Tax Return Choice Act of 2006

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, regardless of where any of us stand on the debate over the broader issue of travel to Cuba, I hope you will agree that there should be an exemption to the restrictions when it comes to travelers who wish to travel for a religious purpose.

In fact, there is a current exemption for religious travelers. The Flake-McGovern-Emerson-Lee amendment would do nothing to weaken or lift restrictions of any kind of travel, religious or otherwise. In fact, my amendment would simply prevent any changes from being made to the exemption as it now exists.

You might wonder, if religious travel is currently permitted by law, why are we proposing this amendment? Well, let me explain.

In 1999, Congress established by law categories of permissible travel, including travel for religious exchanges. But over the past couple of years the Office of Foreign Assets Control, on instruction from the State Department, has published guidelines to accompany these regulations and they have in fact imposed new restrictions on religious travel to Cuba. They have resulted in the denial of travel licenses to many individuals and churches and synagogues, other religions who until recently had longstanding licenses.

This type of regulation runs counter to the spirit of the 1999 law and current administration policy. For example, a woman from Indiana went with her church group to distribute Bibles and participate in religious meetings and events. Soon after her arrival home she was served with a notice of a several thousand dollar fine because she had been to a beach while she was in Cuba. I spoke to this woman. She had been to a beach once to a baptism. This is how ridiculous these restrictions have become.

As a broader example, groups from the Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Episcopal, United Church of Christ and many other faiths have been denied license to travel to Cuba although they have traveled there legally for years. I am afraid we are getting dangerously close to curbing the free exercise of religion in this context and having government impose a religious test. Are you truly religious enough to travel to Cuba? Is this a real religion that you are representing? That is not the business that this government ought to be in.

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

Before yielding 1 minute to the gentleman from Massachusetts, let me simply state I have been to Cuba, as have a number of us. We have met with those who have been in prison for their activities and others. There is no one group that represents the pro- democracy movement in Cuba. Many people have encouraged us to do exactly what we are doing.

I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Missouri (Mrs. Emerson).

Mr. Chairman, let me simply say, if we are afraid that the Baptists, the Methodist, the Lutherans, the Presbyterians, Episcopalians, United Church of Christ, and

other faiths that are going to Cuba are somehow propping up the Cuban regime, then our worries are misplaced. That regime has been there for 47 years, and to deny missionaries and others the opportunity to go there and convert people to the faith and to work is simply wrong.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I rise today to offer a series of amendments on earmark limitations to the Transportation, Treasury, Housing and Urban Development 2007 appropriation.

While the Appropriations Committee is touting a two-thirds reduction in earmark spending, the sad news is that even with that decrease, the bill still contains more than $930 million in pork-barrel spending. With more than 1,500 earmarks, this bill contains more earmarks than all of the appropriation bills passed in each of the years 1995, 1996, or 1997.

This bill provides for new zoo docks, opera houses, bike paths, hiking trails, and 1,500 other congressional priorities, all paid for at the expense of the taxpayer.

The most disturbing part of this bill is that these earmarks are paid for with ``funny money,'' with fictitious offsets that would have never left the Treasury to begin with. So while you will hear during this debate many times you are not saving money by getting rid of these earmarks, all the Appropriations Committee would have to do is to simply say we are not going to fund earmarks this year. We will take a lower 302(b) allocation or we will apply it elsewhere instead of funding these earmarks. So that argument that you will hear again and again is simply wrong.

We were unable to identify whose earmarks are in this bill many times, who requested them, or how they were chosen, because we were simply given the manager's amendment last Wednesday, I believe, with these 1,500 earmarks. It is very difficult, and you will see with some of these, they are very vague as to what they are actually funding. So I would submit that oversight is tremendously difficult when you do not even know what the earmark is really for.

If it is to fund a facility, a facility could mean a lot of things. We do not even know anything more than that from the manager's amendment. We are left with these limitation amendments as the only means of shining daylight on the process, on these projects and programs and on this spending, and there is plenty to shine in light of this transportation bill. I hope that we will take the time today to actually look at what we are doing.

This first amendment would limit the University of Mississippi in Oxford from spending $1 million on the new William Faulkner Museum. This $1 million is part of nearly $12 million that the State of Mississippi has provided in earmarks in this bill, including nearly $2 million in HUD grant earmarks.

Currently, the University of Mississippi already owns Rowan Oak, which was a family home of the Faulkners for more than 40 years. Currently, Rowan Oak nonstudent visitors pay $5 for the tour. According to the University's Web site, this earmark will go toward building a new wing in the University museums featuring a biographical timeline exhibition dedicated to the author who once wrote ``I don't care much for facts, am not much interested in them . . . ''

I would say that if we are interested in the facts here, we are spending too much money. We are often told there are criteria when these earmarks come before the committee, strict criteria that these earmarks have to pass or they are not funded. I would ask, please, someone explain what criteria we are using to take money from taxpayers in California or Arizona or elsewhere to pay for the William Faulkner Museum in the State of Mississippi. If you can justify this kind of spending, I would submit you can justify just about anything. If you can just identify it on economic development grounds, what cannot be justified on economic development grounds?

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

Mr. Chairman, all I can do in response to that is quote William Faulkner. Anyone who believes that we cannot save money by eliminating earmarks does not care much for the facts and is not much interested in them. The notion that this budget is set and now all we can do is spend up to the top of it belies the fact that last week we could have offered a lesser bill, a smaller bill. Earlier in the process when we established the budget, we could have simply said we are not going to fund this year.

Therefore we are going to save billions and billions of dollars. But, no, we passed a bigger budget and then we come here today and say, darn, I wish we could have saved money; we just cannot, it is too late.

Mr. Chairman, I would submit that people are getting tired of hearing that argument. And we simply cannot continue to spend money this way. So with that, I would urge that we accept this amendment, and at least start, at least send some signal that we are going to be better stewards of the taxpayers' money.

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

Mr. Chairman, this amendment would bar Fairfax County

from using $50,000 in Federal taxpayer dollars for field improvements in Annandale, Virginia.

When I first saw this earmark, I had trouble understanding why the Federal Government was giving $50,000 to the Fairfax County Park Authority in Virginia for field improvements. Fairfax County is the 11th wealthiest county in the United States. I used to live there. It is a wonderful county. Has a wonderful park system and a big budget.

Why the Federal Government is funding this, I just do not know. The county's 2007 available funds will total around $3.38 billion, total county funds. In 2004, the median household income in Fairfax County was $88,133, double the national average of $44,684.

The Fairfax County Park Authority in Virginia received over $100 million in revenue in 2005, and spent under $70 million. Again, this is the park authority that we are funding here, adding over 30 million in net assets in one year alone.

In 2005, the assets of the Virginia Park Authority exceeded its liabilities by more than $419 million. Along with parks, recreation centers and trails, the Fairfax County Park Authority manages seven golf courses.

How should we explain this earmark to the taxpayers in Arizona or Colorado or New Mexico or anywhere else; or Mississippi, for that matter? My amendment would simply prevent funding for this purpose. In this bill, Virginia is expecting more than $24 million in earmarking, with more than $3 million in HUD grants alone.

This is compared to States like Wyoming and Vermont which receive less than $1 million in total earmark funds in this bill. Why is the Federal Government adding to the wealth of the Fairfax County Park Authority by giving it $50,000 for field improvements? How does this earmark relate to the central purpose of HUD programs, which I thought was to help house people?

Mr. Chairman, I welcome the justification for Federal funds in this case.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, let me simply state again, Fairfax County's available budget funds for 2007 are around $3.38 billion. The Fairfax County Park Authority received over $100 million in revenue in 2005 and spent under $70 million, adding over $30 million in net assets in 1 year alone.

I would submit that it is the county's responsibility to decide what the priorities are, and if they decide that the priorities are not to spend $50,000 where we want to spend it here, then perhaps it ought to be taken up with the county, but not come to the Federal taxpayer again and again and again for these dollars when the local officials have turned them down for whatever reason.

I can go in my own State and say, the city I live in, they will not appropriate money for the Little League field close to my home. I would like there to be funds for that. So, go to the Federal taxpayer. I could do that apparently. It would meet the criteria, but it is wrong. We should not do that.

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

Mr. Chairman, this earmark limitation amendment would prevent $500,000 from being spent on renovations to the Banning, California, city-owned pool.

This $500,000 is part of nearly $12 million provided to the State of California in HUD earmarks. Now, I live in the Southwest. I know the desert can get awful hot, and there is nothing better than taking a swim. But I do not know why we ought to give the Federal taxpayer a bath every time somebody wants a swimming pool.

That being said, again here, I wonder what criteria we use when these earmarks come forward. If we can say that swimming pools, city-owned swimming pools are eligible for Federal funding, then what is not eligible for Federal funding? Do the criteria mean anything in that regard? Is anything open? Why not earmark the entire bill.

If we accept the premise, which we seem to accept in this House, that we know better than the Federal bureaucrats on how to spend this money, why not earmark the whole thing? I might hear agreement there.

That is what we seem to be doing. We keep going more and more and more. In 1994, I think there were a total of fewer than 2,000 earmarks on all appropriation bills. Last year there were over 10,000. The dollar value keeps increasing.

So we simply have to go the other way. In 2006 the transportation appropriation bill included $250,000 for the city of Banning, California for city pool improvements. Similarly, the 2005 transportation bill included $250,000 for the city of Banning, California for construction and renovation of the city pool.

So this is $500,000 tacked onto $250,000, tacked onto $250,000 for a pool, that to my understanding, has not even been built yet.

They are waiting for more funds to come from the Federal Government apparently before they even build this pool. How does this happen? How does the community pool receive a revenue stream out of the Federal Treasury?

I think this is simply the wrong way to do business. We have got to stop. What better place to stop than right here on this amendment and say we are going to send a signal to the taxpayers that we are going to do business differently?

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

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the comments. When the gentleman says that this money will go back into the pool, I hope we are not talking about another swimming pool here.

Let us remind ourselves what we are talking about here. Whether this funding is being spent by a Federal bureaucrat, I would submit that if they are saying that we ought to be spending money to offset the spending of some swimming pool in Gilbert, Arizona in my district, that would be wrong. A Federal bureaucrat, we ought to have oversight and say you shouldn't do that. But that doesn't mean that we ought to do it ourselves. I mean, it is tough for us to make a credible case for oversight of the Federal agencies when we are spending money like this. This is a swimming pool.

The notion that the criteria now has a 40 percent match that we have to get the local folks to kick in money as well, boy, who wouldn't? Who would not offset their budget? What local municipality would not jump at the chance to pay only 80 cents on the dollar or 50 cents on the dollar for a new project that they have, swimming pool or otherwise? Where did this end? Where does this end? It is no better if it is a Federal bureaucrat. But, boy, we look horrible if we say, hey, we spend money better than Federal bureaucrats. We are going to spend it on a swimming pool in Banning, California. Simply wrong.

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

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I won't speak for long on this. This is an amendment that seeks to limit Monroe County in New York from spending $1 million on Xerox Area Road improvements. This is one of 111 earmarks New York received in this bill worth more than $46 million, the fourth highest total of all States.

These earmarks include more than $1.6 million in transportation earmarks in this appropriations bill.

Xerox is a Fortune 500 Company. It is a $15.7 billion global enterprise and a valued employer to Monroe County, New York. The Xerox area they are speaking of is made up of 47 major buildings, 5.5 million square feet. I simply don't know why the Federal Government, Federal taxpayers, are being asked to essentially pave their driveway.

Monroe County has already offered many incentives to Xerox, including a $500,000 loan for new equipment, $100,000 training grant from Empire State Development and incentives through the County of Monroe Industrial Development Agency.

Let me just say how pernicious this becomes when the Federal Government weighs in on behalf of local governments who are seeking to incentivize private companies to locate their facility there. You are inevitably picking winners and losers.

If Xerox is not going to locate their new facilities or more facilities or more employees in Monroe County, they are going to do it elsewhere, in another part of the country, and it is likely that we may have to fund job training or other in that other area where it is moving from.

At what point do we say this is not our business? The Federal Government's business is not to weigh in and aid one local government at the expense of another. That is essentially what we are doing here.

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

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

The gentleman mentions that he does not begrudge those in Arizona seeking water subsidies, for example. I do. I hope the gentleman will join me in voting against the extension of the next farm bill, which gives massive subsidies to cotton farmers in Arizona. They should not have those subsidies. They should not have them anywhere.

So I simply think we have got to start somewhere, and when we say we are going to incentivize and we are going to join with local governments in incentivizing businesses to come, again I have to ask the question. I would love some guidance from the chairman of the committee on what would happen if the city of Newark, New Jersey, for example, said we are trying to lure Xerox to come here and we would like you to help. How does the committee make the decision? Do you look at seniority of the Member who is asking? Do you look at something else? What criteria are then used? When does the Federal Government stop weighing in and picking winners and losers?

Again, if they are relocating facilities, they are relocating from somewhere else. How do we jump in and say we are going to do it here and not elsewhere?

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

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

This amendment would limit the city of Weirton, West Virginia from spending $100,000 on a facility. Now, I am not being deliberately vague here. This is all we know. This is all we know about this earmark. Again, city of Weirton, West Virginia, we are spending $100,000 on a facility. I would ask for guidance from the committee as to what that facility is, or the author of the amendment.

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

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

Again, I would ask again, we do not know, is it a facility? Is it not a facility? I guess it is planning for perhaps a facility, maybe not. Are we simply subsidizing the city of Weirton, West Virginia? Are we in the practice of subsidizing all cities who are having trouble with their budget? Where do we pick and choose?

Again, we are tasked with providing oversight. How do we provide oversight if we do not even know if we are funding a facility or not?

Let me just give a couple of other examples in this bill, ones that I am not highlighting today. Other examples of vague earmarks, $250,000 to the Salvation Army Family Enrichment Center in Anchorage, Alaska, for the construction of a ``blank.'' The sentence was not completed; $250,000 to the city of Marathon, Florida for the construction of a facility. Again, is it a facility? It may or may not be. We do not know. How can we offer oversight in that case?

This is what it says: $400,000 to the South Valley Community Dental in Albuquerque for the construction of a new, again, ``blank.'' The sentence was not completed; $200,000 in transportation funds for Cedar Bluff, Alabama, no further description; $550,000 to Ed Roberts Campus, Berkeley, California. No other description. What is the money for? We have no idea.

We are, in the Congress, tasked with oversight. This is all we are given from the committee; $750,000 to the city of Temple, Texas for the acquisition and renovation of a facility. There is that dreaded ``facility'' again. Keeps popping up. We do not know what kind of facility. Yet we are asked to fund it.

My staff went so far as to send an e-mail to the committee staff requesting help in determining the intended use of appropriated funds in some of the particularly cryptic line items. We did not receive anything back. I can understand that. There was a lot going on this past weekend. There were 1,500 earmarks added Wednesday of last week. It is tough to get around to deciding what they are, but I would submit that if we cannot, we should not bring them to the floor and ask Members to vote on them, just to vote on appropriating money for ``facility'' when it may or may not be a facility.

Mr. Chairman, I retain the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I think I am the best intentioned multiple- amendment loser in the House these days, I guess. I keep being told I am well intentioned, but these aren't going anywhere.

Let me just say again. As I mentioned last week or a couple of weeks ago, this is the only opportunity we have. This is it. If we are going to offer any oversight, this is it. And when we get amendments that say for a facility, and let me just say that my staff e-mailed the committee last Friday and said, please, can you give us further explanations so that the authors of these amendments can come to the floor and better defend them? Please let us know what this is. We didn't get anything back from the committee. Nothing. That was 4 or 5 days ago.

Now, I understand it is a difficult thing, but maybe the committee ought to think that maybe 1,500 earmarks in

the manager's amendment might give rise to a little suspicion that we can't police this very well; that when we are spending money on swimming pools and facilities that we don't even know whether it is a real facility or not, that we have overstepped our bounds.

I am not going to apologize for standing up and offering 12 amendments, 12 out of 1,500 that we could choose. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, we ought to be doing it more often. So I would ask for the indulgence of the Members. This process, this is the only opportunity we have. We found out about the amendments last Wednesday. We go to the committee and attempt to look at them. We are told we can only look in the committee at one binder, right there. We can't even take it back to our office to study these amendments. Not until Friday did we get a copy. As soon as we did, we sent an e-mail back saying please give further explanation on these amendments. We heard nothing back.

What else are we to do? I am asking. What else are we to do?

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment seeks to limit the City of Yucaipa, California, and I think it was misspelled in the manager's amendment that this is from, from spending $500,000 on an athletic facility at Crafton Hills College. Funding for a California community college project should be under the jurisdiction of the State, not for Congress.

This $500,000 is part of nearly $12 million provided to the State of California in HUD earmarks, which is part of $87 million in total earmark funds included. This is the highest amount of any State in the bill.

You would expect that. California is a big State. But, still, when we are spending HUD monies on athletic facilities at community colleges, I would submit something is wrong. We should not be doing this.

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

Mr. Chairman, again, I do not know what else to say on this one. I think we have spent enough time on it. This is money for an athletic facility, a HUD grant for an athletic facility in Yucaipa, California. Simply, why we are spending money on that I don't know.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment would limit the Strand Theater Arts Center from spending $250,000 for conversion of a theater in Plattsburgh, New York, into a performing arts center.

I simply have trouble again understanding why the Federal Government should pay $250,000 to renovate a theater in Plattsburgh, New York. This is not the only frivolous earmark included in the HUD grants in this bill. Others include $100,000 for the Village of Jamestown, Ohio, for building renovations to the Jamestown Opera House.

I apologize. We will send down the one we intend to do.

I thank the Chair and the Members for their indulgence, and I apologize to the Member from New York.

As I mentioned here, this is funding for the Strand Theater Arts Center, $250,000 for the conversion of the theater in Plattsburgh, New York, to a performing arts center. There are other earmarks in the bill of this type: $100,000 for the Village of Jamestown, Ohio, for building renovations to the Jamestown Opera House; $100,000 to the Metropolitan Theatre Foundation in Morgantown, West Virginia, for the construction, renovation, and buildout of facilities; $100,000 to the Houston Zoo in Houston, Texas, for the construction of the Outdoor Life Science Learning Center.

It goes on and on and on and on. Again, you have to say, where do we stop? Where do we say this is not the role of the Federal Government? Where do we say local government knows best.

We say that we know better than Federal officials and bureaucrats over in the Department of Transportation or elsewhere where to spend money, then it stands to reason that those at the local level know a lot better than we do about what to spend money on. Sometimes in these cases these are facilities that they have decided specifically not to fund, yet we are going to go ahead and fund them.

That may or may not be the case in this case. But when we are saying we know best, we are going to decide

where these monies are going, whether or not it is leveraging local funds, we simply can't justify it to the Federal taxpayer.

We need to remind people again and again we have a deficit this year of somewhere between $300 billion and $500 billion, depending on how you count and what you count. We have a Federal debt approaching $8 trillion, and yet we are spending money to renovate theaters in small towns across the country.

Where do we say we have done enough? This ought to be done at the local level or it shouldn't be done at all. But how can we justify using taxpayer money at the Federal level for projects like this?

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

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

I appreciate this debate. As I have said before, this is the only forum we have to try to exercise a little fiscal discipline over this process.

A few speakers prior mentioned it is the definition of insanity to stand up, do the same thing, and expect you are going to get a different result. I don't know that I will ever get a different result here. I understand this process. I understand log rolling. I understand what this is about. But somebody has to stand up at some time.

I think the definition of insanity is assuming that the taxpayers are buying this, that they believe this is a good use of Federal taxpayer dollars. I think they see it for what it is. I simply think you have to stand up at some point and say enough is enough. That is what we are doing here.

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise to oppose the amendment.

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

With all due respect to the gentleman, and I do respect this gentleman, I believe this is an unnecessary amendment. The Congress cannot and should not abdicate its responsibility to review individual programs and make individual recommendations based on that review. The desire to hold spending in check should be based on congressional oversight of specific programs. We should not take a ``meat axe'' approach nor should we yield our power to the executive branch, and so, therefore, I urge a ``no'' vote on this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I am willing to accept the gentleman's amendment.

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

I know the gentleman has an honest appeal here in terms of doing what is best for his district, but here is the problem, and we are running into this problem consistently. We ran into it yesterday. More and more people are looking for a source of money, a piggy bank, if you will, and the IRS seems to be one of those targets.

What I would say is that with this money that he is choosing to take, he would subsidize the relocation of rail for private rail companies. This gentleman's amendment proposes to fund these subsidies by taking critical funding from the Treasury. As I mentioned, we have been hit again and again, and it seems as though they are going after the salaries and expenses side of the budget. Pretty soon, you weaken that organization to a point that they cannot do their job. We need to obviously be able to collect and deposit revenues into the Treasury. That is one of their major roles.

This amendment cuts the Treasury's departmental offices by $10 million. That is salaries, that is people, that is personnel that they need. This would significantly damage U.S. global economic and national security interests and cripple the Treasury's ability to fight the financial war on terror, and some of that money may have come out of that. We do not need to go there. We do not need to malign the money that is being used to fight the war on terror.

This amendment also cuts the IRS' business systems modernization program by $20 million, ``BSM'' as it is commonly called. While it appears to some that this account is $45 million above the President's request, it is actually just a restructuring of the IRS accounts. In fact, BSM is currently funded at the request level, which is already $30 million below last year's level. Cutting this $20 million will force IRS to lay off many of the 317 personnel who are currently working on the BSM project, delaying all work on the modernization of the IRS legacy systems.

So it may seem harmless to take $20 million here and $10 million there, but pretty soon, you rob Peter to put something in Paul's lap. Unfortunately, this leaves us at odds with how we balance the entire bill in the end. We have to have money for this organization, the IRS, and the many areas in which they work. The most recent one added was the involvement in terrorism.

So I would strongly object to the gentleman's amendment on that basis, I understand this is a program that he is very fond of and certainly favorable to, and there are a number of people from Illinois that I believe are on the same side. However, I must object, and I must oppose the amendment. I just wanted to add one other point.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts, the ranking member (Mr. Olver).

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word, and I would like to yield to the gentleman from Virginia.

Reclaiming my time, I appreciate the gentleman's interest on this and other important issues addressed in the appropriations bill, and I would be happy to work with the chairman, Chairman Davis, as this legislation moves on to conference.

As the gentleman noted, funds are tight in the current budget climate, and we were unable to provide funding for all the new initiatives proposed this year. But as a Member of Congress and a Federal employee, I understand the importance of modernizing the Federal Government's retirement systems and look forward to working with Chairman Davis as we move forward.

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition.

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

First, let me state that of course I do not condone companies relocating for tax purposes overseas. But I oppose the gentlewoman's amendment because I think it is a bad policy, and I will explain.

From a taxation point of view, this language is not necessary. Congress addressed the issue of corporate inversions in the Jobs Creation Act of 2004. The JOBS Act added a new section to the Tax Code which treats U.S. companies that complete a corporate inversion transaction after March 4, 2003 as domestic U.S. corporations for tax purposes.

Second, Congress addressed the issue of corporate inversions by enacting a contracting ban which is still in effect today. Given these two congressional actions, I don't see the need to further punish the people who work in the U.S. for these affected companies.

Companies registered offshore employ hundreds of thousands of U.S. workers, a fact that I believe is lost in these debates. It is easy for Members to vote for amendments such as these until they realize that constituents in their own districts are employed by these very firms and depend upon these firms for a paycheck.

Additionally, I am opposed to the amendment because the U.S. Government enters into billions of dollars' worth of contracts with private sector companies each year. As a proponent of good government, it is essential that competition for these contracts be allowed to go to the company that is the most effective and the most cost efficient.

Agencies under the jurisdiction of this act that would be affected include numerous safety agencies related to aviation and transportation, and they would not have access to many of the best products available ranging from security software, thermal imaging devices, handsets and engineer and data services for critical infrastructure.

This amendment is not necessary. It makes government contracts less effective by restricting competition, and it hurts U.S. workers. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''

Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to Chairman Davis from Virginia.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

I yield to my friend, Chairman Davis.

I would be happy to accept your amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that all of the gentleman's amendments be read.

Mr. Chairman, economic development initiatives, EDI grants, are targeted grants designed to address local economic development needs. As representatives of these communities, it is our responsibility to ensure that these needs when present are addressed.

While I appreciate the gentleman's efforts, I cannot help but feel they would be better directed at real earmark reform, including authorizing bills, not the meaningless attack on an individual project.

I urge a ``no'' on this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker).

Mr. Chairman, I have made my comments pretty clearly. I oppose the amendment. I believe that Mr. Wicker spoke eloquently. I also think that Mr. Olver made it pretty clear that this is not the resolution that we would look for on this particular situation.

Mr. Chairman, I oppose the amendment. I urge a ``no'' vote.

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, every one of these projects relative to the gentleman's comments, must relate to the eligibility of the CDBG program. Every single one. We don't waive the requirements.

In fact, to show how worthwhile we think these projects are, for the very first time this year the committee is imposing a 40 percent match for each of these projects. We think that each EDI is so meritorious that with just a little bit of CDBG seed money, these organizations and cities will be able to leverage other funds for the same goal. They do, and it does work.

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

To oppose the amendment.

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

The Transportation, Community and System Preservation program is authorized to fund a wide variety of transportation projects that improve the efficiency of the transportation system in the U.S., reduce the impact of transportation on the environment, and other purposes.

The purpose of this project, and soon I will yield to Mr. Walsh, in question is to rehabilitate several roads in Monroe County, New York to bring them up to acceptable standards and improve safety. These are eligible activities for the program, as defined in law.

Mr. Chairman, I yield as much time as he may consume to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Walsh).

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word, and I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Bonilla).

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

The gentleman claims this money should remain apparently in the hands of the bureaucrats downtown, and I would ask him what do bureaucrats know about economic development or constituent needs in Arizona or Detroit or Yucaipa, California? The gentleman from Yucaipa, California, has already spoken eloquently on the needs of the constituents in the City of Yucaipa.

I urge a ``no'' vote, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. McHugh).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Sweeney).

Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order against the gentleman's amendment.

The location of a TRACON has absolutely no effect on controllers' ability to manage aircraft or the capacity or capabilities of any airport. This is because TRACON controllers do not have to have visual contact with aircraft as today's radar technology allows it to see the aircraft.

I understand that the gentleman is concerned about the complexity of the airspace in south Florida and the risk of hurricanes and terrorist attack on south Florida.

The fact is the busiest airspace in America is in New York, Chicago and Atlanta, served by TRACONs located off the airport site that have been consolidated with other facilities.

Although I agree that the airspace in south Florida is complex, the New York airspace, with three major airports located within 10 miles of Manhattan, is far more complex than south Florida. And any one of the three major New York airports serves more traffic than all of the Miami area airports. However, a total of 15 airports in this area receive services from a single TRACON located on Long Island.

Consolidation would not affect continuity of operations during a terrorist attack or during a catastrophic hurricane. There are contingency plans in place to respond to such situations. The backup for the Miami, West Palm Beach facilities is a Miami en route control facility. In fact, the colocation of the West Palm Beach TRACON to Miami actually reduces the risk that a storm could disrupt service. This is because the Miami TRACON is built to withstand a Category 5 hurricane, unlike the West Palm Beach TRACON.

Just a couple of examples of consolidated TRACONs. A single TRACON on Long Island serves 15 airports, including LaGuardia, Newark and JFK and the most complex airspace in America.

The Potomac TRACON serves 10 airports. Five different TRACONs were consolidated in one facility in Warrenton, Virginia. The FAA also operates TRACONs in southern California that include 22 airports and extend from San Diego to LAX, and a northern California TRACON that serves 21 airports.

The fact is we do not have TRACONs at every airport and we don't need them at every airport, not with the technology that we have. We do not need all the TRACONs that exist today.

FAA's only mission is to ensure safety, and there is absolutely no safety issue associated with consolidating these TRACONs.

I urge a ``no'' vote on the amendment.

I yield the balance of my time to my friend from Florida (Mr. Mica).

Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

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

I rise in strong opposition to the language amendment overturning a HUD regulation concerning the number of units that are placed under lease.

The provision would allow the PHA to essentially create more vouchers for the program than the 2 million vouchers that exist currently. Today the program and the cost of the program is based on the number of units under lease.

If public housing or project-based section 8 units are being demolished, the additional vouchers provided are only for the units actually occupied prior to demolition. The department budgets each year for the number of occupied units it expects to convert from public housing units to vouchers.

Units that are not occupied now are not provided a voucher, since the program only provides a subsidy for those families that are currently receiving a subsidy in public housing.

To provide PHAs with the authority to create vouchers where there are no tenants to protect is simply a back-door way of creating new vouchers for the program. This cost is not budgeted for in this bill and would be significant.

Approximately 38,000 units in public housing and project-based section 8 are assumed to be demolished in 2007. Of this number, 21,000 are occupied and eligible for a voucher. The cost of these tenant protection vouchers would be $149 million. That is provided for in this bill. If vouchers were made available to those 17,000 units not occupied, as well as those already budgeted for, the costs will skyrocket in 2007 by an additional $122 million and increase every year thereafter.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Kentucky (Mrs. Northup).

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

I understand that you must have a speaker that wishes to speak at this moment?

Mr. Chairman, let me just say that one thing I don't quite understand about what is taking place here, but I want to get to the bottom of it. Having to provide a subsidy for empty units, and that is what you are doing, with a budget that only assumes least unit cost or least unit risks being unable to assist real families, this will, I think, unfairly, shift section 8 dollars to certain regions of the country for what are now vacant units. And this would be to the detriment of the distribution of those funds.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, at the end of the day, this creates an entitlement for vacant units. These funds are for tenant protection, not unit protection.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, let me try to clarify a few things. First, there are no safety or security impacts associated with the proposed rule on foreign investment. In fact, this rule does not change the statutory requirements that limit foreign investment in the U.S. airlines.

For example, U.S. airlines will still be U.S. airlines. U.S. citizens must be in actual control of the airline. U.S. citizens must own 75 percent of the voting stock. U.S. citizens must comprise two-thirds of board membership.

The proposed rule explicitly walls off any foreign investment proposal that would affect safety, security or defense in any way, including any impact of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, or CRAF program. No foreign investors will have a say when it comes to safety, security or national defense.

In addition, any control afforded to a foreign investor, such as marketing or product quality, can be revoked at any time.

Further, in response to concerns raised within the last several months,

DOT met with General Schwartz, Commander of USTRANSCOM and Robert Jamison, Deputy Administrator of TSA, to double check, I should say to triple check that these agencies have absolutely no safety or security concerns regarding the proposed rule. They did not. The rule itself will strengthen the airline industry in the U.S. The industry will be able to attract additional capital to improve their financial position. Some have indicated that the rule will result in fewer jobs. This makes no sense at all. Strong U.S. airlines result in a stronger aviation community that is ready, willing and able to hire more people, more pilots, more flight attendants, more mechanics.

Further, any open skies agreement between the U.S. and the European Union is predicated on this more modern investment rule. The rule, coupled with a U.S.-EU open skies agreement, will preserve and create new U.S. jobs and expand markets. It will increase the number of international flights operated by U.S. carriers and increase the number of foreign travelers to the U.S. It will also increase service to small and medium cities. This is because international markets must be supported by the robust feed traffic from the non-hub markets.

I am for a strong competitive industry that creates new American jobs, ensures better service, and is a boon for the economy, all without weakening security.

I urge a ``no'' on this amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I now yield the remaining time in my allotment to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica).

Mr. Chairman, at the outset here I want to say that this is a worthy program. However, the President's request this year for budgeting under the jurisdiction of this subcommittee was at least $3 billion below the enacted levels for the same functions in the previous year's bill, in the 2006 bill.

During every stage of this process, I have pointed out that we had that set of holes, serious holes in the budget that had to be filled, that we needed to try to fill. There is a further problem that under the authorizing legislation there are guarantees for funding for transportation items in highways, in FTA, in FAA, which the President's request was also below. We had to meet those guarantees in order to be able to bring the bill to the floor for debate at all. Otherwise, the point of order would lay against the whole TTHUD bill that we are debating today.

So here we have an amendment which proposes to put money in an item in transportation where there are already heavy guarantees that we have

to meet and proposes to take money from another section of the bill, one section of the bill which is about one-sixth as large in total as the transportation portion, and takes money from that where there are no guarantees whatsoever. This is something which I must oppose.

We cannot have this situation where money is being taken from other parts of this legislation, making them even worse off than they were under the President's request and whatever the chairman and his staff have been able to figure out how, as best they could, to fund the issue, and to take it for other items in transportation. We cannot do this at this time in the process, and I must oppose the gentleman's amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word, and I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Corrine Brown), who is, by the way, the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Rail on the authorizing committee.

Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, I really want to point out that yesterday we had a huge amendment to add funding to Amtrak, an amendment that involved over $200 million of additional budget outlay for Amtrak. I supported that amendment, and I supported that amendment because in that amendment all of the offsets came out of the transportation area or other areas that were within the authorizing committee's jurisdiction. It was the authorizing committee that offered the amendment, and all of the offsets came out of their jurisdiction.

In this case, this amendment takes money completely outside the authorizing committee's area. We have now heard from the chairwoman, and the ranking member of the authorizing subcommittee for rail, and takes the money out of one of the much smaller segments of this bill. That is why I oppose the amendment, and I will continue to oppose those kinds of amendments which take money out of the smaller areas of this legislation, all of which are equally cut short in a budget which is well below, at least under the President's recommendations, well below the present year's enacted legislation.

So I will oppose those kinds of amendments consistently where they take money out of the smaller areas of the bill to move them to the area of the legislation, namely transportation, which lives under guarantees of minimum funding from the authorizing committee.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I would just like to point out that since these colloquies, at least when they start over on the other side, remain on the other side, I would just like to point out that this is an issue that I have already indicated my very strong interest in. So I would be very happy to work with my chairman in trying to find the funding to be able to do what the gentleman wants, because it has been a matter of very high priority for me and for our side of the aisle as well.

Amendment Offered by Ms. DeLauro

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word, and I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Berry).

I cannot yield any time?

Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for the clarification. I apologize for being a little bit off base there.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut the remainder of the time.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word, and I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment, however well- intentioned it may be. Mr. Chairman, the amendment strikes one item in the Economic Development Initiative under Housing and Urban Development. And I would say that this item is totally consistent with the purpose of the Economic Development Initiative in the first place.

As the gentleman from Mississippi pointed out, William Faulkner is one of our preeminent authors, surely one of the 10 most famous authors of the 20th century here in America. And having William Faulkner's home and museum in honor of him and showing his legacy is certainly an enormous boon to tourism and, more broadly, to tourism generally, but particularly let's say to American authors and English students. People will flock to that place because of the fame of William Faulkner.

And so I would say that Mr. Wicker, the gentleman from Mississippi, knows his district very well and also knows what it is that will have a serious impact on economic impact in his district. And this one is one of those, as so many of them are under this particular initiative, which involves a partnership between the Federal Government, in a relatively small way, very small way in its totality, and the State Government, and local government, and private investment, private donations that will go and have gone to the home and the museum.

I oppose this amendment. I think this is a very, very appropriate expenditure of money.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

I had the impression that the gentleman from Arizona is now switching off the issue that we are talking on and raised a whole bunch of others to try to create some sort of a category. I want to go back to this particular one.

No State in our great country has over the past at least two generations, and probably more than that, suffered greater economic distress and greater job loss than West Virginia. Thousands and thousands of families have migrated to other States, to West Virginia's great loss and to the gain of those other States.

Now, Weirton, West Virginia is one of those places that has been right on the point of the sphere of this economic distress and job loss. As the gentleman from West Virginia pointed out, it has had serious losses of jobs in the steel industry, and its population has declined precipitously. Precipitously.

It is very difficult to bring back distressed communities in situations like that, and it is a hard effort to do the planning and to figure out what are the projects that are the greatest chance of success to bring back jobs.

And there can be no greater purpose, it seems to me under the Economic Development Initiative under HUD, than to provide help in communities exactly like that. This project, because of the breadth of it and the need in the area, meets all the criteria that HUD has set, and it is totally consistent with the purposes of the Economic Development Initiative program under HUD.

So I rise in strong opposition to the amendment that has been offered by the gentleman, however well intentioned it may be. I urge a ``no'' vote on the amendment and hope that that will prevail.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word, and I yield to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis).

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I am intending to speak for a few minutes and then I will yield the remainder of my time to the gentleman from Florida to finish the remarks that he wishes to make.

Mr. Chairman, and Members, this is a simple limitation of funds amendment. It would prohibit the use of funds in this appropriation bill for the 2007 fiscal year from being used to eliminate, consolidate, collocate or plan for the consolidation or collocation of a Terminal Radar Approach Control, TRACON, all of them all over the country. That sounds like a fairly strong piece of medicine.

On the other hand, we have seen no plan that I know of. There are very few people who know how many TRACONs there are, though I am sure the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) would be able to tell that exactly. If there are benefits, we have not actually seen what those are. I have not seen them, as the ranking member of this subcommittee with jurisdiction, and I am concerned when a Member from a growing State, growing fast, but a spread out State like Idaho comes and says there will be no TRACON there. That doesn't surprise me particularly. There will be some other States that will not have TRACONs, and if there is low air traffic that may be appropriate. But I have seen no plan justifying what is being planned to be done. We have not been told, and I am concerned in particularly in relatively urban areas about consolidation of these, though that may be exactly where they should be done.

So with the limitation that has been proposed, I am going to support the gentleman's amendment at this time, and hope that that might make certain that I am informed by the bureaucracy at FAA of exactly what their plans are by the next time we end up with this kind of effort on their part.

So with that, I yield the remainder of my time to the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. Chairman, I also accept the amendment.

I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I want to commend him for his hard work on this important legislation. And while I strongly support Chairman Knollenberg's bill, I will be voting in support of its passage, I am disappointed that this bill does not provide funding for the Office of Personnel Management's initiative to modernize the Federal Government's retirement systems.

The current antiquated paper system is in desperate need of modernization. A failure to provide funding to establish a more efficient and effective electronic process for handling these retirement claims, especially after the first three contracts have already been awarded, represents a significant setback for the modernization efforts.

While I understand that funds are tight in the current budget climate, unnecessary delays to the modernization of the Federal Government's retirement processing will only end up costing us more in the future, and it will likely lead to additional unnecessary delays and errors in the processing of retirement benefits under the current antiquated system.

I would urge the gentleman from Michigan to work with the Government Reform Committee, the Office of Personnel Management, and other interested stakeholders to explore in conference ways that funding for this important initiative might be restored and contracts continue on track.

Mr. Chairman, I oppose this amendment, and let's make no mistake: Much of the work that is performed under contracts that would be banned under this amendment are performed in the United States by American citizens, and we are taking these people's jobs and eliminating them. It is an ill-considered amendment.

While targeted tax provisions to address the issue of corporate tax policy is appropriate, penalizing companies by prohibiting them from participating in Federal Government contracting harms both the United States Government and its citizens. The government should be able to purchase the best goods and services of world-class companies wherever they are located, absent compelling national interests. We should be able to get the best bulletproof vests, the best body armor, the best armor for our APCs that are going around, wherever the companies happened to be headquartered. The prohibition makes no sense.

We are also banning companies from doing business for activities that were legal at the time they made these corporate decisions. This is like an ex post facto ban.

Do we want the best technology and premier information technology service, or don't we? That is the question. This amendment is a wonderful way to ensure that we don't.

I can understand if this amendment applied to Iran or Syria or North Korea; but Panama, Bermuda, the Cayman Island, they pose no threat to the United States.

Preventing successful firms from participating in the Federal marketplace just because they happen to be incorporated outside the United States rejects the free market principles underlying our full and open competitive Federal acquisition system. Obtaining full and open competition from all firms who wish to participate in our Federal market is the keystone of our acquisition system, ensuring that taxpayers get the most value for their tax dollar.

Domestic source restrictions like this are simply counterproductive; and, I might add, they invite retaliation. Americans are only 4 percent of the world's consumers. When we start putting bans on countries that we are not going to contract with, they put up similar bans. The end result is instead of our ability to expand marketplaces for American companies and American jobs, we end up restricting it to the 4 percent of the world's consumers that happen to live in the United States.

Also, the substance of this amendment is not necessary because Congress addressed the issue of corporate inversion in the JOBS Act, the Jobs Creation Act of 2004. The JOBS Act added a new section to the Tax Code, section 7874, which treats U.S. companies that complete a corporate inversion transaction after March 4, 2002 as domestic U.S. corporations for tax purposes. So we have addressed this issue. This is penalizing companies who make decisions prior to that time.

Critics could argue that companies that have engaged in corporate inversions prior to March 4, 2002 should be covered by the JOBS Act, but Congress shouldn't ban companies from competing for government contracts because of legal transactions they performed more than 2 years ago, at the same time denying American servicemen and the American Government the

ability to get the best acquisition products that we can for America.

In recent years, the House has consistently rejected contracting ban amendments. I urge a ``no'' vote on the DeLauro amendment.

Well, I think if you are a patriot on this issue you oppose this amendment. I guess patriotism can be defined in a number of ways.

First of all, the GAO report that was referred to was a GAO report in February of 2004 before Congress passed the Jobs Act that deals with the tax inequities in this particular area. The companies that are at issue pay full taxes on work and contract work that is performed in the United States. Basically, their offshore incorporation refers to how they look at foreign dollars coming through those and how those are viewed under the Tax Code. But the Jobs Act addressed that, and the GAO report was prior to that Jobs Act.

And finally, let me just add that retaliation, Bermuda is a protectorate of the United Kingdom. Panama is a country and an ally, and this is a very slippery slope once we start getting into which countries can do what that propose absolutely no risk to the United States at all. I think it is a bad amendment and I urge my colleagues to oppose it.

I do.

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate my friend taking the amendment out of turn. I rise in opposition to the Flake amendment. The $50,000 that Mr. Flake is trying to strike would go to the Fairfax County Park Authority to renovate fields in Annandale, Virginia.

Baileys Crossroads, Seven Corners, Culmore in the Mason District, is just inside the Capital Beltway in Northern Virginia. Like many areas, they are experiencing significant problems with gangs. They have a heavy immigrant population, and thousands of low-income, low-cost apartments.

I might add, open space is at a premium in these areas. One way we can make a positive impact on the gang problem is to give the kids something to do, and that is just what we are trying to accomplish with this particular earmark.

The playing fields in question are used by youth athletic leagues that bring kids in, offering them any number of positive experiences as alternatives to joining gangs and keeping them out of trouble. This is a much more urbanized part of Fairfax County. It may be in the aggregate a wealthy county, but I can tell you the people that this impacts are the lowest of the low in terms of their incomes.

But we have apartments in this Seven Corners area where you have two or three families living in two-bedroom apartments. This is a more urbanized part of the county. The county has over a million people.

Open space is at a premium. Just a couple of years ago, a soccer field where immigrants used to play soccer was displaced by an Eckerd Drug Store, depriving them of other fields. And gang activity in the Culmore area has thrived. Northern Virginia is rapidly expanding.

With every passing year, there are fewer and fewer places for young people to engage in constructive outdoor activity. And the kids that this affects do not have cars, they cannot take mass transit, they cannot afford taxicabs. This is an area where they can get to and be able to find some alternative to joining a gang and joining into illegal activity.

With every passing day, there seem to be more and more ways for them to get into trouble. Athletic activity is one of the best alternatives to gang activity.

There is an old saying, ``You can pay me now or you can pay me later.'' This investment, if it just saves one kid from a life of crime and a career in the prison system, will be well worth the dollars in this particular case.

But in my district, our constituents frequently tell me there are pressing needs; can we help out over and above what they might be able to get in the political process? A lot of the people that this helps generally have been powerless at the ballot box, they have been unable to get it through the usual allocation of park authority funds, which tend to go out to wealthier areas.

Under the HUD portion of this bill, that is where this earmark comes from. There are programs that are supposed to be used to fund revitalization programs. That is exactly what this is, in the Annandale, Baileys Crossroads area.

This project is good use of these dollars. This project, I think, will help the young people in our district turn away from the influence of gangs and get them into more constructive activities. More importantly, I think it is an investment in the future. So it is for these reasons in this particular case that I rise to oppose the Flake amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I would just reiterate that putting one kid into a gang with the crimes that could be committed and a life in the prison system is worth a lot more than the $50,000 that we have asked for and earmark in this bill that will improve these fields and make them available to a wide array of young people.

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

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

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

Mr. Chairman, with all due respect, the explanation of this amendment that we just heard is exactly upside down. Exactly wrong and backwards.

The fact is that our amendment would ensure that the level of housing assistance is maintained at the same level as previously; that it is not automatically reduced when public housing buildings are demolished or sold. It continues the same number of affordable housing units as previously.

Every year we demolish several thousand units. Until January of this year, the policy always was if you demolish 100 units, there are 100 section 8 vouchers issued, so the number of affordable units in the community does not go down.

In January, HUD put out a new regulation which said that we will replace the units under lease with new vouchers so that if 100 units are demolished but 10 of them were not occupied at that moment because people were moving in and out, they would only replace 90 vouchers. In other words, the number of affordable units would go down.

The policy we have always had which this amendment seeks to continue, not to change, is that when you demolish public housing, you maintain the same number of units by issuing the same number of vouchers, not less, not more. Contrary to what the distinguished chairman said, this would not increase the number of vouchers issued, this would maintain it at the same level as we always have had; one-for-one replacement for all of the low-income housing demolished.

The administration seeks to change that policy, first by HUD regulation last January that said we will only replace those actually occupied at that moment. So if 5 percent of the units are under repair or 5 percent of the units have people moving in and out, there is always some churning, we won't replace those. So the number will go down every time we do this. That is pernicious. It means, as the gentleman from Massachusetts said, that if you want to demolish an overconcentrated housing or you want to privatize an existing section 8 building, what will replace it will be fewer units of subsidized housing.

In the bill before us, the distinguished committee violated the rules of the House because they seek to take this policy initiated by HUD by regulation in January and by adding the words ``under lease'' to the bill, they would say in a broader perspective, in a broader universe than covered by the regulation, we would only replace occupied units.

The Rules Committee said points of order against the bill are waived so we could not raise a point of order against legislating on an appropriations bill. An amendment to take out those words would itself be legislating on an appropriation bill, so it's a one-way racket. The committee can get away with it but we can't unlegislate from the floor.

So this amendment is narrower. It, unfortunately, doesn't prevent the committee from doing what it is doing, which changes the number of units we are replacing to a fraction of those being demolished in some of the housing; but for the public housing at least, which the bill doesn't do but the regulation did, where the regulation said from now on we will only replace occupied units, not the total number of units, this amendment says no funds appropriated shall be used to enforce that regulation. That we can do.

So the CBO scores this amendment as costing zero dollars. All it says is we can't use funds to implement that regulation. It doesn't change the amount of money appropriated for section 8 by a nickel.

What it does say is we will not countenance a change by the department so that the previous policy, which we want to maintain, is if you demolish public housing, you demolish 100 units, you have to have 100 units to replace it, so the total amount of low-income housing in the community is not going down.

They want to replace that by saying they will only replace the units occupied at that moment. So the normal churning effect, people moving in, people moving out, would demolish the number of units replaced.

So this amendment would keep the existing system, the system that has existed for the last few decades, one-for-one replacement, and it is scored by CBO as costing nothing. I would urge the House to adopt this amendment.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, with all due respect, spurious statistics don't help us get anywhere. The fact is, yes, section 8 is a higher percentage of the HUD budget because this Congress has cut down other programs. We have cut down CDBG by $500 million. So what does that prove?

And the fact is that all this amendment seeks to do is to say not that more people should get more section 8 vouchers; I wish we could do that, and not that more people should get affordable housing, but simply to maintain our previous policy, that if you are demolishing low income housing you replace it with the same number of units. QED. And if the administration is so incompetent that we are wasting a lot of money because we are not administering the program properly, there is money slipping through its fingers because they are not administering the section 8 program properly, let them clean up their act. But the fact is the number of units should remain the same or go up.

This amendment says, and the gentlewoman says we are all in agreement, that as many people as possible should be helped. Well, if as many people as possible should be helped, at least let's agree, and this amendment is the only way to do that, not to cut down the number of section 8 units, not to cut down the number of units available whenever we demolish existing housing. That is all this amendment does. Nothing else. And anybody who says that this amendment increases the availability of housing above the policy of one for one is not telling the truth.

I reserve the balance of my time.

No. The other cosponsor had to go back to the committee.

Mr. Speaker, I must correct the gentleman. That is not what it does at all. There are always, in any housing stock, there are always some vacant units because someone moves out on Monday, it takes a month to prepare the apartment for someone else to move in. It has always been the policy that you replace the number of units that you are tearing down. If you are tearing down 1,000 units, you get 1,000 section 8 vouchers. If you change the policy, such as HUD is now seeking to do, such as the bill is seeking to do and which this amendment opposes doing, then you are saying that if 10 percent are vacant because someone has moved out and someone else hasn't moved in yet, they are cleaning it up, that you replace 90 percent instead of the 100 percent.

All this says is continue the policy we have always had of replacing units, not units occupied, because units occupied is always 80, 90 percent of total units because there are always people moving in and out. Someone died last week and so forth. There is no housing stock on earth 100 percent occupied 100 percent of the time. And if you look at 5 percent or 10 percent that are unoccupied now because three people died and five people moved and no one has moved in again, you are reducing the number of units. And all we are saying is don't do that. If you tear down low income housing, replace it one for one on the basis of the number of units. That has always been our policy. That has always been the law and all this amendment seeks to do is to keep it that way and not change it as the bill would do.

I yield back.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.