Floor Statements

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chairman, as we begin this debate today, I think I ought to take just a moment to explain to the Members of the House where we stand. We have, I believe, 19 amendments still pending to this bill. Four of those amendments will take at least one-half hour and perhaps significantly longer. When you add the slippage time to those debate minutes, if every Member exercises his or her right to offer the amendments that are filed, we could be here for another 8 hours on this bill.

I know Members are trying to catch their planes. I will try to keep my remarks as brief as possible; I would appreciate it if everyone else would do the same. And if there are those Members who could be persuaded to forgo offering an amendment or two, that would be helpful also in terms of any Members who are trying to catch planes. I think that by now we are well aware of what people's philosophical ideas are about this bill, and I would appreciate it if Members could extend enough courtesy to their colleagues so that our colleagues, especially those on the west coast, will be able to make their planes without staying in town overnight.

I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Madam Chairman, I reserve a point of order on the amendment, and I will ask the Clerk to read it.

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chairman, I wonder how any of us would like to have our future decided by people we have never met or never even seen on the basis of those people having a 10-minute conversation without our being present. I don't think any of us would like that very much, and yet that is what the gentleman is asking us to do.

The gentleman, in effect, is asking us to pass sentence on 150,000 students who applied for student financial assistance last year using the Spanish version of the application form. Those students would automatically be denied financial aid, with no demonstrable proof that they were illegal aliens, only because they felt more comfortable applying in Spanish.

Now, I want every American--I want every person who comes to this country to learn English. I hope our values are the cement that holds this country together, but I think that English is a great tool to strengthen that cement. But I really would simply suggest that, first of all, this is the wrong venue.

The Appropriations Committee has held no hearings on this matter. So far as I know, the gentleman has held no hearings on this matter. He may have very strong opinions; I do, too. But both of our opinions may be irrelevant when we discover what the facts are. The fact is, if something like this is going to happen, if we are going to make decisions that affect people's career possibilities just for the heck of it, it would be nice if we had thought about it rather than jumped onto the nearest slogan masquerading as an amendment.

So I would strongly urge that this House show a sense of fairness and a sense of restraint and decline to support the gentleman's amendment, at least until we have had hearings in the proper committee. That is the way we would do things if we are concerned with due process, if we are concerned with maximizing fairness rather than scoring political points.

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

Yes.

Mr. Chairman, on this side of the aisle we'd be happy to accept the amendment.

I yield to the gentleman from New York.

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

I wonder if I could ask the gentleman a question. In the interest of saving time helping Members get to their planes, would the gentleman be willing to forgo extended comment if we accept the comment?

Mr. Chairman, because we are trying to get Members out of here for their planes, I would be happy to accept the gentleman's amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order on the amendment. We are not sure which amendment this is.

Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my point of order. And I would simply ask the gentleman, in the interest of time, would the gentleman be willing to shorten his remarks and we would be happy to accept the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Again, the same deal, if we accept the amendment. We are trying to help get Members out of here.

I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, with regard to the Garrett amendment pertaining to the Department of Labor and the National Institutes of Health, which was previously adopted by a voice vote and accepted by the committee, I would like to clarify that the amendment does not specify which Department of Labor programs would be impacted.

Adoption of that amendment does not create any legislative intent that

would require the Department of Labor to reduce funding for the migrant and seasonal farm worker program.

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

Amendment No. 16 Offered by Mr. Flake

I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I just want to get a few things off my chest with regard to this earmarking issue.

I know that policy questions are complicated, and I know that budget questions are complicated. I recognize, therefore, that substantial members of the press and some Members of the Congress as well in both bodies seek to find other more simple issues which are small enough to get their mind around. And so we have spent a good amount of time the last 3 weeks talking about earmarks. I want to put some things in perspective about earmarks.

In the Financial Services bill, out of all of the money provided in that bill, 1.5 percent was devoted to earmarks.

In Interior, 0.43 percent of all the money appropriated was provided for earmarks.

In Transportation, 1.4 percent of the entire bill was allocated through earmarks.

And in this bill, it is slightly less than 0.20. That is a very tiny portion of the overall bill.

The executive branch allocates or directs spending at least 10 times as great as does the Congress and I don't see or hear much squawking about that.

I just want to suggest this: I don't happen to be comfortable with the earmarking system because it is a pain in the neck to me, it takes an incredible amount of time, and I would much rather spend that time on policy. But the fact is that it is a constitutional prerogative of the Congress to do so. And I would submit it creates a much more fair system. An example, when Speaker Hastert ran this place last year, here he is the Speaker of the House, and yet if the Congress earmarked no money, all the dollars would go back to Illinois and they would be directed by a Democratic Governor. So Speaker Hastert would be part of the body that raised the money at the Federal level and sent the money back to States and local governments; and yet without the earmarking process, the most powerful and influential man in Congress would have nothing to say about how that money was allocated in his own State. I submit that is not right.

Or take myself. I chair the Appropriations Committee. I think I spend more time and, frankly, I think I know at least as much about the Federal budget as anybody in this institution, not because I am so plugged in but because of my job and the fact that I have been here a long time, and even an idiot ought to be able to pick up a fair amount of information as long as I have been here.

So I would simply ask the question why should I serve in this body, try to help my district, and then discover that for 16 straight years we had a Republican Governor, I had absolutely nothing to say about funds that were distributed in my State without the earmarking process.

The earmarking process, if it is used correctly, allows individual Members to target things in their own district that they think will contribute the most to improving the living conditions or the educational conditions or the cultural conditions in that district. I don't think there is anything wrong with that.

But I find it incredibly amazing and amusing that we are talking about 0.19 percent of all of the funds in this bill. How much time have we spent talking about basic education philosophy? How much time have we spent talking about which of these education programs really work? How much time have we spent in this debate talking about the programs? The answer is zip because some people prefer to deal with small things.

Mr. Chairman, I just would like to make a couple of short observations. We are told by this gentleman, and we have been told, and we have been told, and we have been told and we have been told for 3 days that somehow it is this bill which is responsible for the outrageous fiscal mess facing the country. I just want to say one thing: Yes, this bill spends $10 billion more on our kids, on our workers, on our obligation to provide access to health care to people who don't have it, than the President does. I plead fully double guilty. I would do twice as much if I could. I would do three times as much if I could because the country needs it.

This is the bill that makes the investments that will make our country stronger economically, educationally and socially not just today but for the next 10 years. That's what this bill is about.

We have got a 2 percent difference between us and the President in terms of what we are trying to spend in this bill versus what he thinks we ought to spend. I have just told you where we have put it in the right places. Where does the President want to put money? The President wants to spend five times as much as the difference that we have with him on this bill, he wants to spend five times as much giving tax cuts to people who make more than a million bucks a year. He is going to give 57 billion bucks to people in this country who make over a million bucks a year. We think that money, a portion of it, is better spent on kids who need it and on sick people who need it. And we make no apology for it.

The other thing I would simply say is that the other place that the President wants to spend it, he wants to spend 60 times as much as that $10 billion on that stupid war in Iraq, the worst foreign policy blunder in the history of the Republic.

So we plead fully guilty to having a meaningful 2 percent difference between the President and us. We plead fully guilty, and I wish it were more.

Mr. Chairman, some simple facts. The President's budget would have us spend as a share of our total national income 48 percent less on education, health care, science, job training, et cetera, than this country spent in 1980, and by 2012 he would have us spend 57 percent less than we spent in 1980.

That creates a problem because we're going to have 27 million more Americans in the next 10 years. We're going to have 12 million more seniors needing health care. We're going to have 2.7 million more kids in elementary and secondary school. We're going to have 2.2 million more students in college. And, unless we change our ways, we're going to have 11 million more Americans without health insurance.

That's why we don't want to go back to last year. We want to move ahead to try to deal with the problems coming at us. We see them; they're there. We ought not to stick our head in the ground like an ostrich. We ought to deal with them, and that's what this bill does.

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

Mr. Chairman, I would rather not talk about what one party did one year and what one party did another year, because I think there is substantial support in both parties for the bill that we have before us today. I want to walk through what the impact of this cut would be on this bill.

If we pass this amendment, we will be cutting $1.2 billion from No Child Left Behind, the President's signature education set of programs. We will be cutting $684 million from Title I grants. We will be cutting $519 million from IDEA. That's a program which both parties have fought for the last 3 days to try to increase.

We would be cutting $717 million from Pell Grants, reducing scholarship awards for millions of students, despite the fact that the cost of higher education has gone up by 40 percent the last 5 years. We would be cutting $1.4 billion from the National Institutes of Health, money that we use to combat cancer, heart disease, Parkinson's and the like. We would be cutting $100 million from community health centers, denying needed health care and dental services to almost half a million people.

We would be cutting $53 million out of the President's request to prepare the country for a potential pandemic flu. We would be cutting $320 million from Head Start, $98 million from Child Care Development Block Grant. We would be cutting $446 million from the Social Security Administration, denying the resources that agency needs to maintain and keep open its local offices and reduce backlogs of disability and SSI claims.

So people have a choice. What's more important, their own accounting sheets or these investments in the country?

The fact is, with the exception of the gang of four, virtually every Republican who has offered an amendment

has done the same thing that Democrats have tried to do. They have tried to find ways to increase programs that they think are important to the country's future.

I would submit I don't think those Republicans are out of step, and I don't think those Democrats are out of step. I think the folks who are out of step are the gang of four offering the amendments.

I believe that most Americans, and I think most Republicans, would rather invest the funds now to prepare our workforce to be better trained, our kids to be better educated, and our health care system to be more efficient and more and more humane. That is what this bill is all about, and I think that there is a bipartisan consensus in this House to stick with this bill. So I would urge respectfully rejection of the amendment, as I make one other point.

We have the $1.4 billion initiative of add-ons to try to discourage women from having abortions. Instead of lectures, we provide resources to make their lives better if they decide to have those kids. This bill would cut about 40 percent of that initiative out of the bill. I happen to think that initiative is too important to sandbag, and this amendment sandbags that effort. So I would urge rejection of the amendment.

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chairman, I would like to again simply walk us through what this cut means in specific terms. This amendment would cut $257 million from the President's No Child Left Behind education flagship program. It would cut $144 million from title I, denying more than 40,000 students those title I services. It would cut $113 million from Special Education. It would wipe out every single amendment but one that was passed on this floor in the last 2 days to enhance Special Education, most of those amendments coming from the Republican side of the aisle.

It would cut $156 million from Pell Grants. It would cut $300 million from the National Institutes of Health for medical research in cancer, heart disease, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and the like. It would cut $22 million from community health centers. Over 100,000 of the uninsured would not have access to those services. It would cut $70 million from Head Start, $21 million from the Child Care Development Block Grant. It would cut $27 million from LIHEAP.

I want to remind you, in LIHEAP, the bill itself only restores half of the cut that was made last year by the President and the Congress.

It would cut $97 million from the Social Security Administration. Members are climbing all over me saying, ``What are we going to do to keep my local Social Security offices open? What are we going to do to eliminate the multi-month backlog in people applying for Social Security disability?'' I will tell you what they are going to do. This will add to it. It will add to the problem.

So with all due respect to the sanctimony that we hear from those who belatedly cry about the Federal deficit, I didn't hear them crying about the Federal deficit when they voted to spend $600 billion on an ill-advised war in Iraq. I don't hear them crying about the fact that $57 billion in tax cuts for millionaires adds $57 billion to the Federal deficit.

So I just think we need to recognize that I believe the vast majority of Americans and I believe substantial portions of both parties in this House believe that this bill is responsible in real dollar terms. All of the domestic appropriation bills that we will produce and have produced this year amount to a 1 percent increase in real terms.

One of the gentlemen over there claimed that these were not cuts. Well, let me tell you something. If you appropriate the same amount of money this year that you appropriated last year but inflation eats away at that and so does population growth, if you don't adjust for inflation and population growth, then to each recipient of the services under this legislation there is indeed a cut to them. And that is what counts. It is the impact on their pocketbook. It is the impact on their ability to get help to send their kids to school.

It is an impact on the couple in my District who called 31 dentists to try to get some help with their kid who had to have the braces taken off his teeth. They couldn't get any of them to take them because the dentists wouldn't take Medicaid patients. They didn't have a local clinic. So the mother held the kid down while the father took the braces off with a pair of pliers.

That wouldn't happen to any child of a Member of Congress. The gentleman is smiling about that. I don't think that is anything to smile about. I met that woman.

Yes, sir.

I understand.

But let me simply say, Madam Chairman, these cuts, these will be cuts in terms of the services that we are trying to provide to these people. It is immoral. It is unconscionable that we allow 44 million Americans to go without health insurance.

This bill will deliver health care coverage to 2 million more Americans than got it last year. It will make up in a tiny way for the indifference, the massive indifference, which has characterized this country the past few years on the issue of health coverage.

I would urge a ``no'' vote on the amendment and support for the underlying bill.

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

Madam Chairman, I will make the same observation as I made last night. What we have going on here, in my judgment, is Operation Diversion. You have a bunch of people in this House who are perfectly comfortable with the fact that the tax policies that they have voted for will deliver $57 billion in tax cuts this year to people who make over a million dollars a year. That is five times as much money as the increase that we have in this bill above the President's request.

And you have people who have voted for the war in Iraq, which has spent $600 billion in a case of mistaken identity as they mistook the stocky guy with the mustache, Saddam Hussein, for the tall guy with the beard, Osama bin Laden, and that mistake has cost us $600 billion when you take into account the President's newest request. That is 60 times as much as the addition we have above the President's budget for these programs.

They voted for all of that, and now they want to scramble away from the deficits and the debt that that has produced. And they try to divert the attention of the public and say, oh, the real cause of our fiscal mess is the fact that these crazy Democrats are trying to put more money into education and more money into health care and more money into job training.

Well, I plead fully guilty. We are trying to do that because yes, we do believe that these are investments. We think that kids are better off if you put more money into education than if you take it away. And we think society is better off economically and morally if we do more to help people who need health care than less.

Now this amendment would cut the following amounts from the bill: It would cut $128 million from this bill for No Child Left Behind.

It would cut $74 million from Title I.

It would cut $56 million from IDEA. Republicans and Democrats alike have spent the last 2 days trying to increase funds for IDEA; now they want to cut it back by $56 million.

They want to cut from this bill $78 million for Pell Grants, despite the fact that college costs have exploded.

They want to cut $148 million from this bill for the National Institutes of Health.

They want to cut $48 million from this bill for the Social Security Administration.

They want to cut $69 million from this bill out of programs that we have here to try to discourage women from having abortions. Now if they want to vote for that, be my guest. We don't happen to think, and I think there are significant numbers of our friends on the minority side of the aisle who don't happen to think that is a good idea.

We do have to make choices, and the basic choices here are do we want to defend the 2 percent increase in these programs above the President's level, because that is what it is, it is a 2 percent difference. And if you don't believe my definition, then take a look at CQ and National Journal because that is the way they define it.

Do you want to put 2 percent more into the health and education of the country, into the training of our workforce, or do you instead want to use it for additional money in Iraq and additional money for tax cuts for the most wealthy people in this country, most of whom would gladly see a reduction in their take if we could improve the quality of our workforce and the quality of our education and the quality of our law enforcement?

I plead fully guilty to agreeing with them, and I would ask for a ``no'' vote on the amendment.

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chairman, it is sometimes amazing to me just how small some congressional debates can be. We have heard a lot of bloviating on this floor today about whether something is a cut and whether it isn't a cut. We have had a boy scout debate about dictionary terms.

But the real question to ask about this bill is simply to ask, is it adequate to the needs of the country? Do we really need to simply continue the status quo by going back to last year's level, or do we need to recognize that there is more than one deficit in the country? Do we really think that we can afford to continue to avoid dealing with the deficit in educational quality, the deficit in health care access, the deficit in worker training?

Do we really think that we can avoid, or that we can afford to avoid investing to increase the number of quality teachers in this country? Do we think that we need to do more or not to help millions of kids who need a better deal in special education? Do we need to do more than we are doing now to help workers who lose their life's work because of the forces of globalization?

Are we comfortable continuing to see the number of research grants for cancer, for heart disease, for Parkinson's disease, continue to decline, or do we think that we ought to make an investment, a collective societal investment, so that we can do more to attack those diseases?

Those are values questions. That is what we have to decide here today. This amendment is largely symbolic. It gives people a chance on both sides to talk to some more, as though we haven't, God help us, talked enough already.

But we are now roughly at the point where we will have to decide what our priorities are.

This bill is about 2 percent above the President's budget for these items. That is what we are talking about; we are talking about devoting 2 percent more of the Federal budget than the President wants to devote to deal with the deficits in education, health care, job training, worker protection, and the like.

Each Member is invited, in my view, to make their own choice, but I think the choice is clear. We have had a huge increase in the gap between the richest people in this country and everybody else over the past 20 years. This bill attempts to deal with the results of that gap by providing additional grace notes to help the people who haven't been in that top 1 percent so they get a little better deal in sending their kids to college, so that they get a little better deal in being able to find doctors who will take care of them without begging in the community health clinic, so they can find some job training so they maybe can get a job that pays two-thirds of what their job paid before they were bounced because of bad trade deals or globalization. That is what this bill attempts to do.

It has traditionally had bipartisan support through the years in this country. It would be a shame if that bipartisan support didn't continue. I urge rejection of the amendment and support for the underlying bill.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I really wish that the gentleman had not offered this amendment, and let me be very frank. I spent most of the last 6 months trying to convince Democrats, primarily liberals, who are now in control of the House, not to try to use their new majority to change any language in this bill that had anything to do with abortion or family planning. I have asked them, in an effort to provide bipartisan support for this bill, to recognize other people's values as well as their own. I have asked them, therefore, to leave alone the six abortion-related or family planning provisions which are in the existing law which many on this side of the aisle oppose and some on the other side of the aisle oppose.

I have asked them to leave alone the Hyde amendment; I have asked them to leave alone Dr. Weldon's amendment. And I had some real fights on this side of the aisle about that, not just with people in my caucus, but with a lot of outside groups. A lot of like-minded people on the left will get together and talk and, after they talk to each other, they think they have taken a public opinion poll. And I have asked them to lay off this bill so that we can try to find common ground on an issue that has divided us for so long.

And we put together an initiative which provided well over half a billion dollars in special funding for programs to help discourage women from having abortions, and we have been able to keep that issue out of here. I have asked Members not to offer amendments on any of these items.

But now, in return for that, we get from the other side of the aisle from one gentleman an amendment that in essence upsets the apple cart. I think that is unfortunate. I can't do a whole lot about it, but I think the gentleman knows that an amendment like this would not survive conference anyway, and yet it is being offered. And what it does, at the last minute, is to blow up a consensus which we have tried to build over the last 3 days that we all ought to be willing to live under the same laws that we were living under when the Republicans were controlling this House and when they passed the legislation that I am now defending. So I would simply ask the gentleman, in the interest of our being able to work together on these issues, to withdraw his amendment.

He doesn't like Planned Parenthood. I don't care whether Planned Parenthood gets money or not. What I do care about is that the women who are served by Planned Parenthood get the services to which they are entitled under the Constitution. And so I would ask the gentleman, in the interest of the bipartisan neutrality that we have tried to build over the past 2 months, to consider withdrawing the amendment, and I thank the gentleman for the time.

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chairman, the issue here is not Planned Parenthood. The issue is whether women have a right to have full access to family planning. State health departments run 57 percent of the clinics that receive Title X funds. Planned Parenthood affiliates operate 14 percent of Title X supported clinics. Hospitals and family planning clinics and other non-privates make up the rest of the Title X clinic system.

Under the law, none of these funds can be spent for abortion. But Planned Parenthood clinics use their Title X funding to provide family planning and health services to millions of women, and it is those women who would be hurt today by this action, not Planned Parenthood.

I would urge a vote against the amendment. It seems to me that we ought to be content to live under the same arrangements that we were content to live under when the Republican Congresses were writing the law.

It seems to me that we need to be finding ways to avoid dividing the Congress and dividing the country because of our ideologies.

This amendment has nothing to do with abortion. It has everything to do with whether or not we are trying to find common ground on this cluster of issues, and whether or not women are going to be allowed to get the services they need in areas where the only services available to them come from the organization in question.

With that, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

Madam Chairman, this amendment is not related to abortion. This amendment is a frontal assault on family planning. Make no mistake about it. Whether you are pro-life or whether you are pro-choice or anything in between, you ought to be pro-family planning. And this amendment negates that, and I would urge defeat of the amendment.

If I have any time left, I would yield to the gentlewoman from California.

Will the gentleman from Iowa yield?

We've been asking Members through the day if they would drop their remarks if we accept their amendments so that Members can catch their planes. Would the gentleman be willing to do that?

In that case we'll accept the amendment on this side of the

aisle. In accepting this amendment, I would make the following two points:

One, I believe it is merely a re-statement of current law which already prohibits the employment of unauthorized aliens. I do not read it as imposing any new burdens on those who use funds appropriated under this Act. Rather it is fully consistent with the current legal obligations imposed on all employers, regardless of whether or not they use such funds.

Two, I am concerned that the amendment may place an undue enforcement burden on the agencies that receive funding under this bill. I plan to discuss that aspect with the administration.

Again, would the gentleman yield?

Same deal.

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

My understanding is that there are no further amendments or colloquies left on either side of the aisle. Is that his understanding, also?

Then, what I would simply like to say, Madam Chairman, is that this bill is the product of 5 months work on both sides of the aisle by some very dedicated people. Mr. Walsh is the new ranking member on the subcommittee, but he has performed like an old timer. I am proud of the fact that the subcommittee worked hard on hearings. And, I'm proud of the fact that we've largely come together on substance.

I would hope that that would be recognized by the endorsement of many Members on both sides of the aisle when the roll call vote is opened. This bill is not a matter of accounting.

This bill is not a matter of political theory or political party platforms.

This bill, more than any other, meets the needs of all of those in society who are not among the most well-connected and the most privileged. But even for the most well-connected and privileged, this bill provides a lot because all of us benefit every time a child is educated. All of us benefit every time an American citizen gets the health care he or she needs. All of us benefit every time a worker is educated so that our workforce becomes more competitive. All of us benefit when a single teacher achieves new skills. There is nothing in the world more damaging than a dull or a bad teacher, and there is nothing more wonderful than a well-trained, intelligent one.

So I would urge Members to recognize that the issue isn't whether some program is defined as a cut or an increase. The issue isn't whether we like the President of the United States or not. The issue is whether or not we are building the kind of country we want to have over the next 10 years. To do that, it takes investments. And, yes, investments cost money. And, yes, I plead fully guilty to wanting to provide even more than we can in this bill. But it is essential if we want to remain competitive. It is essential if we want to have equal access to opportunity in this country. It is essential that we invest in bills like this.

And I thank the gentleman from New York for his assistance in trying to do just that, as well as every other member of the committee and subcommittee.

There is a reason why there were no votes expressed in opposition to this bill in full committee, and that is because this is the people's bill. It is the product of input from each and every Member from the most conservative to the most liberal, and I think there is not a member of the subcommittee who would not verify that.

With that, Madam Chairman, I yield to the gentleman.

Madam Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise and report the bill back to the House with sundry amendments, with the recommendation that the amendments be agreed to and that the bill, as amended, do pass.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, if this issue were in fact the real problem, it can easily be dealt with in conference by Mr. Walsh and myself and the rest of the committee, but in fact it is not a problem. The fact is that under the bill money in the Safe and Drug Free Schools account can already be used for exactly the same purpose.

I would also like to point out, however, that this is a program which was cut by the President to $100 million, and the House has restored $146 million above the President's figure to take care of problems just such as this.

But the membership should also understand that this recommit kills the bill. It is dressed up in language on fees, but in fact it calls for the bill to be referred to the committee and reported back promptly, not forthwith. And, as Members know, that is a device that kills the bill.

We have endured over the last 3 days filibusters by amendment. We have had 25 hours of amendments, sometimes repetitious amendments. We have spent twice as much time on this bill as was spent the last time that the bill was considered by the Congress.

And I would make one other point. The sponsors of this proposal could have used it to do anything they wanted to do with the bill. They could have cut the bill, they could have changed the priorities. They didn't. And the fact that they didn't, in my view, is an admission that, in terms of policy, this is a good bill. It is a backhanded admission that this bill ought to pass as is.

So I would ask Members to vote ``no'' on the motion and vote ``yes'' on passage. They can then go home having done good things for America's children, for Americans who need help to get health care, and for American workers.

Let me also take just a second to thank the House for its indulgence over the last 3 days. I know that it has often been tiresome, but I appreciate the fact that they understood that the committee was just trying to do its job.

I yield to the distinguished majority leader.

Mr. Speaker, again, I want to thank Members of both parties who have helped through the process. I urge a ``no'' vote on this motion and a bipartisan ``yes'' vote on final passage.

parliamentary inquiries

Madam Chairman, frankly, I am looking for my ranking minority member. But until he gets here let me take a little time and say that I would simply suggest to the gentleman, if he thinks this is a good idea, that he take this idea up with the President of the United States.

What this committee has tried to do both on this subcommittee and on the Foreign Operations Subcommittee is to respect and work with the administration in their effort to provide global leadership to deal with the AIDS epidemic around the world. And the fact is that this item in this bill is a critical piece of the President's program.

Given our disarray around the world because of Iraq, I think it is a wonderful exception when we can be seen to be providing constructive leadership in the world on something. And certainly, although I have many differences with the President, this is one area where I think he has exercised significant leadership.

And I think it would undercut our standing yet again in the world if we were to withdraw this funding.

I just think that we've struck a good balance with respect to this program. I think both subcommittees have tried to see to it that we meet our international responsibilities.

You and I are very lucky human beings. Our souls were, thanks to God, infused in a body that lives in the United States. If they had been infused in a body that was born in Africa or in Asia or in some of the other hot spots in the world in terms of these diseases, I think we would take a look at this issue in a quite different way.

This program provides the only real leadership in the world to attack this program. I think it would be a horrendous mistake if we were to adopt the gentleman's amendment. I would urge defeating the amendment.

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

Will the gentleman yield?

Let me simply say that we sort of feel like we're caught in the middle of this one because Mr. Lewis, the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, gave us a lecture yesterday about how we should avoid duplicative programs.

Then, today, this amendment would have the effect of creating in one department a program that is virtually identical to a program that already exists in another department. So we can't win, no matter how we deal with the issue. I don't care which agency this is in. I just want it to be wherever it would be run the most efficiently and effectively.

I am certainly willing to discuss with anybody involved in the issue how we resolve this issue. We didn't put it in in the first place. It was put in by, as you know, a person from your party from your own State.

So we are happy to work with all of you, but I don't want to get cross-wised between two people from the same State. I don't want to be standing here accepting an amendment that creates a duplicative program.

So I think the most constructive result would be if the gentleman would withdraw his amendment and we try to work this out down the line, so that if it is not in the right place, we can talk about how to get it in the right place.

If the gentleman will yield further, if I can simply say again, on this side of the aisle I feel like I am being whipsawed. This was in the other bill because we were trying to accommodate a Republican Member of the House who felt strongly that it ought to be in that bill. Now we are being criticized by another Republican from the same State because we accommodated the other Republican. I can't go in both directions at the same time, which is why I don't seek to have this program in any department. I don't care where it is.

I would just as soon that you settle your differences with your colleague from your own State, and when you have, come and see me. I will try to work with whoever is the winner of the rassling match.

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chairman, I understand the motivation behind this amendment. The gentleman wants to provide additional funding for a very legitimate purpose. It is something we should have done a long time ago, and I understand that. But having said that, I am simply tired of having to defend administrative accounts from people on both sides of the aisle.

So I am not going to object to the amendment, but I do want to point out to the gentleman, as I will point out to many other Members who offer similar amendments today, that this committee is being whipsawed. We are being told by the White House that there is too much money in this bill, yet virtually every amendment that has been offered, save one, has been motivated principally by a desire to increase rather than decrease funds in this bill. This is another similar amendment. While I recognize that it has an offset, it is a ``let's pretend'' offset, just like a number of the offsets were last night.

Anybody who understands how government works needs to understand that if an agency is a grant-making agency and if you gut its administrative budget, then there ain't going to be nobody in the agency to issue the grants in the first place. Therefore, I want Members who offer these amendments to understand that even if they are accepted, when we go to conference we are going to have to make very large adjustments, and a lot of what is adopted on the House floor, if it is based on some of these ``let's pretend'' offsets, will in fact wind up on the cutting room floor by the time we get back from conference. That is just a practical fact of life.

Madam Chairman, as I say, I will not object to the gentleman's amendment, but I don't want anyone to be under any illusion that we can fund all of these additional wonderful things by simply going to the administrative budgets of the agencies, because occasionally you need somebody in that office to turn on the light.

I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.

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

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Drone on, drone on, O ship of State. That's what I'm tempted to recite when I hear these repetitious dronings on bill after bill after bill.

Let me simply say, I think it is legitimate for individual Members of this body to offer amendments in order to illustrate their concern about a larger question. I've done that many times myself in this institution.

But I think that after 3 weeks of hearing the same point made again and again, we understand that these gentlemen believe that we are putting too much money into education and health care and science and other areas that we regard as crucial investments, and that's a perfectly legitimate position to have. But please spare me the sanctimony, spare me the nonsense that somehow these amendments will contribute in any meaningful way to significant deficit reduction.

Let me simply point out, if people were interested in significant deficit reduction, they would not be supporting an Iraqi war which has already spent over $400 billion and which we'll spend another 140 billion bucks by the time we pass the President's supplemental. They would not be insisting that we provide $57 billion in tax cuts to people making a million bucks a year. No, they don't argue about those two things.

What do they do? They come to the floor and squawk about an $8 million program to help the poorest rural communities in this country get basic services like sewer and water. I represent many towns in my District with populations of less than a thousand people. At least half the households in many of those towns are headed either by senior citizens or a woman with a low income, and that means that when they get hit with the DNR order to clean up their water or clean up their sewer, they do not have the tax base to proceed, and they don't have technical expertise even to know how to begin going about it.

We've got a $385 billion backlog in this country of sewer and water needs, and yet we're hearing these complaints about this tiny little program and what terrible abuse it is for the taxpayer.

Imagine a congressional committee trying to do something to help poor communities deal with their sewer and water problems. Isn't that awful? Isn't that wasteful? Good God, Almighty, we ought to be putting that $8 million into the pockets of millionaires in additional tax cuts, right? At least that's what their record shows they believe. Nonsense.

I'm getting up once on this amendment, but I don't intend to continually get up in what is a filibuster by amendment. So I wanted to get that off my chest once, and then I'm just going to sit back and let people drone on, drone on, O ship of State, and occasionally I might even listen.

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

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chairman, again, I feel required to make the same comments that I made on a previous amendment that was offered about one-half hour ago.

This amendment seeks to do a very worthy thing: It seeks to increase support for respite care. God knows, having watched my mother-in-law for 7 years, having watched my father-in-law take care of her every day, God knows that anyone who has ever seen something like that understands that we need a lot more respite care.

But having said that, I want again to use this amendment to illustrate what is happening on this bill, because here is what the amendment says:

Page 63, line 4: After the first dollar amount insert, reduce by $20 million, increase by $20 million.

Now, what the amendment really does is simply to serve as a vehicle by which these two worthy Members can raise the issue that there is not enough money in this bill for respite care. And you know what? There isn't. And there isn't enough money in this bill for CDC; there isn't enough money in this bill for NIH; there isn't enough money in this bill for education; there isn't enough money in this bill for Pell Grants; there is not enough money in this bill to sufficiently reduce the Social Security backlog; there is not enough money in this bill to keep all the Social Security offices open that are closing around the country. And, yet, the administration is sending out a letter telling Members of Congress that they ought to vote against this bill because there is too much money.

Now, I don't fault the two gentlemen at all for using this device in order to raise their concerns; it is about the only thing they can do. But the fact is, as chairman of this committee, I have an obligation to point out to the House and to the occasional other person who might be listening that Members are being forced to go through these kinds of machinations because instead of meeting our obligations to the most needy people, the most vulnerable people in this society, we are instead squirting away billions of dollars on an Iraq war and billions more dollars in tax cuts for persons who make over $1 million a year.

The day that we decide not to do that, the day that we decide that we are not going to spend $150 billion more in Iraq this year, the day that we decide that we are not going to put tax cuts for millionaires ahead of the needs of our disabled and ahead of the needs of our isolated seniors, then that is the day when amendments like this will be real, because then there will be sufficient room in the budget to do what we ought to be doing on these programs.

Again, I will not stand in the way of this amendment because it is a worthy cause. But, understand, this is not a real offset; it doesn't add any new money to this account; and when we go to conference, we are going to have to jettison much of what is adopted on the floor because, like this amendment, in reality, because of budget constraints, it ain't real.

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

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chairman, let me simply say again, as I have several times today, I am sympathetic to the goal of the gentlewoman's amendment, and I appreciate the fact that she did not craft her amendment in a way which would go after general departmental administrative costs. I appreciate that concession on the part of the gentlewoman.

Having said that, again, I will not personally object to the amendment because I understand what she is trying to do. But I definitely want to make clear what the gentleman from New York said, that there's only so far that you can cut any of these programs.

I happen to have insisted on a very deep cut in Reading First because of the abuse that occurred of the taxpayer funds in that account. But having said that, it's our hope that, frankly, and the House needs to know this, it's our hope that by the time we get to conference, we will have worked out enough of an understanding with the administration about the corrections that are needed so that we don't have to take the deep cuts that are in the bill now. But we are not yet at that point, so I think people who are bringing these amendments to the floor need to understand that many of them will not survive, simply for the same reason that I said earlier, that this bill is still short of the funds necessary to fund deserving programs such as that pointed out by the gentlewoman from Texas.

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

Madam Chairman, I reserve a point of order on the amendment.

Would the gentleman yield?

I want to underscore that I agree with my friend from New York and to emphasize that in parts of my own State, school districts face similar problems. In fact, I would bet this problem exists all over the country.

Furthermore, I understand that school districts face a similar issue with respect to the test scores of students receiving special education services. So I'd like to suggest to the gentleman from New York that we sign a joint letter to the authorizing committee requesting that they address this serious issue in the No Child Left Behind reauthorization that they're expected to soon consider.

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word

Madam Chairman, I must confess a certain degree of confusion about this amendment. I always had the impression that good Republicans like block grants, and I also had the impression that thoughtful Republicans favor as much local control as possible. And yet this amendment would have us running in the opposite direction.

What this amendment would do is it would take the dollars in question out of a program which provides aid to all States in the Union and instead reserve that money for use in just the few States who have bought into the approach that is supported by these two gentlemen.

One of my favorite quotations is from Eric Sevareid, who used to be on CBS News a few years ago, and he said, ``It is important to maintain the courage of one's doubts in an age of dangerous certainties.''

And I have to say that I have a lot of doubts about what is the most effective way to teach children. I don't think I have all the answers. I don't think this House has all the answers. So I don't think we ought to be dictating to States what answers they seek in their teacher quality programs.

The virtue of the committee approach, as opposed to the approach suggested by the amendment, is that States can use the money in the block grant as it is provided in the committee bill and they can use it for any variety of techniques, including the one that is being promoted by the two gentlemen pushing this amendment. It seems to me that at a time when we are already questioning the rigidity of No Child Left Behind, and I must confess I voted for No Child Left Behind but with serious reservations and I will not vote to renew it unless those reservations are corrected, but it just seems to me that at a time when we are recognizing that No Child Left Behind is needlessly rigid, we should not be piling on to that rigidity with additional pieces of our own.

So with that I would simply urge Members to allow States to continue to have the flexibility that they have under the committee approach, and I would urge a ``no'' vote on the amendment.

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

Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Madam Chairman, may I inquire as to how much time I have remaining?

Madam Chairman, let me simply say that I have only been to Alaska once in my life. I have certainly never been in an Alaskan school. But my grandfather taught me a long time ago, and I'm sure you have heard this many times in your own lives, but he used to say that nothing is more expensive in the long run than a badly educated child. And I don't care if that child comes from New Jersey or Wisconsin or Hawaii or Alaska, a badly educated child is a menace to society. Why, just imagine a badly educated child could grow up to be elected as a Member of Congress from New Jersey or Wisconsin. They could come into this Chamber filled full of all sorts of half-baked ideas, and the Congress would be plagued with having to spend hours and hours dealing with those ideas. I'm sure I've presented a few of the bad ideas myself to this House in that time.

The point is that Alaska may seem remote and far away, but the fact is that there are special children who do have special needs. Does anyone really believe that we are spending enough on Indian education programs around the whole country, for instance? And yet, we're told by the administration that we ought to eliminate the program for Alaska Native students because they benefit from the Indian education programs. Well, I've got tribes in my own State, and I know how inadequate some of those schools are, though they're trying the best they can.

I would simply say that if the authorizing committee wants to deauthorize this program, then fine, but I see no purpose right now in singling out one special group of children for exclusion from this bill and this account. I can think of a lot of things that go on in Alaska that I would just assume see stopped before I would see them stop educating children with special needs. I wish that they would take a different approach, for instance, on their highway aids. I think that their lack of judgment on that score has embarrassed the entire Congress. But I don't think that the Indian children or the Native Alaskan children who are educated under this should wind up being the principal victims of that action by the State of Alaska.

I sense in this House that people are touchy about voting for anything for Alaska since that happened. Well, I don't want these kids to be unlucky enough to run into accidents that started out to happen to somebody else. So it seems to me that the wise course is to reject the gentleman's amendment and allow the authorizing committee to determine whether or not this program ought to continue or not.

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

Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

I just want to thank the gentleman for bringing to the attention of the House again the fact that the authorizing committees have failed to do so much work in past years.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for raising this important issue. The purpose of the Energy Employee Occupational Illness Compensation Program is to fairly compensate our Nation's former nuclear workers for illnesses they contracted while serving our country.

Former Department of Energy employees who are now elderly and ill have been subjected to bureaucratic run-arounds by the agencies responsible for adjudicating their claims. The Department of Labor is responsible for administering compensation for these former nuclear workers, and I concur with the gentleman from Iowa that a report from the Secretary detailing the administration of the compensation program would provide Congress with highly valuable insight into the agency's implementation of the program.

Streamlining and expediting the method through which claims are processed and compensation provided is in the best interests of the families and claimants to whom our country owes its deepest gratitude and respect.

I'd be happy to work with the gentleman to request this information from the Department and to ensure that the true intent of the program is being carried out with due diligence by the administration.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order.

In reserving my point of order, I would like to ask a question of the gentlewoman. Does she have a score from the CBO?

So the CBO indicates that the amendment is outlay neutral?

If that is the case, then I withdraw my reservation.

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

There are two problems I have with this amendment. First of all, it seeks to cut $10 million from an item in the bill which is meant to establish full-service community schools. These are supposed to be schools which test the concept of making schools neighborhood centers which include early childhood education, remedial education, academic enrichment activities, programs that promote parental involvement and family literacy, mentoring and other youth development programs. It's meant to be a much more holistic educational experience than is usually found in an individual school. We believe that that deserves an opportunity to be tested.

Secondly, I would simply say that, lest this amendment be portrayed as an amendment that does anything significant for special education, I want to point out that this is an especially marginal amendment. The damage it does to the neighborhood school concept that we are trying to explore in the bill is far larger than the negligible impact that it has on the special education program.

What I mean by that is this: Special education is an $11 billion program. This amendment adds $10 million to it. It is another one of those symbolic amendments which I think ought to be placed in context.

The committee has already increased this account by $500 million. It is $800 million above the President, and it seems to me that, by comparison, the amendment is demonstrably but a blip on the radar screen in comparison to the funds that we have already put in this bill.

Now, I know that many of these amendments can be offered, and they can be converted into nice, sweetly packaged 30-second TV spots which tend to leave the impression that a Member has done something significant. Unfortunately, this amendment doesn't fit into that category of being significant, and it may make a very good television spot, but I doubt it's going to be very meaningful in the scheme of things.

I would ask for a ``no'' vote.

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

Let me simply say I agree with the gentlelady from California. The Children's GME is integral to ensuring a stable future for our children's hospitals and is a sound investment in children's health. I certainly will do everything I can to ensure that sufficient funding levels for Children's Hospitals GME are retained in conference.

Mr. Chairman, I simply want to thank my colleague from California for bringing this important matter to the attention of the House. The gentlelady is a strong advocate for the establishment of a robust and interoperable health information technology network, and I want to work with her. I will be pleased to consider this funding need should additional funds become available in conference.

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

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be read, not designated.

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

I withdraw my point of order.

Mr. Chairman, I can't believe my ears. I just thought I heard the gentleman say that IDEA was underfunded. I'm shocked. I've never heard the gentleman say that anything was underfunded before.

Let me take back my time because I only have 5 minutes. But I agree with the gentleman. Many programs are underfunded in this bill.

Let me simply say, Mr. Chairman, that I would certainly support the gentleman's amendment if I thought that we had all of the excellent teachers in the country that we need, but the fact is we don't.

This is not a program that should be cut back or eliminated. This is a program that works. This is a program which helps teach trainers to go through rigorous certification processes. They are star teachers. They go back to their school districts, they become lead teachers in their schools, and I hardly think that that is damaging the national interest.

And I must also confess a certain amount of confusion, because just about an hour ago we were told by a series of Members that we should support the teacher incentive program because we needed to incentivize teachers to increase their skills. And now we have a program that does just that and identifies teachers based on merit, and we're told we ought to cut back the program.

Let me simply say that if you take a look at the way this program has been evaluated, the National Boards for Professional Teaching Standards tells us that this program raises student achievement. It inspires deeper learning. It improves teacher practice. It creates transformative professional development, and it helps these schools to retain teachers.

Let me say that there is a tiny increase in this program. That increase is aimed at helping teachers from low-income schools get master teacher certification.

We've been told for years that the toughest thing to do in education is to get your best teachers to go into your poorest schools or the schools in your poorest neighborhoods. This is a program that's effective in doing that. We ought not to throw the baby out with the bath water.

I would urge opposition to the amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order, and I would ask unanimous consent that the Clerk read the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my point of order.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to oppose the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, let me assure the gentleman that his party did not lose the last election because they did too much for education. Rather, they lost the last election, in my view, because the public so clearly understood that their party preferred to put spending $57 billion in tax cuts for people who make over $1 million to providing decent funding for education.

And the public understood that the other party preferred to spend $600 billion in Iraq rather than spending a small portion of that at home for science and health care and the like to meet some of the needs of our own people. That is why the gentleman's party lost the last election, not because they did too much for education but because they were out of touch.

Having said that, let me simply say that this amendment eliminates funding for the National Writing Project. I would simply point out that this program supports teacher training programs so that teachers can help students write effectively and school districts match those funds dollar for dollar.

I must say all of us have large turnover of our staff here on Capitol Hill. The number one problem that I have in my office and the number one problem I have heard so many other Members comment on is that when young people come in and interview for jobs, they don't know how to write.

When both of my sons went away to college, at least my oldest son asked me, ``Dad, what do you think is the most important thing to learn?''

And I said, I think the most important thing to learn is how to write because if you can write clearly, it means you are thinking clearly, and if you are thinking clearly, it means you can communicate. And I would say that I don't think that this country is over blessed with a number of great writers. I also must say if you listen to some of the congressional speeches written by our staffs, you would certainly agree that we need more help in writing in this country.

So let me simply say that I understand that we are engaged in a little filibuster by amendment. But nonetheless, I wanted to take this time to simply urge Members to vote against this amendment. If you believe in raising the quality of discourse in this country, you have to start with writing, and that is what this program tries to do.

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

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I would just like to bring to the House the following facts: We have been at this bill now for the better part of yesterday. We have been on this bill since 10:30 this morning, and we have been trying to negotiate a unanimous consent agreement so that Members might be able to leave here tomorrow night. I know there is a CODEL of Members going to Iraq but I want to put them on notice now. I doubt very much that you are going to make it unless you want to miss a lot of votes because as things are developing, I am told that right now, because of the insistence that a number of amendments, which we have heard time and time again, will still be subjected to 40 minutes' debate time even though there are five similar amendments, each of which will take about 40 minutes. When you calculate it all, it comes out to about 800 minutes of debate time. That means roughly 13 hours. By the time you account for slippage, the time it takes for Members to be recognized, the time it takes for them to find their amendments, you have to add about another 5 hours plus your voting time.

What that means is that if we continue until 1 o'clock this morning, it will still probably be required for Members to be here until about 8 o'clock or later tomorrow night, which means that we will finish just in time for you to all miss your planes.

I just wanted you to know that so that if you think that you would like to see another result, you talk to individuals who right now seem to think that 40 minutes' time on a repetitive amendment is more important than ending a filibuster by amendment.

Two years ago when this bill was on the floor, it took about 12 hours. At this rate it will take about three times that amount of time. So I want Members who are coming up to me asking me about whether they are going to be able to make their planes or their CODELs, I want them to understand that if they miss them, I want them to know who to blame because it is not going to be me.

I'm happy to engage the gentleman.

If the gentleman would yield, I would like to thank the gentleman for bringing to our attention the important work that the U.S. Forest Service has done in running its 19 Job Corps centers.

I have reviewed the provision in the Senate Interior Appropriations bill. I support retaining the language in conference that directs the Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture to execute an agreement to transfer the three Job Corps centers currently administered by the National Park Service to the U.S. Forest Service.

I hope the Department of Labor will recognize the merits of this approach which I understand was successful in another case involving the Mingo Job Corps Center in Missouri several years ago.

I also understand that the Secretaries of Interior and Agriculture support this approach and expect to work cooperatively with the Secretary of Labor on this matter.

I thank the gentleman.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order, and I would ask that the Clerk read the amendment. We don't have a copy.

I withdraw my reservation of the point of order and move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, let me simply ask the House one question: Do we really know everything that we need to know about how children learn? Do we really know enough about how children learn to guarantee that every child will perform to their maximum ability and potential? I think the answer to that is obvious: we obviously don't.

There is no great political constituency for educational research. But you know it's a funny thing, in any field of endeavor, research is what separates bull gravy from intelligent approaches to issues. That's what research does: it helps lead one to a right understanding of a problem.

What this amendment is, frankly, it's another television ad. What this amendment does is to pretend that it does no damage to education by eliminating $50 million out of the educational research budget. It then puts it into special education.

We have a lot of posing for holy pictures on this floor by Members who are trying to escape the fact that the White House is asking them to vote against this bill because the White House claims there is too much money in the bill when, in fact, every single one of these amendments demonstrates that our own Republican Members know that there is not enough money in this bill to fund programs like special education unless you make damaging cuts to other portions of the bill. And I would suggest that we not do that.

The President cut special education in his budget by $291 million. We have added $800 million in the committee bill to that, and we're $509 million over last year.

I would also point out that this is a 10 percent cut, if this amendment passes, in the research account. And I would point out that this amendment would cut the National Center for Education Statistics, which is the premier educational statistical operation in the country. This amendment would even cut Federal research funds for special education. Do we really know so much about the needs of special education kids that we're going to cut that research? I don't think so.

I think the responsible vote is ``no,'' and I urge a ``no'' vote on the amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, again I reserve a point of order, and I would ask that the Clerk read the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my point of order and would move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I wonder if anybody remembers these words: ``Whatsoever you do for the least of your brethren, you do for Me.'' I wonder if anybody remembers those words?

This amendment is truly amazing to me. This amendment is offered by a Member of the House, who, like me, any time he has an ache or a pain or a toothache or is having a bad day, can trot down to the Attending Physician and have the doctors and the nurses check us over to make sure that we are in peachy keen shape. But what does this amendment say? This amendment says to some of the poorest people in the country, our migrant and our farm workers, sorry, you can't have vocational rehabilitation services if you've got a physical problem.

I would like to ask every Member of this House, have you ever picked cucumbers during the summer? Have you ever picked beans? Well, I have. I can tell you it is darn hard work. I used to represent a county by the name of Waushara County--wall to wall irrigation and crops like cucumbers and beans. I used to watch those migrant workers come in and work their tails off to get a few bucks.

Are we really so stingy? Are we really so utilitarian that we are willing to say to workers like that, sorry, Members of Congress are important, so they can get taken care of whenever they have got a physical problem. But oh no, don't you dare waste the taxpayers' money when it comes to some poor devil in the migrant stream or when it comes to their family or kids.

You want to vote for this amendment? You go right ahead. Count me out.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the Clerk read the amendment because unless she does, we have no idea what the amendment is.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to oppose the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I have been trying to figure out what we ought to be calling these amendments that have been offered for 2 days. I have concluded that we ought to call them the congressional rubber- stamp amendments, because what is happening is we are seeing amendment after amendment offered that would simply return these funding levels to the exact level recommended by the President.

Now I see story after story indicating that a good many of my friends on the other side of the aisle are anxious to separate themselves from the President these days, but we have evidently a few members of their caucus who are eager to embrace virtually every action and every thought that comes from the White House. I find that very interesting.

The President felt we ought to eliminate this program. What does this program do? This program provides $60 million in grants to States to offer needs-based student scholarships. There are 165,000 students who will benefit from this program, getting scholarships of $1,000. I would simply ask, does anybody really believe that we are providing enough help for working families to send their kids to college?

The Pell Grant program is the major program upon which we rely in order to help students from lower and middle-income families find enough money to go on to college. When that program was in its heyday in the seventies, it provided over 70 percent of the cost of attending a 4-year public university. It provided help in the form of a Pell Grant to meet that percentage of the cost. Today, it is down to a little over 30 percent of the cost. So we have shifted a huge percentage of the cost to working families.

The President's answer in his budget this year was to move Pell Grants from one side of the budget to the other making it, instead of a discretionary program, a mandatory program and in the process decided he was going to pay for the increase in the Pell Grants by eliminating virtually every other student aid program on the books except Pell and Work Study.

I would suggest if you think that is a good idea, go ahead, follow the President over the cliff and vote to deny these 165,000 students the additional help they need. The money that we invest in student aid is returned to this country many times over. We are in a competitive world. Over 50 percent of the jobs that will be offered in this country in the next 7 years are jobs that will require a higher education, and it seems to me instead of running away from that obligation, we ought to be embracing it. This is a very bad idea. I urge defeat of the amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that, during further consideration of H.R. 3043 in the Committee of the Whole pursuant to House Resolution 547, notwithstanding clause 11 of rule XVIII, no further amendment to the bill may be offered except:

Pro forma amendments offered at any point in the reading by the chairman or ranking minority member of the Committee on Appropriations or their designees for the purpose of debate;

An amendment by Mr. Pascrell regarding funding for Traumatic Brain Injury programs;

An amendment by Mr. Nadler regarding eligibility for 9/11 health programs;

An amendment by Mr. Nadler regarding funding for 9/11 health programs;

An amendment by Mr. Barton of Texas regarding funding for the National Institutes of Health;

An amendment by Mr. Garrett of New Jersey regarding funding for certain autism programs;

An amendment by Mr. Holt regarding funding for math and science partnerships;

An amendment by Mr. Cooper regarding funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Historically Black Graduate Institutions;

An amendment by Mr. Flake reducing funding for the Corporation for National and Community Service;

An amendment by Mr. Conaway limiting funds for the LIHEAP program until certain conditions are met;

An amendment by Mr. Conaway regarding use of reductions made through amendment for deficit reduction;

An amendment by Mr. Dingell regarding the Deputy Commissioner of the Social Security Administration;

An amendment by Mr. Gingrey limiting funds for Social Security totalization agreements with Mexico;

An amendment by Mr. Hare regarding Critical Access Hospitals;

An amendment by Mr. Jordan of Ohio reducing funds in the bill by 4.6 percent, which shall be debatable for 30 minutes;

An amendment by Ms. Moore of Wisconsin, Mr. Scott of Virginia, Mr. Cole of Oklahoma or Ms. Shea-Porter regarding the Upward Bound program;

An amendment by Mrs. Musgrave reducing funds in the bill by 0.5 percent, which shall be debatable for 30 minutes;

An amendment by Mr. Price of Georgia reducing funds in the bill by 1 percent, which shall be debatable for 30 minutes;

An amendment by Mr. Campbell of California reducing funds in the bill by 0.25 percent, which shall be debatable for 30 minutes;

An amendment by Mr. Obey regarding earmarks;

An amendment by Mr. Scott of Virginia regarding funding for student drug testing;

An amendment by Mr. Lewis of Georgia, Mr. Welch of Vermont, or Mr. Weller of Illinois regarding certain Medicare regulations;

An amendment by Ms. Jackson-Lee of Texas regarding the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Education;

An amendment by Ms. Jackson-Lee of Texas regarding Education for the Disadvantaged;

An amendment by Mr. Upton or Ms. Harman regarding use of Energy Star certified light bulbs;

An amendment by Mr. Pence limiting funds for Planned Parenthood;

An amendment by Mr. Ehlers regarding funding for math and science partnership programs;

An amendment by Mr. Gingrey or Mr. Jordan of Ohio limiting funds regarding requirements for HPV vaccinations for school admittance;

An amendment by Mr. Ryan of Wisconsin limiting funds for certain Centers for Disease Control Activities;

An amendment by Mr. Garrett of New Jersey limiting funds for certain international conferences;

An amendment by Mr. King of Iowa limiting the use of funds to employ workers described in section 274A of the Immigration and Nationality Act;

An amendment by Mr. King of Iowa limiting the use of funds to sponsor certain events at the Sundance Film Festival;

An amendment by Mr. Davis of Kentucky limiting performance bonuses

for certain employees of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Social Security Administration;

An amendment by Mr. Davis of Kentucky limiting performance bonuses for certain employees of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Social Security Administration unless certain requirements related to Medicare part D are met;

An amendment by Mrs. Schmidt limiting funds for title X grantees;

An amendment by Mr. Flake limiting funds for the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City, Missouri;

An amendment by Mr. Flake limiting funds for the American Ballet Theatre in New York;

An amendment by Mr. Flake limiting funds for the Portugese and Lusophone studies at Rhode Island College;

An amendment by Mr. Flake limiting funds for the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago;

An amendment by Mr. Flake limiting funds for the Kansas Regional Prisons Museum;

An amendment by Mr. Flake limiting funds for the Corporation for Jefferson's Poplar Forest in Virginia;

An amendment by Mr. Flake limiting funds for the South Carolina Aquarium;

An amendment by Mr. Flake limiting funds for the Burpee Museum in Rockford, Illinois;

An amendment by Mr. Flake limiting funds for a college preparatory pilot program at Missouri State University;

An amendment by Mr. Flake limiting funds for the Exploratorium in San Francisco, California;

An amendment by Mrs. Musgrave limiting funds for attachment therapy;

An amendment by Mr. Souder limiting CMS funds for certain Medicare payment activities related to hospital transplant programs;

An amendment by Mr. Souder limiting funds of the National Labor Relations Board to recognize a union as the exclusive bargaining representative of employees that has not been elected by a secret- ballot election;

An amendment by Mr. Hensarling reducing funding for the Centers for Disease Control;

An amendment by Mr. Westmoreland limiting funds for the publication of certain student loan applications;

An amendment by Mr. Campbell of California limiting funds for the Charter School Development Foundation;

An amendment by Mr. Campbell of California limiting funds for the City College of New York;

An amendment by Mr. Campbell of California limiting funds for all projects requested by Members of Congress and disclosed pursuant to the rules of the House, which shall be debatable for 20 minutes;

An amendment by Mr. Camp of Michigan regarding the Medicare Advantage program;

An amendment by Mr. Crowley limiting funds for the North Carolina Technology Association Education Foundation;

An amendment by Mr. Crowley limiting funds for Alleghany Memorial Hospital;

An amendment by Mr. Crowley limiting funds for Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute;

An amendment by Mr. Crowley limiting funds for the North Carolina Center for Emerging Technologies;

An amendment by Mr. Crowley limiting funds for the Southeastern Center for Emerging Biologic Threats;

An amendment by Mr. Hensarling regarding education for Native Hawaiians;

An amendment by Mr. Barrett of South Carolina regarding Byrd Honors Scholarship program;

An amendment by Mr. Lamborn regarding the Corporation of Public Broadcasting;

An amendment by Mr. Hensarling regarding Twin Cities Public Television for the Minnesota Digital Public Media Archive;

An amendment by Mr. Hensarling regarding West Los Angeles College, Culver City, California;

An amendment by Mr. Hensarling regarding Families in Schools, Los Angeles, California; and

An amendment or amendments by Mr. Obey regarding funding.

Each such amendment may be offered only by the Member named in this request or a designee, shall be considered as read, shall not be subject to amendment (except that the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on Appropriations and its Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies in each such capacity each may offer one pro forma amendment for the purpose of debate); and shall not be subject to a demand for division of the question in the House or in the Committee of the Whole.

Except as otherwise specified, each amendment shall be debatable for 10 minutes, equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an opponent. An amendment shall be considered to fit the description stated in this request if it addresses in whole or in part the object described.

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

The unanimous-consent agreement under which we are now operating means that there will be at least 13 hours of debate on amendments that are contemplated being offered. In addition to the 13 hours that that will take, you almost have to allow for 4 or 5 hours of slippage because of the time it takes for recognition and things like that. So that means that we will have approximately 18 hours, not counting votes, as I calculate it, to dispose of all of the items contained in the unanimous consent request.

Members further need to understand that we will not be on this bill tomorrow morning because the Appropriations Committee has to mark up the Agriculture appropriation bill. That means that if we stay here until 1 o'clock tonight, we might, if we get lucky and if some people decide to drop some amendments, be finished by 8 or 9 o'clock tomorrow night. I wish that we could do it sooner, but I'm not the fellow offering the amendments. So I simply want Members to be aware of what it means.

What we will try to do, and I don't think this is definitely tied down, but Members should be notified shortly when it is, we will try to go until about 8 o'clock and then have another series of votes. And then those of us who are stuck on the committee or stuck offering amendments, we will have to be here after that. That's the only way that we can see about how to proceed, unless people want to be here Friday or Saturday.

So, I just wanted Members to have that happy news before they go to their happy hour.

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

Would the Clerk read the amendment so we can understand what it is?

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

Mr. Chairman, if you think that there is too much education in this country, then vote for this amendment. If you think that we could use more help to people trying to get an education, then you vote against it.

I think that the only thing wrong with this program in the eyes of the White House is the name of the man that's attached to the program, the distinguished Senator Robert Byrd from West Virginia. He sponsored this program, which provides needs-based scholarships all over the country, some 15,000 of them. I happen to think that's a good thing. I think the recipients certainly think it's a good thing. I think the working families of the recipients think it's a good thing.

The gentleman says that the White House Budget Office has ranked this program as ``not determined'' in terms of effectiveness. I would remind you, this is the same White House that is claiming that the surge in Iraq has shown great progress. I hardly think that their judgment ought to serve as the standing judgment of the House.

I also note, by the way, that the White House also ranks as ``effectiveness not being determined'' IDEA preschool grants, and IDEA Grants for Infants and Families. We've had several efforts on the part of people on that side of the aisle today to increase funding for IDEA. I didn't see them stopping then because the White House didn't think that was such a hot idea. I also see the White House ranks the Federal Work Study program as being ``not determined'' in terms of adequacy.

With all due respect, I think this country needs all the education it can get. I think it needs all the student aid it can get. And I would therefore urge rejection of the amendment.

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

I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. Chairman, I share the gentleman's concern about the Social Security disability claim backlog and the hardship it has caused. Under the President's request for SSA, the disability backlog has gotten worse. The funding increase we've included in this bill will keep that from happening and will protect SSA from staffing declines that the agency has seen in recent years.

I would make the point that despite the fact that we were left in a considerable mess with all of last year's domestic appropriation bills not passed when we took over, we still made SSA a priority and included $148 million over the 2006 funding level. In the bill we are debating today, we have included over $401 million above the 2007 level and $100 million more than the presidential request.

Mr. Chairman, I would be happy to work with the gentleman and others, such as Mr. Arcuri, toward increasing the amount for SSA in the conference and in future years.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman. Mr. Walsh and I both are concerned about the problem, and we will be happy to work with you.

Amendment Offered by Mr. Cooper

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

Mr. Chairman, this amendment, like so many others offered today, demonstrates that the White House is incredibly off base when they tell us that this bill is over-funded. This bill is about 2.5 percent in real terms above last year. The fact that it is so tight and still falls so short of meeting many needs is evidenced by the fact that we have this kind of amendment before us. The only difference between this amendment and several others is that the others have been coming from the minority side of the aisle and this one happens to come from the majority side of the aisle.

But let me simply say that I fully appreciate where the gentleman wants to put the money. It is a good place to put it. There are many other good places to put it. The problem is that it is simply not real to believe that you can decimate the administrative budget of the Department of Education as much as this amendment does.

I am not going to ask people to vote one way or another on this, because no matter which way you vote, you will be wrong, because this amendment, because of the squeeze that we are in, because of the tremendous demand for education help in this country, no matter what you do, someone will be shortchanged. It is either the department that is supposed to administer the programs or the programs themselves.

So I sympathize with what the gentleman is trying to do. I cannot honestly say I endorse the amendment, because of the problems, but I think the gentleman's amendment lays out clearly how inadequate this bill still is in terms of meeting the country's responsibilities, especially to those folks in our population who are not, shall we say, the top dogs.

I yield to the gentlewoman from California.

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

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

I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

I yield to the gentleman from Tennessee.

Mr. Chairman, I am familiar with the NYSP program given the fact of that the University of Wisconsin-Superior in my district hosted a program in 2005. I acknowledge the good work that the program has accomplished, and I am looking forward to working with both the gentlemen.

I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Let me say, I hope anything is funded on the Senate side. I would like to thank both gentlemen for their passion and attention to this program, and I will be happy to join both of you in encouraging reauthorization of this program.

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

I yield to the gentleman from New York.

I share the gentleman's concern about the Social Security Administration budget. Since January, the committee has provided $550 million in additional resources. It has come in large part because of requests of people like yourself who have constantly reminded us of the problem.

In the bill we are debating today, the committee has included over $400 million above the 2007 level and $100 million more than the administration's request. Years of underfunding SSA and the other programs in this bill, such as No Child Left Behind, IDEA, and NIH, cannot be remedied in any one year, but we are certainly doing the best we can to accelerate.

I will be happy to continue to work with the gentleman in conference in the future to obtain the highest level possible for SSA. I know it is a very important problem.

I yield to the gentleman from New York.

I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Earlier today, the gentleman had a previous amendment which tried to put money in a worthy program, and I expressed then my concern about the offset. I must do the same thing on this occasion.

The point I'm making is while I certainly understand why the gentleman wants to add the funds that he wants to add, I simply cannot continue to buy into the idea that we can take all of these items out of administrative budgets. It simply is not responsible. Of course, I don't think it is responsible for the White House to claim that this bill is underfunded either. These programs are very good programs.

But Members are going through this elaborate dog and pony show, or some would call it cock and bull story, because they are prevented from doing what they know should really happen, which is we should be expanding some of these programs without gouging others.

I simply cannot support this amendment and I would not at all urge Members to vote for it not because the funding that the gentleman seeks isn't worthy, but because the solution that the gentleman lays out isn't real, unless you think that we can have agencies run programs with no desks and no lights and no phones and no personnel, nobody to cut the checks and no policy direction.

So, with that, I yield back the balance of my time and regretfully indicate my opposition to the amendment.

Madam Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the Clerk read all amendments so that we know which ones are at the desk. I think both the minority and the majority would like to know that.

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chairman, this is a very simple amendment that I will only take 2 minutes to discuss.

It eliminates all funds for AmeriCorps. It denies opportunities to 73,000 individuals to earn college assistance awards through serving their community.

It may not suit the gentleman's fancy that these folks volunteer and are paid, but I would suggest that it's a whole lot better than having people who don't volunteer at all.

Secondly, the gentleman cites what he considers to be abuses of the program. You know, when I looked at the Congress, I've seen abuse by Mr. Cunningham, I've seen abuse by Mr. Ney. In the old days, I saw abuse by Mr. Hayes, and a few other Members, but you know what, I didn't see anybody move to shut down the entire Congress because of the abuses of a few idiots. And I would suggest that we ought to apply the same standards to AmeriCorps that we apply to the Congress.

I yield to the gentleman from Connecticut.

Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Madam Chairman, what this amendment does is eliminate all of the funds for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I think that would be a very ill-advised thing to do. This Congress has spoken on funding for that organization many times. It has had strong support, often bipartisan support.

The gentleman complains about the fact that it is advance funded. It is advance funded for two reasons: number one, so that you can assure some kind of political independence from political pressure, and, secondly, because programmers need advance time in order to plan their programming.

The advance funding concept was begun 31 years ago by that notorious big spender Jerry Ford when he was President, my good friend, my good buddy.

If this amendment passes, 1,150 public radio and TV stations will be hurt. That will fall especially hard on rural stations. I don't think that's a good idea. I don't think we ought to do anything that would lead us 1 inch more toward a world in which the only kind of news we got was from the commercial stations feeding us the lately breathless news about Britney Spears, Donald Trump and Rosie O'Donnell. I would like to see a little bit better than that, and I think we get it from public broadcasting.

As far as the gentleman talking about taxes, we have seen Republican after Republican march down here like good little young Republicans in their college days repeating their mantra about taxes when this bill has nothing to do with taxes. They are all dutifully parroting their words like the Chinese used to do from Mao's Little Red Book. It's no more impressive now than it was then.

Let me just simply say that for someone to support spending $600 billion on the war in Iraq and spend $57 billion in tax cuts for millionaires and then somehow to suggest that the 2 percent difference in this bill between the President and us somehow has something to do with fiscal irresponsibility is a joke. The American people know it, and so do the Members of this House.

I yield to the gentleman from Oregon.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Madam Chairman, this is I guess what I would call a put up or shut up amendment for the House.

It is difficult for the press to cover budget stories because they are complicated. It is difficult for the press to cover stories about policy because they are complicated. But it is a whole lot easier for the press and for individual Members of this House to complain about some other Member, or in the case of the press any Member, trying to do something in his district, or in the case of a House Member complaining about somebody trying to do something in a different district.

We have a constitutional right to direct spending. In fact, that is the primary power of the Congress, to direct the executive branch in the spending of the taxpayers' money. The executive branch in fact directs far more spending than does the Congress, and yet I

recognize a Member's individual right to object to any direct spending that is engaged in by the Congress or the executive branch.

I would like to put that discussion in perspective. The last year that I was chairman of the Appropriations Committee this bill had no earmarks when it left the House. During the 12 years that the Republicans controlled this House, earmarks exploded to over 3,000.

In this bill, we have cut earmarks back to 1,300. We have cut the dollar amount in this bill for earmarks back to a very small amount, less than half of the amount that was in the bill 2 years ago. In fact, as the percentage of the total bill, earmarks make up two-tenths of 1 percent. Two-tenths of 1 percent. And yet, the debate on that two- tenths of 1 percent has dominated in the press and dominated the congressional debate. That is ridiculous.

But I am tired of having the committee serve as a punching bag for members of the press or Members of this body. I will be happy to play this issue flat, or I will be happy to play it round.

I'll be happy to bring a bill to the House floor with these earmarks, or without them. Those who know me well in this House know that I deeply resent the time that we have to take dealing with earmarks, and they know that the reason that I urged that we cut earmarks to 50 percent of the previous level 2 years ago is not because I thought they were impure, but because I thought they were beginning to be so numerous that they were unmanageable.

So today I'm going to give the House a choice. We've got lots of amendments pending before us on individual earmarks. I'm going to give the House a choice. I want the House to choose whether it wants to proceed with earmarks or not. If it does, then it will reject the amendment that I sent to the desk. If it doesn't want to proceed with these earmarks, then you can save a whole lot of time by knocking them all out with one vote. I invite you to put up or shut up, and make up your mind.

I will be a neutral player in this. I will offer the amendment, and I will vote present so that I'm not pushing people to vote either for or against eliminating these earmarks.

But I want, before we move to individual earmark debate, I want to know whether the House itself takes responsibility for the decision to move ahead with earmarks, or whether it doesn't. And if they want to decide no, be my guest. It will make my life a whole lot easier.

It will do one thing that will bother me at night.

It will give total authority to the executive branch, and that is not a healthy thing.

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chairman, I want to make one thing perfectly clear. I indicated, when I offered this amendment, that I would vote ``present.'' And the reason I want to do that is because I want every Member of this House to vote for or against this bill on final passage on the basis of what they think of it on the merits.

And I want, both by my ``present'' vote and by my comments here, to make it perfectly clear to Members on both sides of the aisle that no matter how they vote on the issue of earmarks and no matter how they vote on the issue of substance, I don't intend to let one affect the other.

I don't care whether Members vote to include earmarks or exclude them. And I will not do what was done to us 3 years ago when, after we voted against the Labor-H bill because we thought it provided inadequate funding for many national responsibilities, that virtually every single one of the earmarks for Democrats were stripped from the bill because of that vote.

So as far as I'm concerned, as long as I'm in charge of this subcommittee, there will be no log-rolling with respect to this issue. As far as I'm concerned, this is an individual vote of conscience and of practical judgment on the part of each Member of the House.

With respect to the record of Congress, Congress has earmarked funds since the beginning of the Republic. At least four of the appropriation bills are, by their nature, project oriented, so they must contain congressional earmarks.

And I want to point out, if we're going to start making comparisons, the HHS Department, just 2 years ago, had $1.9 billion in funds that they shoveled out without being shoveled out on a competitive basis. That is the same, that is the executive branch functional equivalent earmarking. It is directed spending, whether it occurs in the Congress or in the executive branch. And the action of that Department alone represented direct spending in the amount seven times as large as the amount contained in this bill tonight on behalf of the Congress.

So I want Members to vote however you want. But as I said, as far as I'm concerned, this is a put-up-or-shut-up amendment. If you want earmarks, vote for them. If you don't, vote against them. Either way I'll be a happy man.

Madam Chairman, I yield back.

Madam Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chairman, reserving the right to object, I am not sure we have this amendment. Would the Clerk designate and read the amendment, please?

Madam Chairman, is this a multi-page amendment, could I ask? If it is, I don't want to delay the House.

Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Just answer one question. Does it affect every project in the bill?

I thank the gentleman.

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Let me simply say, Madam Chairman, that there is nothing in the world more deadly than a dull science teacher. I know from long, personal experience, and so does one of my sons. Let me say that this earmark is meant to correct that problem in at least one area of the country.

The funds that are attacked by this amendment are for the Bay Area Science Teacher Recruitment, Retention and Improvement Initiative, which supports the professional development of the K-12 science teacher workforce of the Bay Area, with a particular focus on the needs of underserved schools. These funds would be used for professional development programs consisting of summer workshops and academic year follow-up activities for 500 science education teachers, online professional development activities, and curriculum development.

This initiative is being conducted by the Exploratorium, a private, nonprofit science museum in San Francisco. It is a longstanding program of professional development for science teachers. It has been awarded more National Science Foundation grants than any other museum. Those funds will significantly increase the number of teachers served.

Recruitment and retention of science teachers is a major problem in the Bay Area, with over 50 percent of new science teachers leaving the workforce within 5 years, causing ongoing shortages, particularly in high-poverty urban school districts.

It is estimated that in the Bay Area urban school districts, more than 40 percent of high school teachers, 60 percent of middle school teachers, and 90 percent of newly hired science teachers are teaching at least one science course for which they are not technically qualified. High school science students in schools serving large minority populations are twice as likely to be taught by an unqualified teacher, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

This program is consistent with the bipartisan White House and Congressional Priorities for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, the STEM program, and the U.S. Competitiveness Initiative.

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

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chairman, as you know, I have been less than enthusiastic about virtually every amendment offered here today, but this is one exception.

I want to congratulate the dean of the House. He has been a lion for all of the years he has been here in defending Social Security and in pursuing the goal of universal health care for every American.

Before that, his father played the same role. I am pleased to see that he is carrying on the tradition. For a moment, when the gentleman from Michigan explained this amendment to me, I had doubts about supporting it. But then I recognized the legitimacy of the gentleman's concern, especially because the gentleman in the Social Security Administration in question had been appointed through a recess appointment.

I felt that that process was an indication of disrespect for the congressional prerogatives of this body, or I should say the other body. To express what I mean, I want to simply remind Members that several weeks ago when the amendment was offered by Mr. Emanuel to eliminate funding for the Office of the Vice President, I voted against that amendment because I thought that members of one institution in the government owe a certain degree of respect to the other institution, even if you don't especially care for the policies of the people who run that institution.

When the Vice President and I talked about the issue, I told him that the reason I had voted that way was simply because there were at least some people in this body still left who respected other institutions of government. I wish that the administration had demonstrated the same respect for this institution when they allowed this gentleman in question to be appointed through a recess appointment without confirmation.

When a program as vital as Social Security is at stake, I think that rather than lecturing each other about how we find a middle road to solve long-term problems of that program, I think the best way to find that middle road is to walk it and to look for ways to cooperate institutionally with the other branch of government. That is certainly what the White House chose not to do in this instance.

It is for that reason that I think that the gentleman's amendment is a wise one, because it reminds both bodies of the need to respect each other's prerogatives. Sometimes they need to be forcibly reminded of that which this amendment would do.

Madam Chairman, I therefore urge its adoption.

Madam Chairman, I reserve a point of order on the amendment.

Madam Chairman, I make a point of order against the amendment because it proposes to change existing law and constitutes legislation in an appropriation bill in violation of clause 2 of rule XXI. The rule states in pertinent part, ``An amendment to a general appropriation bill shall not be in order if changing existing law.'' The amendment requires a new determination.

Madam Chairman, I oppose the amendment.

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

Madam Chairman, I held up this sign from the well yesterday, and I will do so again today. I have the sign hanging in my office, and every time somebody comes in looking for money, I ask them to read it out loud. What the sign says is, ``What do you want us to do for someone, besides yourself, that is more important than whatever it is you want us to do for you?'' That request includes even medical researchers at universities.

Now, the fact is, this bill contains $750 million over last year, and before that in the continuing resolution we added $620 million to NIH at that time. This bill is $1 billion higher than the President's request for the National Institutes of Health.

Now, everybody loves the National Institutes of Health. I do too. But it does no good to any patient if we only concentrate on putting money in the National Institutes of Health and do not see to it that the information produced by the NIH is disseminated adequately to medical practitioners all over the country.

It also does no good if in the process of squirreling away this money to NIH we do substantial damage to the public health programs of the United States and if we essentially wipe out the one agency which is doing the research to demonstrate to us how to produce the best treatments and how to produce cost savings that will prevent private medical care and Medicare from going bankrupt.

This amendment has all of those problems. This country is consumed about out-of-control health care costs. This amendment would devastate funding for the one agency doing the research necessary to determine the best ways to deliver medical care in order to avoid bankrupting our health care system.

The amendment will also devastate the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health by cutting 20 percent of the funding provided for NIOSH, the only agency in government that supports occupational safety and health research and brings that research from the laboratory into the workplace.

What we are trying to do in this bill is what has been done for the last 16 years: We take a small percentage of the funds we appropriate to these agencies, and we set that aside for research and for evaluation so that we have a truly holistic approach to health care in this country. It does no good if we do lots of research in the lab and the implications of that research never get out into the doctor's office. It does no

good if patients aren't given enough information so that they can question their own treatment. That is what this does.

I would urge strongly, in the strongest possible terms, the rejection of this amendment.

Madam Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Kennedy) for a unanimous consent request.

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

I yield to the distinguished majority leader.

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

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chairman, I have been trying to figure out what to name this operation I have been watching, and I think we ought to name it ``Operation Divert Attention.''

We have heard comments on a number of occasions now, when Members are offering amendments to strike these tiny items, we constantly hear, oh, we are running a deficit, we have to be fiscally responsible.

Well, if I am looking at the Record correctly, the gentleman offering this amendment voted to authorize the President to go to war in Iraq. If I take a look at the Record correctly, all three of the gentlemen who have been acting as the point men in going after these projects and in going after other small amendments today, all voted for the 2007 Republican budget resolution.

I would point out it is those budget policies, and those foreign policies, which have given us, counting the supplemental this year, $600 billion in borrowed money spent on the Iraqi war in a case of mistaken identity, where the President mistook that stocky fellow with the mustache, Saddam Hussein, for that tall fellow with the beard, Osama bin Laden, and hit the wrong country by mistake.

I would also say that the three gentlemen who voted for those Republican budget policies are the fellows who voted for tax policies that are watching $57 billion go out the door this year in tax cuts for millionaires.

Then they try to recoup on the deficit front by saying, oh, we ought to

save a little piece here and a little piece there. If they had been as concerned about the fiscal impact of their actions, voting for past budget resolutions, and voting for past war resolutions, we wouldn't be sitting here with this deficit today, and this attack on these investments would be even more chuckle-producing than this episode.

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

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chairman, I will just take 1 minute to observe this: The gentleman from Arizona has said, in reference to this project, enough is enough. Let me ask why don't we say enough is enough to spending $600 billion in a futile and fruitless and misguided war in Iraq? Why don't we say enough is enough in putting the needs of millionaires who are going to get $57 billion in tax cuts this year ahead of the needs of average working people with respect to investments in their education, their job training, and their community development and their health care? I think, indeed, enough is enough, but we ought to be saying that about the right things.

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

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

I yield to the gentleman from New York.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentlewoman from California.

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

Mr. Chairman, the amendment offered would not permit the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services or the Social Security Administration to pay a bonus or performance-based cash awards to Presidential appointees who are not eligible for bonuses, or to senior executive personnel who are, by definition, eligible for bonuses. Frankly, I don't understand why the gentleman would want to stop CMS or SSA from awarding employees who are eligible for bonuses if they're achieving exemplary performance. The fact is that senior executive service personnel are specifically eligible for bonuses and are paid on the basis of performance.

The gentleman's amendment would overturn the entire personnel policy of the agencies. And I really don't think that makes much sense on the basis of a 10-minute debate at 10:30 at night, especially when this matter is not within the jurisdiction of the Appropriations Committee. This is something which ought to be dealt with by the authorizing committee.

I'm sure that many Members have frustrations with the performance of many agencies from time to time, and I'm sure sometimes we're pulling our hair, but that doesn't mean that we ought to have an across-the- board policy that penalizes people across the board because someone didn't perform up to someone else's standards. So, I would respectfully urge a ``no'' vote on the amendment.

I would be happy to work with the gentleman. If there is a specific problem which can be ironed out by talking to the agency, I would be happy to help in that respect. But I don't think I will overturn the entire personnel policy of the United States for these people because one Member, on the basis of a 10-minute debate, thinks that that ought to be done.

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

I yield back.

Madam Chairman, I reserve a point of order on the amendment.

Well, let me simply say I would like to be helpful to the gentleman, but my problem is that the gentleman's amendment, I believe, is subject to a point of order. I would hope that the gentleman would withdraw the amendment and we could try to work together with the committee of jurisdiction to try to help get a favorable result for the gentleman's concerns.

Madam Chairman, I reserve a point of order on the amendment.

Madam Chairman, let me simply say that I fully support the intent of the gentleman's amendment, and I think our friends on the other side of the aisle do, too. The problem is that, while this is an ongoing program, it is not an authorized program, and that means that under the rules of the House it is subject to point of order, which I'm obligated to lodge. So I would simply ask the gentleman if he would be willing to withdraw his amendment. I'm sure that both sides of the aisle would be willing to try to work between here and conference to find ways to accomplish the purpose of the gentleman's amendment, but at this time, in order to treat everyone fairly, I would feel required to lodge a point of order against the amendment.

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

Madam Chair, I again regrettably will have to insist on the point of order. I understand the gentleman's concerns and I share them. Sometimes I win arguments and sometimes I don't. I take some comfort in the fact that even Babe Ruth struck out over 1,400 times.

Having said that, I would simply say that I would appreciate if the gentleman could withdraw his amendment.

If he cannot, then I will have to lodge a point of order against it in order to be consistent in terms of the way we treat all Members.

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chairman, I am willing to accept the amendment on this side of the aisle because we think that while it is well- intentioned, it has no impact. I would like to explain what I mean. The CDC is responsible for making recommendations for vaccines along with immunization advisory committees. But decisions on whether any vaccine should be a mandatory requirement for school admittance or matriculation is the responsibility of State and local governments and school districts.

The HPV vaccine is recommended for females age 9 to 26. It protects these young women against the cause of the majority of cervical cancers. While it has been made a requirement for schools in some cities and States around the country, these decisions were made locally, not by the CDC or HHS. Because no Federal funds are used to establish such requirements, we do not object to the gentleman's amendment.

I would be happy to yield very briefly, but I would emphasize ``briefly'' because we've got a lot of work to do yet tonight.

I've seen people lose their amendments on the floor when they didn't accept the acceptance by the committee.

Madam Chairman, I yield back my time.

Madam Chairman, could I ask, did the gentleman ask for a recorded vote?

Then I withdraw the committee's acceptance of the amendment.

Madam Chairman, I thank the gentleman, and I renew the committee's acceptance of the amendment.

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chairman, I am of a split mind on this amendment, just as I was on the previous Holt amendment this evening. I think the goal of the amendment is certainly worthwhile; but at the same time I am trying to follow a responsible course with respect to the ability of executive agencies to function administratively.

So again I would simply say that I think the fact that this amendment is being offered in a way that would draw further funds out of the Department of Labor management accounts is another demonstration that the White House is dead wrong when they say that this bill contains too much money. Virtually every amendment that has been offered tonight on both sides of the aisle has been an amendment, with four exceptions, that relate to the President's budget, they have all been efforts to increase funds. I think that demonstrates that we are substantially short of where we really need to be.

I am not going to mount the barricades to oppose the amendment, but I simply have to observe that while the amendment is certainly worthwhile, the offset that it proposes is really not a real one, and I think we all know when we go to conference we are going to have to repair the administrative budget of the agency.

Having said that, I am not going to ask people to vote against it if they want to engage in those kinds of actions on the executive branch's administrative functions.

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

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

I yield briefly to the gentleman.

Madam Chairman, I yield back.

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Wisconsin.

I thank you very much, and I appreciate the gentlewoman raising this issue. I think it's a very legitimate one, and I hope we pay more and more attention to it.

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

Amendment Offered by Mr. Souder

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

I would simply like to read a portion of the letter from Greg Tarpinion from Change to Win. He simply says this: ``Since its inception in 1935, the National Labor Relations Act has permitted workers to unionize and their union representatives to be recognized by obtaining signatures in support from a majority of workers to be represented.''

Many large companies such as Cingular Wireless, Kaiser Permanente, and Harley-Davidson from my own State have voluntarily recognized their employees' desire for union representation using this type of majority signup procedure. By eliminating any funds for the National Labor Relations Board to enforce the laws, in cases in which the majority signup is used, the Souder amendment would gut this long-standing avenue for worker recognition.

As a result, any unions already recognized and any contracts already bargained with unions that obtained recognition using this method would be thrown into legal limbo, and any otherwise applicable labor law protections would become unenforceable. That, to me, doesn't seem to make very much sense.

I would urge opposition to the gentleman's amendment.

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

Madam Chairman, in the interest of saving time in this late evening, on this side we would be happy to accept the gentleman's amendment.

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Let me simply say that I appreciate our colleagues bringing this to our attention. I know the authorizing committee is dealing with the issue at this time as well on this side of the aisle. We would be happy to accept the amendment.

Surely.

I yield to the gentlewoman from California.

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

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chairman, we have not had enough time to analyze the most recent version of this amendment. Its apparent innocuousness, frankly, raises my suspicions. It would appear to enforce current law for eligibility to enroll in benefits.

But for this to be offered just at the time that the authorizers are reauthorizing the SCHIP program and considering pay-fors that might include tightening payments to Medicare Advantage providers, it makes me wonder if this is more than a powerful coincidence.

This is certainly not within the jurisdiction of the Appropriations Committee. It most certainly is within the jurisdiction of the Ways and Means Committee. I don't think, given the sensitivity of it, that it ought to be handled in this manner.

So I would certainly intend not to support it. My understanding is also that the Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means Committees are both highly concerned about this amendment. And under these circumstances, I think it would be highly ill-advised for the House to adopt this amendment at this time.

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

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

Madam Chairwoman, I reserve a point of order against the amendment.

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

I would simply say, in the interest of time, I will forgo any comments and simply say that, on this side, we have no objection to the gentlewoman's amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I move to strike the last word

I would simply say again that on this side of the aisle we have no objection to the gentlewoman's amendment.

Madam Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 12 o'clock and 3 minutes a.m.), the House adjourned until today, Thursday, July 19, 2007, at 10 a.m.

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

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that, during consideration of H.R. 3043 pursuant to House Resolution 547, the Chair may reduce to 2 minutes the minimum time for electronic voting under clause 6 of rule XVIII and clauses 8 and 9 of rule XX.

Madam Chairman, this bill, more than any other, determines how willing we are to make the investment necessary to assure the future strength of this country and its working families. We strengthen the country when we strengthen our families. We strengthen our country when we invest in workers to have the most competitive workforce in the world.

The decisions we make in any one year are not decisive. But if we do not think in long term, if we do not recognize the kind of country we will be in 10 years, we will not make the investments necessary to prepare for that world and we will be shortchanging the future of every American.

Because he has chosen to put his desire to give $50 billion in tax breaks to those make $1 million a year, and his desire to spend $140 billion on Iraq ahead of those investments, the President has chosen to cut those investments by this bill by more than $7.5 billion in real terms.

This bill rejects most of those cuts because we cannot disinvest in the country's future without hurting national security and the future of every American family. Instead of cutting $7.5 billion, as the President requested, we eliminate or cut 41 programs, saving $1.1 billion. We then increase investments in critical programs by about $4.5 billion in real terms, or 2.8 percent over last year, after adjusting for inflation and population change.

Now, why do we do that? Because in 10 years there will be 27 million more Americans, 12 million more seniors needing health care, 2.7 million more kids in elementary and secondary school, 2.2 million more students in college, 11 million more Americans will be without health insurance, unless we wise up and wake up and change our policies. And within 7 years, half of the Nation's job growth will be in occupations requiring higher education skills.

To meet those challenges, with this bill we target modest increases to crucial high priority activities to attack deficits in worker training, deficits in health care, deficits in education access.

On a bipartisan basis, without a dissenting vote, we've provided $450 million above the President's inadequate request for Title I to help an additional 155,000 disadvantaged students. Instead of wiping out every student aid program except Pell and Work Study, we rejected the President's cuts and raised the maximum Pell Grant by $650 over the last year to help over 5 million students go to college.

We reversed the 3-year decline in Federal support for special education. Mr. Walsh, the ranking member of this subcommittee, has taken a leadership role in that regard.

We reversed the President's cuts in teacher training. We provided new after-school opportunities for 163,000 more students.

On health care, nobody has ever come up to me at home and said, ``Obey, why don't you guys get your act together and cut cancer research?'' But that's exactly what Congress did the last 2 years, cutting NIH research grants by over 500 grants. Well, we've stopped that.

In January, we reversed the President's cuts and this bill adds another $1 billion above the President's request, which would again cut research grants.

We have also included a package of five initiatives to put health care within the reach of more than 2 million additional Americans; $200 million to expand access to health and dental care at community health centers, $75 million to help States expand health coverage for targeted populations, $50 million to help States provide affordable health insurance for 200,000 people who are medical high risks and cannot get insurance from the private market, $20 million to help trade impacted workers benefit from the Health Coverage Tax credit, and added funding to help Medicare beneficiaries to get health insurance counseling.

Because of high energy prices, we have added $880 million to the President's request for low income heating assistance, reversing half the cut Congress and the President made last year.

To discourage abortions, instead of lecturing, we provide a $1.4 billion package of incentives to provide real world help to women through expanded Head Start, child care, domestic violence programs, maternal and child health care, family planning and abstinence programs.

To help workers, we reverse the President's cuts in a range of workforce training programs. We also provide a $100 million increase above the President to help reduce Social Security claims backlogs and to keep more Social Security offices open.

Now the President claims that this bill amounts to runaway spending. Fact: From 1980 to today, domestic appropriations, as a percentage of total national income, have declined hugely. The President's budget would cut them to a level 48 percent below the 1980 level, and by 2012, to a level 57 percent below 1980. That's hardly runaway growth. That is a steady bleed of America's quality of life and America's future.

For the President to borrow $1.2 trillion to pay for tax cuts, and $600 billion to pay for Iraq, including another $140 billion next year, and then pretend that this modest 2 percent difference with him is the cause of fiscal irresponsibility is sheer nonsense, and many enlightened Republicans know it.

These investments are not just fiscally responsible, they are necessary for the future health and strength of the Nation.

One other point. We will today hear complaints about earmarks in this bill. Let us be clear, the last time Congress was in Democratic hands there were no earmarks in this bill. Under Republican rule, they exploded from zero to over 3,000.

This bill has cut back the dollar level for earmarks to half the level in the 2006 bill. Exactly two-tenths of 1 percent of the total funding in this bill go for congressionally directed earmarks.

And let me also point out that the amount of dollars in spending directed by the Congress is a tiny fraction of the amount directed by the Administration. First, for instance, the Administration in this bill requests specific earmarks, $10 million for Reach Out and Read, $10 million for Teach for America, $9 million for the Points of Light Foundation, $4.5 million for America's Promise, $1.7 million for the Mind and Body Institute, $1.4 million for the YMCA.

On top of that, in 2006 alone, the Health and Social Services Department directed spending of $1.9 billion through 21,000 contracts that were less than fully competed. That alone is more than seven times the amount of congressionally directed spending in this bill.

In the Labor Department, 90 percent of discretionary funding for the High Growth Job Training Program was spent on a noncompetitive basis.

The Office of Inspector General found that the Education Department strong-armed State and local school districts to select textbooks from favored publishers. Madison, Wisconsin, in my own State, lost its $2 million Reading First grant because they refused to purchase texts from an inferior program. Yet, the most thoroughly evaluated programs, like Success for All and Reading Recovery, were frozen out by the program administrators.

ABC reported that one publisher with good connections at the White House saw its corporate net worth rise from $5 million to $360 million, with a little help from their friends.

The Office of Inspector General has made criminal references to the Justice Department, and we have cut Reading First until the Administration changes its ways.

So I would simply say, Madam Chairman, spare us the Administration's sanctimony about earmarks or directed spending, and please spare us the pretense that this bill has anything to do

with the fiscal mess this country faces. It is a disciplined set of investments. Virtually every Republican amendment in committee did not seek to cut funding, rather it sought to increase it.

I appreciate the bipartisan support for the bill in committee. I appreciate the partnership with Mr. Walsh, the ranking member.

People who have reviewed it most closely, Republicans and Democrats alike, know this bill is responsible and disciplined.

Just one comparison. The Administration's defense request, even without counting the $140 billion in new money that they're asking for in their supplemental, that defense bill is still $43 billion above last year, which is at least four times as large as the difference between the committee and the Congress on this bill.

I would urge every Member who thinks about this country's future to support this bill.

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Madam Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute.

I would also like to take this time to thank all of the staff people who worked on this bill, most especially Rob Nabors, Christina Hamilton, John Daniel, Lesley Turner, Kirstin Brost, Cheryl Smith, Sue Quantius, Nicole Kunko, Muftiah McCartin, Teri Bergman, Andria Oliver, Beth Chaney, Steve Crane, Anne Marie Goldsmith, Ron Anderson, and the associate staff as well. We certainly could not have put together the bill without them, and without them we would be making a whole lot more mistakes than we are likely to make today.

Madam Chairman, I reserve balance of my time.

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

Madam Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Jackson).

Madam Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Ms. Roybal-Allard).

(Ms. ROYBAL-ALLARD asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Madam Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Kennedy).

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

Madam Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Minnesota (Ms. McCollum), who is really not celebrating her birthday on the same day as the Baltimore Orioles.

Madam Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan).

Madam Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hinojosa).

Madam Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney).

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

Frankly, Madam Chairman, I was filibustering in hopes that the majority leader would arrive, but he is in the middle of a meeting and can't make it. So let me simply second the comments of the gentleman from New York. I think this is a good bipartisan product. I think we can work with the Senate to produce a bill which people on both sides of the aisle and both sides of the Capitol can support with pride.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I rise to oppose the amendment.

Madam Chairman, I have a great deal of respect for the gentleman who just offered the amendment, but I have to say this is exactly the wrong thing for the Congress to do at this time.

The gentleman's amendment tries to restore $75 million to probably the most troubled program in this bill. As the gentleman has indicated, we have had six different audits by the Office of Inspector General. He has discovered that the Department of Education

tried to steer billions of dollars in Reading First funds for the purchase of certain reading textbooks and assessments in order to benefit favored publishers and individuals. I don't think the Congress ought to stand for that.

I would also point out that the OIG found out that the Department of Education administrators improperly promoted commercial reading programs in potential violation of Federal law. And this did not just occur in my own State, as I mentioned earlier in my remarks, it occurred in Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey. States in districts with programs that were not on the Department's preferential list were either rejected for grants or pressured to change their methods, even though some argued, as did my own State, that their programs met the law's standard.

What is most ironic is this is supposed to be a peer reviewed program, and yet the programs that have demonstrably shown the best performance levels were frozen out of the program, including Bob Slaven's program at Johns Hopkins that has generally been reviewed as one of the best in the country. Yet, they were virtually invited out the door by the DOE.

In addition to the fact that we certainly should not be rewarding the administration for the way they have handled this program, the gentleman seeks to finance this program by taking $43 million out of job training for ex-offenders. We cannot afford to have criminals reentering society with inadequate job training that provides them with incentives to renew their lives of crime.

We need to provide as much training as possible, and the gentleman scales that back dramatically.

And, lastly, I must confess I'm a bit confused. In the full committee, I accepted an amendment from Mr. Peterson, a valued member of our subcommittee, who wanted to add $25 million for vocational education above my mark. I accepted it because I thought he made a good case. Now we're being asked to take out $23 million of the money that Mr. Peterson successfully added in the subcommittee. I don't think that's a wise thing to do.

There will be plenty of time in conference to restore funding for Reading First, provided that the administration and provided that the agency demonstrates that it's shaped up and it's no longer following the same habits. But at this point, you have the same contractors still in place, you have the same conflicts still at large, and I don't think under these circumstances that this Congress wants to support the kind of shenanigans that we've seen in that Reading First program. And, on behalf of the integrity of the taxpayers' dollar, I would urge a ``no'' vote on the amendment.

Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

I thank the gentleman for yielding and for his question.

Yes, it was our intent to fund both the Credit Enhancement for Charter School Facilities program within the larger Charter School Grant program at their fiscal year 2007 levels, not to eliminate the credit enhancement program. We consolidated the programs for administrative efficiency and fully expect the Secretary of Education to continue funding for existing charter school programs from this single line item.

Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Madam Chairman, I understand the gentleman's concern, and I'm surprised that CMS would consider issuing a final decision when the FDA has not completed its scientific review. I would certainly be happy to work with the gentleman during conference on the issue.

Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Let me say simply say, Madam Chairman, that the fund that the gentleman seeks to increase has been increased by 33 percent in terms of resources just over the last 4 years, and staffing for that same agency has been increased by over 25 percent. That is hardly starving an agency.

I would also point out that at the same time you've had those large increases, the wage and hour division, which is supposed to enforce protection for workers on minimum wage, overtime and child labor laws, will have seen its staffing drop by over 12 percent since 2001, and the staff level at the Office of Federal Contract Compliance, which protects workers from unfair employment practices by Federal contractors, will have dropped by 23 percent.

So it seems to me that what the gentleman's amendment does is to enrich the one portion of the Labor Department which has been doing very well, thank you, and they have been doing very well while other portions of the Labor Department that are supposed to focus on protecting workers have, in fact, been starved.

The Department's own budget justifications for the large increase that they've requested states that the acceptability rate for unions in meeting labor management reporting and disclosure reporting requirements is at 96 percent.

The goal for fiscal 2008 is to raise this to 97 percent. I'd say if you are getting 96 percent, that's an A. At least it was when I went to school. Things may have changed since then.

Let me also say that the place that this funding was taken from, in order to finance this increase is especially pernicious. The administration itself has asked for an 81 percent reduction in the International Labor Account. That is the program that is used in order to protect workers from having to compete against slave labor and child labor.

I don't think that you help workers by weakening that program. We are simply trying to restore funding in that program that the President cut, and I urge a ``no'' vote on the amendment.

Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Could the gentleman tell me, have there been any more labor leaders indicted lately than Members of Congress?

Madam Chairman, I rise to oppose the amendment.

Madam Chairman, I don't really enjoy opposing this amendment because I think this is a good program

that the gentleman seeks to expand. But let me put his amendment in context.

The President of the United States tried to eliminate this program in his budget. The committee has provided $99 million for it, and for that the administration is criticizing us.

I would also point out that in the last year, when the other party controlled the House of Representatives, the committee cut Even Start by $29 million. We've done none of that. We've restored the funding, and I have a great deal of confidence in the program. But I cannot support the idea of adding the additional money the gentleman proposes because he takes it from a very damaging place.

Now, I know that there is no political constituency for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. No one is going to get excited if they hear that we are cutting back funding for that agency. But, in fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which produces the Consumer Price Index, puts together the numbers that determine the way hundreds of billions of dollars flow in this budget and flow in this economy.

We are operating on the basis of an ancient Consumer Price Index. The housing component of that index, which makes up almost 30 percent of it, is some 17 years out of date, and we know there's been a lot of change in housing stock over the last 17 years.

And it just seems to me that while the gentleman is citing a worthy program for adding funds, I would suggest that it would do tremendous long-term damage to this country in terms of equity if we do not update and modernize the data being produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Republicans can have their set of facts, Democrats can have their set of facts, but in the end we need to disregard both sets and we need to have statistics which underlie all of the economic decisions that we make. And it makes no sense to be proceeding on the basis of 17-year old statistics.

So, much as I regret having to oppose the gentleman's amendment and much as I regret having to call Bill Goodling, who is the original sponsor of the program, to tell Bill that I couldn't support the increase in this instance, I do think that the responsible thing to do in this instance is to vote ``no.''

I forgot to mention, and far be it for me to defend the administration's Cabinet appointees. But the gentleman, as I understand it, would take a significant amount of this funding from the Department of Labor administration accounts.

I would point out the administration is also complaining about the cuts we've made in the Labor Secretary's budget. Their Information and Technology Account has already been cut by 39 percent. The Office of the Secretary has already been cut by 17 percent. And we did not provide the requested funds for a core accounting system, and the administration specifically brings attention to their concerns about this. And I honestly do not think it's advisable to cut the agency even more deeply.

And let me assure the gentleman that I would actually prefer that he withdraw the amendment and I'd be happy to try to work, as I'm sure the gentleman from New York would, to try to improve the Even Start position in conference.

But if he has to rely on these kinds of offsets, I regret it, but I simply cannot see my way clear to support it.

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

Madam Chairman, I reserve a point of order on the amendment. We don't have a copy of it.

I withdraw the point of order and move to strike the last word.

Madam Chairman, let me simply point out that the administration has sent us a statement of administration policy, or SAP as it is known in the trade, and they indicate that the President intends to veto this bill. And one of the reasons they intend to veto the bill is because they say this bill spends too much money. I would simply point out that virtually every Republican amendment that has been offered so far is an amendment to increase funding for a specific program.

On this program the President zeroed out this very worthy program. The committee fully restored the funding at the previous year's level of $19.8 million, and now this amendment seeks to add a small amount in addition by taking it out of departmental management.

As the Chair of the committee, I think it is my obligation to the administration to try to be somewhat objective about the funding level that they need in order to fund their agency activities. But if we are going to continue to get amendments from the administration's own side of the aisle that further reduce Cabinet Secretaries' operating budgets, who am I to object? So if the administration can't save itself from its friends, far be it from me to intercede, and so I would simply say that on this I will accept the amendment.

Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to the gentleman's amendment.

Madam Chairman, this amendment is very simple. It seeks to reinstate the President's 81-percent cut in the International Labor Organization appropriation in the bill.

Madam Chairman, I cannot walk into a union hall in my District, I cannot walk into a restaurant, I cannot walk into a barber shop without having someone say to me, Obey, what are you guys going to do to protect workers from unfair competition? What are you going to do to protect us from slave labor in China? What are you going to do to protect us from countries that pretend that they are free market countries when, in fact, they are centrally directed Marxist countries? When are you going to protect us from goods being produced by child labor around the world?

The purpose of this International Labor Organization is to serve as the one agency that serves as a red flag when our workers' wages are being undercut unfairly.

So I think the issue is very simple, and I don't intend to take the full 5 minutes. If you really are comfortable with the idea of just letting the wonders of the world market determine what wages are for American workers, if you are really comfortable with the idea of letting substandard wages and substandard working conditions undercut legitimate American workers' interests, then by all means vote for the gentleman's amendment. If you think that the American worker deserves a square deal in the midst of this globalization rampage, then I would suggest you vote against the amendment. And, I do think that workers and the organizations who represent them will be watching.

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

Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

If the gentleman would be willing to constrain his remarks, we would be willing to accept the amendment.

I thank the gentleman.

Will the gentleman yield?

Again, same deal; if the gentleman will constrain his remarks, we would be happy to accept the amendment.

Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Madam Chairman, I don't like to have to oppose this amendment, but the fact is where some of the previous amendments were merely troublesome, this amendment is irresponsible.

Now, let us point out what's happened so far. What we have going on here is a ``let's pretend'' game. We have the administration telling us that this bill is runaway spending, and they threaten to veto the bill when in fact this bill in real terms is only a little over a 2 percent increase over last year. It is a large difference with the President's budget, but that's because he tried to cut $7.5 billion of it. In real terms, this bill goes up by less than $5 billion.

By now we have a number of people in this House who are trying to escape from the consequences of the President's budget. So we have pretended in one amendment that we can add money to AmeriCorps by taking money out of administrative management accounts for the Labor Department.

Then we are pretending that we can take out, yes, just a small amount, $500,000, out of that same account in order to deal with National Labor Relations Board. Then we are having another effort to escape the squeeze on behalf of another very worthy cause, deaf and blind children. And those have been accepted.

But now this amendment comes in, and it proposes to increase funding for a very worthy cause, Center for Disease Control TB Elimination Program. That is funded in the bill at $150.7 million, an increase of $13.7 million over fiscal 2007 and $13.9 million over the President's request. The funding included in this bill is a 10 percent increase over fiscal 2007.

Now, everybody knows that we would like to be providing more money for that program and a dozen others in this bill. But we are trying, evidently, to give some credence to the administration's complaints about dollar levels in spending.

So what does this amendment do? It savages the ability of the Secretary of Labor to run any programs at all, because what it does is to require a 25 percent cut in the ability of the Secretary of Labor to manage all of the programs within their jurisdiction. So that means that you have to chop the living guts out of the Secretary's own office; you have to chop the guts out of the Solicitor's office. And that is the office that deals with enforcement for mine safety, for OSHA, or even the OLMS union violations that were the subject of a previous amendment just a couple minutes ago.

And what this all is is a giant ``let's pretend'' operation. It's a game that pretends that we are doing something real by adding money for these accounts, when you know that if you're going to be responsible, when we go to conference we're going to have to restore most of these management accounts or else we will have a government agency, admittedly one run by a very conservative Republican, but still a government agency which will be crippled in its ability to provide its functions.

I have in my office two signs. And whenever anybody comes to me asking for money, I make them read those signs out loud. This is what one of them says: ``What do you want us to do for someone besides yourself that's more important than whatever it is you want us to do for you?'' And I think that's the basic question we always ought to be asking in a Judeo-Christian society.

My problem with this amendment is, while it seeks funds for a very worthy cause, in the process it takes away crucial funds for many other worthy causes. And sooner or later, even in the Congress of the United States, we need to think about the needs of the whole. We need to think about all of the needs that the government has to deal with, not just one concern of one Member or one concern of another.

So in the interest of responsibility, I would urge a, very regretfully, defeat of the gentleman's amendment.

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

Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Madam Chairman, this bill contains a provision that freezes public-private competitions at the Department of Labor under OMB circular A-76. That process is used to compete out jobs now performed by Federal employees. Significant resources have been spent by the Department over the last several years on contracting out government jobs, and the committee believes it is time to take a step back and examine how the process is working.

Government-wide statistics cast doubt, frankly, on the overall effectiveness of this process. OMB reports in fiscal year 2006 that government employees won the competition in more than 85 percent of the cases where competitive sourcing was used. At DOL, the results have been similar. Since the process has begun, DOL employees have won 22 of the 25 competitions.

Now, aside from questions about the lack of compelling evidence of cost savings or increased efficiency, there is concern about the fact that the Department is not taking proper care to assure that functions that ought to be considered inherently governmental or are otherwise unsuitable for contracting performance are excluded from these competitions.

We have seen some competitions where regulatory and policy functions are included and believe that an independent look at the Department of Labor's use of this authority is warranted.

The gentleman says that it is labor bosses who are concerned about this. The last time I looked, this was having a disproportionate impact on women and on minority workers, and we are asking the GAO to assess the impact on them.

The bill language freezes the A-76 process at the Department of Labor until the committee has the benefit of a GAO review of that process. What is wrong with that?

The Comptroller General chaired a panel that submitted a report to Congress in 2002 and the request to GAO will be to ask for an assessment of the extent to which the sourcing principle adopted by the panel, including the recognition of inherently governmental functions, are being followed by the Department. This department is frankly not known to be a friend of the worker, certainly not under the present regime. It certainly is not known to be a friend to Federal workers, and it seems to me that we have seen in Iraq what happens when we contract out everything in sight. We have seen what happens in the Labor Department when 90 percent of one of their most important manpower programs, when 90 percent of the money in that program is farmed out on a noncompetitive basis. Frankly, we have sincere doubt about the balance with which the Department is approaching this issue.

Therefore, we asked the GAO to review the process. What on earth is wrong with that? I urge opposition to the gentleman's amendment.

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

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chairman, once again we demonstrate the strangeness of the administration's statement of policy on this bill.

This amendment would add $40 million to TRIO. We have already added $40 million above the amount that the President asked for for that program. It is a worthy program.

The President also eliminated the funding for the other account that the gentleman wants to increase in this amendment. The President zeroed out the geriatrics program. The committee restored $32 million. So in both of these accounts, we are significantly above the President's budget; and yet we get another amendment from the other side of the aisle seeking to raise a worthy program.

Now he seeks to pay for it by cutting, among other sources, AmeriCorp. I am a little confused by that because just a few minutes ago the distinguished gentleman from Connecticut had an amendment to try to add money for AmeriCorp. The House turned that down. Frankly, had I realized that the gentleman's amendment was going to be offered, in this instance I probably would have accepted the gentleman's amendment from Connecticut because I don't think it makes sense to reduce AmeriCorp, which has already been cut $9.2 million below last year, although I admit they do have carryover funds of $8 million.

I guess what I am saying is I don't intend to stand in the way of this amendment, but it once again illustrates that when the administration claims that this bill is profligate, it is in fact far off the mark. Virtually every single amendment being offered today is being offered for the purpose of increasing funding for what is described as a worthy program.

Now, yes, in order to pretend that we are all equally focused on the same things, they say that they have an offset. But it is clear that the offset is a

secondary motivation and the primary motivation is to raise funding for these programs, and I think it indicates that the committee has been far from profligate when it has set the funding levels that we have set in this bill.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Madam Chair, this is another one of those ``let's pretend'' devices that I guess we are going to be afflicted with the next 2 days.

This amendment doesn't do nothing to nobody, and it doesn't do nothing for somebody. The fact is that it pretends to move $37 million out of this account, and then it puts $37 million back into this account and pretends that something has been accomplished.

There is no congressional direction that I know of that's being accomplished by this amendment. There is no consensus about what it does. It makes no changes in either the bill or the report. As a practical matter, it doesn't do anything except let somebody pretend that they have just done something for nurses' education.

If it makes you feel good to play a ``let's pretend'' game, go ahead and vote for it. But let's not kid ourselves. This amendment is not a real amendment. It has no real impact. It pretends to have an increase. It has, in fact, no offset. It's simply a shell game.

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

Would the gentleman yield?

Same deal as we have offered several times earlier today. If the gentleman is willing to shorten his remarks, we are willing to accept the amendment.

Madam Chairman, I reserve a point of order on the amendment.

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

The amendment proposes to amend portions of the bill not yet read. The amendment may not be considered en bloc under clause 2(f) of rule XXI because the amendment proposes to increase the level of outlays in the bill.

I ask for a ruling from the Chair.

Madam Chairman, if I may be heard further, that is a very quaint interpretation of the House rules. And, nonetheless, it does not at all address the fact that the amendment proposes to increase the level of outlays in the bill, which I assume as a good conservative, the gentleman would be opposed to.

Madam Chairman, if I might point out to the gentleman, just because it is neutral in budget authority does not mean it is neutral in outlays. It is not neutral in outlays, and, therefore, it is out of order.

Madam Chairman, could I inquire of the gentleman from New York, is the gentleman from New York intending to accept the amendment on his side?

Then I would suggest accepting the amendment on this side. This is an amendment that does nothing, Madam Chairman, except, in my view, it is an effort to put people on the hook by ratifying some unacceptable conduct by someone who is no longer associated with the program. I don't intend to be associated with that kind of a problem, and so I think this is one of those nuisance amendments that is meant to enable someone to pose for political holy pictures without much effect.

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

Madam Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 4 o'clock and 9 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday, July 16, 2007, at 12:30 p.m., for morning-hour debate.

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

Mr. Chairman, I would like to lay out the context for this debate. Here is the record of our Republican friends when they controlled the House on the question of earmarks. In the last year that our party controlled the House before the Republicans took over, if you take the largest four domestic appropriations bills, there was a total of less than 800 earmarks in those bills. In the last year of the Republican regime in those same bills, there were more than 8,000. That's a thousand percent increase.

In the Labor-Health appropriation bill, the last year I was chairman there were zero earmarks in that bill. The last year that earmarks were considered in the Labor-Health bill under the Republican leadership, there were over 3,000 earmarks.

In addition, earmarks were used for internal blackmail. On one occasion, every Democrat who voted against the Labor-Health-Education bill because it insufficiently funded education and health and job training saw their earmark projects eliminated in retaliation, and I called that at the time internal blackmail.

It was then that I had my staff prepare the first analysis of the growth of earmarks during Republican control of this House.

In addition, we saw earmarks used in order to change votes on Medicare part D, that famous night where the roll call was held open for 3 hours while promises were made in order to turn enough votes around to turn a defeat into a victory for that program.

After the Cunningham affair, our Republican friends announced they were going to attach the names of requesters to the earmarks. But they conveniently declined to make that effective on their watch. So when we came in, the first thing we did was to implement that proposal and require that names be attached to earmarks.

The second thing we did was to impose a moratorium on earmarks until we could straighten out the process.

The third thing we did was announce that we were going to cut them by 50 percent for the appropriate accounts, the nonproject accounts.

The fourth thing we did was to require a certification to make clear that no one had a financial interest in the earmarks that they were seeking.

Then we also provided that, unlike 2 years ago, no provision would be able to be put into a conference report without having a vote on the final product of that conference report by the conferees. That's what we did.

Now the gentleman is making a Federal case out of the fact that I had wanted more time to screen these earmarks which have grown exponentially in order to protect the House from bad choices. Folks on his side of the aisle objected to that, and so we relented and so we now have earmarks in the bill. And now the gentleman is squawking because we have earmarks in the bill just as loudly as he was squawking when we didn't. He's a very hard fellow to please.

Now, what I said a week ago was that I detest the earmark process, and I do. Why? For a number of reasons. Because it requires me as a conscientious chairman of this committee to spend a huge amount of my time simply reading through those things to try to make certain that the House is not embarrassed.

But the more fundamental reason I am frustrated by the process is because it makes so many Members focus so exclusively on the issue of earmarks that we never get a debate on policy, and I thought we came here to debate policy. And that's my problem. I don't think earmarks are evil. I think Members of Congress have a perfect constitutional right to request specific funding for a specific project, just as the executive branch does. And I would remind you that the executive branch directs eight times--

I have forgotten where I was, Mr. Chairman. It must be a sign of old age.

What bothers me is I thought we all came here to talk about policy. And so what I said on the floor is that I would like to see once and for all the House put up or shut up on this issue. I would personally prefer there be no earmarks. But as chairman of the committee, I have an obligation to try to find that balance point in the House that reflects the will of the House. I don't have the luxury of pursuing exclusively my own will on a subject. So I have been willing to support bills carrying earmarks even though I don't like what they do to my time and my disposition, to be frank.

So what I said, I want to see an up-or-down on all earmarks. I drafted an amendment to do so and was informed by the Parliamentarian that would be subject to a point of order, and so I chose not to offer an amendment that was an obvious waste of the House's time.

I will say that I am pleased that the gentleman has offered his amendment. Because while it does go as far as mine did, it will give the House an opportunity to decide once and for all, I would hope, whether it favors earmarks or whether it doesn't.

Rather than spending an inordinate amount of the House's time talking about individual earmarks and seeing vote after vote after vote to eliminate them go down to defeat, I think it is about time we find out what the will of the House is. I want to know whether the House wants to proceed with earmarks in these bills or not. I see no problem with their doing so.

But what I will say is if the House does vote for this amendment, then I will see to it that any bill that comes out from now on has no earmarks. So let's be clear about this. If Members don't want their earmarks, then they should vote for the gentleman's amendment. If they do want their earmarks, if they do think that they have as much right as the President of the United States to determine what happens in their district, then I would suggest that they vote against the amendment. But it is time to put up or shut up. It is time to see where the House stands on this issue.

The committee is trying to reflect the will of the House but we cannot go in both directions at the same time. It's time we find out which direction the House wants to go.

I thank the gentleman for the time.

For purposes of debate, I would like to claim the time in opposition.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, this issue is much ado about nothing. We have been subjected to filibuster by amendment all week, and now we are going to be subjected to 40 minutes of so-called debate on a nonexistent issue. Now, why is this issue here?

There isn't anybody in the Congress that I know of who is trying to legislatively resurrect the Fairness Doctrine, and, certainly, the totally Republican-dominated commission is not going to resurrect that doctrine.

What's at stake here is that a certain Senator, who evidently was afflicted by a bad case of being hit by sun spots so he no longer believes that there is anything like global warming, claims that he was in an elevator and overheard a couple of Senators talk about resurrecting the fairness clause. The two Senators involved say that's nonsense.

But what you have got going on here is an effort on the part of right-wing radio to gin up the folks by inventing a fight that doesn't exist. As far as I'm concerned, it's immaterial to me how people vote on this. If Members want the debate to go until 8:00 tonight instead of 7:00, fine, spend 40 minutes debating an issue that doesn't exist.

But what I do find interesting is that folks who scream every day of the week about that so-called ``liberal press,'' all of a sudden they are now saying, ``Oh, my God, can you imagine, somebody might force a fairness doctrine on us.'' Well, one would think that if they really do believe the press is liberal, that they would then want the protection that would come from the Fairness Doctrine.

I think the very fact that they don't want to see the Fairness Doctrine resurrected is, in fact, an open admission that they recognize the radio waves are largely and almost totally dominated by the right and the far right and the off-the-wall right.

I don't see any purpose in taking any more time.

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

Would the gentleman yield?

I didn't say he was from Arizona.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Ms. Watson).

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

Mr. Chairman, as someone of note said a long time ago, it will be little noted nor long remembered what we say here today. Certainly this has not been one of the most scintillating debates in the history of the Republic.

But I do want to thank my friends on the right because if our folks on talk radio and yap yap TV, if they actually believed that there was a fiercely liberal press that dominated the country, then they would be running kicking and screaming, demanding a Fairness Doctrine. And the fact that the folks on talk radio and yap yap TV are doing just the opposite indicates to me that they are publicly admitting that they are not ``fair and balanced.''

A lot of fun has been made of the FCC. It started in 1929, Herbert Hoover. Herbert Hoover was a very unlucky President who happened to be a very fine man and who had, I think, for his long illustrious life, a pretty good understanding of what it takes to be basically fair in this country. You ought to go back and read some of Herbert Hoover's speeches. He takes a lot of guff, but he was a very impressive man, with a misguided economic policy, but he was a very impressive human being.

When the FCC was created, it was based on the idea that the airwaves, which were being licensed to private holders, were, in fact, property of the public and that it is sort of like our stewardship of the Earth. My religious beliefs tell me that we never really own property even if we have title to it. We lease it from God for a while and we have stewardship responsibility.

Now that, in my view, is the same view that the government had when they started licensing radio stations. What they said to people who stood to make a lot of money with those licenses is, ``Look, if you're going to use the public airwaves, make sure that all sides get a fair shake of the argument. That's what it was all about. It has long since gone by the boards because of court decisions and other administrative actions by various administrations.

Right wing radio today looks at those airwaves as being their open private preserve, and they're not going to give them up at all. But don't worry, I would not, for a second, want to see Rush Limbaugh or good old Sean moderated. I want to see the real, raw Rush. I want him and folks like him to be thoroughly and fully exposed to the American listening audience in all of their bloviating glory. I want to let Rush be Rush. And that isn't going to bother me if he goes on for hours and hours with his one-sided diatribes. Everybody knows he's plugged directly into Republican national headquarters. And so in my view, he is virtually discredited, and I would like to keep it that way.

So all I guess I would say, Mr. Chairman, is that I think we ought to let right wing radio go on just as they do now. Rush and Sean are just about as important in the scheme of things as Paris Hilton. And I would hate to see them gain an ounce of credibility by being forced by a government agency or anybody else to moderate their views enough so that they just might become modestly influential or respectable.

With that, Mr. Chairman, could I inquire of how much time is remaining on the other side?

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time and let the gentleman use his minute, and then I will close.

May I inquire of the Chair how much time I have remaining?

I won't take the time, let me just simply sum up very briefly.

As the Chair knows, we've gone through the last 30 minutes debating a nonissue. The amendment has already been accepted by the committee. And I would expect that there will be an overwhelmingly vote for it because there is no prospect of any serious effort to revive the Fairness Doctrine, either legislatively or legally. And so, this has really been another political exercise.

I've almost given up expecting that substance will dominate legislative debate. We had a State senator by the name of Lynn Stalbaum, who served in Wisconsin many years ago. And the legislature was covered by a man by the name Aldric Revell. Aldric was an acerbic reporter who had the temperament of H.L. Menkin and a pen to match. And he wrote this about Stalbaum one day, he said, ``Stalbaum is a superb legislator, but he has the maddening tendency to expect reason to dominate legislative debate.''

I don't really expect, on issues like this, to have much common sense in the House. You get six like-minded people in this institution, they talk to each other in the cloakroom and they think they've conducted a public opinion poll.

So all I would say is, I fundamentally disagree with the gentleman who indicated that this is a highly important vote. I think, as another famous author once said, this is a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, these agencies, these regulatory agencies in this bill, are not very well known by the American people, but I think this amendment is consistent with the efforts made by Republican Congresses in the past 25 years to slowly but surely weaken and cripple the ability of regulatory agencies to keep the big boys honest and to protect the little people in this society from abuse and to protect legitimate capitalists from chiseling competitors.

If you take a look at what happened to the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, for instance, from 1980 on, the protective capacity of the antitrust division at the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission was being shrunk at the same time that America experienced the greatest wave of corporate mergers and corporate acquisitions in the Nation's history. The staff of the Consumer Product Safety Commission during that time was cut in half, since 1980.

And as I said last night, the ability of the SEC to keep up with its workload was crunched because over that same period of time corporate filings reviewed by the Agency declined from 21 percent to about 8 percent in 2000. That means the rest of the filings never even got a look-see.

Now, the Federal Trade Commission: its job is simply to protect the consumers, to protect them against antitrust and a variety of noncompetitive practices. The SEC is charged with the responsibility of protecting investors, so we don't have more Enrons. And the Consumer Product Safety Commission does all these ``terrible'' things like protecting kids from flammable pajamas.

I would simply suggest that you can cut this bill by 1 percent and it won't be noticed much in any immediate year. But you do that for 4 or 5 years in a row and you allow inflation meanwhile to eat away at those regulatory agencies' budgets, and what you have is runaway, ragged individualism and you have the big boys and the big corporations in this society able to get away with murder. These are the agencies that keep those big boys honest.

Now, they say, ``Well, this is just a small cut.'' I would submit we have already cut this bill 3 percent. We cut the President's budget by 3 percent.

And I would further make the point that I think it is a ludicrous joke for the people in this Congress who brought us $1.2 trillion in tax cuts, paid for with borrowed money, for the people who are willing to give $57 billion in tax cuts this year to people who make over a million bucks, with borrowed money, and for people who are willing to borrow $600 billion to finance the dumbest war in modern American history, and then they want to divert public attention by saying, ``Oh, guess what, we didn't cause the $2 trillion increase in Federal debt. What caused it was these terrible Democrats who are in the coming year going to add $5 billion over the CBO baseline.'' That's all the budget does for this year, add $5 billion over the CBO baseline.

So I plead fully guilty of thinking that added investments in veterans, added investments in school kids, added investments in health care, added investments in science, added investments in budgets that help regulatory agencies keep the big boys honest, I plead fully guilty in supporting all of that. It's a whole lot better than their track record on fiscal responsibility.

It is a colossal all-time joke. Never again in my life will I take any lectures from any members of that party on fiscal responsibility after what they've done the last 6 years. You can rewrite history if you want, but ain't nobody gonna read it!

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

Mr. Chairman, Members of this House have often heard me refer to my old friend, Archie the Cockroach, who is the philosopher I rely upon. And one of the things Archie said once is that ``an old stomach reforms more whiskey drinkers than does a new resolve.'' And I think we have a perfect example of that in this case.

We have seen the minority party, for the past 6 years, zealously and delightedly borrow over $1.2 trillion to pay for tax cuts on the cuff. We've seen them support this year providing $57 billion in tax cuts for people who make a million bucks or more a year. We've seen them blindly and blithely support a misguided war, 600 billion bucks, all borrowed. And now, coming in from a 3-day or 6-year jag, all of a sudden people are sobering up. So they're saying, ``Good gravy, look at the record we've built.''

Mr. Chairman, they have destroyed their credibility with their own conservative base with their profligate borrowing to pay for their pet projects. And then they say, ``Well, how can we cover up that and cover our tracks and pretend that we are taking up the old time religion again of fiscal responsibility?

And so what they do is they say, ``Well why don't we attack the appropriations bills and try to create the impression that they are runaway spending.''

Well, let me give you some facts. By the time this House finishes passing each of the appropriation bills that we're bringing to the floor, this House will have cut over 250 programs, saving almost $6 billion.

I would also point out that if you take a look at the President's budget, if you take a look at the domestic appropriation bills which he's recommended under his budget, you would see these domestic appropriations shrink from 39 percent of the budget to 36 percent. Under the bills that we're bringing to the floor, they will still shrink from 39 percent to 38 percent.

Bob Greenstein, who is probably the most objective budget analyst in this town, respected former OMB official, points out that these domestic appropriations bills, when adjusted for inflation, represent a 1.4 percent increase. I invite you to compare that to the 8, 9, 10 percent increases that we have in the war budgets which the President has asked us to pass.

This bill commits the cardinal sin of trying to restore two-thirds of the cuts that have taken place since fiscal year 2001 in crucial programs that defend the cleanliness of our air, that defend the cleanliness of our water, that protect the public health and protect the publicly owned natural resources of this country.

And they try to divert attention from their miserable record of fiscal irresponsibility the last 6 years by suggesting that somehow these actions have anything to do with the deficits that they've presented the country, turning a surplus when Bill Clinton left office into the largest deficits in the history of man.

Now, you know, I generally prefer to read nonfiction. But I am so used to hearing fiction on this House floor that I guess the next time I want to read a fiction novel I'm not going to go to The Washington Post Book Review or the New York Book Review. I'm simply going to ask my friends on the other side of the aisle, ``What's the best piece of fiction that you've been reading and been peddling this week, because I sure would like to take some lessons from you when it comes to peddling fiction.''

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

I would like to make a few comments on the remarks of my friend from Missouri. We've just heard an expression of deep concern about the so-called runaway spending in this bill and other appropriation bills. And we've heard deep concern expressed about how this is going to hurt the average taxpayer.

Well, I would like to compare priorities. They've talked about our budget. I would like to talk about theirs, although I must admit that in 3 of the last 6 years, they couldn't even pass one. We passed a budget. In 3 out of the last 6 years, they couldn't even pass their own budget because of internal squabbles between themselves. But I want to talk about the budget that they attempted to pass. The budget that we're operating under was signed by the President, passed by a Republican Congress, and this year will give over $50 billion in tax cuts to people who make over a million bucks a year. That seems to be the top priority of folks on the other side of the aisle, to preserve that high-roller tax cut above all else.

Well, let me tell you what we think should be higher priorities. They've attacked us because of what we did in the continuing resolution last year and they attack us for what we're trying to do in this bill today. I plead fully guilty of trying to add, in fact we did add almost $4 billion of additional funding for veterans health care. I see no sense of shared sacrifice in this country when it comes to the war. Only military families are being asked to pay a price. We decided that we ought to at least see to it that veterans are taken care of when they come home. So we added $4 billion.

Then you bet! We added some more so-called ``runaway spending,'' so that middle-class kids could get more help to go to college by raising the Pell Grants. Now, I've never had anybody in my district say, ``Why don't you guys get your act together and cut cancer research?'' But that's exactly what the Republican-controlled Congress did in the last 2 years. They cut health grants, research grants at the NIH, over 500 grants. So we put $610 million back into that continuing resolution to wipe out those cuts, because we think it's more important to save people's lives from cancer and Parkinson's and heart disease than it is to wear a green eye shade that says ``Mr. Perfect'' on it.

Then we added additional funding for community health care. 1.2 million additional Americans are going to be able to access community health centers and get health care without begging.

I do not apologize for that. Nobody does on this side of the aisle. When it comes to this bill, we make no apology of the fact that we are trying to restore funds which were cut out of this Interior budget for the last 3 years, cut out of the EPA budget, for the clean water revolving fund. There isn't a bigger need in rural America than clean water and decent sewer systems.

I represent all kinds of communities of less than 2,000 people. At least half of the families are headed either by women or people over 65. They do not have the tax-paying capacity on the property tax to meet the standards required of them to clean up their water and their sewer problems. Mr. Dicks has tried to deal with that. We do not apologize for that one iota.

We've got some other priorities too. We're going to try to provide additional funding for energy. We have added, in the three bills that have passed this House so far, and including this bill, we will have added more than $1 billion in an effort to increase and strengthen our energy research so that we aren't the prisoners of gas and oil companies and so that we aren't the prisoners of Middle East oil. We make no apologies for that.

Admittedly, there are some people in this House who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. I'm looking at a few of them right now.

But the fact is that we recognize that it is important to make long- term investments so that 10 years from now, we can have the kind of country we want it to be, rather than having the kind of country we don't want it to be.

I would suggest I will compare our priorities to yours any time. You can defend those $57 billion in tax cuts for millionaires until the cows come home. I would rather defend increased service at our national parks, increased educational opportunity, increased health care, increased clean water and clean air opportunities. I think the public will take those priorities any time.

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

Mr. Chairman, I wonder if somebody could call the Attending Physician's office. I'm getting a bad case of whiplash here just listening to these arguments that run in opposite directions.

I just heard the gentleman say a minute ago, and I must say, I'm sympathetic to his problem, but I just heard him say a minute ago that he's frustrated. Well, I'm frustrated too because, what I'd like to point out, as the President of the United States pointed out just a few weeks ago, is that the gentleman's knocking on the wrong door.

And with all due respect, when Mr. Lewis was chairman of the Appropriations Committee last year, it wasn't his job to reauthorize this program. And as chairman of the committee this year, it isn't my job to reauthorize this program. You need to go to the authorizing committee.

We have gotten dozens of lectures through the last month from Members on your side of the aisle who fuss and fume about individual earmarks that they say are not ``authorized.''

Well, this is a case where we on the committee are saying the following: you came to us last year. You said you couldn't get the authorizing committee off its duff, and so you wanted some help to sustain this program until you could get them to reauthorize it. So even against the strong objection of the President of the United States, and the last time I looked, he was a Republican, even in the light of his objection, we put in over $400 million to create a bridge for you until you could get this problem resolved.

Now, I'm sorry that this has not been reauthorized. You need to take that up with another committee. All I can tell you is that we're taking time on this bill, on this amendment because you think somebody else, in some other committee, didn't do their job.

Well, you can't have it both ways, and neither can we. So I would simply ask the gentleman to please go to the right committee. And I'd be happy to send them a letter. The fact is you're taking up this committee's time, and we're getting squawks from Members on both sides of the aisle saying, ``Why are you appropriators taking so blessed much time.''

Well, with all due respect, it's not the appropriators trying to take the time. It's people who are not on the Appropriations Committee who are aiming at the wrong committee in their search of solution to a problem.

I would be happy to yield to my tire-changing friend from Kansas.

I understand. All I can say is, we did respond. We've just heard umpteen speakers on your side of the aisle kick the blazes out of us because they're saying we're spending too much money. And now you're telling us that you're unhappy because we're not spending enough money on this program, and we're not even authorized to spend it. I have a difficult time following that logic.

Sure.

I understand. And I'm more than willing to cooperate because, unlike some people in this Congress, I recognize this is all one country. And we've got an obligation to recognize different needs and different demands in different districts. I wish we had the same courtesy extended to us by certain other Members of the body.

I yield to the gentleman from Oregon.

No, I have been watching them on television.

If the gentleman will yield.

I will be happy to try to assist the gentleman in any way that makes clear that the authorizing committees need to act, because this is not a matter under the jurisdiction of the Appropriations Committee. I've only been around here 38 years; and on occasions, believe it or not, I've seen an authorizing committee object when the Appropriations Committee invades its jurisdiction.

Would the gentleman yield?

Let me simply say, I would not say that it's fair to characterize the authorizing committees as refusing to move. We have only been in charge of this Congress for the last 6 months, and there have been a few other basic priorities, including reauthorization of the basic farm bill that I'm sure have occupied the authorizers. I thank the gentleman for the time.

Thank you for yielding.

I was in my office and I heard you make the assertion that a ``promise'' had been made to finish all of the appropriations bills by July 4.

I am the chairman of the committee. I certainly made no promise. We indicated that it was our plan and our intent. But I would point out we have had several hundred amendments offered by Members of the minority party. We have spent approximately twice as much time debating each of the bills the last 3 weeks than was the case a year ago, despite the agreement between the two leaderships that there would be every effort made to try to handle these bills in a timetable that was consistent with last year's activities.

And so I simply want to make quite clear that there was no ``promise.'' And even if there had been, which there was not, the majority cannot be held accountable for the fact that your Members introduced 188 amendments to a single bill. One Member introduces 188 amendments to a single bill which is simply filibustering by amendment.

Mr. Speaker, let me simply point out, Mr. Speaker, that in addition to the fact that we have effectively endured filibuster by amendment by the minority for the past 3 weeks, in addition to that fact, we have two other practical facts to face.

When we took over this Congress, we had to deal with last year's budget because the folks who controlled the Congress last time just didn't happen to get around to passing the appropriations bills last time. So we had to spend the first month of this session doing the work that they left over from the last session. They had passed not a single portion of the domestic part of the budget. They had not passed a single domestic appropriation bill. So first we had to run that cleanup brigade.

Then we had to deal with the fact that in order to hide the full cost of the war, the President declined to request funding for the Iraqi war in the regular defense bill which was supposed to be finished last year. So we had to take the next 3\1/2\ months to clean up that mess left over from last year. So I would say it is really the pot calling the kettle black to somehow suggest that the majority party has failed in its responsibility because it has not met a so-called mythical promise.

We laid out what the plan was, and given the fact that the first 4 months of this session was essentially spent cleaning up their mess, I think we have done pretty well.

Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, under my reservation I would like to simply bring a few facts of time to the House.

If we are not prepared to stay here and work until around 1 o'clock tonight, it is my estimation that if all of these amendments are offered tomorrow, even if a handful of them drop off, I think it will be virtually impossible for the House to finish its business by 6 or 7 o'clock tomorrow evening.

We have over 50 amendments. Each of them will take at least 10 minutes, plus the slippage that it takes to yield time and the rest. There are also three amendments which would take 30 minutes apiece, debating the very same issues that we debated for an hour and 20 minutes earlier today. There would then be another amendment that requires 40 minutes of debate time to debate an issue which does not exist. Then we will have the added slippage that comes from yielding time in pieces to various Members of the House. Then finally we have to add to that the amount of time it takes for the votes themselves, the amount of time it takes on the recommittal motion and the amount of time it takes for final passage.

I do not intend to object to this request, but I want it understood that if we proceed with a unanimous consent request that is being propounded now, and if we do not stay and consider amendments until around 1 o'clock, then it is a ``let's pretend'' promise to every Member of this House when we are giving them the impression that they will be able to get out of here soon enough in order to catch planes tomorrow.

Now, I am not going anywhere. I am going to be here reading Members' earmark requests between now and next Wednesday. So I am not going anywhere. But for 90 percent of the Members, who I think would appreciate it if every Member of this place would sublimate their own egos just a mite for the good of the body, I would urge that both sides of the aisle demand that Members take up their amendments tonight, rather than waiting until tomorrow, at least enough to keep us here until 1 o'clock.

Now, it is not convenient to me. It is not convenient to the gentleman from New York. It certainly is not convenient to the ranking minority member from Ohio for us to stay this late. Nobody else has to, except the persons who asked to offer these amendments.

But if you ask to offer an amendment, then I think you have an obligation to offer it in a timely fashion and not wait so that everybody can be a TV star in prime time. Because, you know what? I participated in the debate today, and I watched the debate that I didn't participate in. It was, frankly, boring as all get out. With all due respect to everybody here who thinks they are Laurence Olivier or Daniel Webster, I ``ain't'' seen many of either lately.

So I would simply suggest, Members need to understand why they aren't going to get their planes tomorrow if we don't stay here until 1 o'clock tonight.

Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.