[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.