Providing for consideration of the bill (H.R. 3222) making appropriations for the Department of Defense for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2008, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 633 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions). All time yielded during consideration of the rule is for debate only.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members be given 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on House Resolution 633.

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

Mr. Speaker, H. Res. 633 provides for the consideration of H.R. 2786, the Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Reauthorization Act of 2007, under an open rule with a preprinting requirement. The rule provides for 1 hour of general debate controlled by the Committee on Financial Services. The rule tables H. Res. 595, H. Res. 596, H. Res. 613, and H. Res. 614.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of this rule and in support of the Native American Housing Assistance and

Self-Determination Reauthorizaton Act of 2007. This is an open rule that allows for any germane amendment to be offered to this bill, as long as it is preprinted in the Congressional Record. I am pleased to see seven amendments were preprinted in the Record, and it is important to note that six of these are Republican amendments.

I commend my colleagues Chairman Frank, Ranking Member Bachus, Housing Subcommittee Chair Waters, Housing Subcommittee Ranking Member Biggert, and the members of the Committee on Financial Services for their hard work and for this excellent bill. I also want to commend the bipartisan efforts of Congressmen Kildee, Cole, Pearce, Boren and Renzi for their tireless work on this bill and on Native American issues overall.

H.R. 2786 takes a critical step in addressing Native American housing needs. By providing desperately needed reforms, this legislation allows Native American communities to put roofs over the heads of its neediest members.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 2786 increases flexibility and independence within the tribal housing authorities to best meet the needs of their individual communities. This legislation ensures safety and quality of housing by allowing Native American tribes to set aside up to 15 percent of their grant funding for housing rehabilitation, construction and acquisition. Increased efficiency within housing authorities means more affordable housing for more low-income families.

In addition to guaranteeing available and quality housing, H.R. 2786 allows tribes discretion in tailoring block grant funding to their community. Tribes will be able to compete for a greater variety of available grants and attend educational seminars from the Department of Housing and Urban Development on how best to utilize funds and programs.

Currently, the cost to rent a house or apartment is at an all-time high across the United States, and the wages people earn have not kept up with the increases in housing, food, transportation and other basic necessities. Having shelter for you and your family, a decent place to live, is not a luxury. It's a basic human need that everyone requires and deserves.

Too many people face the choice every day between paying the rent or being able to put food on the table or buying medicine for a sick child. That simply should not be happening in America.

Once again, I commend the efforts of the House Financial Services Committee, and I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 2786, the Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Reauthorization Act of 2007.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am proud of what the Democratic Rules Committee did last night. I think the gentleman has a little problem saying Democratic, but that's what it is, Democratic Rules Committee.

Yes, this is an open rule that calls for a preprinting requirement so that people can actually read what we're going to debate. I'm sorry that the gentleman from Texas doesn't believe that Members of Congress deserve the courtesy of being able to read what they should vote on.

I should also say that the gentleman, if he's got a brilliant idea along the way, that his leadership can work with our leadership and maybe we can come to some sort of accommodation if there's another amendment that hasn't been offered. But I will remind him that the majority of amendments that have been preprinted are Republican amendments.

I will also remind him, in case he forgot, that last night in the Rules Committee when we called for a roll call vote, the former chairman of the Rules Committee, the distinguished Republican from California (Mr. Dreier) voted ``yes'' for the rule. The distinguished Republican gentleman from Florida (Mr. Lincoln Diaz-Balart) voted ``yes'' for the rule.

So I'm not quite sure what the controversy is.

Having said that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve my time at this point.

I am the final speaker on this side, so I will let the gentleman close.

Mr. Speaker, I would close by simply saying that this is a good underlying bill. I hope it passes, but this is also a good rule. It is an open rule that requires the preprinting of amendments so that Members who come to the floor can have an opportunity to read and to study what they're going to vote on.

This was a rule that had strong bipartisan support in the Rules Committee last night, including from the distinguished former chairman, the ranking Republican from California (Mr. Dreier); from Mr. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, the Republican from Florida.

This is a good way to approach this issue, and with that, Mr. Speaker, I would urge a ``yes'' vote on the rule and I would urge a ``yes'' vote on the underlying bill as well.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

The previous question was ordered.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Massachusetts for yielding his time, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to this unnecessarily restrictive rule and to parts of the potentially unconstitutional legislation that the Democrat majority is bringing to the floor today.

I would like to note at the outset of this debate that this legislation accomplishes a number of positive things, including making the Indian Housing Block Grant program more flexible and helping Native American tribes become less dependent on the Federal Government by giving them the tools that they need to exercise greater autonomy over their own affairs. I would like to commend my friend from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce) for his hard work on this legislation on behalf of his well-represented constituents and for Native American tribes across the United States.

However, this legislation does include language that places funding for Native Hawaiians at great risk because of its extremely suspect constitutionality. In 2000, the Supreme Court decided in Rice v. Cayetano that the current configuration of justices would likely strike down most Federal benefits flowing to Native Hawaiians as an unconstitutional racial set-aside, if given a chance.

I am already aware of this problem because these exact same constitutional concerns plagued H.R. 835, the Hawaiian Homeownership Opportunity Act of 2007, which the Democrat leadership allowed to fail under suspension of the rules earlier this year.

Title VIII of today's bill contains this same language and opens up today's legislation to all of the same concerns that were leveled against H.R. 835. I understand that my good friend from Georgia (Mr. Westmoreland) has submitted an amendment to correct this problem, and I look forward to hearing the debate on its passage later this afternoon.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, I am concerned by the open-ended nature of this authorization. I understand that about $650 million has been appropriated annually for Native American housing over the last few years. Today's bill authorizes an unlimited amount of spending for the next 5 years for these programs.

While I understand very well the need for funding in a number of impoverished communities across this country, I believe that in the current fiscal climate, a climate in which Democrats have proposed an enormous $26 billion of additional new spending over last year, that authorizing an unlimited amount of money for the program is simply irresponsible.

Limits need to be set, Mr. Speaker, and it's the job of a majority to make tough decisions as to where spending is most needed and from which other programs it should be taken. By authorizing as much money as the appropriators care to spend, this legislation shirks its responsibility to provide guidance to an appropriate level of spending. As a fiscal conservative who is greatly concerned about runaway spending in this Democrat Congress, I believe this is simply wrong.

Mr. Speaker, I encourage all of my colleagues to oppose this restrictive rule that is not an open rule, despite Democrat claims to the contrary. I understand that they are in the majority and that the Democrat leadership has the ability to pressure their Members into supporting a resolution stating that Congress believes that two plus two equals five. However, that simply does not make it so and true.

In this same vein, despite their protests when they came to the floor and the claim that this modified open rule is open, that too is simply not so. It restricts Members who have ideas about how to improve this legislation during the debate from having their proposals heard, and there is simply no denying that fact.

I oppose this restrictive rule and the unconstitutional and irresponsible spending provisions included in the underlying legislation.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce), one of the sponsors of this bill and the leader behind this effort.

Mr. Speaker, if I could inquire from my friend from Massachusetts about additional speakers that he may have, I do not have any additional speakers at this time.

I thank the gentleman.

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

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

and I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts for his work on this bill.

The Native American Housing Assistance Self-Determination Reauthorization is actually quite a bipartisan effort in the Financial Services Committee. We had Representative Waters, Chairman Frank, myself, and Mr. Kildee working on the bill.

Basically, we're faced in many of the States with Indian tribes with large Indian populations. We are faced with the problem of consistent high unemployment, consistent homelessness, substandard housing, infrastructure that is not developed.

In New Mexico, I've seen Native American homes which consist of cardboard, corrugated tin, bare boards, no insulation, and I've seen where toilets simply flush out the bottom of the trailer out onto the ground with no sewage infrastructure.

And so what I began to do when I first came to Congress is sit down and meet with the tribal leaders. We formed not only a working relationship but a strong friendship as we tried to wrestle with these problems in New Mexico, as we began to wrestle with the problems of self-determination, the problems of self-sufficiency, the problems of employment of tribal members. They understand there's a cultural problem, as well as a systemic economic problem; but we have committed ourselves together to work one issue at a time, side by side, to accomplish what we can.

So when we come to this housing problem, this reauthorization, and I understand my friend from Texas and in his objections, and do not disagree with those, but at some point, I myself am faced with a pragmatic decision about just what can we do and what are we going to do.

So I find that the greater discretion that's allowed in this language, the greater flexibility that is allowed to the Native Americans to begin to make their own decisions, and we've had frank, straightforward discussions about accountability, about the needs of these funds to be measured and where they go and what they accomplish, and never do I find them to be wary of this accountability. It's just that they are trying to get their feet underneath them to try to solve the problems on their tribal grounds.

And so I come to the floor to support the reauthorization and several of the underlying amendments that will come up on that.

One of the things that this bill does is begin to set up block grant programs to where the tribes can take out loans for infrastructure, clean water, healthy drinking water, ways to dispose of raw sewage. Those are things that really affect every tribe, and not many of them have very good solutions. Many in New Mexico are a long way away from the urban centers where the funds are available to create sewage treatment plants, wastewater treatment plants; and so it's an important addition to this bill that we allow them that flexibility and that ability to create the loan programs, much like the CDBG program which affects small communities, rural communities throughout New Mexico.

So as we begin to look at this reauthorization again, I would come to the floor in support of that and in support of the idea that we must begin to pay attention to the very desperate needs that exist on many of the tribal grounds throughout this country; and as we do that, I think that we'll find when housing begins to stabilize, then those cultures begin to stabilize because homeownership is one of the basic building blocks of a society, that ability to have some place where you can retreat and be away from the cares of the world with the family structure gathered around.

So it would work well. The idea of affordable housing is one that is extraordinarily important in all of New Mexico. We have a very low per capita income, and so affordable housing is important in every community but especially in our Native American communities, and the affordable housing is addressed here in this reauthorization, too.

So understanding the objection of my friend from Texas, I would still rise in support of the underlying legislation of this rule.