Representative George Miller spoke on the House Floor about the Bush Administration’s attack on the New York Times for their reporting on financial surveillance of suspected terrorists. Miller and his Democratic colleagues supported Democratic substitute that supports tracking terrorist money flows and expresses concern on unauthorized disclosures of classified information. However, unlike the GOP resolution, the Democratic substitute does not include Republican conclusions that are not yet known. Read the text of the substitute here.

Mr. Miller: Today, the House will vote on a resolution that is allegedly intended to reaffirm Congress’ support for stemming the flow of money to terrorists. I support efforts by this Administration to cut the financial supply lines to terrorists.

But the resolution before us today is really just an open-faced attack on America’s free press for telling the American people what its government is doing.

After 9/11, the Bush Administration announced that one of the ways it would go after terrorists was by cutting off their funding sources. A major part of this effort has been monitoring suspect international financial transactions.

I believe that, at the time, this was the correct decision. We can and must do everything we legally can to protect the country from those who wish to bring us harm.

The Administration’s efforts to monitor financial transactions have been a frequent topic of public discussion:

By members of the Administration;

in open, on the record Congressional testimony

and in the United Nations.

However, to date, I am not aware of any harsh recriminations from the President or Republicans in Congress as a result of any of these discussions over the last few years.

But now that the program has been discussed in the New York Times and other newspapers, the radical right wing Republican enemies of a free press in America have come out swinging – again.

Congress had a choice when the NY Times reported on the SWIFT program. It could have announced hearings on the effectiveness of the SWIFT program and on the impact of public reporting on the SWIFT program. But it did not do that.

This extremist Congress instead has chosen a different, but very familiar, path – a partisan political attack for which it has become famous.

The Bush Administration and this Republican-controlled Congress represent the most partisan and most anti-free press Republican party this nation has seen since the days of Richard Nixon and his infamous ‘enemies list.’

The fact remains that this president and this Republican Congress want to manipulate the press to its advantage through the use of covert propaganda and through lying about intelligence and other matters, but it wants to curb the press’ role in communicating the American people information about the actions of its government.

That sounds more like the Soviet Union before the wall came down than the America that I know and love and whose freedom, and free press, is so revered around the world.

The fact is that the party in control of this Congress is out of gas when it comes to leading, they are out of gas when it comes to big bold new ideas to re-energize America.

They have resorted, nearly every day now, to their tired old whipping posts, including the free press, in a desperate effort to hold on to their power, an awesome power that they have failed to use to help America.

As this bill’s sponsor, Mr. Oxley, so wisely stated earlier, we do need accountability in Government.

The President promised to hold those accountable in his Administration involved in leaking the identity of a covert CIA agent to the press. He has yet to do that. Instead he and his rubberstamp Congress choose to go after leaked information only when it suits their political agenda.

We have yet to hold anyone accountable for the falsified intelligence about Weapons of Mass Destruction. Instead we get the rubberstamp Congress’s version of a weapon of Mass Distraction just in time for the November elections.

This Congress has not held anyone accountable for pulling military resources away from Afghanistan to prepare for the unjustified war and occupation of Iraq, which allowed Osama Bin Laden to escape capture.

If only the Administration and its Republican allies in Congress were as aggressive in attacking Osama bin Laden as they are when attacking the press, we might be safer as a nation.