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  is right or mr. hobson  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 .  