[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 2]
[House]
[Page 2201]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      THE WHITE FLAG OF SURRENDER?

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POE. Mr. Speaker, it's 4:14 p.m. on the 14th day of the second 
month of this year. This House is basically empty except for a few of 
us. Everyone has gone home.
  We found time today to do important business for the people of the 
country. I have some of the bills that we passed today. One of those 
was that we had the time to vote after debate on regulating insects, 
roaches, fungus, and rats in the United States. Oh, such an important 
piece of legislation that the House of Representatives debated and 
voted on.
  But while we had the time to vote on these important issues of 
regulating the rats and roaches and fungi in the United States, we 
didn't take the time to protect the American people from those people 
throughout the world who want to kill us, who want to do harm to us and 
our families. And not to America only, but to all freedom countries 
throughout the world.
  Because we didn't have time to work on the Protect America Act, a 
bill that does exactly what it says, Mr. Speaker, it protects America. 
It protects America from terrorists. And one of those ways is being 
able to eavesdrop into conversations when one terrorist overseas talks 
to another terrorist overseas, amending the FISA, the Foreign 
Intelligence Surveillance, Act. But, oh, we didn't have time to do 
that.
  Mr. Speaker, it troubles me because has the House of Representatives, 
without firing a shot, raised the ``white flag of surrender'' to those 
people who wish to do us harm? The head of the National Intelligence 
Service has told us that 50 percent of the intelligence that they 
attained is through FISA. And yet we have cut off that resource by 
failing to vote on that, failing debate on that. But yet we had time to 
talk about roaches, rats, and fungi.
  Mr. Speaker, this ought not to be. Under FISA, we have been able to 
prevent crimes from being occurred against the United States. One of 
those was the bombing of the Brooklyn Bridge, another was the bombing 
of Fort Dix in New Jersey. Those were prevented because of FISA, 
because we had the intelligence, because we had the eavesdropping, the 
legal eavesdropping capability.
  Mr. Speaker, the House of Representatives has not done a service to 
the people of the United States by failing to debate this issue and at 
least have an argument, a lively debate, and then vote on it to protect 
the United States. The people of the United States deserve better from 
us. Our job is to protect America through legislation. And, Mr. 
Speaker, I think we have not done that today because we are off doing 
other things.
  So I hope that I am proven wrong by history that this did not hurt 
the United States down the road for failing to act on this important 
legislation. And it's important that the House come back as soon as 
possible and deal with the issue of protecting America first and making 
sure that we know what they're saying throughout the world when they 
want to do us harm, because the people we fight, the war we fight 
against are people who will do anything to get their way and their 
radical beliefs including killing children and women and the innocents 
and car bombs and anyone else that gets in their way.
  And there is probably joy throughout the terrorist cells in the world 
that the United States Congress did not do its duty today.
  And, Mr. Speaker, that's just the way it is.

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