Veterans' Memorials, Boy Scouts, Public Seals, and Other Public Expressions of Religion Protection Act of 2006

VETERANS' MEMORIALS, BOY SCOUTS, PUBLIC SEALS, AND OTHER PUBLIC EXPRESSIONS OF RELIGION PROTECTION ACT OF 2006 -- (House of Representatives - September 26, 2006)

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from New York. This bill, which is presented to the Congress under the banner of a so-called American values agenda, turns American values on their head. It is an example of false advertising at its very worst, and it forgets the lessons of American history.

This great country of ours was founded largely on the principle of religious liberty. Many of our earlier settlers to this country came to our shores to escape religious persecution from their mother countries. They didn't want the Church of England or any other government telling them how they should worship God, and they sought to escape a state-imposed religion, to escape the establishment of a state-sponsored religion. They wanted to practice religion according to the dictates of their own conscience, not the dictates of the state. And that is why the first amendment to the United States Constitution gives each individual the right of religious liberty and why it bars the state from imposing and establishing a state religion.

If this Congress and this government now seeks to impose certain religious faiths upon an individual, that individual can invoke the protections of the United States Constitution. Now, I would think all of us, all of us in this body, would agree that an individual should not have to pay to enjoy the protections of the United States Constitution. Those rights are given to each of us as American citizens under the Constitution, and we shouldn't have to pay when the state, whether it is a local government, a State government, or the Federal Government, violates those rights under the establishment clause or anything else. Yet that is exactly what this bill does.

Under current law, if the court finds a statute is violating your constitutional rights under the establishment clause, the State has to pay the cost that you incurred in protecting your rights against the State. If your government deprives you of your constitutionally guaranteed rights and liberties, the government should pay, not you, the individual citizen. This is a question of the force and muscle of the government and the States against an individual in trying to deprive an individual of his or her constitutionally protected right.

I would ask, since when is it an American value that you have to pay to enjoy the protections of our constitution? Since when is an American value that the government can trample on your religious liberty, deprive you of your rights, and then, when a court of law, whether the Supreme Court, a Federal Court, or any other court, has found indeed that the government did deprive you of your constitutional rights and you were right as an individual and the government was wrong, that you have to pay and not the government?

That is simply a way, when you think about it, that the government can discourage individual citizens from enforcing their constitutional rights. They have to take on the government. They have to take on people with lots of resources. Yet, at the end of the day, even when they win, and the court agrees that their constitutional rights have been violated, it is the citizen that has to pay to enjoy those protections, not the government.

This debate is about American values, and if you want to protect those American values and you want to protect the Constitution of the United States, you should vote ``no'' on this bill.

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