Mr. Speaker, the other side and the President have a number of times said that this is an anticonsumer bill. Mr. Speaker, this is a proconsumer bill. This bill is very fair to those who may experience harm as a result of a defective…

Mr. Chairman, the important thing to note here is that only in places where housing is widely available do we allow a grower to issue a housing allowance instead of to provide the housing itself. That is only a matter of flexibility, not…

Mr. Chairman, as a Committee on Agriculture member, I too have heard the concerns of agriculture employers who call the current H-2A guest worker program unworkable and thus understand that my colleagues want to give the growers a program…

I respect that, but, reclaiming my time, let me say two things. First of all, given the fact, as we have heard all day here, that there is a need for workers, those workers are going to find employment. Second, if you have already entered…

the difference between the current H-2A program and the Pombo amendment is that the H-2A program requires an independent third party to certify whether there is a need for the workers. That is the big objection to the earlier legislation…

Mr. Chairman, the fact of the matter is, as the gentleman well knows, we put a cap on this program to make sure that there was a limitation because of the fact that with only 17,000 using it right now, we know that there are far more…

Mr. Chairman, as he noted, I did practice immigration law, am proud of the fact I helped people from more than 70 countries immigrate to the United States during my career as an immigration lawyer, all law-abiding citizens and hard…

One would think that the law would already provide that if somebody is illegally in this country, they would not be entitled to receive Government benefits; that they would, instead, once known, be required to depart from the country…

Mr. Speaker, this is an effort on our part to open the Government back up to show the President and the American people that we are doing everything possible to negotiate in good faith, while moving forward on our commitment to finally…

I also compliment the gentleman from California [Mr. Bono] for this fine piece of legislation that will simply give greater assurance to people participating in statewide referendums that they are not going to be overturned by a single…

last week the Democratic leadership sat outside in the rain moaning and groaning and grandstanding for the television cameras about the Republican plan to preserve and strengthen Medicare and increase spending on Medicare. What do others…

this bill does not apply to proposition 187. My State of Virginia does not have initiatives, it just has referendums. But the State legislature can put a referendum on the ballot, millions of people can take time to go to the polls. The…

20 cents to empower the parents of this country to do what every one of them does with their children today when they ask if they can go to a movie theater, give them a limited number of choices to help them make decisions that they cannot…

I think the National Trust for Historic Preservation should make a choice. They should either make the decision that they are going to simply be involved in preserving individual historic properties, in which case there may be an argument…

The people of the State of Virginia, through their elected representatives, have the right to decide this issue. We in the Federal Government should not be funding a rogue organization that is going to go in and offer a contrary view to…

Also look at the parallel that we talked about a moment ago between the plaintiff who has been concerned about--say it is a self-employed individual, been concerned about his family, has bought insurance for the family for years, compared…

In fact what we are saying here is this is a case where liability has already been established on the part of the defendant. The defendant is the responsible party, the one who has caused the harm and now gets to say, hey, don't worry…

I have no dispute whatsoever that a plaintiff should not be able to double dip, if you will, but I think that should be taken outside the courtroom. This argument that somehow insurance should be brought into the case is exactly comparable…

Give me a big award. The one who has been responsible, then the defendant gets to come in and say, ``Don't worry about him because his medical bills are being paid by someone else,'' and that contravenes public policy.

How would that same defendant like to be put in the situation where the plaintiff said, ``I've got a harm here, it's been established, don't worry about how much you give me because this defendant has X number of millions of dollars in…

But the point is here that if we take away the mechanism that has been set up in this bill, we will have eliminated all of the incentives we created to settle cases, all of the incentives we have created to not bring frivolous, fraudulent…

Just a point of winning a law suit and still being required to pay attorney's fees, this would not apply to any of these actions, would it not, because these are all Federal question issues and would not come up under the modified losers…

When you take that in all cases and then ask the judge to give more, the history with rule XI sanctions is that it is very, very, very rarely done. And the attorneys know it, and they do not worry about rule XI sanctions because they know…

Reclaiming my time, the representative of the Girl Scouts for the Washington District Council told me and a number of other Members of Congress and others personally that that was the fact. I am not representing that as something I know…

However, Mr. Speaker, I must rise in opposition to this motion to recommit, because it will return us to the situation we gave right now. It will eliminate the opportunity we have to truly say that when you go into Federal court, you have…