[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 2]
[House]
[Page 2200]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         UNILATERAL DISARMAMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, we leave today for the President's Day 
Recess. We leave at a time where we have our troops committed in Iraq, 
we have our troops committed in Afghanistan, where, in the last 48 
hours there have been reports that radical Islamists have perhaps been 
plotting an attack to assassinate the President of the Philippines, 
where al Qaeda in Iraq has said that they are going to launch new 
attacks or additional attacks against Israel, against Jerusalem, where 
there have been arrests in Denmark of individuals perhaps planning to 
assassinate, murder the cartoonists, their declaration of war by 
Hezbollah.
  And we're going back home without extending the Protect America Act. 
It's unilateral disarmament. The head of our intelligence community has 
said that the Protect America Act, that the authorities provided under 
FISA have been the tip of the spear in keeping America safe.
  But it is not only about keeping America safe, because the 
information, the intelligence that we have gathered under the Protect 
America Act, under FISA, over the last 6 years have kept America safe, 
but has also enabled us to identify threats and potential attacks 
against our allies.
  And what this now does, this unilateral disarmament, means that an 
important tool in keeping America safe and our allies safe expires on 
Saturday night.
  If you take a look at what's happened here, it's the day after 
September 11. The President, meeting with his national security team, 
they're looking for ways to identify exactly what the other threats are 
against the United States, what the capabilities of al Qaeda are. They 
come back with some suggestions and ideas, one of which is to use our 
telecommunications folks, perhaps, and others, to get information and 
insights into al Qaeda and to radical jihadists.
  Members of Congress are brought in. The current Speaker of the House 
was briefed four times, I believe, within the first 8 months in terms 
of what we were going to do, what we expected to collect and how that 
would keep us safe. And today, these folks are thrown under the bus.
  This unilateral disarmament makes America less safe. The President 
has said, I'm willing to stay until Congress completes its work. I'm 
willing to postpone or delay a trip to Africa that's been in the 
planning stages for a long time so that Congress can complete its work. 
I'm willing to work with Congress to make that happen.
  The Senate did their job. Senator Rockefeller was being briefed at 
the same time, 6 years ago, that the current Speaker of the House was 
briefed. He recognizes the responsibility that they have and that the 
Senate has to making sure that America keeps these tools in the hands 
of our intelligence community. They did the right thing. 
Overwhelmingly, the other body passed a bill that keeps America safe, 
bipartisan, protecting those who helped our government to stay, to put 
in place the mechanisms to keep us safe over the last 6 years.
  And now, the House walks away from this for the next 12 days. And 
each day that we are gone, our ability to monitor radical jihadists and 
the threats to the United States begins to erode just a little bit each 
and every day. But every time we identify potentially a new threat to 
the United States, we need to go back through a cumbersome process, one 
that ties the hands of our intelligence community. As al Qaeda and 
radical jihadists have evolved, and they're becoming more coordinated 
and more effective in planning attacks against the United States, we're 
moving back and we're degrading and we are unilaterally disarming.
  It is a disappointment and a disgrace that this House is leaving 
today without finishing this business.

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