from nebraska the state is i have a point of order one of our point of order is as i understand this suspension rule was just amended or written and changed in the last forty five minutes it is my understanding from the votes that we took on the first day of the house that the rules were amended a civility section was added to the rules that said that we would be provided forty eight hours of notice it is my thought up to the desk and asked for a copy of the bill that we will be debating and they i was told that they did not have a copy and the speaker has said that there are copies available for members and i would like to know where the copies are and how many copies are available for the members grossing copy at the desk and for the copies will be made available to members throughout the chamber and of or even be when when will the copies be made available for us currently currently parliamentary require of them being passed out as as we speak mr speaker a parliamentary inquiry on the state his parliamentary inquiry the ruling from the chair in respect to my objection was that based on the rules that were adopted by the house the civility section where we are supposed to be provided forty eight men or forty eight hours not forty eight minutes of notice of any legislation brought to saying that the my majority has to supply forty eight hours notice inquiry as i understand it although the rules package contains a provision that said the majority would provide legislative text to the minority forty eight hours before a vote that is not in fact the rule is that correct a motion to suspend the rules of the gentleman knows any point of order to that effect is there a means by which one of our elementary enquiry gentlemen will state his presence there means by which i can appeal the ruling of the chair you know order to allow the members of the minority the time in the civility clause that is forty eight hours to see the language of this bill which was apparently met it within the last forty five minutes debate coming not points of order and i'm going to object to the continuation of a process that theoretically raises points of order which is debate and not a point of order i don't have a vote stated a parliamentary inquiry i should say to the gentleman from arizona that a motion to suspend the rules is simply to get me given its ordinary meeting meaning in this in this process right now and so the edge of my question is that there is no procedure by which i object to this bill going forward without the forty eight hours promised in the civility provision of the house rules but to begin with i would like to a moment to the chairwoman of the committee and ask just a try to clarify this what is the effective date of the amendment we are considering  part of the reason for the question was an honest inquiry simply because there's been a lot of confusion about the last minute changes which is certainly not customary for a bill taken up on suspension this bill would deprive members of congress of their pensions if they are convicted of certain crimes similar language was included in the ethics and lobbying reform bill passed by the senate last week this is not a new issue this is not the first time the house has generous pension even while serving his prison term in response the house scheduled and voted on h r four zero one one to take away the pensions of members convicted of the offenses listed in the bill it passed three hundred ninety to thirty two in the house but was not taken up in the senate did not become law and restaurant lost and cost he received his full pension incidentally and mail fraud the crime for which m this that behavior recent convictions of some of our former colleagues and published reports implicating a current member in bribery schemes have caused this issue to surface again then as now these prior to its passage in other words mr ross mr ruskin he still would not have been affected by that bill whatever we do today will not deprive any of our convicted former colleagues of their pensions and  won't the pension of the member who might have already engage in criminal activity but has yet to be charged or convicted the supreme court has ruled you simply cannot change the criminal penalty for a crime after it has been committed and apply retroactively this is called ex post facto punishment clearly for headed by the constitution and that is why it is so extremely important to draft the spell properly the congress that originally attempted to do this when it passed the hist act in one nine hundred fifty four in response to the perjury conviction of alger hiss the law applied to a number of offenses but this law after passed after his conviction was written to take away his suspension but was struck down by a federal court and later the congress scaled the law back because it was unmanageable this illustrates again the importance of careful work on bills of not limited to crimes against the state that threaten national security treason espionage sedition etc of course the congress and the act of the house passed legislation on the subject nine hundred ninety six those who have been convicted of listed criminal offense in the interim would not be able to receive pensions in today's action would not be necessary if you all this i have to say mr speaker that i think it is most unfortunate that we are considering this bill under suspension with the last minute changes with limited time for debate and no opportunity to consider alternatives i believe that it is important to look at some of some alternatives the because under this bill a person who commits a heinous crime and has five years of pension credit suffers a minor penalty compared to a person a might commit a minor crime but have twenty years of pension to lose that is not taken care of in this bill and it should be the issue of spots pensions as the chair of the committee mentioned is dealt with in this in this bill but i don't think it's satisfactory i think we should give some guidelines to the office of personnel management in dealing with my fine on all this mr speaker is that this is an important bill that's going to affect potentially affect each and every member of congress i think it should be done with due deliberation and carefulness since i think it's most unfortunate that this bill has become clouded by the hasty effort to get this taken up on suspension with last minute changes not approved previously by the minority i hope this is not an example of what we can expect in the future it's issues certainly more important than naming a post office which is what we normally do in suspension and i hope that this bill when it does pass will come back in conference so that we will be able to fine tune it and conference with the senate and produce of really built a good bill that is worthy of final kansas thank you so much mr speaker i rise today to introduce a bill that will help rebuild the american people's faith in our congress last year a member of this house congressman bob ney praise legislation that would have stripped the pensions of members of congress who are convicted of trading votes for bribes congressman a claim that the bill would hold and i quote would hold members of congress and those they work with to the highest standards in order to ensure that those who abuse the public trust will be dealt with accordingly but that bill never passed for which congressman ney is probably grateful on friday he was sentenced to serve thirty months in federal prison his crime accepting tens of thousands of dollars in luxury vacations sporting tickets and meals from big money lobbyist jack abramoff despite his conviction congressm ney remains eligible to draw a congressional pension and he isn't alone over the last twenty five years as many as twenty politicians convicted of serious offenses have received their congressional pensions the exact amount of their payments vary but the typical payments about forty seven thousand dollars a year that's greater than the average americans total household income and four times the annual earnings of a minimum wage worker why should taxpayers fund comfortable retirement for a crooked congressman the answer of course is that we shouldn't corrupt politicians deserve prison sentences not taxpayer funded pensions mr speaker this house already taken an important first step toward being toward ending congressional corruption on our very first day in congress in session we passed an aggressive ethics package that band members from accepting meals and gifts from lobbyists and we enacted real earmark reform but our work isn't done during my campaign i promised mike my constituents that i would help and big money is control of congress and that promise won't be fulfilled until members can it though except big money bribes cannot still retire at taxpayer expense today i'm proud to introduce h r four seventy six the pension forfeiture act which was strip the members the pensions of members of congress convicted of bribery conspiracy espionage or perjury i'm honored that my three representatives fellow representatives from kansas representative t jury moran and dennis moore are co sponsoring this legislation with me all of us republicans and democrats alike are answering kansas demands to sever the link between money and politicians my father thank you gentlemen will continue unfortunately we cannot now revoke congressman a pension believe me i wish we could but the constitution prohibits us from passing such laws after the fact but we can and we must prevent this from happening again i urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support the pensions forfeiture act i hope that this bill will further deter corruption perhaps when congressmen know that their retirement benefits are on the line they'll think long and hard before committing a federal crime but if some future representative does follow in the footsteps of congressman ney at least kansas taxpayers and the rest of american taxpayers question she has added an amendment to this legislation within the last half hour what was it and what did you intend to do with that amendment i'm sorry the question please you have amended this legislation within the last half hour what was your amendment and what did you seek to do with it integrity felonies not the five under the legislation before us we are missing a key element in this legislation which falls far short of our potential reform reform we know under current law rostenkowski collects after mail fraud traffic can't collect after corruption cunningham collects after bribery and collects after conspiracy but the key story tonight is what is missing in this legislation our house leadership presented a bill which until an hour ago would have exempted one hundred tenth congress from any of these for reform now they would go back with the original session the bill with the new amendment that the congress lady added but this list of felonies fails to include income tax evasion i would ask her why didn't she income tax evasion to the list of felonies under this bill i believe that the bill as intended is the tax the voters has said we need to get something done they did crimes that are included in this bill will go right at the heart of the corruption that's affecting reclaiming my time i would say that we should not provide taxpayer funded pension or someone who is convicted of income tax evasion i yield back the gentleman from california just a couple of seconds that i would like to speak to the speaker who has just spoken he spoke about the amendment to this bill the server nation of perjury this is in the gentleman's bill that he has introduced so i don't know why the his objection to that the democrats about a two additional crimes to this b l m one is that the other one is the conspiracy conspiracy to violate post employment restrictions we've tried to put in this bill to strengthen this bill to additional crimes and so i am concerned that his argument is one that is in his bill that he has introduced at this time  the pension forfeiture at sponsored by my new colleague and good friend congresswoman nancy boy usually mr speaker i pride myself on seeing two sides of an issue but honestly i've looked at i can't find another side on small the amount each dollar that now goes to criminal acts members can be used to fund vital programs at a time when we are challenged with record debt mr speaker i love this institution and it makes me angry that the bad behavior if you had disgraced congress and harmed our nation and in fact this is a very important first step and perhaps in the future we can go beyond this and it frustrates me deeply when members of the media and the public say that we are in is a decent bill but it could be much better if it was brought through a regular order where we were allowed to participate for improvements by way of amendments but the process has been shut down to us and that's why we're upset we can make a decent bil better if given the it was brought up on suspension with the intended purpose of forbidding us from offering any amendments to make it better it was and i just want to say that mark david kirk john shadegg and myself we've been very concerned about people who have violated the people's trust they accepted bribes broken the law in getting their pension that's why all three of us joined together over a year ago when bill but yet the bill that's been brought up today is that one of the republican bills is that civility i doubt it now the interesting part is after working with the speaker a year ago it was brought up for a vote and almost all of the democrat leadership in one hundred  seventy three other members of the democrat party voted against the bill that they're now saying well jeez it's your bill that you brought up a long time ago but there is one area i have amendments prepared because i thought when we were going to get here that we'd go through regular order and one of them was solicitation of a bribe which is not part of this can i enter into a quality quality calling for you sorry what the author of no i want the author of the bill the gentle lady from kansas  my inquiry into her to her would be why did you not offer solicitation of the bribe when you authored this piece of legislation no solicitation has not been there let me just say that i have offered a bill that i think is the story why i think you are going to make a different question and i would i'm just you can vote for it or you can vote against it it's a good first step so if you want to listen bride this is not far and there's glowing gaps what you didn't pass but you did pass this bill you passed this bill through the house it's not law it's not law oh and you had the president you had the senate and you had the house there is now a claim that we've heard now for two weeks the energy bill could have been better yes but many of you voted for that many of you that the minimum wage bill could have perhaps been better by adding some things on but eighty two of you voted for this bill could be better but it is timely it is timely to do the right thing mr kirk has a number of suggestions i think they're pretty good suggestions i don't mind them he asked about income tax now we all pay income taxes all americans pay income taxes or some have preference size their voice assuming we're doing it legally but that is not part of our duties as a member of congress it's part of our duties as a citizen what this bill seeks to say is when you raise your right hand and swear that you will serve your constituents faithfully and honestly that you do that that you don't do it for some outside lobbyist or interest group and that if you do we're not going to pay you a pension that's all this bill says it is late in coming but it is never too late to do the right thing and i would hope that every member of this house when the roll is called on this bill will say to their constituents that i am going to take pensions away from those who abuse their power and responsibility given to them by the american people as members of this alice and undermine the faith and trust that the american people have in members and in this house i agree with mr jerry it could be better we could add things to it perhaps we will as a matter of fact we've just added something as you pointed out in the not because we thought that not only is lying bad but asking people to lie is bad is called a fancy word sovereign nation of perjury but what it is is asking your staffer to say don't tell the grand jury i did that to sexually what that says folks so that you can't tell your staff to go to the grand jury when the grand jury says dismember a b or c take money or lie or do something or take money to vote on something that if you asked them to do that and after all they work for you you have control over their salary you're also going to be subject to loss of pension so i agree with those that say this bill is not perfect they're right but a lot of the bills that we passed now affect probably no bill that we passed has been perfect but this is a good bill as my friend the former  congressman from kentucky would say and i tell you that frankly my expectation is that we're going to have almost every member i would hope one hundred percent of the house say the american people we will not allow members who misuse and failure trust to get your taxpayers dollars paid them in pensions vote for this bill it's a good bill i want to congratulate nancy boyda for her leadership in bringing this urge members of both sides of the aisle in a bipartisan way vote to say to the american people we won't take your pensions if we do wrong by you and we won't let others do as from michigan is recognized i just like to make it brief response to the majority leader before recognizing my next speaker the issue is not just the quality of the bill the main issue is the process and i recall many times over the past few years i asked when we're in the majority i asked our leadership to take up a bill and suspension they said we can't do it unless i'm in the minority agrees to it and i had to wait weeks and several times for that now suddenly we get a b did my colleague mr terry and then already the majority leader has just told us that we are all vote for this bill because it's so important but once again we are here in a procedural abuse of mine buys boggling consequences for my colleagues who have been here you need to know that in the last hour this bill has amended been amended by the majority indeed in the last twenty four hours it's been amended not once but twice it was introduced in one form this morning they announced two different amendments to it changing both its effective date and the crimes to which it applies and your offices were all told when you arrived here today that it had a new effective date and that a new series of crimes which applies but guess what don't rely on your staff because this bill is so important the majority has amended it within the last few minutes now they have added a crime but change the effective date again this is not the way that serious congress legislate if you believe this bill is important don't ask these members to vote on it with less than an hour's notice if you would like to look at a copy of the bill many of our members on the majority asked for a copy moments before big debate started and they couldn't get a copy indeed the amendments appear to have either been handwritten or typed within the last few minutes this is not the way to legislate procedural matters we have not been allowed to see this bill go through committee and to be marked up it did not go to rules where we could offer amendments where we could offer the effective date we think is right or the list of crimes that we believe is right no the majority has decided that the minority doesn't matter let's talk about fundamental fairness in the contract with america we allowed that's when they were in the minority to offer to our contract one hundred and fifty four florham and that's on top of taking all of those bills and forty  that i don't think this is the best procedure the way could have follow the questioning of the decision of the chair stand at the judgment