Heather Wilson

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. There is no common sense exception. And there is no start listening now and then do all the paperwork later. The paperwork has to be done before the Attorney General says, okay, go ahead; put the alligator clips on the wire. Then all that's left is to get the judge's signature on all of that close-to-200 man-hours on average of paperwork. So what we did, and what we, and I actually think this year the problem got worse. It got worse for a couple of reasons. One of them was that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court kept looking at more and more issues, and they found that their court was becoming clogged with huge requests for foreigners, for people who are in foreign countries talking to other people in foreign countries. That is not what this law was for. This law needed to be revised to take it back to its original intent, which was to protect the civil liberties of people in the United States. There are no fourth amendment protections under the Constitution of somebody who's not in the United States, not even related in any way to the United States. That's been long established in law and policy. So why are we wasting all this time with lawyers in Washington getting warrants for foreigners in foreign countries just because they happen to be talking on a wire that transits the United States?

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. Sure.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. In fact, they are much more explicit than they are in criminal law. Think about this. If the FBI thinks that somebody is running a drug cartel and they have got a wiretap on that person, that person may be calling some of his criminal associates, but he also bumps into hundreds of people who are completely innocent. He calls his kid's teacher at school. He may call a cousin. He may talk to his barber. All those people are innocent. You don't have to go out and get warrants on the innocent people. So, yes, wiretaps bump into innocent people. Intelligence agencies bump into innocent Americans overseas. I was stationed in Vienna briefly when I was an Air Force captain, and one of my jobs was doing negotiations with the Soviets at the time. We all knew who the guy in the Soviet delegation who was the KGB guy. He came to my apartment for a reception with all the diplomatic corps. And if he had happened to communicate back to Moscow and we were listening in on that conversation and he reported on Captain Wilson and what she was like and whether she would like champagne and strawberries or what she talked about and the American intelligence agencies bumped into that, they would have minimized my participation. If it had no intelligence value, it was completely destroyed. But if it had some, with respect to this KGB guy, they would minimize it. They would hide my identity in a way that they are required to do both by statute and by regulation. And that is a long-established practice in foreign intelligence

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. But to me it's even worse than that that my colleague from Connecticut mentions, because somebody who is a criminal in the United States has rights under our Constitution; a terrorist outside of the United States does not. They have no protections under the first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, and those things. We seek to steal secrets from people who are trying to kill us. We seek to listen to the radio communications of our enemies on the battlefield, and yet if those enemies are now using a phone, a communication on a wire to the United States, we are tying ourselves up in court in Washington, D.C. while they are killing our people. It sets a standard which is completely unreasonable. Now, the Director of National Intelligence came to us in April of this year and said, I have a problem, a very serious problem. We are starting to go deaf because the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has not been updated. He testified in open session last week about the Protect America Act, which must be made permanent. This fix to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act we passed in August and the President has signed. And he said unless we make this law permanent, we will lose between one-half and two-thirds of our intelligence against the terrorist target. Let me say that again. Unless we make this act permanent, we will lose between one-half and two-thirds of our intelligence on the terrorist target. Think about that. Are you willing to say two of three conversations from terrorists trying to kill us, that it is okay not to listen to them, it is okay that we go deaf with respect to protecting this country against terrorists? I am not. I believe it's possible to protect the civil liberties of Americans and focus our resources there with respect to the courts while listening to people who are reasonably believed to be in foreign countries who are not Americans, and that is what the Protect America Act did.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, the important thing about this resolution, to me, is that the Air Force and celebrating its anniversary is about the people who have served, those who've worn the uniform. In 1916, at the age of 17, my grandfather lied about his age and joined the Royal Flying Corps. He flew DH-7s and DH-9s and did sub search in the Irish Sea during World War I. And after the First World War, there weren't many jobs to be had, so he came to America in 1922 and became a barnstormer in the early days of civil aviation, really the heyday of civil aviation, as new airplanes, new records, new payloads for speed and distance were being set across America. In World War II, he towed targets and ferried parts and developed a system to Medivac soldiers out of the China, Burma, India theater of operations. Then it was B-72s and B-25s, P-38s and Corsairs. In 1943, as a boy of 13, my father started taking flying lessons, traded them for time as a line boy down at the airport. And after World War II, and before Korea, my dad joined the Army Air Corps, which while he was in service became the United States Air Force. He was a crew chief at Walker Field in Roswell, New Mexico, taking care of, I think, F-86s at that time, although the hot plane was the F-100. He left the Air Force and came home to be a commercial pilot. He taught my mom to fly. And in our 2-bedroom house we had three kids, two dogs, a den that was full of airplane. In 1976, when I was a junior in high school, I was in my mother's bedroom when there was a television story on her little black and white portable TV that said that the Air Force Academy was opening its doors to women. Well, my grandfather had had two sons, five grandsons and me. I went to see him and told him I was thinking about maybe going to the Air Force Academy, and he said, well, I flew with some women in World War II and they were pretty good sticks, so I guess that'd be okay. My grandfather started to fly shortly after the Wright brothers first took to the air, and he lived to see a man walk on the Moon. It has been a remarkable century of aviation, and the Air Force has been part of it. Next year, after 33 years of service, active, Guard and Reserve, my husband will retire from the United States Air Force. Generations have been inspired and protected by air warriors who broke the sound barrier, who tested rocket sleds, who trained as astronauts, who became aces and supported those who were, names we know like Billie Mitchell and Jimmy Doolittle, Lance Sijan, Hap Arnold, Bud Day, Clarence Kelly Johnson, and names we don't know of airmen and women called to serve and inspired by the thrill of flight.

Ms. WILSON of New Mexico

Ms. WILSON of New Mexico. Madam Speaker, due to an illness I was unable to vote on Tuesday, September 4, 2007 and Wednesday, September 5, 2007. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall votes 847, 848, 849, 850, 851, 852, and 853.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, I think it is important for people to understand why we are here tonight. In April of this year, the Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Mike McConnell, came to the Congress and said, we have a problem, and the only thing that can fix that problem is legislation. We have an intelligence gap. There are things that we should be listening to that we are missing. Over the intervening months, we came to discover that the gap was larger than any of us suspected. FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, is frozen in time in 1978. While it has been updated since then in some respects, the basic structure of treating wire communications differently than over-the-air communications is still there. In 1978, the phone was on the wall in the kitchen, and blackberries grew on bushes. Technology has changed, and we have not kept pace by changing the law. FISA was never intended to acquire warrants for foreigners in foreign countries just because the point of access was in the United States. And FISA court judges have told us and expressed frustration that they are spending so much of their time dealing with foreigners in foreign countries. We need to update this law. The bill before us would continue to require warrants on people in the United States. Let me say that again. The bill before us would continue to require warrants on people in the United States. It would stop requiring warrants on people reasonably believed to be outside of the United States. That is the problem. There are procedures in the bill that must be reviewed by the FISA court for compliance with the law and reasonableness. It has a 180- sunset, which puts the obligation on us as a Congress to review the implementation of this law, to learn from that experience, to see if it works, and to monitor implementation. Now, we do not all agree in this House. That is very natural for our self-governing Republic. But on the floor tonight and yesterday, there are some Members who have questioned the integrity and the independence of the Director of National Intelligence. He is a retired admiral of 40 years' service who has come back to take a job, at a considerable pay cut probably, to serve his country. And while it may not violate the rules of the House to question his integrity and his independence, those words do bring discredit to this House. The bill we have before us tonight got 60 votes in the United States Senate, 16 from Democrats. The Director of National Intelligence has told us that it will close the gap that must be closed to give our intelligence community the tools they need to keep us safe. I would ask my colleagues to support it.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, today we will pass the Senate version of a bill to modernize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Because I have been actively involved in the crafting of this legislation and the review of the FISA law over the last two years, I feel it is important to be very clear about our legislative intent on some key points. The legislation is intended to make clear that our intelligence agencies do not need a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to target people for electronic surveillance who are reasonably believed to be located outside of the United States. While the law prior to these amendments does not require warrants on communications between foreigners in foreign countries, because technology has changed, it is only in rare circumstances that our agencies can tell in advance that there is no chance that a target will not call a number in America. Because they can't tell in advance that the targeted communication is not to an American and there is no ``safe harbor'' in the current law, they are forced to get warrants to avoid potentially committing a crime. As a result, increasingly, our intelligence agencies have been forced to get warrants on foreign targets in foreign countries. The foreign intelligence surveillance court is increasingly spending time approving warrants on people who have no privacy rights under our Constitution in the first place. Because of recent court decisions relying on the statute, this problem has become worse. This bill was intended to not require warrants if the target is reasonably believed to be located outside the United States even if the point of the intercept or the technology used to intercept the communication is inside the United States. What matters is the location of the person who is communicating, not the location of the communications device or the interception technology. The bill is also intended to retain very important protections of American civil liberties. If the target of a collection is a person in the United States, the government must get a warrant to intercept the content of that communication, as required by current law. There was some concern during work on the bill about ``reverse targeting''. In its simplest form, this could be ``targeting'' a foreign number frequently called by an American so that the government could collect the content of the American's conversation. It is our intention that this ``reverse targeting'' would be illegal under the statute. If the intent is to collect the content of communications of a U.S. person who has an expectation of privacy, a warrant is required, even if the number targeted for that collection is a foreign number. With this new legislation, the role of the FISA Court is limited to reviewing the new procedures for collection, not approving individual warrants or micromanaging collection. The intention is to have the Court review the process, the protections of privacy and the audits in place to determine that they are satisfactory and in compliance with the law. The Court may also issue orders to assist the Government in obtaining compliance with lawful directives to provide assistance under the bill, and review challenges to the legality of such directives. The legislation provides for compulsion certifications for telecommunications carriers. These compulsion certifications are intended to provide the same degree of legal protection as a FISA court order. This is a narrowly crafted change to FISA that fixes an immediate problem. The bill contains a sunset and we must review how the law is being implemented during the early months to determine what, if any, other provisions need to be changed. There are issues we must address when we reauthorize this legislation, including how the Congress should provide immunity, including retroactive immunity, for telecommunications carriers that are parties to lawsuits based on allegations that they assisted the government.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. Madam Speaker, when we adjourned we were discussing a rule to make in order two bills, one relating to Minnesota and the other relating to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The rule does not specify a particular bill number, but my colleague from Florida has made us aware of a bill that was introduced. The bill that the leadership currently intends to bring to the floor is H.R. 3356. I would tell my colleagues that the Director of National Intelligence had not seen this piece of legislation when it was brought to the floor today. In the intervening time that we've been waiting for the vote tally system to become operational again, they've been able to at least initially take a look at it, and we expect a formal statement from our intelligence community shortly, but I have also taken a look at this bill. If we're trying to fix the intelligence gap, this will not do it. In fact, this will make the intelligence gap wider than it currently is, and I want to explain to my colleagues why. First, and most importantly, this legislation would continue to require a warrant for the collection of foreign intelligence involving foreign persons in a foreign country. When the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was passed in 1978, the intention was to protect the civil liberties of Americans, and that is what the law should continue to do. Because of changes in technology, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is now being completely backlogged with requests for warrants that they never used to have to see because telecommunications have changed. We need to go back to what the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was intended to do, which is to protect the civil liberties of Americans and allow us to rapidly collect foreign intelligence on foreign persons in foreign countries without first having to go to court and get a warrant. That is not too much to ask, and the Director of National Intelligence has warned all of us that there are things we should be getting that we are not listening to. The leadership does not have to bring, under this rule, this particular piece of legislation to the floor, and as I understand it, negotiations are continuing and are being much more fruitful with our colleagues in the other body. But we must, before we leave here for August break, fix this problem. It's a problem we've known about for some time and tried to work on and quietly fix. I would much prefer that these things be done quietly, but when it was clear that the law was not working, that it was not protecting Americans, and that we were not moving quickly to fix and close this intelligence gap, I decided that I needed to take action and with my colleagues push more publicly to get this fixed. I believe it is possible here today in this House to find the consensus and something that works for our intelligence agencies to be able to listen to foreigners in foreign countries, who are using the communications systems America has built, to plot, to plan, to kill us. I would encourage the leadership on the other side of the aisle to work constructively with the Director of National Intelligence, call him and get him up here and work this out so that we can do the right thing for our country.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. Parliamentary inquiry, Madam Chairman.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. I thank the gentlelady because I have some confusion over here, and you may be able to help me. As I look at this, I think this is the bill that was rejected by the Director of National Intelligence 36 hours ago as insufficient. And it is not the bill that, as I understand it, was going to be accepted by the Senate this morning that the DNI proposed. Is the House offering a different bill than has been accepted by the Senate?

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the House recess until we get feedback from the Director of National Intelligence that he has seen this legislation and he agrees that it will fix the intelligence gap that is threatening the United States.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. Madam Speaker, the Director of National Intelligence came to the Congress in April and told us that we were not listening to things we needed to be listening to, that we had a problem. And since then we have had numerous hearings, most of them in closed session, about the scope and scale of this problem. And it is worse than we ever thought it was. And, Ms. Harman, I would tell you it is much worse than when you served on the committee. He said, in open session in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, ``We are missing a significant portion of what we should be getting.'' It is imperative that we solve this problem before we leave here. This morning without any agreement, without any prior discussion, the Democrats' leadership introduced the bill we are considering tonight. There is no agreement on the text with Republicans in the House; there is no agreement with the Senate, Democrat or Republican; and there is no agreement with the Director of National Intelligence or with the President. In fact, the Director of National Intelligence had not seen the bill until after we were discussing the rule here on the floor. I rise today to oppose this legislation. I must oppose it because it doesn't solve the problem that we must solve. And, in fact, it makes it worse. The Director of National Intelligence told us this afternoon in writing that ``The House proposal is unacceptable and I strongly oppose it.'' He also said, ``The House proposal would not allow me to carry out my responsibility to provide warning and to protect the Nation.'' This bill will not allow our Director of National Intelligence, who has 40 years of experience in this field, the former Director of the National Security Agency under President Clinton, it would not allow him to carry out his duties to protect this Nation. We are going in the wrong direction. I would urge my colleagues to reject this bill before us tonight; and I would urge the Speaker, Ms. Pelosi, to bring another bill to the floor of this House that can be supported by the Senate, by the Republicans, by the Democrats and by our intelligence community and signed by the President so we can close this intelligence gap. But what does it matter? Why should people care? We all remember where we were the morning of 9/11 and who we were with, what we were wearing, who we called first, who we checked on. You never remember the crisis that doesn't happen because it's prevented by good intelligence.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from New York for her graciousness. I would just tell my colleagues that the Director of National Intelligence, Michael McConnell, has said we are missing things we should be getting. In classified session in this House yesterday, he was much more specific about just what the magnitude is of what we are missing.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. I thank my colleague from California. This is something we've been trying to get addressed since April, since the Director of National Intelligence came to this Congress and said we need to fix the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. There are things we should be listening to that we are not listening to, that we are missing, and it is hurting the security of this country. It continues to imperil the security of this country, and it is only because we are now forcing the Democrats to deal with this publicly that we may be making progress on this issue. I am disappointed, though, to hear some of my colleagues in this House suggest in these negotiations that we should have a judge overseeing foreign intelligence collection overseas that does not involve any Americans. That has never been the role of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The whole point in making these changes is to make sure that we don't have counterterrorism analysts who are very valuable, highly trained people, expert in languages in regions, in organizations, spending their time developing probable cause statements for foreigners in foreign countries who are communicating with other foreigners. There's absolutely no reason for any court to be involved in that kind of an effort. Speed matters. It matters in a war on terrorism where terrorists are using our communications networks in order to try to kill us. It is vital, absolutely vital that we fix the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act before the House adjourns for the August recess.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, we now have 2 days left before the August break, and I would ask my colleagues to oppose the previous question on this conference report so that we may immediately address the problems in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. We have now reached a point where the majority is committed to bring legislation to the floor, and that is a very big step forward, and I regret that it has taken so much public pressure to get us to this point. I am actually a believer that intelligence matters are best dealt with quietly, but when quiet encouragement does not work and national security is at stake, we have an obligation to increase the public pressure in order to get a political decision to move and get things done when it is important to this country. Now that that political decision has been made and the majority has said they will bring legislation to the floor, we need to make sure that that legislation fixes the problem. In other words, we have to get this right. It is critical to get this right. Several Democrat leaders have put forward some ideas, but there are two of them that don't make any sense to me. They want, first, only temporary authority to listen to foreigners in foreign countries. And, second, they want to still be in a situation where you have to get a court order to approve eavesdropping on foreigners in foreign countries. Let's look at that for a second. My colleagues want two things. They want only temporary authority to listen to foreigners in foreign countries. The war on terrorism is not a temporary thing, and spying is not new. As early as the invention of the telegraph and reading people's mail during World War I that was going back and forth to Europe, in World War II much of the war was won because we broke codes that the Germans and Japanese were using and listened to their communications. During the Cold War we listened to our enemies. We have a foreign intelligence apparatus, and we spy on our enemies. Foreign intelligence collection is not new, and it is not temporary. We need to fix this law and get it right now. Secondly, several of my Democrat colleagues have put forward the idea that you should still need court approval to eavesdrop on foreigners in foreign countries. It takes about 200 man-hours to develop a probable cause statement, a packet to go to the court, it's about that thick, to get approval from a court to do a wiretap. Now, these people who have to put these together are not clerks or even lawyers. They are experts in counterterrorism, and their time is much better spent tracking these people than putting together paperwork. More importantly, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was never intended to put a U.S. judge in charge of deciding whether we can listen to foreigners in foreign countries. That is why we spy and what we do. We don't need judges to be considering those kinds of things. And the only reason they are is because technology has changed faster than the law. FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, was never intended to require warrants to listen to foreigners in foreign countries. In 1978, when the law was written, almost all long-haul communications were over the air. That's where international calls were. Almost all local calls were on a wire. When they wrote the act, they froze the law in time. They required a warrant for anything on a wire. And over-the- air communications didn't require a warrant at all because that's where we collect foreign intelligence. In a bill that comes to this floor, we need to do two things. First, no warrant or court intervention should be required to listen to foreign terrorists in foreign countries. Speed matters. And, second, we must continue to require warrants to listen to people in the United States. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance law was intended to protect the civil liberties of Americans. It was intended, and has done actually a very good job at rolling back the abuses that the intelligence community was involved in in the 1950s and 1960s. Let's get this court back to focusing what it was intended to do, which is to protect the civil liberties of Americans, and allow our intelligence community to do what they are intended to do, which is to keep this country safe and prevent the next terrorist attack.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, the Director of National Intelligence has said that there are things we should be listening to which we are not getting. All of us remember where we were on the morning of 9/11, remember who we were with, what we were wearing, what we had for breakfast. I would guess that nobody listening to me here today, or very few, remember where they were the day that the British Government arrested 16 people who were within 48 hours of walking on to airliners at Heathrow and blowing them up over the Atlantic. It was successful intelligence cooperation between the British, Pakistani and American Governments that prevented that attack. And you don't remember it because it didn't happen. Intelligence is the first line of defense in the war on terror, and we must fix this law and get it right.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, that is the anomaly of the law. In 1978 your telephone was hooked to a wire on a kitchen wall. Blackberries grew on bushes, the Internet didn't exist, and almost all long-haul communications went over the air. They were bounced off satellites. And those are completely excluded from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act because we wanted to protect our ability to collect foreign intelligence, but you were required to have a warrant if you touched a wire in the United States. Almost all short- haul communications were over wires. Now the situation is completely reversed. The majority of local calls now are over cell phones, 230 million cell phone users. They are all radio, or the equivalent. Almost all long-haul communications, international communications, are now over wires or over fiber-optic cables.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. You are correct. We are doing everything we can to collect information overseas. We spy on these guys. We try to find out what they are going to do to stop them before they attack us. But the irony is we are hamstrung here in the United States to collect any foreign intelligence information on any facility, wire, or whatever here in the United States. So you need a warrant.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. That is absolutely correct. And to me, Mr. Speaker, the thing that bothers me most is that for 3 or 4 months now we have been talking and I have been talking to my Democratic colleagues and to leadership here and my colleagues on the Intelligence Committee, and I have begged them to take up this issue, to do it in their own way, figure out their own bill. But for God's sake, let's fix this problem because all of us know that American lives are at risk because this Congress fails to act.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Texas for yielding, and I thank him for being here tonight. I would urge all of my colleagues to defeat the previous question on the rule here tonight. We now have 4 legislative days before the Congress recesses in August. In the middle of April, the Director of National Intelligence wrote to this body with draft legislation saying we needed to change the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He wrote a letter to this Congress last week saying that there is an ``intelligence gap.'' We have an intelligence gap, and we need to fix it. He has proposed a much smaller piece of legislation which he sent to the Congress last Friday night, saying it is critical that we fix this problem before the House goes on recess for the month of August. If the previous question is defeated, we will immediately bring legislation to the floor to solve this intelligence gap. Technology has outstripped the law in the field of signals intelligence. We are now in the odd situation where we require our intelligence community to go to judges in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to get warrants on foreigners in foreign countries. This doesn't make any sense, and it wasn't what the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was set up to do. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was written in 1978 to protect the civil liberties of Americans. It wasn't intended to be a barrier for American intelligence to protect terrorists overseas who are plotting to kill us. But because of changes in technology, that is where we find ourselves today. The Director of National Intelligence has told us the situation is critical, that we must fix this intelligence gap. And yet for over 3 months now, this Congress has done nothing. We cannot afford to wait. We must act and fix the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act so that we do not require a warrant to listen to foreigners in foreign countries communicating with other foreigners and plotting to kill us. Mr. Speaker, all of us remember where we were the morning of September 11. We remember whom we were with, what we were wearing, what we had for breakfast. None of us in this room, I would wager, remember where we were when the British Government arrested 16 people who were within 48 hours of walking onto airliners at Heathrow Airport and blowing them up over the Atlantic. The reason we don't remember it is because it didn't happen. It didn't happen because the British, American, and Pakistani intelligence services detected the plot before it was carried out. Intelligence is the first line of defense in the war on terror, and our Director of National Intelligence has told us in black and white that we have an intelligence gap, that there are things we should be listening to that we are missing. It is up to us in this House to act this week to close that intelligence gap and protect the country.

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico

Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, I was listening to this debate and my colleagues. I am a big believer in equal pay for equal work, particularly when it comes to women, because that determines what I get in my packet at the end of the week. But I have to say, I don't like this bill. The reason is, I am sitting here thinking, if you can go back 20 years and say I was discriminated against 20 years ago, we are talking about my first job out of college, and how that may have been, or I am a former small business owner as well. There are folks that I probably don't even remember employing who could come back and start suing me for what I did in small business 20 years ago. I just don't think that's the right way to solve the problem. I am strongly for equal pay for equal work and have fought for it and have given it to employees. I just don't think this is the way to do it, by retroactively allowing people to sue.