I wore this bracelet for 9 months, since September 11. This bracelet was given me by the widow of Ray Downing, one of my best friends. Ray Downing took me through the World Trade Center in 1991 to give me lessons that I should learn to…

We are here tonight, I hope, to help the people who are our first responders. We were not here to help Brookings Institution. We are not here to help The Washington Post. We are not here to help the members of the Committee on the…

I want to say one more thing to my colleagues on the other side. This is my 16th year in this body, and I know my colleagues are upset about this rule and about this process. I guess I have seen this before. It was my first term in…

here is the chart, the unclassified chart of what special forces command had 1 year before 9-11. Interesting. The entire al Qaeda network is identified in a graphic chart with all the linkages to all the terrorist groups around the world…

I will respond to those critics of President Bush who have taken unfair shots at him over the 9-11 situation, and will factually refute what people like the minority leader, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt), have said publicly…

I want to start off again by thanking our chairman and our ranking member, two of the great patriots of this institution, this country, for their outstanding work in bringing us a defense bill that all of us can get behind. It is not a…

Mr. Chairman, this is a historic day in the House of Representatives as we consider an amendment that is bipartisan, co-sponsored by my colleagues the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Thornberry), the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews), the…

First of all, Mr. Chairman, we are not talking about a new nuclear weapon. That is not the discussion here. We are talking about an attempt to repackage an existing nuclear weapon for a new threat that we have to deal with. We know the…

Mr. Chairman, we have just completed almost an hour's worth of work of starting a new era in our relationship with Russia on nuclear weapons. It has been bold. It has been bipartisan. It has been bilateral. We have shown, without any…

this is a 1980s amendment; Ronald Reagan was President. The term ``Stars Wars'' is again resurrecting itself. It has no relevancy to what we are doing today. This is not a discussion of whether or not we are going to deploy a strategic…

this is the toughest vote that I have made in my 16 years in Congress, because I campaigned for this President and made 200 speeches on his behalf in 25 States and raised a significant amount of money. I do not like to stand up here and…

I reluctantly rise to discuss an issue that troubles me greatly. For the past 16 years that I have served in this body I have tried to focus attention on the plight of the Nation's fire and emergency service providers. Across this country…

I can tell you what I am going to do, I will vote in favor of it and I encourage other people who have been supportive of Shays-Meehan to do the same thing because this is not what we were led to believe. I am voting ``yes.''

I did not say that this was added in last night. I said this was not in the Senate bill. That is what I said. And that has, in fact, been said by both sides. I was told that this bill was identical to what the Senate passed and that is in…

I am confused and I am troubled. I have supported Shays-Meehan, and I have opposed almost all of the amendments because I have been told this is a very carefully crafted compromise. Now I find out late last night we have put this provision…

I am proud that this year, even though we had some terrible tragedies here in our country, that we are finally recognizing the true heroes in America. Because they are not in Hollywood, they are not on our ball fields, they are not in our…

Mr. Speaker, I would ask our colleagues to read the text of the material that is in this special order, the additions that we have supplied, and get a full sense of understanding of what 11 Members of Congress did over the past 5 days. We…

This entire document, which we have briefed to the administration, and which I have given to Senator Levin and Senator Lugar and have talked to Senator Biden about on the phone, will be presented to our colleagues in a formal context after…

this is a bill that I hope our colleagues will support. The 11 members of our delegation will be the original bipartisan sponsors of this bill. We have not yet dropped it. But it will be, in fact, the first time that the parliaments and…

I would just add that as we found out that Turkey is a 99 percent Muslim state, yet it is 99 percent behind America and the allies in this effort. That proves the point that President Bush and all of us have been making. This is not a war…

I rise in an attempt to try to set the record straight on some of the facts for those who have spent the time attending all the classified hearings and briefings and asking the questions of both the intelligence community and the members…

tonight I rise to applaud those colleagues of ours who will join me tomorrow, equally divided between both sides of the aisle. Ten of our colleagues will join me as we travel to Moscow. The purpose of our trip is to lay the foundation for…

This is truly a bill that I think reflects the need for this Congress to move forward aggressively in supporting our defense in a way that we perhaps have not done over the past several years. I am ecstatic that we have struck a balance…

Congress authorized the original National Defense Features (NDF) program in the mid-1990s in response to a report by the Department of Defense describing a shortage of sealift capacity during military contingencies. The NDF program was…

I rise today to make some announcements to our colleagues. First of all, our colleagues can call my office today to cosponsor a Declaration of War Resolution that I have prepared which will be introduced within the next several days. This…