Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to offer a multifaceted amendment to limit funds within the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act to programs that are constitutional, appropriate, and sane.

For the sake of time, I will just highlight some of the provisions within my amendment.

My amendment protects Second Amendment rights and individual liberties. It does so by prohibiting a Federal firearm registry from being created with funds in this bill. Similar language has previously passed the House.

I also want to bring the House's attention to some of the ludicrous studies that taxpayers have funded via the National Science Foundation.

First, I appreciate the National Science Foundation's mission and its work. The National Science Foundation grantees and funds have been instrumental in advances in the Internet, astronomy, energy, chemistry, and many other important aspects of scientific scholarship; but, like our well-funded government operations, the bureaucracy begins to grow and proper oversight of the grant process begins to wane.

In 2011, Senator Tom Coburn released a publication titled ``The National Science Foundation: Under the Microscope.'' In that document, he outlined a litany of wasteful, superfluous, and seemingly idiotic studies, some of which I will outline here.

There was a study on human reaction to popular baby names. There was a $580,000 grant to study racial preferences in online dating. There was nearly $1 million in multiple grants to study how rumors are started.

There have been nearly two decades of grants awarded to a certain panel in which the National Science Foundation has granted about $60 million. One of the panel's studies covered how much housework a man creates for a wife in his household. There was a $90,000 grant to study the relationship between a researcher and their online avatar in virtual worlds and differences in their behaviors.

Since 2000, grants provided by the National Science Foundation have been used to study crustaceans running on tiny treadmills after being exposed to different microbes.

These little shrimp were also given tiny backpacks to weigh them down, so researchers could study test variables such as weight and resistance. In 2011, the lab said it planned to build treadmills and create studies for lobsters and blue crabs as well. This amendment would prevent these types of abuses.

There was a 2009 grant disbursed to the tune of $300,000, to study how humans ride bicycles. There was another $300,000, which actually came from the stimulus funds, that was disbursed to a married couple to travel to seven countries around the world to study stray dogs in an effort to discover how dogs became man's best friend. Sounds like a heck of a honeymoon to me.

Possibly the most ridiculous grant highlighted by Senator Coburn's report was a National Science Foundation grant to support a robot rodeo hoedown. Let me repeat that: a robot rodeo hoedown. I would like to point out how laughable it was to my staff to work with legislative counsel to define what a hoedown is for the purpose of this amendment.

The project involved programming small robots to dance to ``Chicken Coop Shuffle,'' but I suppose the event wasn't a total loss. It produced hundreds of YouTube views.

I want to, again, thank Senator Coburn and his staff for producing these reports that shed light on these issues. My amendment will not prohibit all future ridiculous taxpayer-funded studies, but hopefully, I can take part in shedding a little bit of light of those that are the most egregious.

The hope is that those people awarding these moneys wake up and use a little more discretion with hard-earned taxpayer money, but I have a feeling I will be back here next year offering a similar amendment. I urge passage of this commonsense amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Chair, I rise today to offer an amendment which seeks to correct a serious injustice against U.S. citizens and the United States Constitution.

As many of us learned from the intelligence disclosures last year, the Federal Government is engaged in a wide variety of surveillance practices. These practices, though mostly focused internationally, also encompass domestic communications on a regular basis.

I hear many in the executive branch--and the legislative branch, no doubt--making excuses as to why this happens or how that is not all that bad, but I say that it is. It is an absolute violation of our basic civil liberties and the Fourth Amendment.

I could go on and on about the different practices that violate our Constitution and the trust of the people, but my amendment focuses on one simple statute, one simple statute I believe almost everyone will agree needs to be changed. Section 2703 of title 18, U.S.C., United States Code, allows the Federal Government to obtain your personal emails in your email account if they are 180 days or older. It is essentially a carte blanche authority to do so.

What is it about a piece of email being 180 days old that suddenly makes it the business of the government? What is it about a piece of email being 180 days old that suddenly makes it no longer your property? After 6 months, are those emails suddenly a threat to national security? Moreover, if these personal emails do discuss plots against the Nation, in many cases it is a little too little, a little too late to do anything since the government is 6 months behind the ball.

I do not know anyone who can make a legitimate argument to keep this provision of law. I know of no real justification.

To put support for this amendment in perspective, I will point out that there are a handful of bills in the House that abolish or significantly alter this provision of law.

One of these bills is H.R. 1847, introduced by my friend and colleague Congressman Matt Salmon of Arizona. The other is H.R. 1852, introduced by my friend Congressman Kevin Yoder of Kansas. If you add up all the Republicans and Democrats cosponsoring these two bills alone, the number is 217, just about enough to pass this amendment. I can tell you that our constituencies certainly do not accept this gross violation of privacy and abuse of power.

We saw a good bill in the U.S. Freedom Act get watered down and mutilated last week, which was a disgrace. I supported the original act because it made real reforms. I voted against the version that came to the floor because it extended section 215 of the PATRIOT Act for another 2 years.

But can we not agree on this one simple change?

Must the NSA or the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security have access to our emails that are several years old with no other justification than an arbitrary date? I think not.

I urge passage of my commonsense amendment.

With that, I yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte) of the Judiciary Committee.

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