Providing for Consideration of H. Res. Removing A Certain Member From Certain Standing Committees of the House of Representatives

Floor Speech

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Mr. ISSA. Madam Speaker, I find myself sort of the oldest freshman in my class returning after just a 2-year hiatus and finding a House that I am having a hard time understanding how it got so bad in such a short period of time.

As my colleague on the other side of the aisle aptly said, we have had to remove people for cause in this body. When I was a freshman some 20 years ago, we removed Jim Traficant because he had been tried and convicted and still wouldn't resign.

We have stripped people of their committees when they have been indicted and ensured that they left this body when they were convicted.

But we have not and should not, in fact, hold people responsible for actions before the people of their home State elected them and their Secretary of State certified them, and they came here. In so doing, we could pick a plethora of people not to seat or not to give committees to.

On the other side of the aisle, there is a gentleman who I respect whom I have served with for my entire time in Congress who was impeached and removed from office by this very body and, yet, has served honorably here for more than two decades and sits at a high position on many committees.

After the Civil War, in time, there were people who had been Confederate soldiers who came here as Congressmen. In fact, the famous Senator Byrd was a grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan before he was a member of these bodies.

We cannot and should not judge people by what they have done before they arrive, and we should not tell the minority who they can seat. You may shame us, you may disparage us if we give somebody a committee assignment, but that is part of free speech.

In closing, if we do this, it will be no different than when John Adams allowed for a Member----

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Mr. ISSA. Madam Speaker, when a member of this body was incarcerated for something that John Adams felt was injurious to him under the Sedition Act, it was retroactive. He had written it before the act was passed and the act was, in fact, not in keeping with our free speech.

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