[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 155 (Friday, December 15, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H12524-H12528]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE INDIAN AMERICAN FRIENDSHIP COUNCIL AND STRENGTHENING INDIA-AMERICA
TIES
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Pease). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman)
is recognized for the remainder of the minority leader's hour.
Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, it has been a pleasure to work with the
gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) on strengthening the ties
between the United States and Israel.
I want to join with him in praising the Indian American Friendship
Council and discussing how important U.S.-India relations are for the
people of the United States and the important work of the Indian-
American Friendship Council in strengthening those ties.
Mr. Speaker, just a few years ago, half a billion Indians went to the
polls to choose a new parliament, five times as many people who
participated last month in the U.S. Presidential election. Frankly, a
higher level of participation in democracy than we enjoy here in the
United States.
India has demonstrated to the world that democracy is not just a
system of government for the developed world, but, in fact, is a system
of government that can work anywhere. Where else would democracy face
such incredible challenges? A Nation of a billion people, perhaps the
most ethnically and religiously diverse nation on the face of the
earth, with one democratically elected parliament.
India has surprised the world, not only with its ability to maintain
and strength its democratic institutions but also with its economic
growth. It serves as a model to the entire world.
The Indian-American community has also served as a model. It is now
the most highly educated of all of America's ethnic groups. Forty years
ago, there were 35,000 Indo-Americans. Today, there are 35,000 Indo-
American physicians, not to mention the tens of thousands of Indo-
Americans who are in the various other professions who have succeeded
in business, particularly information technology and who have
participated in the cultural and political life of America.
Clearly strengthening ties between India and the United States is an
important mission, and no organization performs that mission to a
greater degree and with more finesse and capacity than the Indian-
American Friendship Council.
The Indian-American Friendship Council has prominent chapters in
networking groups, in many cities and States across this country. As
the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) pointed out, every year the
council hosts a major annual event here in Washington, which attracts
scores of Members of the House and of the Senate and serves as a
platform for discussion between the Indo-American community and other
supporters of the U.S.-India relationship and elected Members of the
Congress.
Mr. Speaker, not only does the Indian-American Friendship Council
serve as a bridge to those who serve in Congress, but it also serves as
a bridge to the State Department and the other departments involved in
international economic and diplomatic policy of this country.
I am particularly proud of Dr. Krishna Reddy, the founder of the
Indian-American Friendship Council, who I am proud to say is a Southern
Californian. So while the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) has
accomplished much for the Indo-American relationship, he cannot claim
that his region is the home of Dr. Reddy, whereas we, in Southern
California, can.
With that in mind and knowing of all the gentleman has done for the
U.S.-India relationship and to support the Indian-American Friendship
Council, I would at this point, yield to the gentleman from New Jersey
(Mr. Pallone), for any parting words about the importance of the
Indian-American Friendship Council.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California (Mr.
Sherman), and I agree that I cannot lay claim to Dr. Reddy, because he
is from the gentleman's part of the country. I will say that about a
year or two ago, Dr. Reddy started a chapter of the Indian-American
Friendship Council in New Jersey.
They are now very active, and I have been to some of their meetings
where there were maybe 200 or 300 people, and so even though he is from
California, his name and his activities have now spread to my great
State as well.
Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I am glad to see that Southern California
is spreading wisdom to the far shores of New Jersey.
Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr.
Pallone), who has been here long before I was involved in the India
Caucus and in strengthening ties between the world's richest democracy
and the world's largest democracy.
Issues That We Need to Confront to Avoid Constitutional Crisis of
Coming Decades
Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin the speech I had
planned to give tonight.
Mr. Speaker, you have been here on many occasions when I have
addressed
[[Page H12525]]
the House late at night, and this is the last speech of the 106th
Congress, as I understand it, the last three quarters of an hour which
you will be presiding over this House.
I wish the gentleman tremendous luck and tremendous good fortune as
the gentleman leaves this House. I want to thank the gentleman for his
service to this House and to this Nation, and particularly his service
as a presiding officer over this House, which he has done so many
times.
Mr. Speaker, I especially want to thank you in advance for your
indulgence during the next three quarters of an hour.
I also want to thank the House for this opportunity to address the
House in the closing minutes of the 106th Congress and take this
opportunity to wish all of my colleagues happy holidays and a happy and
productive new year.
Mr. Speaker, we come to the end of the 106th Congress; and we come to
the conclusion of the selection of the 43rd President of the United
States, perhaps more in exhaustion than in glee, having severely tested
our constitutional structure. When we come back next year, we need to
do so in the spirit of bipartisanship; and I think in that spirit, we
need to address some of the issues as to which there is no Democrat
policy, no Republican policy, but issues that go to the structure of
our democracy, issues that we need to confront now to avoid the
constitutional crisis of coming decades, issues that go to the
structure of our government and go to protecting the Presidency from
challenges that it could face in the decades to come.
I have been asked who could have imagined the problems that we have
faced over the last month. The fact of the matter is anyone with a good
imagination could have imagined these problems and hundreds of others.
We simply need to look at the technical mechanisms for our
government, for our Constitution. And for our democracy in order to
identify those issues that could present crisis in the future.
Now, there are a variety of different kinds of problems this country
faces as to which Members of Congress are not to be expected to have
in-depth expertise. In my own State, there are tremendous problems
dealing with the generation and distribution of electric power. And few
Members of the State legislature of this Congress have in-depth
expertise or experience in matters of electric power; but when it comes
to government and politics and voting, that is the one area where we
are experts. It is time that we turn that expertise to making sure that
all of the foreseeable problems that could go to the structure of our
government are given attention and hopefully are solved.
These are problems, and I will address nine different problems in the
remainder of any speech, that have not gotten much attention. They are
problems that we are not lobbied by the insurance industry or the
physicians. The NIFB has no position, nor does the AFL-CIO; neither the
sugar producers, nor the candy makers have a stake in the outcome
directly.
{time} 2000
None of the hundreds of lobbyists and constituent groups that have
come to our office in the last 2 years have even addressed these
issues. Given what has happened in Florida, we will begin to hear of
one or two of them, but we should address them all and others besides,
because I am not confident that I have the right answers, I am not
confident that I have identified all of the relevant questions. But I
am sure that it is time for this House to imagine those mechanical
threats, those threats to the mechanics to our democracy that could
occur, not just in the next few years, but in the coming many decades.
Mr. Speaker, if I had come to this floor 6 months ago and said that
chad posed a risk to our democracy, a member of the Committee on
National Security would have responded that the West African nation of
Chad posed no threat to us, that it was not the site of terrorism nor
military threat. Yet, we must defend our democracy, not only from the
most obscure sources of international attack, but from those things
that could undermine faith in our institutions.
We have learned that the word chad does not only apply to a nation in
West Africa, but refers to just one of many mechanical problems that
could undermine our faith in those institutions.
Mr. Speaker, it is not enough for us to address just what happened in
Florida, because tomorrow's constitutional crisis will not be the same
as yesterday's. The crisis that we have just faced will inspire us to
close the barn door now that the horse is departed. But it is not
enough to close the door through which one horse escaped, we must,
instead, examine the barn and close every window and every door and
make sure that the walls are structurally sound.
We must identify as many possible constitutionally undefined areas
and address those areas long before they become sources of major
partisan controversy. We must imagine all the problems that we can and
not scoff at those who would solve ``imaginary problems.''
The first of these issues that I would like to address is one that
has not been discussed, I believe, on this floor for at least a decade;
and that is the issue of Presidential succession. We all know that, if
the President is impaired or becomes deceased, the Vice President
succeeds to that office. We all know that a Vice President who then
becomes President can appoint a successor to the Vice Presidential
office.
We all know if things go smoothly, there will always be a President
and a Vice President and a Vice President ready to take over if the
President, God forbid, is deceased. But, Mr. Speaker, there could come
times when we go for months or years without a Vice President. We did
when Gerald Ford became President after the resignation of Richard
Nixon. One could have imagined the crisis we might have faced had
President Ford faced some untoward calamity.
See, Mr. Speaker, we have laws that provide for succession to the
Presidency. Such laws ought to provide two things, certainty and
continuity. The present statute does provide certainty. For if there is
a vacancy in both the Presidency and the Vice Presidency, the next
person in line is the Speaker of the House and then the President Pro
Tempore of the Senate followed by the various cabinet officials in
order of the seniority of their departments. That will provide for
certainty as to who holds the office of President.
But it is not enough for us to have certainty. We also need
continuity; and by this, I mean continuity of policy. If, for example,
the Vice President has become President and there is a vacancy in the
Vice Presidency, the stock markets should know that, if that Vice
President who has become President were to die, that our national
policies would remain pretty much the same, that our economic policies
would remain the same.
Our adversaries and our friends around the world should know that,
even if there is no one currently serving as Vice President, that the
next person in line will carry on pretty much the same policies. No one
should have any belief that a change in who is President except at a
national election could radically change our policy.
Most important, it is key that any potential assassin not believe
that they can radically change America's foreign or domestic policies
with a bullet. They can change the person but hopefully not radically
change the policies.
Unfortunately, our present statute does not meet that standard of
providing for continuity, continuity of policy. Because the person in
line after the Vice President may or may not be of the same party.
Our old system was, I think, superior. The statute, until a couple of
decades ago, provided that, if there was a vacancy in both the
President and the Vice President, the next person in line was the
Secretary of State, and I believe after that the Secretary of
the Treasury, individuals who had been confirmed by the Senate,
individuals of high integrity and very substantial governmental
responsibility, individuals, though, most importantly who would share a
general philosophy with the President of the United States.
Today, we have a very different system, a system where we could have
a change in the party in the White House, not as a result of an
election, but just as a result of succession. One could have imagined
in the 1970s with Gerald Ford serving as President that
[[Page H12526]]
the country would wonder what if something happened to President Ford?
Would that mean that we would pull out of Vietnam? Who knows? No one
should have doubted during that time, but anyone looking at the
Constitution and our statutes would have doubted that a change in the
person of the President would change the policies of the Presidency.
Now I should point out that we changed our statute several decades
ago because it was believed that the first four persons in line to
succeed to the Presidency should be elected officials. I do not find
that incredibly compelling, but I can understand why others do.
So let us maintain that policy should others think it important, but
let us provide that every President may file with the Clerk of the
House and the Clerk of the Senate an official document indicating who
shall be third and fourth in line in succession; that they would
designate that the person third in line would either be the Speaker of
the House or the Minority Leader of the House, and the person fourth in
line would either be the Majority Leader in the Senate or the Minority
Leader in the Senate.
Under those circumstances, we would know that a Member of Congress
would be third and a Member of Congress would be fourth in line. Then
no matter what is likely to happen, an elected official held in high
esteem by their colleagues in the Congress would serve as third and
fourth in line. At the same time, we would know that the party in the
White House is not subject to change except through election.
If we fail to do so, then some time in the next century, we will face
months, if not years, when our allies and enemies around the world
wonder whether there could be a radical change in our policies due only
to a sad death or incapacity. Assassins or potential assassins may be
inspired to their evil deed by the belief that they are, not only
committing a heinous act against this country, but in the misbegotten
belief that that is an appropriate way to change radically America's
foreign or domestic policy. Mr. Speaker, we have not addressed this
issue, I believe, for decades. We ought to.
Let us move on, though, to another issue that is also important; and
that is one that has been discussed at great length, and that is the
need for voting machines around this country or vote tabulation systems
that are worthy of the 21st Century and worthy of the world's most
powerful democracy.
There have been several bills introduced that provide for at least a
study of what can be done to improve our vote tabulation system. But
let me describe how important that is. Thirty-one percent of this
country uses the punch card system which we became all too aware of in
Southern Florida. That system is used, for example, in Los Angeles and
Ventura Counties, major counties which I partially represent.
One out of every 66 persons voting for President in Florida in a
punch card county had their vote unregistered for President, an
undervote. Now, you may say perhaps 1 out of every 66 Floridians did
not care to register a vote for President. But in the adjoining
counties where optical scanners are used, only 1 out of every 250
voters chose to skip that office. We know from our own experience that
the vast majority of people who go to the polls at a Presidential
election cast a vote for President, especially when they are given, not
only the two major choices, but several other choices besides.
In fact, experience in Florida shows that it is not the case that
there are just certain counties in Florida where people want to skip
the office of President, because several counties have moved from one
vote casting system to the other from 1996 to the year 2000. When they
did so, they went from roughly 1 out of every 66 ballots missing a vote
for President to 1 out of every 250.
So we see that the tendency to vote for President, when accurately
tabulated using the best machines available, that 249 out of 250 people
cast a vote, that squares with our experience, and that, in fact, the
vote tabulating machines used in punch card counties are ignoring
almost 1 percent of the votes cast for President. This needs to be
changed, and we need to do more than just have a Band-Aid.
Yes, we could provide Federal funds on a pilot basis to a dozen
counties around the country. We could provide $50 million or $70
million. We could stand in front of a few fancy machines in a few
counties. But 31 percent of all Americans are using this punch card
system. Other Americans are using equally bad systems. And 1 percent of
that 31 percent are being disenfranchised. That is wrong.
We should provide $1 billion a year for several years, real money for
a real problem, because there are 180,000 precincts in this country,
and each one has half a dozen or more voting booths with tabulation
devices. Every county has to be able to count the ballots. This is a
big deal and cannot be dealt with by a few pilot programs that solve
the problem in just a few counties.
What we ought to do is provide grants to counties and other local
jurisdictions responsible for elections, grants of between 50 percent
and 80 percent of the cost of new vote tabulation and vote casting
machinery and the cost of implementing the systems and training the
employees involved.
What we ought to do is commission the Federal Election Commission
with the responsibility of identifying one, two or three of the best
vote tabulation systems for large counties, perhaps a different list of
one, two or three systems for medium-sized counties, and perhaps a
different list of the best systems to be used in small counties. Then
we should turn to every county in America that does not have one of
these good systems and offer between 50 and 80 percent of the cost of
buying the new equipment. To do otherwise is to say that democracy is
worth a quarter trillion dollars a year to defend from foreign threats,
but not even a tiny, tiny portion of that to defend from constitutional
crisis from unintentional disenfranchisement.
Furthermore, the Supreme Court, whether one agrees with it or not,
has just enumerated or identified an equal protection right for votes
to be counted accurately.
{time} 2015
Now, it is possible that this court will never find another
circumstance in which to apply that new constitutional right. It is
possible that this court found that new right to apply it only to this
election and now will want to seal it and never use it again, but that
is just this court. One can imagine a court inspired by more liberal
values that would rely on this case to question or invalidate elections
from coast to coast if there was a denial of equal protection of the
right to cast one's vote in a way in which it would be accurately
counted.
The fact is these old vote tabulation systems are found often, and to
a greater extent and a greater proportion, in urban counties, with
previously disenfranchised minorities, disadvantaged minorities, using
systems that throw out 1 percent of their vote, while adjoining more
economically upscale counties use new upscale vote tabulation systems.
I am not sure this court would use the Equal Protection Clause to deal
with that issue, but I do know that in other courts in other decades
this issue may rise to the level of constitutional scrutiny, and at
that point, at that point we may face another constitutional crisis as
some other court examines whether it is fair to use accurate systems in
upscale counties and decrepit systems for those who are poor and those
in traditionally discriminated against racial minorities.
I also, though, want to point out another issue, and that is if we do
have a Federal right, an equal protection right to accurate voting,
that we establish some rules that require that those rights be raised
on a timely basis. I cite the butterfly ballot, now famous from Palm
Beach County. Certainly we ought to have a rule that says that that
ballot needs to be challenged 30 days before the election or 3 days
after it is known or should be known to the candidates involved in the
election so that we do not have a Federal Court invalidating an
election weeks or months afterwards because it finds that the butterfly
ballot denies equal protection to those who use it.
We must have a system that puts the onus on candidates to bring to
the attention their objections first to county election officials and
then, if they feel they have a constitutional claim, to
[[Page H12527]]
the Federal courts. The butterfly ballot should have been objected to
long ago, long before the election.
Mr. Speaker, let me turn to a third issue, and one that has also
gotten some attention, and that is the electoral college system. When
the electoral college was first instituted, democracy was a newfangled
dangerous idea that our Founding Fathers did not want to fully embrace,
but which other modern countries have more fully embraced than we have
because it is now a proven idea, and American values require that the
President of the United States be elected by the people. Now, the
values of the 1700s may have been different; but until recently,
virtually no American could have conceived of the idea, was even aware
of the existence of the electoral college.
Secondly, Mr. Speaker, I would point out that at the time our
Constitution was signed, the States really were independent countries.
When they were independent countries, we used the following
terminology. We would say the United States are going to do something.
Today we say the United States is going to do something, because we are
now one Nation, with one President that presides over one people. We
are both a Republic and a democracy. The distinction between a
democracy and a Republic is now, I believe, outmoded because we are a
Republic that should be guided by democratic values, particularly in
the selection of a President.
Now, in this election, the person who will be in the White House did
not get a plurality of the votes, but that was by a mere 300,000 to
400,000 votes. Imagine if by 1 million votes or 2 million votes or
perhaps 3, 4, or 5 million votes one person is installed in the White
House while the other won the popular vote. Would that President have
all of the legitimacy that we would like the President to have? What is
worse, what happens if there is a tie?
I know we just lived through one crisis. But what if Ralph Nader had
won Florida? Not this election, maybe next election. If that would have
occurred, then none of the Presidential candidates would have had 270
electoral college votes, and the Presidency would have been decided
here in the House of Representatives. So far that sounds reasonably
fair. But we in this House would vote by States. North Dakota and South
Dakota would have as much influence as New York and California
combined. Would the country really accept a President who had been
chosen by a majority of the States, representing only a fraction of the
Nation's population? I think such a President might have been accepted
in the 1700s. In fact, that is how Thomas Jefferson was selected. But I
am not at all sure that a President selected through such a manner
would have legitimacy today.
Finally, the maintenance of the electoral college means that there
could just be a few dozen votes in one State that could decide an
election and could be the subject of a recount, or more than one
recount.
The solution is clear. We ought to elect a President by national
vote. But one issue then arises. What if no Presidential candidate
receives 50 percent of the vote? I suggest that we draw the line at 40
percent, since throughout the last hundred years every President we
have installed, I believe, has received 40 percent of the popular vote;
yet in contrast, no President in the last 12 years has received over 50
percent of the vote. But if we had a situation with three, four or five
viable candidates for President and none of them got over 40 percent of
the vote, then I would suggest a national runoff.
For those who disagree with the cost of such an enterprise, even in
those incredibly rare occasions when a leading candidate failed to
receive even 40 percent, then perhaps the House of Representatives
could select the President, with each Member of the House having an
equal vote.
Mr. Speaker, we may not abolish the electoral college; but if we do
not, it is time for us to stop playing with the excitement of wondering
if we will have faithless electors. Now, I am confident on December 18
we will not have faithless electors; that every elector will cast their
vote for the slate to which they are pledged. But just because it does
not happen next week, does not mean we can sleep and wait for when it
does happen. There have been faithless electors in the past.
If we cannot agree to abolish the electoral college, let us at least
abolish electoral college members and use a point system that is
automatic. If we like the pageantry, then we could have electoral
college members, but their votes should be tabulated for the candidate
to which they are pledged, unless that candidate releases them by a
formal notarized document. If we do otherwise, then we will take a
breath, we will relax on December 18, when faithless electors do not
control the outcome of the Presidency, and we will leave it to our
children and grandchildren to experience the constitutional crisis that
we could prevent today by eliminating the risk of faithless electors.
Now, there is another issue I would like to discuss, and that is the
statutory interpretation. It is by no means clear whether this is the
law of the land, but it is the belief of some that a candidate for
President cannot tell the people of the country who would serve in his
or her cabinet. There is discussion that our various anti-bribery
statutes, et cetera, indicate that no candidate for office can indicate
who will get an appointment should he or she be successful. Now, I
agree we should not be selling appointments, and that would never be
legal; but we should certainly clarify the law so that if a
Presidential candidate chose to announce who would serve in this or
that position, and announced it publicly, that the country would take
that into consideration.
No candidate should risk the violation of Federal law. One could even
postulate the idea of a criminal conviction just for telling us what
some of us want to know. Now, as a politically involved individual, I
would advise most Presidential candidates not to tell us who they would
appoint to the cabinets. But any Presidential candidate who chose to do
so should not face any retribution.
Now, Mr. Speaker, the next time bomb which we have not bothered to
listen to is the method of amending our Constitution by holding a
Constitutional Convention. We have never amended our Constitution that
way, and so we have tremendous questions as to how such a
Constitutional Convention would work. The last time Congress dealt with
this, I believe, was in the 102nd Congress, when there was a
Constitutional Convention Implementation Act introduced but basically
ignored by the House and the Senate. Here are a few of the issues.
Let me cite article 5 of our Constitution, first of all, which says
that with the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the
States, there shall be a convention for proposing amendments to the
Constitution, which would then have to be ratified by the legislatures
in three-quarters of the States. In fact, quite a number of States, at
times in the past, sometimes 50 or 100 years in the past, have passed
the necessary resolution to call for a Constitutional Convention.
Usually, they have called for a Constitutional Convention to deal with
this or that problem. Some States have called for constitutional
conventions to deal with a balanced budget amendment or with term
limits. But if a Constitutional Convention were called, or purportedly
called, perhaps called in the opinion of some and not called in the
opinion of others, the Congressional Research Service outlines quite a
number of questions that have not been settled.
For example, on question yet to be settled is whether or not the
petitions to call that convention must all be the same document or
whether some can call for a convention to deal with term limits and
others a convention to deal with balancing the budget, and a bunch of
others calling for a convention to completely revise the Constitution.
What are the scope and limitations of any such Constitutional
Convention? Once assembled, for example assembled for the purpose of
passing term limitations, is the convention free to propose to the
several States the complete revision of our constitution? What is the
validity of any rescission of a petition by a State legislature? If a
legislature called for a Constitutional Convention to deal with the
adverse consequences of prohibition and passed that resolution in the
first half of the last century, is that State, one, counted toward the
calling of a Constitutional Convention included in the tally of
[[Page H12528]]
modern States that have called for a Constitutional Convention to deal
with such modern concepts as term limits?
{time} 2030
Do State petitions have to be contemporaneous? Another unsettled
issue? There are many others.
And yet, our entire Constitution could be revised from the beginning
through the most recent amendment by a constitutional convention which
may or may not be legitimate because it may or may not conform on one
of these issues.
It is time for Congress to either abolish the entire concept of a
constitutional convention or at least clarify how it would be called
and what would be the scope of its powers.
I might add that perhaps we should move to a system where Congress
can propose or State legislatures can propose amendments to our
Constitution either two-thirds of both Houses of Congress or two-thirds
of the State legislatures who could then see that amendment approved at
a referendum by two-thirds of the people of the country. It may be time
to look to the referendum as a way to ratify amendments to our
Constitution.
Those are at least issues that we should talk about as much as we
talk about the issues that pit Republicans against Democrats. We should
deal at length with the structure of our democracy.
We also, of course, should deal with campaign finance reform. And
then we should deal with an issue put before us by the Supreme Court
decision in Jones v. Clinton. You will remember that that is the
decision in which the Court decided that anyone could sue the President
for any reason, that the lawsuit would go forward, the President could
be deposed.
And fortunately, in the last 4 years only one party, only one
individual, has sued the President. It had very significant
consequences.
I would cite the House to the last paragraph of the Supreme Court's
decision where it says, ``If Congress deems it appropriate to afford
the President stronger protection, it may respond with appropriate
legislation.''
We ought to take the court up on that. And here is why: anyone with
sufficient financing could sue the incoming President and we could have
dozens and dozens of lawsuits financed by people who simply are angry
with President-elect Bush or then-President Bush. Slander lawsuits,
sexual harassment lawsuits, job discrimination lawsuits, Federal
lawsuits, State lawsuits.
Could $10 million be raised from highly partisan Democrats for the
purpose of financing dozens of lawsuits resulting in dozens and dozens
of depositions of the incoming President? Perhaps. I do not want to
find out. And even if that is not the state to which our country has
yet sunk in levels of partisanship, do we want to wait a decade or two
or three until there is an organized effort to sue whoever is then
President as many times as possible and take as many depositions as
possible on as many salacious topics as possible?
I suggest, instead, that we indicate that any lawsuit against the
President is suspended, that the statute of limitations is told, that
the rights of the plaintiffs are preserved until that Presidency is
completed, and that any depositions necessary to preserve evidence, any
documents that are necessary to be preserved are preserved so that
trial can go forward after the defendant in that lawsuit leaves the
White House. To do otherwise is to invite anti-Presidential retribution
by lawsuits.
There is another issue that I hesitate to bring before the House but
one that we might be able to deal with, and that is the ongoing
investigation begun by Kenneth Starr. Most of this country knows that
we have failed to reauthorize, that we have squelched the Independent
Counsel statute. Much of the country does not know that the Independent
Counsel's Office of Ken Starr continues to operate and is allowed to
continue to operate as long as it wishes to or until we in this
Congress by statute pull the plug, padlock the office, and send the
files to the Justice Department.
Now we have a particular reason to do so. The Justice Department, on
January 21, will be in Republican hands; and if there is anything in
those files which even a Republican administration using reasonable
discretion determines to prosecute, they are free to do so. But we
allowed the Independent Counsel statute to expire because we know that
it does not operate with discretion, that an office that exists only to
prosecute one individual and it is terminated if it fails to prosecute
will find some reason to prosecute, at least find some reason to
continue to investigate.
And if you think that partisan tensions are now as high in Washington
as they could ever be, imagine how this country will react if a
Republican Congress allows to continue the Ken Starr investigation.
Will we just be viewed as another Pakistan, another troubled
democracy or an occasional democracy if we begin the process of
indicting our former Presidents?
I suggest that the continued failure of this Congress to act, the
continued allowance of this Congress to fund Robert Ray's operation has
the seeds for raising partisanship to one unnecessary level.
We have heard as much as we need to about Monica Lewinsky, and
Federal dollars should no longer be spent to finance an office that has
nothing to do, that loses its power, that loses its payment as soon as
they decide that the Lewinsky matter is no longer worthy of
investigation.
Mr. Speaker, I have brought up bipartisanship quite a number of times
in this presentation. Let me just take a minute to talk about what I
think bipartisanship means.
Bipartisanship, when it comes to legislation, means working together
to obtain bills that have substantial support on both sides of the
aisle, working with the leadership and the mainstream Members on both
sides of the aisle to put together bills that solve problems for
America.
Alternatively, it could mean working through the committee process,
and should mean working through the committee process, on bills that
obtain the support of the ranking member and the chairperson of the
subcommittee that is relevant and/or the committee that is relevant or
obtain substantial support from Democrats and Republicans on the
relevant committee.
My fear is that we will deal with bipartisanship by finding a bill
that is purely partisan and then reaching out to one or two Members of
the other party and saying a bill that is 99 and three-quarters percent
Republican and one-tenth of one percent Democrat is a bipartisan bill.
That would be a betrayal of the consents of bipartisanship.
I commend President-elect Bush for reaching out to Democrats to
appoint to his administration, just as President Clinton has appointed
a Republican who now serves as Secretary of Defense. But it would be a
bitter form of bipartisanship if the appointment process was used
cynically to appoint a sitting U.S. Senator that is a Democrat not to
bring bipartisanship to the administration but to change the partisan
makeup of the United States Senate.
There are many retired Democratic U.S. Senators and House Members
that would make excellent members of President-elect Bush's cabinet. He
should not use bipartisanship as a tool for partisanship as a device
cynically used to appoint and thereby alter the effects of the
congressional election.
Mr. Speaker, I thank you for your indulgence. I thank you for the
hours that we have spent together in this hall from time to time. I
thank you for your indulgence. And I thank the House for giving me the
opportunity to be the last to address the 106th Congress. I know that
when we return we will reach across the aisle to begin solving the
problems of America, and I hope that that process is aided by focusing
on those problems as to which there is no Democratic or Republican
view.
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