Making further continuing appropriations for the fiscal year 2004, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to instruct conferees.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 9\1/2\ minutes.

Mr. Speaker, we are about to go to conference on a bill which spends $87 billion. It is the second installment of what will be many installment payments to deal with the consequences of the war in Iraq. This motion to instruct attempts to put the House on record in favor of three provisions which the Senate passed earlier last week.

First, with respect to the issue of loans versus grants, this motion would provide that after $5.1 billion is set aside for military and security operations, and after $5.1 billion is set aside for Ambassador Bremer to deal with other costs associated with the effort in Iraq, that the remaining $10 billion of the reconstruction portion of the package be provided in the form of a loan, unless the President certifies that 90 percent of the bilateral debt owed by Iraq to other countries is forgiven.

The purpose of this first provision is to recognize that, over the next 5 years, the per capita foreign debt of the United States will be larger than is the per capita debt of Iraq, and since foreign debts can only be paid off by a country running trade surpluses, that means that, in effect, over the next 5 years Iraq will be in a better position to repay their foreign debts than we will be.

Secondly, we ask the House to go on record in support of two provisions that relate to quality-of-life measures for our troops. The first is to provide medical screening and dental screening for Guard and Reserve personnel prior to their being mobilized; and, second, to extend the transitional health care coverage to servicemembers who have been on active duty in Iraq and are now returning home, to extend that transitional health care coverage from the existing 60 days to 180 days. Certainly, that is the least we can do for these returning servicemen and women.

Thirdly, we ask the House to go on record in support of $1.3 billion in additional funds for veterans health care so that Priority 7 and Priority 8 veterans can make better use of veterans health care facilities without having to pay a $250 deductible and without seeing the cost of their prescriptions virtually doubled. This is, in essence, the content of the Bond-Mikulski amendment adopted in the other body.

That is what this does, and I would ask Members to support it.

I would also ask that if they do support it, they recognize that they have an obligation to then insist that these provisions be contained in the conference report, because they are already in the Senate bill. As Members know, conference committees are supposed to deal only with those matters which are in dispute between the two bodies. So I would urge any veteran or any other interested American citizen watching this debate to keep close track of how Members vote today, and compare that vote with how they vote when this conference report comes back. I think in that way it will in effect mean that they will be acting as a ``hypocrisy detector,'' which is always good for this body, when someone is looking over our shoulders.

I want to say one other thing. I know that the President of the United States is a powerful man. I know that in this town he is probably the biggest man on campus that you can find. But the fact is that I have never yet met a White House who did not think that Article I of the Constitution was a drafting error by the Founding Fathers. And I think that we need to remind all Presidents that we represent the same citizens that they do. We owe every President our respect, we owe every President a respectful hearing, but he also owes us the same thing, and that means that we need to work with each other.

Checks and balances: Mr. Speaker, in my view checks and balances is not simply an ornamental concept of democracy; it is a core element. It is the heart of our democratic system, and we have a right to expect the same respectful hearing from the President if we have an opinion that differs from his, as we have an obligation to give his views a respectful hearing.

But I note in today's article by E.J. Dionne in the Washington Post that the President, in a meeting last week, appears to have provided something other than that respectful hearing to Members of Congress.

Now, I know that the President is a business school graduate of a distinguished university, and I know that he regards himself in many ways as being an MBA President. He wants to bring business practices to the White House. Fine. But I would say that if that is the case, then even under the model that he sees, that means we are the Board of Directors.

We owe it to the country, it seems to me, to approach issues like this with great deliberation and great care. When we rubber-stamp the desires of any President, we, in essence, do not behave like the greatest deliberative body in the world; we behave instead like a poor imitation of the Board of Directors at Enron.

I do not think we ought to do that. Yet I notice in Mr. Dionne's column of today, he is describing a discussion that took place at the White House between the President and a number of Senators, and he is quoted by one Senator as saying, ``I'm here to tell you that this is what we have to do and this is how we have to do it,'' one Senator quoted the President as saying.

Then that Senator went on to say that after she had asked a question of the President, ``He looked at me and said, `it is not negotiable, and I don't want to debate it.' ''

Now, I would suggest that that might be a proper attitude if a parent is dealing with a minor child. It is not a proper approach when we are dealing with co-equal branches of government.

So I ask every Member today to use their own judgment and think through what they think is in the best interests not just of this country, but of the Guard and Reserve forces who we are asking to fight our battles over in Iraq and our veterans who have done their duty and who are looking for some help with health care problems that they incur along the way.

Mr. Speaker, I would urge support for the motion to instruct.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Evans), the ranking Democrat of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Rodriguez).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher).

Mr. Speaker, could I inquire how much time I have remaining.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards), the ranking Democrat on the Military Construction Subcommittee on Appropriations.

Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin).

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

Mr. Speaker, who has the right to close?

Does the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) have any other speakers?

Mr. Speaker, since I have the right to close, I will let the gentleman proceed. I have only one speaker.

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

Mr. Speaker, this motion has nothing to do with the question of whether the troops will come home sooner or not; but it has a whole lot to do with how we will treat those troops before they go to Iraq and after they return home. That is why we provide in this motion that the House ought to accept the Senate provision providing for premobilization health care and dental screening for Guard and Reserve forces and why we extend health coverage, the military health coverage to them for 4 additional months after they return home, above and beyond that to which they now are entitled.

This amendment has nothing whatsoever to do with making it harder for Iraq to repay its debts. In fact, this provision has a huge incentive for all other countries in the world to forgive their debts, just as they did with Poland when Poland became a democracy. Because this says that 50 percent of the reconstruction money to Iraq will be in the form of a loan unless the rest of the world forgives their debts. And then if the rest of the world forgives their debts, then we will too.

If we are looking for a way to put Iraq in the strongest possible position and to make sure that Uncle Sam's

taxpayers are not the only ones stuck with the bad deal, you need to vote for this amendment.

I would also say that we have heard the argument that somehow this proposal might slow down consideration of the bill; just the opposite. All this motion does is to accept three items that the Senate has already agreed to. The Senate has already determined that half of the reconstruction funds ought to be in the form of loans. The Senate has already determined that we ought to provide the additional health care to our military personnel that I have just described. The Senate has already determined that veterans deserve the additional $1.3 billion in veterans health care that we are trying to provide. So all we are doing is narrowing the differences between the two Chambers, which ought to make it faster in terms of the time it takes to deal with there bill.

I do hope, however, that particularly veterans groups, I hope veterans groups will put out a very large ``Beware'' sign on this vote, Mr. Speaker, because I am afraid that there will be a number of Members who will vote for this motion in the belief that it is merely symbolic, fully intending to support efforts by the Senate and House Republican leadership to then jettison these provisions as soon as they get to conference. That would be the ultimate act of insincerity.

And I hope that veterans groups will not let Members of this House pose for political holy pictures on this vote and then bug out of their responsibilities to stick to that vote when the bill goes to conference and comes back from conference.

I also would like to say one other thing. The President, as I said earlier, deserves the respect of every Member of this House, if for no other reason than by virtue of the office that he holds. But I want to say that the President is our leader; he is not a one-man band.

This Congress has an obligation also to weigh in with its own best judgments. I think this President, rather than telling Members of Congress that items like this are nonnegotiable, I think, as teachers often say to parents, he needs to learn to ``work well with others''. And I think that applies to how well he needs to be able to work with the Congress, and I think it also applies to how well he needs to work with our allies. And I would hope that, I would hope that that would happen.

After all, this is the same administration that did not provide the needed Kevlar linings for body armor for over 40,000 American troops.

This is the same administration that did not provide enough jammers, electronic jammers, to our troops in Iraq. And as a consequence, we have had American servicemen and women killed or maimed because they could not prevent the remote detonation of bombs and mines.

This is, after all, the same administration that did not see to it that we had enough armor for the Humvees so that they would not be vulnerable to explosions from the roadbed.

And this is the same administration that asked for so little money for clean water for our troops that 80 percent of our troops in Iraq, right now, are still drinking putrid water.

So I would say, with all due respect, no one is perfect. This administration certainly does not have a monopoly on wisdom. Neither do we on this end of Capitol Hill; but we ought to be able to work together in an effort to reach reasonable compromises. I think this recommit motion is, in fact, an effort at a reasonable compromise; and with that, I would ask for an ``aye'' vote, Mr. Speaker.

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

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 ask unanimous consent to take from the Speaker's table the bill (H.R. 3289) making emergency supplemental appropriations for defense and for the reconstruction of Iraq and Afghanistan for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2004, and for other purposes, with a Senate amendment thereto, disagree to the Senate amendment, and agree to the conference asked by the Senate.

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

Mr. Speaker, motions to instruct are usually a very strong tool of the minority party, and the reason I know that is because we were in the minority for a lot of years. As a matter of fact, one party controlled the House of Representatives for 40 years without a break. During that time, the minority party, our party, used a lot of motions to instruct. Most of these never passed, because the majority party has to manage and has to function and pass bills. So motions to instruct, although they are not binding, still seem to carry weight in the conference meeting. We need to move this conference quickly.

After lengthy debate in the House on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of last week, and for nearly 2 weeks in the Senate, a lot of debate on amendments took place. Some amendments were agreed to; some amendments were adopted, and some were defeated.

Two of the amendments we dealt with seriously through most of the debate had to do with loans to Iraq. As we all know, the House spoke rather emphatically that loans are not the way we were going to proceed. One problem is there is no government in Iraq to whom we would make a loan. Our own laws require that there be a government established before we can make a loan to a country.

But what we are dealing with primarily, is to finish the job that was started in Iraq; and, when we finish the job, that means bringing our troops home. In order to bring our troops home, we are going to have to complete what they set out to do.

Saddam is gone, his regime is gone, but we cannot guarantee that another Saddam will not arise from the ashes of Baghdad if we do not help the Iraqi people establish a government, if we do not help the Iraqi people establish a health system, if we do not help the Iraqi people establish an educational system, and we are doing very well on the educational system. The health system is ongoing, and we are providing additional money in the supplemental to provide additional health systems.

We need to rebuild the infrastructure, electrical generation and distribution to people of Iraq, and to create a security force, where the people themselves can own their government, control their government, and not have to worry about a dictatorial regime raising its ugly head. When that happens, we can bring our troops home. The safety of our troops and the bringing of our troops home is important to me.

I do not know that this motion to instruct would actually delay the process, but it could. This should be understood, although most of the debate has been about the construction funds and the reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan, most of the money in the bill supports our own troops. It provides them with more adequate drinking water and potable water facilities. We have spoken strongly on several occasions, and we speak strongly again in this bill, that no American soldier should be in Iraq or any other place of hostility without body armor. In addition, having armor on the Humvees and the military vehicles that are not armored today, also needs to be done for the protection of our troops.

So we need to get this country stabilized and get our troops back home so that they do not have to be deployed constantly, not only our active duty troops but our Guard and Reserves.

The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) has put together a pretty interesting motion to instruct. I would have to tell him that I like a lot of the things he has put in there, but there is one thing that we are not going to agree to: the conferees will not agree to this loan provision.

The President has spoken strongly on loans numerous times. The House has spoken strongly on it. And for those who think that the Senate is opposed to doing it like the House did, understand that the Senate already included $10 billion in their bill as a grant to the construction of Iraq and Afghanistan. And so the Senate is not opposed to doing it this way. They just have a little different arrangement.

So I am going to vote against this motion to instruct primarily because of the provision dealing with loans to Iraq, which the President feels very strongly about. And in the statement of the administration's position, the director of OMB has said specifically that the President's leadership, his top leaders and advisors, would advise for a veto if that loan provision stayed in the bill.

So I am going to vote against this because I am not sure that motions to instruct have ever had any influence whatsoever, as they are not binding. But for any Members on our side who feel that this is something they should vote for to have a symbolic vote, I will have no problem with that. And I am not going to ask the House to defeat this motion. I am just going to say that for the reasons that I mentioned I am going to vote against it and primarily because I am not going to agree in conference to the loan provision. I am going to support the President's position on that issue.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I have no other speakers.

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

Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier in my opening comments, the gentleman from Wisconsin's (Mr. Obey) motion has a lot of things to feel good about. The conference on the authorization committee for the Committee on Armed Services is working on a lot of these details already that the House is supporting.

We have done a number of good things for quality of life for our military. To listen to some of the speakers on the other side, you would think we had done nothing for the members of our military. That is just not true. That is a little misleading, but then we know in debate, things get a little misleading. We provided hazard pay and separation allowances and fully funded them in this bill. We have authorized travel assistance for military families, that is, continued payment of per diem for travel of family members of our military personnel who are ill or injured as a result of active duty service.

Clothing allowances. We provided the Department of Defense authority to provide monetary stipends to soldiers to purchase civilian clothing to wear during their hospital stays.

Meal allowances. The House has moved on three separate occasions and moved very quickly to abolish the outrageous system of soldiers in military hospitals being billed for the food that they consume while they are recovering from the wounds on the battlefield. Outrageous.

The House moved quickly on three different occasions to not only repeal that law but to make it retroactive through September 11, 2001 and to provide for repayment of any of those bills that had already been collected from wounded military personnel. We are going to pay them back. The House has moved very quickly on that. And I thank the House again, because we made it retroactive here when I offered an amendment for myself and the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) to not only make that repeal permanent, but to actually make it retroactive until September 11.

We have directed the Department of Defense to increase the availability of modern hydration systems for the soldiers in Iraq. It gets really hot there, and the soldiers need as much water hydration as they can get, and we insist on that being provided. We took the President's request; we made some changes. I think we produced an even better bill than the President requested. We have a good bill that was passed by the House after debating for 3 days, and I do not want to do anything to limit our ability to advance this important bill, and to have some flexibility in the conference. It is the same thing that they wanted when they were in the majority party, they wanted flexibility to negotiate with the other body and we do too.

As I have said earlier, Mr. Speaker, I am not going to ask my side of the aisle to defeat this motion to recommit and this motion to instruct. It is nonbinding, and it has a lot of good-sounding symbolic items. I am going to vote against it myself, because I cannot agree to the provision that talks about the loan provision that the Senate included that the House defeated on two separate occasions. So I will be there to defend the position of the House and to negotiate with the other body to get the best bill that we can and one that will not be vetoed. And it has been suggested that it could be subject to a veto if that loan provision remains in the bill.

So other than that, Mr. Speaker, I hope we can get about our business. We would like to get to conference quickly on this bill. We would like to be able to conclude a conference early next week and have this bill to the President as soon as possible.

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

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

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

Mr. Speaker, the new deficit numbers came out yesterday, and they confirm what we already know: this Republican government has given America the biggest government deficit in our history, nearly $400 billion in fiscal year 2003, the year just concluded, plus an additional $500 billion deficit in fiscal year 2004, the year we just started, according to the Bush administration.

Mark my words, these Republican deficits will end up raising taxes, and worse, raising our children's taxes. The Republican leaders are going to do everything in their power to hide their abominable record of fiscal mismanagement.

Just listen to the Bush administration's Treasury Secretary in today's New York Times. He predicts that this jobless recovery will somehow magically add 2 million new jobs before next year's elections. He is saying this economy, which has lost nearly 3 million jobs since President Bush took office, the worse job records since Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression, is now going to create 200,000 new jobs a month. Perhaps the Bush administration still believes in Santa Claus, and perhaps they really believe that 2 million jobs will magically appear under the election Christmas tree next year; but the American people know a snow job when they see one. And make no mistake, they are seeing one today on the House floor.

Mr. Speaker, this so-called continuing resolution is a procedural shell game to hide Republican mismanagement of the government. This is not trick or treat, Mr. Speaker, just tricks. This entire process today makes clear that this is a Republican government that refuses to do its job, at the same time that too many hard-working Americans are still suffering from the Republican recession. While millions cannot find any jobs, Republicans refuse to do the job that they have and that taxpayers pay them to do.

As my Republican friend on the Committee on Rules, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss), once said about another continuing resolution, ``Congress is failing to fulfill its obligations in a timely and responsible way, choosing to fall back on one CR after another instead of putting in the time to do our jobs.'' Or as he said another time, ``a continuing resolution erodes the credibility of the Congress.''

After misleading the American people for too long, neither this Republican Congress nor this Republican administration has much credibility to erode anymore. And as for ``putting in the time to do our jobs,'' this Republican Congress hardly even bothers anymore. This House has not put in a full week's worth of work in months. And this week we are not even going to be here for 24 hours. It has gotten so bad that this resolution is the only so-called substantive legislation before the House this week, and everyone knows that it will not actually do anything. It is just a procedural shell which they will use to hide from the taxpayers the massive omnibus spending bill that they are going to sneak through this House later this year. And mark my words, when this resolution comes back to the House in its massive and bloated form, you will not even recognize it.

My friends in the majority will tell you that the House did its work. They will tell you that the other body caused the problem they are addressing today with this shell game. Mr. Speaker, they want Americans to forget one simple truth. The Republican Party controls the Senate just like it controls the House, just like it controls the White House and the entire executive branch. And Republicans refuse to use that power for the people still suffering from the second Bush recession and the third Republican recession in the past 20 years. For example, some 1.4 million Americans have been unemployed so long in this economy that they have exhausted their unemployment insurance. After the end of this year, Americans who lose their jobs, people like the nearly 3 million jobs lost since President Bush took office, will not be able to enroll in unemployment insurance. But Republicans refuse to help them before this Congress closes up shop for the year. Some will say that Republicans are simply incompetent, that they cannot figure out how to run the government. That would be bad enough. But I do not think it gives the Republican Party the credit it deserves, because this Republican government can be ruthlessly effective when its priorities are involved. Unfortunately for the American people, the priorities of this Republican government are largely limited to the political priorities of the Republican Party.

Mr. Speaker, time and again Republican leaders have proven their willingness to use their power over the government to get more power for the Republican Party. As the Washington Post suggested last week, Republicans are creating an almost Soviet-style system. They treat the people's government as just another arm of the Republican Party.

Republican leaders have moved heaven and earth to protect big corporate tax dodgers, but they will not give military and working families the same tax credit that they gave to the wealthiest. Just last week, House Republican leaders twisted enough arms to block a Democratic pay raise for the military which would have given soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan a $1,500 bonus, but they cannot be bothered to do anything about high health care costs. And earlier this year Tom DeLay's office used Federal resources to track down his legislative opposition in Texas, and even urged the FBI to arrest the Democratic State legislators who dared to stand up to him. But now House Republican leaders will not use the Federal resources of the Congress to help the millions of Americans who need unemployment insurance in the midst of President Bush's jobless recovery.

Mr. Speaker, this is not a government of the people, by the people and for the people. It is a government of the Republican Party, by the Republican Party and for the Republican Party. And if the Republican Party wants this Republican government to raise the debt tax on Americans, while at the same time shortchanging education and veterans' health care, then they should at least have the courage to be honest with the public about it.

So I urge my colleagues to oppose this rule. Do not help the Republican leaders keep Americans in the dark this year.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

(Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), the ranking member of the Committee on Appropriations.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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, once again we are being asked to pass a resolution that keeps the government open because Congress has not finished its work on appropriation bills. That is not unprecedented. Many times in the past we have faced this situation. But I do think that it is harder to understand when we have one party in control of all of the tools of government. When one party is in control of the Presidency and both the House and the Senate, it ought to be somewhat easier to get the work done on time. Over the past 34 years, one party has been in control of all three of those power centers, the Presidency, the Senate and the House, 6 years. The average number of appropriation bills that had been passed by the time the fiscal year ended in those 6 years was twice as high as it is today. Today we have only three appropriation bills passed. That, in my view, is no reflection whatsoever on the majority leadership of the Appropriations Committee. I think if things were left to the committee, we would be much further along the road. The reason that we have not completed our work is largely because the majority party leadership in this House has determined that they only want to pass appropriation bills on the majority party's side of the aisle.

The majority party has a right to define itself and lay out what its first preferences are. The minority party has a similar right and obligation. But then both parties, in the end, are supposed to seek a way to resolve those differences. I recognize, being a member of the minority, that the majority party is likely to, and under our system is entitled to, win most of those fights. That is the way the system works. But for the good of the system and for the good of both parties, there

are some occasions where the issues are so tight that you can use a little help across the aisle.

And it is the obligation of the minority party to try to do that if and when some legitimate compromises are made, not so that the minority party wins the argument on those bills but so that the minority party can at least feel that some of its concerns have been modestly attended to. That has not been the case in this Congress on appropriation bills and outside of the appropriation realm.

I, for the life of me, do not understand why we do not have bills on energy and water before us, why we do not have the military construction bill before us. On bills like that, those are relatively simple bills. They are normally fairly noncontroversial, and on bills like that what we have today is the majority in a fight with itself, and so far it has not been able to triumph. So we are stuck with those bills in limbo. On the labor, health, education bill, which I had hoped would be passed on a bipartisan basis eventually, we are stuck because the majority party is insisting on a fairly extreme approach to that bill.

The administration asked the Congress to vote for No Child Left Behind. We did. But now the funding for No Child Left Behind is being left behind.

The bill that we have on labor-H is some $7 billion short of where it ought to be in order to meet those promises.

And then we have similar problems with respect to the Commerce- Justice-State bill where efforts are being made to pretend that more money is being provided to local law enforcement than in fact is being provided because to understand what is being provided, we have to compare both homeland security and regular crime funding.

So, Mr. Speaker, I would simply say that we could be a lot further along if there was any indication whatsoever that there would be a conciliatory approach coming on any of these bills from the majority side of the aisle. Even outside of the appropriations process, we see efforts made to really radically change Medicare in the prescription drug bill, whereas if people were to back off of that, we could easily pass a decent prescription drug bill.

So I would say, I used to think we had a good shot at getting out of here by November 1. It is obvious we are going to be very lucky, Mr. Speaker, to get out of here by Thanksgiving. I regret that because I think the longer the Congress is in session, the more damage is being done to the Republic. But because of these disagreements we will be here next week with another continuing resolution. The Members can bet on it. I just hope that sooner or later the majority party recognizes that in the minority they have a willing partner in passing some of these if they are willing to compromise in the slightest on some of these issues before us.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding me this time.

Mr. Speaker, every year this House has a responsibility to pass the 13 appropriations bills that fund the activities of the Federal Government. Once the House passes those bills, the United States Senate is supposed to pass them. After that, the House and the Senate get together on a conference committee to resolve the differences between the two versions. Those final bills are passed and then sent to the President for his signature. This is all supposed to happen before the fiscal year ends on September 30.

I think it is important to review this material from the perspective of a ninth grade civics class because the Republican leadership seems to have forgotten it. Despite the fact that they control the House, they control the Senate, they control the White House, they even control the courts, they cannot seem to get their act together and do the people's work. So we are forced once again to pass a continuing resolution.

It used to be that the Republicans blamed President Clinton for all the delays in legislation. They really got good at blaming him for everything. In fact, I think they kind of miss him. I know I do because the economy was so good and the budget was in surplus. Now, the economy under their leadership is lousy, and we have record deficits. In fact, we have the largest deficit in the history of the United States of America. Then the Republicans used to blame the Democratic Senate for everything. That excuse is gone now, too. We are here for one simple reason. The majority of this House has failed. They did not do their job. They do not want to do their job. And the American people deserve to know that. And what is really amazing is that the House is in session for a day and a half this week. It is Tuesday and this is the last day of business scheduled for the week. I am not sure about other parts of the country, Mr. Speaker, but in Massachusetts, a workweek is generally 5 days and sometimes it is longer, given that in this economy, people have to work sometimes two or three jobs. I doubt that firefighters or steelworkers or teachers or accountants in my district could skip work on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and expect to get a full paycheck.

The American people deserve a Congress that functions, that does the job given to it by the Constitution and they are not getting it. We all know what is going to happen in the next few weeks. We are going to see some huge, omnibus bill that a few people in a back room have worked out over pizza and cigars and be told that it is a fait accompli, take it or leave it, all because the leadership cannot or will not do their jobs. They did not do their job on the Iraq supplemental because we were not allowed to debate and vote on amendments, amendments that would have paid for the package, as opposed to adding $87 billion to the national credit card burdening our children and our grandchildren with debt.

This continuing resolution represents failure and not progress. But failure, Mr. Speaker, has become business as usual around here. Mr. Speaker, we are supposed to be a deliberative body. We are supposed to debate issues. We are supposed to amend bills to make them better to represent the concerns of our constituents. Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, we have a leadership in this House that does not believe in democracy, that does not believe in open debate, that does not believe in the deliberative process. We have a Committee on Rules that kind of acts like the State of California. It does not believe in debate. The fact of the matter is under the Constitution, this is supposed to be a deliberative body. We should debate issues regarding education, regarding unemployment, regarding the economy, regarding health care, regarding things that matter to our constituents each and every day. Yet under this process, we are just kind of kicking the ball down the field and we are told we are going to put this off for another day. And when we put it off, it is going to come back to us in a huge package and no one is going to know what is in the bill.

This process is broken. The American people need to understand that the Republican leadership in this House is not doing its job. The Republicans wanted power. It appears they wanted power just for the sake of power. The fact of the matter is they cannot even get along with each other. This is a disgrace that we are at this moment. I would urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the rule.