Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2005

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2005 -- (House of Representatives - June 18, 2004)

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Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Chairman, before I begin, I just want to say I am perplexed by the notion that we should leave this contract in place because Accenture will hire Americans to do the work. My assumption is that the two American companies who stay here and pay taxes would do the very same.

I thank the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro) for offering this amendment to stop this $10 billion government contract to Accenture. I do not have to explain to anybody in this room why this practice that we have here I think makes no sense at all. A lot of the American companies have decided to evade their Federal tax responsibilities. If you follow this debate, maybe they should all go. It seems it is trying to give us some idea that that is better for us.

But adding insult to injury, this Federal Government turns around and gives billions of dollars worth of contracts to those very companies who will not pay their share.

Corporate expatriates, as my colleagues know, cost us the $5 billion. And when they got this contract, as a member of the Committee on Homeland Security, I was both outraged and flabbergasted to learn that they were going to be responsible for launching the US-VISIT program at our 50 busiest land borders. One of them is just outside my district, in Buffalo, the Peace Bridge.

What do you think my constituents said to me when they learned the company responsible for securing the border, a company funded by their tax dollars, does not pay taxes itself? That the very company that was going to have the important responsibility of tracking foreign visitors is in itself a foreign visitor?

Not only is the contract an insult, it flew in the face of congressional intent. In July of 2002, the House passed an amendment sponsored by the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro) to prohibit the Department from awarding contracts to corporate expatriates. Unfortunately, it could not block the companies already moving to Bermuda, but we have been trying to close those loopholes.

Last year, I offered an amendment to Project BioShield that would have barred expatriate corporations from receiving $5 billion worth of contracts with the Department of Homeland Security, but it was voted down along party lines. But this week we achieve a partial victory.

The House Committee on Rules of which I am a member granted protection to part of the amendment offered by the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro) and the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Berry) that would close the loopholes in homeland security contracting ban, and the amendment easily passed the Committee on Appropriations.

As a long-time member of the Committee on Rules, I can tell my colleagues that is no small feat. As many of us joke, we should probably put a sign above the door to the Committee on Rules room like that hung above the gates of hell in "Dante's Inferno" that says, "All hope abandon, ye who enter here!"

It is no secret that the Committee on Rules is used by the Republicans to kill amendments before they can reach the floor for debate and to substantially restrict debate on legislation having a vast impact on this public.

But 2 days ago a miracle occurred, and we were able to protect the loophole provision on the Delauro-Berry amendment, but this fight is not over.

It does not make any sense, and America knows it. What in the world are we doing here? We are reading every day of the giveaway contract, the no-bid contract to Halliburton that is causing us so much harm and delivering no goods in Iraq, and then we sit here in this Congress and protect the giving of a contract to a corporation that has refused to pay its American taxes. Will my colleagues think about that? They bid against two companies staying here, good corporate American citizens who are at a disadvantage because the company who got the contract does not have to pay those taxes.

It is an outrage, and I think that today we will show that this House of Representatives believes that it is an outrage. I agree with what my colleagues said before: if this bill would ever be allowed by the Committee on Rules to come here for a full debate and vote, we would really show America that most people in this Congress do not like what the leadership is foisting on us.

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