Supporting Intelligence and Law Enforcement Programs to Track Terrorist and Terrorist Finances
SUPPORTING INTELLIGENCE AND LAW ENFORCEMENT PROGRAMS TO TRACK TERRORISTS AND TERRORIST FINANCES -- (House of Representatives - June 29, 2006)
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H. Res. 900.
Let me read H. Res. 900's opening resolution: ``Supporting intelligence and law enforcement programs to track terrorists and terrorist finances conducted consistent with Federal law and with appropriate congressional consultation.''
Everybody in this body supports tracking terrorists. Everybody.
The gentleman who chairs the Intelligence Committee just talked about process. Neither the New York Times nor the Los Angeles Times nor the Wall Street Journal raise their hands and swear to defend the Constitution and protect the laws of the United States of America. We do that, and we have processes to determine how best to do that.
We are at war, and we ought to be united, and I will lament the fact that the Republican leadership continually presents resolutions designed to divide rather than to bring us together. There was not one second of hearing on the resolution before this body, not one. There was no process. There was no oversight. There was no fact-finding. There was no way to determine what, in fact, the facts are.
We are not the newspapers. We have sworn an oath before God and to our constituents to do our work in a way that protects and defends the Constitution and the statutes of this land. You have not done that. You have not brought us together. You have not said let us come together on a resolution. Not only that, but we have an alternative. I have read you its preamble, which accomplishes the same objective you want but without adopting premises that none of us, not one of the 435 of us, know that those premises are accurate.
I tell my friend, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Oxley), he has not had one minute of hearings in his committee on this resolution, not one.
Is that responsible? Is that the way the people of the United States want us to carry out important functions of government when we are at war? I think not. I think they expect more of us. We do not honor this institution or its processes or our Constitution by the actions we take today on this floor.
I will oppose this resolution, but I will support H.R. 900, which says very clearly and emphatically that we want to determine what terrorists are doing. We want to intercept the information from financial institutions that further a conspiracy to create terror and injury and damage to our country and to our people. But we should have done it, I tell the chairman, in a collegial way, in a cooperative way, in a partnership against terrorism, not in a partisan effort to divide and to make political points.
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