[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 147 (Tuesday, October 30, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H7412-H7418]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


ON THE PASSING OF THE HON. JERRY SOLOMON, CHARLIE DANIELS, THE AIRLINE 
   BAILOUT BILL, PROFILING, AMERICA'S BORDERS, AND BEING POLITICALLY 
                                CORRECT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Putnam). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I will start out by saying I take issue 
with the comment the gentlewoman made that it is about time this House 
paid attention to some of the needs of the people out here. What does 
the gentlewoman think the House is doing? Everybody in the House, 
Republican or Democrat, cares about the horrible losses that occurred 
in New York City, that occurred in the Pentagon, the economic losses 
across the country.
  I think it is wrong for any of my colleagues to stand up here and 
imply that one side or the other is not taking the time to care about 
the people of this Nation. I believe every Republican and every 
Democratic Congressman, and I do not agree with all of them, but I can 
tell the Members that all in one way or another are committed to moving 
this country forward in some type of positive fashion.
  Since the tragedy of September 11, I have not come across any 
Congressman that does not care about the children or the people who 
have been hurt by the consequences of that horrible, horrible tragedy. 
So I think it is important, and I think it is a responsibility of every 
one of my colleagues when they stand up here and speak and we address 
each other, that we acknowledge at the very beginning that Republicans 
and Democrats care about the needs of these people; and that while we 
may have debates, the fact that we have a debate should not signify 
that for some reason that means that people do not care about the 
people who have been hurt or impacted out there in any kind of negative 
fashion.
  So I do take exception with that comment, and I hope the 
clarification later resonates from some of my colleagues.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to mention, with due respect to my good 
colleague, Jerry Solomon, who passed away over the weekend, Jerry was a 
remarkable man. He was a Congressman from the State of New York, 
chairman of the Committee on Rules, and served 20 years in the United 
States Congress.
  He had a lot of guts. He spoke very eloquently on the floor. He 
represented his interests, the interests of the State of New York, the 
interests of the things that he believed in so strongly, veterans 
affairs and business issues that he was very well-versed in. He used to 
be an insurance agent.
  His unexpected loss last week is a loss to this Nation. I want to 
send my deepest regards to his family. I hear his service is going to 
be tomorrow. I intend to attend that service, and will represent my 
colleagues who cannot attend that. So our warm wishes and warm regards 
to the family of a very remarkable man who we all had the privilege of 
serving with in the House of Representatives.
  Also tonight on Hannity and Colmes, the TV show on Fox Network, I saw 
Charlie Daniels, the country western singer. I can tell the Members, he 
was talking about this newest song where he talks about the flag, and 
the pride in the flag.
  Charlie Daniels represents, in my opinion, a lot of people in this 
country. There are a lot of blue-collar workers out there. He is their 
hero. He is their singer.
  I just wanted to say I hope Members get an opportunity, if they ever 
see him, tell him to stick to his guns, by gosh, because he is right. 
What happens is there is so much of this politically correct garbage 
going on out there: Oh, my gosh, look at this song, it is not 
politically correct because it may offend some group out there.
  We need to move a little further away from political correctness and 
get back to realism. Charlie Daniels represents the views of a lot of 
people in this country. And how interesting, people who jump up and 
yell about his song, and they object to his song because at some point, 
through some type of interpretation, it might offend somebody, and 
therefore Charlie Daniels' song should not be allowed at some concert, 
those are the very same people that demand freedom of speech when they 
come up with a controversial issue.
  I just wanted to pass on to my colleagues, if they get a chance to 
listen to Charlie Daniels in an interview, he obviously holds his own. 
I want to send a commendation to that song. I think it is a great song, 
and I think it represents a lot of the views across this country.
  Tonight, for the main context of my remarks, there are a number of 
different things I want to talk about. First of all, I want to talk 
about the airline bailout bill. I am going to go into some of the 
promises and some of the thoughts that those of us who supported that 
bail-out bill have.
  I am not the kind of person, Members can tell from my record, who is 
inclined for a government bail-out of any type of industry, but I felt 
some convictions about this, the need for the airline industry to stay 
afloat. Frankly, I felt some sense of betrayal this week by United 
Airlines, which has a large location in Denver, Colorado.
  I want to visit a little about profiling, the need for profiling, who 
uses profiling in our society, and why I think profiling is an 
essential ingredient for law enforcement. Profiling is dictated by 
common sense, and every one of us in these chambers uses profiling 
every day in our life.
  Why all of a sudden, when we talk about using profiling to protect 
the security of this Nation, to provide homeland security for this 
Nation, to hopefully prevent another terrorist act, why all of a sudden 
should profiling then become politically incorrect? It makes no sense. 
I want to go into that in a little more detail.
  I want to talk about our borders. Clearly we have a problem on our 
borders. We have 500 million crossings, 500 million crossings every 
year on our borders. Maybe we ought to consider a dramatic tightening 
of those borders until we can get control of those borders.
  Some people said it is impossible to track those kinds of numbers. If 
we have a huge amount of numbers crossing the border and it overwhelms 
the operation of tracking, the only obvious thing, if we cannot upgrade 
that operation quickly, and obviously we cannot do that, we need to 
downgrade the amount of volume coming in. It is a pretty easy decision 
to make. I want to go into more depth on that.
  I want to talk a little more, again, coming back to this politically 
correct thing and the challenges that we face in this war that we are 
engaged in.
  We cannot fight a war being politically correct. We cannot be a nice 
guy in a war. In a war, the nice guy always loses. The nice guy never 
wins in a war. We have to be in the war, we have to be in there tough, 
we have to be tenacious, we have to strike horribly against our enemy. 
We have to hit our enemy so hard they swear they would never want to 
see us again, never want to ever cross our path again.
  When we tiptoe through the tulips, we are not made to go to war. This 
country has a war, here. This is not some far-off imagination of ours, 
this is a war that struck us in our homeland. We have to strike a 
horrible blow to those, I feel like calling them a horrible name, to 
those cancers, and I professionalize myself here on the floor and will 
not violate the rule. That is not what my gut says to call those people 
who brought across the ocean this horrible act against our country.
  The fact is, they started this war. They are the ones responsible for 
casualties and consequential or collateral damages that occur here. We 
do not owe anybody any apologies. The United States of America did not 
start this war. The United States of America did not dare somebody to 
come and destroy the World Trade Center Towers, or strike the Pentagon.
  The United States of America was the victim in this war, and now all 
of a sudden even U.S. citizens, I begin to sense some are becoming 
apologetic, politically correct, saying we have the Ramadan coming on, 
do not bomb during their holy holiday.
  Do Members think those people would not have set off a nuclear weapon 
in this country on Christmas day? If we think that, we are crazy. These 
people will do whatever is necessary. Remember, most of the Muslims, by 
far, the largest number of Muslims killed so far in this engagement 
were killed

[[Page H7413]]

by the terrorists who struck the World Trade Towers and killed 400 or 
800, I forget the exact number, but it is in that range, of Muslims and 
people that practice the Islam faith.
  That is where those casualties came from: They killed their own 
people. These people, these terrorists and bin Laden preached that they 
are standing up for Islam, and as part apparently of their 
interpretation of Islam they can go at will, at their choosing, at 
their timing, and kill other people of the faith. That is exactly what 
they did in New York City. That is exactly what they did at the 
Pentagon.
  Now people are saying we should handle these people politically 
correctly? We should tiptoe through the tulips for these people? I will 
get into that in more detail, too. I anticipate having a full evening 
in this discussion with these topics. Let us go back and let us start 
with the airline bailout bill.
  The airline bailout bill was about $15 billion. We face a situation 
which the airlines in this country have never faced in their history. 
No airline in the history of airline aviation has suffered two crashes, 
two crashes caused by an act of terrorism that hit a domestic target; 
two targets, two airplanes, two sets of terrorists, and a domestic 
target and thousands and thousands of casualties. United Airlines and 
American Airlines both suffered that fate on the same day, September 
11.

                              {time}  2230

  We all know the facts. We know what happened there. It brought the 
airline industry to their knees, but it almost brought them right on 
the verge of collapse. The United States Government for the protection 
of its citizens ordered that all airlines cease business for several 
days. And the consequences of that terrorist attack are obvious to all 
of us.
  Today I flew in on a plane in Denver, Colorado. It was United 
Airlines plane, a 737. My guess is it had the capacity to hold 120 
passengers, I guess. We had 10 or 12 passengers outside of the crew on 
that airplane.
  The consequences of that act of September 11 are devastating to the 
airline industry. Now it has been devastating to a lot of us and to a 
lot of economic factors in our society. But this society of ours, this 
Nation of ours, the security of this Nation, the business of this 
Nation, the ability to move around in this Nation is very, very 
dependent on an efficient airliner service. So it is to the best 
interest of all of us that we keep the airlines, at least kept them 
from the verge of collapse.
  Sure we ought to let the Adam Smith philosophy of the market take 
place. I am a big fan of Adam Smith. I think he is right. But there are 
appropriate times for the government to step in. I believed when United 
Airlines talked and when the other airlines talked to us, I believed, 
even though some of my colleagues debated on the other side of the 
issue, I believed that this money would be well spent and that the 
airlines would exercise their responsibility in the utilization of this 
kind of money, and that the airlines would realize that they have a 
debt, not just to the stockholders as a corporation, but that they also 
have some responsibility to this Nation, that they too have to pitch in 
and be good neighbors. And a lot of those airlines did it, Jet Blue, 
American, some of these others, they have come, and they have risen to 
that responsibility.
  What happened over at United Airlines? United Airlines has a chief 
executive officer which I think has run that airline into the ground. 
His name is Goodwin.
  Well, Goodwin has been with United Airlines for 34 years. That is a 
lot of years of service. He has successfully done more to bring an 
airline to the verge of collapse than any airline executive I have 
known for a number of years. So over the weekend United Airlines 
decided because the capability of Mr. Goodwin to run United Airlines 
has been severely diminished by his own shortcomings, they decided they 
needed to pay the guy to leave. I want to give you an idea.
  Some of the people who opposed the airline bailout bill said this 
money is just going to fatten the pockets of the chief executive 
officers. I felt, come on, give the airlines a break. Frankly, several 
of airlines, including United Airlines, froze the salaries of their 
executives. And I think that is good will that has been put forth by 
some of these airlines. But while they froze the pay of some of these 
executives, look at what United Airlines just did today.
  By the way, I wanted to compare it. This morning I talked with a 
United employee in Denver, Colorado who had been with the company for 
30-some years. Let us just call it 30 years. This particular employee 
was at the desk. I guess it is a ticket agent, an agent at the desk for 
United Airlines. This particular person was a 30-year employee over 
here to my left on this poster. Her retirement after spending 30 years 
with the airline is $2,000 per month which is approximately $65 a day. 
For the rest of her life she will receive approximately $65 a day. That 
is her retirement after serving for United with 30-plus years.
  Now, she did not run that airline into the ground. She did not help 
contribute to the near demise of United Airlines. Her service has been 
recognized throughout by the company itself. Now ironically, her 
retirement falls within two days of Mr. Goodwin's termination. Her 
time, her service with the company of 30-some years falls very close to 
the same time and service with the company that Mr. Goodwin's does.

  Now let us take a look at what United Airlines, after receiving 
assistance from the Federal Government to help bail them out, take a 
look at what that airline has just done to terminate their executive 
that has put their company on the verge of bankruptcy. I call it the 
United Airlines Bailout and then I move it over to Blowout after I saw 
this morning what the United Airlines has done for their executive.
  They added 6 years of service to his retirement. Now, this employee 
over here spent 30-some years, 30 years and some months with United. 
When this individual was given a choice, frankly, 72 hours they wanted 
people over a certain time to retire, they did not offer to this 
individual to say, hey, we will move you from 30 years to 36 years. But 
they did it with their chief executive office. They went to Goodwin. 
Again, I want to stress how strongly I feel that Mr. Goodwin is where 
the buck stops. That is the individual who has brought this company to 
the verge of bankruptcy.
  What do they do? They have given him 6 years added service. Although 
he did not work the 6 years, they will add it to his 34 years of 
service so his retirement treats him as if he had 40 years with United 
Airlines.
  Now, what does that mean? That means that his pension will be 
$500,000 a year. That is his requirement; $500,000 a year for the rest 
of his life. What does that figure out to be?
  Well, remember, my ticket agent over here that gets $65 a day for the 
rest of her life and this chief executive officer who almost runs the 
company into the ground will be making $1,400 a day. United Airlines 
agreed to pay him $1,400 a day every day for the rest of his life and 
his work is done with United. He walked out the door. That is not all.
  Take a look: 611,450 stock options have been granted to this chief 
executive officer. This is a company that my colleagues here, that the 
House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate, the President of the United 
States has sent $15 billion to the airline industry and asked them to 
exercise responsibility in keeping their airlines above water and here 
is what they do: 611,450 stock options.
  Now today those stock options are under water which means they have 
no value. But these stock options are for 10 years. So if there is any 
bet at all, if United recovers at all, imagine that every dollar of 
recovery that United has, his profit goes up $611,000. Every dollar 
that that United stock moves up from this point through the next 10 
years, if it moves at all, he will make in proportion $611,000 for 
every dollar rise in that stock.
  Now on top of it, it is not enough that United agreed to pay him 
$1,400 for every day for the rest of his life, United felt apparently 
that Mr. Goodwin who almost took their company into bankruptcy, Mr. 
Goodwin was not being treated well enough, so they decided to get him 
severance pay. What is that severance pay? Well, we cannot get an exact 
number. We think just to get him to walk out the door, they gave him $5 
to $7 million. Here is your check for $5 to $7 million, Mr. Goodwin. 
Thanks for almost destroying the country. By the way, here is your $65

[[Page H7414]]

check, ma'am, for being a ticket agent at one of our counters for 30 
years with United Airlines.
  But it does not stop there for Mr. Goodwin. They continue to go on. 
Forty thousand more shares given to him on termination. So they give 
him $5 million in severance. They say they will pay him $1,400 a day 
every day for the rest of his life, and then on top of it because maybe 
his feelings have been hurt, the board throws in another 40,000 shares 
at today's values, another $700,000. That is not all. They decide just 
to make sure that Mr. Goodwin's future is well cared for, he get his 
membership at the country club.
  Tell me when is the last time they ever bought a dinner at the 
country club for one of these employees, for one of the United Airline 
employees that was not in Mr. Goodwin's office. So they agree to keep 
his membership in the country club. They agree to provide him with a 
company car. They agree to continue to provide his life insurance.
  Give me a break United Airlines. Where do you think your credibility 
is when some of us stand up and we are willing to take the heat that 
contrary to our philosophy and our support of Adam Smith, we decide to 
go out on a limb on your behalf and every other airliners behalf to try 
to save the airline industry as a result of the tragedy on September 
11? This is what we are beginning to find out. This is where some of 
this money is going.
  Where is your credibility, United?
  I was really disgusted, and that is a strong word, but that is how I 
felt this morning. It just was ironic that I happened to run into that 
ticket agent whose last day is tomorrow after 30 years and to see she 
is going to be paid $65 a day for doing a good job for United Airlines, 
and then United Airlines turns around to the individual who has almost 
turned that company, and I would not be surprised if that company does 
go into bankruptcy, but to that individual who has almost driven that 
company into bankruptcy, they will pay him $1,400 a day, $5 million 
check on the way out, maybe a $7 million check on the way out, $700,000 
for stock shares they just gave him that day. Go ahead. We will keep 
you in the country club. And, by the way, that car you are driving our 
there, we will pay for the car, the gas, et cetera, et cetera.
  No wonder people feel there is some sort of class division in the 
country. No wonder people feel there is a little injustice. No wonder 
Congressmen like myself end up biting their tongue and having second 
thoughts about this airline bailout, and whether or not this money is 
really going where it needs to go, and that is to keep a healthy 
airline industry from collapsing through the floor as a result of acts 
of the terrorism against this country.
  Let me move on from my dismay with the way that United Airlines has 
handled this situation and talk about profiling.
  I think profiling is a pretty interesting subject. Recently I have 
heard politically correct shows and some of my colleagues here on the 
floor, do not dare reach out and profile people at the border. Do not 
profile people on the street. Profiling should have no place in law 
enforcement.
  Yes, it is pretty ironic to hear that kind of argument. Profiling is 
used at every stage of our life. Everywhere you go. Everyone on this 
floor uses profiling. We use profiling in our own campaigns. We go out 
to our district and we have experts that come in, we have polsters that 
come in and they say, all right, in this age group, 18 to 23, we know 
this percentage of these people are going to register and, of the 
registered, these percentage of people are going to vote; and that 
percentage routinely is pretty low in your district. But over here that 
age group, 45 to 50, and they may be white male, they may be Hispanic, 
Irish, whatever it is, they tend to go along more with your issues. 
They have a much higher voter turn-out. So we want you to target this 
age group. Do not go after the age 18 to 21 because there is not a high 
enough percentage.
  They will tell you, go after the white male or the single parent or 
the head of household or the person that brings the income in, the 
income earner. They are very targeted. They profile in our own 
campaigns; and every one of my colleagues has been the beneficiary of 
this kind of profiling.
  We use profiling with insurance. We know, for example, that if you 
have a young man who is between the ages of say 16 and 23 that that 
individual is more likely to drink and drive, more likely to drive a 
car at a high speed and much more likely to run a stop sign than 
somebody that is 45 to 50 years old. And as a result of that kind of 
profiling, we can determine where our higher risks are and we can 
adjust for that in regards to the insurance premiums that we charge.
  So we use it in our campaigns. We use it to determine insurance. We 
use it to determine risks. We use it in schools, our testing 
mechanisms. We test and we profile. We profile in our school 
neighborhoods. We profile to see which particular segment of 
population, whether it is a white at certain poverty level, whether it 
is black, whether it is mixture, whether it is geographic location, et 
cetera, et cetera, we put a bunch of factors in there so we can 
determine which kind of education will get the best results and be the 
most benefit to that particular profile group.
  So we use profiling for campaigns, we use profiling for insurance, we 
use profiling in our educational institutions.
  Do not let the newspapers who run these editorials, some of the 
liberal newspapers in this Nation, who run editorials about profiling 
and how bad profiling is. Man, talk about hypocritical.

                              {time}  2245

  Take a look at that newspaper and see what kind of profiling they do, 
what kinds of marketing they do to figure out where their advertisers 
are, where their market is, who is going to buy their newspapers, who 
reads the sports page. Any newspaper in this country will tell you very 
accurately what percentage of their readers read their editorials, what 
percentage of their readers read the sports section, which is the most 
read page in the newspaper, what age segment reads the sports section. 
They probably do not have a lot of people 70 and above that read the 
sports section. They may read the social page. But they know between 
about 12 and, say 35 that that is their main focus in a newspaper.
  Newspapers profile. They have very dramatic profiles. It is smart 
business. Of course they do it. No matter where we look in our society 
we see profiling. Even sports teams, they profile. They know who goes 
to their games, they know who buys their tickets and who to appeal to. 
They know where to place their advertising. Even in recruiting their 
athletes, they know which areas are more likely to produce a better 
athlete than other areas. They use this profiling extensively.
  So, for God's sake, why do we not use profiling to protect the 
national security of this Nation? Why are some people out there saying 
the politically correct thing to do is, well, all in all we better not 
profile at our borders, we better not stop somebody who is suspicious 
just based on the fact that they, let's say for example they are Arab, 
come from the Islam faith and come from a particular age bracket. 
Listen, we know those statistics. We can develop risk statistics from 
profiling.
  Now, obviously, I do not support, and I do not know any of my 
colleagues on this floor, not one Democrat or one Republican, that 
supports profiling based solely on race. That is discrimination. Nobody 
questions that. We ought to have zero tolerance for that. In other 
words, we should not just go and say, hey, that individual is Irish or 
that individual is black so they must be a suspect. We only take that 
so far. I mean if we have a bank robbery and the description, the 
profile, of the bank robber is a white male between 19 and 24, why 
would we be in the black neighborhood interviewing black people to see 
if they were the bank robber? Clearly, at some point, we begin to 
profile. But that is one of the factors.
  I do not want my colleagues or anyone to be drawn into signing a 
statement or acknowledging that, look, profiling has no place in a war 
against people that want to tear our guts out, against people that 
killed thousands and thousands of people at the New York World Trade 
Center, or over here at the Pentagon where they killed hundreds of 
people. We ought to use every weapon we have against these people.

[[Page H7415]]

 We ought to be prepared to use whatever method, whatever weapon, 
whatever energies we have to win this battle. We cannot afford to be 
the nice guy here. Oh sure, war has kind of a parameter of what should 
be done, but the fact is that in that spectrum there is a lot of 
horrible things that happen in a war.
  I wish we could avoid this war. I do not know anyone out there that 
wants to be engaged in the war we are in. I do not know anyone that 
chose to have us get into the predicament that we are in today. Maybe 
there are some out there, I hope not, but I do not know many people out 
there that think we had this coming. This is a war that was brought 
upon us. The United States did not strike out against anyone. Thank 
goodness we are too great a Nation to do that. We do not do those kinds 
of acts of terrorism. But when somebody strikes at the United States, 
the kind of blow they dealt us on September 11, and we have felt every 
hour and every minute and every day since September 11, we need to 
strike back with a horrible, horrible swift sword.

  Now, there are a lot of people out there that are counting on the 
fact that the United States of America might be too timid to strike 
back and that the United States of America just does not have the 
resolve to strike hard, that there is going to be a little pretend 
bombing over here, hit a soft target there, and a soft target there and 
declare a victory. Well, thank goodness we have an administration that 
in my opinion is not going to go by that playbook. This administration, 
in my opinion, George W. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, 
these people, they understand we are engaged in a war.
  We cannot stop a war for the holidays. The Taliban would not stop for 
us. The Taliban wants one thing: They want every man, woman and child 
in the United States of America destroyed. They do not want to save the 
children of the United States. They do not want to avoid the loss of 
children. They do not want to save Muslims in the United States of 
America. They do not want to save the people of the Islam faith in the 
United States of America. They want to destroy them simply because of 
the fact that they are in the United States of America. You can take 
that to the bank.
  Take a look at what happened at the World Trade Center. There were 
many people of the Islam faith that were destroyed and their families 
destroyed through the consequences of these actions. We had many 
Muslims that may not even have been of the Islamic faith that were 
destroyed, that were killed. They were slaughtered in New York City. So 
do not give this Taliban or ben Laden any kind of badge of courage. Do 
not give him any kind of credibility because you think they fight with 
honor. They do not fight with honor. They fight with cheap shots. They 
would just as soon gut you in the back as to fight you face-to-face.
  That is the kind of war we are engaged in with these people. This is 
a tough situation that we have. We have to use the weapons and the 
tools that are available to us. There is a vast array of those, but the 
one I am focusing on here is profiling. Again, let me reiterate that 
profiling based solely, and the only reason to do it is to 
discriminate, we do not tolerate. That is not what I am talking about, 
and I do not know anyone who supports that.
  But let me just say that we had 19 hijackers. Of those 19 hijackers, 
19 of them were Arab. Of those 19, they were all within a certain age 
range. Of that, they were all male. All 19 were male. Of that, they 
were all active in this fundamentalist Islam faith. Not representative, 
by the way, of the general Islam faith, but active in a fundamentalist, 
corrupted, perverted view of that. So we can begin to put a profile 
together and we ought to be looking at people who fit in that category. 
If there are people that fit into that kind of category who attempt to 
cross the borders of the United States, we ought to pull them aside and 
ask them some questions. Obviously, we ought to detain them. Of course 
we should refuse them entrance into this country if they fit within 
certain risk factors. We would be crazy not to.
  Let me reiterate that this kind of profiling is used in every stage 
of our life, even when we are born. What happens when a baby is born? 
They figure out how much the baby weighs, they figure out what the race 
is, they figure out if the parents are married. They send all this 
information in for statistical gathering. That is how we can determine, 
for example, in parts of the country, where we have a lot of unwed 
mothers. We profile unwed mothers. We go in and say, why do we have so 
many unwed mothers. Why do we have such a high level of teenage 
pregnancies. We profile it. We go out and figure out, okay, what can we 
do to alleviate teenage pregnancies like we have. We put it to a 
beneficial use.
  My premise here this evening is that we can put to a beneficial use 
for the protection of the national security of this Nation profiling. 
So do not run away from it when a discussion is had on it. And my 
colleagues will hear about it back in their districts. I was asked the 
question, and when I started with my response, the reporter that was 
talking to me said, boy, you are taking on a hot potato. Do you really 
want to go into this kind of detail on profiling?
  Do not run from it. We have to use it. My problem, again coming back, 
we cannot take this so-called theory of political correctness from the 
far left liberal side of the spectrum and let that determine whether or 
not we are going to use that tool to protect this Nation's security. 
The question here is can we reasonably and in compliance with the 
Constitution of the United States profile and use it as a weapon of our 
choice and a weapon for our benefit? Absolutely. The answer is 
absolutely yes. And every law enforcement agency in this country ought 
to use profiling as a tool for their assistance.
  Again, do not let people try to drag you into, well, you must mean 
race profiling, or you are out to go and get the Irish or the African 
Americans. That is not what we are talking about. That is a nice side 
show, that is a nice diversion, but that is not the focus here. The 
focus here is the security of the United States of America. The focus 
is what tool do we have that we can use, and that is why I feel so 
strongly about standing up when we participate in discussions on 
profiling to tell the other side of it. Tell why it is important.
  Take a look in our society and have discussions about where we use 
profiling and the benefits of profiling, because there are a lot of 
benefits of profiling. We have huge benefits, particularly if we 
profile and one of these people shows up at our borders and they fall 
within that risk category, and we are able to stop an act of terrorism. 
We have plenty of evidence to do it.
  By the way, most countries use profiling. Regardless of how wide you 
want to use it, a lot of countries are using racial profiling. They use 
whatever profiling they darn well feel like using. I am not saying we 
should stoop to that, but I am saying that it has proved to be an 
effective weapon.
  They stopped the bombing of, I think it was a Swedish airline about 
15 years ago. A lady walks up and she fits into the category because 
she bought her ticket with cash. Bing. One element of the profile. She 
had no check-in baggage. Bing. She is going here with no check-in 
baggage, and she was going transcontinental. So they asked her where 
she was going. She said my destination is here. They said, we know 
that, you bought the ticket. How long are you going to stay there? Oh, 
three weeks. She has one little tiny bag, no check-in bags. She falls 
within a certain age that they know they have had problems with. Bing, 
bing, bing, bing. This profile begins to set itself up. It alerts them, 
so they ask her some more questions, this and that. All it does is 
bring up more red flags. Then they search her. Guess what they find? 
When the suitcase is emptied and they weigh it, it weighs more than an 
empty suitcase should weigh. Sure enough, they find a false bottom and 
it is filled with high-level plastic explosives intended to blow that 
airline out of the sky.
  We better profile. It is to our benefit and to the benefit of this 
Nation's security. It is to all our benefit, no matter what background 
we are, to go to war with every tool that we can use.
  Now, let me move on very briefly and discuss our borders. I want to 
give some statistics that I think are pretty interesting. Our borders 
are crossed 500 million times a year. Five hundred million times a year 
through 300 checkpoints we have people coming across those borders. 
Now, the largest number

[[Page H7416]]

of people coming across the borders are tourists. The largest number by 
far, 99.9999 percent of the people that come into this country come in 
with good intentions. So how do we focus on that very, very small 
percentage? How do we get our sights on that very small percentage with 
the minimal impairment to the larger percentage while still 
accomplishing the security for the national interest?
  It is a tough job. Just imagine trying to track 500 million crossings 
a year. I am not sure we have the technical capability. We certainly do 
not have the technical capability in place today to do it. Maybe we 
will have that technical capability within a few years, but not today. 
So the question comes up, should we continue to let the 500 million 
crossings occur every year or should we begin to clamp down on who 
comes across that border?
  Now, I have a basic test, a litmus test, as to how to come across 
that border. My feeling is that I ought to treat it like somebody who 
wants to come into my house. When somebody knocks at the door of our 
house, rings the doorbell of our house, we look out the peephole. In 
other words, we do not allow them to come in right off the bat. We size 
them up, kind of profile them, look at them. We say, maybe we should 
ask this person a couple of questions. Then we may open the door but 
still not let them in the house yet. If I know them, I welcome them in. 
If I feel comfortable with them, I welcome them in. If they meet 
certain standards, I welcome them in. Obviously, if they fit the 
profile of a newspaper delivery person, and I know the person and they 
come by every time of the month about this period of time to collect a 
fee, I let them in the house and I give them a Coke or a Pepsi or 
something.
  So what we ought to do here is look at our borders. I think for a 
temporary period of time we have to really clamp down on our borders 
until we begin to make significant strides in regards to this war. 
Right now that percentage of people that wants to do significant harm 
to the United States of America has grown rather dramatically. As we 
know, this United States of America is now under a national alert for 
an act of terrorism.

                              {time}  2300

  Mr. Speaker, I can tell Members that the likelihood of that act of 
terrorism, we can go ahead and put together what that group would look 
like. Number one, they probably are not native born United States 
citizens. Number two, they probably have come across the borders in the 
last year or two. Number three, they probably had a background that if 
checked significantly, we would find that these are not the kind of 
people that we would want to let in our house or country.
  I am not saying close the borders. That is not what I am saying here. 
Almost all of us are beneficiaries of the immigration policy of this 
Nation. I am saying in order for the immigration policy to work, we 
have to have rules of the game, and we have to enforce the rules. When 
we have somebody who violates the rules, we cannot let them continue 
playing the game if they are going to continue to violate the rules. 
You have to have enforcement of the rules and enforcement of 
immigration policy of this country.
  Clearly if there has ever been a demand for enforcement of the policy 
currently in existence, it is right now. We have 3 or 4 million people 
a year come across our borders on visas, and they stay after their 
visas expire. Three or 4 million people a year stay in this country 
even when the rules of the game say you have stayed all you are 
allowed, now you have to go home. It is similar to a guest coming to 
your home for an hour for lunch, and pretty soon they are intending to 
spend the night.
  The INS is doing a good job, but the reality is that the INS has two 
things they have been trying to do. One is to keep foreigners from 
turning into illegal U.S. residents. Two, to investigate domestic 
crimes involving foreigners. As quoted here, keeping track of 
foreigners' whereabouts in this country was not considered anyone's 
job. We have allowed these lax policies for much, much too long. It 
makes a lot of practical sense that one of the tools and one of the 
weapons that we can use in this war that we are engaged in is to 
tighten our borders.
  That means the utilization of profiling. That means if somebody has a 
student visa, that we require that university confirm that person's 
presence, we set up a tracking system. That means that we start saying 
no to people. It means that we start getting numbers of people that we 
allow across our borders so we can manage. There was an ad, I do not 
know if it is still running on television or not, but some people set 
up a business on the Internet. They are waiting for their first order. 
They are worried. They have put in all of this investment, and all of a 
sudden order number one comes in. That is not much, but at least we got 
one order on the first day of business. All of a sudden 2, 3, 4. All of 
a sudden a hundred orders come across. They are smiling and happy. All 
of a sudden it does not stop and it goes to 1,000 orders to 10,000 
orders to 100,000 orders. They are in panic. We cannot possibly manage 
100,000 orders. We cannot manage it.
  Mr. Speaker, the same thing is happening on our borders. Most people 
in the world dream of coming to the United States of America. A lot 
want to live here. It is the only country in the world where we do not 
have a problem keeping people. We cannot open the borders in such a way 
that the numbers are so huge we cannot manage them.
  Today that is exactly where we are. We have so many people coming 
across the borders that we cannot manage it. We need to reduce those 
numbers so that it is at least manageable. So that we know that people 
that come across our border, those 3 million people that currently 
every year come across the border and do not go home when they are 
supposed to, that we can begin to develop management tools to fill that 
gap. That is one of the weapons we can use in our war against 
terrorism.
  Mr. Speaker, I know it is not politically correct to talk about we 
had better cut down on our immigration. I know it is not politically 
correct to talk about tightening our borders, but we got a real dose of 
reality on September 11. We woke up in the morning leading a normal 
life, and those of us fortunate enough to be alive at the end of the 
day got a real wake-up call.
  We have to change our management practices, and one of the management 
practices we have to change are our borders which have become 
unmanageable. There are other things we have to change. You notice 
people agree across the board that we have to change the check-in 
procedure and security at our airports and nuclear facilities. Members 
will notice that Secretary Mineta today ordered no flying of aircraft 
by nuclear plants, et cetera, et cetera. We are changing our management 
practices. We need to change our management practices in regards to 
these immigration policies.
  Now the President, of course, has taken the lead on this. Yesterday 
the President talked about student visas. We have a big problem with 
student visas. We have a lot of people who never show up at the 
schools. Student visas have kind of become the popular tool of choice 
to get into America, and then not have to worry about being held 
accountable to anybody.

  Frankly, we have some universities, institutions of higher education, 
that depend very heavily on student visas because of the tuition that 
they charge foreign visitors. Those golden days will have to come to an 
end, despite the lobbying up here on the hill to leave student visas 
alone. We ought to stop the abuses, limit the number of student visas 
that we grant until we can get a management grasp on it. That is what I 
am asking for. Get it in our control.
  I think we should quit hesitating about what we do allowing students 
of countries that mean us harm. Do you think we ought to allow students 
of Libya or some of these other countries, Iran, Iraq, to come into 
this Nation? Should we educate them and train them how to fly planes? 
There are a lot of foreign students taking airline pilot instruction 
courses in this country as I speak this hour. We should not be ashamed 
of saying no to some people, and we should not be so worried about 
being politically correct that when we see someone from a country that 
is listed as a terrorist country, we ought to have enough guts to say 
at the border, You are not coming over here for your education and 
taking the benefit of our society to later on down the road turn 
against our society.

[[Page H7417]]

  The National Journal, October 27, 2001 reported on a bill over on the 
Senate side which will require the airlines to submit their 
international passenger lists to the INS in advance so names can be run 
through the agency's look-out system.
  Well, today most airlines voluntarily submit those lists. Today most 
airlines, notice I say most, voluntarily give their list to the INS to 
see if there is anybody on that list that is on a suspect listing or on 
the look-out system.

                              {time}  2310

  Guess which airlines that fly into the United States refuse to turn 
their lists over to the INS? Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Pakistan and Saudi 
Arabia. My response to that is if the airline coming out of Saudi 
Arabia, if the airline coming out of Kuwait, if the airline coming out 
of Egypt, if the airline coming out of Pakistan does not want to give 
us the list of their passengers that are flying into the United States 
of America, landing in an airport in the United States of America, to 
be dispersed once they get off the airplane into the cities of the 
United States of America, we should not allow those airlines to land in 
the United States. We are not asking too much to go to these airlines 
and say, we want your list. We want to know who you are bringing into 
this country. Is that asking too much? I do not think so. Just another 
example of sloppy management.
  I want to commend the President. Yesterday he made comments about the 
tightening we need to take on these borders. He talked about student 
visas. The President and the administration is on the right track and 
he deserves the support of the United States Congress.
  Let me move on to some final points I want to make, and that is about 
the battle that we are engaged in. I notice in the last week, there has 
been a lot of publicity about, gosh, maybe we're stuck in Afghanistan, 
maybe we're not accomplishing militarily what we hoped to accomplish. 
You know what people are doing, we are comparing the first few days. We 
controlled all the airspace over Afghanistan within 3 days. It is 
always when you go to pick fruit, at least when I picked fruit, when 
somebody hired me especially to pick fruit, I always filled my basket. 
The easiest time to fill a basket was when I first got to the tree 
because that was the fruit that hung the lowest. That was easy 
pickings. So the first couple of bushels came real fast. But when I had 
to get to the third and fourth bushel, it took a lot more work. It was 
not because I was bogged down in the apple tree, it was because of the 
fact you had to exert a little more energy. You had to climb up into 
the limbs, you had to reach out, you had to hunt those apples. You did 
not have four our five apples hanging where you could just put them 
right in the basket. You had to get up in the tree, you had to reach, 
you had to move the limbs to find them. That is exactly what we are 
engaged in right now. Do not try and urge the President to stop this 
war, or to slow down this bombing for some holiday that these 
terrorists would use simply as a shield to rebuild, take a fresh breath 
and recoordinate their strategies. We have got to go after those guys 
and gals that have instigated such horrible damage to this Nation. 
Actually the worst thing we can do and the best thing that could happen 
to them is for American people to begin to lose faith in the military 
effort that our administration is carrying forward. These are not tough 
warriors when you are able to get them out of their caves person to 
person. We will destroy them. There is no question about it. If you got 
them out of their caves, you got them in an open field, we destroy 
them. There is not even a contest there. Some people think that these 
Taliban fighters are supermen. They are not supermen. They have 
emotions. They are susceptible. I would much rather have our weapons 
than have their weapons. The fact is we have to locate them. They have 
extensive cave networks. They hide in the mosques. They hide in the 
schools. They move their weapons so that if you try and get them or 
their weapons, you have got to kill some of their civilians. That is 
exactly the kind of strategy they are using.
  There is one other strategy they are using against the United States. 
When it comes down to it, they do not think the United States of 
America has the resolve to go after them. They think all they have to 
do is take a couple of Americans, capture them, skin them alive, 
torture them, send their bodies back in body bags and that the American 
people will lose their resolve to win this war against terrorism. If 
that happened, it would be the greatest military victory probably in 
history for an organization like the Taliban. It would be a huge defeat 
for the United States of America, because you are not eliminating the 
cancer. The Taliban is a cancer. If you do not get rid of that cancer, 
it will come back and it will come back in a harsher form than you ever 
believed it could return in. We have got to destroy the Taliban.
  Last Friday, I think, in the Wall Street Journal, Senator McCain, our 
colleague, wrote an excellent article about victory, victory in a war. 
This is a war. I would suggest to my colleagues, read this article. It 
is excellent. It talks about that war is dirty, that the consequences 
of war are horrible, but Winston Churchill once said, the only thing 
worse than war is losing it, and that is exactly what we face tonight. 
The only thing worse for us than this war that we are currently engaged 
in is to lose it. Do not try and urge our Armed Forces to lay down 
their arms until the job is finished. Support the administration until 
the job is finished. The President stood right here on this floor, 
right here at this podium, and he told us and he told the American 
people, this battle will be a long battle. This battle will be an 
intense battle. But that we have hereby resolved that we will eliminate 
terrorism, that we will fight this war. And so 4 weeks into it, I see 
some commentators saying, gosh, are you spinning your wheels? Are you 
stuck? How come we haven't wiped out the Taliban? How come you haven't 
found that miserable little guy in this cave somewhere? Give me a 
break. These are the very commentators that ought to drop that type of 
comment and ought to be saying, what can we do to help? This is our 
country, too.

  I heard a commentator the other day that said, we have 
responsibilities in the media, to remember that yes, we are Americans, 
but we should not let that take away from the point that we should be a 
neutral party and that our obligation is to report the news. It sounded 
as though if you are a journalist, that you have a higher calling than 
being an American, you have a higher calling and that is of a 
journalist. And if it means that you leave the auspices of sanctity of 
your country to complete your job, that is the necessity of being a 
journalist. I could not disagree with that respected journalist more.
  I do not care whether you are a journalist or a Congressman or 
whether you wash windows or drive taxis, America comes first. Your 
country comes first. Your obligation is not to your profession, your 
obligation is to your Nation. You need to stand for your Nation. We 
need to support our administration, and obviously our military troops, 
to carry out this mission until we win. Not until the Ramadan holiday 
starts. That was not a part of war. We need to carry this mission out 
until we destroy the enemy, until we cut their heads off, until we are 
so savage to these people, so horrible to the enemy that the enemy will 
never again have a future under which they would consider attacking the 
United States of America. The price that they will pay has to be so 
high that they never ever again want to be in that war. That is what we 
have got to do. We have a mission. Every citizen in America has this 
mission, and, that is, your country comes first. The values and the 
principles of America have never been matched in the history of this 
world. Never has there been a country as great as our country. Never 
has a country done as much for the poor people of the world as the 
United States of America. Never has a country gone to more aid and 
assistance and gone to war across vast oceans to help friends. Never 
has a country contributed more to health care, to education, to 
industrialization than the United States of America. The United States 
of America does not deserve what occurred, what has happened. But the 
United States of America must accept the fact that it has happened and 
that the United States of America must respond with a

[[Page H7418]]

 horrible, horrible sword, because anything short of it will make you 
think of what Winston Churchill said, and, that is, the only thing 
worse than war is to lose it. For our generation and for all future 
generations, we cannot afford to lose this war.

                          ____________________