Floor Statements

I very much thank the gentleman for the time.

Madam Speaker, I observed that the minority is complaining about the fact that this approach has not been sufficiently bipartisan. As I recall, during the 10 years that the Democrats were in the minority, or more, I asked the Rules Committee almost 100 times to make specific proposals in order. The last time I checked, the record demonstrated that they had made them in order exactly two times.

I didn't hear what you said, but I don't have the time to yield anyway, I am sorry.

The fact is that the 9/11 Commission recognized two problems that in their words rendered congressional oversight of intelligence ``dysfunctional''. The first was that the intelligence authorizing committee was routinely ignored by the administration and the intelligence community because they didn't provide the money. In this town, people follow the money.

Secondly, the Appropriations Committee, frankly, was negligent in its responsibilities for oversight. Example: When Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld established an independent intelligence operation outside of the purview of his own agency's intelligence shop, I tried to find out what was going on. I requested that the Appropriations Committee do a thorough Surveys And Investigations study of what was going on. My efforts were blocked by that same committee.

The third problem we faced is that there was grossly insufficient staff on the part of the Appropriations Committee to have decent congressional oversight. Example: The Democratic minority had exactly one staffer to deal not only with all intelligence issues but also with the entire defense budget. How much do you think you can get done with one person?

The other problem was that there was not sufficient emphasis on intelligence matters by the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee because they had a lot of other things to do dealing with ``little'' problems like the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force.

So the 9/11 Commission suggested one way to correct that problem. They suggested that we merge the authorizers with the appropriators, and that the authorizing committee, in fact, do the appropriating.

We concluded that there was a better way to accomplish the same goal. We felt that the problem with the initial recommendation was that it doesn't make much sense to consider intelligence funding requests standing alone, because in the real world those requests have to compete with other national security imperatives, again, funding the Army, the Air Force, and the other agencies.

Instead, we chose to follow a different model, that of the Joint Committee on Taxation. That committee conducts an annual review of the strategic plans and the budget of the IRS.

This bill follows, with some variation, that pattern. It creates a hybrid committee composed of members from the Intelligence Committee and the Appropriations Committee. They are all appointed by the Speaker because, in technical terms, whenever task forces are created around here, it is the Speaker who does the appointing. Speaker Pelosi has already made crystal clear that she intends to appoint whatever Republicans are suggested by the minority leader.

But there was another reason that the Speaker is listed as appointing all of these people, because we want to make clear to the intelligence community that if they try to ignore what this task force is trying to do, that they are not just messing around with individual Members of Congress; they are messing around with the leader of an independent branch of government who has the authority to inflict consequences if they don't provide information the Congress is entitled to have.

This task force will be given the obligation to prepare an annual assessment of all intelligence activities and to make budget recommendations, which will serve as the basis for the preparation of the intelligence budget, the classified annex to the defense appropriation bill.

The reason the subcommittee needs to have at least the ability in theory to change some of those recommendations is because it has a job which that panel doesn't have. It has the job of measuring the needs of intelligence against other national security needs, and it needs to have that flexibility.

But this bill would also lead to a beefed-up staff for this task force, and that task force will be buttressed by the subpoena power of the Appropriations Committee.

That means that at long last we will have at least one panel which the intelligence community cannot ignore. We will have one panel which even the Republican members of the commission, like John Lehman, have indicated is a great step forward. I would just suggest that if the gentleman had preferred a different approach, it would have been nice if he had produced one in the 2\1/2\ years he had the chance.

I urge support for this proposal.

Madam Speaker, if the gentleman from Illinois, my good friend, wants to hyperventilate over the fact that I simply verbally referred to this as a ``task force'' rather than a ``panel,'' be my guest. I guess his threshold of excitement has been considerably lowered these days.

Let me simply say, the gentleman says this is an insult to Mr. Murtha and to Mr. Young. No, it is not. He asked, does the Defense Appropriations Committee need oversight? It certainly did the last year, and let me tell you why.

When Mr. Rumsfeld set up his separate stovepiping operation for intelligence, I went to Mr. Murtha, asked him to sign a letter instituting a surveys and investigations study because, under our rules, under our practices, we needed the support of the full chairman, the full ranking member and the subcommittee chairman and the subcommittee ranking member. I went to Mr. Murtha. He signed on to the letter calling for the investigation. I went to Mr. Young. He signed on to the letter calling for the investigation. But I was blocked by the full committee chairman.

So if you are asking me, does the Appropriations Committee, based on its record of the last 2 years, need some additional oversight on this issue? You bet it does, because as a result of that refusal to proceed, we never did learn what Rumsfeld was doing until we read it in the press. That is not the way it is supposed to work.

This is the first time that we have created any kind of a panel that will

force the Appropriations Committee and the authorizing committee to work together like adults rather than worrying about dunghill jurisdictional issues. And the security of this country is a whole lot more important than the feelings of any one committee.

Mr. Speaker, what I would like to do is to take some time on the floor today to separate fact from fiction with respect to earmarks.

Let me start by saying that I think my record is clear. I have tried as long as I have been in this Congress to restrain both the dollar amount spent on earmarks and the number of earmarks that we have had. But I want to make certain that if we are looking at earmarks we are asking ourselves the right questions.

I do not want anyone on this floor, or anyone else, including the White House, to suggest that if you eliminate funding for earmarks you save one dime. You do not. The right question to ask about earmarks is simply whether that money is put in the right place or not. And let me explain what I mean.

When the Appropriations Committee, for instance, brings out its appropriation bills, each subcommittee operates under a spending ceiling. And if that bill exceeds that spending ceiling, then a single Member can knock the entire bill off the floor. That means that earmarks, if they are provided, are provided within the predetermined ceiling for that bill. So, for instance, if the committee decides that it is going to earmark 50 after-school projects, those after-school projects are financed within the predetermined ceiling, not above that ceiling.

So if people want to pose for holy pictures on the issue of earmarks, be my guest. Just make sure you have your facts when you do so. That is all I ask.

A second thing I would point out. If we are going to talk about earmarks, then let us talk about the guy who does the most earmarking. That is the guy in the big White House at the other end of the Pennsylvania Avenue. He is called the President. And I want to give you an example of what happens with the President's budget.

The biggest earmarker in the land is the President of the United States of America. Let me give you one example. Last year, the administration provided 18,808 FIRE grants in districts represented by Republican Members of Congress. It provided 11,470 FIRE grants in districts represented by Democrats. Every single one of those FIRE grants is the functional equivalent of an earmark.

Now, does anybody believe that that ratio of FIRE grants in Republican versus Democratic districts was not political? If you do, I have got a lot of things I would like to sell you after the session is over.

Let me also make one additional point: What is an earmark? If the President sends down an Army Corps of Engineers' list of projects, let's say he suggests 800 projects for the Army Corps of Engineers. Let's say the Congress, after its hearings, determines that 16 of them don't make any sense and so they substitute other projects. Are the 16 which the Congress substituted the only earmarks in that bill? What about the original President's list? He has selected those. Doesn't that represent an earmark on the part of the executive as well?

So I would simply ask, if we are going to start talking earmarks, let's

not have the pot calling the kettle black. Let us remember that the Congress has a right to make policy judgments, indeed it has an obligation to make policy judgments, that direct money to one place or another.

When I was chairman of the Appropriations Committee 12 years ago, the Labor-Health-Education appropriation bill didn't contain a single earmark. Last year, our Republican friends on the other side of the aisle were planning to have 3,000 earmarks in the Labor-Health bill. I think that is a gross exaggeration of what our staffs have the ability to review.

I don't want a single earmark in any bill that the committee staff cannot review to make certain that the reputation of this House and the reputation of the committee is protected. That is why we have the provision in this language that says if any Member asks for an earmark, he also has to certify that that earmark will provide no financial advantage to him or his spouse. To me, that is the way you protect the integrity of the institution and still protect the power of the purse and still protect the prerogative of the Congress. That is the way you protect the prerogatives of the Congress, while also protecting the reputation of this institution.

So, please, keep your terms straight. Keep your facts straight. Let's not claim things that are not so about some of these changes. Let's recognize what the definitions are and the fact that this is a very complicated matter.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 10 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, this resolution tonight is a blatant admission of abject failure by the most useless Congress in modern times. That we do not have a budget before us is certainly not the fault of the gentleman from California, the distinguished chairman of the committee.

This House passed every single appropriation bill except the Labor- Health appropriation bill, before the July 4 recess.

The problem is that the budget resolution which defined what would be contained in those appropriation bills was so wildly unrealistic that moderate Republicans in this House rebelled and would not, for instance, agree to support the budget resolution until a promise was made that $3 billion in additional funding would be found in order to correct some of the shortfalls in education and health and worker protection programs.

In addition, as the gentleman from California has said, when these bills went over to the other end of the Capitol, the United States Senate, they ran into the decision of the Republican majority leader to avoid having the Senate take votes on any controversial issues in the domestic portion of the budget.

As a result, we are here tonight with not a single dollar having been appropriated to any government program that has anything whatsoever to do with the domestic operations of this government. That is a disgraceful performance. And so we are left with the

choice of passing this continuing resolution or having the government shut down.

I want to contrast that with the condition that we left the government in when the Democrats lost the majority in 1994. In 1994 I was chairman of the Appropriations Committee and when we lost the election, we had still managed to complete every single appropriation before the end of the fiscal year. We did that because we had reached a bipartisan agreement between the then-majority Democrats and the then- minority Republicans on the allocation of appropriated dollars to each of the subcommittees. And it was that bipartisan cooperation which allowed us to pass every single bill in the allotted time.

Now we are here with Governors unable to plan, State legislatures unable to plan, mayors being unable to plan, families being unable to plan, because they do not know what the final disposition of the entire domestic budget is going to be.

And so now the Congress is going to leave town and when the Democrats assume control next January, we are going to have to pass 2 years of appropriation bills in 1 year. We will do our best to do that; but I must say to my majority party friends that I think that by this act of abdication, they have given up any right to criticize in any way whatever devices we have to use in order to dispose of the unfinished business of this Congress come next January.

We will do our best, but we have very few decent options. And I find it ironic, as the gentleman from California at least obliquely referenced, I find it ironic that the Senate majority leader found time to publicly diagnose Terri Schiavo's case from the Senate floor. I find it ironic that the majority leader in the Senate found the time to insert 40 pages of language into the defense bill last year indemnifying the entire pharmaceutical industry. He insisted on having that language inserted, although it had never been cleared by anyone in the conference and the conference had already finished its work before that was inserted. So he had plenty of time to do that, but he didn't manage to find the time to schedule the appropriation bills on the Senate floor, and as a result, we are here with this mess tonight.

The most fundamental obligation of the Congress under the Constitution of the United States is to decide what activities the government needs to engage in and to provide the financing for those activities. That is the purpose of appropriation bills. And when the Congress fails to pass that legislation, it fails in its principal obligation to the taxpayers.

So I simply want to say that Senator Byrd and I expect to have an announcement next week on how we will attempt to deal with the leftovers from this congressional session.

But I would simply ask one thing of my friends on the majority side of the aisle: Please spare me. Don't have the gall to go to the American public 2 years from now and ask once again to be put in charge of handling the Nation's budget when the decision has been made at the highest levels of the Republican Party tonight to walk away from our collective responsibility to pass this legislation before we adjourn.

The President is entitled to have his new budget considered anew. He is entitled to have the decks wiped clean so that he can start fresh; and with all due respect, I think we are also entitled to be able to start fresh so that come January, we can consider the President's new budget and not have to turn to last year's problems. We are not going to be given that opportunity, and the President isn't going to be given that opportunity. That is a shame. But at this point we have no choice but to support this resolution.

I do want to say one thing. Speaking of unfinished business, I am pleased to see that this resolution at this point does contain the suspension of the congressional COLA until such time as the minimum wage is increased. I know the distinguished minority leader, Ms. Pelosi, had asked that that be done. This resolution does not complete the linkage, but it does suspend that COLA until February 17, I believe the date is, which gives us an opportunity to pass the minimum wage bill in January before it goes into effect. I hope we meet that obligation so that we can see to it that as Congress receives its COLA, the lowest-paid workers in this country also get a benefit.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, in closing, I just want to congratulate the gentleman from California for doing his dead-level best to fulfill his duties in getting all of these bills through, even though he received precious little cooperation from many other key players on Capitol Hill. I would simply point out that it is not his fault that the budget resolution which was adopted by the majority party was so highly unrealistic that, in the end, the majority party in this House could not convince their Senate brethren to vote for the same legislation that was required by that budget resolution. And I want to simply say that I think the Record demonstrates that both of us on both sides of the aisle did everything that we could procedurally to get these bills through the House. We reached time agreements on amendment after amendment, on bill after bill. Sometimes time agreements were so tight that Members were significantly angered by how little time they had to debate these bills. But even though we often opposed the content of the bills, we worked together to move them because we recognized that we had a responsibility to make decisions and to finish the job, whether we won or lost. Unfortunately, the gentleman did not have enough allies on his side of the aisle, and so we are stuck with this leftover mess. We will do our best in January and February to clean it up, but it is not going to be a very pleasant couple of months.

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

Madam Speaker, I rise in joining my colleagues tonight in recognizing the service of Lane Evans. Lane is one of those people who came to Congress willing to work and not very interested in getting much attention or claiming much credit. All the work he did demonstrated his beliefs that we are here not to make a name for ourselves, but to make life better for the people who make this country strong. He was an advocate for the American worker and an advocate for the American Veteran. Since 1995 when Lane became Ranking Member of the House Committee Veterans Affairs, no one has tried harder to honor our obligations to those who have served our Country in uniform. Like the lighthouses on the Great Lakes, Lane has been a beacon of wisdom. When you follow Lane Evans, you know you are going in the right direction.

In addition, he is just a first rate human being. I wish him well and offer my sincere gratitude for his service.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I think it is important for us to understand where we stand at this point. At this point, we have completed the Defense bill and the Homeland Security bill, but we still at this point have not seen the Congress complete action on a single domestic appropriation bill.

So what we are facing is the need within the next 2 weeks, in my view, to try to finish our work, and I think we have a responsibility to do so. The Congress left town for almost 6 weeks for the election. Now because of that long period of time, we face the fact that we still have a huge amount of appropriations work to do.

The House produced final action on every single one of the appropriation bills except the Labor-HHS, and the Senate is in the process, I hope, of moving those bills forward. The Senate passed the Military Construction bill yesterday. It is my understanding that they are taking up the Agriculture bill this week and will also perhaps take up the Energy and Water bill. I hope that is the case. I agree with the gentleman that I would much prefer to see these bills handled in regular order, one by one, on a separate basis.

Having said that, my primary purpose is to see to it that they move, and I care less about how they move than whether they move, and I think most American citizens feel the same way. I think we have a duty to finish action on all of these bills, and I think it would be sad, indeed, if we were to adjourn this Congress with local units of government, local school boards, local program managers and State program managers not having any idea what the final resolution of these bills will be.

So while I certainly agree with the gentleman that it is preferable to move individual bills, I am open to any suggestion procedurally in order to finish that work. We have cooperated on the minority side of the aisle.

We have cooperated procedurally with the majority on every single appropriation bill, even though we have not agreed with the contents on some of those bills. I am willing to entertain procedural compromises. I am willing to entertain substantive compromises. But we need to try to move all of these bills by whatever method makes it possible to do so.

I would simply note, there is one bill that remains in the House for us to act on, and I am perfectly willing to try to work out additional compromises on that bill if that will help the bill to move. I don't like the idea that the Senate might wind up moving first on that bill, but even then, I think our primary obligation is to get this work done.

So I would urge the leadership and I would urge the gentleman and anyone else interested to please recognize that it would be irresponsible for this Congress not to finish its work. I would like to see a more productive closing to this session of Congress than has often been the case, and I am perfectly willing to work with anybody on any day in any way in order to get that done.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would simply like to follow up on the remarks of the gentleman from Kentucky about the gentleman from Minnesota.

I remember when Martin Sabo first walked into this institution in 1978. He and his wife, Sylvia, epitomize more than any people I know what are regarded as midwestern values, most especially the value of modesty. You will never find Martin Sabo bragging much on himself. In that sense, he is a true Norwegian. I also think that he exemplifies the thoughtfulness and the caring for one's neighbor that people in the Midwest have come to take as being the natural course of things.

He is probably the closest friend I have in this body. I very much regret to see him leave. I question his judgment profoundly on that.

As the gentleman from Kentucky has said, while today the gentleman from Minnesota deals with homeland security issues and is certainly an expert on those, in the past he has dealt with transportation issues most ably. As a matter of fact, there is no one in this body who has made a greater contribution to the cause of responsible budgeting and deficit reduction over the years than has the gentleman from Minnesota. He chaired the Budget Committee when we took the action under President Clinton that finally began to get the budget deficit under control.

I just want to profoundly express my appreciation to him, not just for his accomplishments but for the way he has achieved those accomplishments, for the way he has dealt with the needs of this body as an institution, for the respect that he has shown for the values and the traditions of this institution and the respect that he has shown for persons on both sides of the aisle.

He is truly a gentleman. He is a great legislator. I hate to see him go. I hope he is back to visit us often. I thank the gentleman profoundly for the quality of his service.

I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.

Mr. Speaker, I simply want to say that I am pleased to be able to support this bill. I very much regret the fact that we will only have completed two out of the 11 appropriation bills by the end of the fiscal year. That, in my view, is not the fault of the Appropriations Committee on either side of the aisle. It is very much the fault of the fact that this institution chose to adopt a budget resolution which did not accurately reflect the political center of gravity in the Republican Party, much less the Democratic Party when you take a look at the positions of each House.

Having said that, I want to take this opportunity to comment on something the President said yesterday because the President told the country that those of us on this side of the aisle were, in effect, soft on security and soft on defending this country.

I regret very much that the President has chosen to govern this country by dividing it rather than uniting it. I took a great deal of pleasure in working with the President's father in working out many a legislative compromise. We did the same thing with President Clinton. We did the same thing with President Carter. We even on many occasions did the same thing with President Reagan and President Nixon. But this is the first President I have known who has seemed to purposely divide the country in order to govern, and I just want to trace what the facts are with respect to defending the homeland.

I remember, in August of 2001 when I was at home in Wisconsin, receiving a call from my staff director telling me he had just been briefed by the CIA and that they were extremely concerned about the traffic that they were intercepting around the world, and they thought something big was up, did not know if it was domestic or international, but the intelligence community was very worried that something was coming. That was in August, just before 9/11.

The day before 9/11, Attorney General Ashcroft met with his staff to set out their priorities for the year, and in that meeting, he was presented a spreadsheet with various boxes indicating which would be his preferred activities and activities of focus for the coming year. He declined to check any of the boxes that had anything to do with antiterrorism. He was, in fact, urged by his staff to reconsider and rejected that advice and told the staff, ``No, I want to focus on drugs.'' The Attorney General denied that in a hearing of our committee, but in fact, my office had been leaked the documents by his own agency that showed exactly what he had done in that meeting.

Then, after we were hit by anthrax, I called Bill Young, who was then the chairman of the full committee, and suggested that since we could not get into our offices, we talk to the security agencies to see what they felt they needed in order to respond to the threat represented by 9/11.

We talked to the FBI, the NSA, CIA, you name it, all of the security agencies. On a bipartisan basis, we put together a listing of action items, and then we cut it and we cut it and then requested to see the President.

We went down to see the President. He came into the room. Before we could say a word, he said, ``Well, I understand some of you want to spend more money than I have requested for homeland security.'' He said, ``My good friend Mitch Daniels here from OMB tells us that we have got enough money in our budget, and so I want you to know, if you appropriate a dollar more than I have asked for, I will veto the bill. I have got time for four or five comments and I am out of here.''

Senator Stevens said, ``Mr. President, I do not think you understand, we have already agreed. We will knock off any item you do not want. We are not trying to have an argument. We just want something done.''

Senator Byrd made the same point, and then I asked the President, I said, ``Mr. President, I have been coming down here for 30 years, this is the first time any President has ever told me his mind was closed before the subject was even open.'' I said, ``I want to ask you four questions about Federal installations, which we have been told by your own people, your own security people, are gravely at risk of terrorist attack, their words, not mine.'' I asked him about them. It was clear he had not been briefed on them. I did not expect him to. He is a busy man.

But we walked out of there after being told by the President that he would veto any additional efforts to provide funds for homeland security. Despite that fact, we went back up to Capitol Hill and eventually added more than $2 billion to the President's request, and he signed the bill.

The following year, the President held a press conference bragging about the fact that the Customs agency had this new port security arrangement, new inspection of cargo coming into this country, and he had a press conference bragging about it, and then pocket vetoed the money to make it happen. I felt that that was enough to give hypocrisy a bad name.

So that is very basically the early history of what the President's record is in terms of resisting bipartisan efforts to strengthen homeland security funding.

I remember going out to the CIA and watching in real-time as we could see what the Predators flying over in Afghanistan were seeing when they were looking for bin Laden, and I know what the CIA people thought about the President's decision to divert a significant portion of our resources from the job of nailing bin Laden to preparing for the war in Iraq. They were not very happy about it, and we were not either.

Since that time, on seven different occasions on this side of the aisle, we have tried to add funding to the President's budget for homeland security and to the committee budget.

I want to make clear I think the subcommittee has done the best it could, given the allocation that it was given under the Republican budget; but that does not mean that the allocation was adequate. The record is clear that the President on numerous occasions offered inadequate budgets which had to be augmented by this committee on a bipartisan basis.

So I think it comes with considerable ill grace and with considerable reinventing of history for the President to suggest that there is any difference of opinion between the two parties with respect to our dedication to protecting the homeland. He knows it is not so, but campaign rhetoric is getting in the

way of the facts as far as he is concerned.

So I just want to make the point that I do not question the President's patriotism because he chose to put tax cuts as a higher priority than even additional funding for homeland security. That is a judgment he made, and that is a judgment he will have to defend. I do not question his patriotism. I question his judgment. I think that it comes with considerably ill grace from a man who has the track record of refusing efforts of this Congress to strengthen homeland security on various occasions, to have that man question anybody else's dedication to this country, question anybody else's dedication to defending this country.

The record does not bear out his claims, and I think if you check the record, you will find out that every statement I have made today is fully true and accurate.

With that, I thank the gentleman for the time.

Mr. Speaker, on the vote on H.R. 5441, the voting bells in my office malfunctioned, did not go off, causing me to miss the vote.

I would have voted ``aye.''

``Whatever you do for the least of your brothers, you do unto me.'' That is what someone who was fairly important in the history of the world told us a long time ago.

But what has the Congress done for the least of our brothers and sisters? It is an indication of the values of those on the majority side of the aisle when they brag about the fact that they held the minimum wage increase hostage to their determination to give away $289 billion to the wealthiest 7,500 people in this country every year. Their deal was ``we ain't going to do nothing for the little people of this economy unless you first provide even more money in the pockets of the very wealthiest people in this country.''

I defy you to show me two farms in any congressional district in the country that would pay the estate tax under the alternative that the Democrats proposed. You may not remember what the numbers were, but I do.

No. You have plenty of time.

Regular order. If you are going to manage a bill, you need to understand the rules of this House.

No, I would not. I told you I would not. You have got half- an-hour. I have 3 minutes. Why should I yield to you?

No, I will not.

You can answer on your time. I am answering you on my time. You answer on your time. Now, I would appreciate no further interference from the gentleman.

The gentleman wants to brag about the prescription drug proposal in the homeland security bill. The majority party nailed into that prescription drug bill last year a prohibition against the Federal Government negotiating for lower prices. So where did the seniors have to go? Wal-Mart finally announced they are going to provide lower drug prices.

I suggested in the conference in the Homeland Security bill that we add language to that bill which says notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall enter into a contract immediately with Wal-Mart to negotiate on behalf of the United States Government with drug manufacturers and suppliers regarding prices to be charged for prescription drugs under Medicare Part D.

It is a sorry day when the majority party stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the pharmaceutical industry against the recipients under Medicare Part D, labeled ``part dumb'' by a lot of the seniors in my district. And it is a sorry day, it is a sorry day, when we have to rely on Wal- Mart in order to do what the public representatives of this Congress ought to do, which is to allow our own government to negotiate for lower prices, rather than relying on this Rube Goldberg monument that makes people go to Canada in order to get some mercy in terms of drug prices.

They want to freeze the minimum wage. They freeze the minimum wage. It doesn't surprise me. The minimum wage is frozen almost as cold as their hearts.

Let me say to the gentleman, I am not angry at all to Wal- Mart for responding to a public need. I congratulate them for it. The shame is the fact that you and the majority folks in this House would not meet your responsibilities to have the government negotiate to save money for everybody.

I don't even understand what the gentleman is talking about.

No, I did not. I took great umbrage at you interrupting me.

I told you I would not yield.

You don't like the answer.

Mr. Speaker, we have heard a lot of talk on this House floor about values. I would suggest that how we spend our time reveals our values in many ways. This Republican-controlled Congress was able to take the time to debate the fate of horses. They were able to take the time to provide $290 billion in tax relief for 7,500 of the richest people in the country each year.

They were able to take the time to provide new tax breaks for oil companies. But there was no time, apparently, for providing comprehensive health care reform, and there was certainly no time, apparently, to provide an increase in the minimum wage, which has been frozen for 9 years.

The CEOs from your wealthiest corporations in this country earn more in 4 hours than a minimum wage worker earns in an entire year. And yet the Republican majority found the time to make life easier for the most well-off 1 percent of people in this country, but no time at all to help those who need it most. What kind of values does that represent?

Mr. Speaker, this rule will allow the House to pass the Department of Defense appropriation bill for the year; and, in addition, it will allow the Congress to move forward with a $70 billion partial payment on the cost of funding the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I would much prefer that we would be paying for the entire year, rather than continuing to see this war financed on the installment plan. We are now reaching almost $500 billion that has been expended on this endeavor, and I think it would be helpful to the American people if they could see the full cost each year, rather than having it dribbed and drabbed out month by month in order to hide the full impact of the cost. This rule also allows the House to consider the continuing resolution for the remainder of the budget.

We will, when the House leaves this week, have passed only two appropriation bills, the defense bill and the homeland security bill. That means the entire domestic portion of the budget plus the bills to finance foreign operations and State Department operations will be delayed until after the election, well into the fiscal year.

Now, the majority leader in the Senate, Senator Frist, I note yesterday objected to the ``obstructive tactics'' of the Democratic minority on appropriation bills. I want to point out no one in this House is going to be able to point to a single instance in which the minority party has delayed consideration of any appropriation bill. In fact, we can point to at least 16 occasions on which the minority accelerated or helped to move forward the appropriation bills. That does not mean we always voted for them. We voted for some and against others. But I made the point at the beginning of the year that we were going to cooperate fully procedurally because at the end of the year I wanted people to understand that if these bills were not passed that the responsibility would lie with the majority party. And it has.

Now the responsibility does not lie with the majority appropriators. The problem is that this House started out the year with the majority party leadership allowing the strong right wing of their caucus to dictate the content of the budget resolution, and that budget resolution was incredibly unrealistic.

Now, as a result, we find the Senate counterparts of our friends on the majority side of the aisle who are reluctant to go on record endorsing many of the actions that were required by that budget resolution in the appropriations process. And so they prefer to push it past the election so that there will be no accountability for most of the actions taken by Congress on the domestic portion of the budget.

There will be no final accountability with respect to the number of research grants that are cut from NIH below the base 3 years ago. There will be no accountability for the fact that No Child Left Behind education funds are short-sheeted by over $1 billion. There will be no accountability for thousands of other decisions made in the domestic budget, because all of those final decisions have been postponed until after the election when you can then bring bills up for a vote without having any political consequence. I think that is unfortunate, and I would simply say that this demonstrates what happens when the priority of the majority party is simply to deliver king-size tax cuts to persons making over a million bucks a year.

The minority party throughout has tried to show that we could meet our responsibilities in education, in health care, in science, in agriculture, and in other areas by having a very modest cutback in the size of tax cuts that are aimed at those folks who are in the top 1 percent of earners in this country, in fact, even better than the top 1 percent, those who make $1 million or

more a year. And I would venture to say that I think if you asked most of those people they would say ``We don't need a tax cut quite that large as long as you are taking care of the middle-class folks. Instead, use that money to meet these responsibilities.''

Unfortunately, the Congress has chosen not to do that. So, once again, we have to finance the entire domestic portion of the budget on a continuing resolution, hiding until after the election all the multiple decisions that I thought we were so eager to make when we ran for election 2 years ago.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

I thank my friend, and I would just like to point out, is it not true, however, that we were told by the intelligence community that even if Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction, that they would most likely use them only if we attacked?

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman.

Mr. Speaker, this bill represents the death of lobby reform. Over the last year, as we all know, this House has received a black eye because of the DeLay scandal, stories about lobbyists paying for golf trips to Scotland, the Cunningham blatant bribery case, the Abramoff scandal, and we have been awash in talk of reform. But comprehensive reform packages have not been allowed to come to this floor. We have not been allowed by the majority to have votes on them.

But now, 7 weeks before the election, we get a chance to see that the majority has labored long and produced a mouse, or a fig leaf at best.

My old friend, Archie the Cockroach, said once, ``The trouble with most people is that they lose their sense of proportion; of what use is it for a queen bee to fall in love with a bull?'' Think about it a minute.

The problem with this bill is that there is a huge problem and this bill proposes a minuscule solution. The answer of the majority leadership is to require a list of what they call earmarks. But this package is more notable for what it does not include than it is for what it does include.

I would call it the 1 percent solution.

Now, my personal anger about earmarks I think is well known in this body. The last time I chaired the Appropriations Committee there was not a single earmark in the Labor-H appropriation bill. Today there are over 1,200. And 3 years ago the Labor-H Subcommittee used the earmarks as blackmail by threatening to cut off earmarks for any Member who refused to vote for an inadequate bill. I did not especially like that and I made that quite clear. But the point is that the problem is not earmarks. It is the abuse of the earmark process.

This proposal does nothing to ensure institutional integrity. It is consumer fraud masquerading as earmark reform. Look at what it does not cover: It applies only to committee reported bills. It exempts managers' amendments. That means the famous ``Bridge to Nowhere'' would be exempted from this bill. On tax earmarks this bill actually makes the existing law worse. Right now a tax earmark is defined as a special treatment for 100 or fewer persons. This bill says the only time that it is going to be counted as a tax earmark is if it affects one entity. That means you can have a huge tax break for two multinational oil companies and it isn't even covered in this package.

In the 1986 tax bill, there were 340 separate transition rules costing over $10 billion. There were special tax breaks for two Chrysler plants. This bill wouldn't cover it. The only way that that would be exposed under this bill is if there had only been one tax break for one of those Chrysler plants.

The tax bill that passed last year that provided special treatment for ceiling fan imports or for U.S. horse and dog racing or Hollywood studios that produce the movies in the Gulf, all exempt under this bill.

There were 190 special provisions in the Pension Protection Act of 2000, costing $180 million in taxpayers' money--virtually all of them would be exempt under this proposition.

If you want to save taxpayers' dollars, rather than continuing this silly game of Trivial Pursuit, what you would do is to require that reconciliation bills can be used only to reduce the deficit rather than increase it as the majority party has cynically used the reconciliation process the last 4 years. This bill, indeed, is Trivial Pursuit.

I don't care if you list the Members who sponsor earmarks. I put out press releases on every one of them. I attended a ceremony last week where we had a groundbreaking for an expansion of the Mel Laird Medical Center in my district. I got that earmark. I am proud of it, and I am proud to stand for it. The problem is what this package doesn't contain.

This is a joke. It is a fraud. It plays Trivial Pursuit. It focuses on the minutiae instead of the big problems. That should not be surprising given the track record of the majority party in this House. But this House ought to be able to do better.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

I thank you. Will you tell me how this is going to apply to the defense appropriations bill that will be coming back to us this year from conference?

So none of the earmarks presently in the bill will be required?

So none of the Senate earmarks will be included; the Senate will continue to be anonymous?

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time.

I would simply point out under this provision, when the defense appropriations bill comes back from the Senate, not a single Senate earmark will be listed, and in the future only House earmarks will be listed. The Senate earmarks will not be listed.

I would also point out that if you read the language of this resolution, it makes quite clear that the tax provisions covered by this bill are, in fact, fewer than under existing law and also that same fact applies to trade preferences.

Trade bills are hard enough to pass now. So what happens is they slip in all kinds of special deals for special commodities in order to get 218 votes.

This bill will not lay a glove on them, and for that matter, it will not lay a glove on a single appropriations earmark. It doesn't do anything to any earmark in the House or the Senate. This bill is a fraud.

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the proposition that it makes no sense to allow tribes to establish gambling casinos in territories that have no relationship to the tribe. But, I am voting against this bill because I believe that people who disagree with me ought to have the right to offer an amendment--for example, those who want to limit Indian tribes' ability to establish off-reservation casinos but would make an exception if the effort is supported by local officials--county board, city council, mayor--or if it is approved by referendum. But, this bill is arrogantly presented in a take it or leave it fashion which would not allow amendments to accomplish that.

Without amendments such as that, this bill is going nowhere. It is simply a cynical effort by the Committee Chairman and the House Republican leadership to pose for political holy pictures by pretending that they are doing something by pushing a bill that is going nowhere.

Even though I am troubled by some provisions of the bill, I could vote for it

after the House has had an opportunity to consider legitimate amendments to it. But, I will not accept something that is arbitrarily presented on a take it or leave it basis.

One problem in dealing with this issue is that people on both sides of the question have abused the process. Some tribes have abused existing law and have established casinos in territory totally unrelated to their own territorial base and have attempted to run roughshod over local officials in the process. And, on the other side, the committee and the House leadership have abused the process by refusing to allow amendments to the bill.

If this bill were the product of negotiations, I could even accept that. But, the committee has chosen to arbitrarily bring this take it or leave it proposal to the House floor and has not even had the courtesy to provide a committee report to explain and help analyze the bill.

Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, I think especially in the closing days of the session, that Members ought to have an understanding of what is going on, even though this is martial law time.

So I would ask if the gentleman would please explain to the House what this action would do.

Mr. Speaker, continuing under my reservation, could I ask the gentleman, has the administration given us any indication of where they are likely to take funds from in order to accomplish this?

Mr. Speaker, continuing under my reservation, I would hope that the administration would let the Congress know as quickly as possible where it is planning to take funds from, so that if the Congress has any concerns, we might express those concerns before we are facing a fait accompli.

Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation.

Mr. Chairman, I have a preferential motion at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I regret very much that this legislation is before us this afternoon. In my view, this is a badly conceived and most especially a badly timed action which will weaken the nonproliferation regime over the long haul and, in the end, wind up encouraging the production of more nuclear weapons by Pakistan, China and India.

It also is, in my view, spectacularly badly timed because it will give Iran a greater excuse, as if they needed any, but it will give Iran a greater excuse than they now have to continue to proceed with their own nuclear program. I believe it is a profound mistake.

I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for the time.

Madam Speaker, for 9 years there has been no increase in the minimum wage. Meanwhile, CEOs of the largest corporations in this country have seen their pay rise to record heights, almost 200 times the size of the paycheck for an average worker in this country.

For the last month, we on this side of the aisle have been trying to get the majority party to allow for a simple, straight up or down vote on increasing the minimum wage. We tried over a month ago to attach it to the appropriations bill for the Department of Labor, and we succeeded. When we did, the majority party decided they would not allow that bill to come forward because they didn't like the results.

We are now told, if you read Congress Daily put out by the National Journal, we are now told that the Speaker of the House, Mr. Hastert, is against the minimum wage increase; we are told that the Majority Leader of the House, Mr. Boehner, is against the minimum wage increase. But they don't want to evidently face this issue up or down.

So the article in CQ this morning says, ``It is unlikely that GOP leaders would allow an up-or-down vote on a wage increase. Rather GOP aides say that if they craft a bill, it would likely include so-called sweeteners.''

Madam Speaker, I am proud of the fact that on this side of the aisle, our Members do not have to be maneuvered and cajoled and enticed into voting for a minimum wage increase. I am pleased by the fact that on this side of the aisle, Members do not need sweeteners in order to do what is right on this issue.

So we are trying today to attach the minimum wage increase to this bill. There are those on the other side of the aisle who will say that is inappropriate. Well, the previous speaker just recited part of the Pledge of Allegiance. When we stand on this House floor every day and take that pledge, we pledge to provide liberty and justice for all; not for most, not just for CEOs, not just to the wealthiest 1 percent of people in this country, but for all.

This Congress has provided $50 billion in tax cuts this year for people who make $1 million or more a year, and yet it is steadfastly refusing, on the direction of the top Republican leadership of this House, it is steadfastly refusing to do anything at all on the wage front for people who live life on the underside.

I think it is disgraceful for a Member of Congress, or for this Congress, to allow a pay raise for Members of Congress to go through at the same time that they are trying to block an increase in the minimum wage for the poorest people among us.

We have 15 weeks between now and the election. Do you realize, Madam Speaker, that we are going to spend 4 of those weeks in town here, and 11 weeks we are going to be spending back home campaigning for reelection? Meanwhile we will have taken no action to provide a Manhattan-like project on the energy front so that we are not stuck with $3 and $4 gasoline prices.

This Congress will have taken no action to provide health care for every child in this country. It will have taken no action to guarantee that we provide as much protection for the average worker in a company as we do for the board of directors and the CEO if that company goes bankrupt. We are taking no action to make college more affordable for every family in this country. We are not doing any of that.

Cannot we at least provide a minimal increase in the minimum wage for people who are living on life's edge? That is what we are asking you to do. I am amazed that we are told that we cannot do it.

Oh, you have time to strip a court from jurisdiction, just like you had time to call the Congress back to stick your nose in the family affairs of the Terry Schiavo family, but you do not have time and you do not have the will to provide some decent economic help to people who need it more than virtually anybody else in this society.

Shame on every one of you who will not move on this issue.