    [House Document 106-154]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

    106th Congress 1st Session - - - - - - - - - - - House Document 106-154

     A VETO MESSAGE FOR FY 2000 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, AND DEPARTMENTS OF
                LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AND EDUCATION

                                   __________

                                    MESSAGE

                                      FROM

                       THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

                                   transmitting

      A VETO MESSAGE FOR H.R. 3064, THE FY 2000 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA AND
      DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AND EDUCATION, AND
                     RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS BILL.

      November 4, 1999.--Message and accompanying papers referred to the
             Committee on Appropriations and ordered to be printed

                        U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
                               WASHINGTON : 1999

    To the House of Representatives:
        I am returning herewith without my approval H.R. 3064, the
    FY 2000 District of Columbia and Departments of Labor, Health
    and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies
    appropriations bill.
        I am vetoing H.R. 3064 because the bill, including the
    offsets section, is deeply flawed. It includes a misguided 0.97
    percent across-the-board reduction that will hurt everything
    from national defense to education and environmental programs.
    The legislation also contains crippling cuts in key education,
    labor, and health priorities and undermines our capacity to
    manage these programs effectively. The enrolled bill delays the
    availability of $10.9 billion for the National Institutes of
    Health, the Centers for Disease Control, and other important
    health and social services programs, resulting in delays in
    important medical research and health services to low-income
    Americans. The bill is clearly unacceptable. I have submitted a
    budget that would fund these priorities without spending the
    Social Security surplus, and I am committed to working with the
    Congress to identify acceptable offsets for additional spending
    for programs that are important to all Americans.
        The bill also fails to fulfill the bipartisan commitment to
    raise student achievement by authorizing and financing class
    size reduction. It does not guarantee any continued funding for
    the 29,000 teachers hired with FY 1999 funds, or the additional
    8,000 teachers to be hired under my FY 2000 proposal. Moreover,
    the bill language turns the program into a virtual block grant
    that could be spent on vouchers and other unspecified
    activities. In addition, the bill fails to fund my proposed
    investments in teacher quality by not funding Troops to
    Teachers ($18 million) and by cutting $35 million from my
    request for Teacher Quality Enhancement Grants. These programs
    would bring more highly qualified teachers into the schools,
    especially in high-poverty, high-need school districts.
        The bill cuts $189 million from my request for Title I
    Education for the Disadvantaged, resulting in 300,000 fewer
    children in low-income communities receiving needed services.
    The bill also fails to improve accountability or help States
    turn around the lowest-performing schools because it does not
    include my proposal to set aside 2.5 percent for these
    purposes. Additionally, the bill provides only $300 million for
    21st Century Community Learning Centers, only half my $600
    million request. At this level, the conference report would
    deny after-school services to more than 400,000 students.
        The bill provides only $180 million for GEAR UP, $60
    million below my request, to help disadvantaged students
    prepare for college beginning in the seventh grade. This level
    would serve nearly 131,000 fewer low-income students. In
    addition, the bill does not adequately fund my Hispanic
    Education Agenda. It provides no funds for the Adult Education
    English as a Second Language/Civics Initiative to help limited
    English proficient adults learn English and gain life skills
    necessary for successful citizenship and civic participation.
    The bill underfunds programs designed to improve educational
    outcomes for Hispanic and other minority students, including
    Bilingual Education, the High School Equivalency Program (HEP),
    the College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP), and the
    Strengthening Historically Black Colleges and Universities
    program.
        The bill underfunds Education Technology programs,
    including distance learning and community technology centers.
    In particular, the bill provides only $10 million to community
    based technology centers, $55 million below my request. My
    request would provide access to technology in 300 additional
    low-income communities. The bill provides $75 million for
    education research, $34 million less than my request, and
    includes no funding for the Department of Education's share of
    large-scale joint research with the National Science Foundation
    and the National Institutes of Health on early learning in
    reading and mathematics, teacher preparation, and technology
    applications.
        The bill does not fund the $53 million I requested to
    provide job finding assistance to 241,000 unemployment
    insurance claimants. This means that these claimants will
    remain unemployed longer, costing more in benefit payments. The
    bill also provides only $140 million of my $199 million request
    to expand services to job seekers at One-Stop centers as
    recently authorized in the bipartisan Workforce Investment Act.
    The bill funds $120 million of the $149 million requested for
    efforts to improve access to One-Stops as well as continued
    support for electronic labor exchange and labor market
    information. It funds only $20 million of the $50 million
    requested for work incentive grants to help integrate
    employment services for persons with disabilities into the
    mainstream One-Stop system.
        The bill also does not provide funding for Right Track
    Partnerships (RTP). I requested $75 million for this new
    competitive grant program. Designed to help address youth
    violence, RTP would become part of the multi-agency Safe
    Schools/Health Students initiative, expanding it to include a
    focus on out-of-school youth.
        The bill provides $33 million less than my request for
    labor law enforcement agencies, denying or reducing initiatives
    to ensure workplace safety, address domestic child labor
    abuses, encourage equal pay, implement new health law, and
    promote family leave. In particular, the bill provides an
    inadequate level of funding for the Occupational Safety and
    Health Administration, cutting it by $18 million, or 5 percent
    below my request.
        The bill also fails to provide adequate funding for the
    Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB). The bill funds
    ILAB at $50 million, $26 million below my request. The bill
    would prevent ILAB from carrying out my proposal to work
    through the International Labor Organization to help developing
    countries establish core labor standards, an essential step
    towards leveling the playing field for American workers.
        The bill's funding level for the Bureau of Labor Statistics
    is $11 million less than my request. The enrolled bill denies
    three important increases that would: (1) improve the Producer
    Price Index, which measures wholesale prices; (2) improve
    measures of labor productivity in the service sector; and, (3)
    improve the Employment Cost Index, used to help set wage levels
    and guide anti-inflation policy. It also denies funding for a
    study of racial discrimination in labor markets.
        The bill denies my request for $10 million to fund AgNet,
    even though the Senate included report language that supports
    Agnet in concept. AgNet, an Internet-based labor exchange,
    would facilitate the recruitment of agricultural workers by
    growers and the movement of agricultural workers to areas with
    employment needs.
        The bill would cut the Social Services Block Grant (SSBG)
    by $209 million below FY 1999 and $680 million below my
    request. The SSBG serves some of the most vulnerable families,
    providing child protection and child welfare services for
    millions of children. In addition, the failure to provide the
    Senate's level of $2 billion in advance appropriations for the
    Child Care and Development Block Grant would mean 220,000 fewer
    children receiving child care assistance in FY 2001. The bill
    also fails to fund my National Family Caregiver Support
    program, which would provide urgently needed assistance to
    250,000 families caring for older relatives.
        By funding the Title X Family Planning program at last
    year's level, family planning clinics would be unable to extend
    comprehensive reproductive health care services to an
    additional 500,000 clients who are neither Medicaid-eligible
    nor insured. The bill also fails to fund the Health Care Access
    for the Uninsured Initiative, which would enable the
    development of integrated systems of care and address service
    gaps within these systems.
        The bill fails to fully fund several of the Centers for
    Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) critical public health
    programs, including:
         childhoold immunizations (-$44 million), so that
    approximately 300,000 children may not receive the full
    complement of recommended childhood vaccinations;
         infectious diseases (-$36 million), which will
    impair CDC's ability to investigate outbreaks of diseases such
    as the West Nile virus in New York;
         domestic HIV prevention (-$4 million);
         race and health demonstrations (-$5 million),
    which will impair better understanding of how to reduce racial
    disparities in health; and,
         health statistics (-$10 million) for key data
    collection activities such as the National Health and Nutrition
    Examination Survey and health information on racial and ethnic
    population groups.
        The Congress has failed to fund any of the $59 million
    increase I requested for the Mental Health Block Grant, which
    would diminish States' capacity to serve the mentally ill.
        In addition, the Congress has underfunded my request for
    the Substance Abuse Block Grant by $30 million, and has
    underfunded other substance abuse treatment grants by a total
    of $45 million. These reductions would widen the treatment gap
    in FY 2000 and jeopardize the Federal Government's ability to
    meet the National Drug Control Strategy performance target to
    reduce the drug treatment gap by 50 percent by FY 2007.
        The bill provides only half of the $40 million requested
    for graduate education at Children's Hospitals, which play an
    essential role in educating the Nation's physicians, training
    25 percent of pediatricians and over half of many pediatric
    subspecialists.
        The bill underfunds the Congressional Black Caucus' AIDS
    Initiative in the Public Health and Social Services Emergency
    Fund by $15 million, thereby reducing current efforts to
    prevent the spread of HIV. By not fully funding this program,
    the scope of HIV/AIDS prevention, education, and outreach
    activities available to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS in minority
    communities will be more limited.
        The bill fails to fund Health Care Financing Administration
    (HCFA) program management adequately. These reductions would
    severely impede HCFA's ability to ensure the quality of nursing
    home care through the Nursing Home Initiative. The bill does
    not adequately fund the request for Medicare+Choice user fees.
    This decrease would force HCFA to scale back the National
    Medicare Education Campaign. The Congress has not passed the
    proposed user fees totaling $194.5 million that could free up
    resources under the discretionary caps for education and other
    priorities.
        The bill includes a provision that would prevent funds from
    being used to administer the Medicare+Choice Competitive
    Pricing Demonstration Project in Kansas and Arizona. These
    demonstrations which are supported by MEDPAC and other
    independent health policy experts, were passed by the Congress
    as part of the Balanced Budge Act in order to provide valuable
    information regarding the use of competitive pricing
    methodologies in Medicare. The information that we could learn
    from these demonstrations is particularly relevant as we
    consider the important task of reforming Medicare.
        The bill contains a highly objectionable provision that
    would delay the implementation of HHS' final Organ Program and
    Transplantation rule for 90 days. This rule, which was strongly
    validated by an Institute of Medicine report, provides a more
    equitable system of treatment for over 63,000 Americans waiting
    for an organ transplant; its implementation would likely
    prevent the deaths of hundreds of Americans. Since almost 5,000
    people die each year waiting for an organ transplant, we must
    be allowed to move forward on this issue and implement the rule
    without further delay.
        The bill does not provide any of the $9,5 million I
    requested for HHS' Office of the General Counsel and
    Departmental Appeals Board to handle legal advice, regulations
    review, and litigation support, and to conduct hearings and
    issue decisions on nursing home enforcement cases as part of my
    Nursing Home Initiative. This would increase the backlog of
    nursing home appeals and impair Federal oversight of nursing
    home equality and safety standards. A reduction in funds for
    enforcement is inconsistent with the concerns that the GAO and
    the Congress have raised about this issue.
        The bill cuts funds to counter bioterrorism. It funds less
    than half my request for CDC's stockpile, limiting the amount
    of vaccines, antibiotics, and other medical supplies that can
    be stockpiled to deploy in the event of a chemical or
    biological attack. In addition, the bill does not include $13.4
    million for critical FDS expedited regulatory review/approval
    of pharmaceuticals to combat chemical and biological agent
    weapons.
        The bill provides full funding of $350 million in FY 2002
    for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. However, the bill
    provides only $10 million of the $20 million requested for the
    digital transition initiative in FY 2000. This funding is
    required to help the public broadcasting system meet the
    Federal deadline to establish digital broadcasting capability
    by May 1, 2003.
        The enrolled bill delays the availability of $10.9 billion
    of funding until September 29, 2000. While modest levels of
    delayed obligations could potentially be sustained without
    hurting the affected programs, the levels in the enrolled bill
    are excessive, resulting in delays in NIH research grants,
    delays in CCD immunizations for children, and delays in the
    delivery of health services to low-income Americans through
    community health centers and rural health clinics.
        The bill also seriously underfunds critical Departmental
    management activities in the Departments of Labor and Education
    and the Social Security Administration (SSA). For Education,
    these reductions would hamstring efforts to replace the
    Department's accounting system and undermine the new
    Performance-Based Organization's plans to streamline and
    modernize student aid computer systems. Reductions to the
    Department of Labor (DOL) would undercut the agency's ability
    to comply with the requirements of the Clanger-Cohen and
    Computer Security Acts, adjudicate contested claims in several
    of its benefits programs, and examine and update the 1996 study
    on Family and Medical Leave policies. For SSA, the reductions
    would result in significantly longer waiting times for
    disability applicants and millions of individuals who visit SSA
    field offices.
        In adopting an across-the-board reduction, the Congress has
    abdicated its responsibility to make tough choices. Governing
    is about making choices and selecting priorities that will
    serve the national interest. By choosing an across-the-board
    cut, the Congress has failed to meet that responsibility.
        This across-the-board cut would result in indiscriminate
    reductions in important areas such as education, the
    environment, and law enforcement. In addition, this cut would
    have an adverse impact on certain national security programs.
    The indiscriminate nature of the cut would require a reduction
    of over $700 million for military personnel, which would
    require the military services to make cuts in recruiting and
    lose up to 48,000 military personnel.
        In adopting this cost-saving technique, the Congress is
    asserting that it will not have to dip into the Social Security
    surplus. However, this cut does not eliminate the need to dip
    into the Social Security surplus.
        For these reasons, this across-the-board cut is not
    acceptable.
        In addition to the specific program cuts and the 0.97
    percent across-the-board reduction, the bill contains a $121
    million reduction in salaries and expenses for the agencies
    funded by this bill, exacerbating the problems caused by the
    bill's underfunding of critical Departmental management
    activities. If, for example, the $121 million reduction were
    allocated proportionately across all agencies funded in the
    Labor/HHS/Education bill, HHS would have to absorb an
    approximately $55 million reduction to its salaries and
    expenses accounts, Labor would be cut by about $14 million,
    Education by about $5 million, and SSA by some $45 million.
    This would dramatically affect the delivery of essential human
    services and education programs and the protection of employees
    in the workplace.
        With respect to the District of Columbia component of the
    bill, I am pleased that the majority and minority in the
    Congress were able to come together to pass a version of the
    District of Columbia Appropriations Bill that would sign if
    presented to me separately and as it is currently constructed.
    While I continue to object to remaining riders, some of the
    highly objectionable provisions that would have intruded upon
    local citizens' right to make decisions about local matters
    have been modified from previous versions of the bill. That is
    a fair compromise. We will continue to strenuously urge the
    Congress to keep such riders off of the FY 2001 D.C.
    Appropriations Bill.
        I commend the Congress for providing the Federal funds I
    requested for the District of Columbia. The bill includes
    essential funding for District Courts and Corrections and the
    D.C. Offender Supervision Agency and provides requested funds
    for a new tuition assistance program for District of Columbia
    residents. The bill also includes funding to promote the
    adoption of children in the District's foster care system, to
    support the Children's National Medical Center, to assist the
    Metropolitan Police Department in eliminating open-air drug
    trafficking in the District, and for drug testing and
    treatment, among other programs. However, I continue to object
    to remaining riders that violate the principles of home rule.
        I look forward to working with the Congress to craft an
    appropriations bill that I can support, and to passage of one
    that will facilitate our shared objectives.

                                                    William J. Clinton.
        The White House, November 3, 1999.