Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016
Floor Speech
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Mr. MASSIE. Mr. Chairman, I rise today with four of my colleagues to offer a bipartisan amendment that simply requires the DEA to comply with Federal law.
The passage of our amendment to the 2014 farm bill legalized the cultivation of industrial hemp for research purposes and has allowed for the establishment of industrial hemp pilot programs in States across the country. In fact, in my home State of Kentucky alone, nearly 1,800 acres of hemp are projected to be grown this summer in these pilot programs.
However, despite the clear language of our farm bill amendment that specifically states that State agriculture agencies and universities will be growing the industrial hemp for research, the DEA has continuously ignored the plain text of the Federal statute.
The DEA continues to waste valuable time and taxpayer dollars by holding up non-psychoactive hemp seeds destined for legitimate hemp pilot programs.
Last year, officials from the State of Kentucky were forced to file a lawsuit in Federal court to compel the DEA to release industrial hemp seeds for university pilot programs. This year, participants in hemp pilot programs in Kentucky and other States did not receive their seeds until just a few weeks before the start of the growing season.
The language is clear: State authorities, not the DEA, shall register the sites where hemp will be grown. The DEA's deliberate refusal to allow this simple fact has resulted in a broken process where the DEA obfuscates and delays.
Mr. Chairman, States cannot launch industrial hemp pilot programs if the DEA continues to violate Federal law by seizing and delaying shipments of hemp seeds before they reach their destination.
I urge a ``yes'' vote note on our amendment to require the DEA to follow Federal law, and I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Barr).
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Mr. MASSIE. I certainly thank the gentleman from Oregon, and I would just say that these hemp pilot programs have been tremendous in Kentucky. And they have answered all the questions, like the questions law enforcement had. They came and visited the fields. They said: ``You are right; there is no big deal here. This is okay.''
And so that is the important thing about these hemp programs, and we need to keep them going, and we need to take it to the level. We can't afford delays. You can't afford a delay when the weather is not always cooperating with you. A week, 2 weeks could ruin you.
So I urge my colleagues to vote for this amendment. It is just common sense. All we are asking is to follow the law. How hard is that?
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Mr. MASSIE. Mr. Chairman, back in March, the ATF backed off on a controversial proposal to restrict the use of so-called ``green tip'' ammunition, some of the most popular ammunition in the country. In fact, it is used in the popular rifle, the AR-15.
The BATFE received over 80,000 comments, primarily from citizens who opposed the Bureau's attempt to restrict their Second Amendment rights. And so the ATF rescinded its proposal.
In my opinion, the proposed restriction was based on a flawed application of chapter 44 of title 18 of the United States Code. If you go back and look at the debate that occurred in Congress, you will see that the legislation that was written was clearly meant to cover handgun ammunition. It was never meant to cover rifle ammunition.
In fact, there was a debate at the time whether they should limit so-called ``armor-piercing'' ammunition by its functionality--in other words, its efficacy--or whether they should limit it by its design. And they chose to limit it by its design. Because if you limit it by its functionality, what you will find out is darn near all rifle ammunition, unfortunately, will penetrate the common vest. In fact, the most lethal are deer rifles. And so a deer rifle is more lethal in terms of penetrating a vest than would be, say, a so-called assault rifle that shoots a much smaller caliber.
In any case, what happened is one pistol was made and came on the market--or a few pistols were made, handguns were made--that could be chambered with this round, but the round was designed and intended for use in a rifle, not in a handgun.
The clear text of the statute, in my opinion, excludes rifle rounds, but what has happened is recently, the ATF--now, this is only one example that I have recently--they proposed to ban the green tip ammunition, otherwise known as M855 or SS109. This is 223, also known as 556 ammunition. Well, there was a lot of public backlash, and so they backed off of that.
What a lot of people don't know is they already did ban some ammunition with this flawed interpretation. They banned the 7N6, which is a 5.45 by 39 round, and so it was a mistake that happened, and we need to correct this mistake.
We need to prevent future mistakes. The best way to do this is to withhold funding for flawed interpretations.
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Mr. MASSIE. I appreciate that. I appreciate the effort that the chairman put in to making sure that our 556, 223 ammunition did not get banned. I appreciate my colleague from Pennsylvania's comments as well.
Let me say something. I am sympathetic to the ATF's job. We write some bad legislation here, okay. It is clear it has got gray areas. What I am trying to do is to clear up a gray area for them so that, when they go to work in the morning, they don't have to wonder should this apply to this or should this apply to this or not.
Even with the chairman's great efforts, the reason why this is necessary is because the same rationale that they were going to use to ban 556, they actually used a year or two ago to ban 5.45, which is a very similar round in composition and size and capacity. That is why this amendment is necessary.
My colleague from Pennsylvania is right. I do love guns; I have an enthusiasm, but the reason I am doing this is my respect for the Constitution. I understand you have respect for the Constitution as well; I do. We just interpret it a little bit differently.
This is not a bazooka amendment. This is just an ammunition amendment, and I am just trying to make sure this very popular caliber and other popular calibers are still able to be bought.
I appreciate the efforts that everybody puts in to making sure these laws are enforced. I just want to clear up this law. I urge my colleagues to vote for this amendment.
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Mr. MASSIE. Madam Chair, In December of 2013, news broke--and this was in a Reuters article--that, as a key part of a ``campaign to embed encryption software that it could crack into widely used computer products, the U.S. National Security Agency arranged a secret $10 million contract with'' a private company--in fact, ``one of the most influential firms in the computer security industry.''
It was further disclosed that ``an algorithm called Dual Elliptic Curve ..... was on the road to approval by the National Institute of Standards and Technology as one of four acceptable methods for generating random numbers.''
The company adopted this algorithm, knowing that it would be used as a standard, and it was, as expected, approved by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. But ``within a year, major questions were raised about Dual Elliptic Curve. Cryptography authority Bruce Schneier wrote that the weakness in the formula `can only be described as a back door.' ''
This is just one example of the NSA exploiting its relationship with NIST to weaken encryption standards.
Look, NIST, we would like for them to set the highest standards for our country, particularly when it comes to encryption. Weakened encryption standards allow the NSA to snoop on Americans without a warrant.
So these back doors in encryption products are bad for privacy. It makes it just way too easy to violate our Fourth Amendment.
But back doors in encryption software are also bad for security. Think about this: Don't you want the best security available that the minds in this country can create, produce, to safeguard your health records, maybe to safeguard your gun records, maybe to safeguard your bank accounts and your credit cards.
We are more safe when we have better security and better encryption. So it makes no sense for the National Institute of Standards and Technology to work with the NSA to weaken our encryption software.
Finally, putting back doors in products is bad for business. It is bad for privacy. It is bad for security. And it is bad for business.
Why is it bad for business? Why would somebody buy a product made in America if it is known that the standards in America are weaker than the standards elsewhere? You know, if there are back doors in products, it is not just the government that can use them: hackers will find them. In fact, once the weakness was exposed in this Dual Elliptic Curve, it made it very easy for people to hack into that, and the company had to say, Quit using this software. We found a weakness in it.
So I would urge people to vote for this amendment. What it does is it prevents the spending of money at the National Institute of Standards and Technology to work with the NSA to weaken our encryption.
The amendment does nothing to keep them from making better encryption, but they cannot weaken it. They cannot compromise it. They can't spend your tax dollars making American products and our government standards worse.
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Mr. MASSIE. Madam Chair, I will just summarize why this is an important amendment.
We trust the National Institute of Standards and Technology to perform their constitutionally mandated responsibilities. That is one of the great things about NIST: its authorization is in the Constitution, to set the standards of weights and measures. So I appreciate the job they do. But we put a lot of trust into them when they set these standards. And a lot of people make business decisions. It is kind of like the Good Housekeeping seal of approval, if I may use that analogy.
So, when we stamp something as a government-approved standard, we want to know it is the best in the world, that the United States has the best encryption in their products, the best encryption. We want the products that our government buys to be safe. So it would be wrong for NIST to spend money working to put back doors in our products. That is why I urge our colleagues to vote for this amendment.
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Mr. MASSIE. Madam Chair, I thank the gentleman from Arizona's leadership on this issue, and my profound gratitude and immense respect to Chairman Culberson for making sure that this interpretation that was applied to 5.45 ammunition was not applied to 5.56. He has the gratitude of millions of gun owners in this country--law-abiding gun owners, I should say.
This travesty of justice still applies to this other caliber, using the same reasoning. I won't impugn the motives of the ATF. I won't do that. I think they are just trying to enforce the law. There is a gray area here, and I think this bill clears up that gray area for the benefit of millions of gun owners--law-abiding gun owners--in this country, and I thank Representative Gosar for leading on this.
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