[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 80 (Wednesday, June 22, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 22, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                          CONGRESSIONAL REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
February 11, 1994, and June 10, 1994, the gentleman from California 
[Mr. Dreier] is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the 
minority leader.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I have taken out this special order this 
evening to talk about an issue which was consumed a great deal of the 
time of my tenure here and especially consumed a better part of 
calendar year 1993, and that is the issue of congressional reform.
  Now there are many people who think that, if you bring about reform 
in this institution, all of a sudden you will solve all the ailments of 
society. I have not been deluded to believe that for one moment. But I 
am convinced that, if we were to bring about meaningful reform of both 
the House and the Senate, we could increase the accountability and the 
deliberative process here in this institution.
  Now we all know from having visited with our constituents, and I know 
that there are a lot of people who are focused on athletics, whether it 
is soccer or the NBA playoffs which are going to begin in about an hour 
and 15 minutes, but there are many people who have not spent a lot of 
time thinking about the issue of congressional reform. But if you talk 
to people at either soccer games, or basketball playoffs, or almost 
anyplace right now, the level of esteem for the U.S. Congress is 
obviously not very high. In fact, Mr. Speaker, we see surveys coming 
about on a regular basis as it continues to decline.
  I argue that one of the reasons for that decline which we have 
observed over the past several years is that we have seen this place 
remain in the early part or actually the middle part of this century. 
The reason I say that is, if my colleagues look at the last time that 
there was real meaningful reform in a bipartisan, bicameral way, both 
the House and the Senate, it took place nearly half a century ago.
  Now in the early part of the history of this country, as the 
Constitution established the process of having a census taken every 10 
years, following that census the U.S. Congress would alter the 
committee structure to deal with the needs as they existed at that 
point. Well, while there were some slight modifications in 1970s, for 
all intents and purposes we have not seen meaningful reform of the 
committee structures in the House and Senate for, again, nearly half a 
century.
  It was in 1947 when what was known as the Monroney-La Follette reform 
package was implemented, and, while there have been commissions that 
have been put together in the House and in the Senate, in 1992, 
actually August of 1992, in the wake of the many great, quote, unquote, 
scandals that hovered over this Capitol dome, whether it was the House 
Bank, or the Post Office, or the restaurant, or the other things that 
got a great deal of news at that point, Members of both the House and 
the Senate, and Republicans and Democrats, decided to come together 
just before that election in 1992 and establish what has become known 
as the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, that was put into place to actually take effect on 
the first of January, 1993, and one of the things that was particularly 
appealing to me was the fact that it was scheduled to go out of 
existence on December 31 of 1993, something that was virtually unheard 
of, that Congress would establish a committee and it would last for no 
more than 1 year.
  Well, in January of 1993, Mr. Speaker, the Joint Committee on the 
Organization did go into effect. I was very encouraged. I was honored 
when our colleague, Mr. Gradison, retired, and the gentleman from 
Illinois [Mr. Michel], the minority leader, asked me to serve as a co-
vice chairman of that committee along with my colleagues in the House 
and Senate: David Boren, Pete Domenici and the gentleman from Indiana 
[Mr. Hamilton]. I believe that the four of us and, quite frankly, 
virtually all of the Members on the Joint Committee in a bipartisan way 
were optimistic about the chance for meaningful reform in the Congress 
of the United States.

  I remember some of the early statements made when our committee 
hearings were held in January and February of 1993. A number of my 
colleagues said they would rather be bold and go down losing with a 
strong package than they would to see a weak package which would have 
very little substance to it pass overwhelmingly in both bodies, and I 
think that is something that is very important. I think that while 
there are many people that want to reform this institution and launch 
into a regular vitriolic attack, I have to say that I am one who loves 
the U.S. Congress. It is clearly the greatest deliberative body known 
to man. With all the flaws that exist here, Mr. Speaker, clearly this 
is the place where, as was said to a British member of parliament by a 
former Speaker, ``This is where the people govern,'' but quite frankly 
over the past several years we have seen accountability in the 
deliberative process diminish greatly.

                              {time}  1950

  I think that is one of the goals that we had in putting together this 
Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress. I should say that it 
was encouraging for me because as a member of the minority when the 
committee was established, there were an equal number of Republicans 
and an equal number of Democrats on that committee. Our approach was 
clearly bipartisan. In fact, I had the opportunity, something that is 
unheard of as a Republican Member, to wield the gavel over many of the 
committee hearings. The staff of the committee at that point told me 
that I had the chance to hold the gavel almost more often than my three 
colleagues who were cochairs of the committee. It was something that I 
believed was really going to lead to major reform of the institution.
  Tragically, Mr. Speaker, I have found that there are too many people 
in this institution who thrive on the status quo.
  The gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Hamilton], my counterpart, I believe 
very sincerely wants to bring about meaningful change and reform here. 
He wants to do the kinds of things that will improve this institution. 
But unfortunately we have a rather recalcitrant Democrat leadership, 
and that leadership has stood in the way of our attempts to bring about 
reform.

  If I could share with you, Mr. Speaker, our schedule. Initially, we 
had planned to go through our hearings, and, by the way we had 243 
witnesses, 37 hearings. We were able to put together the largest 
compilation of information on the U.S. Congress that had ever been 
gleaned. We were scheduled to do that during the first half of the 
calendar year 1993. Then in the summer of 1993, we were to go through 
our markup. Then in the fall before we adjourned, we were to report 
back to both the House and the Senate our findings and have on the 
floor of both the House and the Senate our package to bring about 
changes in the committee structure, to end proxy voting or at least 
deal with that question, to require that Congress comply with the laws 
that are imposed on the American people. Those are the kinds of things 
that we very much wanted. To bring about budget process reform. 
Virtually everyone here is very frustrated with the budget procedures 
that we have around here; baseline budgeting which really is a sham and 
covers up the increases that regularly go on and on in spending bills. 
We wanted to deal with those things.
  The original plan was to get that to the floor of the House and 
Senate by October of 1993. Unfortunately we went through October, past 
that, got to November, just before we were scheduled to adjourn. I 
should say that in the early fall, we had a very serious problem in 
that the Senate wanted to charge ahead and we had members of our 
committee on the House side who did not. So the Senate did. I 
encouraged them to go ahead. They went off on their own and proceeded 
with their reform package. In the House we frankly dilly-dallied around 
for a long period of time, then finally had our markup. We put 
together, Mr. Speaker, what is known as the chairman's mark. I would 
have thought that since there was an equal number of Republicans and an 
equal number of Democrats and I was a co-vice chairman of the committee 
that I might have been able to have some kind of input into what we 
called the chairman's mark. I did have four or five meetings with 
Speaker Foley, Mr. Hamilton, and other Members of the House, talking 
with them about the need to proceed with a very balanced chairman's 
mark that would address all of these items. Unfortunately as we headed 
towards our markup just before Thanksgiving, we had a package which was 
very, very weak as the chairman's mark. It was very unfortunate the way 
it worked out, because the package that was submitted as the chairman's 
mark was so weak that we could not amend it unless we were to get a 
member of the majority, a Democrat, to join with us, because they 
realized that with 6 Democrats and 6 Republicans on the committee, it 
would be very, very difficult to get a vote and actually offer the kind 
of amendment that we wanted to.

  Mr. Speaker, what happened when we had our markup just before 
Thanksgiving in 1993? We had 25 amendments that dealt with committee 
structure reform, congressional compliance. As I said earlier, having 
Congress live with the laws that we impose on the American people. 
Addressing the issue of proxy voting whereby a committee chairman or a 
representative of the majority, and on the minority side, too, can cast 
votes without the Member being present; budget process reform, sunshine 
legislation, a wide range of provisions, 25 amendments, they were 
defeated on 6-6 party line votes. So we ended up with a very weak 
package.
  Mr. Speaker, I and my colleague from Cape Girardeau, MS, a 
hardworking member of the committee, Mr. Emerson, voted to report the 
bill out. The other Republican members of the committee did not, 
because, like me, they were very frustrated. But I felt it was 
important to keep the process of reform moving. So I did, in fact, vote 
to report it out, so it would be reported first to our Committee on 
Rules, and the Committee on House Administration, and the Committee on 
Government Operations, and then down here on the House floor.
  Unfortunately at this moment the bill remains languished on the 
committee where I sit, the Committee on Rules.
  And what has happened, Mr. Speaker, is that if we look at the 
schedule that is before us, tomorrow afternoon our Committee on Rules 
is scheduled to report out an expedited rescission bill which has 
already passed this House. It is one of those items that we tried to 
address in the amendment process in the Joint Committee on the 
Organization of Congress. We also have had reports that they will 
proceed with a very weak congressional compliance provision. It is sort 
of a divide-and-conquer strategy that I have observed so far. Because 
while we were told at the end of last calendar year that we would have 
the package on the House floor and my counterpart, the gentleman from 
Indiana [Mr. Hamilton], had indicated that he would support a very 
generous rule that would allow the areas that we had debated in our 
markup on the Joint Committee to be considered on the House floor, we 
have seen nothing other than this word that there will be attempts to 
break up this legislation, H.R. 3801.
  I am very pleased, Mr. Speaker, that we have been joined by some of 
the extraordinarily tenacious, thoughtful, diligent members of the 
Joint Committee who worked long and hard through those hearings and 
then through the markup process. I should say that we have been joined 
by 2 of the newer members, one a sophomore who has served one term 
here, and the only freshman new member of the committee to serve on the 
committee was on our Republican side bringing that fresh approach.
  Mr. Speaker, I would first like to yield to my very good friend, the 
gentleman from Colorado [Mr. Allard].
  Mr. ALLARD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to just take a moment to compliment the gentleman 
for his superb leadership on this particular issue. He did a great job 
in leading the issues that came before the Committee on the 
Organization of Congress. It was a pleasure to serve on that committee. 
The results were somewhat disappointing, and the fact that we do not 
have a bill before us this year is even more disappointing. The 
gentleman has worked very hard to try and call to the attention of the 
American people and Members, our colleagues here on the House floor, 
the fact that we do not have a bill before us today that seriously 
addresses the problem of congressional reform.
  Mr. Speaker, the gentleman brought up the issue of budget. We spent a 
lot of time on that committee on budget issues.
  The House had specifically stated that we do not deal with the 
balanced budget amendment, which I support, we do not do anything as 
far as the line item veto is concerned, but we talked about other 
budget matters. We saw a lot of things go on here on the floor in 
debate on an appropriations bill that we talked about in that 
committee, something I wanted to bring up in our discussions and am 
pleased that I was able to have time to get from my office down here to 
join in this discussion.
  Mr. Speaker, we are talking about funding of unauthorized bills, or 
unauthorized projects. We talked about the balance between the 
authorizing committee and balance between the appropriators and how we 
can have more accountability in the process. Here we are today, we had 
a bill from Appropriations on the floor today that had dollars in it 
which were unauthorized. We spent a good part of the day arguing about 
the proper procedure that this House should be following, and I have 
always been a strong advocate that we have a committee of reference for 
a specific purpose, we have appropriators for a specific purpose, and 
that first of all we have to get our programs authorized. Then once we 
get them authorized, we do provide an opportunity then for the 
appropriators to decide what is the appropriate level to provide funds 
for those various programs and projects.
  We also talked about baseline budgeting.
  Mr. DREIER. Would the gentleman explain the baseline budgeting 
process for our colleagues?
  Mr. ALLARD. I would be glad to do that.
  In our personal budget, if we are a city council person, a county 
commissioner or in the State legislature, when we talk about baseline 
budgeting, basically we are talking about what we spent the year 
before. We go from that particular baseline and look at how much our 
expenditures are going to increase over that amount.
  Mr. DREIER. At the local government level and people in their own 
budgets, they have zero-based budgeting, basically.

                              {time}  2000

  Mr. ALLARD. Well, that is one way, zero-based budgeting. They look at 
exactly what they spent the year before. Here in the Congress, our 
baseline has an inflater in it. The inflater is based on the 
anticipated rate of inflation. It might be 3 or 4 percent. It came to 
our attention in some of the testimony we had before the committee that 
if we took the last decade the last 10 years, and did nothing to the 
baseline, did not add any new programs, did not take any action, that 
the growth of the budget would be an average of 10 percent a year.
  So what I think needs to happen, and so many members of the committee 
I think agreed with me, is we need to simplify our budget process, so 
that when Members talk about a 4 percent increase or somebody from the 
agency talks about a 4 percent increase, they understand that that is 4 
percent over and above what was actually spent the year before.
  If we too the last figures, over the last 10 years, the last decade, 
if you say a 4 percent increase, you have got to ask is that 4 percent 
above the baseline, and, if it is 4 percent above the baseline, it is a 
14 percent increase.
  Members of the House and the Senate could go back to their district 
and talk about how the reduced spending on a particular program, and in 
reality it might have been an increase. They can say we cut this 
program 3 percent. But if baseline spending was increasing an average 
of 10 percent a year, in reality what that was allowing was for a 7 
percent increase.
  I thought this was very important, that we have a process that is 
accountable, that the American people understand what we are talking 
about when we talk about a budget. We talked about 4 percent. If your 
city council person talks about a 4 percent increase in his budget, it 
is 4 percent over what was actually spent the year before.
  In Congress, you can bet it is going to be 4 percent plus an inflater 
factor or some other factor above that. It is very important that the 
American people understand that you clarify when you talking about 
spending cuts or spending increases, that you talk about in relation to 
what. Was it in relation to actual spending the year before, or in 
relation to the baseline.
  I happen to feel we need to get away from the baseline concept, where 
we have an actual inflater of some type built into it. We need to talk 
about what was actually spent the year before. We had a lot of 
discussion about this.

  Mr. DREIER. What it basically comes down to is honesty in budgeting. 
As my friend has said, what we have is a procedure whereby the actual 
cost of living increase is built in, and then it appears that if we do 
not have a voted-on increase, that it has remained at last year's 
spending level, when it really has not. What we are really hoping for, 
again getting back to this issue of accountability, that we have 
honesty in budgeting, and, unfortunately we do not have that today.
  Mr. ALLARD. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman personally for 
all his help on this particular issue. I know the gentleman is a very 
strong proponent of a balanced budget and some form of accountability 
in our budgeting process. Here on the floor today we talked about 
unauthorized funding and we talked about some issues related to 
baseline budgeting. I think the American people and this Member of the 
House certainly appreciate your efforts in that area.
  Mr. DREIER. I should say you did a very good job up in the Committee 
on Rules in trying to make your case too. Unfortunately, with our nine 
to four ratio up there, it makes it extraordinarily tough to get some 
of these thoughtful amendments that the American people would like to 
see passed even open for consideration here on the House floor. That is 
one of the other reforms that was among the 25 amendments that I had 
offered, because they we tragically see is a pattern of waiving the 
rules of the House. I offered an amendment when we were in our markup 
last November in which I said we should allow the majority to pass the 
rules under which this House will operate by a majority vote. And if 
the majority wants to say that we will change the rules, we should 
change the rules by a majority vote. But once those rules are in place, 
we should not have a pattern of regularly waiving the rules of the 
House. And, in fact, if the membership decides it is important to waive 
the rules, we should have a three-fifths vote. In fact, if we are going 
to violate the rules, we should have a three-fifths vote to say this is 
a matter that needs to be addressed, and we should proceed with it. For 
example, waiving the three day layover, if there an emergency item that 
has to get to the floor of the Congress immediately, we should be able 
to waive that by a three-fifths vote.

  It seems to me if we are going to have rules here, we should play by 
them the way they are outlined, in a very responsible way at the 
outset.
  I remember the statements made by our former colleague, the late Mr. 
Natcher, who constantly said to me, over and over again, what we should 
do is simply comply with the standing rules of the House. He was always 
very concerned at the arrogance with which this institution, run by the 
Democrat majority, would regularly just cast aside these rules.
  I would like at this time to yield to my very good friend from 
Washington, who is also a member of the committee. I say to my friend 
from Colorado, he can continue as part of this conversation. I do not 
want to limit by any means the opportunity for people to be involved.
  I know my friend from Washington, who again worked long and hard on 
that committee, came in, I was so impressed, in her first days in the 
Congress, and she was able to jump right in and offer a great deal to 
this committee, as well as the other committees on which she sits. So I 
am happy to yield to my friend, Ms. Dunn.
  Ms. DUNN. Thank you very much. I am delighted to be involved in your 
special order. I thank the gentleman from California for yielding.
  I wanted to add to this discussion we are having tonight on 
congressional reform the fact that the discussions have taken place on 
many levels here in the Congress. For all of us, 1993 was to have been 
the year of reform. We worked long and hard, and we sat through, as the 
gentleman from California has said, 6 months of hearings and 
deliberation, more paperwork than had ever been generated from any 
committee such as this in the history of the Congress. Yet at the end 
of the year, we had not completed our work. The committee went out of 
business and we had not passed legislation.
  I agree with you that we need an open rule to discuss reform. Let me 
tell you why.
  In 1992, when we were out there on the campaign trail talking to 
people about what they wanted to see done differently in Congress 
should certain of us be elected, freshmen specifically, we heard a lot 
of words about deliberation. Folks wanted us to come to Congress to 
read the bills, to get to the committee meetings, to do the 
discussions, to figure out what the people were saying, and try to get 
these things done in Congress.

  They wanted us to be fiscally responsible, and we have talked a bit 
about that tonight. They wanted the Congress to be more open and more 
responsive to the people back home. That was where I got the idea for 
my sunshine act, the Open Meetings Act, which is very similar to 
Washington State's own Washington Meetings Act.
  They talked about our schedule and the fact they wanted to see more 
of us. So some of us proposed we be home in the district 1 week out of 
the month and support the Senate schedule, which allows them to do just 
that now.
  But at the end of the year, we really had muffed our opportunity. We 
did not get reform, and we did not respond to what the folks had been 
asking us to do out there in the States.
  But I want everybody to know that if we had an open rule on some of 
these items that we have brought before the Committee on Rules, that we 
have discussed in our many months of hearings and proposed on our side 
in the final days around Thanksgiving, when we actually worked on the 
chairman's mark, that there would have been support from both sides of 
the aisle.
  I come tonight as the only freshman member of the Joint Committee on 
the Reform of Congress, but I worked with two very interesting groups 
through the whole year, and that was the reformers who had been 
selected by their colleagues on the majority side and those who had 
been selected on the minority side as leaders of the freshmen Democrat 
and Republican classes.
  We spent some time together over the last year talking about places 
where we agreed, what we had in common, what we would like to see done 
after having been out there on the hustings listening to people for 
months during 1992.
  We actually agreed on some areas. I want to point out a few of those 
areas tonight and let the folks know that if we were to have an open 
rule, or at least a generous rule on the debate on reform so that the 
House could debate some of these issues, there would be bipartisan 
support.
  The two groups of freshmen on the Democrat and Republican side agreed 
that we should support biennial authorizations and appropriations. They 
actually agreed on that.
  Now, they may not be able to lead on the other side, particularly all 
their freshmen colleagues, or certainly all the Members of the majority 
in the House, but they believed that having 2-year appropriation and 
authorization cycles, just like many state legislatures have now, would 
give us that extra year to do oversight. And that is a very simple 
concept. We vote all these expensive projects on the states and on the 
folks out there who fund them with their tax dollars, and yet we never 
really have time to look into those projects and find out, do they 
really belong under the aegis of the Federal Government.

                              {time}  2010

  Are we spending too much money on them? Should they be funded in 
another way? And the freshman Democrat and Republican leaders agreed 
that this is something we should do. They agreed that we ought to 
reduce the number of subcommittees. They believe in what our great 
chairman, the gentleman from California, had supported, that you can 
put functions together in a far more effective way than we do right 
now. Function-based committee jurisdictions and both groups supported 
this.
  They agreed that we should use computers to schedule our time, that 
the schedule is a big problem in what we do here in the Congress. 
Particularly, new Members of Congress appreciate this. They see it more 
clearly than anybody, the phrenetic pace that we lead, the back and 
forth running across, feeling like a bellboy after awhile, coming and 
voting in the House and racing back to a hearing or to a meeting with 
constituents.
  Mr. DREIER. I think the record should show that we would never think 
of you as a bellboy.
  Ms. DUNN. Bell person. They see no reason for committee hearings 
taking place at the same time that subcommittee hearings under the same 
committee take place. This kind of thing does happen here in the 
Congress. It is because we are an arcane institution in that we do not 
use computers for scheduling, very, very different from the private 
sector and yet that technical ability does exist.
  Together the freshmen on both sides of the aisle believe that public 
records should be available of who attends committee hearings. And this 
is one very minor plus, the chairman will remember that we were able to 
get passed into the chairman's mark on this joint committee proposal, 
but we will only know twice a year through the Congresional Record, of 
anybody's attendance at hearings or the votes that they cast.
  The freshmen on both sides, the leaders believe that we should 
disallow proxy voting at full committee hearings. That is a very 
important pivotal reform that we could make if we could have proxy 
voting come up in some form as part of our committee debate, but it has 
not gotten through the Rules Committee. Proxy voting would require that 
Members be there at the committee hearing to vote on the bill.
  Mr. DREIER. Reclaiming my time on that issue of proxy voting, it is 
important to note that there are committees where we do proxy voting. 
As was said earlier, I sit on the Rules Committee. If I am not there, 
my vote is not cast. And unfortunately, we have so many committees 
where Members do not ever attend or rarely attend, if ever, and they 
allow their vote to be cast without ever even knowing the issue that is 
being discussed. I believe that that clearly is an abrogation of one's 
responsibility to the 600,000 constituents who sent them here. I wish 
very much that we could do that.
  Mr. ALLARD. We have talked in the past about keeping down the number 
of committees that Members are on. I think making them be there to vote 
instead of allowing somebody on the committee to vote for them through 
a proxy would be one of the most significant things we could do to 
begin to cut down the prolific growth of committees and the number of 
committees that we have in this institution. I just wanted to share 
that thought.
  Mr. DREIER. My friend is absolutely right.
  Ms. DUNN. I would say, too, that I recall one very memorable moment 
when the gentleman from Pennsylvania was serving as ranking member on 
one of our committees when the whole issue of proxy voting came to a 
head. I hope he will make mention of that this evening, because it 
illustrates what I am saying and what my other colleagues are saying.
  The fact is that if we want to present a deliberative product, we 
have got to be there to listen to the deliberation, to consider both 
sides of the issue, and to let the folks back home, whom we are 
supposed to be representing, know that we care enough about these 
issues to be there in person representing then.
  Both of the leadership Members on both sides of the aisle among 
freshmen agreed that we have got to separate Members' time in committee 
hearings versus that time that is spent on the floor. Again, an effort 
toward deliberation. We need to listen to the debate in both places. We 
need to be there. This can be done. It can be separated by days of the 
week and I think it is a very important reform.
  So generally, what I am telling the gentleman from California and the 
members here tonight is that there is great agreement on many of these 
issues, which if they were allowed to be debated and discussed on the 
floor of the House, I think could pass and I think could make this body 
more deliberative and more accountable. I think that is what the folks 
back home are asking us to do.
  Mr. DREIER. My friend is absolutely correct. I appreciate the fact 
that you have pointed to some of those items where we did have 
bipartisan agreement and were able to gain the support of both 
Democrats and Republicans, but tragically, as you look at those items, 
as important as they are, most of them really do not get right to the 
meat of this issue of both the deliberative process and the degree of 
accountability which is so often lacking here.
  Earlier I was talking about the problem that we have had with talk of 
trying to break this bill up into bits and consider one particular 
measure and make it appear as if this is congressional reform.
  I know that my friend from East Petersburg, PA, the Chief Deputy 
Whip, has very, very strong feelings, as do I. And I should say that 
Messrs. Solomon and Emerson were sorry that they could not be here. 
They were hard-working mechanics of our committee and are firmly 
committed to the issue of reform. I know Mr. Solomon had originally 
taken out this time this evening and then very generously gave it to 
me, but we stand firmly committed to doing this in a comprehensive way, 
which is exactly the way Speaker Foley called for when we established 
the joint committee.

  I yield to my friend.
  Mr. WALKER. I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. We have just 
heard the gentlewoman from Washington and the gentleman from Colorado 
list a lot of issues that were discussed thoroughly in the committee. 
They were a part of a committee discussion that was designed to deal 
with reform in a comprehensive fashion.
  That is what the reform groups outside of Congress had asked us to 
do. A number of the scholars, including people like Norm Ornstein who 
had looked at this matter, had called for this to be a time for 
comprehensive congressional reform. When the Speaker of the House 
appeared before us, he called for comprehensive reform. He gave us a 
very large mandate. He told the Members of the Hamilton-Dreier 
committee that this was to be a time when we would look at all of what 
the House had been doing and decide whether or not we could not reform 
us in a way that would serve the needs of Congress throughout the rest 
of this decade and into the next century.
  The problem is that having done that kind of work, addressed the 
issues that you heard about tonight, plus many more, the bill then 
moved into no-man's land, where it sits today. And if I heard the 
gentleman correctly, earlier in the discussion, he indicated that he 
believes that that bill may be piecemealed, brought to the floor as 
little bits and that we will never get to address the comprehensive 
issue. Is that what I heard the gentleman saying?
  Mr. DREIER. The gentleman is absolutely right. We have not only read 
this in the press, but in discussions that I have had with a number of 
our colleagues on the other side of the aisle. This is something that 
is regularly being discussed, because, for example, the issue of 
congressional compliance is clearly a hot button. Both Democrats and 
Republicans know that when they go to town hall meetings, when they 
look at public opinion surveys about this institution, one of the main 
original concerns that the American people have is the fact that we 
regularly exempt ourselves from the laws which are imposed on the 
American people.
  Mr. WALKER. We did it just yesterday when we passed the independent 
counsel bill with a lot of fanfare here. I read a couple of news 
reports indicating that we had covered ourselves under the independent 
counsel law. We did so in an optional way, but it was mandatory on the 
other people.
  So once again, Congress set itself up as a class apart at the same 
time that supposedly Congress is going to move toward some sort of 
strategy to cover us under the same laws that everybody else is covered 
under.
  Mr. DREIER. The unfortunate thing that we have gotten in reports is 
that we will simply report out the item that was in the joint committee 
report on compliance, which basically calls for the establishment of an 
office of compliance. And that group will make recommendations back to 
us as to what regulations we might consider imposing on ourselves.
  Mr. WALKER. This is not an office of compliance, then? It is an 
office to discuss compliance later?
  Mr. DREIER. Right. And then see what regulations we might consider 
imposing on ourselves, providing loophole after loophole to continue 
this pattern of exemption.

                              {time}  2020

  We know that there are constitutional questions about the separation 
between the legislative and executive branches. We at length discuss 
those in the joint committee. We do not want the executive branch to 
have undue power, because they handle the regulatory agencies and the 
executive branch over the legislative branch. That is why we, Members 
on our side of the aisle, supported the establishment of an Office of 
Compliance, so that the implementation of those regulations on us would 
be handled within the legislative branch, so we have addressed the 
constitutional question.
  Mr. WALKER. Our idea for the Office of Compliance, I would say to the 
gentleman that this would be a true Office of Compliance; that what 
they would do is take the laws on the books and assure that Congress 
was following those laws, and where Congress was not following those 
laws, they would, through a structure, make certain that the guilty 
parties were brought into compliance.
  Mr. DREIER. That is not what it is.
  Mr. WALKER. That is not what we ended up with.
  Mr. DREIER. That is not what we ended up with at all. The tragedy 
here is that the majority leadership, knowing full well that the 
American people are very concerned about the fact that we regularly 
exempt ourselves from the laws we impose on them, they want to bring 
what will be called congressional reform down to the House floor here 
with that very weak establishment of a bureaucratic haze that would 
create a situation whereby we would consider imposing on ourselves the 
regulations.
  Mr. WALKER. If the gentleman will yield further, so congressional 
compliance would become just another phony congressional coverage 
provision, like the phony congressional coverage provision that was in 
the independent prosecutor bill yesterday?
  Mr. DREIER. That is the way it appears right now. They want to do 
that, from everything I have read and heard, on this, on the expedited 
rescission measure that is going to be coming up, on the entitlement 
review resolution which is going to be coming up. They want to break 
these things up into little bits and say, ``Yes, day by day, we are 
reforming the institution,'' when in fact we have H.R. 3801.
  And if we can consider at least the eight areas, subject matters that 
we offered, and my three colleagues here offered among the 25 
amendments that we're defeated on 6 to 6 party line votes, if we had 
those votes down here on the House floor, I know my friends would agree 
with me, there is little doubt that they would pass.

  Mr. WALKER. If the gentleman will continue to yield, this committee 
was known as the Hamilton-Dreier committee. The Speaker came in and 
testified in favor of comprehensive reform. What has the Speaker had to 
say, as one of the gentlemen who is a co-author of the bill, who voted 
for the bill, who in fact was a co-chairman of the committee, what has 
the Speaker had to say to you about his call for comprehensive reform 
that is now just being eaten alive in the back rooms of the Congress?
  Mr. DREIER. As I said earlier, I probably had four, five, or six 
rather lengthy meetings with the Speaker last fall to discuss this. The 
last conversation that I had with speaker Foley on this issue dealt 
with my request for at least a generous rule that would allow for full 
consideration of all of these measures.
  Mr. WALKER. When was that meeting?
  Mr. DREIER. It was a conversation that I had on the House floor here 
several months ago.
  Mr. WALKER. He has not talked to you about this for several months?
  Mr. DREIER. I have not had a meeting with Speaker Foley on the work 
of our committee for several months. I had several meetings with him in 
the fall of 1993 on this, and we met in his office and had several 
discussions.
  Mr. WALKER. This is the summer of 1994?
  Mr. DREIER. Yes. And other than a brief conversation that I had, 
basically saying that the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Hamilton] 
indicated to us on the record that he supported a generous rule that 
would allow for the consideration of our amendments, which were 
unfortunately defeated by the 6 to 6 party line vote that we had in the 
committee, other than that conversation, we really have not discussed 
this issue. But I have read in the press----
  Mr. WALKER. Just one more question: Is there some chance that the 
Speaker is back in the back rooms here fighting viciously to try to 
make certain that we get comprehensive reform of the Congress, and he 
simply does not have time to discuss this with the gentleman because he 
is fighting so hard in those back rooms to make certain that 
comprehensive reform comes to the floor of the House before we quit?
  Mr. DREIER. One can only infer from what we observed over the past 
several months, reports in the press, and other discussions that I have 
had, that the leadership, Speaker Foley and others, do not want H.R. 
3801, the bill reported out of our committee, to come to the House 
floor under an open amendment process that would allow these items to 
be considered, because they know that as Members are forced to go on 
record here, a majority of this institution would support many of these 
institutional reforms which the American people want to have 
implemented. But as I said at the outset, there are too many Members 
here who thrive on the status quo.
  I yield to the gentleman from Colorado [Mr. Allard].
  Mr. ALLARD. Mr. Speaker, is that not so typical of the way Congress 
many times does business? We will set up a bureaucracy with no clear 
objectives, and here we are talking about a compliance board or an 
agency within the House of Representatives, within the Congress, that 
is going to make sure that the Members--is going to make 
recommendations to the Members. We do not see any guidelines as to how 
many recommendations or how long they are going to be in existence.
  One of the striking things I heard in some of the testimony that sort 
of stuck in my mind, we have more than 37,000 employees that are here 
on the Capitol----
  Mr. DREIER. Thirty-eight thousand.
  Mr. ALLARD. Thirty-eight thousand employees that we have here on the 
Capitol grounds that are working, and we have a work force here in the 
Capitol itself, taking care of the House and Senate and the Library of 
Congress, that is as large as the community that I come from, Loveland, 
CO.
  People do not understand how huge a bureaucracy we have built up, and 
here it is, typical of leadership of the House, to try and come through 
with a proposal that says we are just going to add more to the 
bureaucracy. Mr. Speaker, I don't think the American people really 
think that is the answer. I think they think the answer is less 
bureaucracy and more accountability.
  Mr. DREIER. My friend is absolutely right. I would like to yield to 
my friend, the gentlewoman from Washington [Ms. Dunn].
  Ms. DUNN. I thank the gentleman for yielding to me.
  I want to say, too, from a very new-coming perspective, a freshman in 
Congress, as I watch this whole debate, we know what the problems are. 
We know what the solutions are.
  I would like to know why we are not able to do what the people are 
asking us to do. They want this Congress to work efficiently. We can do 
that. They want this Congress to cut back on the amount of money it 
spends on its committees, and to give some fairness to the ratios that 
currently exist between the majority and the minority parties.
  They want this Congress to open up its meetings so that the people 
who pay for the process can watch the process. It is only fair, it is 
only rational. I would ask why we do not do this.
  I would also add, if the folks who are running this body now think it 
will always stay the same, they are going to be in for a big surprise. 
They are going to have an election this fall, and I have hope that if 
we are not able to debate our reform proposals on the floor in a 
comprehensive manner this year, that we will be the coalition that will 
begin the debate in January of next year, and we will be joined by a 
great number of new Members who are hearing the same call for reform 
that we have all heard, and certainly investigated, over the last year.
  Mr. DREIER. My friend makes a very good point, Mr. Speaker. As we 
look at a class of now 117 new Members of the House of Representatives, 
clearly if we look at it, 25 percent of this body having been elected 
in this session of Congress, one-fourth of it being new Members, it 
seems to me that as I look back on that 1992 campaign, virtually every 
candidate, Democrat and Republican alike, ran on this issue of reform, 
change in the Congress.
  Yet, unfortunately, we have seen more than a few on the majority 
side, on the Democrat side, fall into this trap of being part of the 
status quo. That is not to say that there are not any Members in the 
Democrat Party who want to bring about meaningful reform, as we believe 
the American people want. However, many of them have fallen into that 
trap.
  I think that as we look at this question, I think that the American 
people should be asking, very appropriately, Did you in fact bring 
about reform of the institution following the House bank and the post 
office and the restaurant and the other problems that that institution 
has had? I think that is going to be a natural question which should be 
raised as we head into this fall.
  I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. WALKER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  I want to go back to the point about those 38,000 employees. One of 
the points is that those people are pretty badly treated in some 
instances, and the way in which we deal in this Congress is really 
reprehensible.
  The Capitol Police, most recently, have come under discussion as a 
result of the investigation they were conducting into the post office 
scandal. Now we find out that one of the top staff people working for 
the leadership at one point suggested that the Capitol Police would 
actually be totally dismissed if they did not stop their investigation 
of the scandal in the post office, and stop turning over evidence to 
the U.S. prosecutors.
  What an outrage. That would be like in city hall, the mayor finding 
out that there was a scandal going on in his administration, having the 
city police begin investigating it, and when they do and start turning 
over material to the prosecutor, the mayor would have his counsel go to 
the police and suggest to them that he was going to disband the police 
force if they did not stop this investigation.

                              {time}  2030

  The fact is that in most communities across the country you cannot do 
that because there are civil service laws and all kinds of things to 
stop that from happening. Here on the last plantation it can take 
place. And it is an appalling kind of look at what really goes on in 
the U.S. Congress.
  Ms. DUNN. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. DREIER. I am happy to yield to my friend, the gentlewoman from 
Washington.
  Ms. DUNN. Let me just say that as the ranking member of the 
Subcommittee on Police and Personnel I absolutely support everything 
the gentleman said. There have been very serious allegations. We have 
asked for hearings into that whole situation to decide whether the 
Capitol Hill Police were indeed influenced and what their role should 
be, because there is certainly a division of powers issue here.
  But I think it is a very serious issue, and in fact our request for 
hearings has not been answered by the majority.
  Mr. WALKER. This is interesting, because not only are they 
stonewalling us with regard to the legislation itself on reform, when 
incidents arise that require attention and should be done as a mater of 
reform simply because the institution is being so badly hurt by what is 
going on, they refuse the hearings, they refuse to look at the 
material. They try to shut down the process. They try to keep 
legitimate questions from being asked. They try to keep reforms from 
happening.
  This is a pattern which I think the American people find more and 
more incomprehensible and unacceptable.
  Mr. DREIER. My friend is absolutely right.
  Mr. ALLARD. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. DREIER. I am happy to yield to my friend, the gentleman from 
Colorado.
  Mr. ALLARD. I thank the gentleman for yielding. He also will recall 
that I worked hard in the Committee on Reorganization of Congress where 
we looked at areas like the police, for example, the architect, 
landscaping, printing and all of these nonpolitical functions and why 
we could not begin to consolidate them and establish some clear lines 
of authority so somebody could be held responsible. The way it works 
now, the Speaker just talks directly to the police, or maybe it is on 
the Senate side where they have their own force over there and we have 
ours over here. We could reduce the number of employees we have by just 
consolidating these and make our system more uniform, and more 
accountable.
  I am disappointed that it does not look like we are going to have an 
opportunity to address these kinds of issues on the floor. I am not 
sure from what the gentleman shared with me today that it is going to 
come in a very forthright manner. They are going to piecemeal it in, 
and certainly it is going to create less of an opportunity for Members 
to bring forward some ideas.
  Mr. DREIER. Of course.
  Mr. ALLARD. We heard a lot of those good ideas on that committee.
  Mr. DREIER. And of course what they will try to do when we realized 
that that committee was charged with bringing about a comprehensive 
package, as my friend, has said, we are going to break it up so that 
reports can constantly trickle out to the media, getting to the 
American people that oh, yes, they are reforming, they are reforming. 
But the fact of the matter is, unfortunately, they are providing the 
weakest package possible.
  Mr. WALKER. If the gentleman will yield, it goes to the heart of the 
question that the gentlewoman from Washington raised, and that is the 
question of what kind of amendments will come up. If you keep the 
packages that they bring to the floor very narrow, that will not allow 
the amendment process to go forward. We will have very limited 
opportunities then to try to address other reform issues.
  Believe me, that is purposeful. That is what they are discussing in 
the back rooms right now: ``How do we keep this thing from getting out 
of our hands, how do we make certain that there is no chance at all for 
anybody to do what the public really wants? How do we keep it all an 
inside game?'' Breaking it up into little pieces they are making 
certain that then the rules of the House will apply, because what they 
will say is, ``Well, I'm sorry, that amendment is not germane,'' or 
``That amendment goes beyond scope.'' There will be all kinds of 
excuses for not addressing the big issues of reform because of the 
narrow package they have brought to the floor. And the American people 
will still not get what they want.
  Mr. DREIER. The interesting thing here is if you look at the history, 
I have been told by staff that every time a reform package has come to 
the House floor it has been under an open rule, an open amendment 
process allowing the House to work its will.

  So if we see a restrictive rule on H.R. 3801, if by chance the 
comprehensive bill that we reported out were to get to the House floor, 
if we see a restrictive rule it will be the first time ever. But 
frankly, if you look at the pattern that we have observed over the past 
decade of dramatically increased numbers of rules which prevent Members 
from offering amendments to legislation, I would not be surprised if 
this were to happen for the first time.
  Mr. ALLARD. If the gentleman will yield, open rule is part of the 
problem. The other part is waiving points of order. The gentleman from 
Pennsylvania spends a good deal of his time bringing up these kinds of 
issues related to open rules and points of order. Again, I just have to 
share some of my experiences here today as we had unauthorized funding, 
but yet they would not allow me to raise a point of order because they 
waived points of order. This is the problem that we have, is that 
debate and the rules of the House are restricted. A point I made not 
too long ago was the reason we have rules in the House is so that 
Members have a certain amount of predictability about what is going to 
happen, both the majority and the minority party. But when we begin to 
ignore those rules, then that is where a lot of injustices occur, and 
that is where a lot of things occur around here that create special 
advantage for somebody, or their district or whatever. This House needs 
to focus on issues that are of general public good for this country, 
and that is why we have those rules.
  Ms. DUNN. If the gentleman will yield, the fact that they waive often 
the rule that we have to be presented with a copy of the legislation 
before we vote on it I think is the most obvious waiver of all. We 
often do not have access to those documents, and we are not able to 
read the legislation. We pass monstrous bills that apply to the rest of 
the country without knowing the details.
  Mr. DREIER. That happens on a regular basis. In fact, exactly 2 hours 
ago we did it upstairs in the Rules Committee on the Commerce, State, 
Justice appropriations bill. We waived the so-called 3-day layover 
requirement.
  I mentioned earlier that one of the amendments I had offered when we 
had our markup was to have a supermajority if we are going to waive 
rules, basically a three-fifths vote. But based on the rule that has 
been reported out of the Rules Committee, scheduled to come up I 
suspect tomorrow or Friday as we see the schedule unfold here, they 
have waived the 3-day layover requirement, basically preventing Members 
from having the opportunity to look at this legislation.
  So I found it rather fascinating upstairs that they keep saying over 
and over to us, ``Gosh, you all are not supporting our open rules,'' 
because they are on these appropriation bills having an open amendment 
process, allowing cuts to be made. But when it comes to the bill itself 
that has been reported out, members of the Appropriations Committee are 
treated differently, really above the rest of us because they have been 
able to get provisions in the bill which require waivers to make them 
in order. Again, I referred earlier to our deceased colleague, Mr. 
Natcher, who again, if he said it to me once he said it 100 times, 
``David, we should bring all appropriation bills to the House floor 
under the standard rules of the House,'' whereby we allow for an open 
amendment process, without waivers so that points of order can be 
raised against items where there is legislating in an appropriation 
bill. Tragically, the leadership regularly stood up to Mr. Natcher, 
telling him that they had to impose these rules which would prevent 
Members from being able to do the kinds of things that the gentleman 
from Colorado [Mr. Allard] has attempted to do on the Interior 
appropriation bill.
  Mr. WALKER. If the gentleman will yield, in the time I have been in 
the Congress I know of a number of instances where the American people 
have become outraged when they found some provision was down in some 
bill that we passed that no one knew was in there. Members of Congress 
then will say, ``Well, I had no idea that was down in there. How did 
this possibly happen?'' Well, it happened, and the reason it happens is 
that no one does consider the bills. I remember some months back when 
we had a conference report brought to the floor. All of the rules were 
waived, the 3-day layover, and as a matter of fact, it had just been 
completed. They brought it in and it was a stack of papers about this 
high. They dumped it on the front desk down here. That was the only 
copy that was available anywhere in the House. And when some of us 
questioned, ``Well, how are we to study this?'' They said, ``Well, 
there it is. You can go over there and leaf through it if you want 
to.'' And when we said, ``Well, how are we to understand everything 
that is in this huge pile of papers?'' ``Well, there it is. You can go 
over and look.''

  In other words, it was nonsense. Yet, we waived the rules, we passed 
it, and we depended upon the fact that a few Members made 
representations about that pile of papers and what was in it. But no 
one knew exactly what was down in there. The staff that had prepared 
the papers did not know all of the things that were down in it. And we 
only found out later many of the items.
  In all honesty, I have a hard time voting for that kind of 
legislation. In that case I did not vote for it because I did not think 
I had any understanding at all about what we were about to do.

                              {time}  2040

  Mr. DREIER. We regularly waive the 3-day-layover requirement, 
preventing Members or staff members from having the opportunity to look 
at this legislation, and this is one of the things we tried to address 
here.
  Mr. WALKER. Some of it they do not want anybody to look at because 
they are afraid of what they will find.
  Mr. DREIER. That is exactly right. I yield to the gentleman from 
Colorado [Mr. Allard].
  Mr. ALLARD. There is no doubt we have to do a lot to continue to push 
for change in the House.
  I have mentioned before and will again mention in this discussion 
tonight we have a tremendous reservoir of information that we can draw 
on from all the various State legislators. You know, I served in the 
Colorado State Legislature, which has done a lot on congressional 
reform.
  In fact, you may not want to hear this, but we have actually done 
away with the rules committee in the State of Colorado. The house 
functions. It is a more open process. Everybody understands the rules. 
There are no waivers. There is no limit on debate. They get the job 
done.
  The people of the State of Colorado understand what is going on. But, 
you know, States have tried a lot of innovative things, and we need to 
look and see what is working and what is not working. I just wanted to 
make that last point, because I know our time is running out.
  Mr. DREIER. Let me say I do not want to stand here as a defender of 
the Rules Committee, but it was the first committee established by the 
Founding Fathers. James Madison moved the Bill of Rights through the 
Rules Committee when it was put together, and I think there is 
acknowledgment that in a body of 435 Members there should be a 
structure.
  But what we really should do is we should democratize the Rules 
Committee. I mean, there are not many Americans who understand the fact 
that we have a 9-to-4 ratio, while this House consists of 60 percent 
Democrats, 40 percent Republicans ratio, and in the Rules Committee 
upstairs it is 2 to 1 plus 1 against us, and that is why we should have 
some rules in the institution. But we should have a structure which 
allows Members to participate more than they do now, and that is again 
underscoring Lord Acton's very famous line that power corrupts, and 
absolute power corrupts absolutely.
  The arrogance of power with which they prevent Members, rank-and-file 
Democrats and Republicans, from being able to offer amendments, that is 
what really creates the outrage here.
  Ms. DUNN. If the gentleman will yield, I want to add one thing. The 
way the House is currently composed, the way the rules read and the way 
the committees are structured serves to support an example that was 
given by a colleague and friend of mine here in the House that, I 
think, it is simply outdated, and that is that his statement was that 
the majority is here to run the country, and the minority's job is to 
become the majority, and I think things have changed since that belief 
was accurate years ago.
  I think the people out there are telling us they want both parties to 
work together to solve the problems of the country.
  Mr. DREIER. The unfortunate thing is every Member of this institution 
represents roughly the same number of constituents, about 600,000 
people, based on the population across the country, and the unfortunate 
thing is there are many members of the minority who are not able 
because of the arrogance of the majority to offer the kinds of 
amendments and proposals that their constituents might want them to. I 
think that that really hits the process.
  Our time has expired, and in 16 minutes we will begin the process of 
determining who the National Basketball Association champion is. We 
hope this was a warmup for the NBA playoffs. I thank my colleagues for 
their participation in this special order and for the tenacity that 
they have used on this issue of reform of the institution.
  Where there is life, there is hope. We hope very much that in this 
Congress we will be able to bring about what Speaker Foley has called 
for, and that is comprehensive reform of this institution.

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