Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object to the gentleman's request, it is my understanding that this bill allows $750 million of the $50 billion in disaster relief funding that we provided to be used for loans to assist local governments in providing essential local services. It is also my understanding, as has been discussed here, that there is a ``fig leaf'' attached to this bill, at least it has been called that by some, which would create the impression that these communities are going to be provided loans, rather than grants, and that these loans must be repaid.

I would simply make this observation: This country forgave debt to Eastern Europe, billions of dollars worth of debt. We forgave debt to the tune of billions of dollars for Third World debt. Yet we are being told today that somehow we are supposed to believe that the communities who are supposedly assisted by this legislation will in some way be able to pay back the debt which they would incur under this legislation.

I think we are fooling the American people if we pretend that those communities are going to have the capacity any time soon to repay those debts, and I suspect that this provision is here more to deceive the American people about the true cost than to in fact reflect reality.

I think that if we are going to be honest with the American people and if we are going to be fair to the recipient communities, we need to recognize that these communities are not likely to have any ability to repay that was any greater than the ability of Eastern Europe or the Third World to repay the debts that we forgave in those cases a long time ago. That is one concern I have with the bill.

The second concern I have with the bill is a conservative concern, if you will, because while it is assumed that this bill will provide loans for functions such as police protection, fire fighting and everyday emergency work, in fact there is no guarantee that that is the only purpose for which these funds will be used. Because of that, I want to ask the gentleman whether or not he would be amenable and whether the majority leadership would be amenable to adding the following section to the legislation that the gentleman seeks to have considered. That

I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana.

Mr. Speaker, continuing my reservation, I have been told by several people that they do not want me to pursue this because ``the Senate is going out of session and it will be hard to get an amended version considered by the Senate.''

Heaven forbid that we should ask the Senate to come back and work on something of this urgency. This is the same Senate that did not hesitate to come back in order to tell one American family, the Schiavo family, how they should deal with an end-of-life issue for one of their family members, and yet we are told that we should not build in this protection for the taxpayer because it might inconvenience the other body.

I am very reluctant to agree to proceeding with this legislation without this reporting requirement because, as we have just discovered under the previous $50 billion that we provided to FEMA, they have given us a miserable explanation of the money that they have spent so far. They have given us meaningless spreadsheets and money defined in very broad, meaningless categories that tells the Congress nothing that will enable us to exercise our responsibilities as watchdogs of the public purse.

So, I guess my question is, if I withdraw my reservation, how soon can we expect to have this kind of reporting requirement brought to the House so that we know that in fact the money which is being provided will be used only for the purpose for which it is described today?

I yield to the gentleman from Alaska.

Mr. Speaker, continuing my reservation, I thank both gentlemen for their responses. Let me say that while I intend to withdraw my reservation, given those assurances, I would hope that that would happen as soon as possible, and I would also hope that sometime, somewhere, someone will explain to me why we can forgive billions of dollars of debt to the Third World, billions of dollars of debt to Eastern Europe, but not recognize that American citizens may need that same privilege.

Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. Speaker, first let me say that there are a number of useful things in this conference report. For 3 years, many of us have been trying to strengthen support for border enforcement and control, and this bill is $675 million above the President's request. That is good. It also provides some additional funding to beef up transit security and port security, and that is good. It provides $655 million for fire grants, 30 percent more than the Bush request, and that is good. It provides $30 million for three pilot projects to increase the screening of cargo, which is a major terrorism vulnerability that remains unaddressed by the Bush administration recommendations. This bill, therefore, helps to take care of a rather important problem.

But, in my view, there are three big problems that remain which will require me to vote ``no.'' First of all, because of the need to add $675 million more for border programs, the conferees cut funding for other programs substantially below the President's own request. Example: Pre-disaster mitigation programs, $100 million below the Bush request, $50 million below last year. Grants to States and localities to help them prepare for terrorism and other events are cut by over $800 million, or 20 percent from last year; and this occurs on the very day when we have been briefed by the administration warning us about the total incapacity of State and local governments to respond to local problems, such as a pandemic. Aviation security screening is cut by $83 million from the Bush request under this bill.

My second problem with the bill is that it approves a thoughtless reorganization proposal made by Secretary Chertoff. Just 2 weeks ago, members of the majority party told us it was premature to return FEMA to its previously independent status; and yet this legislation embraces a reorganization plan proposed by Secretary Chertoff, the sixth reorganization this agency has had, and that reorganization goes in the wrong direction.

My third objection is that FEMA is not reformed, but it is in fact further deformed by this proposal. We all understand that the response of the Homeland Security agency to the disaster of Katrina was, well, for want of a better word, disastrous; and yet nothing is done in this legislation to provide for a return to independent status for FEMA. It remains buried in the bowels of a dysfunctional bureaucratically layered agency; and, in fact, this bill moves us further in the wrong direction. The fire academy and other training programs are specifically taken away from FEMA.

So there are two ways, I suppose, that Members can deal with this bill. We can squawk about it, if we do not like parts of it, and hold our noses and vote for it because it does have some substantial improvements, and I congratulate the gentleman from Minnesota and the gentleman from Kentucky for those.

But the fact is that there is another choice if we believe that this bill still is not sufficient to meet the national interests, and that is to vote against the bill as a protest; and that is what I feel compelled to do tonight.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 13 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I do not know quite what to say about this continuing resolution. I have a lot of notes here, most of which I will not use, but let me simply note that this is another case of the failure to effectively govern by the Republican President and the Republican majority in this Congress. We are here facing an end of the fiscal year situation 3 days from now. We have failed in the basic test of governing, and I think it is important to understand why.

Throughout the year, we on the Democratic side of the aisle, in the minority, have worked with the majority on every possible procedural issue and cooperated with them procedurally at every juncture so that we could enable this House to pass the 10 appropriation bills that are necessary to pass, even though we disagreed in most instances with the content of those bills.

When I was asked by numerous Members of my caucus and a number of members of the press why we were cooperating procedurally when we opposed the substance of many of the bills, I made it clear. I said we were cooperating because I wanted the record to show at the end of the year, when the Republican majority failed to pass its appropriation bills by the end of the year, I wanted the record to show clearly why.

Now we are here and in spite of our procedural cooperation, the Republican majority has managed to pass only two of the 10 appropriation bills under our responsibility. Why? In my view it is because the majority caucus has such a fundamental disrespect for the basic functions of government that it has sacrificed and squeezed so many education and health and veterans and other programs in order to pay for huge, supersize tax cuts for the most wealthy among us, that, in the end, they have not been able to convince their Senate colleagues to go along and go on record and endorse those cuts. So now we are faced with a stopgap funding bill which is brought to the House floor by the gentleman from California.

Normally, if Congress fails to pass its appropriation bills, then it continues funding at the existing rate until Congress can get its act together. Instead, this bill does something quite different. It says that for the time period under the continuing resolution, we will be spending at the lower of either last year or the House-passed bill or the Senate-passed bill. That results in a number of, I think, extremely inequitable realities. It, for instance, means that we are effectively cutting $800 million below last year and $400 million below the President in the field of education. It means that we are cutting essential job training programs below last year and cutting job training formula grants by $138 million.

In health care, it means that we are cutting maternal and child health care, and we are cutting rural health outreach programs. It means that we are cutting the Community Service Block Grant, a program which deals with the needs of the poorest people in this society by 50 percent. It means that we are eliminating the 10 percent increase that this House had planned for veterans health care. It means that we are cutting the FBI by $616 million below the House-passed bill. It means that we are freezing low-income heating assistance at a time when the cost of home heating for low-income Americans is going to rise by 40 to 50 percent. But it leaves intact, it leaves intact the huge, supersize tax cuts for the top 1 percent of earners in this society, people who make more than $400,000 a year.

And it leaves in place the President's edict, his unilateral edict in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, that the workers in the afflicted area who are trying to put that area back together are not even going to be allowed to get a decent prevailing wage that they would otherwise be guaranteed under Davis-Bacon. And yet while it is chiseling on the wages of those workers, it is saying to the persons who make over $400,000 a year, on average you are going to get a $32,000 tax cut.

Mr. Speaker, $32,000 is a lot more than a lot of people in this country make in a year. A huge percentage of my district makes less than that $32,000.

But we are going to give an average $32,000 tax cut to the people in this society who need it least. The bill also assures the death of one part of the farm bill that was passed 3 years ago. It makes sure that the only major farm bill that is going to expire is the program that is given some financial support to the smallest farmers in this country, the MILC program.

Now, the question is being asked in this town, ``How are we going to pay for Hurricane Katrina?'' In my judgment, Mr. Speaker, that is the wrong question. Katrina, no matter what the eventual cost is and it is going to be large. It is going to be somewhere between $100 billion and $200 billion, I expect. Let us say it is $100 billion. That is a huge amount of money. But this economy is large enough to handle that because it is essentially a one-time bubble. Even though it will be spent out over the next 3 or 4 years, it is a one-time event, and this economy is always big enough to handle that.

But the right question to be asking is not how are we going to pay for Katrina? The right question is: ``How are we going to be able to pay for the decisions already made by the Republican majority of this Congress and the White House to give away to the wealthiest people in this society, the top 1 percent, over $1 trillion in tax cuts over the next decade?'' We are going to give away, in tax cuts to the top 1 percent, ten times as much as Katrina is being estimated to cost. So the right question to ask is: ``What are we going to do so that we can afford to pay for the Katrinas that come along and the Iraqi War, where we have a war of choice driven by a President who misled us into that war by giving us false and misleading information?''

So if the Members vote for this continuing resolution today, they are voting to keep those giant tax cuts in place. They are voting to do not one blessed thing to deal with the long-term fiscal impact that they have on the country and, yes, will be chiseling on some of the programs that I just mentioned.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to offer a motion to recommit, which does a number of things. I am going to offer a motion to recommit, which, number one, would provide that the funding levels in this bill be at the current rate rather than the three-headed rate spelled out by the gentleman, so that we do not, even for a month, cut back on what we are doing on job training or community service block grants or low-income heating assistance or other programs like that. Second, it will ask that we treat all farm programs the same. Third, it will restore Davis- Bacon prevailing wages. It will countermand the President's unilateral edict. And that is basically what I will be asking the House to do.

Under the rules of the House, as they have been jury-rigged, under the rule of the House, if a Member of the House lodges a point of order, this motion to recommit will not be allowed to obtain a vote. But if persons on the majority side of the aisle refrain from lodging a point of order, then the House would be allowed to vote on a measure which restores equity to the farm programs, on a measure which restores equity to

funding levels for all programs, and it would restore Davis-Bacon protections for workers as well. And it would also, I should add, instruct the Congress to come back with a change in the Tax Code so that we limit the size of the tax cuts for people who make over $400,000 to the size received by persons in the top 5 percent of the economy. That means they still get at least a $9,000 tax cut on average. That is not bad.

To those in the majority side of the aisle who say that we should not be doing that, I would say that does not surprise me because that represents the economic philosophy of the majority party. To those on the Democratic side of the aisle who might find it a little nerve- racking to vote to scale back tax cuts even for those well-off folks, my suggestion is if they cannot even stand up and do that, they might as well go and cross the aisle.

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

Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to recommit.

I most certainly am, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, very briefly, section 1 of the motion to recommit would simply provide that we fund the programs covered under the continuing resolution at the current rate rather than at the lower of either the current rate of the House-passed or the Senate-passed bill. I have already explained the impact of that on program. Section 2 would simply repeal the President's edict that workers in the Katrina- affected region would not be subject to the protections of Davis-Bacon wage protections. Section 3 would simply guarantee that the MILC program remains in force for the same length of time as other titles of the farm bill. And section 4 would require a reduction in the size of the tax cuts for taxpayers with incomes of over $400,000, as I just described in my previous remarks.

Point Of Order

Yes, I do, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, if the rules required equity in legislation we brought to the floor, this amendment would be in order. Unfortunately, they do not; so I must reluctantly concede the point of order.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, last year in the conference on the disaster supplemental, Senate conferees passed a provision extending the MILC program for 2 years, and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Sherwood) and I had lined up enough votes on the House side to accept that amendment. To prevent that from happening, the Republican chairman of the conference gaveled the meeting to a close, and we never met again on the subject. Despite the fact that the President had said in my hometown on that same day that he favored the extension of the MILC program, when my office called the White House asking him to intervene in order to get that conference reopened so that the MILC program could be extended, the White House declined.

That program is now scheduled to expire at the end of this week. If that happens, we will have lost an important safety net for Wisconsin's family dairy farmers. I urge the House agriculture authorizing committee to immediately report out to this floor an action extending the MILC program so that we do not lose that vital program, and I urge the Republican leadership of the House to see to it that the committee does just that.

Mr. Speaker, I would hope that Congress would not repeat the mistakes that it has already made with respect to the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA. We all remember what happened after 9/11. The Congress, in knee-jerk fashion, passed the proposal to create a new Department of Homeland Security, a gargantuan agency. Up until that time there were 133 agencies that had something to do with homeland security.

So what happened is that the Congress and the White House, in its infinite wisdom, took 22 of those 133 agencies, lumped them together in a huge bureaucracy. They did not include the FBI, they did not include the CIA, the two agencies most connected with dealing with terrorism. They took 22 agencies, lumped them together in a huge

bureaucracy, set up many layers of bureaucracy within that organization, and dumped FEMA into that organization.

Up until that time, FEMA had been one of the stars of the previous administration under James Lee Witt when, for a change, that agency had been professionalized and depoliticized. But now what has happened is that since FEMA has been buried in homeland security, we have seen six separate reorganization plans for the Department of Homeland Security. We have had a number of directors, and now we have Mr. Chertoff sending us a letter raising two points that I find almost laughable.

In his letter opposing this motion, Mr. Chertoff says that his proposal was formed after intensive consultations with preparedness professionals. The problem is we do not know who those professionals were and what they recommended because it all happened behind closed doors. It was an inside job. People who thought they knew better than anybody else got together with a proposed plan. I think that plan needs to have some critiquing from the outside, from professional people, before it goes into effect.

Secondly, Mr. Chertoff says in his letter, ``No structural changes were made to FEMA prior to Hurricane Katrina.'' Does he not consider dumping FEMA into a huge bureaucracy where there are many layers that you have to go through before you can reach the President's phone, does he not think that is a major reorganization? Does he not think that taking away the grant program from FEMA is a major reorganization? He may not think so; I think they are.

What I would simply suggest is that instead of, in a knee-jerk fashion, approving the reorganization plans of the gang that has demonstrated they cannot shoot straight, instead what we ought to do is get Chertoff down here in hearings before the committee. We ought to have Chertoff testify about his view about what happened, why we had the failures, what happened within FEMA, what are the faults within the agency, and let us have a detailed discussion of the problem. I would submit while I am sure this subcommittee can do a reasonable job of that, I think the country would feel far better off if we had an independent commission looking at the entire problem.

The distinguished subcommittee chairman says if Members like the status quo, then vote for the Sabo motion. Quite the contrary. The purpose of the Sabo motion is to make certain that the people who are the status quo on this issue have somebody else looking over their shoulders before they make yet another unaccountable decision. This is too important to leave to the people who screwed it up the first time.

Before we buy any more reorganizations on this level, we ought to bring those people down here, talk to them nose to nose. Mr. Brown was the President's appointment to FEMA. Mr. Brown testified yesterday that he inherited a robust organization when he was appointed FEMA director and that the Department of Homeland Security had stripped the agency of authority, positions, and dollars.

We ought to bring them both down here, facing each other face to face, so they can have it out on the outside--not behind closed doors, but on the outside so we can get to the bottom of what the problem is. For Congress to just, in a knee-jerk fashion, pass whatever reorganization program the Homeland Security director sends down to us is patently irresponsible. It is once again neglecting our oversight duties. The problem is we do not pay the price when a mistake is made, the public does, and the best way to avoid that is to pass the Sabo motion.

Mr. Speaker, last week I returned to Washington along with about 20 other Members of the House in order to assure passage of the initial down payment of $10 billion for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Today we will be voting to provide $52 billion more in aid. I am all for it. We will all vote for it. Any suggestion in any way that the delivery of that money would be delayed is pure nonsense. That money will be voted today.

But the problem we have is that the bill is being brought to the floor in a manner which prevents Congress from exercising any independent judgment whatsoever about how best to use taxpayers' money. And the problem is that the agency that we are appropriating most of the money to has demonstrated with great clarity that it is spectacularly dysfunctional; and there are a number of reasons for that.

The problem we have with FEMA is that what was an efficient, professional and qualified agency under James Witt during the Clinton administration has now once again become a dumping ground for political cronies.

Three years ago this Congress in the wake of 9/11 merged FEMA into a huge, new, gargantuan agency, the Department of Homeland Security. Since that time the White House, the Congress, and the Department of Homeland Security all together have squeezed the resources available for FEMA. They have hollowed out that agency and they have cut more than 500 people out of that agency.

To top it off, the President appointed to run that agency a gentleman who before he joined FEMA had no previous disaster experience whatsoever, and whose only apparent connection to the disaster world was that he was the college roommate of the former director of FEMA. We have seen the disastrous results of that appointment.

I want to provide the $50 billion that the legislation is going to provide today, and I will vote for it and so will ever other sane Member of this House, I assume. But I deeply regret the fact that the manner in which this legislation is being brought to the floor today will prevent me or any other Member from taking an action which I think is essential to restore the professionalism of FEMA and to depoliticize that agency.

I wanted to offer an amendment to the bill which would have allowed the money to flow immediately, but which would have done five additional things. It would have restored FEMA status as an independent agency with no intervening bureaucracy between the White House and that agency, it would have reestablished the position of the FEMA director to one who reports directly to the President, it would have required the FEMA director to have extensive experience in emergency or disaster-related management, it would have made that directorship confirmable for a specific 5-year term to reduce the likelihood of the position being used as political patronage of any President by any party, and it would have established a deputy director with primary responsibility to assure that a direct connection is retained with the Department of Homeland Security so that in the process of dealing with domestic disasters, we do not neglect our responsibilities to also protect the country against terrorism.

Our friends on the majority side of the aisle declined to allow us to have that vote.

I do not object to the majority saying ``We do not believe that that is the right solution.'' or ``We do not believe that this is the right time to discuss this.'' That is a legitimate position. But what we are asking for is to at least have the ability to debate that issue, to discuss that issue, because every day that we delay professionalizing FEMA and depoliticizing it is another day that taxpayers' money is being spent by an agency which has been demonstrated under these circumstances to be incompetent.

The President has a responsibility, each and every Member of this Congress has a personal responsibility to see to it that if we are going to provide $50 billion today and another $50 billion down the road, as we most surely will, we have a responsibility to know that that money is going to be spent in the most efficient, the most effective way to save lives, to rebuild communities. We cannot have that confidence under the existing management of this agency. And so I think we have an obligation to move as quickly as possible to fix the problem.

The amendment I would have offered would have given us 120 days to make those changes. I regret deeply the fact that we will not be able to at least discuss that matter on the floor today.

Mr. Speaker, I object.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 4 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, 19 times this year the majority party has asked me as the ranking member of the Committee on Appropriations to help them with procedural waivers of House rules so they could accelerate the passage of their appropriations bills, and we provided that cooperation.

Today, under consideration of this bill we on the minority side asked for three things. We asked, first of all, that since the last money that was provided to the hurricane region was provided with virtually no real debate, we asked that this bill be brought to the floor under an open rule so that Members could offer amendments trying to increase the efficiency of the money which is going to be delivered to the stricken area. The majority party said ``no.''

The majority party then insisted on bringing this bill up under suspension despite the fact that their own caucus rules indicate that no bill should be brought to the floor under suspension, which means no Member has a right to amend. Their own rules say that they should not be brought to the House floor unless the bill is under $100 million. This is a $50 billion bill.

Thirdly, because we had 17 Members who wanted to comment or ask questions about it, we asked if they were going to consider it under a closed rule that they give each side of House 1 hour to discuss the matter. We have been turned down.

Lastly, we asked the majority to provide for us an opportunity for at least one amendment so that we can correct the fact that right now FEMA has been used as a political dumping ground for patronage by the White House, and as a result we have a dysfunctional and chaotic agency. We were not even allowed to offer that amendment.

So I simply want to put the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis) on notice. He need not bother me asking me for any further procedural considerations for the rest of the session. If the gentleman wants to stick to the rules, we are going to stick to the rules.

I agree with the gentleman that it would be nice if we could follow on the model of 9/11 when we had bipartisan consideration of these matters. The reason we had bipartisanship is because the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) and I worked together. We were consulted equally. We met in the Speaker's office and the minority had some opportunity for input in the product.

We have been given no such opportunity by the White House, by your leadership, or by you yourself under those circumstances. I think the gentleman needs to expect to receive the same kind of cooperation which he has extended.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Kennedy).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Sabo), the ranking member on the Subcommittee on Homeland Security.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Melancon). We have seen him in his efforts in his own district after this disaster.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\3/4\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the minority whip.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\3/4\ minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar).

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, we have all seen the damage done when FEMA is run by incompetence and when FEMA itself is a disabled agency. We must depoliticize and professionalize the leadership at FEMA, and I hope we will have an opportunity to do that very soon, because until we do, this money is being spent by a disabled agency.

One other point. The news media has talked often about those who were left behind in New Orleans. They are easy to see because the cameras are there and we can see the dead bodies floating in the water. But there are millions of other Americans in and outside of the region who are also being left behind in our schools. They are being left behind in health care. They are being left behind on Medicaid.

I would hope that this Congress would have the decency to set aside its plans to provide billions of dollars in additional tax cuts for the most wealthy and the most prosperous and comfortable among us while the needs of so many are so apparent and while so many Americans are indeed still being left behind in the affected area and in other regions of our country.

Mr. Speaker, I would also hope that we could come to an agreement that in a matter this serious, the most serious disaster that has ever affected this country, this Congress would find a way to deal with these issues in a bipartisan and consultive fashion. If you want cooperation, you need to extend cooperation. This is too important for this business to be handled any other way.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Jefferson).

Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the distinguished minority leader.

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

Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, I do not intend to object; but I think it would be helpful for Members to understand that if this proposal is agreed to, and I expect it to be, that there will be 5 minutes of debate on each side of the issue, and then any Member who wishes to comment will have an opportunity on a Special Order, which immediately follows, to do so.

I yield to the gentleman from California.

Continuing under my reservation, Mr. Speaker, I think it is important that if this motion is agreed to, I do think that the situation in the Gulf Coast is serious enough that it warrants more than a dog and pony show and that it warrants some thoughtful discussion of how problems like this might be avoided in the future. I would simply say under my reservation that I have been horrified watching my television set over the past few days as I moved around my district in Wisconsin to see the absolute inadequacy of the Federal response to what has occurred. I would hope that the magnitude of the disaster which we have seen would make

us all think through the degree of lack of discipline and denial that has marked this country's preparation for not just natural disasters but disasters of other origins as well.

Point one: I was personally appalled to see an interview with a representative of the Army Corps of Engineers in which he explained away our failure to prepare for anything worse than a level three hurricane for the New Orleans area by saying in essence that a cost- benefit analysis had been done, and it was concluded that it was not cost beneficial for us to prepare for anything above a level three hurricane. What that in essence says is that you are not going to worry about the biggest disasters that can occur; you are only going to worry about the smaller ones.

Whether it is with a hurricane or whether the action of the Mississippi River a number of years ago, how many times do we have to see disasters overwhelm our preparedness before we recognize that we are playing Russian roulette with people's lives, with their livelihood and with the life of whole communities if we do not prepare for the worst?

Point two: I think it is fair to say that the administration and the Congress itself has not covered itself with glory in terms of anticipating problems like this. We have seen the Congress in fiscal year 2004 cut the budget request by $170 million for FEMA. We have seen an amendment by the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran) to try to supplement FEMA funding several years ago turned down by the House. We have seen flood control projects in the Gulf short-sheeted in Federal budget requests from the executive, and we have seen now stories, one by Sidney Blumenthal, which makes the point that in early 2001, FEMA management issued a report saying that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City.

Yet the Federal budget has not demonstrated any serious response to that warning. And we have seen other comments as well in the paper, including a number by Louisiana papers, documenting the lack of effective Federal response. Another statement in the New York Times indicated that 5 days after Katrina hit, the response from our government was still spectacularly inadequate and in the words of the editorial amounts to a stunning lack of both preparation and urgency in the Federal Government's response. I would hope that the pictures that we have seen on our television sets would change that.

Continuing under my reservation, the third point I would simply make is that I think the devastation and utter destruction that we have seen indicates that we have a serious problem not just with respect to our response to natural disasters but in response to other potential disasters. I would hope that we would take to heart the lessons that this disaster ought to teach us about the need for more adequate preparation across the board, including potential terrorist attacks.

There are those of us in the Congress who still believe that we are not doing enough to secure our borders.

There are those of us who still believe that we are not doing enough to protect this country against terrorist attacks from air cargo.

There are those of us who believe that we are not doing nearly enough to protect this country against terrorist attacks by the use of containers in our ports; and in my view, the response of the administration and the Congress since 9/11 on that score has been totally inadequate.

I think that this disaster in the Gulf demonstrates the importance of ending the practice of casual thinking on these potential problems.

Point four: and I do not know the answer to this, but I know questions have been raised about whether or not the heavy involvement of our Guard and Reserve forces in Iraq is in any way linked to the fact that we have had so few Guard and Reserve personnel being used in response to this disaster. I do not know whether there is a direct causation or not, but I do know that there are some 11,000 Guard and Reserve forces from the affected States now in Iraq and those are obviously troops that cannot be used on their home ground.

I think we need to examine very carefully whether or not this demonstrates that we need to do more to build up the size of our regular Army forces so that we do have a greater capacity to use the Guard and Reserve forces at home when they are needed.

I would also say that every time that we have a disaster, Congress responds by tossing together an appropriation bill for an emergency appropriation. It would seem to me after all of the disasters that we have had that we should have a more regularized approach to the problem. I have introduced in the past, and I will introduce again, legislation asking that we establish an experience-rated insurance fund from which all States can purchase insurance coverage against future disasters so that you have a ready-made source of funding the moment these disasters hit.

There are five or six States in the Union that experience disasters on a fairly regular basis, and it seems to me that we need to have an experience-rated insurance system so that we take into full account the cost of hurricanes and the cost of other disasters that might occur. If we did that, we might see a greater level of preparation with respect to, for instance, long-term planning by the Corps of Engineers to deal with the most severe hurricanes.

Mr. Speaker, this legislation obviously has to pass, but I hope this represents just the beginning of some new thinking so that we do not wind up 3 or 4 years from now facing yet another problem as unprepared as we apparently were for this unfortunate and heart-rending incident.

Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, by way of explanation, this bill provides $10.5 billion, $10 billion of which will go to FEMA, half a billion dollars to DOD. It provides for relief efforts for the aftermath of the Katrina hurricane. The funds to DOD will go to the operation and maintenance account with broad transfer authority. They will eventually wind up, I am certain, being used for procurement for housing and matters like that. The funds for FEMA may be used for any traditional purpose under the FEMA legislation, including public assistance, shelter, food, et cetera.

Let me simply say that I hope that we recognize this is just the initial downpayment in the costs that are going to be associated with this incredible disaster. I would also hope that we would recognize that we have for a long time been making inadequate investments in activities that could lessen the impact of disasters such as this, and I would hope we would recognize that values such as preventing this

horrendous event from occurring again ought to be much higher on our values scale than they have been in past months and certainly in past recent years.

Mr. Speaker, I would urge support of the legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the minority leader.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I would simply like to say that this is a close call on this bill as far as I am concerned; but weighing all of the conflicting pressures, I come down on the side of recommending a vote for the bill, primarily because of what it does to finally provide sufficient funding for veterans health care.

With respect to that item, I would simply say to our friends on the majority side of the aisle, welcome aboard. We tried for the last year and a half to convince this administration and to convince the majority that the veterans health accounts were underfunded. Finally, the administration admitted that that was true; and, in fact, the amount being added to this bill today for veterans health care is exactly the amount that we had been asking be added to that program for that purpose for a long period of time.

I want to make clear, the shortfall for veterans' health care is not the responsibility of the chairman of this subcommittee. This problem is supposed to be taken care of by another subcommittee; but, in fact, after running away from the problem for months and months, the majority party has finally decided that they did not want to go home in August and have to face the folks at the Legion hall or the VFW hall without finally doing something to fix the problem. So I am glad that they did.

But even though I am going to vote for this bill because of what it does for veterans, I think we need to understand that in a number of other areas, this bill is far from where it ought to be if we are to meet the responsibilities that we have to this country's future. Overall, funding for the EPA declines by $291 million in this bill. The Clean Water State Revolving Fund has now been cut by 33 percent over 2 years. Grants to States for conservation and recreation are reduced by two-thirds from fiscal year 2005. Every State suffers a 66 percent cut.

In the year 2001, land acquisition funds in this bill were $442 million. Today, they are $124 million. That is the lowest appropriation for this item in the past 20 years. Construction funding for national parks and refuges and forests has been reduced by about 10 percent from last year. The funding for Forest Service buildings, roads, and trails has been cut from $514 million to $441 million, a reduction of 14 percent.

BIA school construction is funded at a level $53 million below last year. Health facilities construction for Indian health services is funded at $38 million, a reduction of $50 million. I do not believe those numbers are numbers that we would be proud to take home.

So we are stuck with a choice. We can cast a protest vote against the cuts in this bill, which many of us have already done; or we can recognize the fact that in a time of war we have an obligation to meet the health care needs of those who have risked everything for this country; and I think we, in the end, have no real choice but to come down in favor of voting for that increased veterans funding.

But I hope that the general public will understand that the cuts in this bill do the Nation no favors. We are shortchanging our country's future. We are not meeting our stewardship responsibilities, and we will pay a long-term price for that, I regret to say.

Mr. Speaker, let me say one other thing. I do want to express my appreciation to the subcommittee chairman for the fairness with which he has dealt with this bill. I may not agree with the priorities that the majority party budget resolution imposed on the subcommittee, but I do want to say that I think the chairman has been most fair in his dealing with the minority; and we appreciate that.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, at the risk of beating a dead horse, I would once again like to express my profound misgivings about supporting this bill this afternoon.

Obviously this Chamber has basic expenses, and they have to be paid for, but I want to suggest that I think that the visitors center, which is now being constructed on the east side of the Capitol, is a project which, while it might be desirable, has been managed in such an outlandish fashion that I think before it is done, it is going to bring great embarrassment to this institution.

The fact is that that center started out costing around $90 million. Before it is finished, it is now going to cost a good $600 million. It was supposed to be open by 2005. We are going to be lucky if it will be open and fully operational, if we ignore the nice word games that we have been presented by the Architect's office; in fact, we will be lucky if this is fully operational by the year 2007.

In my view, this project has been mismanaged as badly as the entire Federal budget has been mismanaged. That hole that we used to have out here, I think, was symbolic of the hole in logic that has dominated the administration of this entire project.

I have two principal objections to that visitors center. Number one, I think it is far too expensive. And, secondly, I object to the misallocation of space in that project.

Now, I have seen three different stories that have purportedly reported on my objections to the center. And each of those stories leaves the impression that my major concern is simply that Congress did not have enough room. That is not my point at all.

My point is that when you have such a huge addition of space to the Capitol, that space should be allocated in an intelligent way, in a way which makes Congress more efficient, in a way which gives Congress more working space as opposed to propaganda space.

We are going to have a lot of money lavished on a media center. We are going to have all of the creature comforts that you can imagine for any of the reporters who cover Members of Congress in that media center. But there will be very little done to make this Congress more able to sit down in a timely fashion in conference and work out our differences.

So I think a tremendous amount of space has been wasted. And I think a tremendous amount of taxpayers' dollars have been wasted. And the reason I am voting against this is because I think this is the last chance that any of us will have to ask the leadership of this House and the Architect's office to at least review the way space is being allocated, at least review the way taxpayer dollars are being expended.

We are going to have, when this project is over, we will have a project which is cosmetically beautiful, no question about that. There will be lots of Taj Mahal marble show space, but there will be very little working space that will be added.

I think that if we are not getting the biggest bang from the buck we ought to be getting out of a project like this. I do believe that not only is the cost of this project out of control, I think the heating center project which is also ongoing is also going to wind up embarrassing this institution significantly.

So I intend to vote ``no.'' I am not going to particularly try to ask anyone to vote any which way, but I intend to vote ``no'' because I think this visitor center represents a missed opportunity and a spectacular case of mismanagement and wasting of taxpayer funds.

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

Mr. Speaker, let me thank the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. LaHood) for reminding me that I forgot to mention the continuity issue as well. Again, I find myself in the minority.

This is a very important question. What we are talking about here is very simply, what would happen if a large number of Members of Congress were obliterated in some kind of terrorist attack and we were left in a crisis situation? And we have very simply a choice that needs to be made. We have a choice between an operation which would allow the executive branch to essentially operate almost any way it sees fits with perhaps only a handful of

surviving Members for a 45-day period until we can have special elections to replace Members of Congress who might have been killed in such an attack; or we could follow a different model under which we would have this Congress populated for a temporary period by persons who are appointed under a previously prescribed procedure until we could have a special election so that we would again have elected representatives for each of the 435 districts in this House.

I much prefer the latter. I do not think it is a good idea, as this bill does, to, in effect, create a situation in which we would have one-man rule for 45 days. We could have literally only a handful of Members of Congress who had survived an attack, and I do not think under those circumstances that we want to be ruled by a President without any kind of checks and balances whatsoever.

So there is an honest, intellectual difference of opinion on this question. And I think we are going down the wrong road. I think that by choosing the model that was chosen, what is happening is that we are in fact choosing form over substance. It is indeed important to have persons who represent each of our districts be elected representatives. But if the Member from an individual district is blown away in a terrorist attack, it is in my judgment, better that that district be represented on a temporary basis by an appointed person rather than having them represented by no one at all for that period.

So that is why I think that this House in its haste to find a solution is going down the wrong road.

I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.

No, I do not think so. I think there is always room in this place for protest votes, and this is one occasion when I intend to exercise it; but I thank the gentleman for his efforts.

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

Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to instruct.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, for the past 3 years, a number of us on this side of the aisle, including the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards), myself and several others, have tried to bring the administration to the realization that we needed many more dollars in the veterans health care funds than, in fact, they requested each year. And each year we have been able to drag them a little bit towards that goal, but we have not been able to drag them far enough.

As a result, we have heard many, many horror stories. We have heard that thousands of patients have had to wait more than 3 months for appointments in California. We have heard that in States like Arkansas and Oklahoma and Mississippi and Louisiana, the VA has stopped scheduling appointments for many veterans who are eligible for care. We have heard of 6-month delays in emergency surgery in Oregon. We have heard that facilities have had to erect scaffolding to protect patients and staff from falling bricks in Maine. We have heard that a medical center in Vermont has major shortfalls in their prosthetics budget. We have been told that doctors have had to pilfer supplies from neighboring hospitals to carry out routine procedures in Illinois. And we have been told that life safety improvements like replacing fire alarm systems have been postponed as the funds are used to cover operating expenses in States like California.

Yet, in the face of stories like that, in April VA Secretary Nicholson told the Congress that no additional funds would be needed for fiscal year 2005. But by the end of June he had to admit that there was a big problem, and he then testified that an additional $975 million was needed. Two weeks later, the problem in their eyes got even bigger. OMB asked for yet another $300 million for fiscal year 2005, so they are admitting a $1.3 billion shortfall right now; and the numbers look worse for the coming fiscal year.

The VA has already amended their $20 billion medical care budget request for an additional $1.7 billion, and that does not count the additional $500 million they are going to need, because I doubt that many Members want to go along with the administration's proposal to raise the veterans health care fees and co-op pays as has been suggested by the administration.

I would hope that by now every Member realizes that we have a VA health care crisis and we have to deal with it right now. The other body did the right thing in the interior bill. They provided $1.5 billion of emergency money for the VA. That would cover the immediate $975 million shortfall and provide an additional $525 million that could be distributed among the VA regions to take care of the source of problems that each of us has been hearing about.

I would point out also that in my view some Members of this House have paid a very high price for speaking out on behalf of our veterans. We saw earlier this year news stories which reported the fact that the majority caucus not only removed from his chairmanship but removed from the committee itself the Member on the other side of the aisle who chaired the committee in charge of veterans funding because he had been too insistent in agreeing with those of us on this side of the aisle who kept insisting that we needed more funding for veterans health care.

I would hope that it would be recognized that he was right, that we were right, not just about yesterday's problems but about today's and tomorrow's with respect to this account.

So I would simply urge each and every Member of this House to vote for this motion. This money is going to be provided. It is just a question of how many times we have to hit the House along side the head before, like a stubborn donkey, they finally recognize that something needs to be done.

Reality is here. It would be nice if we faced up to it. I would hope this would receive the unanimous support of the Members of the House.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished ranking member of the subcommittee, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards), who has been a key leader on this issue as the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Military Quality of Life and Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies.

Mr. Speaker, how much time do we have remaining on each side?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Filner).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Corrine Brown).

Mr. Speaker, let me conclude on this side by making four simple points. First of all, one of the previous speakers tried to suggest that, in fact, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) had not been fired by the majority party caucus because he had been too willing to speak his own mind about the needs that he saw for veterans' health care. I would simply say that I am perfectly happy to believe that if the House is ready to believe that my grandmother is an astronaut and that the Cubs are going to win the pennant this year. The fact is that we know what the facts are, or were, I should say, with respect to the removal of the gentleman from New Jersey from office. He simply did not follow the party line and paid a price. So did the veterans. And now this bill is trying to help meet those costs.

Secondly, the gentleman from New York indicated that there had been a variety of estimates about what would be needed for veterans health care funding this year. The fact is that the Democratic estimates that we offered were consistent, and the bipartisan estimates that were offered by the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) and the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Evans) were consistently that we needed $2.5 billion in this account over the budget request. The House earlier enacted a $1 billion increase. This $1.5 billion in this motion now brings us to the $2.5 billion that we have been saying all along was needed and that the gentleman from New Jersey and the gentleman from Illinois were saying all along was needed.

Thirdly, I would simply say that the administration's denial of the truth on this matter follows a pattern. We saw earlier over the past year and a half when the Veterans' Administration was discouraging outreach, because if veterans knew what they were entitled to, it would cost more money, and that would impact the budget. So we have already seen that effort to not fully explain to the American veterans what they were entitled to. In that sense, it is very similar to the action of the administration in threatening to fire the government official who tried to tell Congress what the true cost of the prescription drugs under Medicare proposal was that the administration proposed last year.

Lastly, I would simply say one of the previous speakers raised the question as to why we were providing this money as an emergency. It is very simple: because it is an emergency for each and every veteran who otherwise will not be adequately served. We have a war going on. It would be nice if during that war we had a sense of shared sacrifice that was conveyed to each and every citizen of this country. But we really do not. We have a narrow band of people, those in the uniformed services of the United States, who are being asked to sacrifice virtually everything while 90 percent of American society is making no sacrifice about the war. They are getting tax cuts. They are able to be comfortable in their homes. It is only a precious few military families who are bearing the entire burden of that war.

It is human nature, I guess, for Americans, when our soldiers go off to war, to cheer and to have the bands playing, but it would be nice if we had that same enthusiasm for veterans when Johnny comes marching home again. Unfortunately, we have not demonstrated that because of the shortfalls that we have seen in the veterans' health care budget.

I would hope that we would adopt an understanding that if we ask someone to put his very life at risk, to put his family's future at risk and go to war to defend an action of the President of the United States, I would hope that we would recognize that we have a concurrent and permanent obligation to each and every one of those soldiers to meet the full cost of meeting their health care needs, their education needs, and their economic readjustment needs when they return to this country. That is the very least that we ought to do. This amendment tries to measure up to that standard. I would urge a unanimous ``yes'' vote.

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

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the right to object.

Mr. Speaker, I express this reservation in order to take a couple of moments to again express my disquiet about this legislative appropriation bill. I had originally intended to offer a motion to instruct conferees, but in the interest of time and comity, I will not do that. But I, under my reservation, want to make a number of points about funding contained in this bill.

This bill contains another large amount of taxpayers' dollars to pay for what is euphemistically referred to as the Capitol Visitors Center now being constructed on this end of the Capitol. In my view, that project has become a story of spectacular mismanagement and colossal government waste, and I feel obligated, as often as I have the opportunity, to object to the way this project has been handled and to object to what it is going to produce.

The cost of the Capitol Visitors Center, which was first estimated at $95 million, has now ballooned to well over $500 million, and there is no end in sight to the escalation in cost.

My second objection is that, for this money, we are getting a pitiful allocation of space to the major needs of the Congress and an outrageous, wasteful allocation of space to areas that I think represent far lower-grade needs. The current design of that Capitol Visitors Center, the House space under that project, provides for approximately 87,000 square feet of space, of which only 3,200 square feet is for hearing rooms where public business can be conducted. The major need of this Congress, if we are going to expand the size of this building, is to have rooms that are sufficiently large so that we can have conferences with the Senate and do our legislative business. Instead, the primary usable space in the House portion of this project is for, in essence, a media center or a propaganda center. It is to make the Congress comfortable with television. So we are going to have this elaborate, two-floor, ornate, state-of-the-art media center, communication center, propaganda center, whatever you want to call it, but we will have tiny rooms for conference committees and very little additional usable space. In short, what I think we will have in the end is an opulent Taj Mahal, abundance of show space, but we will have a shortage of usable working space. I think that is regrettable given what the taxpayer is going to be asked to spend.

I would also say again that I find it incredible to hear the changing justifications for the new theater which is going to be in the visitors center. There is a huge 450-seat theater which is being built at a cost of many millions of dollars. When I asked why we need another room of that size, I was told, well, because it is a place where Members of Congress can bring large constituency groups. I do not know how many Members of Congress bring 450 people into a room in the Capitol, but if there is a Member who has ever tried to do that, I have never met him.

Secondly, we were then told, well, actually this will be good space for the House of Representatives to meet in when its existing House Chamber, the room that we are in now, is refurbished and reengineered and redecorated. The only problem with that, Mr. Speaker, is that we already have a room, the Ways and Means Committee room in the Longworth Building, which was built for that purpose, to serve as a backup House Chamber, and which was just redecorated at a cost of many, many dollars. It is beautiful. It ought to be sufficient. In addition to that, there is yet another Chamber being built for the House off- campus, which I cannot talk about because it is classified. So we are going to have two backup Chambers at a cost of an enormous amount.

And when we really dig into what this room is really supposed to be for, we discover that in the original budget justifications, what it was designated as, is being an additional theater for the Library of Congress.

So those are some of my objections to this bill, and I believe that this is the last chance that we have to get the leadership of this House and the Architect of the Capitol to at least change the way the space is being designed so that it is more usable, more efficient, and more useful to produce legislative products rather than propaganda press releases out of a media center.

Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to be heard on the point of order.

Section 945 to which the gentleman objects is in this bill for the purpose of ending a practice under which a credit card company can jack up a cardholder's interest rates to the default rate which can be as high as 30 percent. Even if that person has never missed a payment and never been a day late on any payment to that credit card company, that interest rate can be jacked up if that consumer was 1 day late in the payment of some other bill and that was reported on a credit report.

This language is in here to correct a glaring and obscene omission in legislation which was passed by the House several weeks ago, the infamous bankruptcy bill.

As I understand the rules, the gentleman is objecting to this language because it is legislation on an appropriation bill and falls under the jurisdiction of another committee. As I understand the rules, while the Rules Committee did not protect this section in the rule under which the bill is being debated, this section could be passed by the House if no Member chooses to object to it.

I would respectfully suggest to the gentleman, in the interest of protecting consumers in this country from these bloodsuckers, I would suggest that the gentleman would do the country a great service if he would withdraw his point of order.

Mr. Chairman, I would have to reluctantly concede because of the warped rules which the majority party passed out of the Committee on Rules, which protected countless other provisions from points of order, but neglected to protect this section so that some of the biggest banks in the country can rip-off Americans, I would have to confess that under that myopic and misguided rule, I would have to concede the point of order.

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

Mr. Chairman, I am going to repeat some remarks that I made on the floor the other day. I happen to have a Visa card. I have had it for years.

The other day I received in the mail a notification that this Visa card had been transferred to another bank. If you take a look at the fine print on the notice that accompanies that transfer, the fine print makes clear that the following can occur.

Let us say that for 10 years the gentleman from Florida who just lodged

the point of order, let us say for 10 years that gentleman has held this same Visa card, and that for that 10-year period he has not been late a single day in any payment to this credit card company. Nonetheless, the gentleman from Florida, or any other citizen of America, can have the interest rate on this card raised to the default rate if, for instance, that person had gone on vacation and while on vacation that person's wife, let us say, had broken her arm. And let us say she was responsible for writing the checks each month and because she was hurt she could not write the checks for a couple of weeks. And if that late payment because of that injury--to another company on another account--wound up in a credit report totally unrelated to your performance on the initial card, nonetheless, that credit card company claims the right to jack up interest rates to 30 percent.

In my view, that is nothing but blood-sucking usury, and I find it incredible that the majority party in this House finds ways time and time and time again to genuflect to the special interests like these credit card companies and to use the technicalities of the rules of this House to deny the average American citizen the protection that they ought to have a right to expect from representatives of this body who are supposed to represent the general interests rather than the special interests of these credit card companies.

It is an outrage that this body would allow this kind of a practice to continue. It is an outrage that the well-connected shysters who engage in this practice are not stood up to unanimously by 435 people in this House.

So all I can say is if the majority wants to hide behind the technicalities to protect yet another well-paying special interest, I cannot do a whole lot about it except raise my voice, and that is what I am doing today.

I would hope that the American consumers would take notice who it is that decides that the technicalities of the rules are more important than giving the consuming public a fair shake.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, the practical result of the point of order lodged by the gentleman from Florida is to make the credit card companies the only people in America who can raise the price of something you bought after you bought it. If people are comfortable putting themselves in that supine position, I cannot do anything about it. But I find it interesting that the gentleman is a member of the Rules Committee, which cleverly left this measure exposed and then exploited that failure on the part of the Rules Committee in order to knock this language out of the bill. That is a nice sleight of hand operation.

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

Mr. Chairman, I cannot believe what has just happened on the floor of this House. In effect, what has happened is that some of these same people who tried to stick their noses into the question of how the Schiavo family should deal with an end-of-life issue at a time of great pain for that family, some of the people in this House who felt compelled to stick their noses into that case are now trying to stick their noses into the question of how often someone who is wearing the uniform of the United States can see their family.

I am getting awfully tired of having people on this floor bleat about family values and then take actions which keep families apart. I am awfully tired of hearing people, in effect, suggest that because we dislike Mr. Castro so much that the only way someone wearing the uniform of the United States is going to be able to see his family in Cuba is only if they are lucky enough to see Castro go.

What happens in the meantime? Where are these vaunted family values?

I will tell the Members where they are. When they get in the way of people's political ideology or family squabbles in Cuba, they get tossed out the window. What a pitiful joke.

Amendment No. 4 Offered by Mr. Davis of Florida

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

I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. Chairman, I simply add to the gentleman's thoughts this point. I find it quaint, indeed, that this House would appear to want to try to promote the freedom of Cubans by denying freedom to Americans. That makes no sense to me.

The last time I looked at it, we are supposed to be representing Americans; and the people I represent ought to have a right to travel anywhere they choose so long as they are citizens of what is supposed to be the greatest, freest democracy in the world. I wish everyone in this Chamber would have a better understanding of that than they seem to have. I thank the gentleman for his efforts.

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

Mr. Chairman, I do not believe in gun control laws. I think in most instances they don't work and I think lots of times they are designed by people who would not know one end of a gun from the other. But having said that, there is something that bugs me about this amendment, and that is that I did not come here to be a city councilman for the District of Columbia. I represent the people of my congressional district. The other thing that bugs me is that the citizens of the District of Columbia have no vote in this body, and in my view, as long as the citizens of the District of Columbia have no vote in this body, this body has no business telling the District of Columbia what their municipal laws ought to be.

Now, I have an amendment that I am going to offer if this amendment passes and that amendment reads as follows: ``The salary for individual Members of Congress shall be paid out of the funds provided in this bill for the District of Columbia and shall be limited to $92,500.'' That is the salary of a District of Columbia city councilman. If the people of this House want to act like you are a D.C. city councilman, then you ought to get paid like you are a D.C. city councilman, which means you can take about a $70,000 pay cut and I think that would be fitting.

I do not have the slightest idea what kind of laws the District of Columbia ought to have with respect to guns, but I do know one thing. I very often simply vote ``present'' whenever any matter affecting the District of Columbia comes up on this floor, because I think we have no business trying to interfere with what the city does on any subject so long as that city and its citizens do not have a vote in this Chamber. The gentlewoman from the District can speak, but when it comes to voting, she is out in the hall, just like anybody else who is not a Member of Congress.

So what you are saying is that you are going to take advantage of the fact that she has no ability to defend her district by voting in this place and you are going to say, ``Well, that's tough, but we're going to impose our judgment.'' If you want to tell the District of Columbia what their laws ought to be, run for the city council. This is not the city council. We look ridiculous and abusive when we try to act as though we are.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the Clerk read the amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, the purpose of this amendment is simple. I happen to agree with the gentleman from Indiana that I think that the provision in D.C. law that he referred to on guns is a dumb law, and I would hope that it would be overturned by the city council. But what I resent is year after year after year having to vote on issues that belong in the backyard of the D.C. City Council, not the House of Representatives.

I have taken this position for a good long time. The second term I was here, I organized the effort that eventually freed up the money for the D.C. subway, when our distinguished friend Bill Natcher decided to hold up that money until the District of Columbia was forced to proceed with building the Three Sisters Bridge. Thankfully, that bridge was never built, and the Congress did not dictate to the District that they do so.

But the purpose of this amendment is simply to illustrate the fact that the Congress is acting like it is the city council for the District of Columbia; and as long as it is acting that way, that is the way it ought to be paid.

I do not object to any Member of Congress having any view he wants with respect to the District of Columbia, but I feel strongly that it is wrong for this Congress to dictate to the District what any of their local laws are so long as their representative does not have a vote. That is the point that I am trying to make to the gentleman from Indiana. The problem is not that Congress has opinions about the District. The problem is that the District of Columbia has no way to express their own views on their own issues through their own elected representative because their elected representative does not have a vote in this Chamber. Until she does, I think the Congress ought to stay out of these issues.

Much though I agree with the gentleman from Indiana on the substance, in this case it seems to me that democratic processes are much more important than my individual opinion on any subject matter.

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

Point of Order

Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from California has made a point of order. I am simply offering the amendment to make a point.

I concede the point of order.

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

Mr. Chairman, if this amendment passes, you might as well tear up the Constitution and toss it in the ash basket. That is what this amendment does.

I happen to think that the Supreme Court decision that came down last week was nutty, and I agree with the gentleman on the substance. But if we disagree with court decisions, folks who are a heck of a lot smarter than we are, the Founding Fathers, spelled out a way to deal with that. It is called passing a law.

All we have to do if we do not like the Supreme Court decision is to bring legislation into this House, take it before the proper committee, have the committee have sensible hearings so that all points of view can be heard, and then bring to the floor either a piece of legislation or a constitutional amendment, whichever you want.

But the idea that this House, every time we do not like a court decision, should decide that we are not going to allow Federal money to be used to enforce that court decision is as nutty as the original court decision in the first place.

So I would hope that we would recognize that the Founding Fathers created the system of separation of powers; they created three independent branches of government for a purpose.

I would not ordinarily rise to oppose an amendment like this, because it is so ridiculous on its face, but it follows in a long line of actions that I have seen coming from that side of the aisle since the beginning of the year.

First, you called the Congress back in order to try to pass legislation saying that you knew better than the Florida courts in the Schiavo case. Then we had another attack launched on independent judges in the form of speeches given by your majority leader and others, and then we have seen various other activities; in fact, I listened to the majority leader himself in a conversation the other day tell some Supreme Court Justices that they were way out of line, and that if they wanted to understand American public opinion, they needed to go through the United States Congress.

Well, God help us if the Supreme Court ever starts going through the United States Congress for its advice on every subject under the sun. They are supposed to use their own independent judgment and, once in a while, they may make a screwy decision, and I think they did last week. But that does not mean that we ought to act in a way which is just as screwy as the original Court decision.

I would urge that we vote down this ridiculous amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous content that the Clerk read the amendment in its entirety.

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

The OMB circular which was just read reads, or which was just referred to in the amendment reads as follows: ``When testifying before any congressional committee or communicating with Members of Congress, witnesses will give frank and complete answers to all questions.'' The purpose of this amendment is simply to make certain that none of the funds in this bill may be used to, in any way, assist in any communication from the Executive Branch of government, which is not frank and complete and truthful.

Now, that may seem like an odd thing to ask, but let me point out recent years are replete with examples of how the executive branch, including this administration, have grossly misled Congress on matters of national importance. Example, the Department of Veterans Affairs deliberately withheld information related to the cost of veterans medical care that was needed during consideration of the fiscal year 2005 supplemental, which they now admit has resulted in a $1 billion shortfall in veterans health care. In fact, they have stonewalled us over the past 3 years in terms of being frank about the needs of veterans health care.

This administration has consistently and repeatedly declined to provide a full accounting of anticipated cost for the Iraq war. Previous OMB Director Mitch Daniels once said that because of oil revenues, the war would be ``affordable,'' and probably would only cost the U.S. 50 to $60 billion.

Instead, the President continues to request funding for the war, and yet when you ask everyone from the Secretary of Defense on down, they are steadily refusing to give us real figures about the anticipated cost of that war.

We will all recall that just a year ago a Federal Medicare actuary was threatened with dismissal by a high administration official for disclosing the exact cost of the Medicare prescription drug benefit before Congress voted on the measure. And we will all remember, no doubt, former economic advisor Larry Lindsey, who was criticized by his colleagues and eventually fired for correctly predicting an Iraq war that would cost the U.S. at least $200 billion. At the time his prediction was termed outlandish by higher officials in the government.

The former Chief of Police at the National Park Service was fired for publicly discussing budget shortfalls that she argued threatened the safety of her police force and hindered their ability to protect national park lands.

And former Member of Congress, Mike Parker, who once served in this very institution was fired for speaking candidly about the budget request of the Army Corps of Engineers.

And I must say that I had the unpleasant experience in the 10 years that I chaired the Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee of having well-known administration witnesses purposely mislead our subcommittee about the Iran-Contra issue. And several of those officials who were much less than candid at the time are now serving in this administration. So unfortunately, I think there is a long track record, not just with this administration, but with many, of misleading the Congress, of telling us half truths, of telling us no truths at all. And I do not know how you can change human nature to insist that the persons testifying before our committees be more forthcoming. But at least you can have the Congress spell out, through a vote, the fact that each and every Member of this Congress expects the administration to allow its witnesses to tell the truth.

We should not have to, as Senator Specter was forced to do last year, we should not have to change the law to require that officials from the National Institute of Health or anyone else can answer Members' questions without referring to higher-ups in the administration to get a politically correct answer.

So that is the purpose of this amendment. And I would hope it would be adopted by this House.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the distinguished minority leader.

Mr. Chairman, how much time is remaining on both sides?

Does the gentleman have any other speakers besides himself?

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank).

Mr. Chairman, how much time do we have remaining on both sides?

Mr. Chairman, I reserve my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the distinguished minority whip.

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

Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Buyer) said he found this amendment ``peculiar.'' I do not know what is peculiar about simply saying that any witness who appears before Congress ought to tell the truth. I find it peculiar that someone thinks that that is peculiar.

Let me also make the point that he is chairman of that committee today, the Committee on Veterans' Affairs, because the previous committee chairman, Republican chairman, was removed by his party's leadership because the previous committee chairman agreed with Democrats that the veterans' budget was inadequate. He told the truth and he paid a high price for it.

There is no question that this administration has hidden the cost of the Iraqi war. They have revealed the cost on the installment plan, a little bit at a time. There is no question that the administration threatened the firing of the man who was charged with telling Congress what the cost of the new Medicare prescription drug program would be. And there is no question that they did fire the National Park Service Chief of Police for telling the truth about the safety of her forces. And there is no question they did fire former Congressman Mike Parker for telling the truth with respect to the Corps of Engineers.

With respect to the ridiculous contention on the part of the gentleman from California that during the Nicaraguan war, Democrats were ``for the Sandinistas,'' I would remind the gentleman that we signed a letter to the Sandinistas demanding that they listen to the Reagan administration's demands for free elections in Nicaragua. I would also remind the gentleman that what we were opposed to was the illegal arms-for-hostages trade with the Iranians. And I would remind him that we were against an illegal, and I emphasize ``illegal,'' war in Nicaragua. So so much for the gentleman's ridiculous contention.

I have a simple suggestion, Mr. Chairman. If the gentlemen on the other side of the aisle think that witnesses should not tell the truth when they are before the Congress, then, by all means, vote against this amendment.

I remember Lyndon Johnson lied to this country about the war in Vietnam, and we paid a high price for it for years. And when he did that, I vowed, every day I served in this Congress, that I would see to it that whoever testified before us, and whoever talked to us, whether it was President or the most lowly administration official, would be held to a high standard of truth. Because when they are not, people die.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.