Date: 1996-08-01
Speaker: GENE GREEN (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Texas

Mr. Speaker. I rise in opposition to the bill and the rule. I consider the bill a dangerous bill. and unlike my colleague from Georgia. English is our common language. I admit. in Texas we speak a little different English from maybe in Georgia and New England. but we still speak English. and some Members in the House on both sides say that we do not. The reason for the opposition to this bill is that my colleagues talk about the bill. saying it is a common language. That is not what the bill says. If my colleagues brought a bill to the floor today that said English is a common language. they would not have any opposition to it because we would all agree with that. What this bill does. though. is separate it. prohibit the use of other languages. and even this rule that we have today is limiting our freedom to debate on this bill. A lot of amendments Members submitted to try and make this bill better and not so onerous were not allowed in the Committee on Rules because of the modified closed rules we are having. and once again we have a rule that we do not get to debate the full bill itself. English is our official language. My opposition said 99 percent of the documents that are printed are printed in English. This.is a solution in search of a problem. Mr. Speaker. Our language classes for English in my district and everywhere in the country are overflowing. There is a waiting list now. They cannot advertise English language classes in Houston because they cannot fill them. and yet these are the same folks that cut education flanding for adult education. So do not come up and shed crocodile tears about how people ought to learn English when they cut adult education to people who want to learn English. This bill should be amended to recognize that English is our common language because that is what their debate is about. but it is not. This rule divides us and this bill divides us as Americans. because we share more than our language. We share our love of freedom and our willingness to fight for that freedom. no matter what our language is. And I thought that was aptly mentioned earlier by my colleague from Puerto Rico. This bill divides our country. because we are united in more ways than language. Again. I will share with my colleague from California. he says "Nothing typifies this more than the Olympic spirit." the unity we see. not just from around the world. but from the United States team in Georgia. We are going into the 20th century. and here this is a bill that I can imagine would have been debated last century. We are going into the 20th century. to try to make sure we can compete in the world and compete everywhere. and yet we are going to punish someone in my office who writes a letter back to someone in German? I know there is an amendment to correct the bill. but it came out of committee. to punish Members of Congress for contacting. in response to people who write our office. whether it be in Spanish. Czech. German. or Vietnamese. They are going to clean it up. but this bill should have been worked on even more. because it is a bad bill and it is a bad rule.