AMENDMENT OFFERED BY MR. CULBERSON

Mr. CULBERSON. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

The Acting CHAIRMAN. The Clerk will designate the amendment.

The text of the amendment is as follows:

Amendment offered by Mr. Culberson:

At the end of the bill (before the short title), insert the following:

TITLE VIII--ADDITIONAL GENERAL PROVISIONS

SEC. 801. None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available in this Act may be used in contravention of section 1373 of title 8, United States Code.

Mr. CULBERSON. Mr. Chairman, if this amendment were adopted, it would shut off all funding for all high-technology work that NASA is doing that has multiple applications.

The amendment says, "no money can be spent in support of the manned mission to Mars." There is no manned mission to Mars in this bill. But the technology application, the research work that NASA is doing to develop the next generation of rocket propulsion, the research work that NASA is doing to develop the next generation of microcomputers, the technology, for example, in this BlackBerry can be used on a manned mission to Mars and also manned missions in low-Earth orbit.

Mr. CULBERSON. Mr. Chairman, regardless of your opinion about Amtrak, if you are concerned about border security and want to do a better job of protecting our border, you need to vote against this amendment. Because according to the CBO's scoring, this $560 million cut from the Federal Building Fund would come primarily out of the repairs, alterations, and construction account.

The President has asked for six new border stations on the border between Texas, California, New Mexico, and Arizona. These cuts would leave the building fund without the money they need to build secure, critical border crossings with Mexico.

Mr. CULBERSON. Mr. Speaker, the government of Mexico has not been friendly to the United States, and the Republican majority in this House is representing the people of America who are flat fed up with the Mexican Government's refusal to control the flow of criminals and illegal aliens to the United States. Let's talk about facts. Mr. Filner is ignoring the fact, and the Democrats are ignoring the fact the Mexican Government is permitting armed training camps for narcoterrorists in northern Mexico. This is a photograph of a Guatemalan Kaibiles militia member training. There is a camp run by the Kaibiles, by the Zetas and just outside of Matamoros, Mexico, across the river from Texas. The weapons these individuals are using, and we will talk more about this in the leadership hour at the end of the day, here is just a sample of some of the weapons these narcoterrorists are using on the border, 40 millimeter grenade launchers. There is open warfare in the Nuevo Laredo areas. These are some photographs of some of the results of some of the gun fights that are taking place there. There are even armed Mexican militia spotters on hill tops in Arizona on U.S. soil who are protecting the smuggling routes.

Mexico has not been acting like a friend. They have encouraged illegal immigration to this country. They have encouraged and turned a blind eye to the corruption and the criminals pouring across our border, and it is time the House cut off money to Mexico to send the message we are sick and tired of them not protecting our border and discouraging illegal immigration.

Congressional Record

AMENDMENT OFFERED BY MR. CULBERSON

Mr. CULBERSON. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

The Acting CHAIRMAN. The Clerk will designate the amendment.

The text of the amendment is as follows:

Amendment offered by Mr. Culberson:

At the end of the bill (before the short title), insert the following:

SEC. __. None of the funds made available in this Act may be used to process applications or petitions for immigration benefits submitted to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services until October 1, 2007. This section shall not apply with respect to--

MR. CULBERSON. Mr. Speaker, I am proud to follow my good friend from Utah and join with my colleagues from New Jersey and North Carolina tonight to speak in support of Federal legislation to restore the single most important part of our Constitution, the 10th amendment.

We all know from English class the beginning and the end of a document are the most important, and why our Constitution begins with, ''We, the People,'' and why the Founders wrote at the very end of the Constitution a declaration that they believed was as self-evident as saying the sky is blue: That all power not specifically delegated to the Federal Government in the Constitution was reserved to the People and the States.

The 10th amendment has been forgotten largely, and all of us as Republicans are committed to doing everything that we can to try to preserve and protect the power of the States and individuals. The way I often express it to my constituents is, I am a Republican because I want to get the Federal Government out of our lives and free us from the income tax, the most intrusive possible tax, to go to a national consumption tax to restore local control over public education, which is what we are here to talk about tonight, legislation that I filed with my colleague from Utah (Mr. Bishop), with other colleagues here tonight from New Jersey and North Carolina.

H.R. 3499 will return control over public education to the States using a very simple concept that I can really actually best illustrate by using these three glasses of water.

Mr. CULBERSON. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to bring to the attention of the American people the reasons why it is so important the House acted yesterday to pass such a strong border enforcement law and order bill that will bring law and order to our southern and northern borders, but in particular the southern border.

I am a native Houstonian, born and raise in Houston; but I had no idea until recently the scale of violence our law enforcement officers, Border Patrol agents, our local sheriffs are facing along the Rio Grande, and it is the result of a lack of enforcement of our immigration laws, as the Border Patrol has been pulled back and our border has been unprotected at the same time the narcoterrorists and the drug lords have figured out that there is a vacuum there.

A war has developed between the gulf cartel of drug lords and the megacartel. Now, the megacartel extends its territory essentially from, and I am going to use these, Mr. Speaker, to help illustrate for people what I am talking about, this war between the megacartel, the drug lords, and the gulf cartel, is a full-scale battle. The lawlessness is so severe, Mr. Speaker, that the sheriffs in Laredo will not even approach the river at night without turning off all their lights.

Mr. CULBERSON. Mr. Speaker, as a House Republican who, I believe my fiscal conservative ratings are typically among the top ten most conservative in the House; I have no NASA facilities in my district; and I am a passionate advocate for NASA, a strong supporter of this legislation, because I recognize the importance of investing in our Nation's future through investments and the scientific and technological innovations that only NASA and the space program have been able to produce for us. From the Blackberry on our belts, the microcomputers, the computer chips on our office desks, to satellite technology and cell phone technology to medical technology, NASA has touched every one of our lives. I applaud the chairman and the leadership for bringing this bill to the floor, and it is very important that we get behind President Bush's vision, because only by investing in NASA and strengthening our investment in scientific and medical research will we maintain America's leadership role in the world.

Mr. CULBERSON. Mr. Chairman, I want to show the American people what a typical day looks like for a law enforcement officer on the southern border. This is the result of an arrest that took place in Nuevo Loredo and this is what the sheriffs are facing. This is what our Border Patrol is facing: 40 millimeter grenade launchers, 12 of them captured; 10,000 rounds of ammunition; 40 AK-47 rifles. These are carried by individuals, paramilitary commandos, who are trained to kill anybody who stops and attempts to intercept them.

These are 40 millimeter grenades that are taped up with adhesive tape designed to be put on top of a warm engine, and as the glue softens, the tape comes off and the grenade explodes. This is a sniper rifle carried by the narcoterrorist commandos that shoots around corners. It has a television screen and a silencer on it.

Mr. CULBERSON. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of this amendment as well as the underlying legislation because its focus is law enforcement, and this is a law enforcement and a national security issue. In controlling our borders, we will win the war on terror only when we control our borders, and it is important that the country recognize that northern Mexico has become like Colombia, owned lock, stock and barrel by the drug lords whose law is ''plata o plomo,'' silver or lead. You work in my plaza, you pay me silver or I will kill you now with lead, plomo; and we must have the rule of law and order on the border and not the rule of plata o plomo.

The chairman has rightly focused this legislation on reestablishing law and order on the border, and I applaud the gentleman from Georgia for his amendment so we can keep the Department of Homeland Security focused on giving us in Congress the information we need so we can determine whether or not the United States is properly protecting its border at a time when we are at war with terrorists who have told us repeatedly that they are going to sneak into the country using whatever means are necessary to hurt us. I urge all Members to support this amendment and the underlying bill.