Floor Statements

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt).

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

Mr. Speaker, if I can borrow this Republican mike, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson- Lee).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 10 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I intend to vote for this piece of legislation because I think we do need to distinguish between supporting our troops and supporting the war in Iraq. I continue to believe that the war in Iraq is the dumbest war since the War of 1812; but at the same time, we obviously want our troops to be as well-equipped as is humanly possible, and we hope that this bill will take a decent step in that direction.

Having said that, I want to make three points about my concerns about this bill. Number one, it continues a fiction that this war must be financed through ``emergency spending.'' That is simply a gimmick that allows the entire cost of this war, some $450 billion by the time the defense bill, which is going to be considered by the Appropriations Committee tomorrow, is spent. By that time we will have spent $450 billion, and yet we continue to pretend that it is an unexpected contingency which means that it is handled outside of the normal limits of the budget. That does not fool anybody except the American people, unfortunately; and that is what it is designed to do, to mask the full costs of the war.

Secondly, it is outrageous, in my view, that this Congress eliminated both Senate provisions and the single House provision which made it clear that the Congress did not want in any way to allow the impression to continue to exist that we intend to have a permanent presence in Iraq. The fact is over 70 percent of Iraqis continue to believe, despite the protestations of the President and the Secretary of Defense, they continue to believe that America intends to have a long- term permanent presence in Iraq, and we need to disabuse them of that fact in order to take the target off the backs of our soldiers.

Thirdly, as the gentleman from South Carolina has indicated, we will have spent $450 billion on this war by the end of the year, and yet the Congress is refusing to spend an additional $2.5 billion to provide further strengthening and thickening of our efforts at border security and port security.

This bill has a significant increase in funds for personnel as far as border security is concerned; but it shortchanges the equipment, it shortchanges the aircraft, it shortchanges the facilities, it shortchanges the construction efforts, it shortchanges all of the nonpersonnel items that go into providing solid border security on both the northern and southern borders.

There is no excuse whatsoever for this Congress to be providing over $40 billion in tax cuts to people who make over $1 million a year, while refusing to spend adequate amounts of money to secure our borders both the north and the south.

I want to make one other point.

It infuriates me to hear the White House say we will do whatever is necessary to secure the borders of the United States at the same time that the President has consistently refused to support adequate appropriations to do just that.

And I want to tell, I want to close by telling a story that I have told many times because I think the American people need to know about it.

Right after 9/11, when this Capitol Hill was hit by anthrax, this committee was then chaired by the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), and when we could not get into our offices, I called Bill and I said, Bill, as long as we cannot do anything useful in our office, why do we not consult each of the security agencies of our government to see what they think we need on an emergency basis to deal with homeland security problems. We talked to the CIA, the FBI, the CDC, the NSA, you name it; and we got from each of them their estimate of what we needed to provide immediately to beef up our homeland security, border security, and port security operations.

We then went down to the White House to talk to the President. The President came in. We were seated around the table. Before we could say a word, he said, well, I understand some of you want to spend more money than I do on homeland security. I just want you to know, if you appropriate $1 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.

So Senator Byrd made clear what he thought of that attitude. Senator Stevens pointed out to the President that we had already agreed that if there was any item on the list that the President did not want we would automatically strike it.

And then finally it came my turn to speak, and I said to the President, Mr. President, I have been coming down here for over 30 years. This is the first time any President has ever told me his mind was closed before the subject was even open, and I want you to know since you are being hard nosed on the subject, I am going to be too. I asked him four questions about Federal installations that we had been told by his own security people were gravely at risk of terrorist attack, their words not mine, and I asked the President if he had been briefed; if he had, I wanted to know what he had been told because I know what I had been told and it scared the dickens out of me. And to put it kindly, if he had been briefed, he gave no evidence thereof. I did not expect him to. He is a busy man, but I did expect him to have an open mind.

And we walked out of that room after the President said that, without listening to a single argument, he would veto any money we added for homeland security, and that has been the case ever since.

Each year, whatever strengthening we have had on the border, of ports has come at the insistence of the Congress of the United States, overcoming the objections of the President; and we have tried on both sides of the aisle from time to time, we have tried to add more money than the President asked for for border security and for port security.

This is just the latest chapter in the efforts of some Members of Congress to almost get a double hernia trying to do enough heavy lifting in order to get sufficient money into this budget so we do have a secure border on the south

and a secure border on the north, and we still are a long way from being there.

So while I will vote for this bill, I regret very much that it is woefully short in terms of the funding that it needs to truly provide full security on either border. I hope this country does not some day pay a very high price for that, but I worry each day that it will.

With that, I would ask the gentleman if he has any more speakers. If not, I am prepared to yield back.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and I yield back my time.

Mr. Speaker, some of the things that happen in this place are enough to give hypocrisy a bad name. Example: I got a letter just 3 days ago from about 30 Republican Members of the House demanding that we add funding back for the Corporation For Public Broadcasting.

All but one of those Republican Members voted for a budget resolution that makes it impossible for us to do what they ask us to do in that letter. That is what I call posing for political holy pictures in the most cynical way.

Mr. Speaker, the second thing I would say is for any Member to come to the floor and ask that we fully fund programs like the Byrne Grant or any other grant, I would simply say this: Those who voted against the budget resolution have a perfect right to do that. Those who voted for the budget resolution need to simply look in the mirror to see why we do not have the money to do what they have just come to the floor and asked us to do.

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

Mr. Chairman, I want to put in perspective what this amendment is trying to do. As I understand the situation, this bill raises the eradication funds in Colombia by $30 million. It also cuts $103 million from refugees.

All Mr. McGovern is trying to do is to take that $30 million increase that the committee has provided for eradication in Colombia and move it back into an account that has already been cut by almost three times as much as the amount of money he is trying to put back in the refugee account.

I remember when Bill Lehman from Florida used to take this floor every year. There was no better human being I have ever met in this place than Bill Lehman, and he used to routinely remind us that there is no more miserable person in the world than a refugee. They live in often abominable conditions, and they have nowhere to turn.

We have Members in this House who will engage in all kinds of meaningless gestures when it comes to Darfur. They will sign onto a letter to the President, and they will sign onto a bill that they know is going nowhere, and then they will put out their press releases posing for political holy pictures on how much they care about refugees and how much they care about Darfur. And yet what they do doesn't produce one plugged nickel.

If you want to do something real for those wretched creatures, you will do what Mr. McGovern is trying to do: You will add this tiny little dollop of money back to the refugee account.

I mean, if you want a perfect example of money that isn't working, it's money that is spent on eradication.

I remember when we had a huge fight under the Reagan administration about how we were going to pull money into eradication and interdiction. And then I had one of the people in charge of the program come to me silently and say, ``Don't believe what we are saying. We only interdict 2 percent of the drugs.''

I thought conservatives routinely gave liberals lectures about looking at the effectiveness of programs. Well, I can tell you right now, we are not being effective when you have to cut half the food rations for refugees in Darfur. We are not being very effective in meeting our obligations there.

So I would suggest if anybody thinks we are harming the program in Colombia, all we are doing is saying return that budget request to the same level that was requested by that well-known liberal leftist, George W. Bush. That is all this amendment is doing. I would urge its adoption.

I thank the gentleman, and he is my good friend. But the fact is that the refugee count is being cut.

I understand you are saying it is in a different pocket, but the overall account is being cut, right?

This House thought of it yesterday that we wouldn't do anything about them, didn't they? This House denied the funds for fixing that problem yesterday, didn't they?

I thank the gentleman. I would simply say the fact is, you don't just have to look at what this bill does today on this amendment. You have to look at the whole and what it did yesterday on the Egypt amendment, coupled with what it is doing here today, and that means we have shortchanged those refugees.

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

I know people want to get out of here. This is my wedding anniversary; I do, too. This will take just a moment. Yes, my wife is a saint. Yes.

I know people want to catch their airplanes. But the gentleman from Arizona has served 22 years in this House, and this is the last time that he will be handling a bill on the floor of the House, and I think that we owe him to take note of that fact.

Mr. Chairman, for 10 years I chaired this subcommittee, and I know how easy it is to demagogue this subcommittee and the bill that it handles. And on behalf of every Member on both sides of the aisle, I want to tell the gentleman that he has done honor to this House and to each and every Member, because at every moment that I can recall, he has dealt with the subject matter at hand on the basis of substance, not politics; he has brought an intellectual quality to his argument that is very seldom matched. We don't always agree on everything, as was evidenced by the debate yesterday; but as Will Rogers said, when two people agree on everything, one of them is unnecessary.

But I just want to say, Jim, good luck in whatever you do, and we appreciate what you have done for the House and for the country and for the world in the way you have handled this bill.

Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey).

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

Mr. Chairman, I have made this point several times before during the appropriations cycle, and I want to put Members on notice one more time. I think the record is pretty clear that the minority has cooperated at every step of the way on every appropriation bill before this House so far this year. We have facilitated time agreements, we have persuaded our own Members to stifle themselves and reduce the amount of time they take on amendments, we have asked numerous people not to introduce duplicative amendments, and we have, in general, worked as a willing partner with the majority to see to it that this House proceeds in an orderly fashion.

I have had only one requirement. I do not believe that major issues affecting the expenditure of taxpayers' dollars should be decided in the dead of night, and I do not believe that this House has any business voting on these major issues at 11, 12, or 1 o'clock in the morning. It is clear to me that that is what is going to happen on this bill.

I intend to support this bill, unless two amendments that are pending do not pass. But if that happens, I intend to support this bill. But I do not believe that it serves the interests of this country to be passing this legislation or dealing with major amendments thereto in the midnight hours.

So I want to put every Member on notice. I am perfectly willing to agree to a unanimous consent agreement that enables us to get a substantial way through the consideration of this bill. I would love to see it finished tonight. If it can, by a reasonable hour, no one will be happier than I. But I do not intend to cooperate in a process which pushes all of these votes into 11, 12 or 1 o'clock votes.

We saw that on prescription drugs, we saw that on major tax bills, we have seen that on several appropriation bills last year, and I do not intend to allow that to continue without doing everything I can to prevent it. We can either proceed in an orderly fashion, in a way which is reflective positively on what is supposed to be the world's greatest deliberative body, or we can run a death march where we hide most of our major actions after midnight.

I don't intend to participate in the latter. I will be happier to cooperate in the former.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. Chairman, I recognize that there are some problems associated with this amendment. And if it were adopted, I think there would have to be substantial rejiggering of the allocation to the subcommittee. But I just want to make an observation, nonetheless.

With the passage of the defense appropriations bill, we will have spent $450 billion on the dumbest war since the War of 1812, that war being our involvement in Iraq.

The conferees on the supplemental two nights ago, despite the fact that there were two Senate votes and one House vote which put into that bill a declaration that the Congress was in opposition to creating permanent bases in Iraq, despite that fact, the conferees dropped all three of those.

So we are now in the position where the Congress of the United States will not even take a position that we don't want permanent bases in Iraq. Now, I know there are some people in this Chamber who don't want us to pull out immediately. There are a lot of people who don't want us to do that. But, certainly, the only other option isn't to stay there forever, but that is what is being implied if we accept these permanent bases in Iraq.

Imagine how our influence in the world would be transformed. Right now, since our invasion of Iraq, we are at an all time low in terms of American popularity in every region of the world. Imagine how our popularity would be transformed if we said that, instead of spending $450 billion on a stupid war, imagine how the world would look at us if instead we said we were going to take 1/10 that amount and use it to make certain that every single one of God's creatures who we could reach in the next 10 years would finally have access to water that doesn't make them sick and doesn't make a lot of their kids die. America would be transformed, at least our image would be transformed, into actually living up to our Judeo-Christian principles. Wouldn't that be a shocker?

So I recognize that there are technical problems associated with the gentleman's amendment. But just because my heart moves me on that subject, I am going to vote for it. And if it means that somebody somewhere is not going to get all the weapons they have been planning on, isn't that too bad.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I am offering this amendment on behalf of myself, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde), the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos), and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Al Green).

For some time, Mr. Chairman, I have been troubled by the repression of political freedom in Egypt and the lack of democratic reform. But in light of the historical role that Egypt has played in the region and the continuing stability that Egypt brings to an increasingly troubled region, I have appealed for patience and moderation in efforts to alter Egypt's aid package.

I chaired this subcommittee for 10 years, and during that time I was responsible for providing over $20 billion in military and economic aid to Egypt. In the years since, I have helped to fend off amendments that sought to cut or restrict aid to Egypt.

Last year, during the Full Committee consideration of the bill, I offered an amendment that earmarked some of Egypt's economic aid for democracy purposes, a move that allowed Congress to fend off yet another attempt to restrict the military aid. But in offering that amendment, I gave notice to the government of Egypt that my patience, and the patience of the American people, was wearing thin, and I hoped and expected that the government of Egypt would get the hint and make some moves to loosen its grip on political freedom and democratic reforms.

Instead, I am sad to say, we have gotten backsliding on municipal elections, an extension of emergency laws, repression of judicial freedoms and a crackdown on demonstrations and rallies.

Most recently, we have seen the appellate court in Egypt reject the appeal of Ayman Nour, a political opponent of President Mubarak who was conveniently arrested just prior to last year's presidential elections.

Hundreds of demonstrators have been arrested and jailed in recent weeks, many of them young kids in their teens and 20s who have been beaten and bullied. Reporters have been roughed up and intimidated.

Just this week, the government of Egypt suspended the work of the International Republican Institute in Egypt after the IRI country director criticized in an interview the pace of reform as being too slow.

Now, I am not a naive peddler of global democracy. I am not preaching that we hold elections all across the Middle East and call it a day. I understand that the very free and fair elections in the West Bank in Gaza have resulted in a disastrous consequence for the peace process through the election of Hamas.

But I do fear that Egypt is heading toward a precipice. What is happening in Egypt, Mr. Chairman, is that the government is systematically fencing in and squeezing out its moderate opposition. And if they continue to do that, they are going to wind up with the only viable opposition being the Muslim Brotherhood, the most radical of the forces in the country. That will be disastrous for Mr. Mubarak. It will be disastrous for his government. It will disastrous for the American people, and it will be disastrous for the entire region.

I consider myself a lifelong friend of Egypt, and I have taken a lot of heat on this floor through the years for taking a number of actions that supported Egypt and the rest of the Arab world, sometimes even when I differed with my friends who were supporting various provisions for Israel.

But it seems to me that if you are a friend of Egypt, you will try to make them understand that they are endangering their ability to have a peaceful transfer of power when Mr. Mubarak leaves office.

Now, I have met Mr. Mubarak's son. I understand that Mr. Mubarak would like to see his son succeed him. I am very impressed by his son. I happen to think he would probably be a good leader. But he is not going to get the chance for very long if the moderate opposition in that country is systematically jailed, beaten up and wiped out, because then you will have only the most radical extreme elements left.

So what we are doing in this amendment is to cut $100 million out of the Economic Support Fund, and we are moving 50 million of that to help refugees in the Sudan, and we are moving another 50 million of it to provide increased funding for the President's HIV/AIDS initiative. I am not doing this out of anger at Egypt. I am doing this out of a deep and abiding concern for the future of that country.

I respect Egypt. I think the people of Egypt are a wonderful people. And I think that Mr. Mubarak has done many constructive things that have been in the interest of peace in the region and have helped promote our own national interests as well.

But I am speaking as a friend, and I am saying this Congress has an obligation to recognize the problem and to act before it is too late to salvage the situation.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Last year, I said virtually everything that my good friend is now saying today. The problem is that in the last year they have jailed their main opponents, they have beaten up people who are defending an independent judiciary, they have imposed another round of martial law, and they have continued the very things that are totally opposed to our values.

Now, to me the issue is not whether Egypt is a good friend and a good ally. They obviously are. The question is; Are they going to be around to continue to be that. If they do not change the way they are behaving, they are not going to be succeeded by a moderate government. They are systematically alienating every moderate group in that society, and you are going to wind up with the Muslim Brotherhood running that country unless they wake up before it is too late.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

I thank the gentleman. We were just told this amendment goes too far. The fact is the State Department made phone calls to a number of people here yesterday indicating they would be willing to support this amendment. The only difference was that they wanted $50 million going to added democratization programs rather than going to AIDS. That was the only difference, because the State Department is getting fed up with the conduct that Egypt is demonstrating, and the State Department recognizes that this is a very dangerous slippery slope the Egyptian government is on.

So some may think this amendment goes far, but based on these conversation yesterday, the State Department is not one of them.

I thank the gentleman. Someone on the other side just said ``What will the headline be tomorrow?''; that it will be that there is a slap in the face of the government. That is the point. That is the point.

Our long-term security is tied not just to Mr. Mubarak, but whoever comes after him. And what we are trying to do is to send a message to all levels in Egyptian society that we stand for what we say we stand for, which is a modicum of decency in dealing with your political opponents, absent other trappings of democracy.

And it is important that a lot of people in Egypt besides Mr. Mubarak understand that we are serious about our democratic values, that we are serious about assuming that the country that is more identified with us than any other Arab country, that it is important that they reflect certain norms of decency with respect to the way they treat their population and treat their political opponents.

And it is in the interest of the United States to make sure that every citizen of Egypt understands that, because otherwise, we allow other groups, like the Muslim Brotherhood, to paint caricatures of the United States, which will do us no good in the long run.

I thank the gentleman for the time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, my views on this bill are well known, as well as the provisions in it. I think the report speaks for itself.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, the President said in December of 2004 that the intelligence bill, ``took an important step in strengthening our immigration laws by, among other items, increasing the number of Border Patrol agent.'' Yet neither the Congress nor this administration has provided the funding for those increased agents.

The committee bill falls short in meeting our border security responsibilities. The committee bill cuts 300 agents from the Bush Border Patrol agent request. It is 1,800 agents short of 4,000 additional Border Patrol agents called for in the Intelligence Reform Act. The committee bill cuts 1,846 detention beds from the Bush request. That is 9,000 detention beds short of the bed space called for in the Intelligence Reform.

My amendment would provide an additional $2.1 billion to increase border enforcement. It would fund an additional 1,800 border patrol agents above

the committee bill and meet the Intelligence Reform Act requirements.

It would also fund an additional 9,000 detention beds above the committee bill and meet the Intelligence Reform Act requirements on that front. The detention bed space level funded by my amendment would meet the 34,653 detention bed level recommended by the DHS Inspector General as necessary to detain all criminal aliens and aliens from special interest countries.

My amendment would further increase our border detection capacities by providing funding for additional air patrols and operating hours, by cutting in half the number of unfunded radiation portal monitors, and by replacing old Border Patrol vehicles and expanding border facilities.

It would also provide for the port security grant program at the $400 million level passed by the House in the Safe Port Act 2 weeks ago. The committee bill provides only $200 million for those grants, and it contains a number of other increases.

Despite the lessons from Hurricane Katrina, the committee bill cuts funding for programs geared to improve the preparedness of local police, fire departments, and emergency responders by $186 million, or almost 6 percent, from 2006. My amendment would provide additional funding for State emergency managers, for firefighters and for updating flood maps in critical, high-risk areas more quickly.

It would also provide an additional $750 million for urban areas and State homeland security grants so that all States and urban areas would receive at least as much as they received in 2005 or 2006, whichever is the highest. That would mean, for instance, that New York would receive almost $115 million more than it received in the recent DHS grant announcement. It would mean that Washington, D.C., would receive $40 million more than it received in the recent grant announcement.

This amendment would also provide more funding for aviation explosive detection for air cargo and for passenger and carry-on bags.

The amendment is fiscally responsible. It would offset the $4.5 billion in additional funding by capping the tax cut that people making over $1 million this year would receive at $102,400 instead of $114,200.

I would urge the chairman to withdraw his point of order against the amendment so that the House could have an opportunity to meet these essential national obligations.

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

Point of Order

Mr. Chairman, the purpose of this amendment is to meet critical national responsibilities that the President of the United States has already indicated we should be meeting and that this Congress has indicated on previous occasions that we should be meeting.

Unfortunately, because of the rules under which the House is operating, the gentleman is technically correct. The House could vote on this amendment if the House Republican leadership saw fit to allow us to do so, but I must say that under the rules that the House is operating under I must reluctantly concede the point of order.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word and yield to the gentlewoman from New York so that the Members might understand what is going to be in the motion to recommit and what will come next.

I yield to the gentlewoman.

Mr. Chairman, let me simply explain that the Lowey motion to recommit will be with instructions to report it back forthwith to the House with an amendment adding an additional $750 million for State and local formula-based grants and high-threat, high-density urban area grants so that no State or urban area receives funding below which it received in 2005 or 2006, whichever is higher, and is offset by a 1.8 percent reduction in the tax reduction resulting from the enactment of Public Laws 107-16, et cetera, for taxpayers with incomes in excess of $1 million for calendar year 2007.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for the time.

Madam Speaker, we have a bill here with which I cannot argue in terms of the allocation of resources within the total dollar amount assigned to the subcommittee, but I can argue with the overall total because I think, despite the fact that the chairman and ranking member have tried as hard as possible to put money where you will get the biggest bang for a buck, the fact is, we

do not have enough bucks in here to get enough of a bang to really protect the country.

We tried to do something about that in committee, and I would like to describe what some of the provisions were that we wanted to change.

We essentially tried to add $3.5 billion in committee for key Homeland Security actions, border protection, harbor protection, port protection and all the rest, and we did it in a fiscally responsible way, because what we suggested was that we simply reduce the amount of the tax cut for persons making over $1 million a year by about $10,000, which would mean that those persons making $1 million, instead of getting on average a $114,000 tax cut this year, would only get a $104,000 tax cut. The poor devils just would have to scrape along on that amount. I think the country needs added homeland security, much more than millionaires need a supersized tax cut.

Let me tell you what some of the items were that we would fund with that money. We wanted to add 1,800 additional Border Patrol agents, and we wanted to add 9,000 additional detention beds. We wanted to provide increased funding to meet all of the Intelligence Reform Act mandates for increased Border Patrol agents, increased immigration investigators and increased detention bed spaces.

We also wanted to increase our border detention capabilities, and we wanted to provide for additional air patrol and operating hours and cut in half the number of unfunded radiation portal monitors. We also wanted to replace older Border Patrol vehicles and expand border facilities.

We wanted to provide additional funding for Customs and Border Protection and the Coast Guard to expand the number of overseas ports that are monitored. We wanted to provide for an updating of flood maps in critical high-risk areas, and so on and so on.

I know there are those in this House on the majority side who say, you should not try to link taxes with spending; those are two separate issues. The fact is that every dollar of tax cuts provided, in tax cuts that the Congress passed just 2 weeks ago, comes at the expense of programs like this, programs to strengthen border security, whether it is on the Mexican or the Canadian border, programs to strengthen our ability of local law enforcement officials to have interoperable equipment so that they are speaking to each other on the same frequency.

I think while a good many Members of this chamber do not like the fact that we keep dredging this up, the fact is, this is the most important priority choice the Congress will make. I really do not believe that the average taxpayer thinks that we should accept less effective immigration enforcement, less effective border control in order to provide another supersized tax cut for people who are already the most well-off people in this society.

I think the country as a whole would be far more strengthened by some of the items that we have talked about here than they would be by such tax cuts, and that is why I will be voting against the previous question on the rule and the rule itself in order to protest the fact that we are not able to actually vote on these specific tradeoffs.

The Budget Act was meant to force Congress to make tradeoffs between spending and revenues. In fact, the way the Budget Act is being managed by the leadership of this House, those tradeoffs are being avoided. We should not do that in what is supposed to be the greatest deliberative legislative body in the world.

Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, I was simply confused by one thing the gentleman said. It was my understanding that the agreement would reflect an understanding that the last vote would begin around 10 o'clock. I thought I heard the gentleman say that, under this motion, the last debate would conclude at 10 o'clock.

I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky.

Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation with the notation to Members it would be helpful if they would get here to the floor so we can dispose of as many amendments tonight as possible so that we have as few amendments as possible left when we return after the recess, because we do have a lot of other bills we need to get done. I thank the gentleman for helping to work this out.

Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Madam Speaker, reserving the right to object, I would simply like to point out that if this unanimous consent agreement is accepted by the House, we are looking at at least 7 hours of time, not counting the votes that will be cast on these amendments, and if every single one of these amendments were pushed to a vote, you would be adding another 3 hours to the debate time.

So I would ask Members to recognize that perhaps it isn't crucial to have the House learn as much as it will learn in a 5-minute discussion on some of these amendments, and I would hope that Members would withhold on some of them so that we can focus on the major matters before the House and not deal with this at some time around midnight.

Madam Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

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

Mr. Chairman, yesterday, we spent an inordinate amount of time focusing on a few relatively tiny earmarks on the agriculture appropriations bill and spent almost no time discussing whether or not that bill was adequate in responding to the needs of rural America. Today, we are going to be debating the shape and nature of some of these individual programs, but we are likely, except for the Visclosky amendment, never likely to really discuss the adequacy of this bill in terms of the challenges that lie before the Nation. So I want to take just a moment to express my regret that the majority felt it necessary to strike the Visclosky amendment on a point of order.

We have been drifting aimlessly on energy policy ever since President Carter left office, as Mr. Visclosky pointed out last night. In a variety of program categories, when we are discussing (energy and conservation research, renewable research, fossil fuel research and energy conservation) we are funding these efforts at levels that range from one-quarter to one-half in real-dollar terms of what we were funding those same efforts when Jimmy Carter was President.

As a result of that two decade or more drift, we as a society today are extremely vulnerable to higher energy prices, and especially higher gas prices. The Visclosky Amendment was an attempt to, at least for a few moments on the debate on this bill, focus on the adequacy of our effort.

No one faults the gentleman from Ohio for the job he has done in allocating what resources are available. But the fact is, if we are really serious, if we were really serious about meeting the flood control needs of the country, if we were really serious about meeting the energy conservation and energy development needs of this country, we would be putting those items first.

We would be putting an extra billion dollars into those items, rather than providing super-sized tax cuts to people who make $1 million or more a year. The Visclosky Amendment would have simply asked that we cut back by $2,000 per taxpayer the size of the tax cuts going to people who make $1 million or more a year.

The tax bill that this House passed 2 weeks ago provided over $40 billion in additional tax cuts to people who make over $1 million a year. We would have simply taken $1 billion of that $40 billion and transferred it from tax cuts for the most privileged among us to investments in flood control, to investments in the kind of energy promises that Mr. Visclosky was talking about today.

It is regrettable that this House does not see fit to put first things first by passing an amendment such as the Visclosky Amendment. I simply wanted to take the time to express that thought.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.

Mr. Speaker, I had originally intended to vote for this bill and for this rule; but the action of the Rules Committee on one item last night has changed all of that, at least for me, and I would like to alert Members of the House as to the reasons why.

In the farm bill that passed several years ago, the expiration date for various programs wound up not being identical; and that meant that the dairy program was hugely at a disadvantage after the expiration of the dairy title of the farm bill. Last year the Congress renewed the dairy section of the bill that related to the milk program, but it contained a budget gimmick which ended the dairy program one month before the end of the fiscal year and one month before the other farm programs in that bill.

As a result, when the next farm program is put together next year, dairy will be at a huge disadvantage because there will be nothing included in the budget baseline for dairy. That will not only be a problem for dairy farmers; that will be a problem for all other farmers, because if in the end the Congress decides under those circumstances to extend the milk program, the funding for that will come out of the hide of each and every other farm program, all because of this 1-month gimmick that we tried to correct in the Appropriations Committee.

Now, the Appropriations Committee adopted an amendment that I offered last week which attempted to correct that problem by simply extending the milk program by 1 month so that it would expire at the same time as the other programs in the farm bill. But now our friends on the authorizing committee have insisted that the Rules Committee not protect that provision from being stricken on a point of order. As a result, if such a motion is made and upheld by the Chair, it will mean that we are going to create the conditions for a billion dollar war between farm groups all over this country. That could easily be avoided by the $40 million provision represented by section 752 of the appropriations bill that will shortly be before us.

That $40 million correction is fully paid for so that at this point there is no budget problem associated with 752. So I would simply want to alert every Member of this House who represents dairy farmers that they will be at a substantial disadvantage in considering the farm bill a year and a half from now if this section 752 of this bill is stricken.

And I want to alert Members who represent other kinds of farmers that lest they think this is only a problem only affecting dairy farmers, I'm sorry, it will affect all farmers because financing for whatever dairy program that eventually emerges from that authorization bill will come out of reductions for other farm programs.

Now, this may not be a big problem for persons who have thousand-cow dairy herds, but it is a huge problem if you represent a district like mine where the average herd is 50 or 60 cows. The extension to the milk program will determine whether or not many of those farmers stay in business. And I would submit that the House would be doing itself a great favor if they could prevail upon our friends on the authorizing committee not to lodge a point of order against this provision in this bill.

There is another provision in this bill which affects an extension of the peanut program for storage. It seems to me that there are good reasons for extending both of those programs. So I would urge any Member of this House who is concerned about being able to pass a decent farm bill down the line to recognize that if this action takes place today, if this action takes place today, anyone who votes for the farm bill, if this is stricken today, anyone who votes for this agriculture appropriations bill will be voting to put dairy farmers at a huge disadvantage a year and a half from now when the reauthorization is considered and they will be inviting a very nasty war between different commodity groups and different regions of the country.

That is what the milk program sought to end 3 years ago when we wanted to end all of these regional fights on dairy, and I would suggest that the House would be ill advised if it produces that result by allowing this provision to be knocked out on a point of order.

So I will be calling for a roll call on the rule to protest the action of the Rules Committee, and I will urge Members from farm country to vote ``no'' on the rule and ``no'' on the bill if that provision is stricken.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I want to renew my comments on something that is likely to happen here later with respect to the dairy program; but before I do that, in the unlikely event that anybody in any of the congressional offices is listening, I hope they understand that there are at least 50 amendments pending to this bill. If we only take 10 minutes on each of those amendments and if we only have votes on about half of them, we will be here until about 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. So I hope that Members will not expect us to have a schedule which allows them to go to supper and allows them to do other work around here and, at the same time, expect the committee to get us out of here before the wee hours of the morning. If all of these amendments are offered, that just isn't going to happen.

Let me say, Mr. Chairman, that I want to once again take note of the

fact that because the Rules Committee chose not to protect a provision in this bill that is very important to small dairy farmers around the country, we face the likelihood that a point of order will be lodged against section 752 of this bill. That section is meant to correct a major flaw in the authorization bill that was amended last year.

Under existing law, supplemental payments to dairy farmers, the so- called MILC program, will expire 1 month before the other major commodities programs expire in the existing farm bill.

What that means in practical terms is that there will be no dairy component in the budget baseline when the next farm bill is considered by the authorizing committee.

If that happens, we are guaranteeing that there will be fewer dollars in the Federal budget that will be flowing to rural America than would otherwise be the case. If people think it is a good idea for rural America to voluntarily relinquish any portion of their share of the Federal budget, then by all means they should be enthusiastic about the point of order.

If they do not, then I think they ought to ask the authorizing committee chairman not to make that point of order. I would point out that the provision in this bill which extends that MILC program for 1 month so that we can correct that budget baseline problem. I should point out that that provision is supported by the Midwest Dairy Coalition, the Northeast Dairy Producers, including Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont. It is supported by the New York Farm Bureau, by the National Farmers Union, by the Wisconsin Farm Bureau, and by a good many other farmers around the country.

Mr. Chairman, I would simply say that if that point of order is lodged, and if this bill therefore does not carry that correcting provision, it will not just be dairy farmers who are hurt, it will also mean that if a dairy program is continued, financing for that program will have to come out of the base for each of the other farm groups.

That is a great recipe for having a regional war between different farm groups, and it is a great recipe for having a war between various commodity groups in the agriculture community. So I would urge the majority party leadership to prevail upon the chairman of the Agriculture Committee not to make that point of order, because, if he does, we are not going to be able to fix this problem and dairy farmers are going to be at a huge disadvantage when the next farm bill is written.

I thank the gentleman for yielding. Let me simply say that I appreciate his comments, especially in light of the fact that last year in the conference on this bill after the conference was gaveled to a close, the conference committee then made arbitrary and anonymous changes in the definition of organic foods without a vote of the conference. So it seems to me that the gentleman is correct that we need to be vigilant in terms of who is trying to manipulate their definition of what represents a high organic standard.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

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

Mr. Chairman, I simply want to express my chagrin at the fact that the chairman of the authorizing committee has exercised a point of order against the provision in the appropriation bill, section 752, which would have corrected a gross shortcoming in the dairy program.

The fact is that with the language in the appropriation bill being stricken, we will now face the situation under which dairy will be at a distinct disadvantage when the farm bill is renewed in 2007 because the authorization committee arranged in previous legislation to see to it that the milk program expired one month before the end of the fiscal year. What that means is that evidently the Agriculture Committee majority desires to see the supplemental milk payment program die.

I hope that every small dairy farmer in America takes note of that fact. It is a pretty clear indication of whose side people are on. And I simply want to make the observation that this provision that required the milk program to expire 1 month early was not done for any policy reason. It was done as a gimmick to get around the budget act. And it is another illustration of the fact that when our principal goal is to find whatever parliamentary gimmicks we can find in order to fit programs into a defined box, then real people get hurt. The fact is that there will be many small dairy farmers who go out of business if they do not have the support that comes from that supplemental milk payment program.

So, Mr. Chairman, I regret very much the gentleman felt required to do that. I hope that dairy farmers will take note of the fact that the only possible dairy farmers who could benefit from this are the giant operators, the 1,000- and 2,000-cow herd operators, but the average dairy farmer in the United States is hurt by the action that was taken today, and I hope they take that into account when they go to the polls in November.

Reserving the right to object, Mr. Speaker, as I calculate the time that would be required to dispose of all the amendments made in order by this unanimous consent agreement, it appears to me that it amounts to about 6\1/2\ hours just of palaver, without the time consumed by votes; or for that matter, without the time consumed by slippage as we go through the procedures around here.

That means that if every person offers each amendment that is provided for in this unanimous consent request, and if they take the time allotted, we will be here until at least 10:30 or 11 o'clock before we even get to the votes.

Given the fact that there are many amendments, that means, as I see it, that we could be here as late as 2 o'clock tomorrow morning. I would ask Members to keep that in mind when they are determining whether or not they actually want to offer many of these amendments.

I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.