Anthony Weiner

Mr. WEINER

Mr. WEINER. Well, in conclusion, our time is expired, but I want to thank the gentlewoman from Nevada and the gentleman from Pennsylvania for joining us here today, and I just would close with this. There are big, complicated conflicts that are going on in that part of that world. They're not going to be easy to resolve. For years, we've been watching with some level of success but a great deal of failure, but just imagine the circumstances if tomorrow, when you dropped off your kids at school, a couple of times during the day they'd have to look like this rather than studying their school books. Imagine if an 8, 9, 10-year-old child had to be on tranquilizers in order to get through the day. There are some things that just are without any political nuance, without any varnish, and are just wrong. What's going on in Sderot is just wrong.

Mr. WEINER. And I think the gentlewoman is right, except in her pronunciation, which was confirmed with the embassy earlier today that there is no T and it is Sderot. But that is another whole conversation, which is why I would never get elected to the Knesset from that district.

Mr. WEINER. And then the question has to be raised, as much good intention as Secretary of State Rice and the administration may have here, having sit-downs and negotiations with Mahmoud Abbas and trying to present him with aid and trying to make his government or the idea that his thoughts or actions would be better for the Palestinian people, does that bring us one inch closer to stopping the attacks on Sderot? Does it do anything to truly enforce the idea that Gaza is under control? And the people voted for them. And by the way, this notion that they just carried, this is not like an electoral college map, they just carried Gaza, they have broad support throughout the West Bank as well.

Mr. WEINER. But I have to say to the gentlelady, this notion that it was a response to corruption, when someone campaigns and gives you a flyer, vote for me and I am going to wipe out the State of Israel, and then the moment they get in, they increase the amount of attacks going on, at a certain point you have to say this is not about who is going to fix the potholes. They are doing exactly what they said. It might be true that message took hold in an environment where Fatah was corrupt, but I think we in some ways let them off the hook a little bit. They did campaign on the idea of driving Israel into the sea.

Mr. WEINER. Unless you believe, which some people may, that all of Israel should be under Arab control. Then you don't believe in this existential sense that Israel should believe at all.

Mr. WEINER. Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to ponder a hypothetical. Imagine for a moment that a small town in your district, whether you represent a rural or urban district or suburban district you can imagine this hypothetical, but it's an unimaginable concept to many of us in the United States. Imagine if a town in that district was hit by a rocket, just landed out of the sky, launched from a neighboring town, or if you're near the border, launched from a neighboring country. Imagine for a moment how you would react as an elected official in that town, imagine for a moment how you would act as a parent of people in that town, imagine how you would act if you were government from that town. Well, for one small town in the southern part of Israel, it's not something they need to imagine. Let me show you a map of Israel and point to a small town called Sderot. It's right down here near the Negev, right along the border of the Gaza Strip. Sderot is a town of 24,000 people. It is not a wealthy town; it's basically a working class town. Like I said, not very big. But in the last 5 years, not one, not two, but 2,000 rockets have landed on that town, all of them launched from the Gaza Strip. Now, as you ponder what it is that you would do, let me tell you a little bit about the effect it has had to the people of Sderot. Eight people have been killed as these qassam rockets have fallen. What is a qassam rocket? A qassam rocket is a fairly primitive rocket that is made out of basically a plumbing pipe with four stabilizers and filled with about a pound or so of shrapnel, that when it explodes, it blows the shrapnel all around. This is a picture of some of the qassam rockets that have landed in Sderot over the last 5 years. This is what the back of the local police station looks like. They keep them all and they mark it when they land. Now, eight people have been killed by these rockets, three of them children, dozens have been wounded. There have been 155 of these rockets landing in this town just since June, when Hamas was elected as the representative party of the people of the West Bank, and some would argue Gaza as well. You see this small strip of land? That's the Gaza Strip. Lobbed one by one by one into this town of Sderot. Well, as you think about how your citizens might deal, let me tell you a little bit about how the citizens of Sderot have dealt. For one thing, when there is any kind of notice that they get, and they have a rather primitive system of lasers that detect when there is heat out in the desert that seems extraordinary, a notice goes to the local police department and then they send out tzeva adom, tzeva adom, which just means ``code red.'' Then you have about 15 seconds. That's how much time the people of Sderot have to respond. They can do a couple of things. They can run into these concrete shells that have been built all throughout town. The way we might have phone booths in our towns, they have concrete structures that are called life shields. They are supposed to pull over or stop their car where they are and run to a building or wall. It's the only part of Israel where it's illegal to wear your seat belt because you have to be able to run out of your car as quickly as possible to avoid the rocket attacks. And kids, of course, they're taught the old 1950s-era American idea of ``duck and cover,'' except when it comes to the children of Sderot, it would be more aptly described as ``duck and suffer.'' One in three children in that town suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. It is not coincidental or accidental that seven rockets landed in that town on the first day of school this past Sunday. There was a rocket attack today. It is hard to find pictures that truly can express what it is like when a rocket falls on an elementary school; but this is a picture that was taken during a rocket attack last year, children essentially cowering in a corner of their school and holding their heads for their lives. You know, it is easy to describe in dry terms what you're supposed to do when a rocket lands on your town, and thank God many of us will never know what that is like. But imagine what it is like when there are hundreds of them, and now thousands of them over the course of the last couple of years. Now, we here in Washington, we frequently think of things through the lens of what should the government response be. Well, what would your town's government response be if it was attacked by a foreign power day after day after day with rockets? Well, unfortunately for the people of Israel, there isn't a great deal that they can do, particularly since the international community has shown very little concern about the matter. The United Nations, perhaps we can urge them to pass a resolution of condemnation. They've been unwilling to do anything. You might try to figure out what ways you can make your residents more safe. The Israeli Government sent 200 soldiers to this town of 24,000 people to escort their hundreds of kids to school. You might want to try to figure out where they're getting the artillery necessary to be launching these attacks. As you can see here, the border is only with one other country, and that's Egypt. Time and time again there have been found tunnels that lead into the Gaza Strip providing weaponry. You might want to crack down on Egypt to make sure that they stop providing the artillery. But one thing for sure is you would do something. And sooner or later, I think it's fair to say that all of us, if we were put in this circumstance where there was one or even two or three at most rockets falling in our districts, we would demand that something be done. Well, I believe that it is time for those of us in the United States to realize that terrorism falls in all kinds of ways every day that barely gets a notice. When several of these rockets fell in Sderot on the first day of school, you might have missed it in your neighborhood newspaper because it is so commonplace. It should never be, in 2007, commonplace for one nation to lob missiles down on the other. Now, it comes as little surprise that just in the several months that Hamas took over control of the Gaza Strip that there has been an escalation in the number of rockets. But I also think that we need, as a country that is in solidarity with Israel and the many things that they're trying to do, you know, it's not the purpose of this map, but you can see that this is a nation that is surrounded with enemies. On the northern border they face Hezbollah, which declared war across the international border and lobbed weapons upon them in the Lebanese war. You see here they're dealing with problems in the Gaza Strip. Now, I should point out that much of the escalation has happened in the period since Israel withdrew unilaterally from the Gaza Strip. There are no Israeli forces there anymore. Since the Israeli forces left, the rocket attacks have gone up. So what can the Israelis do? Well, I guess they could reoccupy the Gaza Strip, and you can imagine the public condemnation and hue and cry that might occur if that happened. I guess they could try as best they could to track where these rockets are being fired from and try to go in as quickly as possible and counterattack. Well, it's not a very practical thing to do, perhaps they would argue. But one of the things they are considering doing is saying, look, we're going to cut off the power and supply to the Gaza Strip; we're going to make the citizens of Gaza Strip make a choice whether they're going to have terrorists in their midst or not. Well, one thing that we can do, as far away from the front of the Sderot conflict as we are, is we could make it very clear that if we were in the same position, we would not be calling upon ourselves to show great restraint. We would try to figure out how do we solve this problem. And so we, as the United States of America and the State Department, when they call upon Israel, show restraint, show restraint, don't retaliate, maybe that's a reasonable argument after one or two or 10 rockets. Now, I think we have to realize that what Israel is engaged in, what this tiny town is engaged in is playing defense in the war on terrorism every single day without much support and without much help. So I take the floor today with my good friend from Nevada to say that, while we are not being asked to live in a town like Sderot, we should be mindful of the idea that such towns exist in Israel, that it is not just the province of people who live along the Lebanese border that are facing terrorism, it's not just the province of people who drive along the roads even in the inner country of Israel who find themselves being under attack. It's a daily attack on this tiny town. Now, they don't have C-SPAN; I doubt they have C-SPAN in Sderot. But they do listen very carefully when the United States of America, when the Secretary of State, when the President, when elected officials stand up and say, listen, we don't envy the situation that Israel is in, but we understand it. And we understand that retaliation is sometimes a difficult thing to contemplate, but sometimes it's necessary. We know that if we were put in the same position and suddenly the good folks in Canada started lobbing missiles over the New York border, I would be demanding that we respond. If the folks who live in Arizona or Texas started getting attacked with missiles coming over the border, certainly none of us would be saying, show forbearance. If these children were being forced to cower at rocket attacks day after day after day in any town in the United States, we would understand perfectly well that something needed to be done to stem the tide. But there are other things we can do. We can say we are not going to continue to be a supporter of Egypt, as we have, if they continue to allow their nation to be essentially a wide open font for terrorist activities. We are going to understand that, while it was every right, and sometimes I'm criticized for making this image, it's every right of the people of the Palestinian territories to choose to elect Hamas as their leaders, but it is also the right of the international community to say that this is what we expected would happen. We would have an increase in the international terrorism that emerged from the Gaza Strip, and now it has happened. And if we had a terrorist government in Canada, we wouldn't hesitate for a moment to see it as a threat to our security. We can also understand that the people of Sderot's fight is all of our fight. When the United Nations is, resolution after resolution, condemning Israel for its heavy hand in this or its heavy hand in that, when it convenes a conference to talk about the plight of the Palestinians, putting aside the plight of the Israelis, they do a disservice to the basic common sense about who it is that is doing the attacking, who it is that is launching the missiles and who it is that is on the other side. The other thing that we can do is make sure that weapons like this are never armed with high-tech guidance systems. Right now, the administration is putting the final touches on a plan to present to the United States Congress that would sell missile guidance systems, $20 million worth, to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has been one of the foremost advocates for Hamas in the world. They fund them. They support them. They provide them aid and comfort. Imagine for a moment if these missiles weren't being lobbed relatively indiscriminately in the direction of schools, hospitals, shopping centers and synagogues, but imagine if they had laser guidance systems provided to the Saudis and then leaked to them, because that is what happens in that part of the world. Imagine this number of rockets that are hitting people and installations and churches, well, synagogues and not just falling to the Earth. We can stop that sale. We in Congress can stop that sale. And we should do everything we can to do so. Ms. Berkley and I circulated a letter that over 115 Members of Congress signed onto saying this is a bad idea to be selling weapons, high-tech weapons, to the foremost exporter of terrorism in the world. But tonight when we lay down our heads, we should know that not far away, 2,000 miles away in Sderot, children are going to be walking to school, and most likely if tomorrow is like today was, they are going to hear a siren go off. They are going to hear a voice over the loudspeakers saying in Hebrew, ``condition red, condition red'' which meant that they have to go find cover somewhere. Imagine raising your child in that kind of environment. Imagine the outrage that you would feel as a parent or resident of that town. We should never forget that we are not going to be safe just because we don't have rockets falling on us every single day. So long as there are entities in the world that find comfort in being able to do that day in and day out, we all suffer. We admire Israel for what it does. It is probably the last remaining country besides the United States of America that every day is trying to fight terrorism. Our friends in Europe turn it on and turn it off as they might be willing to. Frankly, it is the United States and Israel every day. But as much as we fight and as much as we invest in resources, as much as we honor the men and women of the armed services, 150,000 fighting for us in Iraq and Afghanistan, imagine if every single day we weren't having to go out and fight that fight, but it was landing in our community. That should be the lens that we look at this conflict through. There are complications. It is a nuanced and difficult thing. It is difficult trying to persuade people who are democracies in Lebanon, democracies in the West Bank and Gaza, that they shouldn't be voting for people whose campaign slogan is ``I want to drive Israel into the sea.'' It is discouraging. It is complicated when you have a nation like Jordan for whom many of these people would consider their home country and have them take little responsibility for those people who are in the West Bank, as well as for those people who are in Gaza. It is a difficult, complicated part of the world. But there are some things that are immutable. And I would hope that we would all agree that one of the immutable things is that under no circumstance should any country have to withstand tens and tens, and hundreds, eventually thousands of rocket attacks on its land just because it is a small town and just because most people have never heard of it. My colleague, Congressman Wexler, and I had a long debate about how to pronounce it. He said ``Sderot.'' I said ``Sderot.'' It is unclear. It was written originally in Hebrew. It probably appears in the Bible somewhere. Perhaps we can find an authority on that. These are not the most influential people even in Israel. But it is troubling to me. I think I speak for my colleague, Ms. Berkley, that day in and day out these attacks happen, and none of us even notice any more. Well, the children and the adults and the people of that community notice. They notice. They are traumatized by it. I think it is our obligation as citizens of the world to say that while you can have different viewpoints about where borders should be and you can have different viewpoints about the relative gripes of the Palestinians or the gripes of Hamas or who should prevail, Fatah or Hamas, or whether or not the Egyptians are doing enough, or whether or not the Syrians are doing enough, or whether or not they are all just exporting terrorism in one form or the other, I would hope that we could agree that it is an international abomination that this is allowed to happen. I would be glad to yield to my colleague from Nevada.

Mr. WEINER. Reclaiming my time, I think you have raised the essential question, why is it that people are attacking Sderot? What is the great political fight that is going on that leads people to be launching missiles out of Gaza into Sderot? There was once upon a time a conflict over whether or not Israel should be occupying this territory. They are not. What is it now that the fight is over? What is it, now that Hamas has been elected and there has been this dramatic increase in them, what is the objective of those people who are committing these acts of terrorism? It is no longer a border dispute. The Gaza strip, the Israelis have said okay, it is yours. Take it. Take it and control it, govern it, be responsible for it on your own. It also raises another question. Hamas was elected in the West Bank and Gaza. This notion that they only control the Gaza, the West Bank is under someone else's control, remember now, this is a new government under a democracy, and I largely have agreed with the President when he has said, you know, democracy is a virtue that we should try to encourage throughout the world. Well, while there is a lot of complaints you can make about the people that they chose, this was a pretty free and clear election. No one has accused them of cooking the books or stealing the election. If anything, Fattah was in control of more of the apparatus, they should have won. So now Hamas has been elected and there has been a dramatic increase of attacks. These are the numbers just since June. Every week, 7, 14, 12. This is a week. This is not over the course of a month, this is just over the course of each week how much there has been. And the question has to be, what is now the fight over? What is it that the terrorists, what is it that Hamas, what is it the people here are trying to do? Well, could it be could it be that the people here in Gaza are always going to attack the citizens of Israel. What is then the logical extension our policy? It is fine to say, all right, let's try to figure it out. The Saudis have put forth this plan and said let's return the country to the 1967 borders. Maybe that is the solution. Well, the Lebanese border is no longer under contest. The United Nations decided where the line should be. Israel said you are wrong, but we are going to observe your line. The Palestinians said the Gaza Strip is ours. The Israelis said, well, we don't believe you can secure it and it won't be safe for us to leave, but we are going to leave anyway. So now you have people crossing over from Lebanon and taking prisoners and declaring war. You have the Palestinians electing a terrorist organization and increasing the amount of attacks. What is it they want? This is not, my colleagues, a basic border dispute any more. Now you can only conclude if they are attacking a small town of 22,000 people just because they can, that their objective is going to be under every circumstance, whenever given the opportunity, they are going to attack. Now, I don't say that to drag us into a larger discussion about what the ultimate solution to this challenge is, except to say for many Americans who look at this part of the world and don't see the nuances, they say can't they just work something out there? Just kind of find a border that works for everyone. Well, Sderot is nowhere near the border here. It has never been under Palestinian control, ever.

Mr. WEINER. But I think it is important to realize that we hear it just about every day out of the State Department, and this is true under Democratic administrations as well, Israel must show restraint. Every time there is an attack we hear that, Israel must show restraint. Imagine if there were two attacks in New Jersey or in Pennsylvania. Imagine if there was one, and imagine if al Qaeda had just won the elections in Toronto and these attacks started, would any of us say we have to show restraint?

Mr. WEINER. Let me just reclaim my time briefly and just make one or two points. When I posited in the introduction to this special order the idea, well, what would you do if you were faced with this kind of challenge? Well, imagine, if you can, that you were able to build a wall tall enough into the sky to intercept any of those rockets. You would say jackpot. We figured out a way to do it. It is not pleasant, it is not nice, but we figured out a way. Or a giant net to catch them all. Well, they didn't have indiscriminate missile attacks coming from this part of the Palestinian territories. They had human beings who had strapped armaments around their waist filled with ball bearings and nails, and they had them walk into cafes and walk into discotheques and blow themselves up and everyone near them. So Israel, after trying to detect them as best they could and stop them as best they could, and having remarkable success as doing that, found that, you know, what, we don't like doing this, but let's build a wall, a fence in some cases, a wall in other parts of it, to stop people from just walking across. Well, it is the equivalent of trying to catch those missiles, and it makes a certain amount of common sense. It is a terrible message and a terrible sign and you hate to do it for your neighbor, just the same way if you were living next door to someone to build a high concrete wall between you and your neighbor. You would never want to do it, unless they started walking across into your lawn and blowing you and your family up. So they went and they constructed this wall. Do you know, I say rhetorically, because I know the gentlewoman from Nevada knows, the amount of international hue and cry that went on, how outrageous it was for the Israelis? Even our government said they were opposed to the idea of building this security fence. Well, it has been successful. They have figured out a way, albeit not the best possible way. The best possible way is to say the people of the West Bank, the people of Gaza, you want your own state. We want you to have your own state. The United States does. The Israeli government does. A recent poll showed that 87 percent of the population of Israel said we want the Palestinians to have their own state. But if every time you cede more responsibility to the territories it leads to more violence, it makes you long for a solution. So what is the solution? Well, the most ideal solution is for the Palestinians, as you say, to stand up and say, look, we have high-rises here in Gaza City. We are living not very good lives here. We have been cut off from the international world because the source of our economic activities is being good neighbors to everyone else in the world. Israel and Egypt both went up economically the moment they signed the Camp David Accords because they realized that international cooperation, although not a great love, but international cooperation leads to benefits for everyone. So the people of Gaza have to say, look, what is it that it is getting us? We are terrorizing our neighbors, but to what end? Eventually the Israelis are going to have to say something. The Israelis are deliberating now on what steps to take. Can you blame them if they say, we are going to cut off all electricity to the city until it stops? Can you blame them if they say, we are going to close off all border crossings until it stops? You can't possibly blame the Israeli Government for whatever they do to protect the people of Sderot. But the objective should not be what kind of defensive, and you know that the Israelis are now experimenting with not one but two antimissile systems to try to stop them. It is billions of dollars. When I visited Israel last week, the defense minister was saying, I am not satisfied with having one antimissile system. We may need to have two of them to protect them both from the Lebanese border and from the rockets coming in on Sderot. But the real solution is for the Palestinian people and the international community to say, look, if you want to live side by side as a two-state community, let's get to talking about how to do that. If your objective is to have nonstop violence, then you act the way you are, the way Hamas and their supporters are acting in Gaza. You just keep doing acts of war over and over again. The Israeli people, God bless them, whenever there is a hint of a possibility of a chance of some kind of a negotiated settlement, they pursue it.

Mr. WEINER. That is probably right. But the point is, to be serious here, we have heard a great deal here recently about the upcoming meetings that are going to be going on with foreign secretaries to try to resolve and prop up Abu Mazen, who is the leader of the Fattah faction that lost the election, but who many people in the United States, and many people in the world community, feel is kind of a better choice than Hamas. Whether or not he is or isn't or whether or not he speaks for anyone or not, it is beyond dispute that Hamas holds sway in the Gaza Strip. It is also beyond dispute that they won for reasons that can be explained a lot of different ways. They won. They are the representative people of the Palestinians. We may like Abu Mazen more, but he doesn't seem to speak for as many people. But before I yield to the gentlewoman, I just want to point out that for people who say well, maybe if Israel left the Gaza Strip to Palestinian control, this would be resolved. As the gentlewoman from Nevada pointed out, been there, done that. And, remember, many people argued that it would be a mistake for the Israelis to acquiesce to the Palestinians' request because they would just use this as a launching ground for terrorism. Well, those people turned out to be right, and, unfortunately, rather than saying okay, we are going to accept this as our Nation and we are going to show that we can sustain ourselves and not be a hostile neighbor, it has instead led to this, which is a dramatic increase in the amount of attacks that have gone on since the Palestinians took over the province of their own area.

Mr. WEINER

Mr. WEINER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous material on the subject of my Special Order.

Mr. WEINER

Mr. WEINER. I thank the gentlelady for this time and for her leadership. This is an issue that you would think, from around the country when people gaze upon the memorials that will take place on September 11, for most Americans to realize how many people who responded that day are not being cared for, they would be stunned and surprised. We have a great many ideological debates that go on in this Chamber. We have a great many arguments about philosophy and what government should or should not do. It should be the source of no contention, it should be the source of no real debate, that people who rushed to help their fellow citizens on that day, whether they be at Ground Zero or the fields of Pennsylvania, whether they be at the Pentagon, those people should be honored, of course, but they also should be cared for. And yet years later, day by day, victims of September 11 are dying. It is easy for us to remember, those of us from New York, about how that day was such a heart-wrenching day and how it was also uplifting to see how many Americans, like the gentlelady said earlier, people drove from miles around. The West Side Highway was largely closed, and parked on the sides of the roads were license plates from all around the country of people who said I am going to go and try to help. What that help consisted of in the weeks after September 11 was standing on a pile of rubble with buckets and paper masks and people lifting large pieces of stone and the rubble trying desperately to find anyone who could be saved. If we fast-forward to today, you realize many of those people are dying. They are dying difficult deaths. It has been argued by some that we don't know exactly what the cause of those deaths are. Well, that is not true. A lot of the monitoring has been done. A lot of the studies that have been done by medical experts in New York City and the hospitals in the area, we know with some certitude what happened, and the things we are finding in the lungs of those that are dying is very clear that it came from that horrific day. We also have heard from some who say we don't know how expensive this could be. It could be untold millions and millions of dollars. Well, the first thing is to try to get some sense of responsibility, and I believe it is largely a Federal responsibility, and I think that debate, frankly, belittles the strength of the Federal Government and the idea that this was an attack on our Federal Government. But we do have some sense of what the costs are going to be. Now we need to start to say one final thing. We know what the cost is to some degree. We know what the cause is with near certitude. We are going to accept the responsibility to take care of these people. It seems to me intuitive, and yet here we are 6 years later still having this discussion. And I think, as I said earlier, we can have large discussions about how you provide health care in this country, and I am willing to engage in that. We can have discussions about how we should make our country safer so we don't have a September 11 again. We should have those types of discussions. But as long as we can all embrace the idea this is the responsibility of government to take care of these people because they did not run to that pile waving their Blue Cross/Blue Shield card or waving their Medicare card or waving their union membership, they just showed up and did what they were asked to do. Sometimes they did much more than they were asked to do. I firmly believe that many of those who are dying today, even if they knew that if they did it again they would die, they would still do it. That was the kind of sense, that was the kind of pathos that existed that day. People were so eager to do whatever they could, they were willing to make sacrifices. But the question becomes: Should we let them pay that price? Should we let them, day by day, as we just saw yesterday, two more police officers died from 9/11-related diseases, should we let it happen? And the answer is ``no.'' I want to end the way I began, by offering my congratulations and thanks to the gentlelady from New York. This is a difficult issue, because as much as people would like to say that they are doing everything to honor those victims of September 11, we know in this Chamber that there are some people who are steadfastly pushing back every single day. And Mr. Nadler and the gentlewoman from New York, and many members of the New York delegation, but none more than the two of them, have fought every day to keep this on the front burner. Every year now on September 11, we are going to cast our memory time immemorial back to September 11, 2001. Let this be the last year we have to mark this day by pointing out the shoddy treatment of those who rushed to Ground Zero to volunteer. I know that the gentlelady has communicated this to Speaker Pelosi and she has been very supportive of this. Let's hope we can find the type of bipartisan consensus that is truly reflected in this country in paying honor to the memory of those that were lost and paying honor to the sacrifice of those still with us.

Mr. WEINER

Mr. WEINER. Thank you. I yield now, if it is appropriate, to the gentleman from Staten Island, Mr. Fossella.

Mr. WEINER. Mr. Chairman, I rise to engage in a colloquy with my colleagues, Mr. Fossella and Mr. Crowley of New York, and commend the committee for increasing the APHIS budget to more vigorously attack the national challenge of the invasive species that are ravaging our plants and trees. As you know, New York City is waging a war to stop the Asian Longhorned Beetle. Yes, Madam Chair, a tree grows in Brooklyn, thousands of them in fact, just as they do in Staten Island, the Bronx, Queens and Manhattan. Sadly, the Asian Longhorned Beetle has been advancing steadily. Given that the USDA's work to defeat the ALB elsewhere has been successful and thus will require less funding going forward, can I ask for the commitment of the committee to endeavor in conference to grant the metropolitan area a larger portion of the Asian Longhorned Beetle account than it has received in the past?

Mr. WEINER

Mr. WEINER. Mr. Chairman, point of parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. WEINER. Mr. Chairman, just for future reference. Under the rules, Members who fail to oblige and follow rulings of the order of the Chair, what is the sanction against them if they fail to do so?

Mr. WEINER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. WEINER. Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. WEINER. Mr. Chairman, a point of parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. WEINER. Mr. Chairman, I rise to renew the point of order of the previous point of order.

Mr. WEINER

Mr. WEINER. On rollcall 765, H.R. 2347, the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act, during the period of consideration of that bill Congressman Wexler and I were away from the floor, organizing efforts to stop the wrong- headed arms sale to Saudi Arabia. Had I been present, I would have voted in favor, and believe we need to keep on sanctioning Iran. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. WEINER

Mr. WEINER. I appreciate it. Mr. Chairman, I request unanimous consent that my amendment be withdrawn.

Mr. WEINER. Reclaiming my time, I thank you for your attention. And when you're in conference with the other body, if you can grab them by their institutional lapels and get them to move on our COPS throughout the Nation.

Mr. WEINER. Mr. Chairman, for those viewers of this debate each year and for my colleagues who think that really very little had changed when the House of Representatives changed from majority Republican to majority Democrat, we are seeing in this bill very profound changes in policy in this country, and none is more profound than the difference in the approach to the COPS program. This year's bill has $100 million for hiring in the COPS program. In the COPS program, as many of you know, more than 100,000 police officers in small towns, big cities throughout the country were hired in the period beginning in 1995. Yet shortly after the beginning of the Bush administration, the COPS program was slashed and slashed and slashed to essentially die on the vine. As you see in this chart, in 1995 you had in the neighborhood of 20,000 cops being hired each and every year. In 2005 and 2006, 2007, it was down to zero. In this year's bill, to the enduring credit of the chairman and ranking member and members of the committee, this is now being funded at $100 million. That is going to allow us an opportunity to hire many, many more police officers. Now, we have also, in the first couple of months of the new Congress, passed a reauthorization of the COPS program for another 50,000 cops on the beat. Now, it has gone to the other side of this building. It has gone to the other body and seems to be doing what so much legislation does, and that is dying a slow, excruciating death. They say the other body is the ``cooling saucer of democracy.'' They have turned into the deep freeze when it comes to many of the things that this House is doing. But what this amendment seeks to do is to say let's take that success and let's take it even further. This is one of the programs, the COPS program, it is democratic with a small ``d.'' If you are in a small town, conservative neighborhood, you have gotten COPS. If you are in a big city like mine, you have gotten COPS. What the COPS program argues is that Federal law enforcement, that Federal anti-terrorism means helping local authorities hire more police officers. That is why the Fraternal Order of Police, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Association of Police Organizations, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National Sheriffs Association all support dramatically increasing this program. Now, Chairman Mollohan has taken a program that has essentially been killed and gives it more life. And this is what we need to continue on the trend towards. Now, whether we do it more in this bill with my amendment, or whether we finally get the other body to reauthorize the program and we can start doing this in regular order, we need to realize that as Tom Ridge, the former Secretary of Homeland Security, once said, ``Homeland security starts in our hometown.'' We can't just say to cities, go out and protect yourselves. We need a Federal program that works. Now, I don't mind pointing out that at the apex of the hiring was also the highest point in our crime reduction in this country. We have seen over the course of several FBI index reports that it has started to creep up more and more and more, and by no small measure because of the reduction in the COPS program. We need to continue on this arc. The committee has done an excellent job in doing that. I would be glad to yield to the chairman if he has any feedback for me.

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