Making further continuing appropriations for the fiscal year 2003, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, what is happening here is that this is the first of two continuing resolutions which the House is going to endeavor to pass tonight. The first is simply a vehicle by which we keep the government open for the next 30 days or so, while the Congress at long last gets about the business of finishing what it should have done last year; namely, virtually all of the domestic appropriation bills.

The second continuing resolution that will be voted on after this one will be an empty vehicle which is sent to the Senate, and the Senate will then use that as the carrying vehicle for the work that they do to put together all of the remaining appropriation bills.

As I was saying, the Senate will then proceed to work its will on the remaining domestic appropriation bills. They will then put them together in one package in the second CR, which we will send over, and they will come back to the House for an up or down vote as a conference report. That effectively means that the House will have been shielded from any responsibility to take visible positions on virtually all of the issues involved in education, in health care, in the Labor Department programs, in housing programs, in science programs, foreign aid, you name it. That, I believe, is the purpose of this process.

I do not happen to think that is a very healthy process but that is what the plan is. What that means is that tonight represented the only opportunity for Members of this body to speak to any of the issues that would be funded by this continuing resolution.

Now, the rules of the House provide that if the Committee on Appropriations has not passed a new 302(b) allocation, allocating the total resources of the committee that are available to us to the various subcommittees, then the House is precluded from considering an appropriation bill. So last night the Committee on Rules waived that provision for the majority so that the majority is able to proceed with this process today, but they refused to waive it for the minority, which means that we cannot offer any significant or meaningful amendments to the continuing resolution.

If we had not been denied that right, we wanted to offer a $5 billion package that essentially asked the House to, once again, approve matters which it approved in the supplemental last summer. Half of that would be the $2.5 billion that we provided for additional homeland security items, additional port protection, additional border protection, additional support to the FBI to modernize its computer system, additional translators and the like. All of that money has already been voted for by 90 percent of the Members of both parties in this House, but it has been effectively impounded by the President who declined to spend that $2.5 billion, thus leaving this country needlessly exposed on the homeland security front.

The other $2 billion or so that we wanted to add represented other items that the House had already voted for: The $274 million which was badly needed for veterans medical care to clean up the backlog at veterans facilities; the $401 million which was necessary to provide aid to first responders, our police and our firemen at the local level; and $200 million to assist with anti-terrorist actions on the part of the State of Israel, for instance, all of that has been denied us because the House Committee on Rules essentially said that there should be one set of rules for the majority and another set of rules for the minority.

Now, as I said earlier today on the floor, the purpose of rules in any venue is to see to it that all people are treated the same, and that is true whether you are talking about a San Francisco 49er and New York Giant football game or whether you are talking about actions on the floor of the House. We are supposed to have rules that apply equally to everybody, but thanks to the misguided and misbegotten action of the Committee on Rules that is not what we are going to have.

So what that means is that this House, which is supposed to be the greatest deliberative body in the world, has been turned into something that much more clearly represents a Soviet Congress than it represents the embodiment of democratic representation.

What this means is that a small group of insider Members in the Republican leadership have essentially decided ahead of time what the outcome should be on all of these appropriation bills, and now they have fixed the process so that there is no practical possibility whatsoever of changing in any way that desired outcome. That may be an effective use of power, but it is a fundamental corruption of the legislative process that goes to the heart of democratic government, and people who engage in that kind of conduct, in my view, should be ashamed of themselves.

So what we are faced with is the necessity to try to use extraordinary means in order to try to gain some ability to define what actions we on this side of the aisle believe are in the best interests of the country. Mr. Speaker, I detest the idea of having to go after House traditions and normal House procedures. I do not like, for instance, to have to try to appeal the ruling of the Chair on matters, but when we are denied the legitimate exercise of our rights to define differences, which is supposed to be the subject of legislative debate, then we are left with no choice but to engage in extraordinary measures as a matter of protest.

Now, we have not created this situation. The House Republican leadership and the House Committee on Rules has. I would urge them to reconsider.

Yesterday, we heard all kinds of nice words about bipartisanship. The Speaker said that we should respect each other. We do not feel that much respect has been shown this institution when the normal processes of this institution are cut short for the partisan convenience of the party that happens to control this House.

So I wanted to explain why it is that we on this side of the aisle are unhappy and why we will be doing what we are doing tonight.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings), a member of the Committee on Rules.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, we are not objecting to this process tonight because we are unhappy we are in the minority. We are in the minority, and we expect to lose 99 percent of the votes around here. But we do not expect to have denied to us the opportunity to at least engage in the debate.

My question is, what is the majority party afraid of? Our colleagues in the majority have the votes, and if they think we are wrong, outvote us. But the Committee on Rules has taken us beyond that. What the Committee on Rules has done is that they have said, ``Sorry, we are not going to even allow an opportunity to raise any of these questions.''

Now, this issue came up in March of 1999 when the Republicans were also in control. The exact same situation arose. At that time the majority party did the right thing. The Republican Party waived the rule for the majority so that we could proceed, but they also waived the rule so that we could participate equally in the process. That is what the majority party should have done this time around. They should have followed their own earlier example.

I would also say that, in effect, what is happening is that the minority party is being prevented from doing its job because the majority party neglected to pass a 302 allocation. We did not make the determination on this side that that would not happen; the majority party did. So the minority party is being penalized for the inaction of the majority party. That is quaint in any legislative body.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the distinguished minority whip.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 additional minute to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank).

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield for a point of clarification?

Mr. Speaker, let me make clear to the gentleman, if our amendment is passed, we are still substantially below the Republican budget resolution numbers. We do not exceed the amount dictated by the White House. We simply make sure that the money is used for homeland security, for the SEC, and for the other items that you have already voted for in the supplemental.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

I take this time, Mr. Speaker, to explain to the House the amendment that I will shortly offer. That amendment will do essentially two things: it would provide an additional $308 million for the Securities and Exchange Commission to increase funding to the level agreed to in the Sarbanes-Oxley bill. Secondly, it would make available $5.1 billion in critical funding already agreed to by the House last year as contingent emergencies in the fiscal year 2002 supplemental. That money will pay for items such as helping to find, arrest and deport high-risk individuals who have disregarded the departure date on their visas. It would provide for increased security of U.S. nuclear weapons and nuclear materials at DOE weapons labs, money which the DOE has asked for. It would provide money for the Customs Container Security initiative suggested by the agency. It would provide $275 million for veterans health care, which this House has already approved on a contingent appropriation basis. It would provide $415 million for grants to State and local first responders, and a variety of other items which the House has already approved, but which the President has declined to release.

As I told the House earlier today, right after the election I was watching McNeil-Lehrer. In their panel discussion, Tom Oliphant, the columnist, was asked what the role of the Democratic Party was going to be now that the Republican Party had all of the marbles in every institution. He said, ``Well, their obligation as the minority is to offer alternatives to what the majority proposes.'' That is exactly what we are trying to do. The problem with the rule that was adopted earlier is that it attempts to preclude us from meeting those responsibilities as a minority to offer constructive alternatives. In the process, it also denies the ability to hold either the majority or the minority accountable for the decisions they make. That is why we are attempting to move forward with this amendment.

I would hope when the time comes that no point of order is lodged against the amendment so that we can, in fact, meet the obligations that we have in this House to be a real legislative body, not a Soviet- style Congress where a few unknown individuals make decisions and then subvert the process in order to predetermine the outcome.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to recommit.

I think the Speaker can safely assume that, yes.

Mr. Speaker, what the gentleman from Minnesota is asserting is that the minority should not be allowed to offer a legitimate amendment because the majority did not fulfill its responsibilities to abide by certain provisions of the Budget Act and by the timetable of that act. I find that highly objectionable especially since the Committee on Rules has already waived the requirement as far as the majority party is concerned. It seems to me that the House rules certainly ought to allow the minority the same privilege that the majority has arranged by rule.

Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. Speaker, I offer an alternative motion to recommit at the desk.

I certainly am, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, this motion to recommit would do three things: It would modify the language in the Department of Homeland Security legislation to prevent existing corporations who moved offshore to avoid paying their fair share of taxes from getting government contracts from that agency. It would bring the bill back in line with the language this House voted to include by a vote of 318 to 110 on the motion to recommit offered by the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro) last July.

The Joint Committee on Taxation has estimated that over the next 10 years corporate expatriates would cost us more than $4 billion in funds that could help pay for our Nation's security.

The second point of this motion to recommit would be to suspend the operation of one of the most egregious provisions inserted into the Department of Homeland Security legislation at the last minute last year. That is a provision apparently designed to shield the giant drugmaker Eli Lilly & Company from lawsuits that have been brought by parents of autistic children claiming that their children's disease was caused by a vaccine preservative.

There may be good reason to ultimately require claims of this type to be brought under the Federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, but if that is done, it should be done openly in the sunshine after proper hearings and deliberation, not in a back room deal at the last moment.

Thirdly, this motion would restore the authority of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure to review the leasing of space for the new Department of Homeland Security, replacing the provision in the CR that simply approves the administration proposal without any congressional oversight or scrutiny whatsoever.

We do not stop them from going forward, we simply say that they must follow the procedure of having some review by the committee of jurisdiction before they proceed to spend a great deal of taxpayers' money on leasing property which at this point has been reviewed and overseen by no one whatsoever in the Congress.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 15, I call up the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 1) making further continuing appropriations for the fiscal year 2003, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the legislation before the House, H.J. Res. 1, will extend the current continuing resolution to allow the government to continue to operate through January 31 of 2003. All of the ongoing programs and activities will be continued at current rates under the same terms and conditions as fiscal year 2002, with the exception of funding for programs included in the Defense and Military Construction appropriations bills for fiscal year 2003, which have already been enacted into law.

In addition, all the provisions of the previous CRs remain in effect, with one exception: It deletes a provision relating to the rate of operations for the Federal-aid Highways Program that had been enacted as part of the third continuing resolution. Specifically, that CR established total obligations for the highway program while operating under continuing resolutions. Section 4 of this resolution deletes that provision, and Mr. Speaker, it does so with the concurrence of the transportation and infrastructure authorizing committee.

I want everyone to understand this action is going to affect the budget. We have been advised by the Congressional Budget Office that it will score an additional $1.1 billion in outlays on an

annualized basis against this continuing resolution as a result of that deletion. So we are upping the price, but this was an agreed arrangement. So that is what we are going to do.

The CR also includes five new provisions. I will briefly explain what they are.

Number 1, it will extend the authorities necessary to make entitlement payments to include the Child Nutrition Programs, the Food Stamps Program, Medicaid grants to States, payments to Medicare trust funds, Trade Adjustment Assistance Programs, veterans entitlements and supplemental security income payments through the month of February.

Number 2, it will maintain the annual blue collar worker pay adjustment to be consistent with other Federal pay increases.

Number 3, it will allow for funding for the Public Companies Accounting Oversight Board as established in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, Public Law 107-204.

Number 4, it will allow the District of Columbia to spend local funds at the revised budget levels for fiscal year 2003.

Number 5, it will allow the Administrator of General Services to move forward on the GSA prospectus to lease space for the headquarters of the Department of Homeland Security.

Mr. Speaker, we are beginning a new year and a new Congress. We need to get the business of the old Congress behind us. We will explain at a later date how we plan to do this, but this CR gives us time to put that plan into effect.

I do not think this CR is controversial. I am not aware of any controversy. I urge the House to move this legislation to the Senate and then to the President so that there will be no question that the government will continue to operate smoothly and efficiently through January 31.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute just to say that I am not going to try to respond to all the political comments that are going to be made here this evening. I understand the minority is upset. They are upset because they are the minority, and I know about that. I served in this House for 24 years under their rule.

And if my colleagues think what our party is doing tonight to manage the business of the House is something wrong, they should go back and look over the 40 years of their own rule. We had more closed rules, we had more autocratic management of this House, we had more weird crazy, creative schemes to get through the legislative process. And, yes, we complained, just like they are complaining tonight.

But we have to get this job done. Come on. We are already beginning to get ready for our 2004 business. We need to get the 2003 business finished. Like I have suggested on other occasions, let us do our politicking somewhere else. Let us do the people's business here tonight. Let us get this CR out of here.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) was speaking directly to the issue of the CR and to the issue of the necessary funding, and especially for homeland security. The gentleman is correct. In the supplemental that we presented, we covered most of those items that the gentleman mentioned. The President chose not to release some of those funds, and that was the authority that the President had.

What I would say to the gentleman is my support for those issues is no less today than when we did the supplemental. We are in a procedural situation today. We need to get the CR so we can extend past January 11, which is the present CR, and we have to get the second CR which the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) has mentioned so we can conclude our work of the 107th Congress.

A lot of Members are congratulating each other in starting out the 108th Congress. My comment to some of my colleagues is I am still trying to get out of the 107th Congress. That is what we need to do tonight. Let us finish the business of the 107th Congress, and then we will get on and take care of the issues that the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) has so properly identified.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Walsh), chairman of the Subcommittee on VA, HUD, and Independent Agencies, such as NASA.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Istook), chairman of the Subcommittee on Treasury, Postal and General Government.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf), chairman of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, State and Judiciary.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Knollenberg), who has just become chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Construction.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe), chairman of the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Export Financing and Related Programs.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of the time.

I will be very brief just to say that it has been an interesting debate as usual. I appreciate the work that the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) and I are able to do together because we do agree a lot. My position is we should pass this CR and get on with completing the work of the 107th Congress. There are a lot of good issues raised here today by the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), by the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), by others, but those will be fixed, and I am as anxious as they are to get those fixes in place. I would like to pass this CR now. I would like to take up the second CR immediately, pass it now, and get on to finalizing the work of the 107th Congress by completing the appropriations process for that Congress because we are starting the process for the 108th Congress for fiscal year 2004.

We anticipate the budget from the administration shortly. We will begin our hearings in our subcommittees shortly. We will have a budget resolution this year that we will begin then to mark up our bills and bring them to the floor, but let us get this behind us, let us get this off the table, get it off the desk, get it out of contention. Pass the CR and let us get on to the business of the 108th Congress.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the House is not in order.

Mr. Speaker, I definitely rise in opposition to the motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, as is so often the case, the motions of the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) are creative and appealing, and address subjects that should be addressed.

What I would ask the House to do is to reject the motion to recommit. Let us get on with the regular order of dealing with these issues in the regular order, which we expect to do in a very expeditious manner.

At this point, because we do not want to make too many major decisions in the dark of night, as we hear so often, let us simply vote against this motion to recommit, pass the continuing resolution, deal with House Joint Resolution 1, and get out of here for tonight.

Mr. Speaker, this continuing resolution which I think instead ought to be called this continuing saga of one budget's lonely effort to struggle into maturity is in part a continuing story of the majority's refusal to allow the corporate responsibility bill to go forward. There is some language in here finally that would allow the Public Company Accounting Board to get a couple million dollars in advance from the Treasury. That comes several months late after a couple of unsuccessful efforts that we made; finally the committee has done this.

But on the committee point of funding the corporate responsibility bill known as the Sarbanes-Oxley bill, this continuing resolution continues to refuse to do that. When the President signed the bill with great fanfare months ago, it called for an authorization of $776 million. This bill has in fact a lower figure than the original budget request as amended, and even if we throw in the pay parity, the appropriations level in this bill, as I last saw it, is more than $200 million less than Sarbanes-Oxley called for. That is $540 million instead of $776 million.

So the President signs the bill with great fanfare, and then refuses to fund it. The Securities and Exchange Commission was given a great number of new responsibilities, and none of them are effectively funded in this bill.

The bill also will continue a situation in which public housing authorities are in crisis. Public housing authorities were told by the Republican Party that when they lost the money for the drug elimination program that had been a specific amount, $300 million, not to worry. When the majority eliminated the drug elimination program, quite surprisingly to me, which made funds available to housing authorities to combat drug abuses in the housing projects by hiring police and other ways, they were told that is okay, they could fund this out of their regular, ongoing operation.

But this bill, this procedure, has shorted those housing authorities. So they, in the first place, lose the $300 million for the drug elimination program, and now they are given less money than they needed even without that $300 million, and already because of the stop and go and interruptions of the continuing resolution and some mistakes on the part of HUD, public housing authorities all over this country are going to be short of money. Elderly people are going to be looking for police protection and maintenance, and people are going to be looking for a whole range of basic protections and they will not be there because of the majority's handling of this matter.

So with regards to both Sarbanes-Oxley and public housing, this bill is sorrily deficient.

Mr. Speaker, I am sorry that the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Istook) feels that we are unduly taxing his capacities by raising all of these complex issues. I did not think that the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate accountability bill came as entirely a shock to Members on the other side of the aisle.

We just heard that we are raising new issues. All we are asking for and all I mentioned was let us fund the Securities and Exchange Commission at the level this House and the rest of the government said was appropriate last August. It is not a complicated matter. I am not trying to raise new obstacles. The gentleman said this is just an ordinary bill.

I thought there was a decision by the Congress and the President last summer that ordinary was not good enough for the Securities and Exchange Commission, that we had to do some extraordinary things to combat abuses in the securities industry. So when I say that we should fund the level that we said we would fund, apparently for the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Istook) that is too complicated.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

The gentleman says it has been introduced, but it is not in this version here. It has been introduced for later adoption. It is not a number that is in this bill.

Providing more money than this administration asked for for opposing corporate abuses is not a great thing. What the gentleman from Virginia has said is they have now introduced a bill to be acted on at some future date that will carry out the funding level of Sarbanes-Oxley. But the fact is that we are now in our sixth or seventh continuing resolution and we have not got it yet. I am pleased to know that a bill has been introduced, but it does not do anything for the SEC now. Why not simply in this version of the continuing resolution put that number in there? The bill passed in August. The President in August signed the bill and said, ``I'm improving corporate accountability.'' Several opportunities have gone by to actually fund it at that level, and the answer from the gentleman from Virginia is, ``Don't worry. Hope is on the way. The Lone Ranger is coming. We actually introduced the bill.'' I never heard of a bill being introduced that was immediately implemented.

If, in fact, that is the right number, why not have it in this bill?

Mr. Speaker, when we have points of order, they are important because they establish precedents, and for that reason I intend, if the Chair rules in favor of this point of order, to join in trying to overturn it because I cannot think of a more damaging precedent.

What this does is to take advantage of the fact that the House did not complete the fiscal 2003 appropriations when it should have in the last calendar year. Thus we are now dealing with fiscal 2003 appropriations in a Congress later than we should, not just a year later but in a Congress later than we should. Because it is a later Congress than it should be, the 302(b) allocations expired. Instead of routinely reenacting them, the majority waived the requirement for itself in a rule and did not waive it for any amendment; so the precedent being set will be as follows: Do not get the work done on time, let it go over until the next Congress months after it should have been done; then abstain from the routine act that the gentleman from Wisconsin mentioned, give yourself a waiver from your failure to act, and do not give it to anyone else. So the precedent is that if you delay the appropriations bills, you can bring them to the floor in an unamendable fashion, totally unamendable so that when we complain about the underfunding of the Securities Exchange Commission we are told do not despair, we have introduced a bill and one of these days we might even act on it. Nothing could be more damaging to the democratic fabric of this House.

And I will say that I often, when an appeal to the Chair is made, will vote to uphold the Chair even when I disagree with the legislative consequence, but in this case we are not talking about a standing rule of the House. We are not talking about interfering with those rules that try to govern our deliberations. We are talking about objecting to a deliberate scheme to bring the appropriations for the entire government to the floor of the House in an absolutely unamendable fashion.

The leadership on the other side used to boast, the chairman of the Committee on Rules, about we always get a motion to recommit. This is a motion to recommit, an entirely germane motion to recommit on the substance that is being ruled out of order on this ground, and for that reason I hope the Chair will not sustain this degradation of democracy.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and that is true. But it is also true that we could have in this House passed those appropriations bills without any action from any other body, and it is a fact in addition that we did not finish the work last year that put us in the situation which the majority takes advantage of by denying the House the chance to have even a germane recommit on the motion.

Mr. Speaker, I move to appeal the decision of the Chair.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I cannot think of a good reason, other than nostalgia, to explain why we are still trying to complete our work from 2002. The rest of America has already celebrated the new year. They have already started to write 2003 on their checks. But for the House of Representatives, the calendar year has not turned.

Every year this House has the responsibility to pass the 13 appropriation bills that keep this government running.

Funding for education, health care, environmental protection, homeland security, national defense all must originate here. The scorecard from the last Congress shows that the majority could only pass 2 of these 13 bills. So we are here today to consider a sixth continuing resolution to keep the government open and running. We are here for one simple reason: The majority party in this House has failed. They did not do their job, and the American people deserve to know that.

Members of this House get up all of the time and give great speeches about how much they value education, about how no child should be left behind. But when it comes to actually funding education, the majority says maybe we will get to it later.

I just met with leaders from hospitals and home health care agencies and nursing homes in Massachusetts that are struggling just to hold on. They need relief and they need it now; but when it comes to actually funding our health care system, the majority says maybe we will get to it later.

Where is our commitment to our police, our firefighters and other first responders? Where is our commitment to environmental protection, and funding for our transportation and infrastructure needs? Certainly not in this bill.

Mr. Speaker, later is not good enough. We need to act now on the issues that matter to the American people. Indeed, we should have acted yesterday. As even senior Republican appropriators have pointed out, we are leaving ourself extremely underfunded in the area of homeland security. Take a look at port security, for example. Right now 21,000 shipping containers arrive in U.S. ports every day, each one big enough to carry a weapon of mass destruction, but less than 2 percent are actually screened.

As the Washington Post has reported, Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner has said there is virtually no security for what is the primary system to transport global trade.

Worse yet, the rule before us prevents Democrats from even offering amendments to correct that mistake and provide that critical funding. Somehow, the majority found time last year to pass huge tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, but not much else. We hear a lot of talk about homeland security, but we are not funding our homeland security needs.

This is a time for New Year's resolutions. I hope my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will resolve to bring our appropriation bills to the floor in a timely manner and let the House work its will, vote and move on. The American people deserve a House of Representatives that functions, that does the job given to it by the Constitution, and I hope that we can at least achieve that much during this new year.

Mr. Speaker, there will be a vote on the previous question, and I urge my colleagues to vote no on that previous question. A no vote will allow Democrats to offer important amendments to fund some of our vital interests.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I just want to say to the gentleman from California that I am sorry that my comments made him mad, but I will restate my position, that I believe that the majority party failed to do its job in the last Congress. You are in charge. You have the majority. You are supposed to pass these 13 appropriations bills and you failed to do so. As a result, here we are talking about our sixth continuing resolution; and we are underfunding education, we are underfunding health care, we are underfunding environmental protection, we are underfunding homeland security; and I think the American people are furious over the inability of the leadership of this Congress to lead. That is your job.

I would also simply point out to the gentleman that rather than adjourning early to get an early jump on Christmas shopping, we should have remained in session and worked out the differences with the other body; and we should have stayed here, remained here until we did our work.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 9 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar), the ranking member of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

(Mr. OBERSTAR asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Scott).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank).

Mr. Speaker, may I ask the gentleman if there are any requests for time on his side?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Let me close for our side by again expressing our frustration on this side of the aisle that we are still dealing with last year's work. The fact that we are dealing with the six continuing resolutions before us today I do believe is a failure of the majority party's leadership in the last Congress, and it continues in this Congress. As we bring this bill to the floor, we continue to undercut and underfund education and health care and transportation needs as speaker after speaker has already said.

We are going to call for a vote on the previous question, and I am going to urge people to vote no on the previous question. This rule is unfair, it is undemocratic, it is arrogant, and this is an issue of fairness. The majority has waived the budget rules for themselves, but they have not waived those rules for the minority. This is another abuse of power, and maybe in his closing statement the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Linder), my friend, can explain why one set of rules applies to the majority and a different set applies to the minority in dealing with an issue of this importance. By defeating the previous question, we will restore some fairness to this debate, to this process, by applying the waiver of budget rules to the motion to recommit so that we can offer a meaningful motion to recommit and we can provide the funding, as the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) said earlier, to the SEC so that it gets the proper funding as authorized by the Sarbanes-Oxley bill. It also can provide much needed moneys for homeland security which, for all of our talk about homeland security, we continue to underfund important needs. It provides important moneys for veterans medical care. Everybody talks about how we are committed to veterans, and yet here we are again moving forward on a bill that underfunds veterans medical care and we are not even being allowed an opportunity to correct this. So I would urge all of my colleagues to vote no on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment into the Record just prior to the vote.

Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, let me just point out, the name of our party is not the Democrat Party. It is the Democratic Party. We would appreciate it if we would at least be called by our proper name, okay?

I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

Mr. Speaker, what is happening here today is that the democratic processes in the institution that is supposed to represent the finest of democratic traditions in the world are being mutilated, and I want to explain what I mean by that.

The majority party for the last year has been able to prevent this House from making any significant decisions whatsoever on 90 percent of the domestic budget. They have succeeded in preventing the education, health and labor bill from coming to the floor for a vote. They succeeded in preventing the science budget, the housing budget, the veterans budget and others from coming to the floor.

And now that we are past the election, they are now doing two things. By this resolution before us today, they are making it possible for the House to consider two resolutions, both of which will be sent to the Senate. The first resolution will continue the authority to keep the government open for 1 month, and the second resolution will be used as a vehicle to which the Senate will then attach all of the remaining appropriation bills as they have been worked out in the Senate. It will be attached to that vehicle and then sent back here for an up-or-down vote, and no Member will have any opportunity to affect that package in any way whatsoever. That will mean that we will have gone an entire year without any degree of accountability for the actions of either the majority party or the minority party. Our last opportunity to affect the content of that budget comes today on these resolutions. We are being denied again an opportunity to provide any meaningful alternative to the proposition that is being put together by the majority party.

The House rules say that if the Committee on Appropriations has not passed what is called a 302(b) allocation under which it takes its spending authority and allocates that authority to the 13 different subcommittees, if the committee has not done that, then the rules of the House say that the House cannot consider an appropriation bill. The Committee on Rules agreed to waive that provision for the majority, so they are allowing the majority to bring a bill to the floor allowing for a huge amount of spending, but they did not afford the same privilege to the minority. That means that we cannot offer any meaningful amendment to the funding level being provided by the majority.

There are reasons for rules. Whether you are talking about a New York Giants-San Francisco 49ers game or whether you are talking about the House floor, the purpose of rules is to see to it that everybody is treated the same. What this rule in essence says is that there is only one team that can even touch the ball; that is, the Republican majority team. And it says the Democratic team can have no opportunity whatsoever to have any impact on the outcome. That destroys the ability of this place to be a legitimate representative body.

After the election, I was watching McNeil-Lehrer, and I noticed in the panel that they had, the moderator asked the panel, what were the roles going to be for the Republican and Democratic Party after the election. When they discussed the Democratic Party, Tom Oliphant, the distinguished columnist, said, ``Well, they are now the minority party and so it is their responsibility to offer alternatives to the majority party's propositions.'' That is correct. But we are being denied by this rule by the majority party the opportunity to offer meaningful alternatives. That is bad for us, but it is also bad for the majority party because it means that there is no way to hold the majority party accountable for its decisions and there is no way to judge whether their decisions or ours are better, or more in tune with the country's needs. That is a disastrous result in what is supposed to be the most representative body on the face of the Earth.

If we had not been boxed out by the illegitimate action of the Committee on Rules, what we wanted to do is to offer a simple amendment which would put the House on record supporting expenditures which the majority party has already voted for on the supplemental. We wanted to make certain that the $2.5 billion in homeland security items, for port security, for border security, for FBI computers, et cetera, we wanted to make certain that those contingent appropriations which were frozen by the President, we wanted to give the House an opportunity to say that those items should be provided in this continuing resolution. The President has stonewalled on those $2.5 billion worth of items.

And we also wanted the House to reaffirm its support for $275 million of additional veterans medical care, for $200 million additional funding to fight terrorism in the Middle East, which we would have provided to Israel. The election reform money which both parties posed for political holy pictures about early on, we wanted to provide that. And we are being denied the opportunity to provide all of it. None of that adds to the spending level of the Republican-approved budget resolution. It does add to the level in this bill, but this bill is substantially below that resolution. Yet we are being denied the opportunity to strengthen the homeland security of this country because of the partisan needs of the majority party. I think that is illegitimate.

The other thing we wanted to do is to see to it that the Securities and Exchange Commission is funded at the level promised in the Sarbanes-Oxley bill so that we could in fact put our money where our mouth is and afford investors decent protection from corporate fraud in their balance statements and in their accounting. We are being denied by the Republican majority the opportunity to do that as well.

That is why we are going to be asking this body to vote against the previous question on the rule so that we

can in fact offer this legitimate amendment, to offer these items which all of you, at least 90 percent of you on the majority party side of the aisle have already voted for. The items I am asking people to allow have already been supported by 90 percent of the Republicans and Democrats in the Senate and the House. I do not think that would be too much to ask if this House were a legitimate democratic body, which apparently the House is not. Democracy in this House is being shredded. The Republican Party is simply afraid to vote on these issues because they know that they would either lose the vote or else have a substantial segment of the American people saying to them, ``What in God's name were you thinking when you turned those items down?'' This is an illegitimate action, an illegitimate, arrogant and antidemocratic, small ``d,'' operation, and the majority party ought to be ashamed of themselves.