Date: 2010-06-24
Speaker: DANIEL E. LUNGREN (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Cali

fornia. I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman. I have been privileged to serve in this House for a number of years. During that period of time. I have had the opportunity to vote. probably. thousands of times on many. many. many different issues. Sometimes the result of the votes. of the collective votes of this House and the Senate and the signature of the President during the course of time that I have been here. has resulted in legislation which subsequently was ruled to be. in part or in whole. unconstitutional. I have had conversations on the floor of the House with Members who have said at times. Im not concerned about the Constitution. I mean dont let me worry about that. The courts decide that. Ive always said to them in response. We have an obligation when we take an oath of office to uphold the Constitution. and we ought to do it as we consider legislation. Though. I am not sure that I have ever seen a frontal assault on the Constitution as this bill is. Why do I say that? I say that because this deals with the First Amendment. It deals with political speech. It deals with political speech at its most effective. which is in the context of a political campaign. and we ought to deal with that very. very carefully. I would say to my friend from Michigan. if we were so concerned about the Constitution. why did our committee waive jurisdiction here after only having this bill for a day? Other times. we insist on dealing with constitutional questions. but yet we gave it up. You look at this bill. and you see that it violates the contours of the decision by the Supreme Court. If you want to amend the Constitution. bring an amendment to the floor. It violates it in so many ways. and it is a continual violation. as the auction block was established on the other side of the aisle. We kept hearing day after day. week after week. They dont have the votes. They dont have the votes. Theyre going to make this deal. Theyre going to make that deal. What did they do? They expanded the exemption. They decided. yes. the National Rifle Association got a special exemption. I guess AARP did. I guess the Humane Society did. We dont know who else did because theyve just changed the definition in the last couple of days from a million members to a half a million members. but we know that most groups now will not be exempt. just a privileged few. That violates what the decisions of the courts going back decades tell us. You cannot discriminate among groups. You cannot have disfavored and favored groups. and that is what we are doing right here on the floor. not just about something dealt with by the Constitution. but the essential of the First Amendment. I am surprised that my liberal friends are not down here on this floor. condemning provisions of this bill. They say its not a perfect bill. No. its not perfect. Its unconstitutional. It is unconstitutional by its very terms. In the last 2 weeks and even yesterday. it became more unconstitutional because they carved out exemptions even further for unions and for selected groups of large size. Mr. Chairman. we should do better than this. We should do better than this. If we are not concerned about protecting the Constitution. who is? You know. as was said basically by our leader. we take an oath to protect and to defend all parts of the Constitutionthe First Amendment as well as the Second Amendment. The fact of the matter is we take an oath to uphold the Constitution. To only allow an hours worth of debate when we give far more time to naming post offices is a disgrace in this Housea disgrace. To not allow amendments that deal with some of the very subjects that my friends on the other side talk about is a disgrace. Mr. Chairman. I ask for a "no" vote on this bill.