[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 101 (Wednesday, July 10, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H7251-H7257]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           FBI FILES SCANDAL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from California [Mr. Rohrabacher] is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my colleagues to 
continue joining me in this discussion, and then I will use the last 
half-hour or whatever I have left to go on about the patent issue, 
which is an issue that I have been championing here, and will go into 
great detail for the record after we are done with this discussion.
  Let me just note that I worked in the White House for 7 years. I was 
a speech writer for Ronald Reagan during that time period. I am fully 
aware of the apparatus in the White House, and I was absolutely 
horrified to see what was going on there in terms of these FBI files.
  Let me also note that I was horrified when Billy Dale, who was a 
hard-working, just regular human being, a civil

[[Page H7252]]

servant who spent his time in the Reagan administration but before that 
the Carter administration, so Democrat and Republican administrations, 
sacrificed his life, had done a terrific job, always having to 
improvise because every time it was a crisis getting people here and 
there, and then to have this person fired dramatically, right off the 
bat.
  This President showed what he thinks of the working people and the 
standard operating procedures of the White House by firing this civil 
servant, and trying to replace him with who? Some Hollywood producer 
who had a travel agency, in order for them to get this person into a 
position to basically make some money off getting people to and from 
Presidential functions.
  Well, that was totally out of line, the procedure was totally out of 
line, but the President did that, and now we find out that that was 
just basically the first significant indication of what this White 
House was going to be like.
  We would not even know about the FBI files, the hundreds of FBI files 
that are in the hands of a political operative, actually two political 
operatives, Democrat political operatives people who had been active in 
campaigns. Not only active in campaigns, but their job in the campaigns 
was opposition research, dirt diggers.
  These people ended up with hundreds of FBI files in their position, 
and would we know about it if the Republicans had not won control of 
this body? We had to subpoena these documents. We had to force the 
While House to give us the documents which eventually led to the 
information they had violated the procedure, that they were such 
scofflaws at the White House that they permitted this to happen.

                              {time}  2300

  Let us note one thing, Chuck Colson, I was a reporter prior to 
becoming Reagan's speechwriter, I remember Chuck Colson. I was a 
reporter during the White House and Watergate years. I remember what 
Chuck Colson went to jail for. He went to jail because he was in 
possession of one FBI file and showed half of one FBI file to one 
person who was not qualified to see that FBI file. And now this 
administration has put hundreds of FBI files in the possession of 
political hacks.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I wanted to 
make a point. I have a staff member whose file was pulled. I want to 
give you the background, because when you think about this political 
operative left over from the Al Gore campaign, this Livingston and 
Marceca fellow, you think that they are checking out Newt Gingrich's 
file or maybe Dana Rohrabacher's file, but here is a profile of 
somebody who they checked on: hometown girl from Savannah, GA, mid-
twenty's, graduated from the University of Georgia, comes to 
Washington, idealistic, as we all see thousands of young people each 
year, comes to Washington, gets a job, maybe making $18,000 a year in 
the White House. She is not in the inner circle. In fact, she never 
sees the President. But it is fun and exciting and in her own way she 
got to help change America. Well, 2 years of that, Clinton wins, she is 
out. She has moved up the ladder. I hired her for $25,000 a year in her 
late twenty's. This is the kind of person we are talking about.
  Now she finds out that her FBI file has been pulled and that some 
sleazy political operative is looking at her college education 
transcripts, her speeding tickets, her employment records, if a 
neighbor said something bad about her.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Every dirty little thing that anybody can say, 
totally unsubstantiated rumors are put in FBI files. And they are put 
in there so that later on if there is a problem, people might follow 
up, the FBI might follow up to see if there was someting valid to this 
terrible rumor.
  So this young lady that you are talking about, if she is ever made an 
enemy of somebody by stealing somebody's boyfriend, if that person is 
jealous and says terrible things about her moral character, that is in 
those FBI files.
  Mr. KINGSTON. If they can invade her privacy, none of us are safe.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. If the gentleman will yield, I would come back to a 
very important point that Representative Rohrabacher raised. That is 
this whole story started with the firing of the White House Travel 
Office, and we heard the testimony. We have the documentation, sworn 
testimony that the reason was they wanted their people out, they wanted 
out people in. We need those slots. That was a direct quote. That was a 
direct quote.
  What really disturbs me about this story probably more than anything 
else was they had every right to fire those people. The truth of the 
matter is, they had the right to fire them. They were at will servants. 
They could be fired at any time. But they were not satisfied just to 
fire them. They had to make the story better. They had to embellish the 
story. They had to besmirch these people.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. They charged them with crimes.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. I will tell you what, what really eats at me more than 
anything else, maybe it is because my dad is getting on and my father-
in-law is now gone, but what really bothered me more anything about 
that story was that two of the seven of those individuals had to bury 
their fathers while their fathers went to their graves not knowing that 
they were not crooks.

  In other words, their dads went to their graves not knowing that 
their sons were not crooks because the White House fabricated these 
stories. They used the FBI. They abused the IRS. That is all part of 
the testimony.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. We know what happens when someone is put into this 
situation. Ordinary working people, they say, you can defend yourself 
against these charges. We know what that means. That means that 
someone's life savings is gone. That means that someone who has been 
saving up for maybe all their life in order to have a little house at 
the lake or something or a dream vacation with their wife, that is 
gone. That is over with. Any of the niceties that they wanted to save 
up for, gone, because the money that should be going into that which 
they have worked for and struggled for all their life goes to pay some 
lawyer to defend themselves from going to jail so that the President of 
the United States can put a crony in that position.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. It is true that the money cannot be replaced. What 
really cannot be replaced is your reputation. I cannot imagine much 
worse than having my daughter call me, as I think Billy Dale's daughter 
did call him when she saw the story on the national news, where they 
were accusing him of fraud and so forth. And his daughter said to him, 
Dad, say it is not so. I do not know how you could talk to your family. 
I do not know how you could face your family when on the national news 
you are being besmirched this way.
  I sat in these hearings. I was absolutely certain, absolutely 
convinced that they were wronged and that I told them I hoped that 
whoever was responsible, and I think we have a responsibility to try 
and get to the bottom of who is culpable under this, but I told them 
that I hoped that whoever was responsible would have to pay and pay 
dearly because it seems to me that where this whole story started with 
the seven White House travel office employees and then you see the 
pattern that has evolved, and it is always denial, delay, an they do 
not want to give the documents.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. How this ties in, of course, is that Billy Dale's 
FBI file was pulled in order to what? In order to destroy that person, 
in order to give cover to the President and his clique. They were going 
to destroy this man, and those are the people now who are in possession 
of hundreds of other FBI files. This is totally outrageous.
  Chuck Colson goes to jail for one half of one FBI file and these 
people and these media, I might add, who are sitting and letting this 
thing go by, yes, there is some criticism, there is some criticism, but 
have we seen the follow-up questions and the follow-up questions at the 
press conferences that we would have seen if this would have been a 
Republican administration?
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. As the one fellow said, if this was an innocent 
bureaucratic mistake, why is the bureaucrat most responsible taking the 
fifth amendment: If it is innocent, I would think they would be eager 
to get all this information out. They would be eager to get it all 
cleared up.
  But somebody said, Well, the people in the White House should come 
clean. It only helps to come clean if you are

[[Page H7253]]

clean. And the fear and the suspicion that is building here, and I 
think among the American people, is that there are people inside that 
White House who are not clean. And there has been things going on there 
that they are not proud of, no one is proud of. The only way it is 
going to stop is if the Congress exercises its constitutional 
responsibilities and actually, the whole system is built on a system of 
checks and balances. It would not happen if it were not for the 
Republican Congress.

  Mr. ROHRABACHER. This would never have happened, the American people 
would never know about this had the Republicans not won a majority in 
this body. Even with the Republican majority, the White House tried to 
stonewall us every step of the way in getting this information.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. I am going to close. I just want to share one other 
thing that I learned from one of my constituents, and it is a very 
important thing. He said, this was several months ago when I was home, 
he said, sometimes, and we get into this, Republican versus Democrat, 
he said, it is not Republican versus Democrat. In fact, he said, it is 
not even really right versus left. He said, it is right versus wrong. 
And what we have been talking about, some of the instances that we have 
been talking about tonight, it really is right versus wrong.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I want to mention to you on the subject, I sit on the 
Appropriations Subcommittee, Treasury, Post Office, White House. We 
fund the White House and we put in an amendment that said that if you 
worked for the White House, that unless it involves national security, 
you are not allow to look at anybody's FBI file, period. That amendment 
was passed on a bipartisan basis. We had a few Democrats who voted 
``no'', but the ranking member supported it and so forth and we passed 
it.
  Because exactly what your constituent said, this is not Democrat 
versus Republican, this is right versus wrong. If you are over at the 
White House and you need to look at somebody's files for national 
security purposes, particularly with all the people who are falling out 
of airplanes and jumping over the White House fence, I want the 
President to be protected. I want him to grow to be an old man. I want 
him to enjoy his last few months of being President peacefully. But the 
fact is that we do not want people over there on an extracurricular 
basis invading the privacy of normal citizens.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. This is totally consistent. Even before Billy Dale 
was fired, I remember when this administration came in, I remember it 
like it was yesterday, all of a sudden they started calling taxation, 
what, contributions. And they started calling government spending an 
investment. Remember that? They would not use the word ``taxation'' and 
they would not use the words ``government spending.''
  And when I knew that when someone who is so disciplined to do 
something so, what I considered disrespectful as to try to just change 
the words so the American people do not even know what is going on, so 
they cannot make a decision based on what policies they like or do not 
like because they are just corrupting the whole language so the 
American people will not understand what they are talking about, I 
said, this is one of the most heinous administrations that I have ever 
seen.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. It is almost 1984. It goes back to that book. But I 
will say this, again, I will close becasue I know you want to talk 
about patents. I think it is really refreshing to go home and have town 
meetings. And, frankly, I think the American people are a lot smarter 
than some of the polls and some of the newspaper people and some of the 
media people and some of the people in this city give them credit for. 
I think they are beginning to figure this out.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. I had faith that the American people would know that 
taxes are not a contribution and that all government spending is not 
just an investment. I think we can trust the American people. It says 
in God we trust, but was also trust the American people. And we hope 
that God works his will through the American people. So I wanted to 
thank you both.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I thank the gentleman for yielding.


                  The Steal American Technologies Act

  Mr. ROHRABACHER. I appreciate being part of that discussion.
  I would like to now talk a few minutes about another issue that is, I 
believe, perhaps just as disturbing as anything we were talking about 
in terms of what is going on down at the White House.
  I have spoken on the floor on many occasions on this issue. But it 
has yet to come to the floor because there seems to be some maneuvering 
going on. The issue I am talking about is whether or not the American 
patent system will survive as was envisioned by our Founding Fathers 
and whether the patent rights of the American people will be protected 
or whether the patent rights as we know them will just totally be 
destroyed and another system, totally alien to the patent system of the 
United States, superimposed on us, destroying our rights as Americans 
and hurting our ability to compete and to produce new technologies.
  I have spoken on this so many times that everywhere I go people are 
asking me, how is it possible that after I have given so many speeches 
and I have been on so many talk shows that Congress still may pass, and 
there is a very good chance that this bill still may pass when it comes 
to the floor, and that is H.R. 3460, I call it the Steal American 
Technologies Act, how is it possible that a bill like this, like H.R. 
3460, that will basically destroy the American patent system as we know 
it and that will mandate every American inventor to fully disclose all 
the details of every new invention that he is working on, even before 
the patent is issued, how is it possible that patriotic Members of 
Congress may well pass this travesty into law? This attack on America's 
future may well pass this body and this Congress.
  I am standing here basically by myself tonight. So how is it 
possible, when this room is filled with all of these people, 435 
Representatives, that they could possibly pass a bill like this. 
Because once you know the basics, that it is going to mandate that 
every inventor disclose to every thief in the world every secret of new 
American technology even before patents are issued, that does not take 
a rocket scientist to know what the outcome of that is going to be.
  Yet I am telling you today that when this vote comes to the floor, if 
it comes soon, it will happen, there is a good chance that the 435 
Members of this body will vote to make that part of the law. They will 
vote to take, which is another part of H.R. 3460, the Steal American 
Technologies Act, they will vote to take the current patent office, 
which has been part of the United States Government since our 
Constitution, since Benjamin Franklin wrote it into our Constitution, 
and obliterate it, eliminate it as part of the Government and resurrect 
it in a new form, which is a post office like, quasi-corporate entity 
that, once resurrected, would be under the control of one director who 
could not be removed for policy decisions but instead only for cause. 
Once he is in there, he has almost dictatorial power over the patents 
issued to the people of the United States.
  How is it possible that we would be willing to take this system that 
we have got that has done so well for America and come up with this 
result?
  Well, it is possible, number one, because there are powerful foreign 
multinational and even domestic corporations that want to steal 
people's patents. Surprise, surprise. Is anyone really surprised when 
they hear that? Is it odd that a foreign corporation or some 
multinational corporation or even a huge domestic corporation would 
like to steal people's ideas and not pay them for royalties for their 
new ideas and their new creations?

                              {time}  2315

  Well, that is not odd at all when you think about it. That is not odd 
at all. It is odd, however, that 435 Members of Congress are going to 
listen to big corporations and perhaps not take it one step further and 
say: ``Wait a minute. What does this mean to the American people?''
  Their interests basically, these very, you know, big multinational 
corporations, their interests are not the same as those people who are 
part of the citizenry.
  Now, that is not hard to understand as well, and basically these 
large corporations, unlike the American citizenry, have money to pay 
for lobbyists,

[[Page H7254]]

they actually have access to congressman, they have access to me as 
well, just like every other congressman. We will listen to the big 
corporations in our district because they employ a certain number of 
people in our district, but we have to understand that when we are 
talking to corporate representative, that that representative may not 
even represent the interests of his own working people. He may only 
represent the interests of the people who own that corporation. And 
Lord know who own these corporations these days. Might be national 
interests, might be foreign interests, might be who know who is really 
controlling the board of directors of many large corporations?
  But one thing is for sure: That corporate entity does not necessarily 
speak for the well-being of the community, or the State, or the 
country, or even the employees of that corporation, to some degree.
  Now, they claim, the big corporations claim, that the reason why they 
are backing, the most of the large corporations are backing, this H.R. 
3460, the Steal American Technologies Act, they claim the real reason 
they are doing that is to stop a few inventors from gaming the patent 
system. It is called submarine patenting. That is what they claim is 
the reason that they want to make these drastic changes in the patent 
system of the United States of America: because these few people, they 
are gaming the system, and by doing so they extend the length of time 
that the patent will be actually in force in the outer years when that 
time period would not really be due to them had they not, quote, 
elongated the system and worked it.
  Well, to stop this submarine patenting, these powerful forces claim 
that we must destroy the whole payment system. That is a patent system 
that has served us well since the founding of our country. We cannot do 
other things that will perhaps try to solve the problem for 
administrative, you know, focus on the problem. We cannot do things by 
trying to basically just single out submarine patenting and say these 
are the things we need to do to solve that. No, we have to basically 
destroy the American patent system and replace it with something else. 
That is their excuse, that is the basic excuse that they are using for 
their actions, the submarine patent issues.
  Basically it is like a doctor saying: ``Well, you got a hangnail. Oh, 
yeah, I see you're in pain, and I really sympathize with that. 
Hangnails are problems, and hangnails are bad. Look at how evil 
hangnails--here is a giant picture of hangnails.'' And then you hear 
lectures about hangnails, lectures about hangnails, and in the end the 
doctor says, ``And by the way, we're going to amputate your leg in 
order to cure the hangnail.''
  You say: ``Wait a minute, doctor, I just want my hangnail cured. 
Can't you just sort of cut the nail off or something?''
  ``No, no. We're not going to think of anything else. If you want to 
talk about anything else, we know you're in favor of hangnails. We're 
going to amputate your leg.''

  Well, if you get a doctor giving you that type of, you know, that 
approach to solving your hangnail problem, you better get yourself a 
new doctor or you better question what that doctor's motives--or you 
better question his sanity.
  To stop a few inventors from having a couple of extra years on their 
patent term, the idea of destroying the patent term as we know it, 
eliminating the guaranteed patent term of 17 years, it is absolutely 
ridiculous. You basically are declaring war in order to stop some petty 
theft at a local store.
  We must basically--what they are asking us to do is to force all our 
creative people in the name of stopping a few submarine patentors who 
are gaming the system to elongate their patent by a little bit--
basically we are, in the name of doing that, we are going to force 
every one of the inventors of the United States of America, every one 
of our creative geniuses, to expose and to publish every detail of the 
new technologies they are working on. They are saying, on top of that, 
we are going to obliterate the Patent Office as part of our Government 
and resurrect it as a quasi-independent, post office-like government 
corporation.
  Now, that does not make sense, that in order to solve that problem 
that we have got to go to those lengths to do it. That is why I happen 
to believe that the submarine patent issue is what we call a straw-man 
argument. I mean it is something that has been created there for people 
to argue with, and it is really not--you know, really you are not 
fighting against the submarine patent because the submarine patent 
issue may or may not be real. It is a problem, but compared--but 
obviously it is such a small problem as compared to the incredible 
solution that is being offered us that that may not be the real force 
that is driving the changes in our patent system.
  By the way, one of the things that they are suggesting as a solution 
to the submarine patent problem is this new system, of course a new 
patent office, totally new patent office, obliterate the old one that 
has been serving us since the Constitution, and in the new Patent 
Office the patent examiners who decide--these patent examiners, they 
work hard, and they decide who owns these new technologies that are 
worth billions and billions of dollars. Some of these new technologies 
will be creating billions of dollars of wealth. The new patent 
examiners in this new quasi-government, quasi-private corporation will 
be stripped of their civil service protection, which is an invitation 
to people from the outside to try to influence the process, and it is 
an invitation to corruption because these people now will not have 
their civil service protection to protect them against being fired for 
unjust reasons.
  Now, this is a scenario that we are going to take these civil 
servants who have been protecting us, that we are going to change the 
system that has been protecting us and that we are basically going to 
force our people to publish everything so every thief in the world can 
see it.
  This is an obscene and an insane proposal, and I have no doubt that 
some of those pushing the H.R. 3460, the Steal American Technologies 
Act, actually believe that this destruction of the American traditional 
patent system is necessary because a few inventors, so-called 
submariners, are gaining a few extra years out of the system.
  But I also have no doubt that for many of the multinational 
corporations pushing H.R. 3460, this submarine issue, like I say, is 
nothing more than a front, and what they really want to do, what they 
really want to do is to steal and to control the new wealth-producing 
technologies that are being invented by Americans, especially those in 
the years ahead.

  So there are some people who are very sincere and, I am sure, have 
been taken in by the argument. There are also some people who know very 
well, the corporate interests who are out in the hinterland pushing 
this, know very well that they want to take American technology and use 
it without paying for it.
  I mean this is an incredible scenario. People can say: Can this 
really happen in the United States of America?
  Yes, it can, and the 435 Members of the body here could possibly pass 
this bill.
  It is heinous, and it is evil, and basically, if they get away with 
it, they will be not only stealing technology, but they will be 
stealing the standard of living of the American people's children 
today. If we Americans lose our technological edge, the standard of 
living of our people will go down, and our children will suffer because 
of it. Our Nation will not be able to compete as we are today.
  What gives us the competitive edge today? What gives us the 
competitive edge is the fact that you know people making more money, 
they have better technology in order to our-compete those poorly paid 
people overseas.
  Yet as I said, Congress may pass H.R. 3460, and why? Because many 
Members, perhaps a majority of my fellow colleagues who are going to 
vote on this issue, do not know a thing about it. They do not know 
about this bill. They are at home now asleep or they are with their 
families or out to a movie or they are reading their work for tomorrow, 
their paperwork for tomorrow's committee session. Whatever it is, most 
of my colleagues are not listening to this. But if your Congressman 
does not know about it, your congressman, a Congressman from anywhere 
in the United States could vote on this bill, and you know about it, 
but that Congressman does not. Someone who is reading the Congressional 
Record or

[[Page H7255]]

listening in over C-SPAN will now know more about this bill than their 
own Congressman, and it is vital, if democracy is to work in an 
atmosphere like this, that the people get involved in the process 
because you make a difference; every citizen makes a difference when it 
comes to a situation where a bill may come to this floor when people 
out there listening to C-SPAN know more about this bill than their own 
Representative in Congress does.
  By the way, this bill already passed through subcommittee and 
committee, and it passed through in a breeze. There was almost no 
opposition in the committee.
  Now, I am not a Member of either one of those committees, but I did 
ask members of the subcommittee and the committee if they knew that the 
bill that they had voted for would mandate the publication of all of 
our American ideas to every thief in the world so every thief in the 
world would know it even before the patent is issued. And I will tell 
you that Members I talked to said:
  ``Oh, no. It doesn't do that. No, no, you're kidding me. That bill 
doesn't do that.''
  I said:
  ``Yes, it does.''
  ``No, no, no. It doesn't. No one would put that bill in front of us 
like that.''
  The members of the subcommittee, several of the members I talked to, 
would not believe me that that is in the bill. Because they could not 
believe that the committee would actually pass something so stupid.

  Well, how about eliminating the Patent Office and ripping away the 
civil service protection from our patent examiners? I asked several of 
my Democratic colleagues about that.
  ``Oh, no. That's not in the bill. I didn't vote for that. That's not 
what happened.''
  But it was, and the fact is those colleagues that I talked to are 
very concerned about public employees and whether or not Government 
people who work for our Government, Federal employees, are being 
treated fairly, and they could not leave believe that was in the bill. 
They had just voted for it.
  It takes telephone calls and letters from constituents to get the 
attention of many people who are voting on this floor, especially when 
they are being approached by powerful interest groups like huge 
corporations from their own district.
  Now, basically there is only one thing that I believed in, can 
basically stop this underhanded attack on America's future, and that is 
if our system, as our Founding Fathers envisioned it, works, and 
meaning that the people of America start working at making sure that 
our system works. Basically people have got to call their Congressmen 
or their Representative here in the House and insist that he or she 
oppose H.R. 3460, the Steal American Technologies Act and support the 
Rohrabacher substitute. That is my substitute that I will offer on the 
floor if this bill gets to the floor, and, as I say, there is some 
back-room maneuvering going on now that may--that you know, I will have 
to watch out very carefully for and the American people may have to 
mobilize to oppose H.R. 3460 at a moment's notice.
  My substitute will eliminate the provisions of H.R. 3460 that would 
critically wound our patent system and replace them with the language 
in the bill that restores American patent protection. Basically we are 
going to restore something that was taken away, and most Americans do 
not even know this was taken away.
  Up until this Congress passed the GATT implementation legislation, 
Americans, as a right just like any other right, the right to go to 
church, the right to speak, the right to assemble, you name it, that we 
have a right to a guaranteed patent term of 17 years. This is something 
we have had. It was 14 years for about the first 50 years of our 
country, and then after that it was 17 years of a guaranteed patent 
term. It was always our right to have a guaranteed patent term, meaning 
no matter how long once you applied for a patent, no matter how long it 
took you to get your patent, you were guaranteed after that patent was 
issued that you would have 17 years of protection.
  Well, has already been obliterated because into the GATT 
implmentation legislation we snuck a provision that was not required by 
GATT. This was not something that we agreed to in the General Agreement 
on Trade and Tariffs. We did not agree to changing that. These people 
just snuck this provision in even though it was not required by GATT, 
knowing that we would have to vote for the Whole GATT--you know if we 
did not, if we wanted to stop this, we would have to vote against the 
entire world trading system.

                              {time}  2330

  So they have already eliminated that. My bill, by the way, H.R. 359, 
which is my substitute to the Steal American Technologies Act, would 
restore, would take their language out and put language into the law 
that restores the guaranteed patent term that was taken away 1\1/2\ 
years ago.
  This battle is so vital that I would hate to think that Members are 
going to vote on this and not be fully aware of what they are voting 
on. We cannot sit back and expect that that is going to happen on its 
own. Many Members may think that this bill, when they come in here to 
vote on it, is just a routine bill that has no interest to their 
constituents and no long-term interest to the United States of America, 
because what we have is huge corporations with a lot of money pushing 
H.R. 3460 on one side, and a bunch of little guys on the other side. We 
have the Inventors' Association, small business people.
  Many of America's universities are on the side of the Rohrabacher 
substitute, because they rely on the royalties from their own patents 
to sponsor much of their research at American colleges, and they have 
come out, MIT and Harvard, many of the major universities in our 
country, 60 of them have come out in favor of my substitute.
  But basically they do not have the money to put in to fight this. 
They do not have big PR firms coming down to talk to us and lobby us. 
So basically we have to make sure, the American people have to make 
sure, that the people representing them in Congress know how important 
this is.
  Let us get down to basics, get down to the basics of why it is 
important. America has had the strongest patent system in the world 
since the founding of our country. This is basic to what our Founding 
Fathers believed in. We needed up, because we had this patent 
protection, with more freedom and a higher standard of living than any 
other country in the world. Average people were living well. They had 
rights. They had decent lives. We were not created by people who 
thought we were going to be a country where just the elites lived well.
  We have seen that erode over the years. But before this time, during 
the last century and even now, America has been the world's innovator. 
McCormick, the one that invented the reaper, and Fulton, the steamboat; 
it was Samuel Morse who invented the telegraph, and Bell the telephone; 
Edison the electric light; and of course two fellows, two ordinary 
Americans, two fellows who did not have a big college education, who 
worked in a bicycle shop, two brothers invented the airplane, invented 
manned flight.

  If they had to change the rules back then, who knows, the Wright 
Brothers, would they have kept their invention? Maybe Mitsubishi would 
have come by and stolen their ideas, because it had not been published, 
so Mitsubishi would hear about it and read about it, and then come into 
court. And you tell me who is going to win in court, the guys in the 
bicycle shop, or this huge megacorporation over in Japan trying to 
steal the patent. Tell me who is going to win in court in a situation 
like that. We would have ended up with an aerospace industry in Japan, 
and we would end up with working people in the United States 
impoverished.
  Instead, our Founding Fathers knew the importance of technology and 
put that right into our Constitution. It did not just happen. Thomas 
Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, they understood that. They planned for 
it. Thank God for our Founding Fathers, thank God for their foresight.
  Now we are taking that idea of technology and freedom, and people 
right now are maneuvering behind the scenes to destroy that basic 
concept. Other countries, of course, will own their patent systems over 
the years. Those patent systems were established to help

[[Page H7256]]

who? It was totally different than our system. Their patent system was 
based on the idea that what we want to do is have a patent system so 
that we can get the information out to as many people as possible, so 
that our corporations will be able to have all this information, and 
they will be able to put it into their production processes.
  That is a totally different concept than what emerged here in the 
United States. There they felt it was more of a collectivist approach, 
and the system was set up to help the hierarchy. Here we believe that 
patent protection is like the protection of property rights.
  In fact, a patent as established by the Constitution is a property 
right, just like owning a small farm. Our Founding Fathers did not put 
things in about collective farms, like they did in Russia and all this 
stuff, because they knew if the individual farmer owned his own land, 
that we would produce more wealth from it.
  They knew also that if you had patent protection, that our creative 
genius, our American people would come up with ideas that would produce 
enormously more wealth, and they would do it because we were protecting 
that new idea as their right for a given period of time, a guaranteed 
patent term. That served us well because we looked at the invention of 
new ideas as the creation of new property, of new wealth.
  With this, with this idea, as compared to the Japanese system and the 
European system, which looked at a patent system as just a distribution 
of information, America became an unmatched economic dynamo in the 
world. We were on the cutting edge of all new technologies for a 
century and a half, because we had a patent system that encouraged our 
people, and that is why we prospered.
  Some people say Americans worked so hard. That is why America is a 
prosperous country, because Americans worked so hard. I hate to tell 
you this, Mr. Speaker, I have been all over the world and there are a 
lot of people who work really hard. They work hard. They struggle and 
they slave and they sweat, and they get nowhere. They have no standard 
of living, they are treated like dogs. They have no decent living for 
their family and they have no hope that their family will ever live any 
better.
  Why is that? Because when our people worked hard, our people had the 
benefit of cutting edge technology. Our people were always equipped 
with the best technology so they could produce more wealth. When they 
worked hard, it was as if 20 or 30 or 50 or 100 other people in other 
countries were working hard, because those people were basically 
working as slaves. Our people were working as independent, proud 
laborers and were provided the technology they needed because we had a 
system that encouraged people to invest in technology; because it was a 
guaranteed patent term, people would invest in it, and also inventors 
could come up with new ideas because they would benefit from that 
guaranteed patent term.
  Basically, with that technological edge, we defeated our enemies in 
war. We did not win the cold war because we matched the Communists may 
for man. We did not win the cold war because of that. Everybody knows 
that. Look back at our other wars. We did not win these wars because 
our people just, you know, had human wave attacks against our enemies. 
It was because our people were equipped with the best technology, and 
we could send them into battle with the dignity of knowing their lives 
counted, and we were trying to do our best to help them do their 
mission and come home safely, because we invested in the technology.
  That was the same reason we were winning the economic wars. We beat 
our economic competitors because we had technology. Coupled with the 
hard work and responsibility of our people, this new technology made 
sure America beat our competitors and ensured a higher standard of 
living for our people.
  That has not escaped, by the way, the attention of our adversaries. 
That is very easy to see. Our adversaries understand that fact, that it 
has been our technology that gave us our leverage. So should it 
surprise anyone that today our patent system is under incredible 
attack, and that it is kind of a hush attack, people do not know not 
know much about it? Even the Members of Congress do not know about it. 
Even the 430 Members of Congress who are going to vote on this do not 
know about it.
  But I can tell the Members, our economic adversaries know exactly 
what is going on. They understand that America's patent system has 
provided us the edge to defeat them in the past, so what they are going 
to do is just totally change and destroy our American patent system. If 
it is done in the way, the manner that is going on, they may just 
succeed.

  How we can see this is really easy. Bruce Lehman was appointed by 
Bill Clinton to head our Patent Office. He is the head of our Patent 
Office. One of the first things he did was go to Japan, and there in 
Japan he signed a hushed agreement. I have a copy of that and I put it 
in the Congresssional Record a couple of weeks ago.
  He signed a hushed agreement with the head of the patent office in 
Japan, and here are two unelected officials, and what was the 
agreement? The agreement was to harmonize the American patent system 
with Japan's. It did not say anything about submarine patents. They are 
going to claim the reason they are doing everything is the submarine 
patent, get rid of those submarine patents. But in reality that 
agreement in Japan mentioned nothing about submarine patents.
  What it did say was that our system was going to be cast off, and 
instead we were going to have the Japanese system superimposed on us. 
That is what harmonization means. Harmonization does not mean we are 
bringing the Japanese up to our level of protection. It means that our 
people are going to lose protection and our system is going to become 
like Japan's. What kind of system does Japan have? Let us just remember 
this.
  How many new inventions have come out of Japan in the last 100 years? 
The Japanese are accurately known as people who are basically copiers 
and improvers, and basically people who perfect other people's ideas 
and other people's inventions. They do not, they are not known, because 
they do not really develop a lot of new technology on their own.
  Why is that? Under the Japanese system, yes, they have immediate 
publication. What happens when they have immediate publication in 
Japan? Immediately the big guys, the huge corporations and these 
Japanese conglomerates and these monopolists surround the little guy, 
and this little guy, or maybe it is just two bicycle shop owners, just 
two brothers who work in a bicycle shop or something, but whoever it is 
who has the idea, they are confronted with the most powerful economic 
forces in society and they are beaten down. They are beaten down and 
they are destroyed if they try to resist.
  The Japanese have had to put up with this, and Japan has been the 
worse for it, because their creative people have not had the outlook 
the American people have had. Thus, they have had to rely on the United 
States and others to produce the technology they need for their whole 
industrial infrastructure. Now people in our Government are trying to 
maneuver to make our system identical to what Japan has had in these 
last 50 years. It is absolutely mind-boggling.
  Basically, how are they going to achieve this? Step No. 1, as I said, 
already happened. It already happened. We had our guaranteed patent 
term of 17 years and they snuck that change into the GATT 
implementation legislation, and it sailed right on through. I will tell 
the Members, I was outraged. I felt betrayed, because I had supported 
the GATT implementation legislation. I voted for fast track, knowing 
that there was an agreement that they would not put anything into the 
GATT implementation legislation unless it was required by GATT itself, 
and that way they could bring the whole bill here. That is what fast 
track means, they could bring the whole bill before this Congress and 
there could be no amendments, you would have to vote up-or-down on it. 
They snuck this provision in as if it did not mean anything, but it has 
tremendous implications for our future.

  I raised hell about it, and the gentleman from Georgia, Newt 
Gingrich, and other leaders of the Republican Party guaranteed to me 
that I would

[[Page H7257]]

be able to have a chance to rectify that on the floor of the House of 
Representatives. That is why I then authored a bill, H.R. 359, and 
submitted that legislation, because I had that guarantee that they 
would have a chance to rectify it, because it should not have been in 
the GATT implementation legislation in the first place.
  Guess what, H.R. 359 was tied up in subcommittee for over a year. 
Eventually what came out of subcommittee was not H.R. 359, but H.R. 
3460, which is officially the Moorhead-Schroeder Patent Act, which I am 
calling, and I think more accurately is reflected by the title, the 
Steal American Technologies Act. So at least, however, I have been 
guaranteed that if that bill, H.R. 3460, comes to the floor, that I 
will have a chance to offer my bill, which restores the American 
patent, guaranteed patent term, as a substitute for 3460.
  Basically, I believe H.R. 3460 would finish the job, and if we take a 
look at it, this is what the provisions are, it would finish the job of 
harmonization started with this underhanded change in the GATT 
implementation legislation. America's huge corporations have apparently 
bought off on the idea that we should have a global economy, and that 
our harmonization of patent law with the Japanese is the first step 
toward this global economy.
  I happen to believe that global commerce is a good thing. I am not an 
isolationist and I am not someone who is a protectionist. I believe in 
free trade between free people, and I make absolutely no apologies for 
that. If American companies cannot compete, they should not be 
protected by the Government.
  But we should make sure that we set the ground rules up so Americans 
are protected from having their technology stolen from them and used 
against them, and basically H.R. 3460 would take us toward global 
harmonization, a global economy, by destroying the rights of the 
American people, by attacking our ability to create a high standard of 
living in America. In other words, they are trying to bring down the 
standard of living of the American people in order to achieve a global 
economy; you know, dilute our rights as Americans. It is ridiculous.

                              {time}  2345

  What does H.R. 3460 do?
  No. 1, it demands that any idea, when an inventor comes in and 
applies for a patent after 18 months if that patent is not issued, that 
inventor is going to see his ideas published so every thief, every 
Asian copycat, every pirate in the world will be able to see it and 
steal it. No. 2, it obliterates the Patent Office as we have known it 
since it was put into the Constitution and resurrected some quasi-
governmental or quasi-private corporation which is basically run under 
the dictatorship of one man who is appointed by the President but 
cannot be kicked out without cause, not just for policy disagreements. 
The patent examiners there will lose their civil service protection and 
there is an invitation to steal our technology and an invitation to 
corrupt the whole system at the Patent Office. Basically we will have 
established a czar of the Patent Office for 5 years.
  Mr. Speaker, we do not need czars or dictators or kings in the United 
States of America. We need Government officials who are accountable to 
the American people for the decisions that they are making. Basically 
this is a formula for catastrophe. We are basically trying to remake 
the American patent system into the Japanese system.

  I had a Member of Congress tell me today, ``Well, you know, if those 
other countries have certainly gotten their systems ahead of ours and 
they're more modern than ours, we should have a patent system like 
theirs.''
  I wanted to basically explode when I heard this idea that the 
Japanese system--that has fostered no new improvements, that has kept 
the Japanese people at the mercy of these huge corporate interests--
that that is a better system than ours which was established by our 
Founding Fathers to guarantee the property rights of our people and has 
basically given birth to a standard of living and a degree of freedom 
that the people of the world have never seen before, that the Japanese 
system is better than ours? Basically there are many people who have 
influence on the people who will vote on this. There are large 
corporations, there are people who maybe honestly believe that we have 
to have a global economy and if it means sacrificing the American 
people, so be it, because a global economy will bring world peace and 
all the blah-blah-blah. Well, those people may believe in it. Those 
people may really believe and there may be some who honestly believe 
that the submarine patents are so heinous that we can destroy 
everything in order to get to those few submarine patenters. Let me add 
this about submarine patenters just to let you know. Ninety-nine 
percent of all people who apply for a patent in the United States beg 
and plead to have their patent issued immediately. ``Please give me my 
patent right away,'' because they know until they get the patent issued 
to them, they cannot go out and start earning money from it because 
they cannot get investors, that very few investors will invest in 
patent pending. But if you have got your patent issued, they will pay 
attention to you. They are pleading, please, and they know, and these, 
quote, submarine patenters they are talking about, if they elongate the 
system, they might find out that they are left behind because new 
technologies have come along and just left them behind and made their, 
quote, great technologies obsolete. They know that. The submarine 
patent issue, some people may believe in it. I hope they listen to the 
arguments I am presenting because I believe it is a totally fallacious 
argument that is being used to justify a horrible, horrible change in 
our system that will bring about terrible consequences for the United 
States of America. How can we stop this juggernaut? Those people who 
honestly believe in submarine patents, if they do, they do. You try to 
give them the logical arguments. But those other people, those other 
companies, those other corporations and those people, the influence 
peddlers they hire, we can stop them because democracy works. We can 
stop them if people will contact the man or woman who represents them 
in Congress and say, H.R. 3460, the Steal American Technologies Act, 
has to be defeated, and the Rohrabacher substitute has to be put in its 
place. If we get enough people doing that, we will make the system 
work, I believe it will work, and I believe we will triumph over this, 
because 200 years ago when our Founding Fathers and mothers established 
this country, there were so many hardships and there were so many 
challenges and they knew that people would be coming at us just like 
this. Our Founding Fathers knew this. They knew that people would say, 
``Hey, where is America's Achilles' heel?'' They knew that. They knew 
they would come straight forth. But they also knew you could trust the 
people, you could count on people to defend their standard of living 
and their families and their freedom. That is what we are up against 
today. It is a fight for the future of the United States of America. I 
hope and I pray that the American people will become activated after 
the Fourth of July and that we will win the day.

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