Department Of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2008
Floor Speech
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008 -- (House of Representatives - June 13, 2007)
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Mr. CARTER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
First, I'd like to start out by saying that I do serve on the Homeland Security Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee. It's a deep honor for me to be there. It's a deep honor for me to work with Chairman Price, who is an honorable man and has done hard work on this bill. It's an honor for me to work with Ranking Member Rogers, who has done hard work on this bill.
And I agree with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that there has been a lot of diligence on this bill, a lot of hard work on this bill, and in my opinion, every Member of this Congress probably has, as a first thought, what the Homeland Security Department does to protect our families from terrorists around the world and from other disasters that can strike our families. I can assure you that this subcommittee certainly does that.
This hard work being done does not mean that there aren't differences of opinion on how things should be done because, in fact, in our very subcommittee, and in the overall committee of the Appropriations Committee, there is a difference of opinion on directions that we should take.
Just, for example, on the issue of the border fence, there are those who think that the border fence needs to be built and it needs to be built now, and all obstructions have to be taken away from that that might obstruct building that fence. I happen to be one of those people, and yet, honorable men and women disagree. And those who are in the majority, they do set the policy for the bill that is before us today.
I personally think that it's our duty and responsibility as Members of Congress to debate the issues, whether you're on the Appropriations Committee or not, and by raising issues that are being raised on this side of the aisle on this bill, that we are saying that the Appropriations Committee has not done their job. We're saying we want to put a microscope, put sunshine on the process and see what we see, and then each Member, whether they be right on their amendment or whether they be wrong on their amendment, certainly has the responsibility to submit their opinion on this bill.
We talk about a term that I think that's kind of peculiar, and I certainly was not a Member of this Congress when whoever came up with the term ``earmark,'' but there's a whole lot of folks in the United States that know what an earmark is, and it doesn't have anything to do with what we're doing here in Congress today.
It has to do with a method of identifying livestock, and in old days and maybe in some more rustic scenes today, an earmark was actually the notch cut in the ear of an animal. Now, I'm sure that's offensive to many people, but today, it generally is a tattoo or a tag that designates what the owner intends to do with that animal. And at least in the ranching business, they go out and they mark those that are the keepers and the culls. There are the animals that they're going to keep in their breeding stock, and there are the culls which are the ones they're going to take to market and sell as one way the earmark functions.
And the owner of that livestock designates someone to make that designation of how they should earmark the livestock, and I assume that whoever came up with the term ``earmark'' as it relates to special projects in the appropriations process thought it was a good term because basically, that's the decisions that the owner, i.e., the voter, the American public, asks their individual representative to make about the spending on special projects that's going to be done by the United States Congress.
And so who is the designated person for the 31st Congressional District to make this decision? And I think the people elected me to do that. I think there are 435 individual people here that the folks who originally own this money and gave it to us to use, they said you make the decision on how this money is going to be spent. This is a republic, and we have sent our representative to speak on our behalf to say this is a project that has worth and this is a project that has no worth; this is a keeper and that is a cull.
And that is actually the duty and the responsibility by our oath of every person who sits in every chair of this House.
The Acting CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter) has expired.
(By unanimous consent, Mr. Carter was allowed to proceed for 1 additional minute.)
Mr. CARTER. Mr. Chairman, the reason we are in this debate today, one of the reasons, is we have created a process where instead of 435 people will meet their constitutional obligation of their oath to determine how the earmarks will be spent, we have narrowed it down to one or whatever his designation may be, and I think that is inappropriate, although I will say and I wish to end by saying Mr. Obey is an honorable man, and I have the greatest respect for him.
But that's not the way we were supposed to act when we came to Congress. We were supposed to participate in this process of determining the earmarks.
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Mr. CARTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
I just wish to correct your mistake in your opening statement.
I have been serving on this committee for the last 2 years, and the House of Representatives has finished the appropriations process by the 4th of July both terms that I served in Congress. So I think the statement made as an opening was a mistake.
Mr. ALTMIRE. Reclaiming my time, that has not been the case. The House has not completed its work. These bills were not finished and implemented by October 1.
Mr. CARTER. I beg to differ. These bills were passed by the House of Representatives, in the last two terms I served on this committee, before the 4th of July. I think you can check with the subcommittee chairman, and he will agree with me on that.
Mr. ALTMIRE. The last time they were implemented on time was 1994.
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Mr. CARTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
This has been a stimulating debate, and I want to thank my colleagues on the other side of the aisle for joining in this debate. Yesterday evening we were accused of delaying and taking up all of the time, and I think we have equally shared the time this morning, and I am very proud to have the help of the Democrats on the other side of the aisle in continuing this debate because I think it is important that we hear from all sides. In fact, that is what this is all about.
We keep talking about us, but I think that the Democratic Representatives on the other side of the aisle individually have the same right to see and debate these earmarks as the people on the Republican side of the aisle. I am not arguing this point only for Republicans. I believe that the individual Members who are elected by the people in their district to make sure they are on top of spending have the same right.
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Mr. CARTER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
Mr. Chairman, this has been a wonderful debate. For about 30 years, I hung around courtrooms and watched lawyers talk to juries, and a lot of times lawyers use terminology that people didn't understand.
We just used a ton of terminology, and every once in a while pick up on one or two that I think that maybe newcomers to this House really don't understand, maybe someone else that might be in the House or listening to the House might not understand. I want to talk about some of those things.
First I would like to address, before I do that, I want to point out that we have done an awful lot of talk about history. You know, last year is history.
In fact, yesterday is history. Today is reality and tomorrow, who knows.
But there was just a tirade of numbers thrown out of Congresses just a few months ago. If you want to play that game, then let's take the 40 years prior to the Republicans coming into the majority of Congress and say, what about those 20 Congresses that had the opportunity to reform the appropriations process?
That's a ridiculous argument. That argument carries no water whatsoever. The reality of the problem that we are addressing on earmarks actually came to the forefront when the vast majority of the people that sit in these chairs, in both parties, were surprised by the activities of a few who violated their sacred trust to the United States Government.
We had an election where all of us got painted with the brush of that few. But the reality is, the vast majority of people on this side of the aisle, and I am sure my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, were shocked to disbelief over some of the things that occurred with Members of the Congress, and are continuing to occur, to come to light. Recently, we had light spread on another shocking event that we have had here in Congress.
You know, the nature of democracy is that problems leap up in your face, and you react to those problems. We have had leap into our face that secretism when dealing with money causes people like Jack Abramoff to end up in prison, and those that may be associated possibly end up in prison.
If you look and study what happened, it's all secret things. That's the real offense we are talking about, when we say let's let daylight in on this earmark process. A term that we have used a lot is airdrop, but most people think airdrop, plane, parachute, that drops it in.
What we are really talking about is once a process goes through the House and the Senate, bills come to a conference committee, which is made up of representatives of both bodies. It is in a closed room behind closed doors where the bills are worked out to where they can get a compromise that both bodies can then vote on.
When we refer to airdrops, these are these expenditures and appropriation bills that when it comes back to this body, if we can dig through and find it, we go, where in the heck did that come from? We can't find any record anywhere of anybody talking about that in the Senate of the House. There it is. Where did that come from? So it's like it dropped out of thin air.
I think that's where the term ``airdrop'' gets its meaning. It's that when the Members of this body and the other body look at the final product and say where did that come from.
I think the proposal that's being made by the majority on their new earmark reform, by its very definition, creates a large body. We hear 31,000 possible ``where did that come from'' from for every Member of this body, except maybe one and some staffers who, some believe, are more competent than the Members of this body.
The Acting CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter) has expired.
(By unanimous consent, Mr. Carter was allowed to proceed for 1 additional minute.)
Mr. CARTER. Mr. Chairman, when we had these scandals, and we had the debate last term of Congress about this airdropping, this appropriations process, the public asked us to put what we were doing under a microscope and then let them see it.
That's what we are doing today. That's what we are going to continue to do until the whole process is visible and out in the daylight, and that's what this is all about.
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Mr. CARTER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
The Acting CHAIRMAN. Has the gentleman from Texas spoken on this amendment yet?
Mr. CARTER. No, I haven't.
The Acting CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Texas is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. CARTER. Mr. Chairman, I am very pleased that I follow my colleagues that have worked in law enforcement, for I, too, have worked in the court systems of criminal justice.
This 287(g) program to me is an exciting idea that has great potential, and I would love to see it expanded to where we have trained every law enforcement officer in America in just the style that my colleague from Washington just described, so that they can not only honor the diversity as he described, but also can participate in enforcing the laws of the United States, where the resources required for interior enforcement of the immigration laws, the number is overwhelming. To me, it is a good use of resources to use good, honest law enforcement wherever it exists to enforce the laws of this land.
I thought about this the other night, because it's an experience that most everyone here probably, if they will confess, has had. If you live in Houston, Texas, where my colleague, Ms. Jackson-Lee, lives, or pick a town, it doesn't really matter, Washington, D.C., Cincinnati, Ohio, and you get a parking ticket, if you fail to pay that parking ticket, you're probably going to get a notice from the department that takes care of parking tickets, and they're going to send you that notice and tell you that you have failed to appear to answer to this parking ticket.
They're going to stick a fine on there to go with the parking ticket fine. It could be $100, it could be $50, whatever the jurisdiction chooses, and then that letter is going to say, if you don't pay these two offenses, then we're going to issue a warrant for your arrest on a parking ticket.
Believe me, it happens every day. Ask my daughter, okay? Now, they probably aren't going to get out and serve that warrant unless they do some mass roundup, but generally they don't do that. But you're driving down the street, if you get that ticket in Houston, Texas, and you happen to be in Dallas with a broken taillight, and a police officer stops you to tell you he wants to give you a warning about your broken taillight and he runs the national system of warrants that's available across this Nation. Guess what he finds? They have a warrant for your arrest for a parking ticket in Houston, Texas, and he will arrest you; and he will put you in jail or hold you until you deal with that ticket.
Now, that's what happens to every American citizen that follows the scenario that I just gave you, or could happen to them.
Now, 18 months ago, when I was meeting with ICE people, I asked them how many absconders we had from these folks that were catch-and-release that had been ordered to court and had failed to appear on the ICE warrants. I found the number was approximately 700,000 people. It's probably more now, because I'm talking about 18 months ago; that's the number they gave to me.
And I asked the ICE agents, are there warrants issued for their arrests? Are they in the system? And will local law enforcement respect those warrants? And I couldn't get an answer. I was privately told, ``No.''
Now, this program, with trained officers out on the street, at least we could pick up violators of the Federal law who had disrespected the court system created by this Federal law and had failed to appear in that court. At least we could pick them up in the manner we pick up people who get a parking ticket.
We have to be inventive in this problem that we are facing with massive violation of the law in the immigration system. And I think the 287(g) is the core, so that we train to find these people in prison. There were times when we were at the jail commission trying to close our county jail for overcrowdedness that the district judges would review it every Friday evening, and we would find that 30 percent of the inmates in our jail would be illegal aliens. Thirty percent. And sometimes higher.
Let's have trained people. Let's support this amendment. Let's have trained people and let the departments that want to participate put trained people on the street to deal with ICE issues.
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