Mel Watt

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I object.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, I just want to ask the gentleman a question. Would the votes be after 5 Monday?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I object.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Chairman, I do not believe there is a Member of this House who over the last 5 years has risen in defense of the United States Constitution more than I have. I honestly would tell the Members if I thought statistical sampling was unconstitutional, regardless of the political consequences. I would be rising in support of the Constitution, in defense of the Constitution. I think this whole constitutional argument is a bogus argument, however, and it fails to read the entire sentence in Article I, Section 2, clause 3 of the Constitution, because that section of the Constitution requires an actual enumeration, but then it goes on to say, ``. . .in such manner as the Congress shall by law direct.'' And all of these gentlemen who have gotten up and talked about requiring a head count seem to be ignoring the second part of the sentence. Every single Justice Department that has opined on this issue, the Bush Justice Department, the Carter Justice Department, the Clinton Justice Department, have all said that statistical sampling is fine under the Constitution. Every single court that has addressed this issue has said that statistical sampling is acceptable under the Constitution. The Federal District Court, Eastern District of New York, said it is no longer novel or in any sense new law to declare that statistical adjustment of the census is both legal and constitutional because article I, section 2, requires the census to be as accurate as practical. The Constitution is not a bar to statistical sampling. This is a bogus argument that my colleagues are using. Statistical sampling is constitutional. I rise in support of the 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 rise in support of the amendment to transfer funds to the drug courts. The statistics indicate that 56 percent of the people in our Federal prisons are in there on direct drug charges for possession or sale or distribution. When we add to that 56 percent figure the people who are in there because they robbed somebody or broke into somebody's house or mugged somebody or stole something because they had a drug habit that they were trying to support, the figure goes up over 80 percent. So, if we could get some effective way of dealing with that 56 percent who are in there for direct drug charges, if we could treat them, if we could deal with them more intensively; many of them are first-time users or sellers, first-time charged people. If we could attack that problem, we would attack the robberies, the break-ins, the muggings, the thefts that result because people are strung out on drugs. Now, what is the most effective tool in our whole system for dealing with those charged with drug offenses, especially first-time, minor offenses? It is drug courts, because drug courts, in drug courts they go and they deal intensively with the problem that is causing people to be in the court in the first place. That is why they have been shown to be effective. Right in North Carolina, my home State, they have already determined that that is one of the most effective ways to deal with drug charges and to deal with the consequences that come thereafter from drug charges. They put these people on intensive probation. They try to deal with their home situation. They try to find them jobs. They try to keep them reporting over and over to the courts, and they try to provide some kind of treatment for the problem, rather than just putting them in jail, keeping them there for a while, putting them back out on the street; they go right back to the drug habit that they had, and then they are back for the second time. They go to jail again, serve some time, go back out on the street, still with the same habit, and then the next thing we know they are back in court for the third time. There is no more effective program to deal with drug offenses, especially in the earlier cycles, the first-time offenses, second-time offenses, than drug courts, because they recognize the source of the problem. And if we are not going to take responsibility to get to the source of the problem, we are never going to deal with the problem of drugs in this country. We cannot deal with it. We cannot put enough people in jail to jail our way out of this problem. We cannot interdict enough at somebody else's borders to deal with our problems unless we attack the problem at the source, which is demand. We are not going to get to the source of the problem; we are not going to solve the problem; we are not going to improve the problem. So, my colleagues, let us just try to do what makes sense. Sure, it makes political sense. It is politically expedient to put more money in prisons, but imprisoning a first-time drug user rather than dealing with them at the source of their problem in a drug court makes no sense. It is not cost-effective to do it that way. I simply urge my colleagues to consider seriously the gentlewoman's amendment and support it.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Scott].

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I thank the gentleman for accepting the amendment.

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

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I want to start by thanking the chairman of the committee and the ranking member for their cooperation in getting to what I believe is an agreement on this amendment. It is my understanding that they are prepared to accept it. Let me start by first of all agreeing with the chairman of the committee about what he just said. I do that because I sincerely do agree with him. What we need to put in context, however, is that Pookies' Parcel Post and Lulu's and Anita's are all private enterprises in this country. This is one of those times when this notion that we should privatize everything that the Federal Government is doing basically went awry. This program, the DFS program, has been in existence for 15 years. It was put in during the Reagan administration. And now what we have found is that there are certain things that private enterprise cannot do as well as the Federal Government. So on that, I have to agree with the chairman of the committee. It probably never should have been done in the first place. This is too serious a proposition to give out to just anybody. Now, maybe there are some private enterprises out there who can do it, but we certainly should not have just done it carte blanche. My amendment does not address that issue. It addresses another issue. Beginning March 1 of 1998, applicants for benefits which require an INS interview, such as naturalization, will be required to have their fingerprints taken at the INS. No other fingerprints will be accepted, not even those taken by State and local law enforcement agencies. The rationale for this change, as the chairman has amply indicated, is that the INS intends to implement a new system where fingerprints will be scanned electronically and transferred directly to the FBI for processing. I support this change in the fingerprinting process. I believe the INS should use technology more effectively and believe the system proposed will be more efficient than current ones, and the current system is the DFS system, which the chairman has just talked about. Because of the problems associated with DFS's, my amendment does not extend the DFS program; however, it would extend the March 1, 1998 deadline to give the INS adequate time to transition to an electronic fingerprinting system. What we would do is move that deadline from March 1 of 1998 back to June 1 of 1998. The INS has not purchased all of the equipment yet. There is a concern that it will not be able to implement the new system fully before the March 1 deadline. If this deadline stays in place, and the INS does not shift to an electronic system, the net result would be a tremendous fingerprinting backlog, and that backlog would translate into a de facto moratorium on the naturalization process since no applications could be processed without fingerprints.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I want to commend my colleague from Virginia [Mr. Scott] for bringing forward this amendment and rise in support of the amendment. There is no doubt that the popular political rhetoric and probably the vote, as the chairman of the committee has indicated, will be in favor of incarcerating more and more people. The truth of the matter, however, is that every single study including studies by the Rand Corp., a very conservative group, indicate that they are just wrong in terms of what is effective in reducing crime. And we have studied those things, we have brought them to the attention of the chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime of the Committee on the Judiciary, and notwithstanding that we keep devoting more and more and more money to the construction of prisons and prison beds, when if we just took a step back and looked at what actually works to reduce the incidence of crime in this country and did not yield to the temptation to just do what is politically popular and politically expedient, we would find that what the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Scott] is saying is absolutely correct and we should support the gentleman's amendment. I will not belabor the point. I know where the body is going to go on this because it is a lot more popular to beat oneself on the chest and say one is being hard on crime, but we have a legislative responsibility here to try to do something that is effective, not just politically popular.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words, and I will not take the 5 minutes. I think we are talking about two separate issues, and I am not taking issue with what the chairman says, but the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Souder] in his comments made reference to a report from Peat Marwick. That report just out indicates only 300 out of 1.3 million people who were presumptively ineligible for citizenship, and that is a different issue than the issue the chairman is addressing.

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

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I do not want to prolong this, but as the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims on the Committee on the Judiciary, I just want to make it clear that Peat Marwick has just finished the report and issued it. There were only 300 presumptively ineligible persons found out of 1.3 million, so this notion that there is some massive impropriety going on is just incorrect.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the rule because the rule allows this bill to be amended freely and this bill needs to be amended. It allows an amendment to increase funding for the Legal Services Corporation, which we need to do, and it allows an amendment to have a fair census, which we need to do. We are going to hear arguments about which party benefits maybe from a revised census count, but this is not a partisan issue. It is really about fairness to every single citizen in the United States. And to the extent that we fail to count any one individual in our Nation, we do a disservice to our process. We make it possible for some people to have greater representation than other people, and we should make sure that that does not happen.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the motion to instruct offered by the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Hoyer] and in opposition to the motion of the gentlewoman to forgo the cost- of-living adjustment. I may be in a minority here among people who in 1992 took about a $25,000 cut when I was elected to the Congress of the United States. I had a successful law practice. I believe if I had been in the law practice for the 5 years that I have been here, I would probably have made by now $100,000 or $150,000 or $200,000 more than I have made as a Member of Congress. That to me is unimportant, because I signed on for this job with an expectation that we would maintain a level of parity in our salaries. What is a lot more important than that to me is the judges who each year have contacted me and said, ``Please, give us our cost-of-living adjustment so that we don't continue to lose good qualified people from our judiciary.'' It is absolutely important in a democracy such as ours that we have qualified members of the judiciary, qualified members of the legislative branch, and qualified members of the executive branch. I believe we have done a good job during the period that I have been in this body, and I encourage my colleagues to give up on this notion that we should browbeat ourselves and not maintain parity in our salaries.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Stupak].

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Madam Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from New York [Mr. LaFalce].

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to just say in conclusion that this bill clearly is an improvement over similar legislation which passed the House on the Suspension Calendar last year, but there is no escaping the fact that the net effect of the bill is to further relax border security on the Great Lakes. While I understand that the current system may be inconvenient to Great Lakes boaters, I do not believe that such inconvenience justifies any further relaxation of the border along the Great Lakes, especially at a time when the Congress and this administration have increased efforts to secure all of America's borders against illegal immigration and drug smuggling. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I might consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the bill, and let me state from the outset that if a vote is called on this bill, it will not be because I called for the vote. It seems to me that we are getting votes on each one of the suspension bills today for other reasons. I rise in opposition to this bill not because there are not competing arguments, but because there are competing arguments, and I think my colleagues deserve to hear arguments on all sides of this bill. This is a bipartisan bill, and a number of my colleagues on the Democratic side will be speaking in favor of it, and so I hope that my colleagues will just pay attention to the debate and make their own decisions about it. We used to say when I was growing up that consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, but we also used to say that when you ignore consistency sometimes you can be extremely hypocritical, and, so according, this dilemma here. On the one hand we are substantially beefing up our borders along especially the southern borders and throughout the rest of the United States. On the other hand, this bill relaxes our border around the Great Lakes, and it seems to me that we at least need to be aware that this is inconsistent with everything else we are saying about immigration policy. The bill, like every other bill related to U.S. immigration policy, is about striking the proper balance between securing U.S. borders against illegal immigration while allowing trade and tourism to continue to flow freely. I am not convinced that H.R. 2027 strikes the proper balance between these competing interests. The fact is that the southwest border of the United States between Mexico and the United States is becoming more and more secure, or at least we are attempting to make it more and more secure, and as a result pressures are being increased on other borders for people to try to immigrate to this country illegally across other borders. There have already been incidents of smugglers bringing illegal aliens into the U.S. through upstate New York, and while there have been no reported incidents of alien smuggling on the Great Lakes, there have been innumerable instances of alcohol and tobacco products being smuggled across the Great Lakes into Canada to avoid the steep Canadian excise taxes. If we continue to relax the border on the Great Lakes we may be setting the stage for an influx of illegal immigrants directly into the heartland of the United States, and that is the dilemma we are in with this bill. I think it is commendable to try to make it as easy as we can make it for citizens to get back, for our citizens to get back and forth, into and out of Canada. Unfortunately it is not possible always to know who our citizens are, and the law, as currently written, provides some protections while not creating so much of an inconvenience that it is unreasonable. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I want to join my colleagues on both sides of the aisle in expressing concern if there has been impropriety in the administration of this program. I do not think any of us has the luxury or the American people have the luxury of tolerating improper conduct in the administration of any government program. Having said that, let me also be realistic and say that there is not a government program anywhere where there are not some kinds of problems in them, and it is always our responsibility to try to identify those problems and to address those problems, and that is why we have oversight committees. That is why we have, hopefully, people of goodwill who are elected to office, both on the legislative side and on the executive side, who have as a responsibility running Government as cleanly and honestly and as efficiently as we know how to do it. But there are communities throughout America who need the benefit of this program, at full funding, not at some reduced level, at full funding. There are problems obviously in the military. We heard about exorbitant cost of toilet seats and hammers. We did not go in and try to zero out or freeze the funding of the military. We identified those problems and we continue to identify those problems and try to address those problems. There are problems of sexual harassment in the military, but we have not tried freeze the funding of the military because of those problems. We have tried to address those problems straight on, straight up, go directly at them, and the reason is that we know that there is an important public defense purpose that the military serves in our country. What I have heard on both sides of the aisle is that there is an important public purpose that this CDFI program serves for our country. It was a bipartisan initiative. It was funded through bipartisan efforts. The makeup of it was influenced by my colleague, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Flake]. This is not welfare. This is something that advances what all of us support and stand for, which is the ability of every single community in our country to participate in the economic vitality of our country. I am not critical of my colleagues for investigating any improprieties in this program. We have committed to join in the investigation because if somebody is wasting money that should be going to revitalize programs in inner cities, in rural America, in decaying communities, every single one of us should be outraged about it, and we are outraged about it if their conduct is improper. But that is not, that is not, my colleagues, an excuse to freeze the funding for this program, because then we are saying that the program has no value. Mr. Chairman, I ask my colleagues to withdraw this amendment and allow regular order to proceed.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, as vigorously as I rose in opposition to the juvenile crime bill, H.R. 3, do I rise in support of this bill, which authorizes prevention programs that will prevent juvenile crime rather than reacting after the fact when it is too late. My colleagues should understand that this is just the first step. This is an authorizing bill that has no money in it. So the challenge going forward will be to make sure that moneys are devoted to fund the programs in this bill instead of taking all of the money and putting it in support of H.R. 3, the crime prevention bill, which would provide more jails and more punitive sanctions against young people. If we do not pay the price in advance to prevent crime, we can never build enough prisons to accommodate it.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, this chart tells the whole story. This is the percentage of the tax cut benefit that goes to the middle 60 percent of the people in this country, 60 percent of the people who work every single day. They are not on welfare. They work. Under the President's tax proposal, 67 percent of the benefit of his proposal would go to those people. Under the House version of the tax bill, 32 percent of the benefit would go to that 60 percent of the people. Under the Senate version of the bill, 34 percent of the benefit would go to that 60 percent of the people. Now, tell me which tax cut proposal is fairer? What happens to the benefit that is not shown here in the Republican's proposal? It goes to the top 20 percent of the people.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, the last time this issue came before Congress I voted to extend MFN trading status to China. I felt that engagement was our best hope for getting China to act more responsibly on issues of human rights, international affairs, and international trade. Since that vote, however, China has shown no progress on any of these issues. On human rights the State Department's 1996 report confirms that China continues to commit widespread human rights abuses, and in 1996 China actually stepped up efforts to cut off protest and criticism. On international affairs, China is transferring dangerous weapons and technology to Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, and Burma. On international trade, Chinese tariffs on our exports average 35 percent, while our tariffs on Chinese imports average 2 percent, and our 1996 trade deficit with China was $40 billion. In the face of this, Mr. Speaker, I simply cannot be in support of extending MFN status, and I urge a vote in support of that proposition.