The White Flag of Surrender?
THE WHITE FLAG OF SURRENDER? -- (House of Representatives - February 14, 2008)
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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