Walter B. Jones: “I want to report to the staff that I will not take the full hour. That I am sure is good news because they work awfully…”

“I want to report to the staff that I will not take the full hour. That I am sure is good news because they work awfully hard, and many times the staff is here at 11:00 at night. I will keep my word to be not much longer than 20 minutes. Mr. Speaker, I am on the floor again, I have been every week for the last month, talking about an issue that, to me, if we are talking about September 11, we are talking about the war on terrorism, we are talking about our troops in Afghanistan. Part of the reason they are there is to protect our freedom. There is no question about it, and our national security. The reason I come to the floor is because a year or so ago it was brought to my attention by a minister in my District that he was prohibited from talking about a political issue or candidate during the 2000 election in the months of September and October. So I took it upon myself to, along with my staff, to research this issue, and I found out that in 1954 Lyndon Baines Johnson had the H.L. Hunt family opposed to his reelection, and the H.L. Hunt family had established two 501(c)(3) think tanks. So Johnson, being the majority leader and a very powerful man, and I think very arrogant man quite frankly, but anyway that is my opinion. He put an amendment on the revenue bill that was going through the Senate that was never debated, no debate, and basically what this debate said that if a company is a 501(c)(3) then they may not have political speech.”