Floor Statements

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

Mr. Chairman, we have just passed an amendment that was going to be offered by one Member on our side of the aisle.

I want to make the point that if Members expect us to call them, they are wrong. As far as I am concerned, we are not running a baby-sitting service. If Members want to offer their amendments tonight, they have an obligation to pay attention and be here in a timely fashion.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the intent of this amendment, and in the past I have often considered voting for it. But I have a far different attitude now than I had in the past because of the Iraqi War.

The fact is that we have no sustained demonstrations in the streets against Iraq, and, in my view, largely that is not occurring because we have no draft. And we have no draft because the country has settled into a comfortable acceptance of the idea that a precious few people, namely those in the regular Armed Forces of the country and those in the Guard and Reserves, should be the only people in our society who are at risk in this stupid and fruitless war. And I just cannot abide that.

I have said many times on this floor that I think it is outrageous that there is no sense of shared sacrifice about this war. We ask our Guard and Reserve personnel to return to Iraq and Afghanistan time and time and time again. And yet of the rest of society we ask nothing except to worry about Paris Hilton and to worry about who wins the Super Bowl, and, oh, yes, if you are a millionaire, we are going to spend $57 billion this year giving you a tax cut. That is really some sense of shared sacrifice.

And so I just cannot bring myself to vote for this amendment, though it might make sense on the numbers, because I think it would be a symbolic act which would send to the country yet another signal that the only people we expect to bear any burden for this stupid, outrageous, lied-to-get-into war are those in the military. And I just think that is wrong. I know that is not the gentleman's intent, but I think that is the practical signal that we send.

So I cannot vote for this amendment. I did not even want to speak against it, but this war bugs me a lot and the total lack of the willingness of this society to face the inordinate costs which we are laying on military families bugs me a whole lot more.

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

Mr. Chairman, I simply want to congratulate the gentleman for at least being willing to stay here and debate the amendment tonight. It's more than I can say for a whole lot of other people, and I respect him for that. Let me say, however, that I don't have quite as much high regard for his amendment.

Well, whoever. I have minimum high regard for it, let me put it that way.

Mr. Chairman, I think we need to fully understand what is afoot with respect to contracting.

I want to cite some other facts, because there is an inexorable and stealthy effort to put much of the activities of government in the hands of contractors rather than in the hands of public servants. And more and more of that contracting is being provided in a noncompetitive manner. That also applies to many, many grants being provided by the executive branch.

For example, the Congressional Research Service documented an unusually large number of sole-source grants issued by the Employment and Training Administration within the Department of Labor, which resulted in 90 percent of discretionary funds for the High Growth Job Training Initiative being awarded on a noncompetitive basis over a 5- year period. It isn't just Halliburton and Blackwater who are getting lots of taxpayers' dollars in a noncompetitive fashion.

The administration's use of contracting has increased significantly in the past 5 years. For example, the Department of Health and Social Services' contract obligations have nearly doubled from $5 billion in fiscal year 2001 to $8.7 billion in fiscal year 2006. The number of contract employees at the Department of Health and Social Services exceeds 32,000, about half the number of Civil Service employees. A significant share of those contracts were awarded on a noncompetitive basis.

In fiscal year 2006 alone, Health awarded nearly 21,000 contracts worth more than $1.9 billion with less than full and open competition. That is four times the total amount of congressionally directed earmarks that are expected to eventually be included in the Labor, Health, Education appropriation bill.

I won't even bother to get into what has been happening at the Education Department where local school districts have virtually been blackmailed into accepting contracts with book publishers preferred by the administration or else they are frozen out of the program entirely.

So I would simply say I think the gentleman's amendment is ill- advised, and when the time comes late tomorrow evening, I would hope that we will have 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.

Let me simply say, Mr. Chairman, I recognize this specific discussion is aimed at Sarbanes-Oxley. But in fact I have been around here for awhile, and I know that this occurs in the context of a much broader and much more insidious pattern.

The fact is if you take a look at what Republican controlled Congresses have tried to do since 1995, you will see that they have voted for appropriation after appropriation that cut the SEC budget even below the President's request. What that meant was that while that agency's workload was expanding and exploding, the ability of the SEC staff to keep up with that workload was being undermined by this body.

The percentage of all corporate filings reviewed by the agency declined dramatically from 21 percent in 1991 to about 8 percent in 2000. Is it any wonder that the Enrons of this world were convinced that they could get away with anything. After Enron failed and after we had a series of other corporations that failed, and their officers went to jail, people got scared. They decided we better do something or we will be seen as being complicit in the abandonment of government's obligation to see that investors are protected.

So what happened is they were scared finally in backing into passing Sarbanes-Oxley. They fought it all the way. And now that it is on the books and the heat is off and the cops ain't watching as much, then what are they doing, they once again want to whittle away at Sarbanes- Oxley. Not with my vote they are not going to.

I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

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

Mr. Chairman, I want to congratulate the gentleman from Indiana. I was not aware of the fact that he had gotten a medical degree. I don't think he is a doctor, and neither am I, and so I would submit that neither one of us are actually qualified to make final judgments about medical matters.

But I am also bothered by something else. You know, I came here to be a Member of the United States Congress. I didn't come here to be a Member of the D.C. City Council. I'm certainly not getting paid for it. I don't know if the gentleman is, but I'm not, and I don't feel like doing double duty as a city councilman at 7 minutes after midnight. I don't even think I would feel like doing that tomorrow.

But what I am bothered by is the idea that somehow we think we can come from our own communities, our own States, and then come to this town, because we happen to technically approve the district's budget in a plantation-type style, we, therefore, begin to tell the District of Columbia that we are going to decide what kind of medical advice is relevant. I heard the gentleman say this in debate, I believe it is wrong.

Well, the gentleman is perfectly entitled to that opinion, just as I am entitled to my opinion. But the fact is that I don't believe that it makes much sense for either Dr. Souder or Dr. Obey to be telling D.C. how they can use their own money. I think it's the height of arrogance on the part of the Congress.

If you want to dictate to communities, would you dare go home and dictate to your own hometown what the city council ought to do? Would you say that because we provide Federal money to your city council, that somehow we should decide what their policy ought to be on medical matters? I don't think so.

I am baffled by people, especially by conservatives, who every day will profess to believe in local control, States' rights and the like, but then when it comes to the District of Columbia, they say, well, because we have a special opportunity, we are going to impose our judgment on yours. I don't think this is about the issue of needle exchange or drugs. I detest drugs. My God, look what they have done to Rush Limbaugh.

But for God's sake, it seems to me that we ought to have enough restraint to recognize that if we wanted to dictate to the D.C. what their policies ought to be, then we ought to resign from Congress and run for city council for the District of Columbia, or maybe even mayor.

But until that time, it seems to me that the District of Columbia government has the right to make their own choices even if they are wrong.

Now, Will Rogers said once that when two people agree on everything, one of them is unnecessary.

I would submit that I don't have to agree with the gentleman's opinion, and he doesn't have to agree with mine to recognize that we have got a right to state those opinions and follow up on them on Federal matters. But we are interfering in the operation of a local city, and we have no right to do that on education, on drugs or anything else.

You learn from your own mistakes, and if the District of Columbia is making the wrong choice, then I suspect in time evidence will show they made the wrong choice.

But, until then, we are imposing our own judgment on a life- threatening matter. As one layman to another, that makes no sense whatsoever.

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

Would the gentleman yield?

Let me simply say, I would agree with the gentleman if his amendment was limited only to the money that we are appropriating to the District of Columbia. What I don't agree with is when we impose that same judgment on the use of their local money.

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

Mr. Chairman, I think it is fair to say that no subcommittee chairman presided over the provision of more financial aid to Egypt than I did during the 10 years that I was chairman of the subcommittee.

I think it is also fair to say that I have, on many occasions, tried to see to it that when this body looked at questions in the Middle East that it looked at the interests of all of the parties fairly. But I rise to oppose the gentleman's amendment.

We have a dilemma. Egypt is an important and welcome ally. I have always considered them to be a friend. They have played a very constructive role in the Middle East. But in recent years, I am sad to say, Egypt has displayed an increasingly brutal repression of freedom that is contrary to everything that America is supposed to stand for. We have seen the beating of

demonstrators in Bull Connor fashion. We have seen the jailing of political opponents.

We have to speak out. Unlike some wildly romantic beliefs of some of the neocons in this country, like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and the Vice President, I do not naively believe that we can force democracy down the throats of a region that has had little experience with it. We have seen in the case of Hamas how democratic forms can be abused and subverted by undemocratic means. But, nonetheless, I do believe that we have an obligation to expect that countries with whom we are so closely associated will perform within certain norms of decency when it comes to the question of human rights.

To indicate our concern, while still expressing our respect for a treasured friend, we have fenced $200 million in military aid until the administration can honesty certify that Egypt has greatly improved its human rights conduct and has done more to effectively prevent the illicit supply of arms from being smuggled into Gaza.

In my view, this is a balanced approach. It does not cut off aid. It leaves options open. It certainly leaves a very large amount of military aid to Egypt unfettered in any way whatsoever, enough to continue all existing ongoing military contracts.

It is a balanced approach. It is a nuanced approach. It is aimed at military aid, because only the military in the Egyptian government, in my view, has the influence to make this come to a responsible and friendly conclusion.

Mr. Chairman, I would urge rejection of the gentleman's amendment so that America can send a message consistent with our values, while still recognizing our geopolitical relationships.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, frankly, I have mixed feelings about this amendment. I don't think that the appropriations bill is the proper place to consider issues that are clearly authorization issues, and yet I know that there is considerable concern about this program.

Let me simply say that in the interests of time and because I think the equities are split, that we would be willing to accept the gentleman's amendment, with the understanding that we would need to give the administration an opportunity in conference to express any concerns about it and consider any adjustments that might be made that would be mutually agreed to.

Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back my time.

Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would yield, I would be prepared to accept the gentleman's amendment, with the understanding that the committee will continue to investigate the effect of the amendment as we take it to conference with the other body later in the year.

Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would yield, at this point I am simply standing in for the subcommittee chair, but I would simply say that while I am not frankly as totally familiar with the issue as I am with, for instance, the record of the Egyptian Government in jailing Mr. Nour and other political opponents, I certainly have seen that concern expressed many times, and I would think the conferees would be interested in improving human rights records on Egypt's part with respect to all groups, including Coptic Christians.

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

With respect to the amendment of the gentlewoman, I have some considerable disquiet about the Appropriations Committee on the basis of 3 minutes discussion pronouncing judgment on complicated matters with respect to immigration, but let me simply say I would be willing to accept the amendment as an expression of concern on the subject and would hope that the administration would deal with the concerns as the committee goes to conference.

Would the gentleman yield?

As I understand this amendment, it simply indicates that the Department ought to enforce the law. I am not really inclined to object to that. In the interest of time, I am willing to accept the amendment.

Would the gentleman yield?

In light of the fact that you and the other sponsors of the amendment have worked to narrow the scope of the amendment to just the funds that are involved to operations in the United States, the committee would be happy to accept the amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, I must very reluctantly lodge a point of order against the gentleman's amendment.

The amendment proposes to appropriate funds in excess of the authorized amount. It therefore violates clause 2 of rule XXI, and I would ask for a ruling from the Chair.

Would the gentleman yield?

The gentleman has persuaded me. I would be happy to accept the amendment in the interest of time.

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

Mr. Chairman, I had not wanted to take any more time this evening, but I was in my office and I heard several silly suggestions that somehow bills like this are going to seriously add to the deficit and require a tax increase and all of that other frothy nonsense.

I would simply like to quote from a document by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, one of the most respected organizations in this country in terms of keeping everybody honest about budget facts. This is what they said in a report issued today:

``The main dispute between the administration and Congress is over a $21 billion difference in domestic appropriations. The administration proposes to cut these programs $16 billion below the 2000 levels after adjusting for inflation and threatens to veto bills that do not contain these cuts. Congress would reject these cuts and instead provide a modest increase to these programs of $5 billion or 1.4 percent.''

The report then goes on to say the following: ``Some 81 percent of the increases in appropriations under the emerging bills consist of increases for military and homeland security programs that the President himself requested. Less than one-tenth, or $5 billion of the funding increases reflected in the congressional targets for the 2008 appropriation bills, are for increases for eight domestic appropriations bills.''

Then it goes on to say, ``Under the planned appropriations, those bills would increase a modest 1.4 percent above the Congressional Budget Office baseline.''

Then, get this: ``In real per capita terms, that is, after adjustment for both inflation and population growth, funding for these programs would barely increase at all.''

And as for the nonsense that somehow these bills will require a tax increase or add to the deficit, the report goes on to say, ``As a share of the economy, funding for these programs would actually edge down slightly.'' Then it points out also that the increases in these bills rise more slowly than the expected increase in revenues.

What that means, for anybody who has been through second-grade math, is that you cannot add to the deficit, if that is the case, unless you decide to pass further tax cuts paid for with borrowed money, as the former majority so blithely did over the past 5 years.

I would also say one other thing. It is easy for any citizen and any Member to demagogue foreign aid. I chaired that subcommittee for 10 years. And let me tell you, there is no piece of legislation that this Congress passes each year that saves the lives of more children than this bill. If you take a look at what we do for children's health, if you take a look at what we do through immunizations and these other programs, there is no program that we pass that saves the lives of more children.

We spent a lot of time talking about the right to life today. Well, this bill is a whole lot more effective than lectures from politicians about celibacy or any other matter. This bill actually delivers the goods in terms of the practical things we can do to help our fellow creatures on this planet.

I want to say one other thing. My religious values teach me that we are not Americans because of any special merit that we have. We were just lucky enough that God decided to infuse our soul in a body born in the USA. He could just as easily have made us a child born in Bangladesh, Sudan, or any of the other most troublesome spots in the world, the most agonized spots in the world.

Any idiot can put together an across-the-board cut. All that means is that you don't think. This is supposed to be not the mandatory part of the budget, but the discretionary part of the budget. It means you are supposed to think and apply your values to what you do. That is what this bill does, and I urge you to reject these amendments.

Parliamentary Inquiry

Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, talk about crocodile tears. This bill is $700 million below the amount requested by the President of the United States. The other side cries about the fact that it is $2.9 billion over last year, and they say this is the baby that is going to break the bank.

This is the same crowd that has supported over $600 billion, all borrowed money, to pay for the most misguided, misbegotten, destructive war in the modern history of the United States, all paid for with borrowed money.

I didn't hear any cries about fiscal responsibility then. No, no, no. They spent it blindly, and now they are saying that this bill, which is really an attempt to clean up a lot of the world's messes left over from past wars, that somehow this bill is the one that broke the bank. That is so silly, I would laugh if it wasn't so serious.

I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I won't take the 5 minutes. But let me say that I find it rather humorous that our good friends on the other side of the aisle would utter not one peep when this President decides to spend over $600 billion on a war in Iraq which he misled the country into, which he didn't have a clue of how to get out of, and now he's asking us to make a commitment that will lead over the next 20 years to the expenditure of at least $1 trillion more for that same misguided cause. Not a peep; most of their buttons wired right to the White House, wired right to Karl Rove's desk.

And yet, it's the same crowd that will then make a Federal case out of the fact that when we cut the President's budget for foreign aid we didn't cut it quite enough. And so they're making a Federal case out of one-half of 1 percent.

My good friend, Archie the Cockroach observed once, ``Remember the importance of proportion. Of what use is it for a queen bee to fall in love with a bull?''

Think about it. If you do, you'll realize just how silly and misguided this debate is, because this is a crowd who spent willingly $600 billion on the most damaging war in recent American history, and yet are now objecting to the President's request to fund a bill which is traditionally meant to repair our relationships around the world and to pay a little bit of the cost of citizenship on a planet where many millions of people are a whole lot less fortunate than we are.

I'm also amused by the fact that we hear a constant cry from the other side of the aisle, ``We need bipartisanship. Politics ends at the water's edge.'' And then when we try to demonstrate a little bipartisanship by giving the President most of what he asked, but not all, we then get the White House complaining because we've cut this bill too deeply, and we get their supporters in this House crying that we didn't cut it deeply enough. I get whiplash trying to follow the direction of a party that is that schizophrenic.

So with all due respect, we understand that this is a marginal debate. It is a debate ginned up to try to find any excuse whatsoever to bring down this bill.

It's not going to do it. Let's get on with the public's business. Let's be responsible. Let's reject this amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, I won't take the 5 minutes. I simply want to say that I appreciate the fact that the committee has accepted this amendment. But let me simply make one point.

Because we have heard on this side of the aisle that the minority party is whipping against the bill, let me simply say that I would hope that there are no Members of this House who would engage in an act which would give hypocrisy a bad name by voting for this amendment, which in essence simply repeats existing law, and then use that as cover as an excuse to then vote against the bill in final passage. I don't think that friends of Israel would be conned by that. And I would hope, and I have full confidence, that no Member of this House would engage in such hypocrisy.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos).

Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I think after that speech, there is absolutely no need to say anything more. The amendment says a whole lot more about the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) than it says about the Speaker of the House.

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

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for the time, and I want to congratulate the gentleman from Indiana and the gentleman from Ohio for doing a first-rate piece of work on this legislation. They know their business, they work with each other well, and I am proud of both of them. I would like to discuss two matters. The first is the question of congressional earmarks, and the second is the actual substance of this bill.

We have seen much attention paid over the past several months to the practice of Congress earmarking certain projects.

This bill is a project-oriented bill, and so there will be quite a lot of that going on before the bill is finished. But I would like to put that in context. The fact is that the administration has requested far more dollars for earmark projects for this bill than the Congress traditionally provides.

Example: in fiscal year 2006, which is the last year we had a completed bill, the President asked for 987 specific earmark projects in the budget for the Army Corps of Engineers, costing $3.8 billion. The Congress appropriated $1.1 billion for projects that it ranked as high priority.

The result: 77 percent of the Army Corps budget went for projects earmarked by the administration; 23 percent went for projects earmarked by the Congress of the United States.

In fact, this is a copy of the report for that 2006 bill. The list of administration project earmark requests goes on for 46 pages, and I would submit that if the administration had been Democratic, it would have been the same result.

Now, how does the administration decide how to allocate money to specific projects? Here is what the instruction sheet reads for the Corps of Engineers: ``To be included in the recommended program and considered for the ceiling program for fiscal 2008, a construction project or separate element must be consistent with policy.''

Well, guess what? That is the same policy that Congress provides. Projects have to be consistent with policy in order to be included.

The document from the Army Corps of Engineers also says it must have a decision document for which executive branch review has been completed. And then it goes on to say, each project or separable element must meet at least one of nine criteria, which are listed. But then it goes on to say, ``however, the agency may propose to relax those criteria, to use additional criteria, or to include special cases.''

Guess what? That is exactly what the Congress does in determining which projects it feels are high priority.

Now, let's turn to 2008. This year, the administration has requested some 991 projects. If you string them end to end, that is how long their project list is for this year. I would submit, in the end, this will be a longer list than the project list provided by the Congress in this bill.

So let me simply state that whether projects are funded because of directed spending on the part of the administration or directed spending on the part of the Congress, the result is the same: public money is expended on projects that either the executive branch or the legislative branch thinks represent high priority needs. So much for earmarks in this bill.

Now, let me simply discuss the substance. There are three major areas of funding critical to our country's future in the bill: climate change, the energy crisis, and nuclear policy.

This bill includes more than $1 billion above the President's request for climate change. Funding goes to energy research, for development and demonstration of energy technologies that don't release greenhouse gases. They include conservation, research and development, and demonstration to reduce energy consumption in buildings, vehicles and energy-intensive industries. They include deployment of conservation measures in Federal buildings. They include demonstration of capture and sequestration of carbon dioxide.

In the 1970s, the United States responded to the energy crisis in those days with substantially increased funding for energy research, for development and demonstration. But with the collapse of oil prices in the eighties, the interests of the administrations and the interests of Congress, unfortunately, subsided. So the result is that by fiscal 2006, after adjusting for inflation, research budgets for renewable energy were only 20 percent of what they were in real terms in 1980. Research budgets for fossil energy were only 25 percent of 1980 levels. Funding for conservation research was only 49 percent of 1980 levels.

In the year-long continuing resolution which we passed just 3 months ago, we raised those percentages considerably. So 2007 funding for renewable energy was boosted up to 38 percent of 1980 levels, and 2007 funding for conservation was boosted to 54 percent of 1980 levels.

This bill continues that effort: 2008 funding for renewable energy will now under this bill be upped to 47 percent of 1980 levels, 2008 funding for fossil energy will be upped to 31 percent of 1980 levels, and 2008 funding for conservation will be up to 67 percent of 1980 levels.

This bill also provides for a $2 billion operating level for the nuclear nonproliferation activities of the Department of Energy.

This bill does not fund new nuclear weapons nor major new weapons facilities, because the administration has not developed a strategy for strategic nuclear weapons in the post-Cold War era.

So let me simply say in conclusion that this bill reverses a quarter century of decline in energy research. It increases critical funding to prevent nuclear weapons or material from falling into the hands of terrorists. It represents a responsibly balanced bill. I congratulate both gentlemen for producing this, and I would urge strong support for its passage.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

I thank the gentleman.

Mr. Chairman, as we all know, we have been mired in a god-awful war in Iraq for almost 5 years. What bothers me most about it, except for the deaths that occur on a daily basis, what bothers me most about it is that there is virtually no sense of shared sacrifice in this country in dealing with that war.

The only people who are being asked to sacrifice are military families, and they are being asked to sacrifice again and again and again. They are being sent back to Iraq and to Afghanistan again, again, and again. Not much sacrifice is being asked of anybody else.

We hear politicians prattle about the need to stand behind the troops. You betcha, we certainly should.

But we need to stand behind the troops not just when the bands are playing. We need to stand by those troops when they come home, and they are injured, and they are sick, or they may have lost their job, or they may have lost their spouse; and that's what this bill tries to do.

I think we need to put in context how we got here. It has been a struggle to see to it that we have adequate funding in veterans medical care programs.

Two years ago, on this side of the aisle, we were given information from people within the Veterans Administration that their veterans health care budget was going to fall $2 billion short. We tried to put that money in the budget. We were then in the minority. We were blocked by the majority then, except for one fellow. The Republican chairman of the Veterans' Committee sided with us, he agreed with us that we needed that $2 billion in additional money.

What happened to him? Not only did the then-majority party leadership fire him as chairman, they took him completely off the committee because he told the truth. We finally got that money, but we had to get a double hernia to finally pry that money out of the administration.

Then we had, as you know, the budget process collapse last year, and no domestic appropriation bills were passed by the then-majority party. In fact, this very bill, the Military Construction bill, was held up in the Senate by two Members of the Republican Party who put a hold on it because they didn't like certain earmarks that were on the bill.

So the bill never passed. When we took the majority, the very first thing we did was to make veterans health care a number one priority, and we added over $4 billion to that account, made it the number one priority. Then we added additional funding of over $3 billion in the Iraqi supplemental, and now we have added this money today to make this the largest increase for veterans health care in the history of the country.

When we did that, the White House announced it was going to veto the bill. Now, finally, they have had a St. Paul conversion on the road to Damascus. I welcome the White House on board the bandwagon.

But as Golda Meir said to Anwar Sadat when he finally came to Jerusalem a long time ago: ``What took you so long?'' I am glad the President has finally changed his view.

But the President continues to say, ``Well, now, I may not veto the bill, but you have got to have offsets. You have to find compensating savings.''

Why do we single veterans out for that requirement? There were no offsets that the President required when he decided that this year we were going to spend $57 billion to provide tax cuts to people who make over $1 million a year and pay for it all with borrowed money. No offsets around then. Do you see them? I don't see any offsets in sight for that.

So what do we get? Finally, we get grudging acceptance from the White House that after they stuck us in this miserable war, and after they sit there with no clue about how to get out, at least they are now grudgingly going to recognize that we need the funds in this bill to deal with veterans medical care.

This bill ought to pass unanimously. It is far past the time that we put our votes where our mouths are in terms of long-term funding for veterans health care. I am proud of the fact that I provided the allocation to the subcommittee so that they could do that.

We are taking funding from $49.7 billion last year to $64 billion this year. Now, green eyeshade people may say, ``Oh, that's too much.'' You know what? In my view, nothing is too much for people who have risked everything on behalf of this country. Finally, over the last 2 years, we have been able to get funding up to begin to meet our obligations in this area.

I want to congratulate the gentleman from Texas for helping to lead the way, and I want to express my appreciation to people on both sides of the aisle who stood up for veterans when it was tough, including Mr. Smith of New Jersey, the former Republican chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, who paid a high price for his dedication to the needs of veterans, who paid a high price for putting truth ahead of the partisan wishes of the Bush administration.

Mr. Chairman, the gentleman who just spoke has expressed a certain degree of unhappiness with the remarks that I made previously on the floor. I treasure his unhappiness.

The fact is that when Harry Truman was President, he was out giving a speech one day, and someone in the crowd hollered, ``Give 'em hell, Harry!'' And Truman responded, ``I don't give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell.''

The fact is, I am very comfortable with the fact that the previous speaker did not like my comments, because I think maybe that means they hit home. The fact is the previous speaker was the person who was selected by the then Republican Party leadership to replace Mr. Smith after Mr. Smith was, in essence, fired from his job by the majority because he told the truth about the VA health care needs.

So I will be happy to endure the unhappiness of the gentleman with my comments anytime if we can use that unhappiness to get more money for people who sacrificed everything for this country.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that:

(1) the Committee on Appropriations be permitted to file supplemental reports to accompany H.R. 2641 and H.R. 2643, respectively; and

(2) during further consideration of H.R. 2638 in the Committee of the Whole pursuant to House Resolution 473, the pending amendment offered by Mrs. Drake shall be debatable for 10 further minutes, equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an opponent, and 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 and ranking member of the Committee on Appropriations or their designees for the purpose of debate;

An amendment by Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite of Florida regarding funding for border fencing and technology;

An amendment by Mr. McHenry regarding funding for Citizenship and Immigration Services;

An amendment by Mr. Ferguson regarding funding for Buffer Zone Protection, which shall be debatable for 5 minutes;

An amendment by Mr. Burgess regarding funding for Secure Flight, which shall be debatable for 5 minutes;

An amendment by Ms. Corrine Brown of Florida regarding funding for the Office of Inspector General;

An amendment by Ms. Corrine Brown of Florida regarding funding for FEMA management and administration;

An amendment by Mr. King of Iowa regarding funding for Drug Smuggler Lookout Posts;

An amendment by Mr. Pearce regarding funding for Customs and Border Protection;

An amendment by Mr. Shays regarding funding for sharing information with Interpol;

An amendment by Mr. Kuhl of New York regarding a Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative study;

An amendment by Mr. Kuhl of New York regarding a northern border study;

An amendment by Mr. Conaway regarding funding for invasive species removal;

An amendment by Mr. Hunter or Mr. Royce, Mr. King of Iowa or Mr. Franks of Arizona regarding the Secure Fence Act;

An amendment by Mr. Carter regarding border fencing requirements;

An amendment by Mr. Souder regarding a report on use of air and marine interdiction assets;

An amendment by Mr. McCaul of Texas regarding unmanned aerial systems;

An amendment by Mr. King of Iowa regarding funding for worksite enforcement;

An amendment by Mr. Souder regarding funding for Deepwater;

An amendment for Mr. Bilbray regarding funding for REAL ID;

An amendment by Mr. Dent regarding funding for Secret Service protective missions;

An amendment by Mr. Jindal regarding funding for FEMA disaster relief for hurricane preparedness;

An amendment by Mr. Davis of Kentucky regarding funding for Commercial Equipment Direct Assistance grants;

An amendment by Mr. Langevin regarding funding for cybersecurity research and development;

An amendment by Mr. King of New York regarding funding for domestic nuclear detection;

An amendment by Ms. Corrine Brown of Florida regarding airport employee screening pilot program;

An amendment by Mr. McCaul of Texas regarding the MAX-HR project;

An amendment by Mr. Thompson of Mississippi to strike section 537(b) relating to small business;

An amendment by Mr. Deal of Georgia regarding limitation on use of funds to put out to pasture horses and mules;

An amendment by Mr. Ellsworth regarding limitation on use of funds for contractors delinquent on Federal debt;

An amendment by Mr. Hensarling regarding limitation on use of certain FEMA grant funds;

An amendment by Ms. Jackson-Lee of Texas regarding a report on pipeline and refinery vulnerability;

An amendment by Mr. LaTourette regarding the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative;

An amendment by Mr. Ortiz regarding limitation on funding for border fencing;

An amendment by Mr. Poe regarding limitation on use of funds to implement plans under section 7209 of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act;

An amendment by Mr. Rogers of Kentucky regarding a reduction in funding;

An amendment by Mr. Rogers of Kentucky regarding limitation of total number of airport screeners;

An amendment by Mr. Rogers of Kentucky regarding the Davis-Bacon Act;

An amendment by Mr. Tancredo regarding limitation on use of funds to carry out visa waiver program;

An amendment by Mr. Tancredo regarding limitation on use of funds in contravention of section 642(a) of the Illegal Reform and Responsibility Act;

An amendment by Mr. Price of Georgia regarding limitation on use of funds for research on global warming;

An amendment or amendments by Mr. Price of North Carolina regarding funding levels;

An amendment by Mr. Obey prohibiting funding for earmarks; and

An amendment by Mr. Forbes prohibiting use of funds for temporary protective status.

Each such amendment may be offered only by the Member named in this request or a designee, or by the Member who caused it to be printed in the Record 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 the Subcommittee on Homeland Security 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.

Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Madam Speaker, my understanding, and if the gentleman will shortly yield to the distinguished minority leader and the distinguished majority leader, but my understanding of this provision is that it seeks to assure that there are two kinds of remedies available to items that are in conference. My understanding is that if

the Senate adopts an amendment and the conferees do not like that amendment, then their remedy is to oppose the Senate amendment in conference and refuse to accept it. The question then becomes, well, what is the remedy of each individual Member if something is airdropped that was not in either the House or the Senate bill?

My understanding of the provision is that at that point, any Member has the right to raise a point of order against consideration of the conference report, and if that point of order is upheld by the House, then the conference report is sent back to the conferees for correction or adjustment.

Madam Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, it had been the intention of the minority leader, the majority leader, and myself to try to get the House moving on this bill tonight so that we aren't here until 4 in the morning. Then, while this bill is proceeding, we intend to sit down and to lay out an additional colloquy which will walk Members through all of the other items that reflect any additional understandings that will be attendant to the appropriations process.

Let me simply say to the gentleman, for the convenience of the House so we don't keep them here until 4 in the morning, we would like a little time so that we work out a clear understanding that we are all saying the same thing, that we will shortly be back to the House for an additional briefing on those matters, if that still meets with the approval of the two leaders.

That's not correct. There is an understanding that has been reached. It is a little more complicated than the gentleman has expressed. But the intent is that all of the bills will, by the time the bills move to the Senate, have an opportunity for earmarks to be attached to the bills.

Let me just walk you through what my understanding is with respect to all of the subcommittees.

That is correct, as I understand the agreement.

As the majority leader has pointed out, the only exception to that is that the Energy and Water bill needs to proceed, but it takes a longer period of time to prepare the earmarks. So we will complete action on the Energy and Water bill except for the question of which earmarks would be attached to that. We will then have a separate report which is reported to the House, and the House will then have the opportunity to consider those earmarks. And after that consideration is completed, then, only then, will that bill be sent to the Senate. So when it goes to the Senate, it will be one document.

Yes.

Yes. The understanding is that, as we have in the past, the intention is to reach unanimous-consent agreements under which each of the bills will be considered. And it is our hope that that time will be reasonably reflective of what it has been in the past.

It is also the intention that the bill managers will be expected to be reasonably flexible in establishing those time limits as some modest additional flexibility is required.

That's our understanding. As a practical matter, last year, if you take all of the appropriation bills, the House expended approximately 108 hours of debate. We think that somehow within time reasonably close to that and with reasonable flexibility between bills, we ought to have sufficient expression of views by the Members to make intelligent choices and move the people's business forward.

That's above my pay grade. That's up to the Rules Committee and the leadership. Let the leadership respond.

If the gentleman would yield, let me make clear, I requested an open rule for the bills that have been approved by the Rules Committee so far, and I intend to keep doing so unless we think that those open rules are so abused and so far a departure from what we have expressed as our general intentions that some other course is required.

If the gentleman would yield.

It is our intention with respect to open rules to make virtually the same request of the Rules Committee with respect to each bill that was made by your party when you were in the majority. And it is our hope that you will respond as we did in the minority by agreeing to reasonable time limits on each of those bills in return for that.

Would the gentleman yield?

It has been suggested to me that we can clear this up by my simply reading the statement that we had intended to read to the House at a later point. If the gentleman would indulge me so I could do that, I think it will answer virtually all of the questions that people have.

This is that statement.

The House is now proceeding under a unanimous-consent agreement which in addition to the hours already covered will limit total time for consideration of this bill to 24\1/2\ hours. This is a limit of an additional 6\1/2\ hours which we will have to endure tonight.

The UC agreement also allows the filing of supplemental reports to enable earmarks to be added to the Interior and Energy and Water appropriation bills without returning the bills to committee. It is expected that this will slow down consideration of the Interior bill by about a week.

We will complete action on the Energy and Water bill on the floor next

week, but will not send it to the Senate until the House has an opportunity to act upon the projects that will be attached to that bill. That bill will probably not be sent to the Senate until July.

This agreement is part of a larger agreement that contains the following additional understandings:

There will be a unanimous-consent agreement for Military Construction that limits consideration of amendments and time on that bill.

With respect to the Homeland and Military Construction bills, both bills will be allowed to proceed without earmarks, which, if they are provided, will be added in conference. The intention is that when those bills come back from conference, a point of order against consideration will be in order against any projects that were not in the House or Senate bill, and if those points of order are upheld by the House, the report will go back to the conference for adjustment.

The Financial Services, Foreign Operations and Legislative Branch bills, three bills that have already been reported out of committee, will briefly be sent back to committee so that earmarks can be added. The minority party has agreed to expedited procedures to consider these bills once the earmarks have been attached. That will slow consideration of the bills by up to 2 weeks.

CJS will not be considered until the proposed earmarks are ready for attachment, hopefully before the July 4 recess.

The Labor-HHS, Transportation, HUD and Agriculture bills will be considered after the July 4 recess, that is a change, in order to give committee staff more time to include earmarks for those bills.

The minority has agreed that they will help facilitate reasonably speedy consideration of the remaining bills. The expectation is that the House will adopt UC agreements to place reasonable limitations on the time for consideration for each of the appropriations bills which are expected to be roughly and generally similar to the overall time agreements that were adopted for consideration of appropriation bills in the past.

The bill managers will be expected to be reasonably flexible in establishing those time limits if modest flexibility is required. This is the understanding of the Appropriations Committee and the House Democratic and Republican leadership.

The House should be pleased with this agreement because it recognizes the reality that there is not enough time to responsibly include earmarks in the earliest appropriations bills to be considered by the House. While providing that recognition, it assures a reasonable process that will provide an opportunity to question earmarks.

If the gentleman would yield?

Let me correct the gentleman in one respect. There was no change of heart on the part of the majority leadership on anything to my knowledge.

Secondly, if we are talking about trust, the fact is that I have been asked in this agreement to trust the word of the minority leader that when we describe what the conduct will be during future appropriation bills, that that conduct will be reasonably close to what is described on this paper. There is no guarantee in this paper to me that that conduct will be appropriate conduct.

In this case, however, I am simply taking the word of the majority leader and the minority leader. If it is good enough for me, I hope it is good enough for you. And when the day comes that we cannot trust the word of the majority leader or the minority leader in this House, then this House is really in sad shape.

If the gentleman would yield, I was not part of the agreement on the point of order. I am simply trusting the majority leader and the minority leader, and I would suspect that virtually every Member of this House has that same trust towards both of them.

I think that question has already been answered in the affirmative, so long as the conduct of the House justifies open rules.

No. If the gentlewoman would yield, it is not going to be attached to another bill. The bill is already out of committee. It needs to proceed. It takes a great deal of time. There are a lot of things in that bill besides earmarks, thank God. We are trying to move the business ahead as fast as we can.

What this agreement states is that we will finish all of the nonproject-oriented issues in that bill. We will complete consideration of the bill except we will then rise, and when the report is finished that will be attached to the energy and water bill, it will be reported to the full House. When it is reported to the full House, we will then have before the House for consideration the projects that are included in that report and that will be during consideration of the energy and water bill itself. So it will not be a separate bill, it is the energy and water bill.

We are just allowing the projects to catch up to the bill. And then before the bill goes to the Senate, you will have a full opportunity to deal with the report and the energy and water bill simultaneously.

I honestly don't know what the gentleman is talking about. All I was saying is we were trying to get Members home before 2 in the morning by allowing this bill to proceed. We wanted to simply perfect the statement which I just read to make certain that everyone agreed, and we thought when we had more time to review that and check for any changes, we would come right back to the House. Instead, Members wanted to discuss it now. So forget everything I just said with respect to that other statement.

There are no earmarks in this bill. I personally have no interest in adding them. If it happens in the process because of the will of the committee or the body, then they will be in the bill when it comes back to the House and then the gentleman's point of order will be in order.

If you will take a look at the time that was taken for every bill last year, that time that we have been talking about included the entire time for consideration of the bill. So for example, when we say it took 17 hours and 12 minutes for the Commerce-Justice bill last year, that means it took 17 hours and 12 minutes to do the entire bill from start to finish. Only a part of that time was represented by the time allocated to amendments.

All we are saying is that it is our hope that we can keep each of these bills to roughly the same amount of total time. If you need some flexibility between the bills, the statement makes clear and the understanding is that we will try to show that flexibility so long as it is not abused.

Let me simply say that when we compiled these numbers, since there was no Labor-H bill considered last year, we simply looked at the amount of time that it took the previous year to consider the Labor-H bill, and that was 12 hours and 43 minutes. So I think that in 12 hours and 43 minutes, if Members have an objection to an earmark or any other provision, they are going to manage to find a way to bring it to the attention of the House. And if they can't figure out how, I would just ask that you talk to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee) and she will show you how to do it. She's got a lot of experience.

Let me say, and then be very blunt about this, this agreement requires a lot of trust between people. I've had to rely on a lot of trust on the minority leader tonight, and I expect to have the right to expect the same consideration from others in this House.

We have not had much experience in the last 14 years at either producing or delaying reports. That has been the prerogative of the majority party. We're now the majority; and as you know, we had a lot of catch-up work to do from the last session, and we've been working long hours. It is not our responsibility to run the printing office. Sometimes we don't have control over when documents are printed. Sometimes the process breaks down there; sometimes it doesn't.

All I can assure the gentleman is that we are going to try to comply not only with the letter but the spirit of the rules of the House.

When I was in the minority, I was pushing very hard to see the 3-day practice maintained, even though the rule had been changed to 2 days. We intend to continue to do that.

The answer to the gentleman's question is ``yes.''

Let me be very frank. I haven't had time to consider any of these questions because I have been so tied up simply trying to move bills. All I can tell you is we will comply with whatever the rules of the House are. Frankly, at this point, I am not exactly sure what they are. Whatever they are, I will comply with them.

No one is trying to hold back information. What I need is time to know what that information is.

With respect to the certifications you are talking about, they will be available in the committee office to the public, to Members of Congress, and they will meet whatever requirements, whatever other requirements of the rules that there are. All I can tell you is that we haven't given any consideration to earmarks at this point because we haven't had time to.

I think the agreement that we have here tonight finally recognizes the fact that if we're going to proceed with these bills, that we simply haven't had time to produce the initial earmarks.

We are slowing down this process considerably. I want to assure you that we're going to do everything we possibly can to comply with the spirit and the letter of the law. The gentleman knows me. I hope the gentleman regards me as someone who is up to his commitments.

That's all I can honestly say.

No one is trying to make anything difficult for any Member to review anything.

I don't know what experience you had under the last regime. We have not had an opportunity to perform on that yet.

With all due respect, I take no responsibility for anything done by any authorizing committee.

If the gentleman would yield, one of the reasons I have been trying to explain to the House why it takes so long to carefully screen these earmarks, is because many of the requests that come in are so vague that we don't understand where that money is intended to go to.

So then we have to go to the individual Member, and we have to say, hey, we really can't tell from your request where this is supposed to go. You

need to change your request so we know what you are talking about. Then we have to sort them out so we know that you don't have three people asking for the same thing in different language. That takes a lot of time.

So if the gentleman thinks that sometimes you're confused, so are we. That's why we were asking for more time.

I want to stipulate one thing. I recommended to this House a proposal that I thought would give us the best possibility of avoiding future embarrassment. This agreement indicates the House wants to go in a somewhat different direction.

That means that with respect to almost all of these bills, we will have less time for our staff to review them than would have been the case under the proposal that I was suggesting.

In my judgment, that means that we will run a higher risk of mistakes than we would have otherwise had, because we will not have the entire month of July for the staff to review these requests.

So I am giving up on that expectation for a higher level of staff review so that we can continue to do the people's business and get through these bills in time for program managers to get funding out for these programs in an orderly manner.

So a lot of us have a lot of complaints about this. I didn't invent the earmark process. If I had my way, there wouldn't be any, as the gentleman knows.

But it's my job as chairman not to pursue what I believe. It's my job to try to find a balanced point in the House that I think will achieve consensus in the House, hopefully between two parties. That's what I would try to do, and I will appreciate the recognition of that fact from the gentleman and every other Member of this body.

Even though the Senate is resisting, I am the person who ended the earmarks. I am the person who put a moratorium on earmarks for a year. You know that two-thirds of your caucus and two-thirds of my caucus were mad as hell at me when I did that.

I am now trying, and so is our leadership, to reduce earmarks by at least 50 percent.

As you know, there are a lot of people who are angry about the fact that we are cutting earmarks by that much.

With all due respect, the letters requesting earmarks are not going to be made public. Let me explain what will be made public. I will take responsibility for every earmark that I recommend. But I have no intention of taking responsibility for somebody's pipe dream that we reject.

I have already told you those will be available. I don't know how many times I have to chew my tongue, but I have already told you.

With all due respect, we will comply with the House Rules. That's the best assurance I can give the gentleman.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that, during further consideration of H.R. 2638 pursuant to House Resolution 473, the Chair may reduce to 2 minutes the minimum time for electronic voting under clause 6 of rule XVII and clauses 8 and 9 of rule XX.

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

Mr. Chairman, I hadn't intended to speak on this matter until I heard my friend from Kentucky refer to certain words in the language that would be stricken by this amendment as being ``frivolous.'' Let me tell you what he apparently considers frivolous to be.

The language reads as follows: ``Provided further that none of the funds under this heading may be obligated for fencing or tactical infrastructure project or activity unless the Secretary formally consults with affected State and local communities to solicit their advice and support of such project or activity.''

Isn't that a terrible thing to do? Can you imagine the Congress of the United States, in all of its imperial wisdom, having the temerity to allow someone else besides all-knowing Members of Congress to comment before the Secretary proceeds with the activity outlined on this page?

I thought that people in this Congress had the feeling that local people ought to have a say in what happens. I did not realize that the new motto of the minority party, of the Republican party was: ``Only the Feds know.''

Now, in another appropriation bill, with respect to energy, we had the issue of whether or not local governments should be consulted before the Federal Government imposed the route for a power line which would run through the property of private property owners, run through farms, run through homes of the elderly. And the question was whether or not those folks would have some say, and whether the State government would have some say, or whether all-knowing Uncle Sam would impose its judgment.

What an incredible confession of arrogance. What an incredible confession that ``I know better than anybody else''. You might. But the language you're striking simply says that we should formally consult other levels of government before a unilateral decision is required of the Secretary.

I think the language speaks for itself. This amendment is incredibly arrogant, and I would suggest a ``no'' vote on the amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, I had not intended to speak, and I certainly am not directing my comments to the gentleman who just spoke, but I do want to make a few comments about the issue of so-called earmarks.

For the last 2 days, Member after Member in this institution have traipsed to the well or stood at the committee table and misdescribed and mischaracterized my proposals and the proposals that several other Democrats have made to reform the earmarking process.

I would simply say, I would have been greatly, if I had had any regard at all for those who were making those statements, I would have been upset. Let me simply say there are many Members--well, that is not true. There are some Members who have embarrassed this institution by the carelessness of their earmarks who came to the well and sounded off as so-called champions of reform.

There are Members who have come up to me and chastised me because I was insisting on a 50 percent reduction on earmarks; who have sent me letters asking for earmark after earmark after earmark. And there are a great many Members of this body who are not members of the Appropriations Committee who seem to have a memory lapse and forget that the bridge to nowhere, and most of the actions by Mr. Cunningham had nothing to do with the appropriations process; they occurred on legislation out of other committees.

I want to make clear, I hate the earmarking process. I absolutely detest it, not because earmarks are wrong, I think 90 percent of the earmarks attached by Members of both parties are perfectly legitimate, and they are a whole lot more on target than the misdirected spending of some of our bureaucrats and the misdirected analysis of OMB, and I know that from personal experience.

The reason I hate earmarks is because they suck everybody in. They suck them into the idea that we have to be ATM machines for our districts, and so they focus on the tiny portion of most bills that are earmarks instead of focusing on the policy that is represented by the legislation that we produce.

It's a whole lot more important to know whether we have adequately funded education or whether we have funded the right programs in education and refused to add funding to some of the worst programs in education than it is to know whether a Member got a $200,000 earmark for an after-school center.

I want the public to know all of that. Every earmark I've ever gotten I believe I've put out a press release and talked as loud as I could and tried to get as much attention to it as I could, because I believed in it.

But what I don't believe in is people who walk both sides of the street. I could tell you what they call them in my hometown. The letter begins with W, and I just want to say that I'm going to be very interested in seeing which Members ask for earmarks and which don't, and I'm going to be very interested in seeing which Members vote for the amendment that I intend to attach to every appropriation bill, which would call for a total elimination on earmarks. I want to see how many of you actually vote for it. I want to see how many of you do not give hypocrisy a bad name.

I thank the House for its attention.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to say that I think this bill being brought forth today is an excellent bill. It will strengthen America's security, and every Member interested in doing that ought to vote for it.

The four security-related appropriation bills which we will bring to the floor, Military Construction, Homeland Security, State/Foreign Operations and Defense, will come in at a level about $2 billion above the President's request. This is a key bill in doing that.

I do want to make a few comments about what I understand was said while I was off the floor a few minutes ago with respect to earmarks. Let us trace what the facts are. The last time the Democrats controlled the appropriations process, I was chairman of the Appropriations Committee. In those days, earmarking was focused on about four subcommittees. There were no earmarks whatsoever in the Labor-Health- Education bill the year that I was chairman. Two years ago, there were over 3,000 when the Republicans were running the show.

When we took over the Congress last year, the Republicans had not passed a single appropriation bill on the domestic side of the ledger. So we had to complete their work for them. And one of the ways we did that was to put a moratorium on all earmarks for the year. We promised at the time that we would try to resurrect the process, provided that we had a process that was more transparent.

Now, I understand someone from the other side claimed that we were going to airdrop these earmarks into the conference with no notice. Not so. What we plan to do is the following. And let me say, we didn't not preclude earmarks by choice. The simple fact is that because we had to deal with last year's Republican budget, because we had to deal with the Iraq controversy which consumed the next 3 months of staff time, because we were under subpoena by the San Diego U.S. Attorney to turn over papers related to Republican shenanigans that occurred last year, we did not have the staff time to focus on the substance of the bills for this year or earmarks. And we finally decided that we need to keep the bills moving, even if that meant that we would have to play catchup later with the earmarks.

So what we are going to do is as soon as the staff can prepare them, and we estimate it will take at least 4 to 5 weeks to screen all of those earmarks, we will submit and put in the Congressional Record a description of virtually every earmark that we intend to try to include in conference reports. We will then ask every Member to review those projects. If they have questions, raise questions about them, we will then ask the sponsor of the earmark to respond in writing, so that the person responsible for the request is the person who has to explain to the House what is going on. And then we will use our judgment about what makes sense. If the House thinks that we have got projects in there that shouldn't be in there, they can vote against the bill.

But let me point out there is a big difference between what we are doing

and the existing Republican process. It took 2 years after the fact to find out what Duke Cunningham was asking for. The fact is under our process, you will know 30 days ahead of time. It took us more than a year to find out about the Florida road that was evidently inserted in the highway bill by a Republican Member of this House from another State.

That can't happen in our process. Under our process, you will have 30 days to review what they request. That is a sweeping reform in comparison to the absolute, behind-the-scenes operation that existed when the Republicans controlled this House.

Madam Chairman, the comments of the previous speaker simply indicate how little she understands about the appropriations process.

The fact is that the Iraqi bill we had to deal with was last year's supplemental request. Last year's, not this year's, so we had to clean up your mess on the entire domestic budget; and we had to clean up your mess on Iraq before we could move on our business.

The first week we have been able to turn to our agenda is this week. We have spent the last 5 months cleaning up your spilled milk.

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

Mr. Chairman, I would like to follow through on the comments made by the distinguished chairman of the subcommittee. And I think for Members who aren't here, which is approximately 90 percent of the body, for Members who are watching in their offices or perhaps not watching at all, I should make clear what is happening here and what is not happening here.

We are not having a real debate on a real bill. What is happening is a debate, it is really ``filibuster by amendment.'' It has been made quite clear by the opposition leadership that the opposition

party intends to bring this institution to a halt today. And the way they intend to do that is by offering amendment after amendment after amendment. There are about 120 amendments pending. And as the gentleman from North Carolina has indicated, we are trying to responsibly deal with a budget from an administration of the other party.

The easiest thing in the world for us to do would be for us to gut and slash the administrative accounts in the bill for any department, because, after all, the administration is Republican and we are Democratic. But what we have tried to do instead is to meet our responsibilities. We tried to tie administrative budget levels to the actual needs of the agencies, and we have tried to deal with those agencies in a bipartisan manner.

But we have a series of amendments not taking any meaningful reductions out of these agency budgets. We have a series of very tiny nicks being taken out of these budgets. And these amendments, in my judgement, are designed more to take up the time of this body than they are to produce a different financial result. And as the gentleman from North Carolina indicates, we have been, for the last 2 hours, trying to defend an administrative budget for the other party's administration.

Now, we may not be the smartest folks in the world, but we haven't exactly fallen off a turnip truck. And I also think that we are not exactly cut out to be suckers. And so, I don't think that we can allow our friends on the other side of the aisle to assume that we will simply serve as punching bags, and that we will simply stand here continuing to defend administration operation accounts.

And so, as far as I am concerned, if the administration and if the minority party's leadership can't control their own Members in terms of these budgetary attacks on these agencies, then who are we to stand in the way? So, I think what happens to these administrative levels will be pretty much up to the administration's own party. It will be very interesting to watch.

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

Let me, once again, not that anyone on the other side of the aisle is interested in listening to facts, but let me, once again, cite what the facts are. We keep hearing this mythical, robotic claim from the other side of the aisle that somehow these earmarks are going to be dropped in in conference.

Well, it is not our fault that you couldn't finish the budget last year and we had to finish your work. It is not our fault that you couldn't finish the work on the Iraqi bill for 2007, so we had to spend the last 3 months cleaning up your mess on that one.

Announcement By the Chairman

It is not our fault that we had to spend at least 60 days answering questions from the San Diego prosecutor about shenanigans that occurred on your side of the aisle in the last year. That occupied the staff for an incredible amount of time.

Announcement By the Chairman

Mr. Chairman, I won't say, I won't direct it directly to them. I will simply direct it to you.

It is not our fault that the San Diego attorney subpoenaed records from our committee relating to shenanigans that were conducted on the other side of the aisle in the previous Congress under Republican control.

I will not yield until I finish my statement. I would appreciate the same courtesy I've shown you.

Now, let me point out, the process that they've invented is not one that we have requested. What we have said is that, because of the urgency of substance, we decided we were going to leave pork projects behind for the moment. And what we've decided instead was to focus on oversight and producing substantive bills.

We've now also said that in order to assure that there is review of every project, that we are going to be filing, before the August recess, every single earmark that we expect to place in the appropriation bills. And Members will then have over 30 days to look at the process. They can complain about any earmark they want.

We are going to ask that it be open, not hidden, behind-the-scenes telephone calls. We're going to ask that people file in writing if they have an objection. We're going to ask the sponsor of the amendment to then respond in writing so that we can make a decent judgment about those earmarks.

Now, let me make another point. For people who are squawking about the fact that these earmarks aren't going to be in the bill originally, the Republicans did the same thing on the Labor-H bill in 1998, in 1999, in 2002, in 2004, in 2005. They did not have any earmarks in the Labor-Health-Education bill until the bill was in conference. The only difference was those earmarks were never reviewed ahead of time. These will be. Those earmarks were never in public view. These will be.

They also did the same thing in 2002 and 2003 when they couldn't even get a Labor-H bill through the House, and so they went directly to conference in an omnibus.

The difference between our process and the one they've been following is that there will be an opportunity ahead of time to know who has asked for these earmarks, and you'll be able to ask questions about it.

And I would assume that the leadership of both parties would take a look at the project list for both parties so that they protect this institution from the outrageous scandals that we had because of their mismanagement when they were running the show.

And I will stack my record on congressional reform against anybody on that side of the aisle any time. My entire career here has been defined by reform, and I don't intend to change it now.

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

Point of Order

Mr. Chairman, I am opposed to both the underlying amendment and the substitute amendment, and let me tell you why. I think it's important to put that amendment in context.

We had crocodile tears expressed here about the number of earmarks and what will happen to earmarks. Let me cite the record.

In 1994, the last year when Democrats controlled the House, earmarks were primarily concentrated in four appropriation bills. They were project-oriented bills like military construction, energy and water, Interior and general government. This Homeland Security bill had not even come to pass yet because it was before 9/11.

In the Labor-Health-Education appropriation bill the last year that the Democrats controlled, we had zero earmarks. The last year under Republican control that we had earmarks in the Labor-H bill, we had over 3,000.

In the Transportation bill, the authorizing bill, from 1956 through 1995, we had 20 separate highway bills pass this House containing a total of 739 earmarks. Do you know how many we had, Mr. Chairman, in 2005 under Republican control in just one bill? Five thousand.

Then we all remember the infamous 3-hour vote on Medicare part D.

I would ask my colleagues on this side of the aisle to keep this civil. If the other side wants to turn it into a circus, fine, but I think we ought to behave.

Let me say, we remember Medicare part D when the Republican leadership kept the vote open for 3 hours. Meanwhile, the newspaper stories told of how they promised earmarks in the transportation bill in return for votes on Medicare part D.

Last year, we had three major scandals. We had the Cunningham affair, then we had the bridge-to-nowhere, which caused a lot of heartburn around the country; and now, just recently, we have another story suggesting that the committee chairman then, the gentleman from Alaska, inserted a project for Florida.

Under Republican rules, as they existed then, nobody knew about any of that until about 2 years after the fact. Under the proposal that we are proposing for earmarks, you would know about that 30 days before they went into effect. That is a huge difference.

Let me also point out, in 1994, the four biggest appropriation bills that's Commerce-Justice, Labor, Transportation and VA-HUD. The last year the Democrats controlled the House, in 1994, the four major appropriations bills, Commerce-Justice, Labor-Health, Transportation and VA, we had a total of 764 earmarks. Those same bills, just one fiscal year ago, had 8,600 earmarks.

With all due respect, I don't want to hear any crocodile tears on the other side of the aisle with respect to the issue of earmarks. They have exploded under their operation of this House, not under ours.

In terms of what's going on tonight, I should make quite clear that the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis) told me in January that the minority party would give us no procedural cooperation because they didn't like the way we had handled a continuing resolution. They wanted us to have a straight CR rather than thinking our way through priorities. Now they have simply moved on to another excuse.

So I would simply say, whether you vote for the underlying amendment or for the amendment to the amendment, these are not real amendments. It is clear to me that they have only one purpose, to bring this House to a halt, and they are looking for any excuse they can find.

They got a mighty weak one, but we are going to stay here until the job is done. This is the people's business. We are not going to be diverted by their trying to play Trivial Pursuit on this bill.

Mr. Chairman, I would like, if I could, in a calm atmosphere to simply walk Members of the House through some of the facts so that they understand exactly what it takes for the staff to prepare earmarks for consideration by the Congress.

Yesterday, we were told in the Appropriations Committee by our Republican friends, at least by some of them, they would ask me, what is the hurry? Why can't you slow down these bills until you can attach the earmarks? Today, our colleague from Georgia, Mr. Price, said on the floor, these bills are already 1 month late, implying that the Republicans last year were able to move the bills to the floor faster.

That is right. They did.

I want Members to understand why if we started tonight it would take a good 3 to 4 weeks to prepare all of the earmarks that Members are requesting. Let me explain why.

Our staff doesn't just have to wade through these requests. Some of these requests that we receive propose to place earmarks on programs such as the National Institutes of Health, for instance, which have never before been earmarked, earmarks which the Members on both side of the aisle strongly oppose. So we have to work with those Members to reshape those earmarks.

Some requests come in, but they are duplicative. You may have four or five Members propose the same earmark, but they describe it differently, and the staff has to wade through and reconcile them so they understand it is really the same item.

Some earmarks that are requested fail to make clear which programs the requested funds are supposed to come from, so we have to plug in with Members to get answers to that.

Some requests ask that funds that are earmarked within a specific program be used for purposes which are not authorized by the underlying authorization, so again we have to go back to those Members and review those projects and rework them so that they are eligible.

That is why it is an immense job for the staff to review, especially when we have 32,000 requests.

There is another reason why we have lagged on earmarks, and that is because we chose to do substance over worrying about pork. What we did, after almost 5 years of virtually no oversight by this Congress, we chose to intensify oversight and devote our staff time and Member time to that, rather than people's boodle. As a result, we held 224 hearings, as opposed to 117 last year under the Republican regime.

That is why we have come to the House with the proposition to make certain that we do have transparency, that we will have names attached to every earmark whenever they appear in the process, and we are following a process which has been engaged in by the majority party on the major domestic appropriation bills of each year, and the majority party engaged in this same process for 7 out of the last 12 years. The only difference is, they didn't provide 30 days' notice before those bills went to conference with those earmarks, and our process would.

I know it is late in the evening and I know that Members like to score partisan points, but the fact is, Members, especially those who are not on the Appropriations Committee, are owed the courtesy of at least understanding what it is that the staff has to go through in order to prepare earmarks for everybody.

Now, I don't have a Republican list of earmarks.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for his courtesy.

Mr. Chairman, let me simply say, I don't have any idea what earmarks our Republican friends would want to see included in, for instance, the Labor-Health-Education bill.

But the fact is, there is one other protection that we want to have in our process: Unlike the past, when some Appropriation subcommittees simply said Democrats, you look at yours, Republicans look at yours, and then do whatever you want, what we are going to try to do is to make certain that you get to see ours and we get to see yours so that we have that safety valve built into the system. That will protect the taxpayer and that will protect the reputation of this institution, and I think Members know it.

Mr. Chairman, I would urge Members to remember that our job tonight, after all, is to try to pass a Homeland Security bill, which has traditionally been virtually without earmarks.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for the time and I thank the gentleman for his courtesy.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman.

Let me point out there is one critical difference between last year and tonight: Last year, you agreed that we would shut down at 10 o'clock because we agreed to put time limits on all of the amendments so we could finish the bills.

I cooperated procedurally so that you could move every single bill through the House, even though I disagreed with some of them.

The key was that we each got something. You got to finish the bills, and we agreed that because we were setting time limits on amendments, that, therefore, there would be no need to work in the evening. You haven't been willing to agree to time limits.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

And I know he is serious on this issue, and I respect his integrity on this issue and I also respect his consistency. But let me ask the gentleman one question.

Our job is to try to develop a process. It is not a pro forma process of review but one that is actually effective.

The gentleman has offered a lot of motions in the past 2 years to strike earmarks. Could I ask him how many of them have been successful?

Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would yield further, that is not the gentleman's fault. He has genuinely tried to ferret out what he thought to be troublesome earmarks and occasionally some of mine.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield on that point?

Mr. Chairman, I agree we need accountability. And I want to simply say I don't regard your failure to pass any of your amendments as a personal failure on your part.

Mr. Chairman, I think the gentleman has done his dead level best. The problem is that the system is not conducive to producing real results because, as the gentleman himself has said on this House floor, Members look at these motions and they say, I am not going to vote for the Flake amendment because I have got earmarks hanging out there and I don't want to have my endangered. The result has been that nothing has happened. That is why we have had some of the problems we have had. We could have an honest disagreement about what will be the best system, but I would hope that the gentleman would recognize, even though he might disagree with it, it is an honest effort to develop a system which is far more forthcoming than the one we have had in the past.

And I would simply point out that while the majority leader indicated that he had adopted transparency proposals last year, they conveniently arranged them so that they didn't apply to any of the appropriation bills that they passed last year. That is not the gentleman's fault. But it is the responsibility of the minority leader.

I thank the gentleman for the time.

Mr. Speaker, let me first address the gentleman's comments about process and time.

We have been negotiating with the Senate and with the White House since last Friday. At approximately 12:30 last night, the majority staff on the Appropriations Committee finally wrapped up our work in putting this package together. At about 1:00, we communicated what that package was to the minority staff on the Appropriations Committee. It couldn't have been communicated any earlier because it wasn't done until 12:30. One of the reasons it wasn't done is because as late as 10:00 last night, the White House was still squawking about individual provisions in the bill. And the last time I looked, the White House was in Republican hands.

Now, we have negotiated in good faith. I hate this agreement. I am going to vote against the major portion of this agreement even though I negotiated it, because I think that the White House is in a cloud somewhere in terms of understanding the realities in Iraq. But let's not get our nose out of joint about the way this package was put together.

We have tried in good faith to find a way to put the administration's request and their opponent's position on the floor on an equal footing to give everybody an opportunity to vote however they wanted on it.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

As I was saying, Mr. Speaker, we don't relish bringing a package to the floor that we don't like and that we are not going to vote for. But what I especially don't relish is the fact that, in the process of doing so, we are criticized by people on the minority side of the aisle who, when they were in charge, couldn't run a two-car funeral in terms of the budget.

The gentleman claims that it has taken us too long to get here. The fact is, the gentleman's party was in control last year, and it took them 110 days to produce a supplemental that the administration requested. That is 10 days longer than it took us. And we had to spend the first 30 days of this session passing last year's budget because the gentleman's party couldn't get a single domestic appropriations bill through the House because of an internal Republican Party squabble between Republicans in the Senate and Republicans in the House. So that ate up the first 30 days. And the rest of the time we have spent trying to convince the President to change his mind on the policy in Iraq.

And so we haven't exactly been doing nothing these last 110 days. We sent a proposition to the President to try to force change in American policy in Iraq. He vetoed it. So if somebody is going to bellyache about the fact that the money isn't getting to the troops, we passed that. It was the President who vetoed it. It is the President's action that has delayed getting anything to anywhere.

We then sent a second package over, and the Senate couldn't pass that. And so that is when we faced the inevitability that we simply did not have the votes to force the President to change policy, and so we are now trying to produce a responsible alternative.

Let me also say, with respect to the argument that we are somehow playing into the hands of al Qaeda. Who played into the hands of al Qaeda? A fellow by the name of Bush. He lives in that big White House at the other end of the avenue. He is the guy who walked this country into a war he didn't have a clue about how to end, he didn't have a clue about the political realities in the region, he didn't have a clue about what was necessary militarily to pacify the country. He didn't have a clue about what this was going to do to our influence in the world. If anybody in this country has weakened our influence drastically and tragically in the Middle East third of the world, it is the occupant, the present occupant, of the White House and his Republican allies who continue to support this misguided policy on this misbegotten war.

So, I get a little tired of people who produced one mess after another. I get a little tired of people who have been wrong from the start on this war. They went after the wrong country. They didn't go after al Qaeda, they went after Iraq. Iraq didn't have anything to do with 9/11. The gentleman knows that, unless he has a faulty memory. Only Dick Cheney is still trying to invent that connection, and his aim is about as bad as it is when he's got a shotgun in his hand.

So with all due respect, Mr. Speaker, we have tried to produce change. We have been blocked in obtaining that change by the President. We are now trying to move ahead, on the only option we have available. And the gentleman's nose is out of joint because the action was completed last night too late to provide good notice. You know what? I didn't know about a third of this stuff in this package until I got it in the morning, because we made a number of changes in response to White House requests as late as 10:00 last night. I don't apologize for that. That is what negotiating is supposed to be.

You can't have it both ways. You can't squawk at us for being too late in bringing the bill to the floor, and then squawk at us for not giving you enough notice.

So, with all due respect, I will take a look at the record of the minority party last year when they were running the show and couldn't pass anything, and I will compare theirs to our record any day of the week.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. Speaker, let me simply say, in response to the comments from the gentleman, that given what he prefers to see in this bill on this subject, we are very lucky to have the 1-year fix at all because the White House opposed not only the long-term fix, but the short-term fix as well.

I would also point out that it was last year's Congress that allowed the program to expire in the first place and never managed to get around to finding the offsets that would have enabled the committee to provide this package long term.

So I recognize the legitimacy of the gentleman's concern, but I want to point out that I think that given the resistance of the White House to anything except money for the Iraqi operation and a tiny portion of our obligation for Katrina, with those two exceptions, the White House resisted every single effort made by us to deal with any problem, whether it was Western schools, whether it was kids getting knocked off health-care rolls, or whether it was the need to provide more veterans' health care. They fought it all.

I yield to the gentleman from Oregon.

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the gentleman. I just wish the administration would give us as much help in solving American problems as they have given us heat for not supporting their multibillion-dollar on-the-installment-plan request for Iraq.

Mr. Speaker, I am sorry to interfere with the gentlelady's time, but I just wanted to bring something to the attention of the gentleman from California.

He mentioned that the time stamp on the proposition he received was 6:31 p.m. last night. That was one of only two packages. That time stamp refers to the time at which the legislative counsel got this copy to the staff. The staff still had to read it, to check it out, to make certain it did what it was supposed to do. And that was on the easiest package, that was on the President's package. And everybody knows what the President's request was and what the Warner amendment is.

The time stamp on the other package is 9:30 p.m. last night. What that means is that you have over 200 pages, which we got from legislative counsel, and the staff had to read every page of that to make certain, again, that it did what it was intended to do, and to make sure that, among other things, it reflected the changes that had been demanded by the White House at the same time.

Will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. Speaker, with all due respect, the gentleman has criticized us for taking too much time to bring this to the floor, and he is now suggesting that we delay it. That is like falling off both sides of the same horse at the same time.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 438, I call up the bill (H.R. 2206) making emergency supplemental appropriations and additional supplemental appropriations for agricultural and other emergency assistance for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2007, and for other purposes, with a Senate amendment thereto, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 438, I have a motion at the desk.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, there are two sets of issues before us, the President's request for almost $100 billion to finance the cost of the war in Iraq for the remainder of this fiscal year, which ends October 1.

There is a second set of issues which relate to urgent needs for this year, additional funding for State Children's Health Insurance Program to prevent many thousands of poor children and some of their parents from losing health coverage; gulf coast recovery after Katrina; drought relief for farmers and the 70 percent of the U.S. counties that the President named as disaster areas; and other areas where we believe we must do more than the President wants to do; defense health, such as efforts to provide more help to veterans with traumatic rain injury; veterans' health, to help veterans overcome ridiculous backlogs; homeland security, to strengthen our ports, our borders and our cargo inspection systems; full funding for BRAC, the base realignment requirements; additional funding for military housing needs; and greater resources to wage the effort to root out al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Dealing with these issues is complicated by the fact that this country and this Congress are deeply divided on our involvement in the Iraqi civil war, which has dragged on now for more than 4 years.

Several weeks ago, House Democrats tried to use the President's funding request to establish a process to responsibly end our involvement in that Iraqi civil war. To that end, we passed and sent to the President a plan that spent almost $4 billion more than the President wanted on the health and safety of our troops. It established limits on how much sacrifice could be asked of U.S. military units when no one else, except for military families, are appreciably sacrificing anything in this so-called war effort. It also sets standards for judging the success or failure of the administration's policy.

Now, why did we do that? Because we agree with virtually every general who has said that this civil war will not be resolved militarily. It will be resolved only politically and diplomatically by Iraqi factions making the compromises necessary to bring that civil war to a conclusion.

The President vetoed that proposal. To override the veto, we needed two-thirds of the House and the Senate to concur. We didn't get it for a simple reason, that Democrats did not have two-thirds of the seats in Congress.

Next we tried to send another proposition to the President and gave the President a limited amount of money and tried to set another more flexible set of standards for proceeding with this war. That failed in the Senate.

At that point, like it or not, we ran out of options for using this fiscal year 2007 supplemental to force a change in administration policy.

On Friday we met with the administration and offered to drop all domestic items if the administration would accept meaningful benchmarks and timelines for ending our involvement in that civil war. They flatly refused. That leaves us with the Senate-passed plan, which sets a much weaker set of benchmarks than those passed by the House.

It is clear we do not have the 60 votes necessary to end debate in the Senate and force a policy change on the administration by using the fiscal year 2007 supplemental. Because there are only months left in the fiscal year, no serious person can expect that it is possible to redeploy our troops during that time.

So the question becomes, how do we continue to press for an end to our involvement in that war on a reasonable time frame? The proposition now before us shifts the debate to the President's budget request for the next fiscal year, which begins on October 1.

Weak as it is, the Senate-adopted Warner amendment, with its 18 new benchmarks, at least does end the totally blank check that previous Congresses have provided. Weak as it is, it does at least give Members of Congress whose feet are not firmly planted in the status quo another opportunity to review the futile administration policy by establishing a requirement for two reports to the Congress, one in July and one in September.

The proposal before us will mean that, in September, using the required reports, the Congress will have an opportunity to decide what course of action to take on this war. That decision will be just 4 months away.

Meanwhile, we also insist that the President accept the fact that there are other pressing needs, to which we have an obligation to respond.

This proposal contains a long overdue increase in the minimum wage for America's lowest-paid workers, a wage which may not bother many people in this Chamber but a wage which unconscionably has been frozen for a decade. It will contain $17 billion that the President did not want for added defense and veterans' health care, for BRAC, for military housing, for Homeland Security, for Katrina, drought relief and State Children's Health Insurance Program. Some items it should contain, it does not.

For example, low-income heating, home energy assistance and funding for the pandemic flu.

This proposition falls far short of containing everything that it should on both the Iraqi war and on our own domestic needs. But I take some comfort in the knowledge that even Babe Ruth struck out more than 1,300 times. But weak as it is, this proposition does provide a structure and a process to continue the fight, and it recognizes reality.

I intend to vote against the first proposition that contains the President's military request and the Warner benchmarks because I believe they are far too weak, and I believe it is important to maximize the pressure on Iraqi politicians to compromise by having as many votes as possible for a stronger proposition. I expect to vote for the second proposition, which contains the minimum wage increase, and $17 billion of the $21 billion that we sought to respond to crucial national needs.

This proposition will transfer the Iraqi fight to September on the President's fiscal 2008 defense supplemental request, and it will require a vote on a proposition that would require the funds appropriated to be used to redeploy troops on a responsible time schedule. I am sure we will also address the issue on Mr. Murtha's defense appropriation bill, on the regular bill that will come at us as we return from the Memorial Day recess.

This proposition is apparently the best that we can achieve given the votes that we have. It is my hope that, when these votes occur in September, a firm majority in both Houses will see through the smokescreens being produced by the administration and send an unequivocal message to both the administration and Iraqi political leaders that our patience is over.

Now, some news stories have said that Democrats have ``given up on the time line.'' That is patent nonsense. There has never been a chance of a snowball in Hades that Congress would cut off funding for troops in the field.

Now, some people say to us, why don't you do what you did in Vietnam and simply cut off the funds even while the troops are in the field? Well, I've got news for you, that is not what the Congress did in Vietnam. I know; I was here. When Congress passed the Addabbo amendment, there were less than 500 American troops left in Vietnam. What the Addabbo amendment did was to cut off American aid to the South Vietnamese Government.

Even if the Congress were to cut off aid to troops in the field, the President undoubtedly would not abide by that. He would simply assert his Commander in Chief authority to manage the troops any way he wanted, and we would be tied up challenging that in the court for months, long past the time period covered by the fiscal year 2007 supplemental which this legislation addresses.

The last proposal we sent to the Senate attempted to limit the amount of money available to the President to 2 months' operating expenses, fencing the rest to try to force a policy change.

All we are doing by this arrangement is to slip the timetable an additional 2 months from that proposal, shifting the debate from the 2007 supplemental to the 2008 supplemental. That means our Republican friends who continue to support the President on this misbegotten war will have to face votes in July and in September on the same issue.

We are not giving up. We are simply recognizing that no one believes that it is possible, given the Senate's inability to produce 60 votes to shut down debate, to change course during the remainder of this fiscal year. That may not be a pleasant fact, but it is a reality. Opponents of the war need to face this fact just as the President and his allies need to face the fact that they are following a dead-end policy which we will continue to make every possible effort to change.

Following are additional explanatory materials regarding the appropriations for the Department of Defense made by the House amendments to the Senate amendment to H.R. 2206.

Department of Defense--Military

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Scott).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished majority leader, Mr. Hoyer.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

Let me simply note that it was the administration that refused to provide support for including funds for the pandemic flu challenge facing the country. We have tried on this side of the aisle for more than a month to include that funding.

I've even noted that it was the administration itself who originally asked for that money, as an emergency, 2 years ago. And yet they declined to support it and, in fact, insisted that it come out in this negotiation, just as they insisted that funding for low-income heating assistance come out.

So I certainly agree with the gentleman's suggestion that that money ought to be in here. I said that in my own remarks. I also want it very clear why it isn't.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey).

What's the gentleman's question?

Well, let me make two points. First of all, this is not all that unusual. It was not done during the time that the Republicans ran the House, but it was done often prior to that. All we have to do is to take a look at the history of the Hyde amendment and take a look at several other conference reports that were adopted, one in 1996, for instance.

With respect to the two questions, or the question about the two amendments, technically, it's my understanding that they do not apply to amendments, or that the rules do not apply to amendments.

To my knowledge, there are none.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha), the chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1\1/2\ minutes.

The previous speaker just complained about the fact that this has taken 110 days to finish. If I am not mistaken, he was the majority party whip when his party controlled this Chamber last year, and it took 110 days before the Republican-controlled Congress could get a supplemental to the President. So I think it comes with considerable ill grace for the gentleman to be calling the kettle black.

Let me also suggest that if there has been any delay whatsoever associated with this process, it is due to two things: Number one, it is a little thing called democracy. You know what? We don't have a rubber-stamp Congress anymore. If we did have a rubber-stamp Congress, we could have finished this in 1 day. But that is not what our obligation is.

And, secondly, and even more fundamentally, any delay in the process was not caused by the Congress. We had this job done 3 weeks ago. The delay was caused by fact that the President blocked the funds going to the troops when he vetoed the bill. So I would suggest that the gentleman recognize where the true responsibility lies.

We have a right and an obligation to spell out what we think is in the national interest of this country. Pardon me if it takes a few days.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

I intend to yield the remainder of my time to close debate to the Speaker.

Before I do that, and before the gentleman closes with his last speaker, let me simply thank the committee staff.

Let me thank the CBO staff, the legislative counsel staff, even the White House staff, who worked with us to fashion together this package.

Regardless of how Members feel about it, it took a tremendous amount of work by people whose names never get in the papers, whose pictures never get in the papers, but who do their darnedest to see to it that the will of this House is carried out with as much clarity as possible. I appreciate their work. I appreciate their dedication to this institution and this country.

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

Mr. LEWIS OF California. Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of our time to the Republican leader, Mr. John Boehner.

Mr. Speaker, I yield the remainder of our time to the distinguished Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, let me simply say in response to the previous speaker on that side of the aisle, he claims that efforts on our part to withdraw our troops or redeploy our troops out of a combat situation represents a slow-bleed policy. I would suggest that the existing policy is a bleed-forever policy, and it needs to be changed.

The second question the gentleman asked referred to agriculture. He said, ``Gee, these agriculture disasters occurred last year; why weren't they handled then?'' That is a very good question. We weren't in charge last year. The other side was.

In fact, we have had agriculture disaster legislation pending for 2 years. The President declared 70 percent of the counties in this country to be disaster areas, and yet the last Congress couldn't put together a two-car funeral when it came to addressing that problem. So we are simply cleaning up in a separate bill; mind you, we are cleaning up last year's agriculture disaster problem. It is just another one of the leftover items from the previous Congress that we are now charged with the responsibility to finish.

Now let me get to what the real issue is in this bill.

The Washington Post carries a story this morning describing the efforts of the administration to use Iraqi government officials to try to get the Democratic lawmakers to ease the pressure on the White House to have a timetable for the withdrawal of troops. Mr. al-Rubaie is quoted as saying the following: ``Now, nobody is talking about sliding into a civil war, as we've been able to avoid it.''

He added, ``Portraying the scene there as Shiite killing Sunni and Sunnis killing Shiites is totally untrue.''

What are they smoking? What do we see on television every day, despite the effort of the administration to shut down as much access on the part of the public to the carnage as is possible?

I strongly support this rule today for one simple reason: The President has asked the Congress to give him $100 billion in additional funding to fight this war, no strings attached. The Congress passed a proposal and put it on the President's desk suggesting that there ought to be certain limitations on the President's conduct in return for getting the money. He vetoed that. He believes he is ``the decider.''

Well, under the Constitution, we are all supposed to be deciders. So now we have before us, in response to the President's action, a proposal to do three things: First of all, it would provide an opportunity to have an up-or-down vote on the issue of whether or not troops ought to be redeployed over the next year. I think that is what a democratic institution is supposed to do, to make choices like that.

Secondly, what we are proposing under this rule today will allow the Congress to require the President to report to the Congress on three things: First of all, since the President has said that, as Iraqi military units stand up, we should stand down, we have a sense of the Congress provision in this legislation which says that, as the President certifies that battalions have achieved full combat capability, that a certain number of corresponding U.S. units ought to stand down. It is not mandatory. It is a sense of the Congress that that ought to happen.

Secondly, we ask the President to report to the Congress on the progress that Iraq is making on the benchmarks that the President himself set out last fall as being the criteria by which we should judge Iraqi progress.

And then thirdly, so that it isn't a softball report, we are also asking that the President report to the Congress spelling out which of those benchmarks have actually been achieved. Has the Iraqi parliament actually passed an adequate oil revenue-sharing law which shares that oil equitably with Sunni, Shiites and Kurds alike, because if they don't do that, the Sunnis will never stop fighting?

And then, lastly, what we do is to set up a separate bill that deals with some of the domestic emergencies that we face that the President described as ``pork.'' Among those is the agriculture disaster bill. And so we are considering that as a separate bill to demonstrate to the White House and to demonstrate to our critics that they are wrong when they say that we are afraid to let these programs stand on their own. So we are going to vote on them alone, and I happen to think they are in a stronger position when we vote on them alone.

It is going to be very interesting to see how many of our Republican friends from agricultural districts are actually going to support us in trying to provide that assistance.

After all, we did not declare those counties disaster areas. A fellow by the name of Bush did, and he's the guy that lives in that big white house, and when he makes a declaration like that, there ought to be certain consequences that flow from it, and we're simply meeting those obligations. So that's basically what we are trying to do.

As the gentleman from Washington said earlier, we simply happen to believe, those of us who are going to be supporting this proposition, we simply happen to believe that it would be nice if we were fighting the right war in the right place rather than the wrong war in the wrong place, and the right place to be taking al Qaeda on is in Afghanistan.

Now, we also provide in our proposition, we say that 60 days after or 60 days from now roughly, by July 13, by the time this bill is passed, by July 13, we guarantee the administration that the Congress will have an up-or-down vote on its own request for all the money. I don't know what more we can do.

What we are simply doing is we are letting the President report, letting him give his judgments to us. We then give the Congress about 10 days to absorb what the President has said, and then we vote, up or down, on two issues: number one, whether the President should get all the remaining money; and, number two, there's another amendment that would simply have us instead use that money to redeploy our troops out of combat.

It's a fair, square deal. The administration gets a straight shot at what it wants and war critics get a straight shot at what they want. That, to me, is eminently fair.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 387, I called up the bill (H.R. 2237) to provide for the redeployment of United States Armed Forces and defense contractors from Iraq, and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts, the sponsor of the bill (Mr. McGovern).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Sestak).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Capps).

In that case, I assume the administration is going to support the bill.

I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin).

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey).

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

(Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Hooley).

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to read excerpts from a letter about Iraq. It reads as follows:

``I am deeply concerned about Iraq. The task you have given me is becoming really impossible . . . incompetent Arab officials are disturbing some of the provinces in failing to collect revenue. We have overpaid almost half a million [dollars] on last year's account, which it is almost certain Iraq will not be able to pay this year, thus entailing a Supplementary Estimate in regard to a matter never sanctioned by [the legislative body]; a further deficit, in spite of large economies, is nearly certain this year on the civil expenses owing to the drop in revenue. I have had to maintain . . . troops at Mosul all through the year in consequence of the Angora quarrel: This has upset the programme of reliefs and will certainly lead to further expenditures . . . In my own heart, I do not see what we are getting out of it.

``I think we should now put definitely . . . to the Constituent Assembly the position that, unless they beg us to stay and stay on our own terms in regard to efficient control, we shall actually evacuate before the close of the financial year. I would put this issue in the most brutal way, and if they are not prepared to urge us to stay and to cooperate in every manner, I would actually clear out.

``Surveying all the above, I think I must ask you for definite guidance at this stage as to what you wish and what you are prepared to do. The victories of the [opposition] will increase our difficulties throughout the [region]. At present, we are paying . . . millions a year for the privilege of living on an ungrateful volcano out of which we are in no circumstances to get anything worth having.''

That is a letter written by Winston Churchill in 1922 to David Lloyd George. I would suggest not very much has changed since then.

I do not know if the timetable in this bill is exactly the correct timetable or not. What I do know is that I intend to vote for every responsible action that I can take that will increase pressure on this administration and on the government of Iraq and the politicians of Iraq so that they both finally understand there must be a change in policy; there must be a recognition that our troops do not have the capacity to produce the political compromises that are necessary to end this carnage. That power is only in the hands of American politicians and Iraqi politicians. It is about time we get about the business of using it and insisting that the Iraqis use it.

I would urge support for this proposition.

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

I yield myself 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, I do not know why we should be surprised that we are divided as a Nation when in fact we have an administration whose governing principle has been to govern by dividing.

I would simply observe that there are some Members of this body evidently and some members of the administration who are willing to fight to the last drop of somebody else's blood. We are not, and that is why we are here with this proposal today.

I now yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha).

Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern).

Mr. Speaker, I claim the time in opposition.

Mr. Speaker, this recommittal motion is something that we have seen for approximately 5 minutes. I think it is a dubious proposition to be voting on something this serious with less than 10 minutes of consideration.

But upon a cursory reading of it, it is apparent that the purpose of this proposition is simply to prevent people from voting on the underlying bill. It is designed to gut the bill by adding two additional conditions that would enable our troops to stay in Iraq indefinitely. Those conditions make reference to the regional security of the Middle East and the national security interest of the United States. That language is so broad that virtually any deployment of any armed force could be justified under that language.

It is obvious that would in fact essentially gut the proposal, and so I would urge a ``no'' vote on the motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern).