mr. chairman , i thank the gentleman for yielding me time . 
look , we are down here on the floor , it is empty . 
maybe some folks are listening in their offices . 
i hope they are . 
i hope at least some of the staff , some folks may be paying attention . 
our problem here is very , very simple . 
over and over again our colleagues will say to us , well , i got out of this okay , or we have resolved that issue . 
i am one of those folks . 
i can say that . 
i have had people come up and say to me , well , why are you bothering ? 
pearl harbor made it out of there . 
why was it taken up in the first place ? 
i will tell you why . 
it is politics . 
this has nothing to do with whether or not there is some rational process that has been undertaken , and everybody in here knows it . 
for once , can we not come down on this floor and actually vote the way all of us really understand where our responsibilities are ? 
pearl harbor got brought up for a very simple reason . 
they were going to close a facility up in maine , and the people in maine in their panic said , do not take us , take pearl harbor instead . 
they started comparing some naval apples , some shipyard apples with some shipyard oranges , and they came up with , well , go get pearl harbor . 
it had nothing to do with it . 
i did not come back and say , no , no , no , not us ; go back to maine , go get them . 
what kind of a process is that where we try to devour each other ? 
i said , let us keep all of them open . 
we need every shipyard facility that we can get in this country . 
we are going to be going back out to guam soon because of what is taking place in the pacific right now , and having to recapitulate everything that got put under the water out there in guam , billions of dollars is going to have to be put back into guam in order for us to be able to protect and project our strategic interests in the pacific . 
we are under a review right now in the armed services committee , and we do not even have the courage of our own convictions under our own jurisdictions in our committees . 
it is not that i am right or mr. lahood xz4002280 is right or mr. hobson xz4001800 is wrong or right , or mr. taylor . 
that is not the issue . 
the issue is are we meeting our responsibilities here ? 
we are constantly admonished that no sacrifice is too great . 
we are constantly admonished that we have to honor the sacrifices that are being made by our fighting men and women all over the world right now . 
yet we cringe from our own responsibilities as members of congress to meet those responsibilities and obligations with regard to bases . 
now , i have been told over and over again , well , that is all well and good , but people are going to come down here , and you are going to lose anyway . 
it happens occasionally some people come down and say , you know , i was going to vote the other way . 
let us , for once , come down here , and i make this appeal out there to anybody who is thinking about coming to the floor . 
vote for mr. lahood 's recommendation . 
we are not down here just to hear ourselves . 
when you come over here , search your conscience , and , for once , let us live up to what people expect of us in this congress . 
for once let us not fulfill some stereotype that we are just going to roll over because we managed to make it out the door . 
that is not what we are here for . 
if this is just a job to you , then do not run again . 
this is a calling . 
this is a vocation . 
it is supposed to be . 
that is the way i feel about it , and i know that is the way most members feel about it . 
they want to be able to look in the mirror at night and recognize somebody with a little bit of integrity and walk into their homes justified . 
if we are going to justify our job , everybody knows in their heart that we should not be voting for this , regardless of our good friends being on it , like mr. hansen and mr. bilbray , for example , who are colleagues and personal friends to many of us here . 
it is not a question of whether they did their job or did not do their job ; it is whether we are doing our job , and we are meeting our obligations . 
so i appeal to everybody on their way over here . 
let us vote for ray lahood 's resolution , and let us do the right thing by ourselves and the nation . 
