Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, let me simply respond to one thing the gentleman said. He said that no one has done any reforming of the earmarking process since the Democratic Party took control of this House.

I would point out that the facts indicate quite the contrary. The first year that we were in the majority, we eliminated all earmarks for a year until we could get a handle on the process that had been driven wildly out of control by the previous majority from the other side of the aisle. The second year, we indicated that we would try to cut the amount of money spent on earmarks by 50 percent. The Senate dissented from that. And in the end we were only able to cut it by 40 percent. I would say that is a significant change.

We also, in the process, provided the public's right to know by guaranteeing that every Member who sought an earmark would have to sign a letter, publicly displayed, which spelled out who asked for the earmark and which spelled out and made quite clear that the Member would have no personal financial interest in the earmark. We also provided that these earmarks would be posted on the committee Web site. As a result, the public will know who has asked for what and they will know who got what. I call that reform even if the gentleman doesn't want to admit it.

Mr. Speaker, I would simply point out to the gentleman who was expressing concern about earmarks in the Defense bill, that if this CR represented the CR that I wanted to bring to the House floor, it would not contain the Defense bill. The original CR that I brought forward did not contain the Defense bill. The Defense bill was added at the express request of the minority and at the express request of the Secretary of Defense who wrote us the following letter:

``I understand that there is a consideration in the House to not include full year funding for the Department of Defense in the fiscal year 2009 continuing resolution.

``While I understand that some have expressed policy concerns with the bill, I believe it is critical for the orderly operation of the Department of Defense that Congress pass a full year fiscal 09 Defense appropriation bill in order to avoid the significant negative effects of having to operate under a continuing resolution.

``Accordingly, I urge you to include such an appropriation bill in the final continuing resolution.''

When you make concessions such as we did to this letter, I'm sorry if the clock doesn't give us enough time to do so in a pristinely orderly fashion, but we simply had to move this forward to keep the government open.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1488, I call up the bill (H.R. 2638) making appropriations for the Department of Homeland Security for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2008, and for other purposes, with a Senate amendment thereto, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I offer the motion at the desk.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from North Carolina, chairman of the Homeland Security subcommittee.

I yield the gentleman 1\1/2\ additional minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas, the chairman of the Military Construction Subcommittee.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have only one remaining speaker, so I will reserve time until the end.

If I yield the gentleman 10 seconds, will he yield to me briefly?

It's never true that the gentleman cannot say a lot in 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of the time.

Let me first second the comments made by the gentleman from California about our departing Members. They have, I believe, all been professionals. They have been an asset to this institution. They've certainly been an asset to the committee, and I appreciate the many courtesies that we have received from all of them throughout the years and wish them all the very best in retirement.

Mr. Speaker, today we have three moving pieces with which we have to deal between now and the closing of the session. The first is the President's unprecedented bailout request or rescue request, however you choose to term it, of $700 billion, which has, I believe, truly astounded the Nation.

Second is the need to try to pass a second stimulus package which tries to react to the loss of jobs in this economy by providing funding for programs that will help create additional jobs and also provide funding for programs that help mitigate the pain to families of the loss of employment opportunities.

And thirdly, and most immediate, we have to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government functioning. It is important that we pass this and let the other body pass it because we can add at least a small sense of stability to the markets that are in turmoil today and I think also in the process give us more time to address the truly radical proposals that have been sent down to us by the White House with respect to that bailout.

I want to congratulate Mr. Murtha and Mr. Young because they both know their bill. They both know their brief. And their staff has provided able support to both of them, and I appreciate the hard work that both of them have done, and I appreciate what they've contributed to this institution over their careers.

I want to say the same thing about the Military Construction Subcommittee, which has been ably led by Mr. Edwards and Mr. Wamp, and certainly the Homeland Security Subcommittee, led so ably by Mr. Price and the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers).

I'm especially proud of what's happened in the Military Construction bill. If you take the last year's budget plus this year's budget, we have had the largest increase in veterans health care in the history of the country, and much of that was adopted over the initial opposition of the President.

Let me also say that I--

Mr. Speaker, could I suspend and ask the gentleman a question. Did the gentleman yield back all of his time?

I see the minority leader on the floor, and I'm sure that he would probably like to say some words.

If I suspended my remarks, would you like to proceed with the minority leader's comments right now if you could take back your time?

Mr. Speaker, let me resume my comments.

What I was trying to say is that the item I'm the most proud of in this package is the fact that this Congress will have provided the largest increase in veterans health care in the history of the Republic, and in addition to that, we have also provided by action taken just a few months ago the largest increase in education benefits for veterans since the beginning of the GI Bill. I think that's truly an historic action, and I am very pleased that this House was willing to do that.

So this bill does contain the three bills that represent the security-related appropriation bills for the coming year.

Having said that, let me make one observation. As I said earlier, I initially did not plan to have the Defense

bill in this package. Much has been made today by some Members about earmarks in the bill. The fact is if the Defense bill hadn't been in this package, those earmarks would not have been in the bill. We put the Defense bill in, in the end, at the request of the minority and at the request of the Secretary of Defense who asked us to do so, and I suspect in the end it will probably, from the standpoint of the Defense Department, prove to be the right choice.

But having said that, I want to talk about why I believe we have not been able to finish the domestic appropriation bills. The President submitted a budget to us at the beginning of the year in which he insisted that we cut some $14 billion in crucial domestic items. Example: He wanted us last year to cut 50 percent out of vocational education funding, and this year he wanted us to eliminate vocational education. He wanted us in the last 2 years to eliminate all student aid programs except Pell Grant and Work-Study. He wanted us to eliminate the program that teaches medical personnel to deal with the specialized needs of children in children's hospitals.

I've never had anybody in my life come up to me and say, ``Obey, why don't you guys in Congress get your act together and cut cancer research.'' And yet, that's what the President and the previous Congress did; they cut almost 1,000 research grants out of the National Institutes of Health.

At a time when we've had a 70 percent increase in the cost of home heating, the President asked us to cut the Low Income Heating Assistance Program, to help the victims of those price increases, by 22 percent. So if we had rolled over and accepted the President's domestic budget, that's what we would have had to do.

And we felt therefore, that since the President had made quite clear that he would veto any domestic appropriation bills that exceeded his budget request, we felt that rather than capitulate and make those cuts, we would simply say, ``All right, Mr. President, for the 4 remaining months that you're in office, we'll be living at your budget level, but we will kick the can down the road so that if we have a President who will negotiate like an adult at the end of the road next year, then we will try to cut some compromises that will preserve some of these high-priority areas.''

Now, the President made a Federal case out of our desire to spend $14 billion on our own people, and then he has presented to the Congress in the last 2 weeks a request that we spend 50 times that much, 50 times that much, on the bailout of Wall Street. And so I say that to put in perspective the President's stubbornness.

The fact is, if he had not taken a ``my-way-or-the-highway'' approach to domestic appropriations, we could have sat down. . . . I told Mr. Nussle many times, I would have been happy to sit down and split the differences right down the middle, compromise like adults are supposed to. But no, the President said, ``My levels or no levels.'' So he gave us no choice unless, of course, we wanted to capitulate.

So, by not finishing these bills, we maintained the possibility of providing more support for medical research, more support for energy research, more support for education, and more help to the 50 million people in this country who have no health insurance, and I make no apology whatsoever for doing that. I think it is the right thing to do and the moral thing to do.

Now, let me explain just a bit about what's in this bill. We, therefore, straight-lined all of the domestic bills until March 6. In addition, we've included a number of other items. As I've indicated, we have essentially doubled the Low Income Heating Assistance Program. We're taking it up to the full authorization level.

We have provided the funds that the gentleman from Michigan just referred to, funds requested to try to enable the auto industry to modernize and retool. We did not give them the $50 billion that they wanted. We have cut it to 25, and we did not change the authorization in the way that the auto industry wanted because we did not want government to be on the hook for 80 percent of the cost of those projects.

We also provided the $5 million the White House wanted so that they can conduct their search of e-mails because of subpoenas that have been laid on them. And we have provided $2 billion in this package so that next February, the agency doesn't have to write every family in America and say, ``Sorry, but the Pell Grants for your son or daughter for the next year are going to have to be at a lower level than they were last year.''

We have also provided $23 billion in disaster funding for Iowa, Texas, and all the other States who have been hit by so many bad storms lately. And I will stipulate that I believe that the Community Development Block Grant portion of that disaster funding is inadequate and will have to be revisited next year.

These are some of the initiatives we've taken. As the gentleman has indicated, we have also in the process, at the insistence of the White House, acquiesced in the White House's desire to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling. That will mean that what happens in the future will be determined by who is elected President. To me, that is what ought to happen in a democracy. When politicians can't agree on something, instead of continuing to try to gut each other and have needless wrestling matches for 6 months at a time, the right thing to do on many occasions is to simply say, ``Okay, we're going to take it to the referees. We're going to take it to the final judges, the American people.''

So that's what we're doing with this package. And it is the American people who will decide whether they're comfortable with the President's deep reductions in health, in education, in science, in low-income heating assistance, or whether they believe that our investments represent a better path for America if we want to see this country grow through the coming years. Basically, that is what we are trying to do with this package.

I appreciate the work of the literally hundreds of Members who have had input into this product. I know I have certainly been grabbed every time I turn around by Members who have this idea or that. I'm sure a third of the House is unhappy because of items that are not in the bill and another third is unhappy because of items that are. But that's the way it goes when you have got 535 people, plus a President in the White House who has from time to time been known to have fairly strong views.

With that, I would simply say that I would urge support for the product. I want to especially thank the staff of the committee on both sides of the aisle. On this side especially led by Rob Nabors, our staff chief. I do not think the average American understands how hard they work. I don't know about last week, but I know this week, many of them have not been to bed in 2 or 3 days. That, I think, is a testimony to their dedication and their willingness to step up and help us do what the country needs.

I hope that we will pass this today. But I hope we will keep in mind that we have been asked to do so much with so little in some of these discretionary appropriation bills; and I hope people will keep that in mind in comparison to the huge size of the bailout that the President is asking us to provide for Wall Street.

I make no apology for making one last stand to try to preserve our ability to invest $14 billion in our people here at home at the same time that we're being asked to provide 50 times that much to bail out Wall Street for its past mistakes.

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

Mr. Speaker, I happen to agree with the Supreme Court decision on the gun issue. I've always felt that those who claimed that there was not an individual protection in the second amendment for gun owners were oddly mistaken. But the issue facing us today is not about guns. It's about the Federal relationship with local communities.

The first fight I ever had on this floor was when Bob Giaimo and I pried loose the money for the District subway when the Appropriations Committee was trying to dictate local transportation policy. I didn't like bullying then, and I don't like it now.

That's why, since that time, I've generally voted ``present'' whenever the Congress tries to play city council and dictate local business. I do that as a protest against Congress acting like we're elected city councilmen.

Most Members of this Congress would fight to preserve local authority for their own communities, but they don't hesitate to destroy it when the District of Columbia's around. Well, I, for one, was not elected to be a D.C. city councilman. I'm not paid to be a D.C. city councilman. If I'm expected to vote on their issues, I want to know where is my check from the District government?

If Members of this body want to decide D.C. policy instead of running for the Congress, they ought to run for the district council, and they ought to cut their paychecks to the District council level. That's what I believe, and that's why I will vote ``present'' on the underlying bill, and I will vote ``present'' on any amendment thereto as a protest to Congress idiotically playing city council on this or any other issue.

Mr. Speaker, I simply want to respond to one theme that we have heard here in the last 20 minutes or so. We have heard complaints about the ``outrage'' that is being perpetrated by the passage of this rule because it is alleged that this rule closes up consideration of this bill and in fact prevents Members from offering legitimate amendments.

Let me point out this rule does one thing and one thing only. It simply says that if a Member wants to offer an amendment, that that Member should notice the House 1 day ahead of time in the Congressional Record so that we do not legislate by ambush. The only thing that is required for an amendment to be considered on this floor is that it be printed in the Congressional Record the day before it is considered so that no Member of the House is blind-sided by any amendment.

We believe that the bill managers on both sides of the aisle have a right to know in an orderly way which amendments are going to be offered to bills. We also believe that any individual Member who happens to have a project in his district which is going to be challenged by another Member, that that Member has the right to notice of that challenge. And we believe that every single Member of this House has a right to know ahead of time what they are going to be called upon to vote on by way of amendments. So this rule simply says any amendment is in order so long as it was printed the day before.

Now, the gentleman managing the bill on the other side of the aisle asked the question, ``Will secondary amendments be allowed?'' My understanding is yes. My understanding is that this rule provides--or that this rule does not in any way get in the way of the ability of Members to offer secondary amendments.

So, very simply, this bill is attempting to meet the military needs of the country. It's attempting to meet the needs of our veterans in terms of health care. It's meant to meet the needs of our communities in terms of construction on military bases all around the country.

This bill builds upon the fact that in the last 2 years we have provided the largest increase in veterans' health benefits in the history of the country. This bill continues in that tradition. It is a terrific bill for veterans. It is a terrific bill for the communities that host military facilities around the country. And instead of having a sham debate about legislation which is not before us today, I think we would do well to confine our comments to the bill at hand, which is the military construction bill.

It's a good bill, and I would predict it will be supported on a huge bipartisan basis. It was reported unanimously by the subcommittee. What we ought to do, instead of pretending that there's a procedural problem, when in fact there is none, we ought to get to the subject at hand.

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

Mr. Chairman, I had not intended to speak in general debate on this bill, but in light of some of the comments made by the previous speaker, I feel obligated to.

The gentleman said that it was the nature of the rule under which this bill is being considered that prevented him from offering an amendment. The fact is that the only thing this rule did was to require that people publish their amendments 1 day ahead of time so that we were not legislating by ambush. The rules of the House always provide for germaneness. And, as the gentleman knows, his amendment is not germane to this bill.

Secondly, I would point out that we put $2.65 billion in the supplemental for Midwest disaster funding and for other disasters around the country. And I would point out that we did that even though the White House never sent to this Congress an official budget request to deal with the disasters not just in Iowa, but Wisconsin as well, my own State.

Thirdly, I would point out that the Speaker met today with a number of Members from the Iowa delegation and we made clear that as soon as we get official numbers from the administration that are at all coherent, we will act, and that this Congress will not adjourn for the year without providing needed disaster relief.

I just want to make clear there was nothing done in the rule.

Yes. I'd be happy to.

As the gentleman knows, we have been criticized up and down the river by your own leadership for trying to add what they described as nongermane or unrelated items to these bills. As you well know, this bill is probably not going to become law before any supplemental that is passed in September, as the gentleman knows. So there is no rational reason for me to accede to that request.

We have dealt with the gentleman above the table, honorably, and fairly. You offered an amendment in the full committee to the energy and water bill, adding money for disaster funding. We accepted the amendment. I would suggest that the gentleman owes the Speaker of the House an apology.

Not further at this time.

Reserving the right to object, Mr. Chairman, it is 9:15 at night. We don't know how long it is going to take us to complete this bill tonight. And what we are being asked to do, as I understand it, is to give unanimous consent so that the gentleman may be able to offer an amendment which he otherwise would not be able to offer because we have already moved past that point in the bill. That is my understanding.

Go ahead.

Mr. Chairman, continuing under my reservation, I am not interested in the reason why the gentleman's request is tardy. I simply want to repeat, it is my understanding that what the gentleman is asking us to do is to allow him to offer an amendment which we have already passed in the reading of the bill.

I will not object to that request, provided we have certain understandings about how long we are going to drone on on these issues. Since this is already a non-germane amendment, I want to make sure I understand what the full request is going to be.

My understanding is that Mr. Burgess also has an amendment which he wants to offer which has also been passed in the reading; is that correct?

If that is the correct understanding, then I simply want to make certain that if we grant this request, that there will be only one speaker on that side on the subject of the amendment that the gentleman from Utah wants to offer and one speaker on that side of the aisle on the amendment that Mr. Burgess desires to offer.

But is that the understanding?

I will be happy to yield.

If I can take back the time. I know Mr. Burgess was here. I saw him sitting here for a considerable length of time, and I am not trying to pin a tail on anybody. My point is simply that this has not been a day noted for its courtesy across the aisle. And I am perfectly willing to grant courtesy, provided that we have a clear understanding that the House is not going to be abused, in terms of its time, in the process.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my reservation.

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

Mr. Chairman, one month ago when we were trying to add funding to provide the largest expansion of the GI bill in the history of the bill

since it was first approved in 1945, the House Minority Leader issued the following statement. He said, ``House Republicans believe that loading up the troop funding bill with billions upon billions of unrelated Washington spending is reckless and dangerous.''

Now, it was difficult for me at the time to understand how adding education benefits for our troops was unrelated to funding the troops, but today we are now being asked to consider a nongermane amendment which would bring a divisive energy debate into legislation which is trying to provide for the needs of our military families around the country and which is trying to provide the needs in the health care area for our veterans.

If I were to debate energy in the middle of this bill, I would point out that one of the reasons that we have $4 gas today is that we have an administration which has pursued fiscal policies that have borrowed almost $2 trillion to finance tax cuts and to finance the war in Iraq, and that has contributed to driving down the value of the dollar, which has in turn raised the cost of purchasing a gallon of gasoline by 30 percent.

If I were to debate energy on this bill, I would point out that, since Jimmy Carter left office, we have had a succession of administrations running from Reagan to Bush that systemically presided over the gutting of energy research done by the government on alternative energy sources.

I would also point out that over the last 8 years we have had an energy policy run by an administration dominated by two oil men in the President and the Vice President.

I would point out that their national security advisor, Secretary Rice, served on Chevron's board of directors for 10 years and even had an oil tanker named after her; that Interior Secretary Gale Norton started her career at a think tank funded by energy companies; commerce Secretary Don Evans was former president and CEO of a Texas oil company; Deputy Interior Secretary Griles was a former lobbyist for the oil, chemical, and mining industry, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,

I would also point out that we on this side of the aisle have worked to pass increased fuel economy standards for automobiles; we have voted to eliminate $14 billion in special tax breaks for oil and gas companies; we voted to crack down on speculation which has driven up the cost of oil and gas at the expense of the American people. I would have pointed out that we have voted to get more oil from the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. And, I would be pointing out that we have also asked the President to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

I would also point out that we support drilling on the 68 million acres of public lands that are already leased and not being developed. That is what I would point out if I were in a debate on energy. But, in fact, this is supposed to be a discussion about the needs of our military families for housing, for education, and the needs of our veterans for health care. And I think we would best serve the country in this Chamber tonight if we would focus our remarks on that issue. And that is what I will continue to do.

Point of Order

Mr. Chairman, on the point of order, I would simply observe that the ruling of the Chair will do one thing and one thing only: it will determine what the rules of the House are and whether this amendment is in compliance with those rules. And I would ask for a ruling.

Reserving the right to object, Mr. Chairman, so long as the understanding that was expressed earlier

stands and that there will be only one speaker on that side of the aisle on this nongermane amendment, I would not have an objection.

I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Well, the gentleman from Wisconsin does not intend to participate on this one, so it will just be two of you.

I withdraw my reservation.

I thank the gentleman. Let me simply say I would never apologize for having a rule which requires all Members of the House to be aware ahead of time what amendments they will be asked to consider. It seems to me that the proper time to raise the questions raised by the gentleman who seeks to offer the amendment is before the bill ever hits the floor. It seems to me that if the authorizing committee or any member thereof has some ideas that they would like to see included in the appropriation bill that the best way to work in the legislative body is to talk to people ahead of time about it so that we don't have to make these horseback, half-baked judgments at 10:30 in the evening.

I ask that the gentleman's words be taken down.

Mr. Chairman, in the interest of the House finishing its work tonight, I withdraw my request that the gentleman's words be taken down.

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

Mr. Chairman, I have just one observation to make about the remarks of the previous speaker when he indicated that the Speaker did not want to hear the truth.

I would simply observe that when the VA several years ago was insisting that the administration's budget for veterans' health care was insufficient to meet the needs, the Speaker heard the truth and acted on it. And as a result, even in the teeth of fierce opposition from the administration, she insisted that we provide another $1 billion to the veterans' health care budget. And eventually, even the VA came to admit that that money was needed.

When veterans' organizations after our party took control of the Congress 1.5 years ago, when those veterans' organizations told us that we needed to provide at least $3.5 billion more than the President's budget had provided for veterans' health care, she heard the truth and she acted on it.

The Speaker need never take a back seat to the gentleman from Indiana or anyone else in this chamber when it comes to hearing the truth and acting on it when it concerns America's veterans. She made quite clear that the welfare of American veterans was going to be her number one budget priority when she became Speaker, because she was objecting to the fact that the only families in America who ever had to make any sacrifice because of the Iraq war were military families. That was indeed a truth which she not only heard but saw and acted upon, and this House can be proud of that on both sides of the aisle.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to oppose the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, the gentleman said that projects in this bill are allocated on the basis of one's power and influence. Well, I think, when it comes to the appropriations process and since I'm the chairman of the committee--and I'm a fairly powerful or influential person except when I'm at home with my wife--I would, nonetheless, say that I have no projects whatsoever in this bill--none, zip. I would also say that, whether you like the reforms that have been instituted in the last 2 years or not, just about the only reforms that have been instituted on the earmarking process have been sponsored by me, and I think the House knows what they are. We wouldn't even be on the floor tonight, dealing with these in this way, had it not been for those reforms.

I want to make a point: Regardless of what individual Members think about earmarking, there are certain appropriations which by their very nature require earmarking. There are other bills that by their very nature do not. This is one of the three that does. You've got the Military Construction bill; you've got the energy and water bill, and you've got the interior bill. Large portions, if not all of those bills, are simply construction accounts. When it comes to construction accounts, those projects are in the main, requested and defined by the administration. The overwhelming majority of projects in this bill are selected by the executive branch.

This bill includes 518 total earmarks: 408 earmarks, 79 percent of them, were included at the request of the administration. Of the 110 other earmarks, on its own initiative, the committee added seven earmarks to improve better training barracks and medical facilities for soldiers, marines and their families. They were not added at the request of particular Members, but they are in this bill, nonetheless, and the committee makes no apology for them.

I would also point out that 103 of these projects were added at the request of a Member. One hundred two of them are military construction projects, and one is a VA project. All of the military construction earmarks, including the quality of life projects, were also included in the authorization bill, and the VA earmark is included subject to authorization.

There is no difference between what the Congress does in earmarking military construction and what the White House does when it requests earmarks for military construction. For example, five different Members, Democrats and Republicans alike, asked the committee to provide the second phase of a facility, $7.5 million, to support a facility for a pararescue unit at the Gabreski Air National Guard base in New York. Now, the sponsors of this amendment, evidently, are going to crow about cutting 103 earmarks. Let's look at what they will actually be cutting.

They will be cutting Air Force runways, aircraft refueling stations, training facilities, maintenance facilities, fire stations, chapels, barracks, control towers, firing ranges, and so on. You would be hard- pressed to find a substantive difference between these projects and the other 408 contained in the bill. The only difference is that they have not been blessed by the White House.

Now, apparently, the sponsors of this amendment believe that the only spending that is legitimate is that which is blessed by the executive branch. Well, this document, the Constitution, reads as follows: ``No money shall be drawn from the Treasury but in consequence of appropriations made by law.'' It doesn't say, ``only in consequence of funds requested by the executive.'' It doesn't say, ``Only spending by the executive is sacrosanct.'' It says that Congress has the responsibility of making these decisions.

Now, Congress may make some wise choices. It may make some bad choices. So may the executive branch. I would submit that, regardless of your attitude about earmarks in general, it is ludicrous to say that you cannot have the Congress using its judgment on occasion to decide where money ought to go in the development of facilities on military bases, just as it would be ludicrous to say that, for the Army Corps of Engineers in the energy and water bill, the only projects that are worthwhile proceeding with are those which are requested by the executive branch.

I invite you to take a look at the way a number of accounts in the executive branch have been turned into political slush funds. Take the Reading First program. Look at the major job training program in the Department of Labor. There are ample examples of abuse of the earmarking process in the executive branch and in the legislative branch. Our obligation, in my view, is not within the process of trying to dig those out to throw the baby out with the bath water.

I think this committee has done a responsible job in making its judgments about what those projects ought to be. If the gentleman is concerned about members of the Appropriations Committee who he feels have an inordinate number of earmarks, well, I have none. Yet I stand here tonight, defending this process, because at least, on this bill, I think there is very little to be said for the idea that only the executive branch may make choices about whether barracks or hospitals or daycare centers are built to facilitate the convenience of military families. This bill is an example of Congress' meeting its responsibilities and controlling the power of the purse.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1284, I call up from the Speaker's table the bill (H.R. 2642) making appropriations for military construction, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2008, and for other purposes, with the Senate amendments to the House amendments to the Senate amendment thereto, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I offer the motion at the desk.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, we've heard a lot of comments tonight about what there should or should not be in this legislation, and I agree with many of those comments. And honestly, just once, acting as chairman of a committee, I would like to put together a bill which reflects my priorities. But that is not usually what chairmen have to do in this place.

What we have to do is try to find a consensus that will gather 218 votes and be sustained over time. And on this bill, there are some peculiar problems because, very frankly, we have a very different constituency in this House for continuing the war in Iraq than we have for most of the other items in the bill and, therefore, we had to find a way to allow each and every Member of the House to express his or her opinion. We had to try to find a way to allow each and every Member to vote their convictions in a way which would not keep the House tied up in knots for another 6 months.

Now, the way we did that was to adopt a procedure under which we took a conference report pending between the Senate and the House, and used that as the device by which each House would express their preferences, and we would work our way to a solution.

Our committee is often criticized because we wind up producing omnibus appropriations in which everything is thrown into one package, and people are forced to vote up or down on the entire package. What we tried to do this time was to do just the opposite, to disaggregate these issues so that people would have a chance to vote separately on the major propositions in the legislation.

And that is why the House sent to the Senate originally three amendments. We sent one amendment that would fund the operations for Iraq and Afghanistan. We sent a second amendment which stipulated the conditions under which the first amendment money could be expended. And then we had a third amendment which laid out, basically, other domestic priorities or associated military priorities that we thought were important. And we sent it to the Senate, and it included a number of items about which questions have been raised tonight.

In addition to the expanded GI benefits for veterans and unemployment compensation, we tried to protect the Medicaid safety net by having a moratorium on seven Medicaid regulations.

We also had a number of restrictions on Iraq policy, one requiring that any money that is expended for reconstruction by the State Department or USAID be matched dollar for dollar by the Iraqi Government so that they

would begin to pick up a fair share of the cost of redeveloping their own country.

We also had language with respect to trying to assure that there would be no permanent bases in Iraq. We had funding $2.2 billion above the President's level for military construction and veterans' hospitals, and we fully funded BRAC.

Someone asked earlier on the floor today why did we have $178 million in this war supplemental for the Bureau of Prisons. Very simple. Because the executive agency asked for the money because if we don't, there are going to be prison guards laid off because there has been a heavier than expected Federal prison population. And that may not be an emergency to Members of Congress, but if you're one of those prison guards who's working shorthanded under dangerous situations, you don't want to have people laid off in those Federal prisons.

And so we sent that package over to the Senate, and the Senate added roughly 37 additional items which cost $10 billion and which the House felt, in many instances, did not accurately reflect emergency expenditure funds.

So the Senate sent those amendments back to us, and among other things, they stripped out totally the conditions on the war. That is why I will personally vote against amendment No. 1 because I would vote for that amendment provided that we had a set of reasonable conditions in defining what our national policy is in Iraq. Absent those conditions, I don't intend to vote for that amendment.

But I do intend to vote for the second amendment, and I want to take just a moment to explain what was in it. Primarily, we do three important things: We, first of all, create a new program to provide greatly expanded education benefits for American veterans under the GI Bill. We have some Members of this House who are unhappy about the fact that that is not paid for. I am among them. But I would point out that the entire war is not being paid for. Mr. Murtha and I and Mr. McGovern tried to offer the House an opportunity to vote to pay for the entire war. We did not, frankly, find much enthusiasm for that on either side of the political aisle.

But we stipulated that we felt that if that war was going to be fought, even though I personally think it's the most misguided war since the War of 1812, nonetheless, we felt if the war was going to be fought, at least we ought to pay for it so we didn't pass the cost down to our grandkids.

That has not happened.

My point is simply that if we aren't going to pay for the war, then I feel no particular guilt about saying to the GIs who have fought the war that we aren't going to provide you with the equivalent of a 4-year college education because we have had no sense of self-sacrifice in this country except on the part of military families. They've been asked to sacrifice again and again and again while the rest of us have been asked to go shopping or swallow a tax cut. And I think that's illegitimate.

We lost the argument on funding the war, and it just seems to me that it is a peculiar view of proportion if people get exercised about not paying for the GI Bill expansion but don't get exercised about not paying for the war. It would take over 50 years of paying benefits under this new expanded GI Bill. It would take more than 50 years to spend as much money on veterans as will be spent in a 2-year period in Iraq.

And so I make no apology. While I would prefer that it be paid for, I make no apology for the fact that, in the end, it wasn't. This is the only way that we could get the United States Senate and the administration to accept the expanded GI Bill. And I think we owe it to those veterans to provide it no matter what the budgetary niceties are.

Secondly, with respect to unemployment compensation. We wound up essentially--and I want to thank Mr. Rangel especially for the work he did in conference yesterday. The House initially sent over a package which provided 13 weeks of expanded unemployment benefits for every State in the country and then provided an additional 13 weeks on top of that for States with high unemployment rates.

The administration, as you know, Mr. Speaker, did not want that. They objected to it. So we looked for various ways to try to salvage as much of that as we could.

In the end, we adopted changes which bring the cost of that down from about $10 billion to $8 billion. So we have retained 80 percent of the original unemployment compensation provision.

We've made two changes. We have agreed with the administration's request to require 20 weeks of work history if a person is going to be eligible for that, and we also dropped the second step, the targeting of those benefits. We will have to deal with that issue on another bill in another venue.

The third issue that was causing great controversy was the fact that we were trying to place a moratorium on seven Medicaid regulations that the administration was trying to impose that would cut services to seniors, families, and those with disabilities. In the end, we got six of those seven in the package. I think that's doing pretty well.

Because of the new disasters that we have had around the country, certainly most visible in Iowa recently, the administration agreed to $1.8 billion in disaster funding. This bill comes in considerably higher than that at $2.65 billion.

That's basically the outline of what we have done. And there are several other items in the bill. One that Members should be aware of, if we do not get our appropriation bills done by the end of the fiscal year--that has been known to happen from time to time around here--if that doesn't happen, then if we were to proceed for a short time on a continuing resolution, Israel would wind up receiving $170 million less than the President's budget. We did not want that to happen. And so we are including in this bill a provision which guarantees that as of October 1, that even if we were to pass a continuing resolution at last year's level, Israel would not be accidentally shortchanged by that action and they would get that additional $170 million.

There are a number of other provisions in the bill, but I think most Members are familiar with them. Most of these items have been around for quite a while.

And so with that, Mr. Speaker, I would like to reserve the balance of my time.

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

I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New York, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Rangel. I want to thank Mr. Rangel for the work he did in conference.

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

I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott).

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

Let me simply take this opportunity to thank the staff, especially Rob Nabors, on our side of the aisle. And I want to especially also thank Mr. Murtha and Senator Inouye and Mr. Young for the work they did in fashioning amendment No. 1 that we have before us today.

I also want to thank Mr. Rangel, certainly Mr. Hoyer, and the Speaker for all of the work that they have done in bringing us to this point. And I also want to thank especially Mr. Boehner, who certainly has been integral to achieving this today. And also Mr. Lewis and Cantor, who have worked consistently on this, and I appreciate the work they did even through yesterday. And one more thank you to Senator Webb and to Representative Herseth Sandlin in this House for leading the efforts to see that we did have an expanded GI Bill benefit for veterans, and also Senator Reid.

And now let me inquire, does the gentleman have any other speakers?

I intend to have the Speaker do the closing. Would you like to finish before I ask her to close?

I thank the gentleman, and I yield 1 minute to the distinguished Speaker of the House.

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

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, no one can visit the American cemetery at Normandy without gaining a profound appreciation for the courage and the sense of self-sacrifice demonstrated by every one of our soldiers who fought to take that beach and begin the liberation of Europe.

For years, families who went to that cemetery to think about their loved ones, think about their loss and, at the same time, think about their pride, had a totally inadequate place in which to sit and think or perhaps retreat from the rest of the people around them for a few precious moments. And I am so pleased that I was able to work with Congressman Murtha, with Congressman Walsh, with Congressman Hobson, in order to provide the funding for the new visitors center which is now at that location. It is a spectacularly beautiful, and yet subtle tribute to each and every American who fought there.

For years, that visitors center did not tell an adequate story of the sense of self-sacrifice that was exhibited in those days. Now it finally does, and I think it will serve as an inspiration, not just to every American who visits that site, but also to every person from any part of the world who values freedom and values sacrifice.

I know of no monument that is more eloquent in paying tribute to both than that monument, and I think it's fitting that we pass a resolution, again, praising the courage and the dedication of the Americans who fought to make the entire world free.

Madam Speaker, I hope the House will forgive my laryngitis today.

Madam Speaker, I have just heard complaints from the minority side of the aisle about the process by which this proposal is being brought to us. This criticism about process comes from the same crowd that brought a $40 billion proposal to the floor 2 days after 9/11 without ever running that proposal through either the appropriations subcommittee or the Appropriations Committee. That criticism comes from the same crowd----

No. I didn't interrupt you. You always ask someone to yield in order to interrupt their train of thought. I would appreciate if you would stop doing that with me.

Madam Speaker, ahead of time, I will not yield to anyone until I have completed my statement.

This criticism on process comes from the same crowd that stood by and allowed 30 pages of unread material to be surreptitiously and anonymously slipped into a conference report on the defense bill after the conference report had completed action, language which insulated the drug industry from liability in cases where their products injured the health of customers.

This comes from the same crowd that several years ago blocked the ability of this House to vote on a single matter that had anything at all to do with the most significant domestic appropriation bill, the Labor-Health-Education bill. They simply wrapped it into other items and refused to allow the House to work its will on any piece of that proposal which had more than 500 programs which were insulated from House review.

This comes from the same crowd that brought three supplemental appropriation bills to the floor without running those bills through the Appropriations Committee or subcommittee.

Now they say that they want one vote on the package all put together. Well, let me tell you, what we are trying to do is to avoid Members having to look at everything in one package. What we are trying to do is to give them a straight up-or-down vote, a clean shot on the issue of whether you want to provide funding for the war or not. It is a procedurally neutral approach. If you want funding for the war, you vote ``yes'' and if you don't want it, you vote ``no.'' That way you can't hide on that issue. It stands out there alone, and people see where you stand.

We are also having a separate vote on whether or not we should impose conditions on the administration in exchange for the use of that money, straight up-or-down vote, clean shot at it, can't hide behind any other issue.

And thirdly, we are taking the administration's other requests and two priorities of our own and putting them together in a third amendment, again separate, not tied into a big package, out there so that Members can choose up or down whether they want to do that or not. I make no apology for that.

Now we are being lectured about the fact that this is a bloated bill. Out of all of the appropriated items in this bill, all but $2 billion are requested by the administration. Congress has the temerity to be asking to spend 1 percent of the appropriated amount in this bill. The rest the President takes ownership of.

Secondly, we are being told, Oh, it's terrible because we've taken a military bill and ``larded'' it up was the term that the gentleman from Janesville used, that we larded it up with unemployment compensation and with the expanded GI Bill. Well, I suppose additional unemployment compensation benefits may look like lard to a Member who makes $165,000 a year; but to people who have exhausted their unemployment benefits and have been out of work for 6 months, it doesn't look like lard to them; it looks like basic bread, and I think we should be ashamed of the fact that we haven't provided this sooner.

It also may look like lard to the gentleman from Janesville for us to say that we want to provide expanded education benefits to the GIs who fought this war. But I would remind every Member of this House, this is the first war in my knowledge where we have never had any sense of shared sacrifice. The only people in this society who are being asked to sacrifice are the veterans and the military families. They have been sent to Iraq and Afghanistan again and again and again, and we have the quaint idea that we ought to be able to take 6 percent of the cost of that war to date, 6 percent, and devote it to expanding education benefits for people who have sacrificed by wearing the uniform of the United States.

We pay for that by providing what the majority leader refers to as a patriots' premium, a one-half of 1 percent increase in taxes for the most fortunate people in this society who make more than a million bucks a year.

If you think that is even a close question, whether we ought to put the GIs before those fortunate folks, then it is no wonder you lost the seat in Mississippi 2 days ago.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1197, I call from the Speaker's table the bill (H.R. 2642) making appropriations for military construction, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2008, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. Speaker, I offer the motion at the desk.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman may be reciting the PAYGO rule as he wishes it were, but that's not the way it is.

The legislation before the House fully complies with the PAYGO rule. That rule deals with direct spending and revenues.

As to revenues, the revenue effects of this package reduce the deficit, rather than increasing it. As to spending, none of the spending in this package falls into the direct spending category, which is basically defined as spending outside the appropriations process.

Even though not technically required to do so, the Medicaid provisions and the expansion of veterans' education benefits fully meet the PAYGO standard. Both sets of provisions contain offsets to ensure that they do not increase the deficit over the 5- and 10-year periods used by the PAYGO rule.

The rest of the bill consists mostly of emergency appropriations for defense and other security-related needs, largely for things requested by the President. And the other major spending item, relating to extended unemployment compensation benefits, is temporary in nature and responds to current hardships created by the economic downturn.

So I believe that we ought to abide by the House rules as they are, not as some Members wish they were.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the pending legislation.

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

Mr. Speaker, we have a tough problem before the House today. We have a war which the majority of this House despises. We have a war that we do not have the power to end so long as the President is as obstreperous as he has been on the subject. That means that we have to find a way to try to manage this problem in a way that sends a clear message to the public that they are the only ones who can, in fact, muster the power to change direction on this war by electing a President who will get us out of this war. It also means we have to manage it in such a way that we set the table for the new President to give him at least a few months to think through how he is going to proceed to extricate us from this war and to get his ducks in a row on Iraqi policy. Therefore, we are taking the Senate bill and we are asking the House to consider three amendments and work their will on it.

The first amendment is very simple. It's an up-or-down vote on providing the funding to pay for the equipment and to pay for the salaries for the troops as long as they are going to be in the war situation. That money will be estimated to run out by June of 2009.

The second amendment would simply be an up-or-down vote on the conditions that the House believes should appropriately be attached to the spending of that money, many of which the House has seen before. Those conditions will, among other things, require that virtually every unit sent to the war be fully combat ready. They will provide that no one who works for the United States may engage in interrogation techniques that are at variance with the Army Field Manual. In plain language, no torture. The conditions will also say that there shall be no long-term security agreements entered into with Iraq without submission of those agreements to the United States Senate for their consideration. It will establish a timetable for extricating ourselves from combat by setting a goal, not a firm date but a goal, of 18 months from the date of enactment.

Also, we have added two conditions which would have the effect of requiring Iraq to provide a dollar-for-dollar match for any of the redevelopment and reconstruction activities that are being carried out by the United States Government. The effect of that would be the functional equivalent of turning 50 percent of what we provide to Iraq into loans. We've done it this way because we have faith that the loans would ever be repaid, and this way we guarantee that the Iraqis, who are now about to develop very large surpluses in their own budget--they will have to meet these costs up front on an equal basis before the United States proceeds to expend its own money. And it would also require that the American military be provided gasoline in Iraq at the same subsidized price as the Iraqis are being subsidized. We don't see why the United States troops who are defending that country ought to have to pay a premium.

Then we will have a third amendment, again up or down, on the other administration requests. Those include food aid. We've increased the international food aid recommended by the President by $745 million. Anybody who has read the newspapers or watched television for the last 2 weeks understands why that is a moral necessity. We have also included the administration request for the Louisiana levies exactly as they have requested it as fiscal 2009 money. We have responded to a request from the Bureau of Prisons to provide $178 million so that they do not have to lay off prison guards and other personnel in the U.S. prison system. The Secretary of Commerce has requested that we provide additional funding because they run into technology problems at the U.S. Census Bureau; so we have responded to that with a $210 million appropriation. We have also added $2.2 billion in military construction funds above the President's request to fully fund the administration's 2008 BRAC requests. We have also included $210 million for military child care centers, which the President from that rostrum told the country he was for but neglected to ask the money for in his budget this year.

There are no Members' projects whatsoever in this bill. In the military construction portion of the bill, for instance, there are 121 facilities that are provided for; 111 of those were specifically asked for by the White House, and the others were identified by the committee as top service priorities after testimony from the military services.

There's only one proposal that could be really considered a specific project earmark, and that is one hospital which the Assistant Secretary of Defense asked to be included in the recommendations, and we're providing planning funds for that facility.

In addition, the other items in that third amendment to be considered would deal with the following:

If we're going to fight the war, we happen to believe that we ought to provide a ``thank you'' to the people who have fought it, especially because there has been no sense of shared sacrifice in this country. The only people who have been asked to sacrifice are military families again and again and again. So what we are doing is including the Webb bill, which would provide for the equivalent of a full-boat 4-year education at a public university for persons who have spent 36 months on active duty, and the benefits are scaled down in accordance with time served. It's long past time that we do that.

We have also included emergency funding for unemployment compensation so that for persons who have exhausted their unemployment benefits, they will have an additional 13 weeks available to them.

We have also in this amendment recommended delaying the administration's rules changes in Medicaid that have been so controversial, and we include two contractor reforms which the House had already passed.

The main difference, Mr. Speaker, between this bill and the administration's bill is that we pay for everything in the bill except the unemployment compensation provision and the President pays for virtually none of his requests.

Now I prefer to pay for the entire war if we are going to have it. I don't think we ought to have it. But if we were going to have it, I thought we ought to pay for the whole thing. So did Mr. Murtha and Mr. McGovern. So we introduced legislation to pay for the whole war with the war surtax. We lost that argument. That is not in this bill.

I felt that if we weren't going to pay for the war up front, then there should be no requirement to provide an offset to provide the additional GI Bill expanded benefits, which are the equivalent of only about 6 percent of the cost of this war so far. But I lost that argument, too.

And so this bill does pay for the expansion of GI benefits. And it pays for that in probably the best way possible, by asking the most fortunate citizens in our society, those who individually make $500,000 or more a year, or as a couple who make $1 million or more a year, we are asking them to help out in the form of a patriot premium by, in essence, asking them to pay a one-half of 1 percent surtax in order to finance the GI Bill expansion.

As I look at this bill, what we are doing is we are asking people who, on average, have gotten a $126,000 annual tax cut to take a tiny portion of that

tax cut to help us make life better for the persons who have been doing the most in order to preserve the way of life which has enabled those people to do so well in life. And I make no apology for it.

Ninety-nine percent of the appropriated dollars in the bill--99 percent of the appropriated dollars in this bill--are being requested by the administration.

This war, Mr. Speaker, has screwed up our economy. This war has injected chaos in the lives of military families all across the country. We make no apology in trying to use this vehicle to respond to the needs of the two groups in society who have been hit the hardest by this war; one being those who have lost their jobs because of the turmoil we have had in the economy because of the war and other factors, and second, the military families whom we believe ought to be treated about as well as the GIs were when they came back from World War II. This war has now lasted longer than World War II. And we think we have an obligation to respond to what is actually out there on the ground in communities all across the country.

We can debate our political philosophies. We can debate our economic theories. We can behave like little budgeteers, arguing about this comma and that comma, this offset and that offset. But in the end, we are dealing with the lives of human beings. We are dealing with the lives of families. We are dealing with people who have sacrificed incredibly much with their family members being sent to Iraq and Afghanistan once, twice, three times. Kids are not seeing their parents.

I represent a city of 37,000 people. We have had almost 35,000 casualties in this country. It is as if 4,000 people in my hometown were killed, and virtually every other person in that hometown wound up in a VA hospital. That is the human toll that has been paid so far just by Americans on this war.

So this is a process which will give Members the opportunity to vote up or down on the major pieces that comprise this legislation.

And I urge the House to move forward.

I, myself, will be intending to vote against the first amendment. I will be voting for the second and the third amendment. I hope that every Member here today exercises his conscience. That is what they are supposed to do.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from California. Those are some of the nicest words he has ever said about me, and I appreciate them deeply.

Let me also say that I think his speech simply bears out that because they can find no real substantive fault with the legislation, they have to fall back on whining about process.

I would suggest that the gentleman from California is the last person I will take lectures from when it comes to talking about an open appropriations process. I was not chairman when the Appropriations Committee when, after the conference was closed and the work was done and the names are on the conference report, I was not the chairman of the committee who allowed 30 pages of unrelated new language not seen by anybody to be inserted in that conference report which insulated the pharmaceutical industry from suit if their products damaged their customers.

I was not the chairman of the committee when the committee, after the conference was closed, and after it was finished, inserted anonymously, anonymously, in the dead of night, language which changed the definition of organic foods on the agriculture bill and led to nicely enriched profits for certain people in this society.

All I can say is that the gentleman may not like the fact that we couldn't finish discussions as fast as we wanted to on this bill. He says he has only been able to see the text for the last day or so. Let me simply suggest that at least the text he reads is the text that will be in the bill after we vote on the bill, which is more than you can say for what happened under his stewardship on several locations.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 additional minute.

Let me simply make the point, there is virtually nothing in this bill that hasn't been around here for months. This is not new material. The President's war request has been around here for months, as the gentleman himself has indicated.

The unemployment compensation provision that we are providing in this bill already passed the House on one occasion. The Webb bill has been around for months, and it has the support, and, in fact, the sponsorship of the majority of the House and wide bipartisan support in the Senate as well.

I would suggest, I think the question is, the Pentagon is saying you've got to get the money to the troops, because they're about to run out of money and won't get paid. Yet our friends on the other side are asking us to follow a process which would have taken a much longer period of time.

You can't have it both ways. This is a fair process.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself another minute.

I am personally opposed to the first amendment which we are presenting to the House. But out of courtesy to the minority, who support it, and out of courtesy to the White House, who supports it, we are allowing that to come to a vote. Our party has not even whipped on that question. We told Members, vote your conscience. I don't see how you could be more fair than that.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished chairman of the Military Construction Subcommittee, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards).

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

I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from South Dakota.

I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I just cannot allow the impression to continue that somehow we have violated House rules or committee rules by this procedure. The fact is that despite some Members having not been around here long enough to remember, the House used to often proceed in this way, moving amendments back and forth between the Senate and the House as a device by which to reach agreement on legislation. That happened routinely during the old abortion debates back in the seventies when amendments offered by Mr. Magnuson and Mr. Flood were bounced back and forth between the Houses.

The fact is also that I offered, and my staff director specifically offered, to have the minority staff participate in every discussion related to appropriation items. We pointed out, we were not drafting, in our committee, the unemployment insurance issues. That was drafted by the authorizing committee. And we were not drafting the language with respect to Medicaid rules. That was done by the Energy and Commerce Committee.

But we offered to have the minority staff participate in all of the staff meetings that were going on with respect to anything over which the Appropriations Committee had direct jurisdiction. If they chose not to exercise that right, that's their responsibility, not ours.

I would also point out that my understanding is that in the 109th and 110th Congress, fully 12 percent of legislation that was passed was passed using this process of moving amendments back and forth between the Senate and the House. So this may be an unusual procedure, but it is far from unprecedented.

I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Jackson).

I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey).

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

I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished majority caucus chairman, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel).

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is yielded 1 additional minute.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

I cannot believe what I just heard.

The gentleman just indicated that somehow we're adding $72 billion to a bill ``that has nothing whatsoever to do with the welfare of soldiers.'' I would point out by far the largest item that we are adding to this bill, $51 billion over 10 years, is devoted to help those very same soldiers so that the people who fought, when they come home, get treated the same way that the GIs did at the end of World War II. That isn't on the backs of the soldiers. That's trying to enhance their lives. It's trying to enable Reservists and Guard members and regular forces who have had their lives disrupted, who have gone to Iraq two and three times. We're trying to say, Okay, you can stay home for a while. Get yourself a college education.

The GI Bill paid back this country $7 for every dollar it cost.

I yield myself 1 additional minute.

The GI Bill paid back to this society $7 for every dollar that it cost. There are unfortunately some people in this House who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Fortunately, the people who support this third amendment today will not be among them.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Tanner).

I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, the gentleman from California (Mr. Filner).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Walz).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, Just Imagine! The mortal sin that we're accused of committing on this side of the aisle is believing that we ought to provide some additional economic assistance to people

who have been hit the hardest by economic dislocation and have been unemployed until their benefits have expired and haven't been able to find a job.

It's suggested that we're doing this ``on the backs'' of our fighting men and women who return home. I'd suggest it's just the opposite. When a man or a woman returns home from Iraq, when we find out that in addition to their having their reentry problem, they also, some of them, may have post-trauma stress reaction, they find out in addition to what they have to worry about for themselves, they also have to worry about the fact that their sister or their brother-in-law is now unemployed, adding to the burden on that family.

I yield myself 30 seconds.

I think those GIs recognize this is supposed to be a seamless society. We're supposed to help take care of the people who are in the most trouble, and I don't apologize for using some of the money that we use for veterans benefits. I don't apologize for getting that money from some of the people in this society who have had the least stress in their lives.

It seems to me that that's what the Judeo-Christian ethic is all about, and we plead fully guilty on this side of the aisle.

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

I yield myself 30 seconds, and I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

I would like the gentleman from Texas to point out a single piece of Member pork in this bill.

Yes.

Name one.

Name one.

Can you name one or can't you? The fact is there's not a single piece of Member pork in this bill. You ought to know.

I yield myself 1 additional minute.

And through the Chair, I would invite the Member to name a specific piece of congressional pork in this bill. He cannot because there is none. He's at least had enough time to read the bill to know that.

The only possible piece of pork in this bill is one which we inserted at the request of the Deputy Secretary of Defense for a military hospital in Guam that came here at the request of the Secretary of Defense's office.

You can find no Member's pork in this package, and you know it as well as I do.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott).

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute to answer the gentleman's question.

The gentleman wants to know why do we have money in this bill for the census? Simple. It's because the Secretary of Commerce asked us to put it in because they've had a huge technical screw-up in the Department of the Census. The last time I looked, the Secretary of Commerce was appointed by the President of the United States, Mr. George W. Bush.

He wants to know why we have money in this bill for prisons. Simple. We've been told by the Bureau of Prisons--last time I looked, it's run by the Bush Administration--that if we didn't provide this money, because of cost overruns they're going to have to fire guards and lay off people in Federal prisons. Anybody interested in law and order I don't think is going to be happy about that.

So it seems to me it is responsible to respond to emergencies on both the domestic side and on the international side.

I'm sorry that the gentleman doesn't seem to be aware of the fact that we have, in writing, requests from both of those agencies, but that happens to be the fact. And that's the answer.

We got requests in writing from the agencies.

They testified before the committees. I don't know if you were there or not, but they testified.

Announcement By the Speaker Pro Tempore

I yield myself 10 seconds.

Once again, when they can't argue about the substance, they whine about process. That's not going to impress very many people. It certainly didn't in Mississippi yesterday.

With that, I would like to yield 1 minute to the distinguished Speaker of

the House, the gentlewoman from California.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Florida (Mr. Boyd).

I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.

Could I inquire of the gentleman from California how many speakers he has remaining.

I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Patrick J. Murphy).

I yield the gentleman 30 additional seconds.

I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from Texas.

I want to make sure the gentleman's rights are protected. You indicated to me that you wanted the minority leader to close debate on your side?

How many speakers does the gentleman have remaining?

I'm sorry. I couldn't hear you.

I guess by default I am the last remaining speaker. The majority leader is otherwise occupied and so I would ask the gentleman to proceed.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the remainder of the time.

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want Members to understand this bill was not written in the Speaker's office or any other leadership office. Virtually every appropriation issue of this bill was

written in the Appropriations Committee. We did not, obviously, write language that has previously passed the House under the control of other committees. The Energy and Commerce Committee produced the language, for instance, on the Medicaid rules. And the authorizing committee produced the language on unemployment compensation. That's normal.

In fact, the Speaker herself was joking the other day and teasing me, indicating that there were three items that she had wanted in the bill that the committee had turned down. So I would suggest this is not quite the dictatorship that the myth-makers on the other side of the aisle are trying to portray.

Having said that, let me explain what it is we are doing here today, since the minority leader was courteous enough to ask. What we are trying to do is to recognize a sad fact, which is that as long as George Bush is President of the United States, we are not going to be able to shut down the war. So what we are trying to do is proceed in the most responsible possible manner in order to assure that the next President, whoever he or she is, has at least 3 or 4 months to think through how he or she would get us out of this god-awful mess in Iraq, which I regard to be the most misguided foreign policy decision in my lifetime.

What we are trying to do is to recognize that we do not have a majority in the United States Senate to shut down this war. And so we are looking at ways to provide Members with an opportunity to speak out on whether they want to see that war funding go ahead or not, a straight up-or-down vote. No coercion, at least on this side of the aisle, no whipping that question on this side of the aisle. Members were told, ``Vote your conscience.''

We are also trying to do two other things. We are trying, once again, to attach conditions to the use of this money. Now I myself will vote against the first amendment because I have no guarantee that the conditions in the second amendment will survive Senate action. If they did, I would be perfectly comfortable with the first amendment because I think the first amendment is a straight effort to do what I just described a minute ago.

But the reason we want to pursue the second amendment is because we think it is about time that the Iraqis, now that they are generating oil surpluses and budget surpluses, we believe it is about time that they begin to assume the costs of their own reconstruction, at least 50 percent of it. This is why we have a 50-50, dollar-for-dollar match requirement which we are imposing on the Iraqis if we are to be expected to spend any more money in reconstructing Iraq. We think that's eminently sensible.

We also think it is about time that Iraq quit overcharging the U.S. military for the price of gasoline. There is no reason why we should be paying through the nose at a much higher price than Iraqis are paying for gasoline.

And then thirdly, we are asking the President of the United States to remember that the United States of America still exists, too, and that there are some problems that we need to address here. In fact, the administration itself has recognized some of them because the administration sent down a reprogramming request to deal with the problem of the Bureau of Prisons. They sent down a reprogramming request to deal with the census. We didn't think we ought to fix those problems by cutting even more deeply into local law enforcement funding, because those budgets have already been cut far too much. So we rejected the way that the administration wanted to pay for those items. And instead we have included them in this bill fully, fully paid for.

We also have the temerity to believe that if we are going to fight this war, then we ought to also provide a thank you note, a healthy thank you note, for the people who fought the war on our behalf. That is why we are insistent that we pass the expansion of the GI Bill so that you can take people whose lives have been turned upside-down for years, military families from the east coast to the west coast, their lives have been disrupted for years. We want to say ``we want to at least partially compensate you by giving you the opportunity for a full, 4-year college education at any State university in your State.'' And we have provisions that will even expand beyond that if they go to other schools that also participate in helping finance their education. We make no apology for including that.

We have heard from at least three speakers on that side of the aisle that we are providing $51 billion for that on the backs of the soldiers.

It isn't on their backs. It's an effort to help them. I would point out in the previous GI Bill in World War II, this country got a return of $7 for every dollar that it invested in the GI Bill. We recognize the value of doing that again. We recognize the moral obligation of doing that again, and we make no apology in going forward with it.

We also make no apology for recognizing that when we have millions of Americans unemployed, that there is no harm done by providing to those who have been unemployed the longest and have exhausted their benefits, with 13 weeks of additional assistance as those people look for jobs. This Congress sits here in a comfortable room making $160,000 a year, nickel nursing about our efforts to provide a few additional benefits to people who have been unemployed that long.

If we don't vote for that provision, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves. I ask each and every Member to vote your conscience. I am not going to tell you how to vote on any of the amendments. I will be voting against the first, for the second and the third.

But I urge us to get on with it. This is the only way that we can get the problem dealt with.

Mr. Speaker, following is an explanation of the amendments of the House of Representatives (relating to supplemental appropriations for fiscal years 2008 and 2009) to the amendment of the Senate to H.R. 2642, the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act, 2008.

In this statement, the provisions of the House amendments to the Senate amendment are generally referred to as ``the amended bill''.

House Amendment 1 strikes lines 1 through 3 on page 60 of the Senate amendment and inserts language providing supplemental appropriations for the Department of Defense for fiscal year 2008, and additional supplemental funds for fiscal year 2009 for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

House Amendment 2 inserts after line 3 on page 60 of the Senate amendment language regarding policy for operations in Iraq and reforms relating to war profiteering and contractors.

House Amendment 3 strikes line 1 on page 1 of the Senate amendment and all that follows through line 21 on page 59, and inserts language providing supplemental appropriations for military construction, international affairs, and other security-related and domestic needs, as well as language providing for improved veterans education benefits, temporary extended unemployment compensation, and a moratorium on certain Medicaid regulations, and establishing a surtax on high income taxpayers to offset the cost of the veterans benefit provision.

The texts of the amendments are printed in the Rules Committee report (H. Rpt. 110-636) to accompany House Resolution 1197.

Unless otherwise noted, all appropriations in the amendments are designated as emergency requirements and necessary to meet emergency needs pursuant to subsections (a) and (b) of section 204 of S. Con. Res. 21, the congressional budget resolution for fiscal year 2008.

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

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

Let me simply say this bill is intended to increase the small business set-aside for these research programs. That does no harm for a large agency whose budget has been rising, such as the Department of Defense, but it can do immeasurable harm to the crown jewel of our research agencies in this country, the National Institutes of Health.

If we were to do what this bill does to NIH, it would result in $187 million less being available for traditional medical research grants at medical research centers and universities. I think that that is not a good idea. The President's budget has already reduced the number of grants that NIH will be able to provide by almost 500 grants. This will add about another 500 grant reduction to the President's budget. That would mean that we would be supporting a grant level for the traditional NIH grants at about 1,100 grants fewer than was the case in 2007. I think that is a very bad idea. Therefore, when the bill comes before us, I would urge support of the Ehlers amendment, which will correct the problem with respect to the National Institutes of Health.

I know that some people will say, ``Well, we're not reducing the number of grants, we're simply shifting the nature of grants from traditional grants to small business grants.'' But the fact is that the success rate for small business grants under this bill is expected to rise to 52 percent whereas the success rate for applications for traditional NIH grants is expected to decline to 18 percent. That is a disparity that the scientific community and the country at large simply cannot afford.

NIH believes that there will not be sufficient high-quality grants under the small business set-aside to pass peer review over time, and that means they would simply have to lapse back precious research money that could be used for heart disease, for Parkinson's, for cancer, things like that.

So I would strongly urge, when this bill comes before us, to vote for the Ehlers amendment as a way to address that balance.

Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

I thank the gentleman. Let me simply say I was here for those secret sessions. And I think the great utility of having another one, given the mumbo jumbo that I heard at the last three, is simply to demonstrate the almost total uselessness of secret sessions.

Mr. Speaker, to listen to the last two speakers, one would think that they had Rip Van Winkled their way through the last year in this House. For the Republican Party leadership to belatedly give us lectures on earmarks is, in my view, akin to reformed alcoholics giving lectures on temperance.

The higher education bill being debated today is funded through the Labor-H appropriation bill. In fiscal year 1995, the last year I chaired that subcommittee, that bill contained virtually no earmarks. By the year 2000, that same bill contained 491 earmarks; and by 2006, that bill had 3,031 earmarks totaling $1.2 billion.

The previous Republican leadership was notorious for using earmarks as enticements in order to get their membership to vote for bills that individuals otherwise would not be inclined to vote for. For example, newspapers at the time reported that the previous Republican leadership used earmarks in the Transportation authorization bill as rewards for several Republican Members to switch their votes and agreed to support the Medicare part D provision that forbade the Federal Government from negotiating with the drug industry to provide lower costs for seniors under Medicare.

Under the Republican leadership, the cost of the earmarks quadrupled, and we were treated to stories about Mr. Cunningham, Mr. Ney, Mr. Abramoff abusing the process, as well as several other.

When Democrats took over the House, until we could reform the process, we suspended earmarks for a year, over the fierce objections of as many Members of the Republican Party as we saw in my own party.

In response to demands from both parties, after we reformed the process, we then resumed the earmarking process with the expressed intention of cutting in half the cost of earmarks in non-project accounts. We made no such commitments for accounts that are by their nature project-based because to do so would gut the very purpose of the bills under consideration.

For example, the Army Corps budget is by its nature project-based. In fiscal 2006, the administration sent up a budget request for the Army Corps containing 984 projects. Of the final amount provided by the Corps, 86 percent of the projects were administration-requested earmarks. The Corps is an interesting example. The administration argues that they have a system for selecting projects and that they only select projects that score a 3 or better on their scale. However, in 2006, there were 16 projects requested by the administration that did not even qualify for funding based on the administration's own criteria.

After all the shouting was over last year, we essentially met our promise, cutting nonproject earmarks by 43 percent after negotiations with the Senate, cutting it from $16 billion down to $9 billion. So we came pretty doggone close to our goal. I would have preferred a larger reduction than 50 percent, but the 43 percent reduction is a 43 percent larger reduction than any Republican Congress ever produced, and we did it under a reform process.

At the beginning of the 110th Congress, the new Democratic majority passed unprecedented new rules that required the listing of the sponsors of every earmark, that required that any Member of Congress requesting an earmark disclose in writing the name and address of the intended recipient, the purpose of the earmark, and required that Members certify that he or she had no financial interest in the project.

We also required that all matters before a conference committee including earmarks must be subjected to full and open debate and that no item might be added to the conference report after the conference committee had adjourned, as has happened many times in the past.

As we moved forward with earmarks last year, I brought a motion to the floor to see if Members wanted to eliminate all earmarks. That motion failed by a vote of 53-369, with a majority of both parties voting against it.

I am assuming they did that because an overwhelming number of honorable Members on both sides of the aisle believe that Members should not lose the ability to fund priority items for their districts because of the scurrilous behavior of a handful of renegade Members.

During House consideration of fiscal year 2008 appropriation bills, 71 earmark-related amendments were debated and voted on in the floor, including three amendments to eliminate all earmarks from the bill under consideration and 68 amendments to eliminate particular earmarks. Of the 48 amendments on which record votes were taken, only 13 received the support of more than half the Republicans who voted. On those 13, the percentage of Republicans voting ``yes'' never exceeded 57 percent.

Every Member knows that even if the House unilaterally suspends earmarks, the Senate will not follow suit. A firm majority on both sides will see to that. I have learned that lesson the hard way.

One last point: the resolution introduced by our friends on the other side calls for the suspension of earmarks for 6 months until yet another group offers their suggestions for change. It is ironic indeed that that delay would force us to do the same thing that the Republican leadership so roundly criticized me for last year when I proposed to delay earmarks 1 month until we had more time to review them. The practical effect of the resolution which our Republican friends want to bring up to date, even though it is nongermane to this bill, would be to require the air-dropping of every single earmark in the entire Federal budget. It would guarantee that no earmarks could be discussed or debated while the bill was on the floor of the House of Representatives. It would then give you in spades what our friends on the Republican side said last year they wanted to avoid.

I fail to see how requiring every single earmark in appropriation bills this year, I fail to see how requiring all of those earmarks to be air-dropped rather than debated when we consider the bills is reform. It moves exactly in the opposite direction of that which our Republican friends said we should move last year. So as far as I am concerned, the truth is this is not serious reform at all. It is a grandstanding attempt to escape the reputation of previous Congresses. If I had presided over those previous Congresses, I would be running away from their reputation just as fast as the minority appears to be today.