trade is not a political issue; trade is an economic issue. The economics of this agreement are such that Peru, if you voted for the Andean trade preference, already has access to our markets without regard to tariffs and duty. This is the…

Our colleague and my friend, Mr. Wilson of South Carolina, introduced this resolution that seeks to recognize the significance of the festival of Diwali. Diwali is celebrated as victory of good over evil for some, and as a remembrance of…

North Korea is quite literally, as we know from satellite images, one of the darkest places on Earth. One can see that when these images are taken from space at night. It has an underdeveloped economy which cannot supply even the most…

Let me thank Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee for introducing this resolution, which condemns the recent vicious and deadly assault on African Union forces. On September 29, 2007, an estimated 1,000 members of a heavily armed group of…

The genocide in Darfur has taken a horrific toll on that region. Well over 60 percent of the villages have been destroyed, 2 million people displaced, 400,000 killed, and 200,000 driven into refugee camps in neighboring Chad. Thanks to the…

The point of this is that our soldiers, sailors, airmen, guardsmen, marines, are not dying in the name of the Republican Conference or the Democratic Caucus. They're dying in the name of the United States of America. We owe them a unified…

I don't have or didn't have a closer friend in Congress than Paul Gillmor. He was not only an extraordinarily talented individual who made people comfortable around him, but he also had a leadership quality that I observed up close and…

I understand this or any administration's defensive posture when it comes to criticism of policy. And I understand the members of his party feeling the need to defend it. This interim report, ordinarily, I would be one who would wait until…

That is according to the GAO. There were six that were compliant with the Federal management, financial management law. Commerce, Labor, the EPA, the National Science Foundation, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Social Security…

NATO is probably arguably one of the most important organizations now in this post-cold war period. NATO, our allies in Europe and Canada, have presently almost 17,000 troops on the ground in Kosovo and 35,000 in Afghanistan. The alliance…

I was on active duty during the Vietnam years. The problem here is not the troops; the problem is the competency of the civilian leadership that has gotten us into this mess. This resolution supports our troops and calls for a different…

I come here this morning with the Congressional Roll Call Golf Cup here. We have Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper here, which sponsors baseball games and football and basketball, and we have a Congressional Ryder Cup golf competition…

You are talking about OPEC and the price of gasoline. Gasoline in July was $3-plus a gallon. Can you name one thing that has changed between July and now as it relates to the world situation that would make gasoline come down? The…

Again, this is not a political statement. I can't imagine the most partisan person in the world saying that this is good government, when we have money leaving here through a fire hose and nobody asking them where it is going or what…

I want to talk about the government of the United States from a business standpoint, because the Congress of the United States is failing the constituents, the shareholders of our country. Every day, to whoever is watching C-SPAN, every…

According to the GAO in fiscal year ending 2004, 16 of 23 Federal agencies, and 19 of 24 in fiscal year ending 2005, according to the GAO, couldn't produce a clean audit. I wish I had made this up, but I didn't. It would be easier to…

I thank Mr. Cardin and I appreciate this time. I wanted to come and speak on this because I voted against this agreement on the Ways and Means Committee when it was reported out a couple, 3 weeks ago. I did so out of sheer frustration and…

If you will yield on just that point, here is what the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security, which is where FEMA is now, said in regard to their financial statements. ``Unfortunately, the Department made…

Thank you, Mr. Ross, and I am delighted to be here and delighted that this hour is being devoted basically to common sense. You know, when I was growing up in Tennessee, my parents basically taught me three things about financial…

Let me tell you about another bill that our Blue Dog friend, Dennis Cardoza, has. And we passed the Sarbanes Oxley Act about holding the CEOs of all of these major corporations accountable. Dennis has a bill that says, basically, if a…

Well, I am going to have to go, but I want to thank you all again for letting an old guy like me pretend I am 30-something again. It is a real thrill to do that, because your generation, I have two children in their 30s, and I have two…

You can look around. I could hit a driver and a 3-wood most of these places. They could start right here in this town just trying to find out what did you do with the money we gave you.

Well, I thank you, you fellas. The 30-something Group is rendering great service to our country. It is about the only way I know to turn the clock back and be youthful again is to associate with the 30-something hour. I want to speak for…

If you add Hong Kong, that is over $300 billion that China controls of our paper.

people say all the time why can't government run more like a business? As I said earlier, no business would tolerate what we are tolerating here with this abdication of Congress' responsibility to keep up with the money. The very least the…