[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 58 (Thursday, May 5, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H2995-H2997]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
{time} 1200
PERSONAL PRIVILEGE
Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I seek recognition on a question of personal
privilege pursuant to rule IX of the rules of the House. I have placed
at the desk the documentation on which this question is based.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaTourette). On the basis of House
Report 109-51 and certain media coverage thereof, the gentleman may
rise to a question of personal privilege under rule IX.
The gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler) is recognized for 1 hour.
Parliamentary Inquiry
Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.
[[Page H2996]]
Have the corrections or the supplemental report to the committee
report been filed yet?
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The supplemental report authorized by
section 2 of House Resolution 258 has been filed.
Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, the basis of my question of personal privilege concerns
the manner in which amendments I offered during the Committee on the
Judiciary's consideration of H.R. 748 on April 13, 2005, were
characterized in the committee's report on that legislation, House
Report 109-51.
Specifically, the report, in the section required under clause 3(b)
of rule XIII of the rules of the House reporting the votes of the
committee described my amendments in a manner that denigrated my
``rights, reputation, and conduct . . . in [my] representative capacity
. . . '' within the meaning of clause 1 of rule IX.
The language in question appears on pages 45 and 46 of the committee
report, and it mischaracterizes my amendments in a manner that does not
reflect the actual content of the amendments nor the actual intent of
those amendments. In fact, it uses legislation to describe my
legislative actions that is pejorative and inflammatory and that is
highly damaging to my reputation.
It is with great sadness and regret that I come to the floor today. I
have never previously in my 12 years as a Member of this House, nor in
my quarter century representing the people of New York, had the need to
rise on a personal privilege. I have never had my reputation, or my
legislative efforts, so terrible maligned in an official record of any
legislative body in which I have served.
It is my hope that this is the last time I will ever need to claim
the floor in a question of personal privilege. I would observe that the
filing a few minutes ago of the supplemental report to the Committee on
the Judiciary report is a tacit acknowledgment of the inaccuracy and
untruthfulness of the original report and its reputation in the public
domain, and renders much of what was said in its defense in the
Committee on Rules and on the floor, as the saying goes,
``inoperative.''
I commend the chairman for correcting the record and hope that with
this correction of the slanderous report language, this unfortunate
chapter can be brought to a close.
While I would have hoped that this correction would have been
accompanied by an apology and by an acknowledgment that this report was
a violation of the tradition and norms of the House, that is, perhaps,
in the regrettably poisonous atmosphere of the present day,
unobtainable. I regret that things have reached such an unfortunate
state.
This situation is especially sad because it involves the Committee on
the Judiciary's official report on this bill, which contained false and
misleading, indeed libelous, descriptions of the amendments I and my
colleagues offered in committee in good faith, and with the intent of
protecting children and families in terrible situations.
Those characterizations came in the section of the report, required
by the rules, that simply requires an accurate report of all recorded
votes.
There are many places in committee reports where commentary is
appropriate. Both the majority and the minority have the opportunity in
the report to make their cases, and very much to the credit of the
gentleman from Wisconsin (Chairman Sensenbrenner) the Committee on the
Judiciary reports also contain a transcript of the markup.
What has never been done, and I am not aware of the majority on any
committee having so abused its power, is to distort the content of the
amendments in the section reserved for reporting votes.
Every Member of this House sits on committees; every Member knows
what a report looks like, and every Member of this House knows this was
an aberration and that it was wrong.
I do not believe it is necessary to repeat the report language that
gave rise to this point of personal privilege. The Chair has the
offending language, and it has been plastered all over the Record, the
press, and Web logs. I feel no need to repeat it. Enough damage has
already been done.
To place this report, and the slanderous language it used in context,
the last time the Committee on the Judiciary reported a version of the
same bill, the report said: ``An amendment was offered by Mr. Nadler
prohibiting H.R. 476 from applying `with respect to conduct by a
grandparent or adult sibling of the minor.' '' Same amendment, same
committee, different year.
Earlier versions of this bill have been reported by the Committee on
the Judiciary on three prior occasions, going to 1998. In no case have
any of my amendments been described in the inaccurate and pejorative
fashion they were in this year's committee report.
The Committee on Rules described the same amendment in the following
manner when it reported it to the floor: ``Adds to the exceptions to
the offense of transporting minors for the purpose of obtaining an
illegal abortion grandparents of the minor and members of the clergy.''
Even the Republican Study Committee, the voice of some of the most
conservative of our colleagues, described the amendment this way: ``The
amendment allows a grandparent of the minor or a clergy person to bring
pregnant minors across State lines for abortions.'' These are factual
descriptions of the amendment. They are nonargumentative factual
descriptions as the rules call for.
In fact, neither the bill itself nor the amendments contained the
offensive terms used in the committee report to describe my amendments.
No member of the committee described my amendments in this libelous
manner at any time during the debate. Nobody in the majority, none of
the Republicans in opposing my amendments in committee debate said that
they contained the material which the committee report libelously says
they do. As the transcript clearly shows, the transcript contained in
the committee's report appearing on page 58 to 120 will clearly show.
It is regrettable that even in filing the supplemental report, the
majority felt the need to restate the slander, but this time in the
section reserved for majority views. The majority, however, is entitled
to its views, even if they are not factually based; and the appropriate
place to express them is in debate and in documents reserved for
expressing their views, such as the majority view section of the
committee report.
The minority has a similar right in debate and in its dissenting
views, and I would not expect the majority to tell us what views we
should have or how to express them.
Not abusing the power the majority has over the contents and the
filing of the report, which the minority does not get to see until it
is filed, is really based on nothing more than the honor system.
Unfortunately, in this system, the honor system failed.
This abuse of power of mischaracterizing and slandering the
amendments and the Members who offered them in the section of the
report reserved for simply reporting amendments and the votes thereon,
could not be allowed to stand or there would have been no end to it.
This is not about party, nor is it about a bill, nor about an
amendment, nor even about the underlying issue. It is about the
``rights, reputation and conduct of Members, delegates or the resident
commissioner, individually, in their representative capacity only.''
When the majority abuses its power to attack the reputation of Member
or Members, as it did in this case, the House must act to correct the
injustice. The supplemental report filed by the majority is an
important step in that direction, and I thank the chairman for agreeing
to file the correction.
We have strayed far from the customary comity and fair play to which
this House has long adhered. That is no way to represent our views to
the voters of this country. The voters have every right to expect us to
fight for our beliefs, to represent them vigorously, and to speak out
in clear terms on the important issues of the day.
But, Mr. Speaker, there are limits. When Members of this House
transgress those limits, we fail the people who sent us here and we
fail the institution in which we are honored to serve. We are elected
to 2-year terms. The office does not belong to us, but to the people.
We are mere custodians of
[[Page H2997]]
the office. I hope that, in our conduct, we can prove ourselves good
and responsible stewards of this public trust.
It is my sincere hope that now that the correction has been filed and
the slander abated, this will be the last time any Member has the
unpleasant duty of rising in this House to defend his or her reputation
and the traditions of this institution. I hope that this single
aberration will be remembered as just that: a single aberration.
Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman
from Virginia (Mr. Scott).
(Mr. SCOTT of Virginia asked and was given permission to revise and
extend his remarks, and include extraneous material.)
Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record an
editorial published this morning in the daily newspaper in Norfolk,
Virginia, the Virginian Pilot, on this issue.
[From the Virginia Pilot, May 5, 2005]
A House Divided Against Itself
The mood in certain precincts of Congress has become so
poisonous that people aren't speaking our common language
unless they're accusing political opponents of unspeakable
crimes.
The ``Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act'' would
make it a federal offense to take a minor across a state line
to get an abortion without the consent of her parents, for a
physician to perform such abortions, and allows parents to
sue anybody who does.
Democrats on the Judiciary Committee offered several
amendments that would have limited the law's scope. U.S. Rep.
Bobby Scott, for example, sought to insert this line: ``The
prohibitions of this section do not apply with respect to
conduct by taxicab drivers, bus drivers or others in the
business of professional transport.''
Pretty straightforward, right?
Should the U.S. government prosecute a bus driver because a
girl in one of its seats is traveling to end a pregnancy? No
matter your answer to that question, the congressman's
wording is pretty clear, unless you're a member of the
Judiciary Committee's staff, which managed Scott's amendment
into this:
``Mr. Scott offered an amendment that would have exempted
sexual predators from prosecution if they're taxicab drivers,
bus drivers or others in the business of professional
transport.''
In other words, the staff of a committee on which Scott
serves accused him of trying to protect sexual predators,
arguably a crime in itself.
It is the kind of libel--repeated against two other
Democratic members of the committee--that only nameless,
faceless bureaucrat would dare make. But, significantly, it's
also the kind of power-made mischief that the Republican
leadership felt deserved defense.
The Congress Tuesday evening spent an hour debating a
resolution to require Republicans to change the descriptions,
which are supposed to be, and ordinarily are, written in dry,
neutral language.
That debate was itself illustrative of how deep the
divisions in Congress have become. While the Democrats--
including Scott and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi--talked
about how Republicans abused the truth to score political
points, the majority changed the subject entirely and re-
argued the merits of the abortion bill, which passed the week
before.
``The issue is whether we can trust each other to deal with
each other fairly,'' said Wisconsin Democrat Rep. David Obey,
who had voted for the abortion bill.
In the end, Tuesday's debate was a rancorous parry and
feint, lasted an eternity and came to absolutely nothing. The
resolution to change the descriptions, of course, failed on a
party-line vote.
Still, for 60 minutes, the rudeness that now rules the hall
of the Capitol was on sharp display for all America to see.
``The rewrite says more about the person who wrote it, and
those who defend it, than it does about the amendment
itself,'' Scott said Tuesday.
Scott's right. What is says is nothing kind, and not to be
forgotten.
Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, not seeing the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms.
Jackson-Lee), I thank the chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary
for filing the corrected report, and I yield back the balance of my
time.
____________________