against Federal bureaucracy, they are now the ones who are here saying, let us set up this bureaucracy. It is those parts of the bill that require States, which have already gone through a conviction and a service of time, taking money from their Federal funds and transferring it over to another State, and keeping track of two or three States down the line and trying to figure out who has the responsibility and who should be paying for incarceration. That is just dumb. If somebody ought to be put in jail for doing something, put them in jail for doing it, but do not set up some kind of complicated bureaucracy and come in here and beat on one's chest and say that this is something that makes a lot of sense. It does not make a lot of sense. It is for that reason that we get the National Governors Association saying on August 5 of 1999 about this bill, and I quote, ``This mandate is onerous, impractical, and unworkable.'' We get the National Conference of State Legislatures on May 11 of this year 2000 saying, ``Aimee's Law is worse than an unfunded mandate.'' I am quoting them. This is not the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Watt) or the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) saying this, this is the National Conference of State Legislatures, who know that this bureaucracy that we are creating is just dumb. All it does is create a mechanism on the floor of Congress for somebody to beat on their chest and say, we are trying to be tough on crime, and ignore the public policy rationale for what we are trying to do. There is no public policy that would support such a circuitous funding mechanism. It is that reason that caused the Council of State Governments on August 30, 1999, to say, ``The provision is almost certain to generate a morass of bureaucracy to monitor compliance with the law and to account for subsequent adjustments to block grant amounts awarded to States,'' because we have to have some bureaucracy that monitors the transfer of Federal funds from one State to another. This just does not make any sense. It does not make any sense. I understand that people are outraged about what happened to Aimee, but our objective here as Members of Congress is not to let our outrage overtake our common sense and set up a bureaucracy that makes no sense; that does nothing, really, to address the real issues that we are sent here to address. So it is for that reason that we have the National Governors Association, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the Council of State Governments all saying negative things about the bill. And we have the Department of Justice saying, ``This bill will present significant enforcement challenges and will do little to achieve the laudable goal of protecting children.'' There is a laudable goal that the supporters of this bill are trying to achieve. We are not arguing with that. What we are talking about is this stupid, dumb process that this bill puts in place. It is simpleminded, the process that we are putting in place to do this. There is nothing wrong with the goal that my colleagues are trying to accomplish, and neither the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) nor have I said anything negative about the goal my colleagues are trying to accomplish, it is the process and the bureaucracy and the cost of implementing it that makes no sense. Everybody at the State and the Federal level who would be involved in the process of implementing this bill have tried to point that out to my colleagues. Finally, we have independent researchers from universities who have looked at the bill and studied it in detail saying, ``the box score on House Bill 894 is that its probable impact is going to be zero.'' And we are not talking about the goals of the bill. We are talking about the process that is being used. And in the final analysis, where we get to is we get to the bottom line is that some people have decided that it is in vogue to stand up and beat ourselves and pat ourselves on the back for being hard on crime without paying any attention to the way that this bill will be implemented and the impact that it will likely have. For that, even though I applaud the laudable goals of the sponsors of this bill, I would just say to them, shame on them for using the misery of this family and these children and these young people who have been abused to make a political point.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin, the ranking member of the full committee.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words, and I yield to the gentleman from Rhode Island.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, in the last few days, my Republican colleagues have gone out of their way to say that they are trying to reach out to the African-American community and racial minorities in various ways. They have had a big summit here for Historically Black Colleges and Universities at which they took credit for doing all kinds of things that I was not aware of that they were doing for Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Some of them had a big press conference about all of the efforts that they had taken on behalf of black farmers; and, of course, we had to dispute that at today's press conference. The Speaker and my colleagues on the Republican side have gone out of their way to tell us how much they support a new markets' initiative that they would like to do on a bipartisan basis with the Democrats, and this is the appropriate bill, Commerce, Justice, State, this would be the appropriate bill to fund that through. I note that there is not anything in the bill that would fund that initiative, yet, we are trying to do away with and not fully support the Civil Rights Commission, whose job it is to go into communities and investigate hate crimes, investigate police brutality, investigate and expose racial intolerance and the problems that we have in this country so that we as a Nation can confront these issues. What would we rather do with the money? Sure, we would rather get tougher and tougher on crime and increase monies to build prisons. Yet will we adequately fund efforts to reduce intolerance? Will we adequately fund efforts to reduce hate crimes and expose them when they take place, or will we simply be parties to what is going on? There is just an insufficient amount of money in the budget, in this bill to fund the Civil Rights Commission. There has been a tremendous amount of animus on the Subcommittee on the Constitution which has oversight jurisdiction over the Civil Rights Commission. They spent probably as much time coming to hearings about various aspects of their operation as they have the opportunity to spend on operating the agency. I think it is time that we fund them and support the Conyers amendment.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, and returning to the amendment at hand which I understand to be an amendment by the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) to increase funding for the Civil Rights Commission, not that the discussion that just took place was not extremely important, I fully support my colleague from Rhode Island and his efforts to try to increase funding for crime fighting on Native American reservations. The amendment at hand has to do with how we fund and at what level we fund the Civil Rights Commission. On that point, I would just point out to my colleagues that hate crimes are on the rise. Police brutality is on the rise. Racial intolerance is on the rise.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I thank the ranking member for yielding time to me. For the very reasons that the ranking member, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) described in his statement, I have about ceased to come to the floor to debate appropriations bills because, especially at this stage in the process, we engage ourselves in a charade because we know this bill and many others are going to be vetoed. Occasionally I pick up a bill and become so disappointed, indeed sometimes so outraged, that I just have to raise my voice. This is one of those occasions, because when we are dealing with Commerce, Justice, and the Judiciary, and matters of state, we do not have the excuse that many of my colleagues on the Republican side have when they are just beating up on poor people or trying to deny giveaways or welfare, or whatever their political or social agenda is. This bill generally is about how we assure people who are trying to do right by the system that we give some presumptions to how we fund their programs and be of assistance to them in meeting their obligations in the democratic process. So when I look at a bill that funds the Legal Services Corporation at a 50 percent cut or 60 percent below what the President of the United States has requested, I say, what are we saying to people? Should they take to the streets and try to get their rights redressed in the streets, or should they continue to have confidence in our legal process and go through the legal process? What obligations do we have as a Congress to encourage them to use the legal process? When I look at no funds in this bill to help address the digital divide, I ask myself, what message are we sending to people who are not able to, because of their station in life, to take advantage of these E advances, this technology, this booming growth that we are taking advantage of as a Nation? When I look at a bill and see that the Equal Opportunity Commission is cut by 10 percent when people are trying to get equal justice and equal access to jobs in a growing economy, I say, what message are we sending to the people of the country? I could go on and on and on, because this bill is simply inadequate. We should reject it and quit participating in this charade.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Sanders-Boehlert-Kind amendment perhaps from a slightly different perspective than my good friend from Vermont (Mr. Sanders). I really have no problem with the Energy Department's fossil energy research and development program. I do not consider it welfare. I think we need to continue to do research into fossil energies, into alternative fuels, into the whole range of possibilities that will make our country less dependent on foreign oil and energy. But one of the components, perhaps the most important component, of our energy policy in this country should be reducing the use of energy and saving resources, and the low-income weatherization program is a demonstrated effective method of doing that. We are faced as Members of this Congress with budget constraints. And as the chair of the subcommittee has indicated, sometimes that means we do have to rearrange the chairs on the deck and make some choices. When I make those choices, I have to keep in mind the things that my mother used to tell me. And one of those things is that a bird in hand is worth more than a lot of birds in the bush. The research may well yield some fascinating results in the future, but what we do know is that home weatherization will yield immediate results in the present and that the low-income energy weatherization program has been a vital and important success story as a means of saving energy. So I do not have any particular beef with doing research in the long run. We need to do that. And, of course, there is going to be plenty of money in this bill to do that. But in the meantime people are freezing to death and people are without the weatherization program that would reduce the heat in their apartments, and that is a choice that I have no problem making in favor of the amendment, even though I have no particular beef with the longer-term research. So in that context I want to encourage my colleagues to do what makes sense in the immediate future and do something that we know works. This amendment will allow us to support and finance and put our money, at least in part, in something that has been a proven success story, the weatherization program. I encourage my colleagues to support the amendment.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I thank the ranking member of the Committee on the Judiciary for yielding me the time. Mr. Chairman, let me be clear that I originally supported the appointment of a commission and the original moratorium, because I thought the whole issue of how we tax Internet sales was a very, very complicated issue which had substantial implications for commerce, as well as substantial implications for local governments and their ability to support initiatives at the local level. I thought that we could not in the Committee on the Judiciary make a quick judgment about how to create a level playing field between brick and mortar stores and e-commerce sales. The Commission has failed in my estimation, and I think we do need some kind of extension of the moratorium. I do not think that 5 years is an appropriate extension. I think it is way too long to extend this moratorium, because what we have in addition, related to the moratorium itself, is a companion issue which deals with how we create a level playing field between retailers and other businesses that are operating in brick and mortar stores and people who are selling over the Internet. Right now, brick and mortar stores are at a competitive disadvantage because they have to collect local sales taxes. In many cases, e- commerce is able to evade those local sales taxes, and that puts brick and mortar stores at a competitive disadvantage. So if we are going to create a level playing field for both e- commerce and brick and mortar local retailers, we need to deal with how we do that at the same time we deal with the extension of the moratorium. To delay how we create that level playing field for 5 or 6 more years, actually 6 more years, not just the 5-year extension, because this 5-year extension does not pick up until a year from now, we are talking about a 6-year extension of a moratorium that really puts in place an unlevel playing field for that 6-year period. I think that is terribly unfair to our existing brick and mortar stores in our communities. It is terribly unfair to local governments who rely on the ability to tax to support their activities. So I hope my colleagues will oppose this bill and support the Delahunt amendment.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) and the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Tauzin) and their interest in protecting the minority community. And I am sure they are sincere. I just happen to disagree with them on this issue about whether this is protective of the minority community or not. But that is not the point that I rose to make. Actually, some of my very best friends are owners of commercial radio stations and own interests; and they deserve to have their signals protected, which is why the underlying purpose of the bill is a good purpose. There needs to be a study. But I will guarantee my colleagues that, at the end of that study, those same friends of mine will, regardless of the outcome of that study, even if it says that there is no interference, they will be here saying do not take action because they will be trying to protect their own economic interest. And I do not have any problem with that. But I know that they have enough power in the process to keep any kind of bill from coming that will allow these low-power FM stations to go forward even if the study says there is no interference. And that is why I support the amendment of the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Barrett) and the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Rush). Because this is really a question of who is going to play offense and who is going to play defense. I know the commercial stations have the power to play offense. If this study shows that there is any kind of interference, this Congress will respond to the commercial radio stations, and I know that. But I do not have that same kind of assurance about the minority community and small institutions and small colleges having the power to move Congress to do something to respond. And I think we ought to put the burden on the commercial stations, which is exactly what the amendment of the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Rush) and the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Barrett) does. If there is a finding that there is really interference, I guarantee my colleagues they will be here and their interest will be protected. And I will probably be on their side because a lot of them are my good friends, and my supporters I might add. But in the absence of some overwhelming finding, the burden should be on them and not on the community. The airwaves belong to the community in the final analysis. Parliamentary Inquiry

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Well, beyond the Subcommittee on the Constitution, the bill did not even go through the full Committee on the Judiciary this year. It has in prior years. But if my colleagues are seriously saying that they are serious legislators and Members of Congress, and they take their job seriously, and they are going to amend the most sacred and profound document of our country, the United States Constitution, do they bring a proposed constitutional amendment to the floor of the United States House of Representatives without even going through the Subcommittee on the Constitution whose job it is to deliberate and decide on the merits of constitutional amendments? Do they circumvent the entire Committee on the Judiciary and go around that committee and bring it to the floor? Or do they go through the regular process? So that in and of itself is an indication that this is a political exercise designed to score political points and having nothing to do with the merits of whether there should be a constitutional amendment. Now, we have gone through this time after time after time. In the past, I have tried to bring constructive amendments to the legislation. It was not a constitutional amendment when it was done before. It was legislation that one could try to amend and try to bring some rationale to. But this year, it is a whole new proposal. It is a constitutional proposal. But it went around all of the processes. It is hard for any of us to take this seriously other than we must be getting close to April 15, tax day in this country, and the Republicans must be very interested in making political points about the level of taxation in this country, which is fine. I mean, they can make those political points. Nobody likes taxes. But we have to have some priorities in this country. If my colleagues are going to be serious about a constitutional amendment that raises taxes, what about a constitutional amendment that deals with cutting taxes? Why should there be a different standard when we are talking about doing away with loopholes in a Tax Code then we would if we were raising taxes. But this constitutional amendment would not give us any authority to have a supermajority. So this is not serious. It undermines the basic principle that our country is founded on, which is one person, one vote. It undermines my representational authority for the\1/435\th of the people of this country that I represent, because, all of a sudden, to get something done, we would require a two-thirds majority vote rather than a simple majority. If this were being taken seriously, it would have gone through the regular process. So I do not even know why I came to debate this. We are not engaging in any serious congressional activity. It is obvious from that, from the number of people on the floor. So I will yield back the balance of my time so that my colleagues on the Republican side can go ahead and make their political point.