[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 14571]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          A PARODY OF CONGRESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, something odd has happened. There are a lot 
of odd things that happen around here, but the Republican Web site, the 
one that they use for scheduling the weekly activities of Congress, has 
been hacked by writers for the John Stewart Show, and they don't seem 
to mind. So we are going to be a parody of Congress this week instead 
of a real Congress this week, despite the fact that we are borrowing 
$1.4 billion a day to run the government, we are running a $2 billion a 
day trade deficit, average families haven't seen their wages go up in 5 
years, and we are raining tax cuts on the wealthy.
  There are a few real things that we could deal with that the American 
people are concerned about. Maybe high gas prices. No, those things are 
not on the agenda. We have the faux agenda for Congress, which is 
designed purely for either entertainment purposes or for political 
purposes.
  Well, what are we doing? We are taking up an amendment to ban the 
threat of gay marriage. Now, let's see. The Senate didn't pass it.

                              {time}  1945

  That means it is not going forward. But, nonetheless, the House is 
going to use valuable time to vote on banning the threat of gay 
marriage even though we know that the constitutional amendment cannot 
move forward because the Senate has already disapproved this venture.
  But it is good for the ratings, entertainment value. The John Stewart 
writers thought it would be fun to bring that up in the House. So we 
are going to bring it up. Then we are going to do another thing here 
called ``court stripping.'' We are going to say there are only two and 
a half branches of Congress, or maybe one and a half, the President and 
half a Congress, and the judiciary only if they are pets of the 
President and the Congress.
  That is, no judge will be allowed to hear a case challenging the 
Pledge of Allegiance. Now, no judge has found the Pledge of Allegiance 
unconstitutional. Quite the opposite, they have found that the use of 
the words ``under God'' is de minimis in the Pledge and have upheld its 
use.
  But the Republicans, they do not even want judges to hear those cases 
any more and reject those claims any more, because they think that this 
might provide entertainment value or excite some strange people in the 
Republican base. So we will spend a day on court stripping instead of 
dealing with high-energy prices.
  Then we are going to take up two phony bills on a serious issue, stem 
cell research, could have tremendous benefits for the American people. 
The President is opposed to stem cells, the Republicans are opposed to 
stem cell research. The United States is falling behind the whole rest 
of the world.
  Americans will have to go overseas to get procedures that have been 
developed by stem cell research that could cure Parkinson's or other 
debilitating diseases, because the Republican right wing does not want 
research on using stem cells, but the American public does want that 
research.
  So we are going to take up two fake bills, two pretend bills. We are 
going to ban a practice that is not happening called fetal farming, and 
everybody will probably vote for that, and then we are going to 
authorize them to do what they can already on the President's lame 
program that is not working and is having America fall behind on stem 
cell research. So you see, we are really for stem cell research.
  Well, not really, because the lines they are using are all corrupted 
and it is not going anywhere. And then the real bill, the real 
compromise bill that passed the House, it passed the United States 
House of Representatives, is going to probably pass the Senate this 
week. It will go to the President and he will veto it.
  So in order to give them political cover or to provide entertainment 
value, they will vote on two fake stem cell bills, and then vote to 
support the President in vetoing the real stem cell bill that could 
provide tremendous advances in research for the American people.
  So this is a sort of play Congress week. Maybe it was not the Stewart 
writers, maybe it was Colbert who was going through interviewing 
Members of Congress, and he might have gotten some of the data there.
  But in any case, instead of dealing with very real problems that are 
confronting Americans, instead of dealing with world crises, instead of 
dealing with high energy prices, growing debt, stagnant wages, you 
know, access to better education for our kids, health care, high-cost 
pharmaceuticals, adequately funding veterans benefits, no, none of that 
is on the schedule this week.
  This week we do not have time for those things because we are playing 
Congress taking up bills that are not going anywhere, or that are 
pretend bills that will go somewhere to cover up the fact that they are 
killing the real bill that would do something useful and also that, you 
know, we are taking up constitutional amendments that are not going to 
pass. Hooray for the Republican majority.

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