Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1782, I call up the bill (H.R. 3082) making appropriations for military construction, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2010, and for other purposes, with the Senate amendment to the House amendment to the Senate amendment thereto, and I have a motion at the desk.

Madam Speaker, I have only one speaker on this side.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I was in error. We have two speakers on this side.

I now yield 1 minute to the distinguished Speaker of the House.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey).

I yield 1 minute to the distinguished majority leader, the gentleman from Maryland.

I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

I yield the gentlewoman 1 additional minute.

I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards).

I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks).

I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price).

I yield the gentleman 30 additional seconds.

I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mollohan).

I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.

Madam Speaker, we really do need to bring this to a conclusion, so I yield 1 minute to the last speaker, the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Welch).

I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur).

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on the pending legislation.

Madam Speaker, I appreciate all of the kind words that have been said about me tonight. I must confess that I sometimes am more at ease when I am being pummeled than when I am being praised, but maybe that's just my quirky character.

Let me simply say that this is the last time that I will be making any comments on this floor. I want to thank the Members on both sides of the aisle for their courtesies over the past 42 years, and I want to say that it has been a privilege for each and every one of us, whether we have served here one term or 21 or even more, it is a privilege for all of us to have been sent to this place, to the people's House. I can think of no greater privilege and you cannot. This is the only place in the government that you have to be elected in order to occupy our jobs. In the Senate you don't have to be elected. Even in the Presidency, you don't have to be elected under quirky circumstances, and I think all of us can be proud of that distinction.

Let me also say, Madam Speaker, that I do think I need to say at least a word or two about the subject at hand, this piece of legislation. John Wesley said that his rule for living was this: do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.

I wish I could say that this legislation lived up to that lofty goal. It does not. It has many, many shortcomings.

The only reason for supporting this legislation today--and it is an overriding one--is to keep the government operating. If I were to vote my preferences, I would vote ``no'' because I believe we should have before us today a continuing resolution for the rest of

the fiscal year. The only reason we do not is because only in the United States Senate can you get a majority of votes for any proposition and still lose because of their peculiar rules.

I think the difference between the way our two respective parties have handled similar situations is interesting.

Four years ago, when our party took control after 12 years of rule by our friends on the other side of the aisle, the outgoing Republican majority chose to simply dump most of the work for that fiscal year onto the incoming Democratic majority by passing a short-term CR. That meant that we had to spend the first 2 months dealing with the previous year's business rather than being able to start with a clean slate in dealing with new problems.

In contrast, today's outgoing Democratic majority has tried mightily to clear the deck for the incoming Republican majority by producing a full-year CR, which attempts to compromise by producing funding levels that were $46 billion below the President's budget and which amounted to a freeze at the previous year's level. Passage of that legislation would have meant that the incoming Republican majority would be able to start with a clean slate in working with the President on a whole host of major problems.

But, instead, we are here today confronted with this legislation, which expires on March 4 and which will require the incoming Republican majority to spend the first 2 months of its stewardship dealing with last year's business. I think that's unfortunate. Through the use of the Senate filibuster, it has been assured that we could not complete a full-year CR. That action simply mirrors the procedural resistance with which we have been faced all year long with the Senate minority engaging in more than 87 filibuster actions in order to grind matters to a halt and frustrate the Congress' ability to do anything on the budget front by majority vote.

That is unfortunate; but at this late date, there is no point in arguing. The die is cast, obviously. The only responsible choice at this point is to recognize reality, even though that means that the early days of the next Congress will be unnecessarily confrontational and partisan. It means that, on budget issues, most of next year will simply be about demonstrating political leverage rather than working through honest, substantive differences to reasonable conclusions. Because of that, I most reluctantly, but firmly, suggest an ``aye'' vote.

I want to take an additional minute to thank two people in this Chamber who the public will never know, but there are many, many of them over Capitol Hill who work day in and day out to produce a better country, and the public never knows their names. One of them with us tonight is Jeff Shockey, who has done an admirable job as minority staff director on the committee for years. Sometimes I wish he hadn't been so good, but I do appreciate the work that he has done.

And, lastly, I do not know what I would have done without Beverly Pheto as the chairman of the Appropriations Committee. She is an absolute true professional. She has imagination, she has courage, she has stamina, and most of all, she has an amazing ability to put up with me, and that alone ought to get her the Congressional Medal of Honor.

So, with that, I would simply say good-bye to you-all, and I would hope that we would cast a responsible vote so that we can get about the country's business next year, even though many of us will not be here to participate.

I yield back the balance of my time

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to the rule, I call up the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 105) making further continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2011, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, this resolution is very simple. The continuing resolution under which we are now operating expires at midnight on Saturday. This simply extends that underlying resolution to midnight Tuesday.

I urge support.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1755, I call up the bill (H.R. 3082) making appropriations for military construction, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2010, and for other purposes, with the Senate amendment thereto, and I have a motion at the desk.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks on the pending legislation.

I yield myself 7 minutes. Mr. Speaker, I'm bringing a resolution to the floor that I have minimum high regard for, to say the least.

America is facing serious problems, the most depressing is that we have the biggest divide between the haves and the have-nots since the Great Depression. Over the last decade, 80 percent of the growth in our economy has gone to the luckiest 10 percent out there. Meanwhile, the economy is sputtering along, and families are hurting. And what has been Washington's response? Apparently, it is to spend nearly $80 billion over the next 2 years to give supersized tax cuts to millionaires and another $24 billion to give families worth $10 million a pass on paying taxes on their good fortune. This occurs at the same time that Washington politicians are singing pious songs about the need for deficit reduction.

I hope that the Congress is not too ``offended'' to recognize that, yes, we must deal with long-term budget deficits; but if this country is to grow for everybody, we also need to confront our investment deficits in jobs, in education, in infrastructure, and in science and technology. That is the context in which this bill, to keep the government functioning for a year, is being considered.

This bill freezes discretionary appropriations at the 2010 level for the rest of the fiscal year, spending $46 billion less than the President asked for this year. It adjusts last year's priorities in three main ways: It funds the current shortfall in Pell Grants for college students; it meets the increased medical needs for our veterans; it makes adequate adjustments to meet military pay and health costs. It provides the Department of Defense $513 billion, which is $4.9 billion more than last year with corresponding cuts on the domestic side of the ledger, I'm sorry to say.

Now I'm sure we'll hear a lot of talk about a number of changes in the bill, the number of hard choices we had to make in this package to try to keep Uncle Sam from being Uncle Scrooge this holiday season. John Wesley admonished us to ``do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.'' This product falls embarrassingly short of that goal. But I make no apologies for the fact that the committee has done its dead level best within the constraints under which we are operating to make some modest adjustments, to salvage some investments which over the long haul just might create more jobs than tax breaks for millionaires and adjustments that might ease the financial desperation faced by so many families today who cannot afford to send their kids to college, to find decent child care, or to

provide adequate medical attention to their needs.

So we have had the unmitigated gall to shift additional funds to the Social Security Administration to ensure that people get their benefits without undue delay.

In an outrageously socialistic attempt to provide some additional health safety protections for miners who have all too often been the victims of the mindset of owners who put more emphasis on profitability than they do on miner safety, we shifted about $50 million into that account.

I hope that the Congress is not so penny-wise and pound foolish that they will object to our decision to shift funding to further our efforts to ferret out waste, fraud, and abuse in Social Security and Medicare.

And on a day when temperatures are dropping to 5 above zero in my hometown, and we were a balmy 23 degrees here in Washington last night, I hope this Congress isn't too offended that we have recommended $190 million above last year for homeless assistance grants to combat the growing number of families who are living on the streets, thanks to the ``brilliance'' of political leaders in Washington in managing this economy. Those are a few of the modest changes that we have made in what would otherwise be an automatic pilot course of action in a straight continuing resolution.

Within the same dollar limits, this legislation attempts to make modest adjustments that recognize that needs and conditions change over a year's time. I hope it does not represent too great an ``inconvenience'' to those Members of this body who are much more comfortable providing budget-busting tax gifts to the economic elite in this country rather than making even the tiniest government investment in programs that will help the lives of the unlucky by making their lives a little bit better with investments that might run the unholy risk of making the economy work nearly as well for average families as it does for the American elite who can afford to make large contributions to those fortunate enough to be honored by our constituents with the stewardship of the national interest.

I want to say one other thing. There are at least 50 decisions in this bill that I am flatly opposed to. There are many arguments in this bill that I have lost. But the fact is, sooner or later, if you're going to be responsible, you have to set aside your first preferences and simply do what is necessary in order to keep the government open so that Congress doesn't become the laughingstock of the country. The only responsible vote to cast on this proposition is an ``aye'' vote. I urge support for the resolution, with all of its shortcomings.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Mr. Speaker, could I ask the gentleman how many speakers he has remaining.

We have none. I reserve my time.

Would the gentleman like an answer to that question?

This amendment was a Republican amendment offered by Mr. Cole from Oklahoma. It was not slipped in. It was voted in in the subcommittee appropriation bill 5 months ago.

Don't suggest it's been sneaked. It has not.

I yield myself 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, I happen to agree with the gentleman from Virginia on the substance of the issue. But the fact is that the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee voted in open session with open debate to adopt the Cole amendment.

Now, as chairman of the full committee, I don't have the luxury of producing bills that represent my own priorities. It is my obligation to try to find the center of gravity that enables us to represent the views of the House. That's what we did on this issue. And for the gentleman to suggest that there is anything corrupt about it is scurrilous.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

May I inquire as to how much time remains.

I yield myself such time as I may consume. Don't worry, I am not going to take it all.

Mr. Speaker, I had not expected to get into this kind of a discussion today, but I think the comments of a previous speaker from the other side illustrate just another reason why I am glad to be leaving this place.

When I came here, I don't think there were very many Members who would reach a conclusion that if someone disagreed with them on substance that somehow they were morally defective.

In a civilized, adult, legislative body, Members would recognize that there can be legitimate policy differences that can be highly controversial and that you can have honorable people on both sides of the question engage in honest debate and discussion about those issues.

In the main, that is what Members of this House usually do, but I have noticed a tendency in recent years on more and more occasions for Members to substitute hyperbole for thought and to substitute attacks on character for attacks on argument, and I find that sad indeed.

I do not know of a straighter shooter in this Congress than Mr. Cole. He is a highly partisan individual. He at one time ran the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, but he did it with honor and, in my view, he has brought honor to this place in the way he has handled himself on a wide variety of issues as long as I have watched him operate.

I do not believe that he or any other member of the Interior subcommittee who dealt with the issue at hand demonstrated anything but an honest effort to try to deal with a Court decision which played fruit basket upset on years and years of legal precedent.

I am, for one, proud of the service that I have had in this place with people like the gentleman from Oklahoma, and I would simply urge all Members, as I leave this Chamber, to remember that there are good people on both sides of the aisle who have honest, hard-fought views and hard-earned views and have a right to express them without some off-the-wall Member accusing them of corruption.

I urge an ``aye'' vote.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to the rule, I call up the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 101) making further continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2011, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on H.J. Res. 101.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, this legislation is one page long. It does only one thing: It changes the date so we can keep the government running from this Friday, December 3 to Saturday, December 18. Otherwise, the government would shut down. For the 2 weeks we are extending the current CR, it will provide us and the Senate time to consider the full year CR and the nominees that the administration should be sending us today.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I made a mistake here today. I assumed that because the election was over that we would have at least a temporary suspension of election-year rhetoric. But evidently I was wrong. It's not the first time, but nonetheless I had hoped it would be otherwise today.

Let me simply say that I will take a lot of lectures from a lot of people on a lot of subjects, because I have made more than my share of mistakes in the years that I have served in this place. But the one thing that I will not take is lectures from the other side about fiscal responsibility. I mean, these are the folks who managed to turn $6 trillion in expected surpluses when Bill Clinton left office into a $1 trillion deficit. These are the same folks who insisted on passing two tax cuts primarily targeted at the wealthiest people in this country, all paid for with borrowed money.

These are the same folks that have insisted that we fight two wars on borrowed money rather than paying the bills. And these are the same folks who attacked President Obama for the so-called bailouts when, in fact, the mother of all bailouts, TARP, was brought to this Congress by the previous Republican administration.

While I don't like the way they implemented that bailout, I happen to think that that administration did what was necessary under the circumstances, circumstances created in large part by previous policies that were pursued by the folks running Washington, D.C. I don't want to go any further than that. I didn't intend to get into the political side of the debate, but neither am I going to sit by and have these comments go unanswered.

With that, I would simply say this, again, is a very simple proposition. It extends the budget for 2 weeks at existing levels so that the Congress can make an attempt to finish its work so that we do not do what was done to us 4 years ago, because when we took over 4 years ago, we had to clean up all of the last year's fiscal mess before we could turn to next year's problems.

I would think that it is worth trying to finish action on our budget this year so that our friends, as they assume majority status in January, can start with a clean slate and be looking forward rather than backwards, and this resolution is an attempt to facilitate that. I urge passage of it.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1682, I call up the bill (H.R. 3081) making appropriations for the Department of State, foreign operations, and related programs for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2010, and for other purposes, with the Senate amendments thereto, and offer the motion.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the pending legislation.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, this continuing resolution is designed to keep the government open and running. We have an obligation to do this. We've got enough problems in the economy right now without adding to uncertainty. The Senate passed this continuing resolution by a vote of 69-30. The House ought to pass it. It is a relatively straightforward and unadorned CR which simply keeps the government open for 64 days.

As far as the funding levels are concerned, in total this CR is a bit below what was enacted in 2010. The CR allows agencies to continue fiscal 2010

levels, with three exceptions. First, it provides additional funding for the National Nuclear Security Administration at the President's requested level of $7 billion. This is for weapons security, included at the request of Senate Republicans. Second, the CR provides less funding for the Census and Defense BRAC activities because less is needed for 2011. Third, the CR provides funding equal to last year's security assistance for Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, and the State Department operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. This exception is needed because some of last year's funding was provided in the 2009 supplemental. It also extends a number of authorizations that would otherwise expire, such as TANF. It also extends higher mortgage loan limits, stop-loss payments to our troops, and other programs.

Frankly, I had hoped that this CR would do a few other things, but the Senate would not accept them. For example, I had hoped that the CR would allow continuation of the emergency job program through which 37 States provide subsidized jobs for nearly 250,000 otherwise unemployed parents and youth. The Senate would not allow this program to continue.

I urge an ``aye'' vote on the legislation. And I would simply note that, given the calendar, a vote against this proposition would be a vote to shut down the government.

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

Madam Speaker, it is the highest priority of the Appropriations Committee to ensure that the American people are well served by sound investments in federal programs and services. To this end, the Committee has been working to produce fiscal year 2011 appropriations legislation in a fiscally disciplined manner. The Committee conducted more than 160 hearings this year in order to thoroughly review the President's fiscal year 2011 budget request and to conduct vigorous oversight of ongoing programs.

In keeping with an overall discretionary funding level of $14.5 billion below the President's request, two fiscal year 2011 appropriations bills have passed the House and the remaining 10 bills have been approved at the

subcommittee level. In the coming weeks, the Committee will continue its work to produce fiscal year 2011 appropriations that meet Americans' highest priority needs within this fiscally responsible framework.

In the two fiscal year 2011 appropriations bills that have passed the House thus far--Transportation/HUD and Military Construction/VA--the Committee has made some significant cuts below the Administration's request. Among these reductions, the Committee cut $500 million below last year and $1.36 billion below the request for ill-defined or duplicative programs of the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Transportation. The Committee also cut $545 million below the request for military construction projects due to bid savings and ill-defined plans for the realignment of forces to Guam.

In recent years, the Appropriations Committee has also eliminated or cut hundreds of wasteful and duplicative programs. Last year alone, the Committee terminated 60 programs and significantly cut funding for another 660 programs.

Since 2007, the Appropriations Committee has strengthened contract oversight and independent audits to make programs across federal agencies more effective and efficient. As an example, the Committee has led an initiative to double enforcement capacity to end improper payments, fraud and other abuses at the Social Security Administration and the Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services. These efforts are projected to save more than $48 billion over the next 10 years.

Furthermore, the Appropriations Committee has ended unnecessary no- bid contracts and strengthened competition, management and oversight in government contracts across the federal government.

Most notably, the Committee has worked to impose discipline and strengthen accountability for Department of Defense, (DOD), contracted services. From 1997 to 2007, DOD contracted service costs grew 143 percent from $125 billion to $299 billion. Yet, DOD had no system of accountability for contract services, and couldn't even identify the number of its contractors. At the Committee's direction over the past three years, the Pentagon is now implementing reform efforts to strengthen contracting and clarify rules prescribing when outsourcing is and is not appropriate. The Army can now identify the number of its contractors (213,000) and is working to bring in house inherently governmental functions. The Defense Department estimates that these actions will result in a $4.5 billion savings by 2015. Last year, the President followed the Appropriations Committee's lead and announced government-wide contracting reforms based on the Committee's direction to DOD over the past 3 years.

Madam Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1606, I call up the bill (H.R. 1586) to modernize the air traffic control system, improve the safety, reliability, and availability of transportation by air in the United States, provide for modernization of the air traffic control system, reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration, and for other purposes, with the Senate amendment to the House amendment to the Senate amendment thereto, and offer the motion at the desk.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes.

Madam Speaker, today we have heard from our friends on the minority side an ample amount of sarcasm and cynicism and partisan hyperbole mixed in with fiscal fiction. I hope we can cut through that today.

Today, we can either sit frozen in the ice of our own indifference, as Franklin Roosevelt once said, or we can take action to help States meet their safety net obligations and to protect our children's education by keeping teachers in the classroom while we continue to claw our way back from the most devastating economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Last year, in the first job recovery package, we recognized two reasons for providing Federal aid to States and school districts. The first was to reduce the human carnage that occurs when we take kids off health care coverage or let their education suffer because of teacher layoffs. The second was that standing by while States, localities, and school boards cut essential investments in services and impose significant new taxes will cripple the ability of the economy to grow and cause additional job weakness in both private and public sectors.

It is important, Madam Speaker, to remember how we got here. The failed

economic policies of the previous 8 years obliterated hard-won budget surpluses inherited from President Clinton. Federal oversight of Wall Street banks was gutted, allowing them to morph into casinos, and drive the economy into catastrophic collapse. That produced monthly losses of 750,000 jobs in each of the last 3 months of the Bush administration.

We now know that the economic crisis was even deeper and more broad than we initially expected. While the economy has improved, the effects of the recession are still not behind us. They are still affecting people's lives and livelihoods.

Three times before today, in December, in May, and in July we tried to take additional actions to ease the problems, and three times we were blocked. Now, today we have this much-reduced bill to provide $10 billion in funding to save somewhere around 160,000 education jobs and $16 billion in health assistance to the States.

Our friends in the minority accuse us of including job-killing tax increases to pay for it. That's ridiculous. The bill closes a tax loophole that encourages companies to ship jobs overseas. Not only will that help pay for this package, it will fix a hole in the tax code that is rewarding companies for sending American jobs elsewhere.

Still others, including the leadership of the minority, call this a special interest bailout. To that I say since when do we regard America's kids as a special interest group?

I yield myself 2 additional minutes.

You don't get a second chance to educate kids. We should not fool ourselves into thinking that this package will do as much as we ought to be doing to ease the squeeze on the national economy. We will have partially offset with this bill the human wreckage caused by the recession, but we will still have done nothing in this round to address the macro reality that the economy is still incredibly weak. This bill will soften the blow of State budget cutbacks, but those very cutbacks have had a negative and neutralizing effect on the Federal fiscal stimulus in the first place.

This is a far less dramatic action than the Nation needs to recover from the recession. But this aid is long overdue, and the time for arguing is past. The cutbacks in food stamps in the bill are plain wrong. But face it, the minority party in the Senate is using the rules of the Senate to give them the functional equivalent of the majority's ability to determine the agenda of that body, and they have decided to follow a rule or ruin approach to governance, blocking every action they can, and in this case delaying action to the point of complete confusion.

Our Nation's kids are getting ready to go back to school. They need this help now, inadequate though it is. I urge all Members to vote ``yes'' to give it to them. It's the least we should do.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller).

That is the committee's intent.

That is our intent.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Could I inquire how many speakers the gentleman has?

Madam Speaker, I would simply say yes, this bill spends money. Yes, it saves money. It saves more than it spends to the tune of $1.3 billion, according to CBO.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 1586 and the motion to concur.

I thank the gentleman for the time.

Mr. Chairman, I would describe this bill as a fiscally responsible jobs bill. It is below the President's request by $1.3 billion, and below last year by one-half billion dollars.

Last year, the Recovery Act demonstrated that investments in transportation and housing both support decent paying jobs, while providing critical infrastructure investments.

Let me review some of the facts: To help the economy save jobs, we put over $60 billion in the Recovery Act for transportation and housing programs. With the exception of two new programs that were created in that bill, nearly all of the money, 98 percent, has been obligated. It has started over 14,000 transportation construction projects supporting an average of 41,000 direct jobs each quarter. It has rehabilitated or developed more than 188,000 units of low-income housing, and served over 357,000 low-income individuals through housing for the homeless.

But the economic downturn was far worse than was predicted. There are still many families reeling from the housing crisis. In fact, approximately 6 million homes have been foreclosed upon in the past 3 years, and our roads, bridges and mass transit systems are in desperate need of additional investment.

The Department of Transportation states that there is a yearly investment gap of $27 billion just to maintain our current highways and bridges. And the state of our transit system isn't much better.

This bill increases the amount that can be spent on highways and transit by a modest $4.5 billion over fiscal 2010, and over the President's request, even as we come in under last year and under the President's request overall. According to DOT's job model estimates, this increase will support more than 150,000 transportation jobs.

In addition, vulnerable populations affected by the economic downturn, such as the homeless, the elderly and the disabled, are also supported in this bill through programs such as funding for section 8 housing vouchers. We have $113 million for foreclosure mitigation counseling. The bill also includes $75 million for 10,000 additional vouchers for homeless veterans, support for the homeless, with $2.2 billion allocated for housing and services, and a new demonstration linking HUD and HHS funding to better support these families and individuals.

Low-income individuals have disproportionately been affected by this economic crisis. We need to focus instead on the right kind of affordable housing for seniors, the disabled and the homeless. That's what this bill does, and I urge support of it.

Mr. Chairman, to hear the gentleman talk, you would think that this bill is being gobbled up by a huge number of earmarks, causing the deficit to explode. The gentleman used a chart. I've got a chart too. This bar represents the total spending in this bill, $67 billion. This bar represents the portion of that bill represented by earmarks. Mr. Chairman, I have a tough time finding it. Oh, yeah, with this magnifying glass I can almost see the bar that represents the earmarks. Less than one-half of 1 percent of this bill are represented by earmarks.

And you know what? The last time I looked, the Constitution gave the Congress the power of the purse. No Congress has ever changed any President's budget by more than 3 percent in all the time I have been here. And that 3 percent difference is the difference between having a President and having a king. And whether the President is Republican or Democratic, I want a President. I don't want a king.

So all I would suggest to the gentleman from Arizona is that he keep this in perspective. Keep it in perspective. Or as my old friend Archie the cockroach said once long ago, ``Perspective is everything. Of what use is it for a queen bee to fall in love with a bull?''

Mr. Chairman, the way I see it, we're watching a let's pretend attack on the deficit tonight by singling out these items that cost about a million bucks.

If Members are concerned about the deficit, I would ask, why did they vote for two tax cuts, primarily aimed at rich people, that spent more than $2 trillion? Why are they continuing to insist that we provide further tax cuts for people who make over $250,000 a year, again paid for with borrowed money? Why did they vote to go into two wars on borrowed money that cost over a trillion dollars? That's where the real money is.

I thank the gentleman for the time. I thank him for his overblown words.

I do want to extend my best wishes to Bill Young, who is one of the most loved Members of this House and one of the most respected.

I also want to congratulate the gentleman from Texas for the superb job he has done in putting this bill together. It is a well-balanced bill, and everyone understands the gentleman's convictions and his passionate desire to defend the interests of American veterans.

Madam Chair, there are more than 6 million veterans and their families who depend on the Department of Veterans Affairs for medical care, for disability payments, and education benefits, and this bill represents our obligation to them. It builds on our actions of the last 2 years, which have provided the most significant enlargement of education benefits for veterans since the passage of the original GI Bill of Rights.

One of the bill's highest priorities is to help cut through the bureaucracy that disabled veterans face over their claims. They shouldn't have to wait months and months for their paperwork to be processed before receiving the benefits owed to them. The bill provides for an additional 4,000 permanent claims processors--a 25 percent increase to work through more than 1 million disability claims.

These resources are especially needed now that the Vietnam veterans will be eligible to file claims for disabilities caused by Agent Orange. Veterans' medical care is the largest component of the bill. According to the VA, more than 6.1 million patients will be treated in 2011, including nearly 440,000 veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now, many people think of veterans' health care as being solely focused on physical injuries. We understand now, better than ever, how combat threatens soldiers' mental health as well. We owe it to every one of them to address not only their physical wounds but also the mental and emotional consequences of war. This bill includes added resources for services to veterans suffering from traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and other mental conditions. Full access to this care remains a problem for some veterans, for seeing the right specialist can mean expensive trips and hours and hours in the car.

In Northern Wisconsin, for instance, there are tens of thousands of veterans who cannot regularly see counselors because there aren't vet centers anywhere near their homes. This bill makes critical investments to meet our obligations to them.

This bill also addresses the high rate of veterans' homelessness. On any given night last year, 107,000 veterans were homeless. That is shameful. With the goal of ending veterans' homelessness in 5 years, this bill matches the budget request for VA homeless assistance grants and supportive services for veterans and their families who need them.

At the end of the day, it is important to remember that this bill is not just about dollars and programs. It is about our duty to American veterans--to respect their service and sacrifice, not only with flowery words on the Fourth of July, but also with actions like this, on days like this, that are less noticed but every bit as important.

I congratulate the subcommittee for the bill that they have produced.

Madam Speaker, I move that the House suspend the rules, recede from the House amendment to the Senate amendment to the bill (H.R. 4899) making supplemental appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2010, and for other purposes, and concur in the Senate amendment.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 4899.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes.

Madam Speaker, I have a double and conflicting obligation on this matter. As chairman of the committee, I have an obligation to this House to bring this war supplemental before the House to allow this institution to work its will. But I also have the obligation of my conscience to indicate by my individual vote my profound skepticism that this action will accomplish much more than to serve as a recruiting incentive for those who most want to do us ill.

Last year, as the administration was undertaking its Afghanistan review, I expressed my concern that the best policy in the world could not succeed if we did not have the tools on the ground, namely, the effective cooperation of the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan, to accomplish it. I submit today that those critical tools are not at hand.

The Afghan Government has not demonstrated the focused determination, reliability, and judgment necessary to bring this effort to a rational and successful conclusion. Even if we could have greater confidence in that government's capacity, it would likely take so long that it will obliterate our ability to make the kinds of long-term investments in our own country that are so desperately needed.

We have appropriated over $1 trillion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to date, more than $700 billion to Iraq and $300 billion for Afghanistan. These wars have been paid for with borrowed money. What's happened with this bill is a good indication of the tensions in the false choices that we face. The bill started in March as a domestic disaster relief and youth summer jobs bill, and the Senate added war funding. Then we tried to do something about other emergencies this year, such as the loss of more than 100,000 teachers' jobs because of devastating State and local budget cuts, border security vulnerabilities, and a shortfall in Pell Grant funding because more students qualify for aid due to the economic recession.

The House tried to fund those emergencies, which were largely paid for with offsets to other programs, but now, true to form, virtually everything we've attempted to do this year to address the economic crisis and emergencies on the domestic side of the ledger has fallen by the wayside. And on the current course, we will face the very same situation again next year and the following year as well.

Military experts tell us that it could take up to 10 more years to achieve any acceptable outcome in Afghanistan. We've already been there 9 years. I believe that is too high a price to pay. Now, to those who say we must pay it because we're going after al Qaeda, I would note that Afghanistan is where al Qaeda used to be. Today, there are fewer than 100 al Qaeda in Afghanistan, which was publicly confirmed last month by CIA Chief Panetta. Al Qaeda has relocated to other countries and regions.

I yield myself 1 additional minute.

I have the highest respect and appreciation for our troops who have done everything asked of them, but they are being let down by the inability of the governments of Afghanistan and, in some instances, Pakistan to do their parts. I would be willing to support additional war funding provided that Congress would vote up or down explicitly on whether or not to continue this policy after a new National Intelligence Estimate is produced. But absent that discipline, I cannot look my constituents in the eye and say that this operation will hurt our enemies more than it hurts us, and so I will reluctantly vote ``no.''

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished chair of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks).

I yield 2 minutes to the chairwoman of the Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee, the distinguished gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey).

I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards), the chairman of the Military Construction Subcommittee.

I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), the distinguished chairman of the Armed Services Committee.

I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), a key member of the Rules Committee.

I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich).

I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee).

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

I yield myself the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I don't know when it was that this Congress has suddenly decided that when we talk about critical needs that that does not include border security, that that does not include meeting our obligation to those students in this country who are eligible for Pell Grants who also must get funding in this bill, and our school children, who do a whole lot better if they don't lose 100,000 teachers out of the classroom nationwide.

The second point I would make is simply this. If the Pakistani and Afghan Governments were doing half the job that American troops are doing in this war, I wouldn't be worried about supporting this bill. But tragically, they aren't. And the biggest favor we can do those troops is to recognize that reality.

As I indicated, I will vote ``no'' on this piece of legislation.

Disclosure of Earmarks

The following table lists the congressional earmarks (as

defined in clause 9(e) of rule XXI) contained in the Senate

amendment to H.R. 4899. The Senate amendment does not contain

any limited tax or tariff benefits as defined in paragraphs

(f) or (g) of clause 9 of rule XXI.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

I thank the gentleman for the time.

Talk, talk, talk. Blah, blah, blah. Yap, yap, yap. The country is sick of it all. They are sick of it all. Thank God finally there will be a cease-fire for the moment on the yap-yapping and the talk-talking while the Congress actually takes some action to restore unemployment benefits for nearly 85,000 people in my State and over 2\1/2\ million Americans who are caught up in the partisan delay game that was being played every day by some of our friends in the other body.

We're told, ``Oh, we can't afford this.'' We hear that from the same people who blew up the economy in the first place with two wars paid for with borrowed money, with two tax cuts primarily aimed at the highest income people in this country paid for with borrowed money, and with years of economic policies that allowed Wall Street banks to morph into casinos because the referee was taken off the field.

And now they're crying crocodile tears at this late date about the cost of helping folks who are unemployed. And they want us to take actions in dealing with that that would further weaken the ability of the economy to grow.

And then some of them even have the gall to challenge the work ethic of Americans who are drawing unemployment. And some of them are off- the-wall enough to even believe that those folks would rather get a few hundred bucks a month rather than a steady paycheck. Well, if you believe that, I've got a lot of unemployed workers in Wisconsin I'd like to have you meet.

If you want, if you must, by all means debate economic theory, debate your academic theories, debate anything you want. But for God's sake remember that in this debate the people who are being affected are flesh-and-blood human beings. They are families who need our help. And it would be nice if we could quit yap-yapping long enough to provide that help.

Don't use the unemployed as cannon fodder in academic and political debates. For God's sake, remember there are simply people who need our help. Get it to them. We can have the phony political debates on another day.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1500, I call up the bill (H.R. 4899) making emergency supplemental appropriations for disaster relief and summer jobs for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2010, and for other purposes, with the Senate amendments thereto, and offer the motion.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the pending legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, the underlying bill presented to us by the Senate is, essentially, a bill to provide funding to continue the war activities in Afghanistan. Why, people might ask, are we trying to add this amendment to that proposal?

I would suggest the numbers tell the story. With this bill from the Senate, we will be spending, in this fiscal year, $167 billion on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is obvious to any but the most obtuse that that expenditure is killing our ability to finance a recovery of our own economy.

We tried to deal with that problem in December with a $90 billion economic package. The Senate declined to act on it. We've proposed smaller packages on two occasions since then. About a month ago we offered a $23 billion package aimed primarily at trying to save teachers' jobs, teachers who otherwise are going to be laid off because of the severe economic conditions in virtually every State in the Union, except a few lucky exceptions like North Dakota and South Dakota.

We now bring before the House a bill which reflects what we've been asked to do by a great many Members. It attempts to provide a much smaller aid package to keep those teachers on the job, about $10 billion; and it contains a few other small items, including almost $5 billion in additional Pell Grants funds for some 87,000 students who are going to need them badly.

We were also asked to provide offsets, and so we have done that. We have offsets for virtually every dollar above the President's request, and those offsets are not pleasant, and they are not popular. Certainly, I don't like some of them myself. But the fact is that they are necessary if we're to provide a fiscally disciplined bill that has a chance of getting the votes to pass this House, and that's what we've done.

I think people need to ask themselves one question: Are they interested in simply standing by and allowing teachers to be fired day after day for the next 3 months all around the country, or are they willing to do something about it? I hope the answer is the latter.

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

I yield myself 1 minute.

Somehow we are being told that we are committing a mortal sin because we are trying to attach some material to the bill sent to us by the Senate. I would simply point out that just a few weeks ago, as the gentleman from Massachusetts pointed out earlier in the debate, when the defense authorization bill was on the floor only nine Republicans in this House voted for it. They felt then that another matter was evidently more important than providing passage for that bill. And yet today they criticize us because we are suggesting several additions to the appropriations bill. I find that inconsistent.

I would also point out that there are a number of high-priority national items that we are trying to add besides education funding. We are trying to provide additional funds for Pell Grants, some $5 billion. We are trying to provide $700 million more for border security, $180 million more for energy loans, $163 million more for schools on military installations, $142 million for gulf coast oil spill funding, and $16 million to build a new soldier processing center at Fort Hood.

I yield myself 30 additional seconds.

I would like to know what's wrong with any of those items.

I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Reyes) to explain why it's necessary to do additional funding for border security.

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

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

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, how much time does each side have remaining?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price).

I yield the gentleman an additional 15 seconds.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield for the purpose of making a unanimous consent request to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich).

(Mr. KUCINICH asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks and include extraneous material.)

Mr. Speaker, let me simply say that our Republican friends are running true to form tonight. In the past 2 weeks, they have voted against funding unemployment insurance for people who have been laid off in the most excruciating recession in 70 years. Now, today, they are refusing to support a proposal which will help us stave off the laying off of well over 100,000 additional teachers around the country--something which, I think, thoughtful people would recognize would injure not just those teachers but their students and the communities in which those students are supposed to learn. There is nothing as expensive as ignorance, and ignorance is fed when you have an inadequate number of quality teachers.

Let me devote the rest of my time to something that I consider to be fairly off the point today because it had been suggested to us that the Secretary of Education is somewhat unhappy because of the offsets that we have required in order to pay for this additional funding. Let me put that into perspective.

We are trying to provide $15 billion in additional education resources to this administration--$10 billion to stave off the firing of teachers and about $5 billion to fill the shortfall that developed in the Pell program this year because of the economy.

In order to finance that, we have had to cut many programs. I don't like to do that, and the administration certainly doesn't like to see it either. But we also had to require that the Secretary's department itself take a cut that is equal to about 5 percent of the value of the additional education dollars that his department would receive.

One of the Secretary's objections, evidently, is the fact that last year in the stimulus package we provided him with a $4.3 billion pot of money to use virtually any way he wanted to stimulate educational progress in this country; $4.3 billion. He has spent a very small amount of that, about $600 million, and we decided we had to cut about $500 million out of that fund in order to finance and fully pay for the package before us. That still leaves him with $3.2 billion in money that he can spend any way his department wants.

We had a big discussion yesterday in the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee about whether or not it was acceptable for the Secretary of Agriculture to have a $38 million pot, yet the Secretary of Education is somehow offended because he only has $3.2 billion to pass around. I would suggest that that loose money, that untargeted money that he has available, is roughly functional to what could be called a congressional earmark. In fact, what I would call that fund is a fund that enables the Secretary to provide executive branch earmarks.

I would point out that all of the legislative-directed earmarks in the Labor-H bill last year amounted to less than $1 billion, and yet the Secretary seems to be offended by the fact that he only has three times that amount to spread around as he sees fit.

I would also point out that in the year-and-a-half they have only gotten grants out to two States, and the department has already announced that at most there will be about 15 other States that might get winning grants, which means that more than half the country will never see a dime from that money.

I would suggest that there is nothing wrong with providing the Secretary a modest amount of funds to promote educational change. God knows we need it. But to suggest that we are being unduly harsh is a joke.

With that, I urge support for this amendment.

Mr. Speaker, as was pointed out earlier, those who suggest that any efforts to add any items to what is called a military supplemental are somehow out of line are simply wrong. This legislation started out as a disaster relief bill. It went to the Senate, and they morphed it into a military supplemental, and we're simply now responding to that action.

I want to talk about the problems in Afghanistan. A year ago, I made the statement that while I was dubious about the mission in Afghanistan, I would give the President a year to see whether his policy would bear fruit. But I warned at the time that we could have the best possible policy in the world and, if we did not have the tools to implement it, it would be a failure. And I would suggest that the only two tools that we have available to use in that region of the world are the Pakistan Government and the Afghan Government; and I think it's safe to say that both of them have been less than a spectacular success, to say the least. Since then, I think it's also fair to say that events have gone downhill, especially in Afghanistan.

And in addition, since we're now spending $167 billion on these two wars, I think it's also obvious that we're having a profoundly negative effect on our ability to reinvest in and rebuild our own economy. And I think the time has come for new consideration.

Now, last December the President indicated that it was his intention to follow a policy which would begin to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan beginning in July of 2011. This amendment is meant to simply buttress that commitment, and what it says is this: It requires that in January, a new intelligence estimate be provided, and that after that is provided, the administration, by April 4, must respond to it by sending to the Congress an outline of its plans to follow the policy which they have announced which would begin to get us out of there starting in July of next year.

What this amendment also says is, if the administration decides to follow a different policy by, for instance, extending that date, then they cannot do that unless the Congress explicitly votes to allow the funds to be used for that purpose.

What I'm concerned about is this: What I can see happening is come next July, we can be told by the Pentagon, well, things are marginally better than we thought they would be and so we're going to need more time and that target date will be slipped. On the other hand, they can also say things are really going badly and so we obviously can't get out at this time. We need to have more time.

I want to know that there is a serious, determined commitment to withdraw our troops beginning in June of next year. That is more than ample time for the Pakistani Government and the Afghan Government to demonstrate whether they are capable of doing this mission or not.

I think it is obvious that we are not going to be able to rebuild our own country and make the investments we need here at home so long as we're continuing this mission in Afghanistan. And so I think this provides an orderly, rational, responsible, thoughtful way by which we can reach a conclusion to get out of that country rather than spending another 9 years before we finally face up to reality.

I thank the gentleman for the time.

Disclosure of Earmarks

The following table lists the congressional earmarks (as

defined in clause 9(e) of rule XXI) contained in the House

amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 4899. The House

amendment does not contain any limited tax or tariff benefits

as defined in paragraphs (f) or (g) of clause 9 of rule XXI.

Will the gentleman yield?

The gentleman seems to think the Senate bill is the original bill. The Senate amended the House bill, which was a disaster bill. If you wanted a clean vote, we would be voting on the disaster bill tonight, not the war.

I object.

I object.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

I thank the gentleman for the time.

Mr. Speaker, for most of the last 15 years, Senator Robert Byrd led the Senate Democrats on the Appropriations Committee. And for roughly that same amount of time, I had the same privilege on the House side, and I got to know him extremely well. I loved Robert Byrd. For one thing, he and I shared a love of bluegrass music. I daresay he was the finest fiddler in the history of the Congress, but that's not the real reason that I hold him in such high esteem.

He began as a product of a segregated background, but through sheer intense pursuit of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom, he became a person who is a powerful representative for the cause of equal opportunity for everyone. I can think of no one in the history of the Senate who demonstrated a greater capacity for personal growth than did Robert Byrd. He was truly unmatched in his recognition of our obligation to the Constitution and to the institution of the Congress itself.

And the greatest thing about him, in addition to his dedication, was, simply put, he had guts; and he wasn't afraid to demonstrate that on many occasions when the Nation needed to see it demonstrated. He made the point that he never served under any President. He served with many, honorably and with distinction. They really don't make them like him anymore.