Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, all I can say to our Republican friends on the other side of the aisle is: ``Welcome Aboard,'' even if you are a little short and even if you are a little late.

The fact is that for the last 3 years we have had a history of resistance by the majority party in this House to efforts by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards) and me to add funding for veterans health care above the amounts that the Republican majority saw fit to provide.

Example: fiscal 2005, the budget resolution. We asked that $1.3 billion more be made available for veterans health care. We were turned down. In a continuing resolution for fiscal 2005, we tried to add $2.5 billion for veterans health care. We were turned down.

As recently as a month ago, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards) was called a demagogue by a member of the majority party because he was insisting that the VA estimates were too low and that we needed more money.

Now the VA belatedly admits that they have found a problem. The only problem is even under their story they found it in April and they did not reveal it until now. I would suggest that the VA also has a history of trying to chisel on veterans' benefits. Three years ago, they sent out instructions to veterans' service officers not to engage in outreach in order to inform veterans what they were entitled to, and we had to scold them day by day on this House floor to try to get them to back off, and they are still being penurious about it.

The sad fact is that tonight what we ought to do is to take what the Senate did. We ought to take the $1.5 billion that the Senate Appropriations Committee reported out unanimously, every Republican, every Democrat, $1.5 billion, and they suggested that if we passed that, we could pass it immediately, no need for a conference, and we would be in great shape.

We were told yesterday we should not bother with bringing funding up on the Treasury Transport bill because we wanted to rush bills through that could be signed faster. Well, the best way to get a bill through this place immediately is to take the same number the Senate is taking and pass it.

Let me also simply say that I find amusing this scramble by the majority party leadership to finally get on board in a recognition that veterans need more funding. It was just 6 months ago that the majority party dumped the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) from his chairmanship of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs because he had been too insistent on adding money for veterans' health care. So when he got out of line, you dumped him and you substituted someone you thought would be more compliant with party leadership.

The gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Hooley) pointed out to me that this message was on a billboard in a veterans hospital in her district. It reads: ``Important: We regret to inform you that, due to budget issues, we can no longer supply meals to patients. Please bring a meal from home if you are going to be in the short-stay unit. We apologize for any inconvenience.''

Well, I think this Congress ought to apologize for the inconvenience that they have caused veterans for the past 3 years by refusing to recognize that these budgets are inadequate. We are oh so good at praising the soldiers when the bands are playing and they are going off to war. We have an obligation to be just as enthusiastic in meeting their needs when they come home.

I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time, and I hope we would vote against the previous question so we can adopt the $1.5 billion solution which the Senate, on a unanimous basis in the Senate Appropriations Committee, indicated was necessary.

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and let me simply say that I appreciate the fact that the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Knollenberg) has tried to do everything in his power to make this bill as acceptable as possible, given the circumstances. So I do not object to what he has done, but I do object to the circumstances.

I would simply say that the problem is that Chairman Knollenberg has not been given the tools necessary to make this a desirable bill. It is sort of like giving a surgeon a spoon and telling him to go ahead and perform surgery. He needs more than that in order to get the job done.

This bill, I think, is an important failure in terms of our obligation to meet a number of national needs. As has been mentioned previously, we have a number of important HUD programs which are crunched and zeroed out. Brownfields, for instance. My community has had some wonderful successes in cleaning up polluted areas through the use of that program. That program, if this bill has its way, would be gone. We have other problems in the housing area which have already been discussed.

Amtrak. As my friends in this House know, I often quote my favorite philosopher, Archie the Cockroach. Archie said once: ``Did you ever notice when a politician does get an idea, he gets it all wrong?'' And I would say that this budget for Amtrak gets it all wrong.

Amtrak, frankly, does not impact my district to any significant degree, but the fact is it is an important national resource which should not be scuttled like it is an old World War I battleship. The fact is that it provides an important national service, and we ought to be able to preserve a national passenger rail system.

The idea that is wrong is the idea that somehow we ought to require passenger rail service in this country to show a profit. We do not require airlines to do that. The Federal Government pumps a lot of money into the budget in order to provide service to hard-to-serve areas in the country as far as air travel is concerned, and we need to treat rail transportation the same way.

We would not have a Federal highway system if we only built the routes that ``paid for themselves.'' Most of rural America would be flat out of luck, especially the West, when it comes to highways, if we applied the same logic to highway construction that the House is trying to apply to railway transportation in this bill.

Another shortcoming, in my view, is the fact that it provides a $250 million reduction to the Community Development Block Grant. I do not represent a city over 40,000 in my entire district, but those small- town mayors that I represent make terrific use of the money in this program in order to revitalize neighborhoods in ways that they otherwise would never be able to do.

I would also say, and this is no particular fault of the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Knollenberg) either, but this bill represents the last chance that we have to do something about the fact that the administration for 2 years has kept the truth from Congress about the needs of the veterans health care system in this country.

We have been trying for 2 years to get more money into the VA for veterans health care. We have steadily been told by the administration, No, no, no, the budget is fully adequate, we do not need any more money. Now we know it has all been baloney.

Yesterday, the administration finally broke down and admitted that they are more than a billion dollars short for this year, and for the coming year, they will be $2.6 billion short. We have an obligation to do something about it. The Senate did something yesterday on the Interior bill. The Senate added $1.4 billion as an emergency appropriation to deal with what is an emergency situation in the veterans health care agency.

This is the last appropriation bill that is going to go through here on a regular basis, and because we were not allowed to offer this amendment on the subcommittee bill where it should have been offered, we have no choice but to try to get it offered to this bill, unless this House wants to sit, as FDR used to say, ``frozen in the ice of its own indifference.'' I would hope we would not do that and would respond to the challenge at hand.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Let me simply say, I hate to say, we told you so, but we told you so. We warned the majority that, if you listened to the denials of the Veterans Administration, you would eventually be embarrassed because their request was inadequate to meet the needs of returning veterans.

We have now been told yesterday, finally the VA is telling us the truth, and the fact is, this is the only remaining appropriation vehicle that we can use to add the necessary funds. The Senate added $1.4 billion yesterday to the Interior bill. That was not germane either, but the Senate did not let dunghill jurisdictional politics get in the way of dealing with the problems of veterans. I would urge the House to follow the lead of the Senate and to allow this amendment to be added so that we can take care of the problem.

We are not even adding the extra $400 million that the Senate added yesterday. We are simply saying, take what the VA has already admitted they need for this year. We know it is going to be more for next year. But at least take the $1 billion we know is needed now, so that we do not continue to listen to false promises from the VA.

Parliamentary Inquiry

Mr. Chairman, I would simply state that the House is in a strange position today because, under the rules of the House, every item that is brought to the floor is supposed to be germane to the bill at hand unless the Committee on Rules has provided exceptions to that. My understanding of the rules is that notwithstanding the fact that the rule does not specifically allow for this amendment, if no Member objects, this amendment could be considered.

So I would simply ask every Member of the House, through the Chair, whether or not this matter is sufficiently important enough that a point of order not be lodged.

The gentleman from California suggested that this ought to be considered in some other venue. We would be happy to do that if someone had another suggestion; but right now, this is the only dog in the hunt. I am afraid that if the gentleman persists in his point of order, the gentleman from Texas and I would have to concede the point of order; but I would hope that we would not be pushed into that position.

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this amendment, and I want to just comment on a couple of things that were said by the distinguished subcommittee chairman during the debate. He described this amendment as being a ``slash and burn amendment.'' Well, I want to suggest that what was ``slash and burn'' was the budget resolution which has enforced these kinds of reductions across the budget.

In my view, it is the budget resolution which slashed and burned when it wound up producing an education budget that left No Child Left Behind education programs $800 million below last year. It was slash and burn which left the National Institutes of Health with 500 fewer medical research grants than they had 2 years ago. It was slash and burn that eliminated nine out of the 10 programs that were supposed to focus on the development of health professions in rural areas and in urban inner-cities. It was slash and burn which has caused this very bill to provide, in essence, a shutdown of Amtrak.

The gentleman from Oregon summed it up as well as anyone in the debate today when he pointed out the strange dichotomy that exists between believing that railroad transportation must show a profit, but airline transportation, passenger service at least, does not have to.

And I would add that there are hundreds of miles, thousands of miles in this country of interstate highway that in actuality have very few riders and standing alone could not justify their construction in the first place. So it seems to me, as has been said, we need a balanced set of transportation alternatives in this country. And you do not balance your transportation system by putting one leg of that transportation system out of business, as this committee product essentially does.

Mr. Chairman, I would urge support for the amendment. I do not like the reductions in the offsets any more than many other persons in this Chamber like them, but the fact is they were forced by every single Member who voted for that Republican budget resolution. So like it or not, those are the choices you enforced, and we choose not to shut down one of the major transportation legs in this country.

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

Mr. Chairman, I would just like to bring the House's attention to one fact: Since Members keep asking me, are we going to be here Friday, I would like to make the point simply that this is the 224-page bill. We are still on page 2.

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

Mr. Chairman, this House, just a short while ago, adopted the LaTourette and Oberstar amendment, the clear intent of which was to restore passenger service to the routes shown in the map that everybody has been showing around today, the areas, the routes in red. It was meant to retain a truly national passenger railroad service.

Without the subsequent amendment of the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Corrine Brown), that initial action by the House remains essentially meaningless, and it means that the only thing that the money would be used for, which was gained in that LaTourette amendment, would be to pay shutdown costs to the former employees of the parts of Amtrak that are being shut down. I do not think that action is going to please anybody. I do not think it is going to fool anybody. We clearly need this amendment, and I would urge support for it.

Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Corrine Brown).

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

Hallelujah. Hallelujah. We have finally found a Republican who cares about any kind of a poor people program. Hallelujah. What has the world come to? Let me tell you some of the things that you scuttled for poor people before you started with crocodile tears on this amendment. Let me just list some of the programs for poor people you have scuttled over the last 4 years.

The earned income tax credit: You only qualify for it if you make less than $27,000 a year, but oh, you had to have a major effort on that side of the aisle to cut it.

Housing: How many times have you come to this floor cutting housing programs for low-income, squeezing housing programs for elderly, low- income?

Dental care programs: How many times in the Labor, Health, Education bill have you opposed efforts to try to increase dental care service? What did you do just last week in the Labor HHS bill when you scuttled the community services block grant, when you savaged it? That is a program that many rural communities use to help the homeless, to help the low-income.

What did you do about low-income heating assistance? Last week, you cut it by $200 million bucks.

What did you do about the minimum wage? How many times have you tried to block an increase in the minimum wage?

I just have to say, I am thunderstruck. I am amazed we have finally found a Republican who would put something on the Floor to help poor people, except that is not the real intent; is it?

Mr. Chairman, it seems to me that it is rather convenient that we have a newfound concern for the poor at a time when, by expressing concern for the poor, it facilitates the scuttling of a national transportation system. So I just have to say, I do not know how this amendment's going to go, but I have no doubt that the purpose of the amendment is simply to scuttle what is left of our ability to provide a national transportation system, and if, for a few moments, the poor people of this country are fooled into thinking that the other side actually cares about them, well, this is politically so much better for you; is it not?

Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, as I understand this unanimous consent proposal, what this means is that we still face the need to dispose of some 43 amendments. As I calculate it, given the time allotted to each, that means that with the slippage that normally occurs, we are looking at approximately 9 hours of additional debate on these issues, without counting the time that it takes to conduct the roll calls on whatever issues are put to a roll call.

I would urge Members to recognize that if all of these amendments are offered, we are going to be here until the cows come home, as they say in my area, and I think we would prefer to see debate more focused than that.

For instance, under this agreement, we face the prospect of having some 10 amendments on Cuba. I would hope that we could focus that issue on the most important issues that are involved.

Having said that, I would simply like to ask one question under my reservation: It is my understanding that if this unanimous consent agreement is agreed to, that we would proceed to debate further issues until 9:45 tonight. At 9:45, we will take whatever votes are pending. We would then resume action in the House tomorrow at 10 o'clock, and that this committee would be allowed to complete its business before any other matter comes before the House.

Is that a correct understanding?

I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman. I would simply like to point out, it is not particularly important to me whether we finish the appropriation bills before we leave for the July 4 recess or not, but I was under the impression that it was important to the gentleman from California and to the majority leadership. I am willing to cooperate in that effort, but I do not want any other committee business to come before the House that would get in the way of accomplishing that end.

So if that is the understanding and if the gentleman is in fact speaking for the leadership on that matter?

Mr. Speaker, with that understanding, I would be happy to withdraw my reservation of objection and wish Mr. Knollenberg good luck.

Mr. Speaker, this bill spends a lot of money on foreign aid, but there is a major problem with this bill today. And that problem is not money that the bill contains. It is money that the bill does not contain.

Last week we were told by the Veterans Administration that after continually resisting efforts to increase funding for veterans health care, they were finally admitting that there was, in fact, a $1 billion shortfall in veterans health care funding for the present fiscal year.

My understanding is that at the hearing of the Subcommittee on Military Construction this morning, the VA amended that number and they are now telling us that in addition to the $1 billion shortfall which they said they had in this fiscal year, they are saying that they are going to need $1.5 billion next year, plus another $1.1 billion if the Congress does not take action with respect to co-payments and enrollment fees that the Congress has already decided that it will not support.

So in other words, there is a huge hole in the Veterans Administration health care funding and it is growing.

Now, we have had to endure a lot of cynical comments from some Members on the other side over the past 2 years because the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards) and I and several others have tried at every opportunity to get more money into the budget for veterans health care.

In fact, I recall at one point the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards) was called a demagogue by a member of the majority party because he stood up and insisted that we fund veterans health care at least a billion dollars higher level than it was being funded.

I think now we recognize, and I would hope our friends on the other side of the aisle would recognize, that the numbers which the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards) and others have been citing are correct and that the numbers that the Veterans Administration has been citing are not.

I find it ironic that the majority party even removed from the Committee on Veterans' Affairs chairmanship, the gentleman who last year recognized along with us that we need higher funding for veterans health care. He was rewarded for being frank about the needs for veterans by being bounced out of his committee chairmanship.

I think we ought to take a look at what the facts are. Right now medical facilities are literally falling down around their patients. One veterans medical clinic had to put up scaffolding around walls to protect patients from falling bricks. Physicians at VA hospitals have reported that they had to visit neighboring hospitals to borrow supplies that they needed to carry out specific medical procedures.

The VA is proposing two solutions to the problem: diverting $400 million that was to be used for medical services next year, and using $600 million that was supposed to be used to improve hospitals. This, in our judgment, is just digging the hole deeper, and it is not the first time that we have seen this resistance.

In fiscal 2002 the administration would not allow the VA to spend $275 million that Congress had provided to meet the needs of veterans. In fiscal year 2004, the VA Secretary testified that the administration had cut his own request by $1.2 billion. They now admit there is a shortfall.

For 2006 the VA bill adds only 2 percent or $661 million for the Veterans Health Care Administration. Not nearly enough in light of today's revelations.

I will place into the Record, Mr. Speaker, a listing of our efforts over the past 2 years to raise veterans health care.

In short, I simply want to urge each and every Member of this House on both sides of the aisle to vote against the previous question on the rule on this bill so that we can try to respond to what is obviously an emergency situation and add to this bill the money that the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards) tried to add on the floor last week to a previous bill so that we can clean up the shortfall in the VA health care budget for this year, and so that we do not dig the hole deeper for the following year.

Even the money that the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards) was asking for last week will not be sufficient for the 2-year problem, but it is a whole lot better than hiding the problem under the rug as the administration has done for the past 2 years.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I would simply say I appreciate the oversight hearing but what we need is not so much a hearing but action. Secondly, I would grant to the gentleman that the preferred place to deal with this problem is not on this bill. The problem is we tried to deal with it on the bill where it belongs and we were blocked by the majority for doing so.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I oppose this rule for two reasons. One is because of this, a little piece of plastic called a credit card. All too often, little cards like this are issued by bloodsuckers. This bill, as it went to the Committee on Rules, contained a provision to defend average consumers from some of these credit card companies who abuse their privileges under the law and wreak havoc on people's financial rights.

Right now, there are a number of credit card companies who feel no compunction whatsoever about the idea of changing your interest rate on your credit card, even if you have never missed a payment, even if you have never been a day late with that company. They still reserve the right to jack up your interest rate to the default rate called the universal default rate if you have missed some other payment on somebody else's bill. Example: if you go on a vacation and you are a week late paying a mortgage bill, or you are a week late paying a light bill, if that gets reported on somebody else's credit report, a credit card company can make you pay 30 percent interest, no questions asked, even though you have never been late with a payment for them.

As Linda Sherry of Consumer Action said, ``It is the only industry in the world to reprice something you have already paid for.''

Now, the bill, as it went to the Committee on Rules, contained an amendment which I offered which passed by a 10-vote margin on a bipartisan basis in the Committee on Appropriations. Yet, the rule does not protect that provision from being stricken on a point of order.

So under this rule, any one Member out of 435 in this House can come to the floor and, for any reason they want, can knock this provision out of the bill.

Now, we will be told by friends on the majority side of the aisle, ``Well, this provision belongs under the jurisdiction of another subcommittee, or another committee.'' There are dozens of provisions in the bill before us that require waivers of points of order, but this one was singled out to be not protected. It will be very interesting to see whether any individual Member has the chutzpah to come on to this floor and knock out this provision, which is a protection for consumers that is long overdue.

The second reason that I will vote against this rule is because it does not make in order the Olver amendment. The Olver amendment is very simple.

It says that instead of giving people who make a million bucks a year a $140,000 tax cut next year, we ought to scale that back to $131,000 so you have enough room in this bill to meet our national obligations in funding Amtrak and in funding the other high priority plans in this bill.

Now, the Republican majority has steadfastly insisted on hanging on to those super-sized tax cuts for the most fortunate people in this society. And that is why we had to have a hearing in the Subcommittee on Military Construction this morning when we find out that even though the Veterans Department is now admitting that they are more than $1 billion short in veterans health care funding this year and they are going to be more than $2.6 billion short next year, even though we face those shortages, the majority is insisting that we not treat that problem as an emergency because, ``oh, it will put pressure'' on them to reduce the size of those tax cuts.

These are minimal actions that this Congress ought to take to protect the public who needs decent transportation, to protect veterans who need decent health care, and to protect consumers who are sick and tired of being bullied by shysters who take advantage of little print on their forms that charge people an arm and a leg on their credit cards.

These three little things the majority could have helped out. They have not. Those are three good reasons for voting against this rule.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Let me say that thank God there were some jobs added in the last few months of the Bush presidency, that made up for the 3\1/2\ million jobs that were lost from the first 3 years of his presidency.

You came within 100,000 jobs of being first President since Herbert Hoover not to add a single job in his term. It was the most anemic job growth of any president since Herbert Hoover.

3 million jobs that have been destroyed in the first place by the policies of the very administration that you are bragging about. You destroyed 3 million jobs and then gradually the economy recovered and you built back so you came back to about square one. I would not brag about having the worst job creation record of any president since Herbert Hoover. If you think that is a great achievement, that puts us in a different league.

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

Mr. Chairman, I just want to make one point to the membership on both sides of the aisle. As has been the case with most appropriation bills this year, we are trying to work our way to a unanimous consent agreement that will limit time for discussion of amendments to this bill in such a way that we can finish this bill today.

Right now, the unanimous consent agreement which is being worked on would result, if you take into account the debate time plus the slippage time that occurs between each speech, we would probably be on the floor for about 6 to 6\1/2\ hours, not counting vote time. That means that we would be very lucky to finish this bill by 10 o'clock tonight.

We are being asked to do so earlier if possible so that we can finish the transportation bill by debating it on Wednesday and Thursday, trying to avoid a Friday session before the July Fourth break.

We are getting, frankly, crossed signals from Members. Some Members want to see to it that we get out by Thursday; other Members want to see the time on their amendments extended. We cannot accomplish both goals at the same time. So I ask Members to choose for themselves what they want, whether they want to be here Friday or whether they would like to reach a reasonably congenial agreement on time limits so that we can finish this bill at a reasonable hour tonight and finish the remaining appropriation bill by Thursday.

But this is really up to Members. We cannot control what Members offer on the floor; all we can do is deliver the bad news.

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

Mr. Chairman, as this amendment is considered, I think it would be useful to remember what the committee has done with respect to our assistance to Egypt. As the gentleman from Arizona has indicated, the committee adopted an amendment offered by me which earmarked ESF funds for Egypt, doubling the amounts spent on democracy, governance, and human rights and providing additional funding for education within that account.

The amendment earmarked $50 million in ESF for democracy, governance, and human rights and $50 million for education. Both categories were projected at about $25 million in the administration request. So this essentially doubles that amount.

The reason for that has already been stated. We were looking for a way to send a clear signal to Egypt that we find their human rights record to be an embarrassment without thoroughly upsetting the administration's ability to continue to negotiate in that region, to try to move what is left of the peace process forward.

I have no idea whether the administration will be sufficiently serious about the issue. I have no idea whether or not they will be successful if they are serious, but I do just want to say one thing. I think every Member of this House would like to be able to vote for this amendment because we like where the money would be put; but we also have a responsibility, regardless of party, to try to see to it that in the attempt to send messages we do not blow things up in different regions of the world.

So I have absolutely no doubt that this amendment would produce a most irresponsible result in the region, but I think it will be interesting to note who supports the administration's position on this roll call and who does not. I intend, for one, to watch very carefully to see whether or not the leadership of the President's own party is going to be sticking with the President or not, and whether they do or not will send an interesting signal to those of us on this side of the aisle.

I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. Chairman, if I could just say, I would be most curious to know what the administration is clearly saying on this subject. I have just received a message which indicates that the administration is pleased with the language in the committee bill. I hope that they continue to clarify their position to make clear exactly where they stand on this amendment. If they do not, they will be the ones who have to explain the consequences.

Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, I certainly will not object. I simply want to take this opportunity to explain to the House that what this timetable means is that if all of these amendments are indeed offered and debated to the full extent allowed under the unanimous consent request, we will be fortunate to be out of here by midnight tonight. That is how much time it will take, assuming that we have about one-third of these amendments that proceed to roll calls.

So for those Members who are asking what time we intend to get out tonight, I think it depends upon the zeal with which Members push forward with their amendments and with requiring recorded votes.

Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

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

Mr. Chairman, I find this debate most interesting, especially the statement made by the previous speaker, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica). It has been my experience on this floor through the years that the most baffling moments come not when we are talking about things we do not know, but when we are talking about things that we do know that ``ain't'' so.

I think the gentleman from Florida just illustrated what I mean. He stood here on the floor and suggested that somehow those of us on this side of the aisle who are skeptical about Plan Colombia had blocked all kinds of initiatives. He also suggested that this plan was a plan which had been forged into a successful program by President Bush and Speaker Hastert.

Well, the fact is that I remember when Plan Colombia was first pushed through the Committee on Appropriations, because I opposed it vehemently. I thought, based on my experience in chairing the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, for 10 years, that our drug interdiction programs were largely a flop. I know that I had officials from the Reagan administration tell me privately that we had intercepted less than 5 percent of the drugs that came across the southern borders from not just Mexico, but from elsewhere in this hemisphere.

I would ask what initiatives did we block? I wish we had blocked some, but what I remember is getting run over. And I was not run over by President Bush and Speaker Hastert, I was run over by President Clinton and Speaker Hastert. They were the two who pushed it down the throats of the Committee on Appropriations, each trying to compete with each other to show who was most zealous in their resistance to the drug problem.

So I would simply say I do not mind each of us rewriting a little history, if it is on purpose, but I hate to see history being rewritten by accident. That gets to be more than a little dangerous.

So I would simply suggest that on the merits, this program has had a long time to prove itself. In the end, the only way it could succeed is if you had a Colombian society that was determined to make it succeed, and that society has not been willing to do that. They have not been able to muster the forces necessary to deal with the problem effectively.

So we are left to ask what is ordinarily spoken of as a good conservative question, and that question would be: No matter how desirable this program is, does it work? And the answer is clear. This program has, at best, had only marginal success, very hard to see certainly, night or day. So I would simply suggest that with all of our challenges in the foreign aid area, even if we confine those challenges just to the Western Hemisphere, there are a lot of other places where we could more productively spend this money than we are in this initiative.

Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, we cannot hear.

Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my objection, and I support the gentleman's motion.

Mr. Speaker, in light of Karl Rove's savage attack on the patriotism of liberals in this country, I have a couple of questions. Two days after 9/11, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) and I, on a bipartisan basis, pushed a $20 billion package through this House in response to the attack. We had to sit in the Speaker's office and defend the President's request against people like Phil Graham and Don Nichols of the President's own party. Are those the liberals that Karl Rove was talking about?

One month after 9/11, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) and I went to the White House and urged the President to support a greatly increased homeland security budget. The President, without even looking at what we were proposing, said, ``If you add one dime to our budget for homeland security, I will veto the bill.'' Mr. Rove was sitting over his shoulder when President Bush made that remark. Is President Bush one of those out-of-line liberals that Mr. Rove is talking about?

I come from the State of Wisconsin. I know a third-rate Joe McCarthy when I see one, and I saw one in Mr. Rove's comments yesterday.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, let me thank the gentleman from Ohio for striking the last word so you could raise this.

Let me simply say to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank), I fully agree with him about the value of the program. The President's budget wanted to transfer it to this bill. The subcommittee did not pick up the money in this bill. In my view, it should have. But I would say that because it has not, there will be another opportunity next week to try to deal with this when the Teasury-Transportation bill comes to the floor.

It would be disgraceful if the Congress allowed this program to fall through the cracks because neither committee included the funding for it and if Congress simply played Alfonse and Gaston on us between the two subcommittees.

Mr. Chairman, I would not describe it as breaking the agreement. If the gentleman would be kind enough to let me explain what I think has happened here. The gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) and the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler) both missed their opportunity to offer their amendments in regular order because the reading went fast and neither of them was on the floor. We had a unanimous consent agreement which was about to be propounded by the gentleman from Ohio.

When the gentleman from Illinois and the gentleman from New York discovered that they had missed their opportunity, the gentleman from Illinois asked for an opportunity to go back. At that point, I suggested that the unanimous consent agreement be rewritten to include your amendment and the gentleman's from New York. The committee majority preferred, and I can understand why, because it was time consuming, the committee preferred to simply rely on our ability to get unanimous consent to go back to consider yours and the gentleman from New York's amendment.

However, the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie) was not part of the arrangement. And since your amendment takes money out of a program in

his State, he felt required to object. So I do not think that anyone is ``breaking an agreement.''

This is what happens, number one, when Members are not on the floor when they need to be. Secondly, it is what happens when we do not include matters like that in the UC agreement. We were relying on an assumption that proved to be erroneous, and I am certain the gentleman from Ohio feels as badly about it as I do. But in my view, no one on the floor is breaking his word. This is just an unfortunate set of circumstances, and a Member has the right to protect his own State's interest if the opportunity presents itself.

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

Mr. Chairman, if I could have the attention of the gentleman from Ohio, I simply rise neither to speak for nor against this amendment, but simply to make an observation about it.

The situation that the gentleman from Ohio finds himself in on this issue is a very difficult one, because he is trying to balance between two legitimate claims on the Federal Treasury. We have seen, as was observed in the Washington Post article this morning, a parade of Members come down to the floor yesterday and today trying to wiggle out from the consequences of the budget resolution which was imposed on the entire House by the passage of that resolution.

Now, I do not like to be in that position. I have a little less sympathy for the gentleman from Ohio than I do for myself on this issue, because he voted for the budget resolution and I did not. But that being said, there is no right position on an amendment like this.

This issue simply demonstrates that when the money that you provide for education is inadequate, when it is inadequate to the needs of the Nation, then we are going to be eating each other's favorite programs, then you are going to have all kinds of interest groups in this country chewing on each other and each trying to get out from under at the expense of everybody else.

So I can actually understand why the gentleman opposes this amendment, because he needs some flexibility in conference to deal with some of the legitimate concerns that Members have. I love the program the gentleman from Georgia is trying to add money to. I had a son in the gifted and talented program. He was a National Merit scholar. Yet I would have a great deal of difficulty voting to add money for that program at the expense of programs that went to help less gifted and less advantaged children in this society.

So the amendment is half right and half wrong, and I hope, therefore, that the Members on the majority side and the minority side will understand why the gentleman from Ohio is so reluctantly against this amendment.

I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.

Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman for correcting me, I misheard. I happen to think that that is a tremendous program too. But the problem is all of these amendments, taken together, will limit the chairman's ability to provide any flexibility at all in conference to fix these problems. So I urge the gentleman to think about it. He might be surprised at which programs are going to be bitten if the gentleman does not have the flexibility that he needs.

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of this amendment. We have heard a number of Members on the majority side of the aisle say we should not overturn a court decision.

Where were you on the Schiavo case when you brought the Congress back in order to stick your nose into the very painful end-of-life decisions that were made by a family in agony? You did not hesitate to try to overturn a court decision then. Get straight, fellows, come on.

This amendment is absolutely necessary if we are going to stop the dumping of pension obligations on the taxpayers of the United States. The taxpayers have enough trouble now getting their representatives to do real things to fix Social Security and now they are going to dump the responsibility for private pensions on the taxpayer as well. That is goofy and it is gutless. It is stupid. It is negligent. Outside of that, it is a terrific idea.

What I would say is this, and I hope the House remembers this when the Treasury bill is on the floor next week because I got added to that bill a requirement that the General Accounting Office do a study to determine whether or not we need to re-regulate the airlines and treat them as a necessary public utility providing service to every community in this country in order to save our pension system for airline employees. If we do not do that, if we do not do that, we can bet there will not be a single airline that has a private pension system by the end of the decade. There will be a race to the bottom in terms of costs, and the first people who are going to get run over in that race are going to be the workers who thought they had a private pension system.

This Congress needs to start talking about matters that affect the people back home rather than continuing to focus on matters that deal with the welfare of people inside the system and inside the Beltway in Washington. It is about time Congress quit paying attention to little details that have nothing to do with people's lives and start focusing on big problems like preservation of their private pensions. This is the only way that we can fire a shot across the do-nothing leadership of this Congress' bow and get some movement on this crucial pension issue.

I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, without this amendment, Uncle Sam is being Uncle Sucker.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim the time in opposition of the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition, not because I am necessarily opposed, but because I might be if I understood this correctly. This is not something that we have had a lot of notice to discuss, and I must confess considerable disquiet at the idea that we should overturn a report of the Department of Education Inspector General with respect to the use of taxpayers' money.

As I understand it, the IG, and what I understand is on the basis of a 2-minute briefing, what I understand is that the Inspector General ruled that a number of these schools were, in fact, private and not public and also questioned the way that at least two of the schools had spent taxpayers' money.

Will the gentleman enlighten me with respect to the latter concern?

I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.

Reclaiming my time, let me simply say, I would be willing to let this amendment go by and have it temporarily accepted by the House, provided that there is an understanding that the committee reserves the right to change its mind during the conference process if we learn that the public interest requires us to oppose it.

I do not want acceptance to be interpreted as the committee's willingness without examining this further to allow this to continue until the authorization bill is passed. That might be a good idea, but I think we ought to keep that as an open possibility rather than make it as a commitment.

I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.

Mr. Chairman, in that case, I somewhat dubiously will withdraw any objection to this amendment for the moment and hope that we can clarify it further as we go to conference.

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

Mr. Chairman, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute.

Mr. Chairman, I would also say that I note in the letter in the final audit report that there is a sentence which says: Additionally, two of the charter schools that we audited did not expend Title I funds entirely in accordance with applicable law and regulations.

I do not know what the facts are with respect to that sentence, but I would simply say that I would not, in any way, want the acceptance of this amendment to be an indication that the Congress is carte blanche accepting the fact that funds ought to continue for those two schools, because it seems to me we have an obligation to make certain that, even if we are trying to deal with the temporary problem, we do not want an improper expenditure of taxpayers' money.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, this amendment is misdirected, misguided, and stupid. If you are out in the woods with a rifle and you are hunting and you shoot at something, it would be nice if you are shooting at the right target.

This amendment does not do anything about illegal immigration. This amendment simply shoots the victim of illegal immigration by damaging the local hospitals. If we have illegal immigrants in this country, it is because of a failure of the Federal Government to effectively enforce its immigration laws. That is the problem.

The problem with the gentleman's amendment is that because he does not like the fact that the Federal Government has been ineffective with respect to immigration, he wants to take it out on the local hospitals. The local hospitals when someone shows up on their door, they have an obligation under the law to treat that patient. If the Federal Government does not pay for the treatment of that patient, then local taxpayers and local hospitals get stuck with the bill.

I have a similar situation in my district. I have a huge percentage of Hmong who have come to this country since the end of the Vietnam War. They came because of a decision of the Federal Government. Yet after they come to my district, after a very few months of Federal support, the financial cost for maintaining them, for educating them and for dealing with their medical needs winds up being assumed by the local government. That is not fair. Local governments do not make the foreign policy decisions that determine who our refugees are, and local governments do not have anything to do with what policies the Federal Government follows with respect to immigration.

I would suggest to the gentleman if you do not like Federal immigration policy, shoot the right messenger. This one shoots the wrong messenger. This amendment deserves to be roundly defeated, unless you believe that somebody should pay for somebody else's mistakes.

Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Linda T. Sanchez).

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

Mr. Chairman, I simply want to say that I rise in support of the gentleman's amendment. I would fully grant that I think there is a problem with the timetable associated with the amendment because of its immediacy, but the fact is that under the rules of the House, the gentleman had no choice but to draw the amendment that way in order for it to be eligible to be offered as an amendment.

The committee, if it so chooses, can easily fix this problem in conference. It can easily delay the effective date of the gentleman's amendment, and I think that is what we ought to do. I think the Social Security Administration, I think the Federal Government, I think the Pentagon, I think our banks and other financial institutions, have been incredibly reckless in protecting the privacy of American citizens. And we are increasingly going to see this as a huge problem, and we are also going to see identity theft mount exponentially.

I congratulate the gentleman for trying to do something about it. That is more than one can say for most of this Congress. And if there are technical problems, this committee, if it is worth its salt, can easily have them fixed before the bill is reported back in conference.

I urge support for the amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, I think the gentlewoman from Connecticut has indicated correctly that there are a number of technical problems with this amendment; yet I think I know that if there is a roll call, it will be passed overwhelmingly.

So what I would suggest in the interest of time, unless we want to stay here until midnight, is to simply accept a number of these amendments which we know have significant technical flaws, but which can be corrected in conference. Otherwise, we are going to have a lot of meaningless debates, and they will simply consume a lot of time, and we will wind up in the same place.

So what I would simply urge is that the committee accept the amendment, recognizing that it needs to be fixed substantially in conference, and deal with some of the very practical problems just laid out by the gentlewoman.

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

Mr. Chairman, I do so so that I can facilitate a colloquy between the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich) and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula), and I yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich).

I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for raising this issue.

Amendment No. 16 Offered by Mr. Hefley

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

Mr. Chairman, the gentleman said, for some reason we think that Mr. Tomlinson is being political. I wonder why? Mr. Tomlinson is the follow who said that public radio stations should get in line with the Republican election victory.

Mr. Tomlinson is the person who appointed a consultant in order to try to measure the number of instances when people on PBS programs were, quote, anti-Bush or, quote, anti-DeLAY.

Mr. Tomlinson is the person who recommended the appointment to head the Corporation of a former cochairman of the Republican National Committee. If Bill Clinton had appointed the former Democratic National Chairman to the public broadcasting board, the other side would be having a conniption fit. The other side would be screaming in outrage and passing out motions of impeachment; they have had a lot of practice at that.

It is also Mr. Tomlinson who was reported to have worked to raise money in order to put the Wall Street Journal editorial board on public broadcasting. Now, there is an objective operation for you.

I would also suggest that what is at work here is something broader than Mr. Tomlinson. What I think is happening is this, Mr. Chairman. I think we have a ``thought police'' brigade loose around the country. And we have seen evidence of it in a number of places.

We saw it in the Schiavo case, where the Republican majority tried to tell every American family how they had to handle an end-of-life decision. Then we saw it in the efforts of the majority leader, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), who fired a shot at every judge in the country who had the temerity to think for themselves, warning them if they did not toe the line, he would go after their jurisdiction.

And then you have this effort to appoint the chairman of the Republican National Committee as head of public broadcasting. And then I wonder why the American people get a little nervous about the thought police at work.

The fact is that every public opinion poll shows that the American people have more confidence in the objectivity of public television and public radio than they do any other news outlet, and certainly more confidence in their objectivity than they have in us as a body.

We have hit a new low recently in terms of public approval of the way this Congress is operating, I would say with good reason, because this Congress spends so much time worrying about things that affect itself rather than worry about things that affect the American people.

So I think there is a very good reason for the gentleman's amendment. I regret that there is a necessity to bring it up. But I do think that Mr. Tomlinson is primarily responsible for politicizing this entire issue.

Mr. Chairman, I do not mind seeing Republicans on public broadcasting. I do not think there was a better show on television than Bill Buckleys's program through the years. Bill Buckley had a huge intellect, and I think the country was served by the programs that he had on that program for many years.

I do not think the country is served well when Mr. Tomlinson takes upon himself the duty of being the thought policeman for the entire country on public television. That crosses the line. He ought to go. He ought to resign. This Congress ought to demand that he do so.

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

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I would simply say that while I am dubious about the content of several of these amendments, in the interest of moving the bill forward, I would also urge that we accept the en bloc amendments and move on to the others.

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

Mr. Chairman, I want to explain to the House why it is that I vigorously oppose this amendment. I am the only Member of the Chamber who was exposed to a recall effort because of my support for tribal sovereignty. Even though the Constitution of the United States does not provide for such a recall, our State constitution thought it did. And so I had to endure an effort in recall because of my fierce support for tribal sovereignty.

But having said that, I want to say that the gentleman's amendment goes far too far in that regard. Now I will tell you why.

In my State, we had an experience in which one of the tribes contracted out to a private party to run their casino. That private party took advantage of the fact that the compact that the Governor set up with the tribe was defective. And under that defect, they made quite clear to female employees of the casino that it was their obligation, in blunt language, to either put out or get out.

Now, we all know what that means. And what the gentleman's amendment means under those circumstances is that when you remove the protection of the National Labor Relations Act, you subject individuals with no power at all to that kind of treatment by shysters and bums.

Now, as far as I am concerned, I heard a whole lot about family values from that side of the aisle. You think this amendment represents family values in that situation? Give me a break. It does not.

I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I simply want to say institutions, no matter what they are, whether they are tribe or any other institution, they have a capacity to violate human rights. And with the gentleman's amendment, you will be opening a loophole in the law as big as a 65-foot truck. This amendment is a terrible amendment. It ought to be buried in a box and we ought to pretend it never was presented.

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

But the contractors are bums.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word, and I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, let me simply say that, like the gentleman from Ohio, I see no problem with accepting the amendment on this side because, as I read it, it does not do nothing to nobody for anybody or about anybody. And so with that, I am happy to accept the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word, and I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur).

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

Mr. Chairman, as the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula) said, there are no plans for anyone in the Federal Government to conduct universal screening, and there are no funds in this bill for any such purpose. Having said that, let me simply say I do not think our problem in this country is that we do too much screening for mental health problems with young people.

We are all familiar with the problem of youth depression. There are a very significant number of teenagers who are afflicted with that problem. We are, I think, all familiar with the sad situation with regard to teenage suicide. Two friends of each of my sons committed suicide. So I do not think the problem in this country is that we know too much about mental health problems for young people. The problem is just the opposite; we know too little. So I agree with the concerns expressed by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula).

I yield to the gentleman from Rhode Island.

I yield to the gentlewoman from California.

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

Mr. Chairman, all through last year on this side of the aisle, we continually insisted that we needed more money for veterans health care and were consistently told by the administration and the other side that we did not. As recently as April 5, Mr. Nicholson, the head of the VA, told the Senate in an effort to defeat a Democratic amendment, ``I can assure you that the VA does not need emergency supplemental funding in fiscal 2005 to continue to provide timely, quality service that is always our goal.'' We were again told this year when we tried to add money to the VA for veterans health care that it was not needed, that we were simply pandering to veterans.

Well, now the facts are out. Today's Washington Post: ``Funds for Health Care of Veterans Short $1 Billion.'' What we find out is that now the Bush administration is belatedly admitting to the Congress what we have been trying to tell people for months, namely, that the VA budget is inadequate and their accountants indicate that they are going to need more than $1 billion.

The gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards) is going to shortly be asking unanimous consent to consider an amendment which would, on an emergency basis, add the $1 billion which the administration is saying is necessary to pay the bills at the VA. I would hope that the Congress could find a way to accomplish this. At a time when we are having trouble with recruiting, it makes no sense to be sending messages to our veterans that, Okay, you can go over and fight in Iraq, but we are not so sure about what services you are going to get when you get home.

Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards).

I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. Chairman, I insert at this point in the Record the text of the amendment that the gentleman from Texas would like to offer to correct this egregious situation.

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

Mr. Chairman, I take this time at the end of the bill to explain why I am going to vote against the bill. I am speaking as one Member of the House; I am not speaking as ranking Democrat on the subcommittee or committee. I simply wanted people to know why I am going to oppose this bill; and I want to, at the same time, explain my motion to recommit.

The good thing about this bill is that we repaired most of the damage to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Most, but not all. But let us understand, this bill, in my view, is still an assault on the country's future. This bill is just the start of cuts planned over a 5- year period to implement the Republican budget resolution that is placing the importance of $140,000 tax cuts for those making $1 million a year ahead of our long-term investments in education of our children, the health care of our people, and the security of American workers.

This is the most important bill that we will consider this year in terms of meeting the needs of the average American family and in building the long-term strength of our society. More than any other, it is the bill where we care for our neighbors. It is the bill that determines how well we meet our obligations to those in society who have not been among the most fortunate. This bill fails to meet those tests in some dramatic ways, and I would like to point out just a few of them.

Because of the fact that this House is deciding that large tax cuts for very well-off people are more important than anything else, this bill, on the worker protection front, guts the program that we rely on to try to protect our workers from having to compete against child and slave labor. It cuts that program by 87 percent, this at a time when the administration is asking that we pass new trade legislation with

Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, we cannot hear.

Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my objection, and I support the gentleman's motion.

Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to recommit.

I most certainly am.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the motion be debatable and that debate be limited to 2 minutes, equally divided between the proponent and an opponent.

Mr. Speaker, this is a simple, straight motion to recommit so that the committee can repair the shortcomings in the education, health care and worker protection programs in the bill, and so that the committee can respond to the announcement of the Veterans Administration yesterday by adding a billion dollars to veterans health care programs.

I urge an ``aye'' vote on the motion to recommit. I will be voting against final passage, and I would hope a good many others will, too.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I am sad to say that I think this bill is a prescription for a second-rate economy for the American people because it declines to make the long-term investments that are necessary in education, in health care, in job training, in worker protection and the like.

I will be voting against the previous question on the rule and the rule itself because the Committee on Rules did not make in order the amendment that I had asked them to make in order which would have done one very simple thing: it would have provided an additional $11.8 million in funding for high-priority education, health and worker protection programs. It would have provided that same amount, $11.8 million, in deficit reduction; and it would have paid for that by reducing the supersize tax cuts for people who make over a million dollars a year. Right now they are expected to get on average a $140,000 tax cut this year. We would have limited their tax cut to only $36,000, the poor devils. They would have to get along with only $36,000.

I make no apology about wanting to make these investments. We are the greatest country in the world. We have the greatest economy in the world. We are the world's leader in technology. We are the world's leader in almost everything, but we did not get there by not making crucial investments year after year after year. We got there by investing in our people by way of education, by making the right capital investments, by making the right investments in science and technology; and that grew the economy for everybody. This bill walks away from that responsibility.

This bill, in real-dollar terms, after you adjust for inflation, will deliver on a per-person basis about $5.9 billion less in these critical areas than it delivered last year.

There is one other element of the amendment I would like to talk about for just a moment. We talk a lot in this country about preventing abortions. It has been my experience that lectures from your local friendly politician or your local clergyman are not nearly as helpful to young women who are pregnant and trying to decide if they are going to carry a baby to term or not as is a helping hand. The amendment we wanted to offer would have provided that helping hand.

It would have taken critical programs that would make it economically easier for low-income and vulnerable women to choose to carry pregnancies to term. We would have had $175 million for maternal and infant health care, returning it to the fiscal year 2002 level. We would have added $300 million to child care, returning that to the fiscal year 2002 level. We would have added $418 million to the community service block grant to provide people with an opportunity for education, training and work, and to live with decency and dignity. And we would have provided $126 million for domestic violence prevention, effectively doubling that program. We

would have doubled the Healthy Start program for newborn babies, and we would have increased job training for young women by $212 million.

If we are concerned about life, our concern cannot end with the checkbook's edge. We need to recognize that if we are going to provide real-life, real-world opportunities for women to help convince them not to have abortions, we need to be funding programs like this. These are a whole lot more important to the spirit of the country, to the economy of the country, than providing a $140,000 tax cut to somebody who makes a million bucks a year.

Mr. Speaker, I regret the Committee on Rules did not make this amendment in order. That is why I will be voting against the previous question and voting against the rule.

Mr. Speaker, with respect to Pell grants, the College Board has indicated that the cost of attending a 4-year public university has increased by $2,300 since the President became President. The President decided to fix that problem by raising Pell grants by $100, thus taking care of 4 percent of the problem. The committee cut that to $50. That means that the committee is taking care of 2 percent of the problem.

In addition to that, the new IRS regulations out of the administration have cost students in my State over $170 per person. So the fact is that right now any student going to a 4-year university is dragging behind. He is not doing nearly as well as he was 4 years ago.

To suggest that a $50 increase in the Pell grant is going to take care of a $2,300 program is a joke.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula) for yielding.

Mr. Chairman, I want to emphasize, as the subcommittee chairman says, we are trying to help Members get out of here today. We cannot do that unless we get cooperation from Members on amendments and on time.

Frankly, if I had my way, there would be one speech for this bill, one speech against it, and we would vote, because we are not going to make any significant changes in this bill given what the budget has done to us.

So we might as well get on with it. I would ask Members to give us their cooperation. I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula) for bringing it to the House's attention.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 10 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, this bill is the clearest demonstration that I can think of of what happens when Congress puts $140,000 tax cuts for people who make $1 million a year or more ahead of our investment needs in our children, ahead of our investment needs in our health care system, and ahead of supporting programs that will help our workers compete in world markets. This bill, make no mistake about it, is a prescription for a second-class economy.

I know most of the discussion today will be focused on public broadcasting. I will be offering an amendment to add back $100 million that the committee cut out. Previously in the committee, I offered another amendment which added $400 million for this year's funding. We are simply trying to get it back up to last year's level. That is an important issue, and I hope that the House will vote for the amendment.

I want to make clear that even though the press has focused 90 percent of its attention on public broadcasting, in one sense that is fortunate because at least the people who pay attention to public broadcasting do have a megaphone of sorts, and they can get their message known. I believe our amendment today will pass, but even if it does, I would hope that the Members of this House and the members of the press would understand that that is far from the most important issue in this bill.

The most important thing about this bill is what it does to hurt the future of our children, what it does to avoid meeting the needs of people in this society who are sick and without health insurance, what it does to help our workers in the world economy.

The distinguished majority leader in discussing the budget resolution earlier this year said this: ``This is the budget the American people voted for when they elected a Republican House, a Republican Senate and a Republican White House.'' I quite agree, and this bill is also, unfortunately, the kind of bill that the American people are going to get because they voted for a Republican House, a Republican Senate, and a Republican White House.

Last year, the programs in this bill were $3.5 billion above the previous year. This year, this bill in a program-to-program basis cuts $1.6 billion from these programs.

Now, what does that mean? It means, for instance, that this bill even cuts into the President's signature programs in training, in health care and education. It cuts back substantially the President's recommendation for community college skills, for community health centers and high school reform. Let us take a look at what it does in other key areas of our economy.

For our workers, the administration is about to bring forth CAFTA, yet another misguided, misbegotten trade agreement. The administration is breaking arms and promising the Moon in order to get people to vote for that amendment; and yet this bill cuts the program that is supposed to be the traffic cop that protects American workers against having to compete against child and slave labor. It cuts that program by 87 percent. I do not think that the American people would agree with that.

This bill disinvests in job training and help for the unemployed. This bill for adult training grants is the lowest funding level in 10 years. It even cuts the Job Corps below current services level. And if you take a look at the health care area, of the 11 programs that we had on the books to help us develop the kind of health profession that we need, so that you have enough in rural areas and enough in your major metropolitan areas, this bill cuts 10 of those 11 programs. Only one is remaining, and 84 percent of that portion of the budget is gone. It also eliminates a community access program that is a key program that helps deliver health care services to the uninsured.

National Institutes of Health. There is not a politician in this House who does not go home and tell your constituents what you are doing on cancer research or Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. And what does this bill do? It means the National Institutes of Health are going to have 500 fewer grants to put out to scientists around the country than they had 2 years ago. We are backing off on the attack on disease.

Low Income Home Energy Assistance program. That is a program that helps low-income people and seniors avoid having to choose between heating their houses and feeding themselves. The program is cut by $200 million.

Education. Effectively, this is the first freeze on education funding in a decade. This bill cuts No Child Left Behind programs by $800 million. You have the mother of all mandates, telling the States and school districts what they must do here, what they must do there. That costs money. But the Federal Government is welshing on its responsibility and on its promise to help pay those costs. It is backing off.

On IDEA, the program that helps local units, or local school districts, pay for educating disabled kids. What does this bill do for that? Well, the Republican majority promised a few years ago that the Feds would pay 40 percent of the cost of that program. Today, this bill actually cuts the share of Federal participation from 18.6 to 18.2 percent of that program, welshing on another promise.

It freezes after-school centers for the fourth year in a row. It slashes education technology at a time when that has never been more important. It eliminates comprehensive school grants for 1,000 high- poverty school districts by eliminating the program. It freezes Impact Aid.

On Pell grants, the main program we use to help kids go to college, what does it do? On Pell grants, we are told by the College Board that the cost of a 4-year public university has increased $2,300 during the last 4 years. What is our response to it? The President says, well, we will fix the problem with a hundred bucks add-on to Pell grant. That takes care of 4 percent of the problem. This bill cuts that to 2 percent. It provides a measly $50 increase in the Pell grant program, and that does not address the fact that because the IRS has changed the eligibility tables there are going to be thousands and thousands of kids who are tossed off the program entirely. In fact, it is going to raise costs in my State by about $187 per student.

So what I would say is that this is the main legislation we will deal with this year that deals with the economic and social problems of the country. The main issue in this country the next 40 years is going to be how we gear ourselves up to economically compete with countries like China and India. We need to invest in all of the technology, all of the education that we can possibly invest in. This bill walks away from that obligation, and that is why I say it is a prescription for a second-rate economy. It walks away from our obligation to workers, and we will long regret it if we pass this bill.

I would urge a ``no'' vote on the bill. The problems with this bill have nothing to do with the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula). He is a fine man and a fine chairman, but this bill implements the Republican budget resolution in the broadest possible areas in our economy and our country. It is a major social and economic mistake, and it certainly does not represent my values, and I do not believe it represents the values of the American people.

Madam Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the distinguished minority whip.

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

Madam Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey).

Madam Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Jackson).

(Mr. JACKSON of Illinois asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Kennedy), also a member of the subcommittee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Tierney).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes.

I just want to address one issue because it has been raised twice on the floor today, Mr. Chairman. The argument our friends on the majority side make is that we should be happy because the education budget has gone up considerably since they took over control of Congress.

Let me point out what the record of the majority party has been on education. When the Republicans took control of the Congress, they did so with the promise to abolish the U.S. Department of Education. Their first act was to rescind $1.8 billion in fiscal year 1995 in education funding. In the next year they tried to do the same to the tune of $3.7 billion. In the 7 years between 1995 and 2001, each of the Labor-Health bills passed by the House Republicans was below President Clinton's request for education. The net result is that there would have been nearly $19 billion less spent on education between 1995 and 2005 if we had enacted the Republican Labor-Health bills into law.

Title I. If Congress had approved the House Republican Labor-H bills, we would have spent $2.8 billion less than we actually spent. After- school centers. If the Congress had approved the House Republican Labor-H bills, we would have spent $516 million less for after-school centers. Special education. If Congress had approved the House Republican Labor-H bills, we would have spent $2.7 billion less for special education. On Pell grants, for the last 3 years, the Republican majority has proposed to freeze Pell grants. If the Republican proposals in fiscal year 2006 are adopted, the purchasing power of Pell grants will continue on a downward spiral.

The plain fact is yes, the money went up for education because Democrats dragged the Republican Party, kicking and screaming, to those higher numbers. So I am glad the Republicans are now trying to take credit for something they were pushed into. It does not matter who gets the credit so long as the school districts get the money.

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

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, we all know what this amendment is. It is very simple, and I will not take very much time on explain it.

We simply strike the $100 million rescission that was included in the Labor-HHS bill for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. This restores the $100 million in funding for CPB, which distributes the majority of those funds to over 1,000 public television and radio stations nationwide, and uses the remaining funds to support national programming and public broadcasting systems.

It is offset by modest reductions in low-priority demonstration programs and administrative accounts in the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Department. I think those reductions will not do serious harm to any of the administrative budgets involved.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Leach), one of the cosponsors of the amendment, and I appreciate very much his involvement in this activity.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell).

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

Mr. Chairman, how much remains on both sides?

Mr. Chairman, I yield for the purpose of making a unanimous consent request to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays).

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, I cannot believe some of the comments I have just heard from my good friend, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula).

Let me simply say with respect to the offsets we have in this amendment, with respect to the Labor Department all this does is to reduce funding for pilot and demonstrations in the department from $74 million in the committee bill to $16 million. It still leaves a significant amount of money in this account.

This is an area where the committee itself has indicated that they do not have sufficient information from the agency to even know how they are spending that money. So it seems to me that we are simply following the committee shot across the agency bow.

With respect to the Labor Department, departmental management, this essentially cuts the increase over last year for departmental management, excluding the International Labor Affairs Bureau. Large amounts of money in that department are being spent for activities that are clearly not authorized, and some procurement practices now being exercised by the agency do not meet the standards that we will want to have to defend in public.

With respect to HRSA program management, I cannot believe any objection is being made to the reduction in this account. The bill itself eliminates 11 programs in HRSA. If all of these programs are going to be eliminated, certainly there are fewer bodies that are needed to manage them, and this is simply consistent with the programmatic actions already taken by the committee.

With respect to the funds for the improvement of education, this amendment merely trims the additional funding provided in the committee over the administration's request for this item. None of these items are going to have any significant impact on the accounts involved.

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

Mr. Chairman, how much time remains?

Mr. Chairman, I yield for the purpose of making a unanimous consent request to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney).

(Mrs. MALONEY asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Leach).

Mr. Chairman, I yield for the purpose of making a unanimous consent request to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Eshoo).

(Ms. ESHOO asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey), ranking member on the subcommittee with jurisdiction in this matter.

Mr. Chairman, I yield for the purpose of making a unanimous consent request to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Corrine Brown).

(Ms. CORRINE BROWN of Florida asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield for the purpose of making a unanimous-consent request to the gentlewoman from Indiana (Ms. Carson).

(Ms. CARSON asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield for the purpose of making a unanimous consent request to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

Mr. Chairman, how much time remains on each side?

Mr. Chairman, I yield for the purpose of making a unanimous consent request to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey).

(Ms. WOOLSEY asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield for the purpose of making a unanimous consent request to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran).

(Mr. MORAN of Virginia asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I know the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula) has the right to close. How much time do I have remaining?

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

Mr. Chairman, let me say the choice before the House is simple. I think the American people recognize that public television and public radio are both national treasures. I think also that we all recognize that there has been a systematic attack on both for quite some time.

What is before us today is a very simple choice. We can either stand with those who are determined to see to it that public radio and public television continue to function reasonably effectively, or we can take an action today which will gut the ability of many of the stations to continue to produce quality programming and meet the needs of local areas.

Some objection has been raised to the offsets. The fact is, under the budget resolution, tough choices are required. You cannot get the offsets out of thin air. These offsets do as little damage to management accounts as is humanly possible. If anyone does not like the offsets involved, then I would suggest they amend the budget resolution so that we do not have to provide them.

But the choice is very simply: Are you going to support public broadcasting or are you not? And the vote will tell the tale.

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

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

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

Mr. Chairman, I do so to try to report to the House what is happening with respect to a unanimous consent request.

The gentleman from Ohio (Chairman Regula) announced to the House earlier, and I concurred, that we are trying to make an attempt to get the House out today. We indicated that would require a lot of cooperation from both sides.

I think everyone understands how this bill is going to wind up. Much as I detest this bill and will vote against it, it is not going to be changed very much between now and the time it finally reaches final passage. No amount of fixing can fix this bill, in my view, because of the inadequate allocation.

The problem we have is that despite the gentleman from Ohio's (Mr. Regula) best efforts and my best efforts and that of our staffs, at this point, there are still some 20 Republican amendments that people seem to be hell-bent on offering, and there are approximately 27 Democratic amendments that people seem to be hell-bent on offering.

If all of those amendments are offered, we will have to have at least 6\1/2\ hours of debate time. In order to finish today, because of events beyond our control, we have to be finished with debating by 4:30. Obviously, unless we get a much greater sense of give, not only will we be here tomorrow, we will be here a long time tomorrow.

So if Members are serious about wanting to get out today, it would be nice if they recognized that that means that we cannot dispose of 47 amendments in 2 hours.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I am strongly opposed to this amendment. I take a back seat to no one in my support for rural health care. I have offered numerous amendments in the past to add to its budget. But this amendment gets the money to restore funding for rural health care in an outrageous fashion, because it takes it from the agency that is supposed to protect workers' health and lives.

In 2003, more than 5,500 workers were killed in this country by job injuries. That is 15 workers every day. In the steel industry, there has been a major increase in workplace fatalities the last 2 years. The impact of those fatalities is enormous. According to Liberty Mutual, the Nation's largest Workmen's Compensation company, the direct cost of these injuries and illness is $1 billion a week, and the total cost is between $200 and $300 billion a year.

The present budget proposal for OSHA in this bill is $477 million, which is less than $4.60 for every private sector worker. Under the current OSHA budget, OSHA can inspect workplaces on an average of once every 108 years, and this amendment will make that worse.

This is a case where, again, the budget resolution is totally inadequate. Neither of these programs should be cut. The problem is that this amendment takes money away from a program which will save workers' lives. I would urge a ``no'' vote. I most reluctantly take this position because I am strongly in favor of rural health care but not at the expense of workers' lives.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Capps).

Could the Clerk reread the amendment again?

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

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, let me say I think the gentleman's amendment is a good one. It is an important program and an important initiative, and I would hope that the committee would accept it.

Reserving the right to object, Mr. Speaker, I think the Members need to understand what is happening. As we indicated at the beginning of the debate, the gentleman from Ohio and I were trying to work things out so that we could finish debate on this bill this afternoon. That, unfortunately, has not been possible. We have had quite a bit of cooperation from some Members and quite a bit less from others. As a result, it appears that at this moment we still have 26 amendments to consider. As you know, there is an event which some Members of the Congress feel required to attend tonight, not the gentleman from Ohio and not the gentleman from Wisconsin, but because of that event, we are going to be required to begin voting very shortly. An offer was made to continue to debate this bill throughout that event, allowing Members to return afterwards, but that offer was not accepted, and so the problem we have now is that, despite our best efforts, we will be here tomorrow, and, if this unanimous consent agreement is accepted, we might be finished by 3 or 4 o'clock.

Mr. Speaker, I want to say one other thing. I would ask Members in the future if they are offering amendments

to any appropriations bill to please be attentive enough to what is going on on the floor so that we do not pass their amendment in the reading of the bill. If we do that, then there are misunderstandings, somebody thinks somebody else was double-crossed or misled, and we wind up with frayed tempers. The committee cannot be expected to take care of Members who do not take care of their own interests.

Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. Speaker, I will be voting against this rule. I will be voting against the previous question on the rule. I will be voting against the bill itself. I will wait until debate on the bill in order to explain my vote on the latter.

But let me simply say two things with respect to the rule. The leadership of this House, the Republican leadership of this House, has chosen to insist that their continuity of Congress proposal, which is a totally unrelated matter, be added to the appropriation bill to finance the operations of the Congress. Our committee gave this all of about 10 minutes of consideration. No alternatives were presented. And what that means is that the House Republican leadership is insisting that a bill which the House has already passed once be passed again, because the Senate has declined to take up the bill that the House sent over in the first place.

I think they were wise not to take that bill up. I am in a distinct minority on this proposition. But what this proposition does is to say that, within 45 days of the Speaker's determining that 100 or more vacancies exist in the House, that he will call a special election.

A couple of problems with that. Number one, that means that a national election is left to the discretion of and to the timing selected by the Speaker. I do not think that is appropriate. Secondly, it means that for that 45-day period, if there are 100 vacancies in the House because of death and destruction associated with an attack, for instance, it means that those 100 districts would be unrepresented at a time when the most crucial decisions affecting the continuation of the Republic would be made. I do not think that is a good idea either.

If we are going to be forced to vote on any of those propositions, then, even though I am a Democrat, I much prefer the alternative presented by the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher), a Republican. The alternative that he presented in the last session of Congress would have provided that each and every year when we are elected, we also have to supply a list of persons whom we feel are most qualified to take our place if something happens and we are killed by such a disastrous attack. I would submit to the Members that it is far more appropriate to have someone who is revealed ahead of time to be the person of choice in case a tragedy like that happened. I would suggest that is a far healthier situation than to have a situation in which a district was unrepresented for 45 days.

The gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier) suggested that it was important to maintain the distinction the House has that one must be elected in order to serve in this body. Well, obviously I would much prefer to have an elected person representing my district, but an appointed official is preferable to no one at all. And yet that is

what we are stuck with under this misbegotten attachment that the House leadership is insisting that we add to this bill in a power play. So that is one reason I oppose this rule.

The second reason is that the Committee on Rules steadfastly refused to make in order the creation of a Truman-like committee to review waste and fraud in the war in Iraq. When Franklin Roosevelt was running this country, Harry Truman was appointed to lead a congressional review committee. Truman held 430 hearings. He issued 51 reports. A Democratic Congress investigating the activities in a Democratic administration. It was good for the Democratic Party. It was good for the Republican Party. It was good for the Republic. A lot of money was saved. A lot of chicanery was exposed and corrected.

But here we have horror story after horror story of waste, incompetence, fraud, theft in Iraq, all of the taxpayers' money. And yet what does this Congress do? Virtually zip in terms of the oversight that it is providing on these matters.

I think this Congress is derelict in its duty by not appointing such a committee. And for that reason alone, I think we ought to vote ``no'' on the previous question so we can change the rule so we can at least provide some protection for the taxpayers' money.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.