Providing for consideration of H.R. 5682, United States and India Nuclear Cooperation Promotion Act of 2006
PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 5682, UNITED STATES AND INDIA NUCLEAR COOPERATION PROMOTION ACT OF 2006 -- (House of Representatives - July 26, 2006)
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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the gentleman from Florida, for yielding me the time.
Mr. Speaker, I am not going to talk about the underlying bill. We will do that a little later on today. But, instead, I want to take a couple of minutes to speak about the rule and about what I believe is a flawed process that Members of this House are forced to operate within.
It is easy in this Congress to get as much time as you want to debate trivial issues. We spend hours and hours honoring sports teams, we name post offices, we do all kinds of things like that. But when it comes to serious issues, all of a sudden there never seems to be the time.
There were a number of amendments that were proposed in the Rules Committee last night. Some of them were not made in order, and I regret the fact that those amendments were not made in order. But a number of those that were made in order have been limited to 10 minutes, 10 minutes, to talk about issues dealing with nuclear proliferation and arms control, 10 minutes to talk about issues that impact U.S. treaty obligations, 10 minutes to talk about how we prevent this world from being extinguished in one terrible nuclear flash.
That is what the leadership of this House thinks about issues of arms control and nuclear nonproliferation, 10 minutes; 5 minutes pro, 5 minutes against.
My colleagues, Congressman Berman and Congresswoman Tauscher, have an amendment that restricts exports of nuclear reactor fuel to India until the President determines that India has halted the production of fissile material for the use in nuclear weapons. It is a serious issue. Regardless of whether you believe it should be part of this underlying bill or not, it is an issue that deserves debate and that the more debate that it gets on the floor the more of an indication we are going to send to our negotiators and to the Government of India that these issues are important to those of us in this Congress.
Congressman Markey and Congressman Upton had an amendment that essentially would require the President to determine that the U.S. has received India's support in preventing Iran from acquiring weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. engages in nuclear cooperation with India.
The President and Members of this Congress take to this well constantly to talk about how we are concerned about Iran possibly acquiring weapons of mass destruction. This seems like a reasonable amendment. It was not made in order, so now we are forced to use it as a motion to recommit. We get 10 minutes to debate that, 5 minutes in favor, 5 minutes against.
We need to get our priorities straight in this House. We give resolutions honoring sports teams 40 minutes, 40 minutes; and we can only give 10 minutes to deal with amendments that are dealing with issues of whether or not we are going to see this arms race proliferate throughout this world? We need to get our priorities straight.
For that reason, Mr. Speaker, I am going to vote against this rule. Regardless of how you want to vote on the final passage of this bill, we should demand, all of us, Republicans and Democrats, that serious issues that get debated, get debated with enough time on this floor, at least as much as we give to these trivial issues like honoring sports teams.
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