Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that further consideration of the veto message and the bill, H.R. 3043, be postponed until November 15, 2007.

Madam Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 794, I call up the bill (H.R. 3043) making appropriations for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2008, and for other purposes, with a Senate amendment thereto, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Madam Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 794, I have a motion at the desk.

Madam Speaker, we have been here before and we know what is the content of this bill. I urge support.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, could I inquire of the gentlemen if he has any remaining speakers.

Then if the gentleman would be happy to yield back, I have one statement myself, and I will yield back.

Madam Speaker, the measure we are considering today contains the same language pertaining to the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and related agencies that the House approved by a vote of 269-142 on Wednesday evening. The statement of the managers accompanying the conference report on H.R. 3043 contains instructions and guidance to these departments and agencies, including detailed tabular material regarding the allocation of resources among the various programs, projects and activity funded in the measure pending before us today.

House Report 110-424 reflects the intent of congressional guidance underlying the legislation now before the House. The departments and agencies funded in H.R. 3043 should implement these programs, projects and activities in a manner consistent with the guidance in that report.

Now that I have the boilerplate out of the way, Madam Speaker, let me simply make a very few observations. Madam Speaker, it is now ``put-up or shut up'' time in the House. This is a bipartisan bill. When the bill first passed the House, we had 53 Republicans supporting it, along with every single Democrat, except one. We had every single subcommittee Republican and Democrat vote for the bill as it left committee. When it was marked up, every single amendment offered from the minority side of the aisle was an amendment to increase, not decrease, funds.

The President, in the budget that he submitted to the Congress, suggested that we cut vocational education, cut special education, cut NIH funding, cut LIHEAP, and cut training for medical personnel in children's hospitals. We rejected those suggestions. We also kept a good many provisions in the bill that were sought by many minority members on the subcommittee.

Also, because it is such a controversial issue, we tried to cut through the issue of abortion, and we provided several hundred million dollars in initiatives to help encourage women to carry babies to full- term, so we would offer young women something besides lectures when it came to the question of whether or not they would carry their babies to full-term or seek an abortion. After the bill left the House, we made further concessions to the White House and the minority party by cutting $1 billion out of the bill that we had voted on in the House.

Now, when we voted to go to conference a week ago, at that time, as you know, the intention of the majority was to include the Defense appropriation bill in this conference report. We heard many objections from the minority side of the aisle, so we conceded the point and took Defense out. We left Military Construction in, but the Senate overruled us. So now at this point we have a bill which is exactly what so many people said they wanted, a straight-up, unadorned Labor, Health, Education and Social Services bill.

I would point out that with respect to the question of earmarks, when this House started the consideration of this bill, I offered the House a chance to eliminate every single earmark with an amendment that I proposed. It was overwhelmingly defeated on both sides of the aisle, and this bill has proceeded within the spirit and the letter of the rules with respect to earmarks. It moved to the Senate, and it received almost 80 votes.

So now it is really up to us. The choice is whether or not we are going to exercise our own judgment as an independent body about what requirements we have in this economy, or whether we are simply going to wire our buttons to the White House door. I would hope that we would not do that.

In 2 short minutes remaining, I would like to simply remind Members what is at stake.

On health care, one in six Americans is without health insurance. That is 47 million Americans. The President cut funding for the primary Federal agency responsible for increasing health care access by $600 million. This bill rejects those cuts and provides $1.5 billion above the President's request for programs to improve health care access, roughly the cost of 5 days' activities in Iraq.

On education, the President cut funding for the Department of Education by $1.2 billion. This bill rejects those cuts, investing $4.5 billion above the President's request to the Department of Education, roughly the cost of operating for 2 weeks in Iraq.

On job training, the President cut the largest job training program in the vocational education programs by $1.2 billion. He cut State grants for vocational education in half. We rejected those cuts on a bipartisan basis, investing $1.3 billion above the President's request, roughly the cost of 4 days of operations in Iraq.

With respect to medical research, the President attempted to cut funding for medical research at the National Institutes of Health by $450 million. That would have resulted in 800 fewer medical research grants. The committee rejected those cuts, investing about $1.4 billion above the President's request, roughly the cost of 4 days in Iraq.

Finally, the Low Income Heating Assistance Program, the President tried to cut that by $400 million. We rejected those cuts and invested $630 million more than he requested, roughly the cost of 2 days in Iraq.

This is a balanced bill. It is a moderate bill. It is essential to make these investments, and I would urge Members on both sides of the aisle to support the proposal.

I would make one last point: on earmarks, when this House voted on my amendment to determine whether or not earmarks should be retained or excluded from the bill, this House voted 53-369 to keep earmarks in the bill, and we have tried to do that. We have a 40 percent reduction in the amount of money for earmarks. It is a 40 percent reduction from the amount that this House had 2 years ago.

But I want to make one practical point.

I know there are some people in this Chamber who believe that if this bill goes down, if the President vetoes it, that somehow a way will be found to compromise and still protect these earmarks.

I want to make it clear, I have been told many times by the White House that they have no intention whatsoever of compromising on this or any other bill that exceeds the President's wishes. If that is the case and if this bill goes down, then the only alternative left to us will be to bring in a bill at the President's level of funding.

I would ask every serious-minded person in this body, if they really think there is a chance of a snowball in Hades that Members' earmarks on either side of the aisle will survive if we wind up at the President's level of funding, I think you understand that is not likely. And so I think the fate of all of the work that has gone into this bill, the fate of every project that Members have been concerned about is in your hands.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 794, I call up the conference report on the bill (H.R. 3043) making appropriations for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2008, and for other purposes.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include tabular and extraneous material on the conference report to accompany H.R. 3043.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.

I think everyone understands what the legislation is before us, and I urge adoption of the conference report.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 7 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards), chairman of the Military Subcommittee.

Madam Speaker, I yield 15 seconds to the gentleman from Texas.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished Speaker of the House.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards).

I have one remaining speaker--me.

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

First of all, Madam Speaker, I will not take the full time, but I simply want to rise to thank the staff that has helped to put these bills together: Cheryl Smith, Sue Quantius, Nicole Kunko, Teri Bergman, Andria Oliver, Beth Chaney, Rob Nabors, David Reich, Kirstin Brost, Lesley Turner, John Daniel, Christina Hamilton, Steve Crane, Anne Marie Goldsmith, Ron Anderson, all the associate staff and the staff on both sides of the aisle.

I also want to express my appreciation to Mr. Walsh. He is a good man and I think he understands these issues very thoroughly.

Having said that, I would like to spend just a few moments to talk about what this debate is really about, because, so far, it has skirted around the edges.

The fact is that last November the public sent two messages to Washington. The first is that they wanted a change in Iraqi policy and the second is that they wanted a change in priorities here at home.

The President has decided to stiff the American public and reject both of those messages. First, what he is saying to the American people is forget what message you thought you were sending in the last election. I am the great decider and we are going to do things my way. That is what is happening here.

The President isn't just stiffing the Congress when he says that he will veto any appropriation bill that departs from his budget ceiling by one dollar. He is also stiffing the American people, who made it quite clear that they thought very little of his budget and foreign policy priorities.

Since that time, since the election, the President had said ``stay the course'' in Iraq, and in addition to the gargantuan defense budget that he has asked for, he is also asking for $200 billion in additional spending just to deal with the war that he started.

He is also saying stay the course when it comes to the $60 billion we are providing this year in tax cuts for people who make a million dollars a year. But at the same time, Madam Speaker, he is saying oh, tut, tut, tut, we cannot afford to invest here at home, so he sends the Congress a budget which cuts $16 billion out of education, out of health care, out of science, out of law enforcement and other critical domestic national priorities. And then he threatens to veto any appropriation bill that departs from his great wisdom.

Well, let's walk through where this bill would be and what it would look like tonight if we had followed the President's budget advice. If this bill did what the President wanted to do in his budget, it would be cutting vocational education by 50 percent. Is there anybody on either side of the aisle who is shortsighted enough to think that is a good idea?

If we had followed his instructions, we would have eliminated every student aid program on the books except Work-Study and Pell Grants.

In the area of handicapped education, there are a number of Members on the Republican side of the aisle who have made that their number one priority. They want to raise funds for special education. The President suggested we cut $300 million out of that program. Even the Republican Party objected in the House to that, and they raised the money that I had provided in the chairman's mark above the mark that we had provided, and we restored a significant amount of money to that program.

The President wanted us to cut mental health services by $100 million. He wanted us to cut funds that teach medical personnel how to deal with illness in children's hospitals by 63 percent. The President wanted us to cut rural health programs by 54 percent. He wanted us to cut the Low-Income Heating Assistance Program by 18 percent. We have rejected those cuts, and this House on a bipartisan basis provided 53 Republican votes for this bill as it left the House.

Now some people say this bill spends too much. This bill is a billion dollars less than it was when it left the House because we cut that in a concession to our minority party Members.

We have also in the bill respected a good many Republican priorities and respected a good many Republican initiatives, and in the process we have cut $1 billion.

Surely, surely at a time when we are spending $200 billion or close to it in Iraq, surely we can spend the equivalent of what we spend in Iraq in 6 weeks in order to meet high-priority domestic needs in the education, health, and job training areas.

Now our Republican friends cry newly found crocodile tears because we are also marrying this bill up with the military construction bill. Well, it seems to me if we can't agree on the advisability of the war, at least we ought to be able to agree how we feel about the warriors. And what we are doing in this bill is adding $3.5 billion for veterans health care. And we paid for it. We paid for it by making an identical reduction in the Defense appropriation bill, but that didn't suit the President. He said you have to pay for it again, and so he has issued this dictate that we pay for this increase in veterans health care twice by now going in and cutting other domestic programs by $3.5 billion. And that is why we are marrying these two bills together, because we want the public to see what the specifics are. We want the public to see what the domestic priorities are that would have to be cut if the President wants us to double pay for the bill we have already paid for in increasing veterans health care by $3.5 billion.

Now the President says he is going to veto any bill we send him, and the House Republican leadership says they already have the votes to sustain any veto the President makes. So we have a choice. We can sit here like potted palms and do nothing and supinely roll over to the President's dictation; or we can try to make it as uncomfortable as possible for him to be irresponsible and unnecessarily confrontational. And that's what we are trying to do.

We are sending these bills to the Senate because it is the right thing to do. And as the gentleman from Texas points out, when the minority says that this is an unprecedented act, that is absolute nonsense, because they did the same thing four times themselves; nary a peep from anybody on that side of the aisle then.

I would simply make one last point. We have heard the slogan ``better late than never.'' Well, last year the Republicans decided rather than being late, they chose never. And they delivered not one dollar, not one dollar in additional expenditures for veterans health care, and it fell to us after they shut this Congress down and went home without appropriating a single dollar in veterans health care. It was left to us to fix that mess and to add over $3.5 billion in new funding for veterans. We did it last year. We are doing it again this year. We have made it our number one priority.

But that isn't what the boys and the girls on the other side of the aisle want to talk about. They want to obscure a few facts. And here they are:

In health care, the President cut funding for the primary Federal agencies responsible for increasing health care access in this country. This conference report rejects those cuts and provides $1.5 billion above the President's request to provide programs to improve health care access for the millions of Americans that don't have it. We do that at the cost of 5 days of what we spend in Iraq.

On education, the President cut funding for the Department of Education by $1.2 billion. This conference report rejects those cuts. We invest $4.5 billion above the President's request to the Department of Education, roughly the cost of 2 weeks in Iraq. And by doing that, we provide strong increases for Pell Grants, Head Start and various other education programs.

In job training, the President cut the largest job training in vocational education programs by $1.2 billion. This conference report rejects those cuts and invests $1.3 billion above the President's request, roughly the cost of 4 days of the war in Iraq.

In medical research, the President cut funding for medical research at the National Institutes of Health by $480 million. I have never had anybody in my life come to me and say, ``Obey, why don't you guys in Washington get together and cut cancer research.'' But that's what the previous Congress did in each of the last 2 years. They cut 1,100 grants out of the National Institutes of Health with the complicity of this President. We are saying no way. Let's have an end to that nonsense. We reject those cuts. We invest $1.4 billion above the President's request, roughly the cost of 3 days of fighting in Iraq.

For economic development, in helping to alleviate poverty, the President slashed those programs by over a billion dollars. We rejected those cuts, costing roughly 4 days of what we spend in Iraq.

Lastly, the Low-Income Heating Assistance Program. The President comes from an oil State. He knows energy prices have skyrocketed, but he has cut LIHEAP by $380 million in his budget. We have rejected those cuts and invested $630 million more than the President's request, roughly the cost of 2 days of activity in Iraq.

So we are left with this. We are left with two arguments. We hear some of our Republican friends say we are going to vote ``no,'' we are going to vote against the Labor-Health-Education bill because we don't like the fact that the bill also contains the veterans funding. And we hear others say we are going to vote ``no'' on the Military Construction bill because we don't like the fact that it contains too much for education and health. Those are two beauties as reasons for voting against this bill.

I want to see whether the minority party Members of this House, I want to see whether they are going to be following the wishes of their constituents or whether they have their votes tied once again lock, stock and barrel to the President's desk. I want to see if they came here to represent their constituents or be another set of lemmings jumping off the cliff once again for this President. We will find out on that vote tonight. I hope we see the right vote.

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

Madam Speaker, parliamentary inquiry.

Are we participating in Little League politics or doing the country's business tonight?

Madam Speaker, pursuant to clause 1 of rule XXII and by direction of the Committee on Appropriations, I move to take from the Speaker's table the bill (H.R. 3043) making appropriations for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2008, and for other purposes, with the Senate amendment thereto, disagree to the Senate amendment, and agree to the conference asked by the Senate.

Madam Speaker, I yield 30 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis) for the purpose of debate only. And I yield myself 30 seconds.

Madam Speaker, the motion is self-explanatory. This will enable us to go to conference with the other body on the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education bill and begin the process by which we can deal with the conference reports on the seven bills so far completed action by the Senate.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself 8 minutes.

Madam Speaker, the gentleman is a good friend of mine. And I don't mind his pulling my leg, but from way over there, it's a little bit of a stretch.

Let me simply recite a few facts. If we take a look at the past history to see how these bills have been handled in the past, the gentleman talks about having a separate military construction bill. The fact is, over the last 5 years, when our Republican friends controlled this House, on three occasions they tied the military construction bill to other bills. And on one occasion, they never managed to pass a military construction bill at all. Only once in the past 5 years did they pass a freestanding military construction bill. So, I will stack our record against theirs any time.

There is another substantial difference between us on that score. In the 2007 budget and in the bill before the Congress now, we've added $7 billion in additional funding for veterans health care, money which the administration itself opposed. So, I make no apology for what we have done on that score.

Let me also point out the gentleman is objecting to the possibility that we will combine the labor, health, education bill, the defense bill and the military construction bill into one piece. If we do that, that would mean that 90 percent of the dollars in the bill would be security related. The President has asked us to send him a defense bill and to send him a military construction bill. That is exactly what we would be doing. In addition to that, we would be sending the largest domestic bill, so that together we would be sending, in essence, 71 percent of the appropriation part of the budget down to the White House. I make no apology for that.

I would also point out that, while the gentleman has a newfound objection to omnibus appropriation bills, during the 12 years in which the Republicans controlled this body, 56 times they sent omnibus appropriation bills to the President for his signature.

During the Bush administration, they sent omnibus appropriation bills to the President 27 times. The President had no objection whatsoever when they came from a Republican Congress. I find it interesting that he now professes objection because we are doing what his Republican Party did in spades for so long.

In fact, last year, the other side, when they controlled this House, they avoided sending an omnibus appropriation bill to the President because on the domestic side of the ledger, they didn't bother to send him any at all. So we had to spend the first 6 weeks when we were in control of this body cleaning up last year's Republican business.

I would also point out, lest we take lectures from the administration and OMB, Mr. Nussle, who is the President's new budget director, he was chairman of the Budget Committee for 6 years. Since 1976 when the Budget Act was passed, Congress failed to pass a budget resolution four times. Three of those four times occurred when Mr. Nussle was chairman of the committee. So I don't think I am going to take any lectures about the newfound interest of the new budget director in having timely consideration of any matter related to the budget.

I would also point out that during Mr. Nussle's tenure of 6 years, the Republican Congress passed three omnibus appropriations and one omnibus CR. So it seems to me that this is a debate about, if not nothing, at least very little. I would simply say that what we ought to be looking at is not what kind of a ribbon we have on the package, but we ought to be taking a look at the contents of the package. And I make no apology whatsoever about the contents of this package.

Now, if we take a look at the President's statement, his veto pronouncement yesterday, he says that the Congress has wasted time voting on efforts to change direction in Iraq. I would suggest that the President has wasted 5 years of the country's influence by the way he has handled Iraq in the first place. The President objects to the fact that in all of the domestic appropriation bills, we are some $20 billion above his budget suggestion, about 2 percent. That 2 percent difference is the difference between having a President and having a King. And I would point out, he wants to spend 10 times that much money in Iraq in just 1 year.

The President says that Congress has gone it alone on SCHIP. I would suggest the President has gone it alone in Iraq. He has gone it alone without our allies. He is going it alone now without the support of the American people. So I would be careful, if I were the President, referring to someone ``going alone'' on anything.

I would also point out that the President says the Labor-H bill is bloated. Well, as a practical matter, if we were to pass the President's budget, we would be cutting vocational education by 50 percent. We would be accepting the idea that we ought to cut the National Institutes of Health grants by 1,100 grants over the past 2 years. We would be accepting the fact that we ought to allow No Child Left Behind to become a hollow shell in terms of financing. The President is, in fact, objecting to our increase for special education, an item which the Republican Party in this House took the lead on in putting in the bill in the first place.

So it seems to me the President, his priorities are not supported by the country. So he is falling back on a process argument. I don't think anybody is going to be especially impressed.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Would the gentleman yield if I yield him a minute of my time? I ask unanimous consent to give the gentleman a minute of my time.

I would simply ask the gentleman, with the exception of last year when you were chairman, or last term when you were chairman, where were your speeches when your party brought those 56 omnibus appropriation bills to the floor? Where were your objections then?

Are you saying that it didn't make sense when your party did what we are doing today 56 times? Is that what you are saying?

I find the gentleman's conversion interesting.

I yield myself 1 minute.

The gentleman says that he finds this a precedent. I repeat, we are doing with Military Construction what the Republicans did in 4 of the last 5 years, considering Military Construction in association with other bills. I do welcome, however, the newfound expression of support for veterans by the now minority party. Over the last 2 years, we had to drag them kicking and screaming into voting for higher funding for budgets for veterans' health care than their own President wanted. In fact, when their committee chairman agreed with us 2 years ago that we needed to add a billion dollars to veterans' health care, they responded by removing that committee chairman from the committee because he wasn't following the party line.

I don't think veterans will have much trouble determining who has been on their side the last 5 years and who hasn't.

With that, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Israel).

Madam Speaker, I yield myself 4 minutes.

Madam Speaker, there was an old comedian who used to say: When somebody says it's not about the money, it's about the money. When the gentleman says it isn't about the Labor, Health and Education bill, it's about the Labor, Health and Education bill.

The gentleman objects to the fact that we are doing what has been done in this institution for many years. We are taking the bills that are finished in both Houses at this time and we are trying to get them to the President in the fastest possible way. And the way to do that is to send them down together.

Now, the President wants to cherry-pick. He wants to pick and choose. He said you have got to send me 11 separate bills. He didn't send us 11 separate bills. The President sends us one omnibus budget. He put all the departments together in one document and sent them down to us. We are sending him back whatever proposals we can put together in the fastest possible time.

Madam Speaker, he says that the Labor-Health bill is bloated. Well, let me compare it to the President's budget. The President says that he is the ``great decider'' and that he is going to decide how much money is going to be in this bill and we have got to live within that limit or else he's going to veto anything else we send him. If we live under the President's budget, we would cut vocational education by 50 percent. Anybody think that is a good idea? If we live under the President's budget, we would eliminate all student aid but Work-Study and Pell Grants. Anybody here really believe that is a good idea?

In all my years in Congress, I never heard anybody say: Obey, why don't you guys get together and cut cancer research. Yet, that is what this previous Republican Congress and the President have done the last 2 years; they have cut 1,100 grants out of the National Institutes of Health, medical research grants. If you want to live under the President's budget on law enforcement, we would cut what the committee has in its bill by one-third. The President wants us to cut handicapped kids' education by $300 million. Mr. Walsh, the ranking Republican member of the Labor-Health Subcommittee, led the objection to that, and in fact persuaded the committee to put a higher number in the bill than I had put in in the chairman's mark; yet the President says we ought to follow his budget for Labor-Health. If we do, we will cut rural health by 54 percent.

He also wants us down the line to cut the Clean Water Revolving Fund by 37 percent. He wants us to cut disabled housing assistance by 47 percent. He has ordered his Secretary of Veterans Affairs to send us a letter indicating that they don't want the $4 billion that we have added to veterans health care.

So you don't think this is about priorities? You bet you, it's about priorities. I submit to you, the teachers of this country, the school kids of this country, the parents of this country, and the veterans aren't going to be fooled. Veterans aren't going to be very thrilled if you take care of their needs so long as they are in Iraq, but the minute they get home you forget the help their kid's need to get an education, you forget the help their wife's needs or husband's needs if they run into medical problems.

Veterans are whole people, just like everybody else. This Congress has an obligation to meet all of their needs, not just their needs so long as they are wearing the uniform and then forget them once they take it off. That is not the American way. It shouldn't be the Congress's way. That is why we are proceeding as we are proceeding.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

I yield myself the time simply to respond to something said by the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker). Mr. Wicker implied that the delay that took place in bringing this to the floor today was because of supposedly some turmoil about how this bill was packaged.

In fact, as the gentleman from New York (Mr. Walsh) will tell you, the reason for the delay is because I spent all day defending two Republican amendments to this bill that the Senate wanted to reject. And until I got agreement to quit horsing around with those amendments, I refused to bring this bill to the floor.

And now I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

May I inquire how much time is remaining on both sides.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan).

Does the gentleman have any remaining speakers?

Then could I ask the gentleman to give his summary remarks. I have only one remaining speaker.

Madam Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?

Madam Speaker, I yield myself the remaining time.

Let me state once more that I find somewhat disingenuous concerns expressed about the so-called delay that this process will provide for veterans health care. I would like to know where that same concern was when last year the now-minority party never even passed a Military Construction bill. Last year, they completed their session, they walked out of town, shut the doors and said good-bye, and they never passed any bill whatsoever to provide veterans health care.

So we took over in January, and the very first action we took was to clean up that mess and add over $3 billion to veterans health care. That was our top priority. And then we followed it up in the regular appropriation bill by adding again more than $3 billion. So I will take a backseat to no one in terms of our expression of concern for veterans.

But let me say, we're not just going to take care of veterans as long as they wear the uniform. We're also going to try to take care of their kids' needs for a decent college education. We're going to try to take care of their families' needs in terms of medical research. We're going to try to take care of their housing needs. We're going to try to take care to see that there's decent law enforcement so they can live in communities where kids can actually grow up into adulthood. As the gentleman from Ohio said, we're going to treat veterans as a whole person. That's the purpose of trying to pass all of these bills.

Let me simply say I think these bills have been bipartisan. The Labor-Health-Education bill, one of the speakers indicated that it was the most contentious bill on the floor. We got 53 Republican votes for that bill. I hardly think that we would have done that if it had been a partisan product. In fact, if you average all of the appropriation bills that we passed in this House, we got 65 Republican votes on average for every appropriation bill that passed. That means that we passed these bills on average by exactly two-thirds, which is exactly what it takes to override a Presidential veto.

Now we're simply trying to get these bills to the President as fast as we can and in a way which does not enable him to have an easy time of cherry-picking. That's what we're trying to do.

I sat down with the President's budget director, Mr. Nussle, and I said, Look, why don't we right now, even while the Senate is working, sit down and try to work out a bipartisan compromise for all these bills? He said, Dave, I'm new at the job, but he said, so far I don't find anybody in the White House that has the slightest bit of interest in compromise. I said, Well, that's too bad. I hope that changes. Please call me if it does. But meanwhile, if the President wants to veto something, why don't we at least sit down and try to figure out which bills he wants to veto so maybe we can agree on which ones to send him first. I got no takers on that either.

So we're proceeding the way we're proceeding because we're playing off what the President of the United States has said and done, and so far all we've heard is my way or no way. I don't believe that the Republican Members of this Congress came here to walk in lock step, and certainly we didn't on this side of the aisle. We will find out as the process unravels.

And so with that, I would simply urge that we support this motion.

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

Is the gentleman sure he doesn't want to yield back? Could I inquire of the gentleman how many speakers he intends to have on this?

All right. We'll try to do the same.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes.

Let me simply say, Madam Speaker, that what the gentleman is saying is that he wants to prevent us from doing something on this bill which his party did 56 times in the time that they controlled this House over the past 12 years, and I don't find that especially persuasive.

He also wants to prevent us from producing more than one bill at a time, and yet the President signed omnibus appropriation bills 27 times since he's been President, when they came from his own party. Now, because one might come from the Democratic Party, he wants to make a Federal case out of it. I don't think people are going to be very impressed with that either.

I find it very interesting that out of all of the motions that the minority could have offered, they haven't offered a single motion, and nothing in this motion today would in any way reduce by one dime any of the funds that we appropriated in the Labor-Health-Education bill. They argue that the bill is bloated, and yet when we give them an opportunity to offer motions to reduce spending for any specific item they don't take advantage of it.

That is exactly the same experience we had when the subcommittee considered the bill, and in fact, virtually every Republican motion and every Republican speech was on behalf of an effort to increase funding for a number of items, whether it be vocational education, which I agree with, or whether it be Pell Grants or whether it be special education.

So I find it interesting that after all of that rhetoric about so- called bloated funding for this bill they choose to argue an arcane process issue.

All they're really saying is, when you consider Labor-Health, don't even think of moving forward with Military Construction, don't even think of moving forward with Defense, don't even think of addressing the problem of California wildfires, don't even think of adding additional funding for MRAPs. Well, if they're comfortable with that, fine. I don't think we ought to let procedural theology get in the way of doing what's needed for American families and American veterans and American fighting men and women.

So, with that, I would simply urge a ``no'' vote on the motion.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Israel).

Madam Speaker, I have only one remaining speaker, so I would ask the gentleman to finish.

Can I inquire how many speakers the gentleman has remaining.

Just one?

Then I'm the last speaker on our side.

How much time remaining?

I yield myself 5 minutes.

Madam Speaker, I simply want to repeat what the gentleman from Ohio said earlier. We often see politicians try to wrap themselves in the flag, and we often try to see politicians pose for holy pictures every time the issue of veterans comes up. And America's very good at saluting veterans and playing the band when they go off to war. We haven't been as good in dealing with their problems after they come home.

And so what we intend to do in the Military Construction bill, in the Defense bill, in the Labor-Health bill, and in a number of other appropriation bills is we intend to deal with all of the problems faced by veterans and their families and other families in this country.

When veterans come home, they aren't just worried about whether or not they're going to get veterans health care. They also want to know whether the kids are going to be able to go to decent schools, taught by qualified teachers in decent classrooms. So we are going to be trying to see to it that programs such as title I and handicapped education are much more adequately funded than they would be under the President's budget.

Impact Aid, that directly affects many military families. We're trying to make sure that we do a better job funding that program than the President did in his budget.

Medical research, believe it or not, veterans need the results of medical research just as much as and probably more so than many other Americans. We're going to see to it, in our bill, that we don't experience a cutback of 1,100 grants in military research around the country.

I would suggest that this motion simply says that the new minority does not want us to do something which they did 56 times when they ran this House, namely, combine appropriation bills for the purpose either of efficiency or to strengthen our capacity to meet our obligations around the horn.

I also think something else is going on. Under the budget rules of the House, the President does not have the right to veto a budget resolution; he only has the right to veto appropriation bills. But what he is trying to do, by asserting that he, and he alone, will determine what the overall number is for appropriations, he is trying to indirectly position himself so he can veto a budget resolution. He's never had that power. The Congress never gave him that power, and the Constitution certainly doesn't.

So I would suggest that one of the probably unintended consequences of the motion of the gentleman from California is that it would, inadvertently, transfer additional power to the executive branch. I don't think that's wise.

Having said all of that, I want to make one more point. I know the gentleman from Florida would never want to misstate or misquote any other Member, but I was somewhat stunned to hear him suggest that I have said that we must pass these appropriation bills singly. In fact, I have said many times on this floor just the opposite.

I've said that, unlike the previous chairman, who was extremely concerned about passing each of these bills separately, that while I would prefer to do it that way, I would be happy, if that didn't work, to pass them in minibuses or omnibuses or any other kind of bus you can find, so long as we deliver the goods, and so long as the goods are the right goods for the American people. And that's the philosophy I have.

So I would simply suggest, we've had more debate than I'd expected today on procedural niceties. I would suggest that we simply recognize that we've got an obligation to get on with completing our appropriations business. This is the most effective way we can do it.

All three of these bills passed the House on a bipartisan basis, and I have no reason to expect that they won't do the same when they come back from conference.

I do want to say that I agree with not all, but some of the comments made about our esteemed colleagues in the other body, but that's a discussion for another day.

And with that, if the gentleman has one remaining speaker, then I'm prepared to yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 677, I call up the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 52) making continuing appropriations for the fiscal year 2008, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on House Joint Resolution 52.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, this resolution keeps government functioning until Congress and the President can make final decisions on appropriation issues for fiscal year 2008. It is a clean CR. It funds all departments at last year's level. The only exception is a $5.2 billion appropriation for MRAPs, which are essential to protect our troops. It expires November 16. I ask Members to do the responsible thing and vote ``aye.''

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

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

Mr. Speaker, let me recite a slightly different version of recent history with respect to appropriation bills.

After 12 years of rule by the Republican Party, the American people gave the Democratic Party the privilege of moving into the majority in the last election. We were sworn in on January 4. At that point, not a single domestic appropriation bill had been passed by the previous Congress.

So before we could move to our own business for this year, we had to first clean up the unfinished business left by the previous Republican- controlled Congress. That took us 6 weeks. And in 6 weeks we passed the entire domestic budget; and, at the time we did that, we eliminated all earmarks.

Then we also set about to implement the earmark reform process which was spoken for by both political parties in this House. That took us an extra 3 weeks. During that time, we ramped up the number of hearings and the intensity of congressional oversight; and by the end of the hearing process we had doubled the number of hearings held by the previous Congress and restored a much more tenacious set of oversight habits.

We also were forced to confront the President on Iraq because of the unraveling situation in that misbegotten war. And we also, as we tried to pass our appropriation bills, had to endure filibuster by amendment on the part of the minority. They took more than 60 hours above the amount taken by the minority in the previous year on appropriation bills.

Republicans offered 339 amendments to the appropriation bills that we passed in the House, compared to 172 amendments that were offered by Democrats when we were in the minority. Despite all of that, we still managed to pass every single appropriation bill before the August recess. That is only the second time during the Bush administration that this House has passed all of its appropriation bills before the August recess.

Then those bills went to the Senate; and, as the gentleman indicated, they ran into considerable trouble. The Senate has passed four bills. I have asked them to proceed to pass as many additional bills as they can, and I hope that they do. And, incidentally, when they do bring up bills, I was told yesterday that you have between two and three hundred amendments filed to several of the bills, so you face a filibuster by amendment on the part of the minority in the Senate. As you know, under Senate rules, debate cannot be shut down unless you have 60 votes, rather than 50.

So that's the record as I see it. The gentleman from California has recited the record as he sees it. But I would suggest that what is important is what we do now. Where do we go from here?

Even as the Senate makes an effort to complete action on its bills, I would hope that we could shorten the process by sitting down now with the administration to work out compromises on those bills so that we don't have to spend the next 6 weeks continuing to define our differences.

I'm an old-fashioned legislator, and I believe that the way the parties ought to proceed is that we first ought to define our differences and then we ought to resolve them. We've already defined our differences with the passage of the 12 bills in the House. I doubt that the Senate bills are going to get any better from our standpoint, and so it seems to me that time's awasting. It seems to me that we would best serve the needs of the country if the administration would be willing to sit down with us now and begin discussions about how we might reach compromises on these bills so that we can move forward.

Now, let me make one additional point. The President is asking us to spend about $200 billion, every dollar of that borrowed, in order to finance the supplemental for the war in Iraq, and yet he is objecting to the fact that in the House-passed bills we tried to take about 1/ 10th that amount and use it for crucial investments in our country's future.

The job of this Congress, the job certainly of this committee, is to make investments that will benefit the country over the long haul, make us a stronger country, and make us a stronger society over the next 10 years. We don't believe on this side of the aisle, and I think in fact we had significant bipartisan agreement if you take a look at the votes, we don't believe that you accomplish that strengthening of the country by cutting vocational education by 50 percent, as the President does in his budget; by eliminating all student aid programs except work study and Pell Grant, as the President does in his budget; by gutting education technology grants, as the President does in his budget; by actually reducing the number of medical research grants at NIH, as the President does in his budget. I've never had anybody come up to me in my life and say, ``Obey, why don't you guys in Congress get your act together and cut cancer research.'' And yet, that's what the Congress has done the last 2 years. We don't think that ought to happen. So that's why we depart from the President on that score.

We also don't think we strengthen the country when we cut special education by $300 million, and there are a good many Republicans who agree with that. In fact, Mr. Walsh, the ranking Republican on the Labor, Health, Education and Social Services Subcommittee, Mr. Walsh, led the effort to increase the funds that our committee provided for special education, and I commend him for it.

We also don't think it's good to cut mental health and drug abuse funding by $160 million. We don't think that we strengthen the society or this country when we cut minority health professions training by 66 percent. We don't think that we improve health care for children by cutting the training of medical personnel in children's hospitals by 63 percent, and we don't think we strengthen rural America by cutting rural health programs by 54 percent.

We don't think we help make our communities better and cleaner by cutting the clean water revolving fund by 37 percent, as the President does. We don't believe that we meet the needs of our logging industry and the recreational needs of the American people when we cut the forest service budget by 15 percent, as the President's budget does. And we don't believe that we ought to cut housing for disabled Americans by 47 percent or senior housing by 20 percent. In an age of high gas prices and high energy prices, we don't believe that we ought to cut the low-income heating assistance program by 18 percent.

And let me say that Democrats are not the only ones who believe that. If you take a look and analyze the votes on the various appropriations bills that went through the House, you will see that on average we had 65 Republicans who voted with us in support of the appropriations bills that we sent over to the Senate. In fact, if you average out each of the rollcalls for each of the bills that passed, you will see that exactly two-thirds of this body voted for those bills.

So I think we have established a bipartisan foundation in the House for moving forward, and I hope this continuing resolution gives us the necessary time to do that.

I would hope that the Senate can move forward and complete its work on a bill-by-bill basis, but frankly, it is immaterial to me whether the bills are produced one by one or if they are produced in bunches. What counts is not the form. What counts is the substance. What counts is whether we make the right investments to make this country stronger over the long haul. That's our obligation, no matter how we package it.

So I would once again simply urge the administration to sit down with us and begin to talk about how, as adults, we can reach a compromise on these issues.

The President would have the country believe that we are blowing the lid outrageously on budgets and pouring money into the domestic budget. I would suggest that restoring $16 billion in Presidential cuts is mighty small potatoes in comparison to the $200 billion that he wants us to spend in Iraq and the $50 billion that he still wants us to provide for tax cuts for people making a million bucks a year.

Let me remind the House, Mr. Speaker, that in 1980 the appropriations for domestic budgets equaled 4.8 percent of our total national income. Today, they have been reduced to 2.9 percent of our total national income, and the President's budget would take us, by the year 2012, down to 2.4 percent of the Nation's income. That means that we would have cut in half our investments relative to our national wealth. We would have cut in half those domestic investments since 1980. I don't believe, and I think there are many in both parties who don't believe, that that is the way that we build a stronger future for this country.

So I would simply point out what we have here is an effort on our part to add about 2 percent to what the President is doing in the area of education, health care, science, law enforcement and all of that, and I'd simply suggest that, instead of continuing to talk about it, we sit down and have some more productive actions; we sit down and try to work out these differences between us so that we can leave town at a reasonable time, having completed our action on these bills and having met our responsibilities to make the investments that will, over the long haul, make this a stronger country.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I'm ready to yield back.

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

Mr. Speaker, I reserve a point of order.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time in opposition.

Yes, I do.

Mr. Speaker, I want to urge support for this motion. As those in this House who know me well understand, I come from the State of Joe McCarthy. And one of the reasons that I changed political parties, because I grew up in a Republican family, is because I saw what the local McCarthy supporters did to the best teacher I ever had when they impugned his patriotism by calling him a Bolshevik back during the McCarthy heyday. And to this day there is nothing that gets my dander up more than to have someone's patriotism questioned on this House floor or anywhere else in the political realm. And if I'm going to get upset when that kind of juvenile activity occurs on the part of the political right, then I've got an obligation to be equally upset when that kind of juvenile debate emanates from the left.

It seems to me that we all ought to recognize that we can have honest and profound differences with the policy that the general was selling 2 weeks ago without getting personal about it. I think what we ought to do is accept this motion, vote for it, send the continuing resolution to the Senate and get on with the business of negotiating out the content of these appropriation bills so that we can do our duty to the country.

I yield back the balance of my time and ask for an ``aye'' vote.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to the instructions of the House on the motion to recommit, I report H.J. Res. 52 back to the House with an amendment.

I thank the gentlewoman for the time.

I simply cannot believe that Paul is gone. I first got to know him when we both served on a task force to rewrite the code of ethics in the nineties. That was not an easy job. Paul's performance was solid. It was thoughtful. In all the time that we discussed those issues before we brought our recommendations to the floor, I never saw him for one moment raise a partisan angle on any ethics question, and I never saw him question anyone else's motives.

What I did see was a man who understood that ethics is important, and yet because it involves the rules of the House, it can also be exceedingly complicated.

I never saw Paul take a single cheap shot in all the time that he served on that committee. That is one of the reasons that he became one of my favorite Republicans in this place, because there are very few people on either side of the aisle who aren't willing to take a cheap shot at the other side, even if it results in damage to the institution. That's where Paul drew the line.

He didn't mind seeking partisan advantage. That's what all of us try to do from time to time. But what he always tried to do, in my judgment, was to seek whatever advantage he saw without taking advantage of the institution at the same time. That's an important line to draw in an institution like this.

I think we can all be grateful for the job that Paul did for as long as God allowed him to do it. I simply cannot believe he is gone.

I extend my sincere regrets and best wishes to his family and all the members of the Ohio delegation.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

I'm sorry, but the record shows that in the year 2000, when you were chairman, on three occasions, Transportation, Labor-H and Agriculture, you reported self-executing rules.

No. They were always Republican amendments, in contrast to this, which are both Republican and Democrat.

Would the gentleman yield?

Let me simply say the reason these amendments are in the self-executing rule is that we agree with you that under the circumstances they should not be in the bill.

As I warned the House when we first started bringing appropriation bills to the floor, our committee did not have enough time to adequately get all of these amendments that were coming at us, and so we asked for a process which would allow us during the month of August to review all of them.

In the end the House decided they did not want to do that. One of the major reasons is because Members of your party wanted to make certain that we had an opportunity to deal with them on the floor now. I warned at the time that meant that mistakes would be made. They were. When we caught the mistake, I went to the Rules Committee and Mr. Mollohan agreed that under the circumstances they ought to come out.

We ought to be congratulated for it, rather than being questioned about it.

No, we had determined that because they were in controversy, for the good of the House they should not be considered at this time.

Mr. Speaker, I think we again need to remind ourselves why we are here in this situation. And I don't like it, but we are here because people need to experience the consequences of their own actions, at least adults do.

Why are we here? We are here because as the distinguished majority leader pointed out, despite the agreement that we felt we had reached for consideration of the appropriation bills, we had seen more than 4 hours of dilatory action the last time this bill was on the floor. As a result, this House was not able to complete action on a single provision in the agriculture appropriation bill even though we were told that the minority was really unhappy about something else totally unrelated to that bill.

So they dragged this out for 4 hours during which we were able to accomplish nothing. At the same time, the President is on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. At the same time we have had foot-dragging on the part of the minority on this bill, the President held a press conference this morning in which he is attacking the Congress for not moving these bills at a sufficiently rapid speed.

Secondly, I would point out that, as the distinguished majority leader indicated, we have spent some 86 hours more debating appropriation bills this session than we spent debating appropriation bills the previous session when the now-minority party was then in control. Why was that the case? Because last year we considered 144 amendments to those appropriation bills, whereas this year we have considered 339 amendments. That is a 77 percent increase. It illustrates why I keep referring to filibuster by way of amendment.

There comes a time when we have to face the fact that if the public's work is to be done, we need to move these bills forward. It was very clear that this bill was going nowhere the last time it was on the floor. The distinguished majority leader informed the minority if that was the case, we would have to go to the Rules Committee in order to move the people's business forward. That is exactly what we have done.

With respect to his criticism about this rule containing self- executing provisions, I would simply point out that on eight occasions when the gentleman from California was chairman, his committee reported out, and this House passed, self-executing rules.

In 2000, it occurred on the Transportation, Labor-HHS and Agriculture bills.

In 2001, it occurred on Agriculture, Treasury-Postal, Foreign Ops and Energy and Water.

In 2002, it occurred on the Interior bill. And I have them before me.

In each case, they contain the magic words ``provides that the amendment or amendments printed in the Rules Committee report accompanying the rule shall be considered as adopted.''

Let me simply point out that I think it is indeed regrettable that we have had to adopt this approach in order to finish the public's business on time. But in fact, if Members of the minority want to know why it was required, all they have to do is look in the mirror.

Now I would yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier).

Reclaiming my time, with all due respect, this amendment makes in order 14 amendments. The majority of those amendments are Republican amendments. One of them is an amendment by the gentleman from Arizona that in fact goes after a project in the district of the majority leader. That is hardly shutting down the process.

Mr. Speaker, they were the ones who shut down the process 2 days ago when they refused to allow us to consider a single new amendment during a 4-hour period.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman.

Let me simply say the gentleman says we have ``shut down the appropriations process.'' That is absolute nonsense. We are making in order 12 amendments, all of them Republican amendments. Three of the six self-executing amendments are amendments that are sponsored in all or in part by Republicans.

If anyone shut down the process, it was the minority party which filibustered for 4 hours the last time this bill was on the floor and didn't allow us to complete consideration of a single item in the bill. Not one. In addition to which when we tried to pursue a unanimous consent agreement before that bill hit the floor, we were denied that opportunity by the minority party.

We had an understanding with the minority party that these bills would be finished in roughly equivalent time to that which was taken last year. The minority party was so angry about a bill that was going to extend health care to 5 million additional kids they walked away from that agreement, and that's why we are here today.

Mr. Speaker, let me simply say that of all people, the gentleman who just spoke is way off base when he cries about being denied an opportunity to deal with an amendment.

It was his amendment for $50,000 that this House debated for 4 hours without coming to a resolution thereon because of the filibuster that was being conducted on that side of the aisle. To suggest that somehow that Member, who single-handedly held us up for 4 hours, to suggest that he was denied, is a joke.

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

Mr. Chairman, I think it is important for Members on both sides of the aisle to understand what is going to transpire here. This is a filibuster masquerading as an amendment. This amendment cuts $50,000, a tiny, tiny symbolic sum, from the administrative account in question. But, as I see it, this is not a real amendment.

What it means is that it simply affords those who offer it, under the guise of talking about spending, to really engage in delay and delay and delay. Because their goal, if they can, is to not have the House finish its appropriations business. Their goal, also, if they can, is to delay the SCHIP bill from coming to the floor and finally being passed by the House.

So after we have seen this administration and their allies in this House borrow $1.2 trillion to pay for tax cuts and after we have seen them borrow another $600 billion to finance that misbegotten war in Iraq, now they pretend that they are contributing to the public good by offering to cut spending by $50,000; not $50 billion, but $50,000.

This is, in plain language, a filibuster. It is the first of many amendments that are being offered by people who are so opposed to the SCHIP proposition, which will be before us tomorrow, that they would prefer to defend $50 billion in tax cuts for people making $1 million a year than they would to see 5 million more kids covered by health insurance in this country. That is really what is afoot here.

Mr. Chairman, I find myself only mildly amused, because the subject really is serious. I find myself only mildly amused by the fact that, 3 days ago, we had the President announce another large, massive increase in foreign aid which he wants us to provide yet this year.

We also now increasingly are coming to understand that the President will be asking for an extension of the surge in Iraq, which will require him to ask the Congress to spend an extra $25 billion to $30 billion above and beyond $140 billion he is planning to ask for in the supplemental already for this year for Iraq. So, yet, we are here mired today in this let's-pretend Potemkin debate over $50,000.

We don't, on this side of the aisle, intend to get bogged down; at least, we don't intend to contribute to the bogging down. So we will let them drone on, drone on and drone on with their Lilliputian amendments.

Meanwhile, we recognize what is happening: If the other side wants to delay the people's business for a while, all that means is that, in the end, our colleagues won't be going home on Friday, they won't be going home on Saturday, and we will still be having Sunday dinner together.

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

Mr. Chairman, as the gentleman from California pointed out, we have now probably expended in terms of salaries for the clerks, the cost of air conditioning for the Chamber, the cost of lights for the Chamber, we have probably now expended more money than would be saved by this $50,000 amendment; and so what I think this amendment is about is something very different than in fact we are hearing from our friends.

What I think this is about is that, last year, if you take a look at the appropriation bills that have been considered so far this year, last year, approximately 86 hours were spent debating those bills. This year, we have had about 152 hours expended debating the same bills. Why is that?

Last year, there were 144 amendments offered by those on this side of the aisle then in the minority. This year, the now minority has offered 339 amendments. So it is obvious to me what is going on.

I don't think this debate is at all about either fiscal responsibility or the fact that the amendment purports to save $50,000. This is simply a device which allows the sponsors and the supporters to tie up the time of the House and eventually deny this House the ability to get its work done before it leaves for the August recess. That is what this is about. And all of the rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding, I think every Member of the House knows that is what it is about.

From the beginning, it has been apparent that there are a small number of Members on the other side of the aisle who would prefer to engage in filibuster by amendment, no matter what that means in terms of the quality of the debate, no matter what that means in terms of the inconvenience to Members, and no matter what that means in terms of the ability of this House to finish its business in a timely fashion.

So let me simply say we will hear a lot of rhetoric tonight about fiscal responsibility. Keep in mind what the real debate is, and we will give all of that rhetoric the attention that it deserves, which is very little.

Will the gentleman yield?

The gentleman has complimented me for the way we have handled appropriations bills.

I appreciate the compliment. But let me suggest that I would appreciate it, if we have conducted ourselves the way the gentleman thinks we should, then I would appreciate that he would not visit his frustrations on other legislation on the appropriations process when we have produced bills in what you readily admit is the correct fashion. If you have an argument in your own bailiwick, it would be nice if you kept it there so that the House might get its work done.

Point of order, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I thought that Members were required to be addressing the matter at hand.

Point of order, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I am perfectly willing to hear the gentlemen debate this matter when their bill is on the floor. But the last time I looked, I thought an appropriations bill was on the floor; and, just for the heck of it, I would like us to stick to the rules and consider the matter before us. We have spent 2 hours on a nonsensical, symbolic amendment that has very little relationship to the bill; and it seems to me this House is getting considerably far afield.

Point of order, Mr. Chairman.

Point of order, Mr. Chairman. I am not under the impression that the rules of the Energy and Commerce Committee are now before the House. I am under the impression that the Agriculture appropriations bill is before the House, and it would be nice if we could focus our discussion on that.

Point of order, Mr. Chairman.

The gentleman is not discussing the matter at hand.

Mr. Chairman, point of order. The gentleman can raise any question he wants with the gentleman from Michigan but not on an appropriation bill.

Mr. Chairman, point of order. This is not a matter pertaining to the subject at hand.

Yes, I do. The gentleman is not addressing the matter at hand. This is not the United States Senate where anything is possible.

Point of order, Mr. Chairman.

Perhaps the gentleman can tell us what the name of the Secretary of Agriculture is. That would at least get us close at hand to the subject we are supposed to be debating.

Madam Speaker, point of order.

The House is not debating the issue of Medicare Advantage. The House is debating an Agriculture appropriations bill, and the gentleman has an obligation to stay on the subject.

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

Mr. Chairman, I think everybody ought to speak English in this country, and I think we ought to have

policies that encourage it. What I don't believe is I don't believe that the Congress of the United States has any business whatsoever predeciding a court case, and when the Congress ahead of time tells the EEOC that they cannot even bring a suit, that means that Congress is substituting political judgment for legal judgment on an issue that ought to be decided in a court of law.

Congress has the right to pass legislation saying whatever it wants about immigration and about who is going to get Federal aid, things like that. But it is dead wrong, it is wrong morally, it is wrong constitutionally, for the Congress to prejudge what the outcome of a court case is going to be. And if they deny funds to the Equal Employment Opportunity Agency in this government, the agency that is supposed to enforce civil rights laws, if they deny funds to that agency on a hit-or-miss basis based on what can get a majority on this House floor, God help us all.

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

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

You know, Mr. Chairman, we've had a game going on in this Capitol for the last 6 years. It's called ``Shift the Shaft,'' and nowhere is it more clear than in what has happened with law enforcement funding.

As I said yesterday, we've had a Kabuki dance going on in this Congress for years. What happens is each year the President comes up with a budget. He's looking for things he can squeeze out of the budget to make room for tax cuts for millionaires. And so what does he do? He cuts the guts out of our assistance to local law enforcement, and then we wonder why the crime rate has gone up the last 2 years. He cuts the guts out of law enforcement, and then each year the previously Republican-controlled Congress comes in, they restore about one-third of those cuts, they say, oh, what good boys are we. Look at what we've done to help law enforcement. And at the end of that time, we're $1.5 billion below where we were in 2001 in terms of our assistance to local law enforcement. Now, maybe that makes sense to some folks; it doesn't make sense to me, not with the explosion of meth problems all over the country, not with the explosion of drug problems.

The prior Speaker of the House had a big thing about going after drug production in Colombia. We're spending hundreds and millions of dollars in Colombia, but we're not spending nearly enough money here at home to reduce the demand for those same drugs that are being produced in Colombia, and this amendment would cut that further.

The same crowd talking is the crowd that didn't mind providing $600 billion in borrowed money in order to finance that misbegotten war in Iraq. It's the same crowd that is willing to provide $57 billion in tax cuts to millionaires this year, paid for with borrowed money. But then they divert the public's attention from the cause of those on-the-cuff expenditures by saying, oh, we're going to focus a 1 or a 2 percent cut on law enforcement, a 1 or 2 percent cut on the National Science Foundation so we can get people to think that that's the problem that's causing the deficit and not our profligacy for the last 2 years.

Now our friends on the Republican side of the aisle say, oh, we've got this terrible tax cut coming in the farm bill. Baloney. What we're trying to do in the farm bill is to increase support for domestic nutrition programs so that, in addition to having 44 million people in this country who are walking around without health insurance, we don't also have a lot more kids walking around who are hungry. And we're talking about paying for that not by raising taxes on middle-class Americans, but by closing the loopholes on offshore foreign corporations.

Now, I'm not at all surprised that the Republican leadership cannot tell the difference between closing tax loopholes on special interests and raising taxes on the middle class. The difference is that on this side of the aisle we can, and that's why we're voting against your amendment.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, the last comments I think demonstrate that this debate is in danger of descending into something that resembles a high school debate, and we appear to be edging toward having a dictionary debate, arguing about whether something is a ``cut'' or an ``increase''.

With all due respect, in an adult world, that's not the issue. In an adult world, the question is what is the size of the problem you're trying to attack, and is our response to it sufficient?

And with all due respect to those on the other side of the aisle who are objecting to this bipartisan product, with all due respect, we think we have a serious problem that requires a serious response.

In the area of law enforcement, we have seen our support for law enforcement grants drop by $1.6 billion since fiscal 2001. That is almost a 36 percent drop. That isn't a dictionary problem. That's a problem on the street for every community in America.

We also see at the same time we have a rise in the crime rate, which requires a response, regardless of our dictionary definition, and we also have an explosion of meth use. Have you ever seen how screwed up a kid can be after meth has gotten done with him? It's a god-awful sight, and I've seen plenty of it.

So what we're trying to do is to have an adequate response, and the reason that we are having a significant increase in law enforcement funding this year is because we're trying to dig out from that hole that we've been put in since 2001 by these systematic reductions in law enforcement assistance, at the same time that the crime rate is rising.

And then the second thing we are trying to do is to recognize that we're going to have a lot more people in this society in the next 10 years. We're going to have a lot more low-paid workers all around the world from China to you name it competing with American workers for jobs, and we've got two ways to combat that. One is education, and the other is technology. And the only way we're going to stay on the cutting edge of technology is if we make much larger investments in the National Science Foundation.

Politicians in both parties fall over themselves talking about what they're going to do for the National Institutes of Health, but I don't hear many discussions about what we're going to do

to provide support for the even more basic science research that is then used by everyone else in this society to determine what kind of a future we have.

Without that investment in science, our economy lags. If our economy lags, our jobs lag. If our jobs lag, our wages lag, and that means that we wind up with a huge family income deficit. We wind up with a huge education opportunity deficit. We wind up with a huge scientific knowledge deficit, and that cripples our country's future.

And that's why we're not going to engage in this silly little debate about whether something is an ``increase'' or a ``cut''. The question is, does it have a good impact or a bad impact on America? And this amendment is being sponsored by people who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. That's the difference between us.

I thank the gentleman for the time.

Let me simply say that I do appreciate very much the initiatives that are being taken by this subcommittee with respect to the climate change problem facing the globe. These are small initiatives; they are nonetheless important. They are not nearly sufficient to deal with the long-term problem, but we will have to mount a much greater effort on this front in the years to come.

I would like to comment on what has happened with respect to local law enforcement assistance over the past 3 years. We have had a Kabuki dance going on for years between the White House and the Congress of the United States. Each year, the President proposes very deep cuts in the law enforcement assistance grants to localities, and each year the Congress only partially restores those cuts. It then pats itself on the back, says, ``Oh, what a good boy am I. Look how much we added to law enforcement,'' when, in fact, all they did is restore a small portion of the President's reductions. As a result, these programs, which were funded at the $4.4 billion level in fiscal 2001, are now funded at about $2.8 billion, $1.6 billion below the high watermark. That is ill- advised, in my view.

I appreciate the fact that this bill provides a substantial increase in that funding for local law enforcement, $1.7 billion, or 53 percent, above the President's request. I think that is essential.

The committee also recognizes that State and local law enforcement benefits from the criminal investigation resources and capabilities of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and so this bill provides $148 million over the President's request for that purpose. I think that money is very badly needed.

Having said that, I have to confess a significant degree of discomfort with the way the FBI has performed in recent years. As we know, investigations of the use of national security letters by the FBI have told us that the FBI issued approximately 8,500 of those in 2000. The March 2007 Senate investigation of the Justice Department's Inspector General puts that number now at over 143,000 NSLs issued between 2003 and 2005. The same investigation found serious FBI abuses of NSL regulations. And what is even more alarming is the report that the FBI's own lawyers counseled against the illegal use of emergency letters requesting telephone and Internet information, and still the practice continued for 2 years. This practice continued for 2 years, despite counsel's recommendation to cease, and Congress only found out about the situation upon public release of the IG report when the FBI's general counsel had been briefing special agents in charge on reversing the practice for 2 months prior to that.

I am disconcerted by that fact, and I have talked to the director of the FBI about this on two occasions. I was pleased when he got the job in the first place, but I am not pleased with the way this has worked out. I would certainly hope that the agency would shape up so that it does not continue to be an embarrassment in terms of its declining to adhere to rule of law.

With that said, I also am pleased that the Legal Service Corporation is funded at a level $66 million higher than the President's request. All I can say about that is that it is about time.

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

Mr. Chairman, let me summarize the basic facts. The Economic Development Administration budget last year was $250 million. The President's request for this year was $170 million. The committee added $100 million to the President's request to take it to $270 million, and the gentleman's amendment would take it back down to $170 million, which is a 32 percent reduction below the amount provided last year.

With respect to the FBI, the committee has already added $148 million to the amount that the President requested. We are substantially above last year's budget. The FBI has been treated very, very well.

I find no reasonable justification for saying that we ought to provide the $6 million increase for the FBI when it's already received an increase of $148 million. And I certainly don't find any reason to say that we ought to reduce our efforts to support economic development around the country.

Economic development funds are used, among other things, to help localities establish industrial parks. I have to tell you there are literally thousands of jobs that have been added in my own district by corporations who were able to move into these industrial parks to get their services and grow. We have developed a very strong electronics industry in my district through the use of funds through EDA.

I think the key to this bill is balance. We have provided a significant increase for the FBI. We've provided a modest increase for EDA. And I think that the country is better off if we stick with the committee recommendations.

I would urge a ``no'' vote.

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

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

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

The amendment proposes to increase the level of outlays in the bill. I don't think that's the intention, but that's the effect.

The fact is that the outlay rate in the NOAA account is 65 percent. The outlay rate in the FBI account is 80 percent. Therefore, the amendment is not budget neutral, and I ask for a ruling from the Chair.

Mr. Chairman, if I could respond, the fact is this may be a straight transfer as far as budget authority is concerned, but that is not the impact on the outlay side, and therefore, I ask for a ruling from the Chair against the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I understand what the gentlewoman wants to do in terms of mortgage problems, and I understand that the source of her money, the offset, is from general administration for the Department of Justice.

And given the performance of the Attorney General in the other body yesterday, I see no great harm in taking $6 million away from him; so I would be happy to accept your amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, it's obvious how reluctant the gentleman is to bring this before the body. He has offered an amendment which does absolutely nothing in order to give him an opportunity to talk about something he says he doesn't want to talk about. Only in Washington would that be believable.

Let me simply say that I think I know something about the Code of Ethics in this House. I wrote the Code of Ethics in this House in the 1970s, and I think I know something about what this House regards as a conflict of interest.

Let me simply point out that the gentleman from Iowa has objected to a Member of the House chairing a subcommittee which oversees the agencies that he says are involved in an investigation of that Member. The fact is that that gentleman in question has recused himself from all matters relating to the FBI, the Attorney General, the Criminal Division, and U.S. attorneys. That's why I am here on the floor handling those portions of the bill today.

The gentleman in question has not reviewed any reprogramming letters. He has not reviewed any Member requests for any of the attendant agencies involved in that investigation. He has not presided over any hearings. He has not participated or made any recommendations with respect to funding either on this bill or in the continuing resolution.

So let me simply say that if the gentleman has a strong view about what the House rules ought to be, then the proper place to take that up is not on an appropriation bill. The proper place for him to take that up is with the Standards Committee and with the leadership of both Houses. By taking it up here, it is simply an excuse to bring into question the actions of one Member. And it would be very easy for us to respond in kind with respect to the activities of a number of Members on that side of the aisle. We choose to stay above that and allow the proper committee to deal with the issue.

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

Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order.

Mr. Chairman, I must insist on my point of order.

Mr. Chairman, I certainly understand what the gentleman is trying to accomplish, and I probably agree with it. But, nonetheless, this committee is not the proper venue and this legislation is not the proper legislation upon which to raise the issue.

During the consideration of the Labor-H bill last week, I had to object to a number of amendments and lodge points of order because they were not appropriately offered to that bill, even though some of them were from my side of the aisle and I agreed with them.

This amendment, while I would certainly be happy to work with the gentleman, this amendment cannot be accepted by the committee without violating the rules of the House, and so therefore I make a point of order against the amendment because it provides an appropriation for a non-authorized program and therefore violates clause 2, rule XXI, which states in pertinent part: ``An appropriation may not be in order as an amendment for an expenditure not previously authorized by law.''

The amendment proposes to appropriate funds for a program that is not authorized and therefore violates clause 2, rule XXI.

I ask for a ruling of the Chair.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order.

Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield, I think on this issue there are certainly questions of equity on both sides. I think they need to be resolved. I understand why the FBI wants to follow the policy that they follow. I also understand why agents themselves feel it is unfair leaving them with the reduced retirement possibility.

So, again, I would be happy to work with the gentleman to see if we can't persuade the agency to come up with an agreeable solution to the problem.

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

Mr. Chairman, I want to point something out. Last night the committee, while most Members were able to leave for dinner, the committee had to stay here and work until 10 p.m.. Lots of Members didn't show up then to offer

their amendments, and so now we have a surplus of amendments that we still have to go through today.

Now, today, the committee is grinding through these amendments, and we've just hit a patch in the road where no Members were here to offer their amendments.

Under the House rules, the committee could have chosen to rise and we could have moved to final passage without considering any of the other amendments that are still pending. The committee chose not to do that, out of fairness.

But I want to point out that if Members want to tie up the committee's time ad nauseam on repetitive amendments, the same amendments on the same bills ad nauseam, then the least they can do is to be on the floor when those amendments are supposed to be offered. The next time there is such a gap, I will move to rise and move to final passage.

Amendment Offered by Mr. Flake

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word

Mr. Chairman, I had not intended to speak on this issue either, but I feel required to respond to one thing that the gentleman from Arizona said.

He indicated that it was too bad that he had only had 2 or 3 days during which time he could review the earmarks in this bill. I simply want to say if he feels badly about that and wants to know why that is the case, all he has to do is look in the mirror along with a number of his other colleagues.

Why do I say that? Because I tried about a month ago to make clear to the House that I thought the Appropriations Committee staff had had insufficient time to take a look at and screen a number of these earmarks, especially those that came early in the process. So I offered up another option, and what I proposed is that the committee simply be given more time to screen those earmarks, and that before the Congress adjourned in August, we would then publish all of them, and any persons who had doubts about them would have more than 30 days over the August recess, and our staffs could have reviewed each and every one of them for a much longer period of time.

The gentleman and others on that side of the aisle chose to belittle that proposal, suggesting that we were trying to, quote, ``hide earmarks until conference.'' Not so. All we were trying to do was to give the staff and any Members who were interested additional time in which to review those earmarks. Our friends on the other side decided that they would rather criticize than agree to that, and so we acquiesced in their desires to have earmarks in each bill as they came to the floor.

We felt that there would be ample protection for Members because we also included a reform that would have required persons in the conference to be present and voting on every single item rather than having to endure what has happened in the past when large amounts of legislation were slipped into conference reports without a vote of the conference after the conference is over. But our judgment was not followed, and so as a result, we have this very limited time for Members to review projects as they come through in regular order. I'm sorry about that. But I would say to the gentleman, no one in this House can have it both ways. We've tried to accommodate the wishes of the House. Either way, we're doing the best we can. And if the gentleman doesn't like it, I think, as I say, all he has to do is look in the mirror because it was comments from people like him that required us to follow this procedure in this manner.

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

Mr. Chairman, I seek to control the time in opposition, and I reserve my time.

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

Mr. Chairman, as the gentleman has indicated, this provides funds for a revolving loan fund for North Central Regional Planning Commission. The purpose is to provide small low-interest loans for small business start-ups or expansions. It is targeted to enterprises which have little access to capital and need to change the technology which they use in production.

The planning commission is established by county governments under State statutory authority. It provides zoning and economic development assistance to counties. The planning commission covers a 10-county area and three congressional districts, mine, the gentleman from the eighth, Mr. Kagen, formerly Mr. Green, and also Mr. Petri's district.

Why are we providing funds for this area? Very simple: this is an economically challenged area. And I make no apology whatsoever in trying to provide some modest assistance to the area. We have a similar fund in two other parts of my congressional direct. In Chippewa County, for instance, 3 years ago we established a similar fund.

That fund has saved 58 jobs in the area. They have provided grants, very small grants, to businesses in question, and they have already received $200,000 in repayments. All of the repayments are current.

But I want to ask a series of questions about the gentleman's district. I make no apology for trying to provide small loans to domestic small business entrepreneurs. In the 10 years that I chaired the Foreign Operations Subcommittee, I learned very quickly the value of small loans rather than large, megadevelopment projects. I see no reason why we shouldn't provide those same lessons here at home.

I find it ironic that someone from Arizona would challenge economic development funds in Wisconsin. Arizona ranks 24th in the Nation in per capita Federal dollars spent in Arizona; Wisconsin ranks 48th. So the gentleman is exactly twice as well off in terms of State ranking than my own State. Arizona receives $41 billion in Federal funds out of the budget; my State receives $31 billion. Arizona receives $7,300 per person; Wisconsin receives $5,675 per person. That is a $1,600 per capita difference.

Eighty-five percent of the difference in what our two States get is due to differences in Federal salaries and in procurement. Arizona gets $7 billion more out of the Federal Government because of money spent for procurement than does the State of Wisconsin. In fact, Arizona gets a lot more money than all of the States in the upper Midwest. Arizona, as I said, ranks 24th. Wisconsin ranks 48th in per capita expenditure, Michigan ranks 47th, Minnesota 49th, Illinois 46th, Indiana 45th.

On a per capita basis, Arizona gets 28 percent more out of the Federal budget than does Wisconsin. It gets 22 percent more per capita than does Michigan, 29 percent more than does Minnesota, 21 percent more than does Illinois, and 20 percent more than does Indiana.

Let me also point out that I doubt very much that the Arizona delegation doesn't work very hard to see to it that giant defense contractors like Raytheon, Boeing, Honeywell and General Dynamics together receive almost $4 billion in funding from the Federal Government. I doubt very much that the delegations from those States don't work to get that money in their States. So I make no apology for this tiny pittance that we are trying to provide for my own State.

Mr. Chairman, I also want to say, however, I think it comes with considerable ill grace for someone from Arizona to question the expenditure of $400,000 in Wisconsin, when Arizona has been the principal recipient of the second largest Federal earmark in the history of earmarking in this country, the Central Arizona Project. For Arizona, we have already spent $4.3 billion. The total cost of that project is expected to be $5.6 billion. The President's request is at $27 million this year.

Mr. Chairman, that seems to me to be the pot calling the kettle black. I would urge a ``no'' vote on this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

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

Mr. Chairman, I want to continue my observations about what the gentleman receives from the Federal budget. The Republican Study Committee said that the $1.5 billion that was provided to the D.C. subway was the largest earmark in history. In fact, the Arizona project is almost four times as large as the D.C. subway. Yet the gentleman is complaining about a tiny $400,000 economic assistance grant for my State.

I would also simply note that the median household income in the gentleman's district is $48,000. The median household income in my own district is $39,000, a $9,000 difference. A good portion of that higher median income lies in the fact that Arizona has a very large number of Federal installations in the gentleman's State. Fort Huachuca and several other Air Force bases inject enough funds to provide employment for 9,000 additional people, yet the gentleman is objecting to a small revolving loan fund which provides help in keeping about 50 jobs in Wisconsin.

I make no apology in trying to get the median family income in my district just a mite closer to the much higher income found in the gentleman's district.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I don't want to get into the debate on this specific project, but I again want to simply note that I find it interesting that the gentleman from Arizona is questioning small economic development programs in other States when, in fact, as I said earlier, the second largest earmark in the history of the Congress is the Central Arizona Project, upon which we have already spent not $4.3 million, but $4.3 billion, total cost estimated to be $5.6 billion.

And I also have in my hand, as a certain Senator from my own State used to say, 61 pages of military contracts that are let to firms in Arizona. We don't have in our State something like Fort Huachuca or Luke or Davis Air Force Base, and I'm sure that if we did, we would be experiencing the benefit to our economy that the gentleman's State is experiencing.

But I wonder if the gentleman has any idea what the $44,000 was spent on in a contract with Two Pals and a Gal?

I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.

I don't either. It would be interesting to find out. That's another expenditure in Arizona.

Taking back my time, I was here when we went through all of that with the Central Arizona Project, and I assure you that the project was not approved because of the merits. It was approved because of the persistence of the Arizona delegation, and if anyone thinks that a little politics didn't go into determining that $4.5 billion project, I'd like to sell them a couple of bridges.

So, all I can say is it is fine for someone who comes from a district as prosperous as yours to belittle or question these modest economic development efforts that are being provided around the country in districts that have a per family income of $8,000, $9,000, $10,000 less than yours. This is, after all, one country.

And just as I believe that the most fortunate human beings in this country ought to be willing to extend a helping hand for those who are least fortunate, I also think that those communities that are well off ought to be able to extend a helping hand to the communities that are less well off, and that certainly is the case with the number of the economic development projects that this committee is trying to fund, recognizing that we are, after all, all one country.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, again, I do not want to comment on the particular project under question, but, again, I just want to make a point to my friend from Arizona. And I love the State of Arizona. It is a beautiful State. I go there every year to visit some friends. I think it is absolutely wonderful.

But when I came to this Congress, I believe there were four congressional districts in Arizona, four Representatives of Arizona in this House, and there were 10 Representatives from the State of Wisconsin. Now, almost 40 years later, Wisconsin has eight congressional districts, eight Representatives, and Arizona, I believe, has a similar number. That means that Arizona has grown at an incredibly rapid rate, and an awful lot of money from a lot of other States has helped finance that economic growth.

And I return to the Central Arizona Project. I am not expressing a judgment about that project one way or the other, but I do know that it is one of the two or three most expensive earmarks in history. And I would simply suggest that I find it ironic that the gentleman has chosen to go after several projects today in States whose economies are far less prosperous than the gentleman's own State.

I also would question whether or not there is any greater purity in a highway, for instance, being built on the basis of a determination by two or three persons from a given State that knows the area, I don't know why that is any less pure than to have some partisan bureaucrat in the agency decide.

Moment of Silence Observed in Memory of Officer Jacob J. Chestnut and

Detective John M. Gibson

As I was saying, I don't know why one should assume that a decision to build a highway or any other project, if made by partisan bureaucrats or politically appointed bureaucrats in an agency, I don't know why that is any more pure than a decision being made out in the open by Members of Congress, who I think know their districts as well as any bureaucrat.

So all I would suggest is that while I am certainly not fond of the earmarking process, I am also not fond of the idea that somehow those of us from States not quite as prosperous as the gentleman's need to be embarrassed by the fact that we are asking for a little better deal in terms of Federal money spent in our districts, especially when the gentleman's State is above the national average in terms of the amount of Federal dollars spent in his own State.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis).

I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

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

Amendment Offered by Mr. King of Iowa