[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.
    
    
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