[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 28 (Thursday, March 6, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H795-H801]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   CIVIL LIBERTIES, WHERE AMERICA IS HEADED, ITS PROBLEMS AND THEIR 
                               SOLUTIONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Paul] is recognized for 
60 minutes.
  Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, I have asked for this special order today to 
continue

[[Page H796]]

a discussion that I started 2 weeks ago with another special order on 
the subject of civil liberties, where the country is going, and what 
some of our problems are and how we can solve them.
  I am a freshman Congressman right now serving in the 105th Congress, 
but I served here in the Congress a few years back. I had four terms 
which were ended in 1984. I now return to the U.S. Congress, and 
probably the most common question asked of me since I have been back is 
how are things different. In many ways they are very similar and in 
some ways that is very disappointing, but in other ways they are 
different and hopefully we are making some progress in solving some of 
our problems.
  The big difference, though, that I have noticed, both here on the 
House floor as well as watching television over the past 2 years, is 
that the House floor has been used in a different manner. I think the 
atmosphere is somewhat less relaxed. I think Members frequently are 
more on edge, and there may be a little less friendship, which to me is 
a bit sad. But also we have noticed that the House floor can be used 
for personal and political attacks, which I find not to be the best way 
to use the House floor.

                              {time}  1430

  As a matter of fact, I have more or less pledged to myself and to my 
constituents that is not the reason I have come to the Congress, to use 
the House floor for anything political or personal. Even if those 
attacks may occur against me on the House floor, I will choose not to 
answer them on the House floor because I do not think that is proper. 
If attacks occur, I will answer those attacks or charges in another way 
but not here on the House floor.
  Mr. Speaker, in the recent special order that I did, I talked 
basically about the coming welfare bankruptcy of the welfare state. And 
I think that is one of the reasons that there are so many conflicts 
here on the House floor, because we are not yet seeing this in economic 
terms. There is still a sentiment, both in the country and in the 
Congress, to continue to spend a lot of money.
  We have heard discussions about Social Security, and the difficulty 
in solving this problem and whether Social Security or any other 
benefits, there is a tremendous demand to continue these programs, but 
it is getting very, very difficult to raise the revenues. Certainly 
there is not an environment here today to introduce new programs and 
new welfare entitlements. So this difficulty in finding the funds has 
led to some of the problems on the House floor.
  It is easy for a very wealthy country to continue to get involved in 
redistribution of wealth, but once the country is getting smaller and 
the economic conditions are such, it is a much more difficult, much 
more difficult problem to solve. I think that we should do everything 
conceivable here on the House floor to show respect to each other. I 
think it is important that we show friendship. And over and above all 
that, I think if we are serious about the ideas, there is no reason why 
we cannot have some enjoyment in doing this, in trying to solve our 
problems.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this moment to just quote one 
sentence from my previous special order dealing with the rising police 
state and the attack on our personal civil liberties. In that order, I 
say, centralizing powers and consistently expanding the role of 
government require an army of bureaucrats and a taxing authority upon 
which a police state thrives. And I am suggesting here, as I did 
before, that this is not the right direction to go and that many 
Americans are sincerely concerned about the power and the authority of 
the Federal Government. This has not been our tradition. This is not 
part of our Constitution. But certainly in the last several decades, we 
have had an accumulation of power here in Washington.
  Also, my solution or my suggestion to solve these comes in thinking 
about the philosophy of government. If we do it just in a technical 
fashion and think that all we have to do is have a line item veto or 
have revenue scoring or have a balanced budget amendment, I think we 
are missing the whole point because I think it is a much bigger issue. 
I think it is a philosophic issue, not a technical or budgetary issue, 
and all of this is related to how we look at the important role for 
government.
  The decision that we as Members of Congress have to make is whether 
or not government should have the power and the authority to do what 
they do. And in order to answer that question, we really have to ask it 
first. Does the Government really, does the Federal Government really 
have the power and the authority under our constitutional system of law 
to do as much as they are doing? I challenge that because I quiet 
frankly believe that we here in the Congress do not have the authority 
that we have exerted here over the last several decades.
  Mr. Speaker, my personal philosophy is this. It conforms with what I 
believe the Founders believed, that is that government should be 
precise. Government should be there for the protection of liberty. We 
should not concede to the Government the right and the power and the 
authority to use it in order to bring about social and economic 
changes. Most individuals recognize that you cannot force other 
individuals to do things that you want them to do. But so often we 
allow the Government to do the same thing. We grant them this power and 
authority to try to mold the country, mold people's personal behavior 
and of course mold the world as we intervene in so many places around 
the world.
  In many ways, I use a political golden rule to address this subject. 
That is that we must reject the use of force, personally and 
politically, to try to bring about these changes. Some would say, well, 
that sounds like pacifism because you do not want to confront, you do 
not want to use the authority of the state. I do not want to use the 
police. You do not want to use a gun to force people to do the things 
that you think are necessary and to obey the law.
  But it is not pacifism. It is far from that. It is a system of 
government that is designed to encourage tolerance and volunteerism to 
solve our problems. The role of the state is limited to that of 
protecting liberty, providing for the national defense, and to make 
sure that individuals do not violate these rights as well, that 
individuals, when individuals exert force and violate another 
individual's rights, that certainly invites the role of government to 
come in and solve that problem.
  In recent years, we have seen some, a better discussion about what we 
have to do. In the last Congress we have seen a step in the direction 
of at least trying to take some of these powers and some of the 
authority away from Washington and delivering it back to the States. 
Quite frankly though, I am not convinced that block grants is the whole 
answer, leaving the money in the States would be a much better way.
  Mr. Speaker, at least the discussion is much better. We have now 
talked about returning the management and the financing of welfare back 
to the States. I find that encouraging. There are a lot of us in 
Congress now talking about the same thing about education. 
Nationalizing our educational system really has not done that much more 
for education. You can draw a graph and show that, as the funding went 
up for national control of education, the quality of the education went 
down directly. The same thing could be said about medicine.
  It is easy to accept the argument by many of us here in Congress that 
welfare should be a State function, education should be a State or 
local function. But so often there is a resistance and no consensus on 
what we should do with the police powers, whether we are fighting the 
war on drugs or the war on the environment or whatever. But under the 
Constitution, it was never intended that police powers would gravitate 
as they have here in Washington.
  So my suggestion here is that we should seriously think about that in 
the area of police activity, because now we have a national war on 
drugs which is a total failure, has not done any good, has done great 
harm. Not only has it not solved the serious problem that we face with 
the massive use of drugs, this very dangerous precedent, but it also 
has cost a lot of money, and it has been a cost to our civil liberties.
  So in the name of the drug war, we have sacrificed much, both in 
terms of money and our liberties, while failing to solve our problem. 
The same could be said about the war on guns. The war

[[Page H797]]

on guns only started recently. It is interesting to note that the war 
on guns and the war on drugs really got a tremendous boost in 1934. 
Prior to that, it was assumed by everybody in this country, under the 
Constitution, that deregulation of guns would be handled by the States. 
Yet endlessly we are writing laws and pursuing the gun rather than the 
criminal. In the same way, we are making very, very strong attempts to 
all the educational problems and medical problems, social problems and 
the environmental problems, all through regulations coming from 
Washington.

  Now, you might say, well, that really is not a police function. We, 
all we do here in Congress is we write regulations. We are not 
authorizing guns to go and perform certain acts. But regulations have 
the force of law, and when you have the force of law, it is at least a 
threat of a government agent coming with a gun and threatening an 
individual either with a hefty fine or with imprisonment. So the 
rejection of the use of force also rejects the notion that you threaten 
to use force because the threat of force, if you have the power to do 
it, is just as sinister and just as dangerous as the force itself.
  Mr. Speaker, many people in this country already concede that the 
concept of private property rights has just about been extinguished. 
And some would argue and say, how could that be. We all own our homes. 
We own our property. We own our farms and we own our ranches. But when 
they stop to think about it, they look at the tax burden we have. Now 
total taxes are about 50 percent, but when we pay our property taxes, 
we are merely paying rent to the Government. But the Federal Government 
is very much involved in this because they are writing regulations. And 
they have to go through numerous bureaus and agencies just to be able 
to use their own land, and frequently they are not allowed to use their 
own land.
  So the concept of private property ownership has been seriously 
undermined in this country, and it continues to be further threatened 
by the radicals who believe that individuals should not have the right 
to use their land as they see fit.
  The concept of liberty is indeed threatened. I believe there is less 
liberty in this country than there was 20, 30, 50 years ago. Certainly 
there is less liberty than was intended by the founders of this 
country. And as our liberties are diminished, we see the expanding role 
of the Federal Government, we see the expanding role of the bureaucrats 
who are now quite capable of carrying guns themselves.
  But one of the symbols I think that comes from the Federal Government 
in their policing activities that dramatizes so well a serious problem 
that we face, that is that frequently on TV we see that we have these 
attacks or these confrontations with the citizens where the TV company 
is called out, the news media is called out there to witness this 
wonderful event on how our government is enforcing the law. But very 
frequently, as I am sure so many of us here in the Congress have 
witnessed, is that our police force, whether it be the FBI or the BATF, 
they will wear a ski mask. Is it not interesting.
  Mr. Speaker, why would they wear a ski mask in a free society to 
protect the people? I do not know the exact answer for that, but I 
would think that in a free society our policemen would be much more 
ready to show their badge, show their warrants and not wear ski masks. 
Our police are supposed to be our friends to protect us, not the kind 
that will break down and break into our houses with a mask on.
  A lot of good intention goes into so much of our legislation here in 
the Congress, and yet I do not believe the good intentions themselves 
will be much good if we are using the wrong ideas. If we do not accept 
another notion about the role for government, if we do not accept the 
fact that economically we are facing bad times ahead because we 
literally cannot afford the welfare warfare state anymore, I think that 
conditions are going to get much worse because, as the people become 
frightened and concerned about their future, unfortunately there will 
still be a large number that will come here and lobby for more 
government rather than less, failing to realize that it was the size of 
government and the scope of government and the way we ran our monetary 
system that was the problem rather than the fact that we need more 
liberty, not more Congress, more congressional activity.
  Today we have a bunch of laws on the books that permits and 
encourages the search and seizure and confiscation of property. We have 
100 laws on the books today that allow confiscation of property without 
due process of law. Once the property is seized, it is up to the 
American citizen to prove that the property was seized incorrectly. 
Instead of honoring the constitutional commitment to innocent until 
proven guilty, it has been reversed as it is with the IRS. We are 
guilty until we prove ourselves innocent to the agencies who threaten 
our liberties.

                              {time}  1445

  Another trend that has occurred here in the last several years is 
disturbing to me. That is the willingness of our police agencies in the 
Federal Government to find the suspect rather quickly and then demonize 
the suspect in public.
  The best recent example of course would be Richard Jewell, with the 
accusation that he ignited that bomb at the Olympics. Here is a man, 
hopefully he will get his redress in court, but it was still a perfect 
example of how our police officers took it to the media. That is no way 
for an American citizen to have their rights protected. Our goal and 
our obligation is to protect the rights, not to abuse and undermine the 
rights of our citizens.
  What has all this done to us? Well, I think what it has done and has 
led to is that many Americans now are fearful, fearful of the 
Government. The Government is supposed to be our friend. We in the 
Government are supposed to be befriending the citizens and reaching out 
to them and taking care of their freedoms to make sure they are secure, 
secure that if they know they have a conflict, that we can settle the 
conflict in court, that we should be secure from outside threat.
  Yet today many, many Americans feel very insecure. They feel insecure 
economically, they are not certain about what will happen in their 
economic future, but that is an economic issue. But what I am talking 
about here today, many of them feel insecure in their personal life. It 
is very intimidating to the average American if they receive a 
registered letter from the IRS, very, very intimidating, and it causes 
a great deal of anxiety. So obviously our tax system is a serious 
problem to all of us. But the people are not happy and they are not 
satisfied and they are very, very fearful of what is happening.
  Now, some may write this off and say that the Congressman is just 
making this up because the American people are not fearful, everybody 
is very content and they are satisfied with the success of the welfare 
state and they are satisfied with the policing activities of all the 
agencies of government. But not too long ago, there was a poll done. 
The poll was very interesting. They wanted to find out how the American 
people felt about this very issue. They asked a rather strong question. 
They asked, do you feel like there is an immediate threat to your 
rights and freedoms from the Federal Government? The answers coming 
back to the Gallup Poll were slanted in one direction to such a degree 
that they could not even believe the results, so they went back and 
redid it, because they thought the people they were polling did not 
really understand what they were saying. So they were trying to get 
another answer. But the same answers came up again: 39 percent of our 
people feel immediate threat to their rights and to their freedoms by 
the Government. Maybe it is not true, but it is very important that 
they think that. I have seen other polls that were actually even worse 
than that, where people were fearful of the Government and are not 
satisfied with the way the Government operates.
  The pollsters then decided they wanted to know, well, these must be 
all the right-wing extremists that are fearful of the Government and, 
therefore, we will just put them in a category and write them off, so 
they checked to find out whether these were liberals or conservatives 
that expressed this fear of the Government. It turned out that more 
liberals were fearful of the Government than the conservatives. This 
probably should not surprise us too much when you think of some of the

[[Page H798]]

law enforcement that occurs and the abuse of civil liberties in our 
inner cities. It was just the other day I saw something in the New York 
Times that said that some teenagers were shot rather quickly, unarmed 
teenagers and then the questions were asked afterward. I realize how 
difficult a situation the police get into, but it still is well known 
that the abuse of police powers in the inner cities is there and 
something has to be done about it.
  Senator Wallop when he left the Senate expressed some sincere 
interest in this particular subject and I believe is continuing to do 
some work in that area. He was shocked because so many of his 
constituents would come up and express their fear of the Government, 
whether they were the environmental people or whatever, but then they 
would quickly add after they told him about the problems they were 
facing, and the constituent would say to him, ``Don't do anything. I 
don't want you to even rock the boat, because I'm fearful that they 
will come and get me.''
  That is a serious charge, and that comes from a respectable Senator 
who continues to work on this problem.
  A couple of years ago, there was a group of individuals who banded 
together because they too were concerned about the growing police 
powers of the Federal Government, and they wrote to the President and 
they were expressing to him that he should do something about this, 
that the police powers of the Federal Government were indeed violating 
the civil liberties that we were acting in a perverse manner, we were 
not protecting liberty, we were destroying liberty.
  I want to read from that particular letter that went to the 
President. He said he was urging the President to review the policies 
and practices of all Federal law enforcement agencies and to make 
recommendations and steps that must be taken to ensure that such 
agencies comply with the law. This review is necessitated by widespread 
abuses of civil liberties and human rights committed by these agencies 
and their failure to undertake meaningful and ameliorative reforms.
  Federal police officers now comprise close to 10 percent of the 
Nation's total law enforcement force. Today some 53 separate Federal 
agencies have the authority to carry guns and make arrests. This 
represents an enormous expansion in recent years in terms of both 
personnel and jurisdiction. What is lacking, however, is a systematic 
oversight and review of Federal police practices.
  Certainly we need oversight, but we also have to raise the question 
of whether this is the proper place to put the police. In the 
Constitution there are three Federal crimes listed. Today we have 
literally thousands. Nobody would know because we here in the Congress 
write the laws and the agencies write regulations that have the force 
of law.
  They go on in this letter to point out some of the problems that they 
see. Improper use of deadly force, physical and verbal abuse, use of 
paramilitary. That implies military law. Use of paramilitary and strike 
force units or tactics without justification. Use of no-knock entrances 
without justification. Inadequate investigation of allegations of 
misconduct; use of unreliable informants without sufficient 
verification of their allegations; use of contingency payments to 
informants, giving them an incentive to fabricate the information since 
payment is usually contingent on conviction; entrapment, unnecessary 
inducement of criminal activities as an investigative technique; 
inappropriate and disproportionate use of forfeiture proceedings to 
obtain financing for law enforcement equipment and activities; use of 
military units and equipment in the course of domestic law 
enforcement; pretential use of immigration laws and Immigration and 
Naturalization Service personnel for nonimmigration law enforcement.

  Again, who is complaining to the President about this? Are these the 
rightwing extremists which is implied by so many in the media, a 
rightwing extremist attitude and idea that we have to curtail the 
Federal Government in their police powers? No; there are others who are 
interested in civil liberties as well. Let me just read a couple of 
names of the individuals who signed this letter to the President asking 
him to look into the matter. Ira Glasser, executive director of the 
American Civil Liberties Union; Eric Sterling, president, the Criminal 
Justice Policy Foundation, Arnold Trebach, president, Drug Policy 
Foundation; James Grew, president, International Association for 
Civilian Oversight and Law Enforcement; John Hingson, president, 
National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, not exactly a 
conservative group; Mary Broderick, director and defender, Division of 
the National Legal Aid and Defender Association.
  So these are the people who are concerned about civil liberties. I 
think we all should be concerned about civil liberties. We certainly 
should, because we have the responsibility as we write law and as we 
perform oversight that our goal is to protect liberty, not write laws 
that end up undermining and demeaning the whole concept of liberty.
  Just to use something more recent, the associate director of the 
American Civil Liberties Union has just written recently an editorial 
for Scripps-Howard, just a few months ago. In this letter, in this 
editorial, he says:

       A powerful nation orders its telephone companies provided 
     with foolproof wiretap access to the national communications 
     infrastructure. The national police agency, which in recent 
     years has been dramatically increasing the number of 
     wiretaps, then demands the resources to tap one of every 100 
     telephone lines in the country's most populous area. The 
     government claims it needs these new powers to combat 
     domestic terrorism, but its own records show that only a 
     microscopic portion of its wiretaps could have anything to do 
     with what might be called terrorist activity.

  If it is not for terrorist activity, why do they need so many 
wiretaps? What is the purpose? He goes on to say, and in a way lectures 
us, he says:

       This is precisely the sort of invasion of our privacy that 
     during colonial times caused American patriots who had 
     experienced general searches by the British to rebel and to 
     adopt the protection of the Fourth Amendment to the United 
     States Constitution. I think it would do us all well if we 
     did look and read the Constitution and specifically in 
     regards to this subject, the Fourth Amendment.

  Again, this comes from not a right-winger, but somebody from the 
American Civil Liberties Union, and we should not ignore that.
  I would like to mention a few of the more startling cases that have 
occurred over the last 4 or 5 years. Some are well-known, some are less 
well-known, making the point that we do have specific examples of how 
our Government has overstepped its bounds.
  One of the cases, and this first case I am going to talk about is 
fairly well-known. I think a lot of people and a lot of Members will 
have heard of it, but I just want to bring it up once again so that we 
do not forget because the problem has not been solved.
  The first case occurred in 1992, and it involved a gentleman by the 
name of Don Carlson from San Diego. The DEA and the U.S. Custom agents 
raided his home. The claim was, the suspicion was, that it was a vacant 
drug storehouse. He arrived at home at 10:30 p.m. and the house was 
under surveillance at that time, and he walked in. If they were to 
issue a warrant, he was available. But he went to bed and after 
midnight the agents broke through the door, and he immediately thought 
he was being robbed. He reached for a legal firearm to defend himself, 
he did not fire a shot, he was shot three times, including once in the 
back, after he had been disarmed.
  Now he did not die. He survived. He is disabled, but he has a 
lifetime of medical expenses as well as being disabled. No drugs or 
illegal weapons were found. The paid informant that gave this 
information had never specified which house to break into. So that is a 
shortcoming on the police activities of those individuals that went in.
  Another case, 1991, Sina Brush, from New Mexico: 60 agents from the 
ATF, DEA, National Guard and the Forest Service charged that this Sina 
Brush possessed illegal drugs. They broke in, tore the place up, no 
drugs were ever found, but Mrs. Brush and her daughter who were not 
dressed, only partially dressed, were forced to kneel in the middle of 
the room during this whole episode while being handcuffed, and this all 
came about because of unreliable sources accusing them of being 
involved in the drug trade.
  Another case, and this case is pretty well-known and that has to do 
with Donald Scott from the ranch in the Santa Monica Mountains. This 
was in

[[Page H799]]

1992 as well. This occurred in the middle of the night. Why do they 
have to go in the middle of the night? This is a terrible thing for a 
free country to have police agents going in the middle of the night. 
You never hear of the same individuals going in the middle of the night 
into the inner city, but outside the city they are more likely to go in 
the middle of the night. This involved the DEA and some local police 
activity, and they were of course looking for drugs. The wife started 
screaming, and Scott grabbed a weapon because he did not even know who 
was coming into his house. He was quickly shot and killed.

                              {time}  1500

  No drugs were found, no illegal weapons were found in this house, and 
yet a man lost his life not at the expense of a burglar, but at the 
expense of his careless attitude about our policing activities that we 
have allowed to occur here in the U.S. Congress.
  Another case: Louis Katona from Bucyrus, OH, a part-time police 
officer, had a run-in with the Federal police. He was a gun collector, 
and the BATF raided his house because it was said that he might have an 
illegal weapon.
  As a matter of fact, the charge that was--that he was alleged to have 
committed was that he counterfeited, that he actually forged a document 
and signed it for the police chief. But after the dust settled they 
found out that he done everything properly, took the forms to the 
police chief and the police chief's AA, the administrative assistant, 
signed the bill, signed the document, and yet they went in and tore up 
his place with the idea of trying to find this illegal weapon.
  Finally--at least finally all charges were dropped, but that is at a 
tremendous cost. And there was an additional problem there too because 
Mrs. Katona was pregnant at the time, and she was roughed up in the 
episode, that very night started to bleed and then subsequently had a 
miscarriage, and it very well could have been related, and most likely 
was.
  I recall a personal case that occurred while I was practicing ob/gyn 
back in my home district, and my patient and my patient's husband 
appeared on the scene at a dock. They were getting off their boat. The 
husband went down first. He walked accidentally into a drug bust. He 
was quickly apprehended, thrown down on the deck, handcuffs put behind 
him, and he was merely standing by. He just happened to be a passerby.
  When his wife spotted this, she rapidly ran down, and she was 
approximately 6 months pregnant, and she said, ``What are you doing to 
my husband?'' And they quickly did the same thing to her, slapped her 
down, put handcuffs on her back, her hands on her back, and put her on 
her stomach. Now fortunately she did not miscarry, but it could very 
well have caused a miscarriage, and yet it was all done in the name of 
solving this drug problem which continuously gets much worse.
  Harry Lamplaugh, a gun collector from Wellsboro, PA, had a run-in as 
well with our national police. There were 15 to 20 ATF agents that went 
into his house, and these agents all wore masks in the middle of the 
night. Lamplaugh, his wife and his attorney, who at one time was an ATF 
Assistant Director, verified the story that was told afterward.
  And the agents came in, and they were looking for a particular gun. 
But in the meantime they took all his business records, they took all 
his mailing lists, they took his personal records, his birth 
certificate, his marriage certificate, baptismal records, mortgage 
records, and medical records. Lamplaugh was a cancer patient. They took 
his medication and strewed it on the floor, spread it all over the 
house and was a great deal of problems to him. And then, to add insult 
to injury, one of the agents stepped on their cat. But that was not 
enough. He picked it up and threw it at a tree and killed the cat.
  During the whole time it was verified that very, very abusive 
language was used. Mrs. Lamplaugh was threatened that if she did not 
inform on her husband, that she would be thrown in prison under the 
worst of circumstances.
  These things should not happen in America, we should not permit them 
to happen, and hopefully they are not happening as often, but I am not 
totally convinced of that.
  Another case, Paul and Patty Mueller of St. Louis, in 1996, a more 
recent case. The ATF came in, a dozen men, kicked the door down. They 
never knock on the door and ask. They kick the doors down. Even if they 
have a key, they kick the door down. They threatened to kill the dog. 
Mr. Mueller had his hands bound, he was pushed to the floor at gun 
point, and they kept yelling and screaming ``ATF, ATF.'' These people 
were very innocent, and they had no idea who they were or what was 
happening, and they were fearful for their lives. They thought they 
were being wrong.
  It was an hour later that the ATF officers presented a search 
warrant. No weapons were found, no drugs were found, but a paid 
informant gave the information which turned out to be wrong. There were 
no apologies and no payment for the damages.
  There was a case up in--another case in Pennsylvania. James Corcoran, 
a police officer, had been arrested on a gun charge, and when it 
finally got to court, it came out in testimony and it was admitted by 
the BATF that they tampered with the weapon and made it into an 
automatic weapon in order to convict him of a crime. Fortunately, that 
case was cleared up because they were able to get the BATF to admit 
this.
  Another case, Gilberto and Josefine Gomez, a couple years ago, 
Mexican citizens. They came to the United States. They were legal 
immigrants. They had--Gilberto had a accident, and he won in a suit, 
compensation suit, he won $19,000, and he was taking it back to Mexico 
in cash because he was not sophisticated enough to have a checking 
account nor do wire services or do any of that, and he had proof of it. 
He carried proof of where the money came from.
  But when he got to the border he was arrested, the money was taken 
from him, and then when it was realized that this looked like 
legitimate honest money, they made an offer to him. They wanted him to 
settle out of court, and they say, we will give you back $13,000 if we 
can keep $6,000. That was the bargain they offered him. He refused 
that. I do not know for sure if that was totally settled and he got all 
his money back, but for the most part once the property is confiscated, 
once the money or property is taken by the Government, which is not by 
due process of the law, it is very, very difficult to get these funds 
back.
  Just recently this past week there was an article in the Wall Street 
Journal that dramatizes a case that adds to this sentiment of the 
people, why they are not happy with the Federal Government, they are 
not happy with us here in the Congress because they see stories like 
this. But not only do they read about these stories, they know about 
these stories. You hear them endlessly if we just will listen to our 
constituents.
  In March of--well, this was a story about James J. Wilson. He was a 
developer in Maryland, nearby here, and he is actually an American 
success story. He started a construction company in 1957 with nothing. 
He had $760, and now he has been charged with a very, very vicious 
crime, and he was charged with filling a wetlands with water. I mean 
that is serious, and unfortunately for him, he has a long way to go to 
win, but he is a fighter and let us hope he does win.
  In his trial, which occurred just recently, he had some environmental 
experts testify in favor of him and say there has been absolutely no 
negative environmental impact on what he was doing in his development. 
When he started his development in Maryland, he went to the Corps of 
Engineers, and he got approval, and they said that there were no 
hazards, and he was given the approval to proceed. But in the middle of 
his development they came by and they reassessed it. I guess they came 
by right after it rained, and they saw a damp spot, and they said ``Ah, 
ha, you have wetlands on your land. You will stop, stop the 
development.'' He did. He never once violated a cease and desist order.

  But he was not very happy. He was losing a lot of money. It was 
something that he had been given original approval for, they changed 
the rules, and now they were accusing him of this vicious crime, and he 
was upset, so he filed suit. He had not talked to the

[[Page H800]]

Senator who was told by his constituents: Do not do anything, it is 
dangerous if you do anything. But he did not have that advice, so he 
went, he filed suit against the Federal Government.
  And what happened? His noncriminal charges turned into criminal 
charges for what he had done.
  Now this is interesting. It is said that he has violated the Clean 
Water Act of 1972. If you go back and read the Clean Water Act of 1972, 
it talks very clearly about not discharging any pollutant into a 
navigable water. That is basically what the Clean Water Act was about 
in 1972. But with regulations and with court rulings this has evolved 
into a monstrous piece of legislation which has encouraged the Wall 
Street Journal in their article to talk about the wetlands gestapo. And 
this is not just from some fringe newspaper. They are talking about a 
Federal Government agent running a gestapo-type agency.
  And the case has pursued; he has lost one case, but it is still, 
hopefully, something he can win. But the Government is saying that they 
have the right and the authority to regulate this. Their constitutional 
argument is that at one time somebody knows of some beavers on that 
land, have not been caught and transferred over the State line. Now if 
that is not the most gross distortion of the interstate commerce clause 
I have heard, I do not know what it could be. The interstate commerce 
clause by our Founders was written for the purpose not to regulate 
interstate commerce, which was done throughout the 20th century, but it 
was written precisely to break down the barriers between the States, 
and it is doing exactly the opposite right now.
  Now where Mr. Wilson deserves a lot of credit is the fact that he is 
not arguing this on a technicality. He is arguing this on a 
constitutional issue, that they do not have the right, the Federal 
Government does not have the right, to come in and regulate and harass 
as they have done.
  The tragedy, of course, is that he has gone through his first trial, 
he is fighting on principle, he spent $5.7 million on legal fees, he 
lost, he got fined personally $1 million, his company was fined $3 
million, and he is sentenced to 21 years in jail for being an American 
dream story, going from nothing, building, being a developer, doing his 
very best to follow the rules, providing jobs. We are going to put him 
in prison; that is what we are doing today.
  No wonder people who are really ambitious are so often encouraged to 
take their businesses elsewhere. Whether it is labor law regulations, 
environmental regulations, or health regulations, they are just too 
burdensome for so many of our business people that it is so much easier 
to just take the business overseas, and this is a good example of why 
we encourage so many of our jobs to leave our country.
  Big question here is: Do we in the Congress think Government is too 
big? I think the American people think our Government is too big and it 
is too abusive. And in a personal way it is too intrusive in our 
personal lives, whether we are wiretapping too many telephones or 
whether we are stopping too many people and taking their money and 
assuming they are convicts and criminals even without any due process 
of law and without probable cause. The big question is: Is this out of 
control? Is it reversible? That is the question we have to ask. I hope 
it is reversible; that is one of the reasons why I came here to 
Washington, because I would like to reverse some of this. It needs to 
be reversed because if we continue in this same direction, we are all 
going to suffer.
  We must do something about this. This country is a great country, but 
we have to know what it was that made it great. We have to understand 
the principles of liberty. We have to understand why individual liberty 
precludes redistribution of wealth, protecting our rights, protecting 
our civil liberties, providing for a national defense, and not to 
micromanage every piece of property and threaten people with jail and 
have our doors broken down with a police, Federal police that wear 
masks. We have to really think seriously about this and do our very 
best to change it.
  I understand there are some moves in the Congress to bring about a 
more sensible approach on the seizure of property and the forfeiture, 
and, hopefully, that will do some good.

                              {time}  1615

  I do not think a lot will be accomplished unless we address the 
overriding subject of what the role of Government ought to be. Unless 
we decide we want a government that protects liberty, and that we have 
respect for our Constitution and the rule of law, I do not believe that 
we will get rid of the Federal police force very easily.
  The agents that we see performing these acts that I am complaining 
about, Mr. Speaker, in some way I am critical of it, and every one of 
us has personal responsibility in obeying orders. Wartime is never an 
excuse.
  But in many ways, I have a lot of sympathy for the agents. I do not 
place a lot of blame on the individual agents, because for the most 
part, I will bet if we looked at all the BATF officers and all the FBI 
officers, I believe they are very honest, decent American citizens, 
believing in their hearts that they are doing the right thing, that 
they are following and enforcing the law. We all know that in a civil 
society we have to have law and we have to have law enforcement. They 
probably feel very good about what they do.
  I do think there has to be a limit. Certainly if we are using war 
gases and participating in raging fires that burn up little children, I 
think we should question it. I think if we are--as individuals, if the 
policeman is asked to shoot somebody in the back or he ends up shooting 
somebody in the back, or shooting an unarmed mother holding a baby, 
yes, there is some personal responsibility there.
  But I am also convinced that the overwhelming number of individuals 
that work for all our agencies in Government are probably very decent 
American citizens trying to do their very best to obey the law and do a 
good job.
  The agencies of Government bear some responsibility; not the agents, 
but the agencies. Policy is very important. The agencies we create, the 
administration in power, has a lot to do with policy, but policy is 
very, very important. So the administrator that we have of that policy, 
the current President, has a great deal of responsibility in how these 
laws and the enforcement of the laws are carried out. They bear some 
responsibility.
  Then again, there is another group. There is another group that has a 
lot of responsibility, and now that is hitting closer to home. 
Ultimately these agents, these agencies, and this policy comes from 
here. It comes from the U.S. Congress.
  The BATF officers and the FBI are not vigilantes. They get their 
authority and they get their funds from us. So if we do not like what 
they are doing, and I do not, I do not go and complain bitterly about 
the agent himself because he has an infraction, or something did not 
work as well as he thought. That is not the problem.
  The problem here is that policy being carried out by the 
administration has originated here in the House and in the Senate, and 
we provide the funding. So if we create these agencies and allow them 
to happen, then the responsibility falls on us.
  Ultimately, the responsibility falls on the people, because we should 
be a reflection of the people. So when the people object enough, maybe 
the Members of Congress will do something about it. But I just want to 
make that point one more time; it is not the individual agent who 
creates the problem, it is the policy. It is the philosophy of 
Government. It is we here in the Congress who pursue and permit these 
things to occur.
  What will the solution be if we decide that we have overstepped our 
bounds? Of course, we can start repealing, we can start doing more 
oversight, we can start putting more rules and regulations to restrain; 
but overall, the real solution comes from us upholding here in the 
Congress our oath of office, which should be the rule of law; that is 
to obey the Constitution.
  The Constitution does not authorize so much of what is going on. It 
just is not there. If we take our oath of office seriously, we will not 
continue to finance these agencies of Government. We here in the 
Congress create the agencies. The agencies are permitted then to write 
the regulations. The regulations themselves have the power of law.

[[Page H801]]

  Then we permit the agencies to become the Justice Department as well. 
They can be judge and jury. They do not go into civil court, they go 
into the administrative courts. This is part of our problem. Not only 
do we give them the power of the administration, we give them the power 
of the judiciary. We give these agencies the police powers as well. So 
we have created a dictatorship within our system when we create these 
agencies of Government.
  All rules, all agency regulations, should be approved by the U.S. 
Congress, and we should do something to curtail the power and the 
authority of these agencies through limiting of their funds.
  It is not difficult, Mr. Speaker, on what to do. The answers are 
written very clearly in the document we have sworn to uphold. If we 
read and obey the Constitution, the solutions will come to us. We must 
work for a moral and just society. We must reject the notion of 
violence. We should never condone the idea that the Government is there 
to force people to act in certain manners. And if we do this, I am 
totally convinced that we will have a much freer and more prosperous 
society.

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