[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 75 (Tuesday, May 20, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H4336-H4337]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         THE TEXAS LEGISLATURE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, at the beginning of this year, as the Texas 
legislature convened, it faced, and continues to face, some truly 
significant problems: a budgetary crisis; proposals to drop 250,000 
children from the Children's Health Insurance Program, so that their 
mothers will be faced with the crisis of trying to decide how to handle 
an illness and perhaps let it go until they have to go to the emergency 
room; proposals to stop the publication of new textbooks; in one school 
district after another, a freeze on the hiring of new teachers.
  With all of these problems, it is understandable that the Republican 
leadership of the State early on expressed a reluctance to take up the 
question of redistricting. One statewide Republican figure referred to 
redistricting as like having the flu. I do not think that he envisioned 
that it was the lethal kind that Texas had last week.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, fast forward several months to last week, and we 
find redistricting at the center of a struggle where Democrats are 
working in Ardmore, Oklahoma, and Republicans are twiddling their 
thumbs under the Capitol dome in Austin. How did this happen? Well, it 
happened very directly as expressed by our majority leader, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), to The Washington Post when asked why 
they were doing redistricting. He said, ``I'm the majority leader and I 
want more votes.'' He was very direct about it. Not unlike his answer 
when questioned about lighting up his cigar in a Federal building, and 
he said, ``I am the Federal Government,'' when questioned about this 
apparent violation of the rules for operation of Federal buildings here 
in Washington.

[[Page H4337]]

  The gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) is willing to cut however many 
communities he needs to cut in Texas, to split up communities that have 
been together since the beginning of our State, if that is what it 
takes to get him more votes. The question that several of my colleagues 
have been asking throughout Washington today is whether there has been 
a going over the limits with reference to using Federal resources in 
order to further that political agenda. And the reason those questions 
were raised were comments from Mr. DeLay: his indication that he had a 
former Justice Department official working on it in his office; that he 
had a United States Attorney working on it in Texas; that he thought 
the FBI and the U.S. marshals ought to be pulled into this.
  Well, where are we today? Our colleague, the gentleman from Texas 
(Mr. Turner), the ranking Democrat on the Select Committee on Homeland 
Security, this morning sought to get the information about whether the 
Homeland Security Department had been used for political purposes. He 
was stonewalled. This afternoon, our colleague, the gentlewoman from 
Houston, Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee), sought to get similar information 
from the Justice Department. She also was unable to get an answer. And 
the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) has been strangely quiet.
  The security level of our Nation, the danger to our families, goes 
up. Comments from Mr. DeLay? They go down.
  I think the public has a right to know whatever it is that they are 
so determined to cover up. If this was merely a routine law enforcement 
request, they do not need an inspector general. Just release the tapes 
and the other related documents so that everyone can see. Instead, they 
have ducked and dodged and tried to assign the investigation to a 
political functionary.
  This weekend, the latest chapter in all of this. Instead of 
responding directly to a communication from 16 Members of Congress to 
release these documents, we got excerpts of tapes. We got an indication 
that a gentleman named Clark Kent Irvin was going to be the inspector 
general who would tidy all this up, investigate it, and give us a fair 
and complete report as to whether anything had gone amiss. And the 
Department of Homeland Security indicated in comments to several 
newspapers around the country that they were mighty proud of Clark. 
They thought he could do a really good job of this and pointed to his 
recent work in service to this administration.
  What they did not point out was that Mr. Irvin is a perennial 
Republican candidate, having run for Congress and tried to become a 
member of the delegation of the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay); 
having run in what later was an aborted race for the Houston City 
Council; having run for State representative; and having failed in 
these several runs for elective office, then began to take a series of 
Republican patronage jobs.
  To his credit, after inquires from the press yesterday and another 
letter that a number of us sent from the Texas delegation, Mr. Irvin 
has withdrawn himself from the investigation.

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