[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 116 (Wednesday, August 17, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 17, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                 EMERGENCY SPENDING CONTROL ACT OF 1994

  Mr. MOAKLEY. Madam Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I 
call up House Resolution 513 and ask for its immediate consideration.
  The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:

                              H. Res. 513

       Resolved, That at any time after the adoption of this 
     resolution the Speaker may, pursuant to clause 1(b) of rule 
     XXIII, declare the House resolved into the Committee of the 
     Whole House on the state of the Union for consideration of 
     the bill (H.R. 4906) to amend the Congressional Budget and 
     Impoundment Control Act of 1974 to limit consideration of 
     nonemergency matters in emergency legislation. The first 
     reading of the bill shall be dispensed with. All points of 
     order against consideration of the bill are waived. General 
     debate shall be confined to the bill and the amendments made 
     in order by this resolution and shall not exceed one hour 
     divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking minority 
     member of the Committee on Rules. After general debate the 
     bill shall be considered for amendment under the five-minute 
     rule and shall be considered as read. No amendment shall be 
     in order except those printed in the report of the Committee 
     on Rules accompanying this resolution. Each amendment may be 
     offered only in the order printed, may be offered only by a 
     Member designated in the report, shall be considered as read, 
     shall be debatable for the time specified in the report 
     equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an 
     opponent, and shall not be subject to amendment. All points 
     of order against the amendments printed in the report are 
     waived. If more than one of the amendments printed in the 
     report is adopted, only the last to be adopted shall be 
     considered as finally adopted and reported to the House. At 
     the conclusion of consideration of the bill for amendment the 
     Committee shall rise and report the bill to the House with 
     such amendment as may have been finally adopted. The previous 
     question shall be considered as ordered on the bill and any 
     amendment thereto to final passage without intervening motion 
     except one motion to recommit with or without instructions.

                              {time}  1030

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. DeLauro). The gentleman from 
Massachusetts [Mr. Moakley] is recognized for 1 hour.
  (Mr. MOAKLEY asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. MOAKLEY. Madam Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield 
the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Goss], 
pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During 
consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose 
of debate only.
  Madam Speaker, House Resolution 513 provides for the consideration of 
H.R. 4906, the Emergency Spending Control Act of 1994. The resolution 
waives all points of order against consideration of the bill and allows 
up to 1 hour of general debate, equally divided and controlled by the 
chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on Rules.
  After general debate the bill will be considered as read, and no 
amendments will be in order except the four amendments in the nature of 
substitutes printed in House Report 103-690. The amendments will be 
considered in the following order under a king-of-the-hill procedure: 
First, the amendment by Representative Sam Johnson or a designee; 
second, the amendment by Representative Castle or a designee; third, 
the amendment by Representative Stenholm, Representative Kasich, or 
Representative Penny or a designee; and fourth, the amendment by 
Representative Spratt or a designee. Should more than one amendment be 
adopted, only the last amendment adopted would be reported to the 
House.
  Each amendment is debatable for 30 minutes, equally divided and 
controlled by the proponent and an opponent. The amendments are not 
subject to further amendment, and all points of order against the 
amendments are waived.
  Finally, the resolution provides for one motion to recommit, with or 
without instructions.
  Madam Speaker, the Emergency Spending Control Act of 1994 is designed 
to improve the budget process and control emergency spending.
  This Government is now operating under a 5-year budget plan passed 
last year by this Congress with the President's leadership. As a result 
of that plan, the deficit is plummeting even faster than expected.
  As a result of that plan, jobs are being created faster than before. 
Unemployment is lower than before. Consumer confidence is higher than 
before. Interest rates are still low. Inflation is extremely low. 
According to the Republican Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Mr. 
Greenspan, ``the outlook for the U.S. economy is as bright as it has 
been in decades.''
  Madam Speaker, one of the features of the 5-year economic plan was a 
freeze through 1998 on discretionary spending. Discretionary spending 
funds most of the Government itself and most Government programs.
  When Congress first imposed caps on discretionary spending in 1990, 
we realized that from time to time sudden, nonrecurring, catastrophic 
events take place which increase demands for Government services. These 
events are typically natural disasters like floods, hurricanes, 
earthquakes, droughts, and so forth. Such emergencies cannot usually be 
predicted with any certainty. Consequently they cannot be easily or 
accurately estimated and budgeted for in advance.
  In the budget process were so rigid as to require cuts in other 
programs before Government could meet the needs of Americans left 
homeless by floods, hurricanes, or earthquakes, it would in effect 
force Congress to shift the suffering caused by the emergency in 
question from one group to another. Congress could debate for days or 
weeks about what programs to cut while thousands of Americans suffered 
from homelessness, disease, and lost income brought about by the 
emergency.
  So, the Budget Enforcement Act allows Congress and the President to 
provide emergency assistance to those in need without fighting a 
bruising political battle over what programs to cut and whom to inflict 
suffering on instead. Basically, if the Congress and the President can 
agree that an emergency exists for which additional spending is 
required quickly, then that spending will not count against the 
spending limits.
  Unfortunately, at times additional items, which were arguably not 
emergency items, have found their way into emergency bills. It is this 
problem H.R. 4906 is designed to cure.
  The bill would amend the Budget Act to provide that, during 
consideration of any bill containing emergency spending, any Member 
could offer an amendment to strike out any provision which is not 
designated as an emergency.
  And, Madam Speaker, H.R. 4906 would make it easier for the American 
people to determine who supported these additional, nonemergency items 
in the emergency bills by facilitating recorded votes on amendments to 
strike them out. Under the bill, a recorded vote would be ordered on 
amendments striking out nonemergency riders if demanded by a Member and 
supported by only nine other Members. That is a total of only 10 
Members to get a vote, instead of the current 25 in the Committee of 
the Whole or 44 in the House.
  Finally, the bill ensures that any nonemergency provisions in enacted 
emergency legislation will in fact count against the applicable 
allocations of spending under the Budget Act. Madam Speaker, I urge all 
Members to support the bill.
  I also urge Members to support the rule. It makes in order all the 
amendments which Members asked the Rules Committee to make in order. 
The rule provides for a king-of-the-hill procedure so all the 
substitutes can be considered and debated thoroughly. It does not 
restrict the motion to recommit in any way. It is a fair rule that will 
expedite this important legislation, and it deserves our support.
  Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. GOSS. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  (Mr. GOSS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks and include extraneous material.)
  Mr. GOSS. Madam Speaker, I thank the distinguished chairman, the 
gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Moakley] for yielding me this time.
  Madam Speaker, because deficit growing emergency spending is a real 
problem that needs to be addressed and because all Members who sought 
to offer amendments have been allowed to offer them on the floor, I am 
not going to call for a vote in opposition to the rule that we have 
before us. But that is not to say it is a good rule or that it has not 
got some problems with it.
  I think it is sort of appropriate we are here today on the leading 
edge of a weather event which has caused serious problems to our south 
down in the area which I represent and other areas of Florida and 
Georgia and the Carolinas, and once again, we have gone a long distance 
of time without providing for these acts of God or these unforeseen 
disasters that come upon us.
  Weather-related disasters are predictable in the sense we know they 
are going to happen. It is just we do not know the date. It seems to me 
we ought to be a little bit smarter about getting ready for the fact we 
know we are going to have these kinds of problems. That is one of the 
things that the Government can do, is to try and buy relief for people 
in need, for our citizens in need in this country, and we need to find 
a way to do it better.
  I would point out as we start this that we had assurances, if not 
promises, from the Democrat leadership, I believe it was a little over 
a year ago when we were debating the Mississippi flood problem, that we 
would come to grips with this problem. Well, we have not come to grips 
with the problem, and today we have a very modest Band-Aid patch which 
really does not do anything different than what we are really doing 
now, and the real purpose of why we are here today is to vent on the A 
to Z issue rather than accomplish a really solid proposal that will lay 
some funds aside for these predictable problems that we are going to 
have helping out Americans in need as a result of natural disasters and 
other emergency spending needs that this body and the other body and 
the President and the communities deem truly worthy of relief from the 
Federal Government.

                              {time}  1040

  Going back to the rule, first the rule waives all points of order 
against the bill. That is a red flag for most Members now, especially 
after we have discussed the crime bill at such length and seen the 
kinds of minefields that can be in there when we protect things and we 
are not sure what we are protecting, sometimes there are some nasty 
little surprises. And I think we have gone through that process.
  One more time, we have got a rule that waives all points of order 
against the bill.
  While we at least took the sensible step of waiving all points of 
order against the amendments as well, and the reason I say that is so 
that they are treated fairly, if we are going to protect one part of 
the process, then we may as well protect it all. I think that is 
justifiable as long as we know what is there. In this case we generally 
do know what is there. So it is not quite as upsetting as not knowing 
what is there.
  I must comment once again that this is a dangerous trend, however, 
and one we on the minority side would like to get away from. We think 
Members should know what is in the bill and what is being protected and 
what is not.
  The Committee on Rules now seems to be in the business of providing 
blanket waivers as sort of a normal way that we do stuff. I do not 
think that is a good idea. We are going to continue to resist that. I 
will admit there are times when there are items that need protection. I 
am not saying that we should not use judgment and wisdom. I am just 
saying, providing blanket protection all the time for everything that 
might be hidden in one of these reports is not a good way to do 
business.
  It has actually reached the point where we are not even told what 
provisions in this bill might need protection. I think we do know in 
this bill more than we do in others. I am not as concerned about this 
bill because this bill does not do a whole lot. But I do not like that 
uncertainty and I do not think Members want that uncertainty. I find 
it, frankly, a little bit ironic that as we are about to consider a 
bill that seeks to use points of order to control future spending, and 
that is what this does, we are demonstrating why such a measure is 
impotent because we are violating the very thing we are seeking to 
outlaw.
  In addition, this rule calls for a king-of-the-hill procedure. We 
have had much debate on that. It is a complex machination that in this 
case, as in every case, stacks the deck against the adoption of any of 
the amendments offered. What generally happens is this, we go back to 
where we started, and we tilt the deck so where we started is the 
choice that will normally come up. This is because even if an 
overwhelming majority of Members vote in favor of a substitute, it 
would only take a bare 218 votes to restore the language in the base 
bill which will be considered as the final amendment. So we go through 
a long process of maybe debating for half an hour on each side, or 
whatever the time allowance is, worthy amendments. And we do two or 
three, and we have votes on each one. Then the last amendment we always 
put back in as shall we go back to square one?
  What that does is it allows everybody to say, gee, I voted for one of 
those great amendments but at the end, I also voted for the bill 
because that was the best I could get. So it is sort of a charade. We 
are giving cover to Members to say they voted for something that they 
thought their people wanted back in their district. But when it came 
really to the end, the last vote they had to vote for is the one that 
the majority party wanted in the first place, the party position, and 
that is the one they vote for to be members of the party and adhere to 
the discipline in their party position.
  So we end up not with a merit but we end up with sort of a partisan 
approach to the debate. We have advocated in the minority for an 
alternate approach to this. Instead of it being the going back to 
square one when we go through the amendment process, that instead of 
that, that we allow the amendment which gets the most votes to win. I 
think any American would say that makes sense.
  The proposition that the most people vote for is the one that should 
come up as the winner. That is not the case when you ever king of the 
hill, unfortunately. It could happen that way, but it usually does not.
  In committee, we have offered a motion to allow the amendment that 
garnered the most votes to carry the day. We do that on the Committee 
on Rules. And we think that is a more democratic way to go and a more 
common sense way to go but, unfortunately, it gets rejected. And I 
would point out it gets rejected in the Committee on Rules. And one of 
the reasons, there are usually party line votes. I would point out the 
majority has nine positions in the Committee on Rules and the minority 
has four. So it takes a mighty effort to overcome a 9 to 4 tilt.
  Finally, as we shall see during the general debate, this Emergency 
Spending Control Act of 1994, as it is called, does not provide for 
greater control over emergency spending than is currently provided for 
under the standing rules of the House. What we are doing today does not 
provide for greater control over emergency spending than is currently 
provided for under the standing rules of the House. In other words, we 
already can do in this House what it is we are trying to legislate 
today. So we are going to have this wonderful, long debate about are we 
worried about emergency spending while those folks in Carolina are 
having so much trouble, those folks down in northern Florida are 
picking stuff up off their streets and wondering where their house 
rests, and those folks in Georgia are digging out from another flood. 
There is going to be the appearance that we are really serious about 
laying funds out to help these people in situations like that.
  The truth of the matter is, under the rules of the House what this 
little bit of legislation does today could actually come to pass. So it 
is not going to add a whole lot to their relief. I am afraid that this 
just is another empty part to that A-to-Z buyoff we have talked about 
so much. Members will recall that A to Z was the program where we could 
have some time set aside to have real opportunities to debate spending 
cuts here. Members would have the opportunity to offer individual cuts 
they felt worthwhile in order to achieve an even further plummeting of 
the deficit and a closer balancing of the budget here. And we were 
going to go through that process and let those proposals stand on their 
merit.
  The majority leadership has felt that would be a poor idea and they 
have looked for other ways to deal with the problem, and this is one of 
the solutions that they have come up with.
  I use the term ``solution'' lightly because this does not accomplish, 
as I say, anything we cannot already do. But we will have a fun debate 
about it.
  Frankly, I think we would do better if we were debating A to Z or 
other substantive matters because the American public is asking us to 
come to some kind of a reasonable conclusion on the crime matter and 
the health reform matter and all of those issues which are absorbing 
us. And here we are, on a Wednesday, during time that many had thought 
we would be in our recess, talking about something that is really not 
going to accomplish anything. One wonders why.

  The distinguished chairman has mentioned that economic times are 
relatively good, relative to where they have been. I agree they are 
relatively good. It is a precarious situation, and I hope they stay 
relatively good. The outlook is that they will become relatively not 
quite so good. I think we had an indication of that as interest rates 
climbed up half a point yesterday. I think that anybody who studies the 
numbers realizes that a plummeting deficit is a very temporary downturn 
in what appears to be a very serious uprise in the deficit that is 
scheduled in the years after 1996, a significant rise in the deficit. 
So we do have to come to grips with this deficit question.
  I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks that we had a promise from 
the Democratic leadership that we would have a task force that would 
deal with this subject of emergency relief spending. I understand there 
is such a task force. I do not believe that it has delivered any kind 
of a product so far. Surely, had it delivered a product, we would be 
having a request for time for Members of that task force to speak 
today. I have no such requests for time. I may get them. But I do not 
have any yet. I think that we have one or two speakers who want to 
address the subject, but not a report.
  The final thing that really concerns me very much about this, when we 
have these disasters, it appears that it is too much of a temptation to 
let a must-pass relief bill go through without adding a whole bunch of 
what we will call ``Christmas tree items.'' There has been outrageous 
abuse on that, as we have seen in the past. That is a process that we 
just seem not to have been able to bring under control. And even though 
this legislation talks a little bit about that, I do not think it does 
as firm a job as we need to do.
  I guess it is like having a leaky roof and wanting to sell your house 
and then you paint the wall to cover up the leak stains before any new 
customers come in. It is not any good to keep painting the wall. You 
have to fix the hole in the roof, and this legislation is not going to 
fix the hole in the roof.
  The final part of it is that, yes, we are going to continue to have a 
need for emergency spending. And sadly enough we are going to have 
emergencies, and we will have victims of emergencies in our country and 
it is going to be appropriate for us at the Federal level to help out. 
We are going to have to find a way to shift resources to do that. But 
we just cannot keep adding up immense amounts of debt on the burden and 
say that every time we have an emergency, a storm or a fire or 
something of that event, a flood, that we just simply have to step back 
and say, well, we will just have to add it to the deficit.

                              {time}  1050

  Frankly, Madam Speaker, that is what we do now too much. Madam 
Speaker, I have outlined some of the problems with the rule and the 
bill. I hope we have generated a little interest among our colleagues 
and we will get some more requests for time.
  Madam Speaker, for the Record I include this chart depicting open 
versus restrictive rules:

                                  OPEN VERSUS RESTRICTIVE RULES 95TH-103D CONG.                                 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                              Open rules       Restrictive rules
                      Congress (years)                       Total rules ---------------------------------------
                                                              granted\1\  Number  Percent\2\  Number  Percent\3\
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
95th (1977-78).............................................          211     179         85       32         15 
96th (1979-80).............................................          214     161         75       53         25 
97th (1981-82).............................................          120      90         75       30         25 
98th (1983-84).............................................          155     105         68       50         32 
99th (1985-86).............................................          115      65         57       50         43 
100th (1987-88)............................................          123      66         54       57         46 
101st (1989-90)............................................          104      47         45       57         55 
102d (1991-92).............................................          109      37         34       72         66 
103d (1993-94).............................................           91      25         27       66         73 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\Total rules counted are all order of business resolutions reported from the Rules Committee which provide for
  the initial consideration of legislation, except rules on appropriations bills which only waive points of     
  order. Original jurisdiction measures reported as privileged are also not counted.                            
\2\Open rules are those which permit any Member to offer any germane amendment to a measure so long as it is    
  otherwise in compliance with the rules of the House. The parenthetical percentages are open rules as a percent
  of total rules granted.                                                                                       
\3\Restrictive rules are those which limit the number of amendments which can be offered, and include so-called 
  modified open and modified closed rules, as well as completely closed rule, and rules providing for           
  consideration in the House as opposed to the Committee of the Whole. The parenthetical percentages are        
  restrictive rules as a percent of total rules granted.                                                        
                                                                                                                
Sources: ``Rules Committee Calendars & Surveys of Activities,'' 95th-102d Cong.; ``Notices of Action Taken,''   
  Committee on Rules, 103d Cong., through Aug. 12, 1994.                                                        


                                                        OPEN VERSUS RESTRICTIVE RULES: 103D CONG.                                                       
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                  Rule                                      Amendments                                                                  
   Rule number date reported      type       Bill number and subject         submitted         Amendments allowed         Disposition of rule and date  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
H. Res. 58, Feb. 2, 1993......  MC        H.R. 1: Family and medical     30 (D-5; R-25)..  3 (D-0; R-3)..............  PQ: 246-176. A: 259-164. (Feb. 3,
                                           leave.                                                                       1993).                          
H. Res. 59, Feb. 3, 1993......  MC        H.R. 2: National Voter         19 (D-1; R-18)..  1 (D-0; R-1)..............  PQ: 248-171. A: 249-170. (Feb. 4,
                                           Registration Act.                                                            1993).                          
H. Res. 103, Feb. 23, 1993....  C         H.R. 920: Unemployment         7 (D-2; R-5)....  0 (D-0; R-0)..............  PQ: 243-172. A: 237-178. (Feb.   
                                           compensation.                                                                24, 1993).                      
H. Res. 106, Mar. 2, 1993.....  MC        H.R. 20: Hatch Act amendments  9 (D-1; R-8)....  3 (D-0; R-3)..............  PQ: 248-166. A: 249-163. (Mar. 3,
                                                                                                                        1993).                          
H. Res. 119, Mar. 9, 1993.....  MC        H.R. 4: NIH Revitalization     13 (d-4; R-9)...  8 (D-3; R-5)..............  PQ: 247-170. A: 248-170. (Mar.   
                                           Act of 1993.                                                                 10, 1993).                      
H. Res. 132, Mar. 17, 1993....  MC        H.R. 1335: Emergency           37 (D-8; R-29)..  1 (not submitted) (D-1; R-  A: 240-185. (Mar. 18, 1993).     
                                           supplemental Appropriations.                     0).                                                         
H. Res. 133, Mar. 17, 1993....  MC        H. Con. Res. 64: Budget        14 (D-2; R-12)..  4 (1-D not submitted) (D-   PQ: 250-172. A: 251-172. (Mar.   
                                           resolution.                                      2; R-2).                    18, 1993).                      
H. Res. 138, Mar. 23, 1993....  MC        H.R. 670: Family planning      20 (D-8; R-12)..  9 (D-4; R-5)..............  PQ: 252-164. A: 247-169. (Mar.   
                                           amendments.                                                                  24, 1993).                      
H. Res. 147, Mar. 31, 1993....  C         H.R. 1430: Increase Public     6 (D-1; R-5)....  0 (D-0; R-0)..............  PQ: 244-168. A: 242-170. (Apr. 1,
                                           debt limit.                                                                  1993).                          
H. Res. 149 Apr. 1, 1993......  MC        H.R. 1578: Expedited           8 (D-1; R-7)....  3 (D-1; R-2)..............  A: 212-208. (Apr. 28, 1993).     
                                           Rescission Act of 1993.                                                                                      
H. Res. 164, May 4, 1993......  O         H.R. 820: Nate                 NA..............  NA........................  A: Voice Vote. (May 5, 1993).    
                                           Competitiveness Act.                                                                                         
H. Res. 171, May 18, 1993.....  O         H.R. 873: Gallatin Range Act   NA..............  NA........................  A: Voice Vote. (May 20, 1993).   
                                           of 1993.                                                                                                     
H. Res. 172, May 18, 1993.....  O         H.R. 1159: Passenger Vessel    NA..............  NA........................  A: 308-0 (May 24, 1993).         
                                           Safety Act.                                                                                                  
H. Res. 173 May 18, 1993......  MC        S.J. Res. 45: United States    6 (D-1; R-5)....  6 (D-1; R-5)..............  A: Voice Vote (May 20, 1993)     
                                           forces in Somalia.                                                                                           
H. Res. 183, May 25, 1993.....  O         H.R. 2244: 2d supplemental     NA..............  NA........................  A: 251-174. (May 26, 1993).      
                                           appropriations.                                                                                              
H. Res. 186, May 27, 1993.....  MC        H.R. 2264: Omnibus budget      51 (D-19; R-32).  8 (D-7; R-1)..............  PQ: 252-178. A: 236-194 (May 27, 
                                           reconciliation.                                                              1993).                          
H. Res. 192, June 9, 1993.....  MC        H.R. 2348: Legislative branch  50 (D-6; R-44)..  6 (D-3; R-3)..............  PQ: 240-177. A: 226-185. (June   
                                           appropriations.                                                              10, 1993).                      
H. Res. 193, June 10, 1993....  O         H.R. 2200: NASA authorization  NA..............  NA........................  A: Voice Vote. (June 14, 1993).  
H. Res. 195, June 14, 1993....  MC        H.R. 5: Striker replacement..  7 (D-4; R-3)....  2 (D-1; R-1)..............  A: 244-176.. (June 15, 1993).    
H. Res. 197, June 15, 1993....  MO        H.R. 2333: State Department.   53 (D-20; R-33).  27 (D-12; R-15)...........  A: 294-129. (June 16, 1993).     
                                           H.R. 2404: Foreign aid.                                                                                      
H. Res. 199, June 16, 1993....  C         H.R. 1876: Ext. of ``Fast      NA..............  NA........................  A: Voice Vote. (June 22, 1993).  
                                           Track''.                                                                                                     
H. Res. 200, June 16, 1993....  MC        H.R. 2295: Foreign operations  33 (D-11; R-22).  5 (D-1; R-4)..............  A: 263-160. (June 17, 1993).     
                                           appropriations.                                                                                              
H. Res. 201, June 17, 1993....  O         H.R. 2403: Treasury-postal     NA..............  NA........................  A: Voice Vote. (June 17, 1993).  
                                           appropriations.                                                                                              
H. Res. 203, June 22, 1993....  MO        H.R. 2445: Energy and Water    NA..............  NA........................  A: Voice Vote. (June 23, 1993).  
                                           appropriations.                                                                                              
H. Res. 206, June 23, 1993....  O         H.R. 2150: Coast Guard         NA..............  NA........................  A: 401-0. (July 30, 1993).       
                                           authorization.                                                                                               
H. Res. 217, July 14, 1993....  MO        H.R. 2010: National Service    NA..............  NA........................  A: 261-164. (July 21, 1993).     
                                           Trust Act.                                                                                                   
H. Res. 220, July 21, 1993....  MC        H.R. 2667: Disaster            14 (D-8; R-6)...  2 (D-2; R-0)..............  PQ: 245-178. F: 205-216. (July   
                                           assistance supplemental.                                                     22, 1993).                      
H. Res. 226, July 23, 1993....  MC        H.R. 2667: Disaster            15 (D-8; R-7)...  2 (D-2; R-0)..............  A: 224-205. (July 27, 1993).     
                                           assistance supplemental.                                                                                     
H. Res. 229, July 28, 1993....  MO        H.R. 2330: Intelligence        NA..............  NA........................  A: Voice Vote. (Aug. 3, 1993).   
                                           Authority Act, fiscal year                                                                                   
                                           1994.                                                                                                        
H. Res. 230, July 28, 1993....  O         H.R. 1964: Maritime            NA..............  NA........................  A: Voice Vote. (July 29, 1993).  
                                           Administration authority.                                                                                    
H. Res. 246, Aug. 6, 1993.....  MO        H.R. 2401: National Defense    149 (D-109; R-    ..........................  A: 246-172. (Sept. 8, 1993).     
                                           authority.                     40).                                                                          
H. Res. 248, Sept. 9, 1993....  MO        H.R. 2401: National defense    ................  ..........................  PQ: 237-169. A: 234-169. (Sept.  
                                           authorization.                                                               13, 1993).                      
H. Res. 250, Sept. 13, 1993...  MC        H.R. 1340: RTC Completion Act  12 (D-3; R-9)...  1 (D-1; R-0)..............  A: 213-191-1. (Sept. 14, 1993).  
H. Res. 254, Sept. 22, 1993...  MO        H.R. 2401: National Defense    ................  91 (D-67; R-24)...........  A: 241-182. (Sept. 28, 1993).    
                                           authorization.                                                                                               
H. Res. 262, Sept. 28, 1993...  O         H.R. 1845: National            NA..............  NA........................  A: 238-188 (10/06/93).           
                                           Biological Survey Act.                                                                                       
H. Res. 264, Sept. 28, 1993...  MC        H.R. 2351: Arts, humanities,   7 (D-0; R-7)....  3 (D-0; R-3)..............  PQ: 240-185. A: 225-195. (Oct.   
                                           museums.                                                                     14, 1993).                      
H. Res. 265, Sept. 29, 1993...  MC        H.R. 3167: Unemployment        3 (D-1; R-2)....  2 (D-1; R-1)..............  A: 239-150. (Oct. 15, 1993).     
                                           compensation amendments.                                                                                     
H. Res. 269, Oct. 6, 1993.....  MO        H.R. 2739: Aviation            N/A.............  N/A.......................  A: Voice Vote. (Oct. 7, 1993).   
                                           infrastructure investment.                                                                                   
H. Res. 273, Oct. 12, 1993....  MC        H.R. 3167: Unemployment        3 (D-1; R-2)....  2 (D-1; R-1)..............  PQ: 235-187. F: 149-254. (Oct.   
                                           compensation amendments.                                                     14, 1993).                      
H. Res. 274, Oct. 12, 1993....  MC        H.R. 1804: Goals 2000 Educate  15 (D-7; R-7; I-  10 (D-7; R-3).............  A: Voice Vote. (Oct. 13, 1993).  
                                           America Act.                   1).                                                                           
H. Res. 282, Oct. 20, 1993....  C         H.J. Res. 281: Continuing      N/A.............  N/A.......................  A: Voice Vote. (Oct. 21, 1993).  
                                           appropriations through Oct.                                                                                  
                                           28, 1993.                                                                                                    
H. Res. 286, Oct. 27, 1993....  O         H.R. 334: Lumbee Recognition   N/A.............  N/A.......................  A: Voice Vote. (Oct. 28, 1993).  
                                           Act.                                                                                                         
H. Res. 287, Oct. 27, 1993....  C         H.J. Res. 283: Continuing      1 (D-0; R-0)....  0.........................  A: 252-170. (Oct. 28, 1993).     
                                           appropriations resolution.                                                                                   
H. Res. 289, Oct. 28, 1993....  O         H.R. 2151: Maritime Security   N/A.............  N/A.......................  A: Voice Vote. (Nov. 3, 1993).   
                                           Act of 1993.                                                                                                 
H. Res. 293, Nov. 4, 1993.....  MC        H. Con. Res. 170: Troop        N/A.............  N/A.......................  A: 390-8. (Nov. 8, 1993).        
                                           withdrawal Somalia.                                                                                          
H. Res. 299, Nov. 8, 1993.....  MO        H.R. 1036: Employee            2 (D-1; R-1)....  N/A.......................  A: Voice Vote. (Nov. 9, 1993).   
                                           Retirement Act-1993.                                                                                         
H. Res. 302, Nov. 9, 1993.....  MC        H.R. 1025: Brady handgun bill  17 (D-6; R-11)..  4 (D-1; R-3)..............  A: 238-182. (Nov. 10, 1993).     
H. Res. 303, Nov. 9, 1993.....  O         H.R. 322: Mineral exploration  N/A.............  N/A.......................  A: Voice Vote. (Nov. 16, 1993).  
H. Res. 304, Nov. 9, 1993.....  C         H.J. Res. 288: Further CR, FY  N/A.............  N/A.......................  .................................
                                           1994.                                                                                                        
H. Res. 312, Nov. 17, 1993....  MC        H.R. 3425: EPA Cabinet Status  27 (D-8; R-19)..  9 (D-1; R-8)..............  F: 191-227. (Feb. 2, 1994).      
H. Res. 313, Nov. 17, 1993....  MC        H.R. 796: Freedom Access to    15 (D-9; R-6)...  4 (D-1; R-3)..............  A: 233-192. (Nov. 18, 1993).     
                                           Clinics.                                                                                                     
H. Res. 314, Nov. 17, 1993....  MC        H.R. 3351: Alt Methods Young   21 (D-7; R-14)..  6 (D-3; R-3)..............  A: 238-179. (Nov. 19, 1993).     
                                           Offenders.                                                                                                   
H. Res. 316, Nov. 19, 1993....  C         H.R. 51: D.C. statehood bill.  1 (D-1; R-0)....  N/A.......................  A: 252-172. (Nov. 20, 1993).     
H. Res. 319, Nov. 20, 1993....  MC        H.R. 3: Campaign Finance       35 (D-6; R-29)..  1 (D-0; R-1)..............  A: 220-207. (Nov. 21, 1993).     
                                           Reform.                                                                                                      
H. Res. 320, Nov. 20, 1993....  MC        H.R. 3400: Reinventing         34 (D-15; R-19).  3 (D-3; R-0)..............  A: 247-183. (Nov. 22, 1993).     
                                           Government.                                                                                                  
H. Res. 336, Feb. 2, 1994.....  MC        H.R. 3759: Emergency           14 (D-8; R-5; I-  5 (D-3; R-2)..............  PQ: 244-168. A: 342-65. (Feb. 3, 
                                           Supplemental Appropriations.   1).                                           1994).                          
H. Res. 352, Feb. 8, 1994.....  MC        H.R. 811: Independent Counsel  27 (D-8; R-19)..  10 (D-4; R-6).............  PQ: 249-174. A: 242-174. (Feb. 9,
                                           Act.                                                                         1994).                          
H. Res. 357, Feb. 9, 1994.....  MC        H.R. 3345: Federal Workforce   3 (D-2; R-1)....  2 (D-2; R-0)..............  A: VV (Feb. 10, 1994).           
                                           Restructuring.                                                                                               
H. Res. 366, Feb. 23, 1994....  MO        H.R. 6: Improving America's    NA..............  NA........................  A: VV (Feb. 24, 1994).           
                                           Schools.                                                                                                     
H. Res. 384, Mar. 9, 1994.....  MC        H. Con. Res. 218: Budget       14 (D-5; R-9)...  5 (D-3; R-2)..............  A: 245-171 (Mar. 10, 1994).      
                                           Resolution FY 1995-99.                                                                                       
H. Res. 401, Apr. 12, 1994....  MO        H.R. 4092: Violent Crime       180 (D-98; R-82)  68 (D-47; R-21)...........  A: 244-176 (Apr. 13, 1994).      
                                           Control.                                                                                                     
H. Res. 410, Apr. 21, 1994....  MO        H.R. 3221: Iraqi Claims Act..  N/A.............  N/A.......................  A: Voice Vote (Apr. 28, 1994).   
H. Res. 414, Apr. 28, 1994....  O         H.R. 3254: NSF Auth. Act.....  N/A.............  N/A.......................  A: Voice Vote (May 3, 1994).     
H. Res. 416, May 4, 1994......  C         H.R. 4296: Assault Weapons     7 (D-5; R-2)....  0 (D-0; R-0)..............  A: 220-209 (May 5, 1994).        
                                           Ban Act.                                                                                                     
H. Res. 420, May 5, 1994......  O         H.R. 2442: EDA                 N/A.............  N/A.......................  A: Voice Vote (May 10, 1994).    
                                           Reauthorization.                                                                                             
H. Res. 422, May 11, 1994.....  MO        H.R. 518: California Desert    N/A.............  N/A.......................  PQ: 245-172 A: 248-165 (May 17,  
                                           Protection.                                                                  1994).                          
H. Res. 423, May 11, 1994.....  O         H.R. 2473: Montana Wilderness  N/A.............  N/A.......................  A: Voice Vote (May 12, 1994).    
                                           Act.                                                                                                         
H. Res. 428, May 17, 1994.....  MO        H.R. 2108: Black Lung          4 (D-1; R-3)....  N/A.......................  A: VV (May 19, 1994).            
                                           Benefits Act.                                                                                                
H. Res. 429, May 17, 1994.....  MO        H.R. 4301: Defense Auth., FY   173 (D-115; R-    ..........................  A: 369-49 (May 18, 1994).        
                                           1995.                          58).                                                                          
H. Res. 431, May 20, 1994.....  MO        H.R. 4301: Defense Auth., FY   ................  100 (D-80; R-20)..........  A: Voice Vote (May 23, 1994).    
                                           1995.                                                                                                        
H. Res. 440, May 24, 1994.....  MC        H.R. 4385: Natl Hiway System   16 (D-10; R-6)..  5 (D-5; R-0)..............  A: Voice Vote (May 25, 1994).    
                                           Designation.                                                                                                 
H. Res. 443, May 25, 1994.....  MC        H.R. 4426: For. Ops. Approps,  39 (D-11; R-28).  8 (D-3; R-5)..............  PQ: 233-191 A: 244-181 (May 25,  
                                           FY 1995.                                                                     1994).                          
H. Res. 444, May 25, 1994.....  MC        H.R. 4454: Leg Branch Approp,  43 (D-10; R-33).  12 (D-8; R-4).............  A: 249-177 (May 26, 1994).       
                                           FY 1995.                                                                                                     
H. Res. 447, June 8, 1994.....  O         H.R. 4539: Treasury/Postal     N/A.............  N/A.......................  A: 236-177 (June 9, 1994).       
                                           Approps 1995.                                                                                                
H. Res. 467, June 28, 1994....  MC        H.R. 4600: Expedited           N/A.............  N/A.......................  PQ: 240-185 A: Voice Vote (July  
                                           Rescissions Act.                                                             14, 1994).                      
H. Res. 468, June 28, 1994....  MO        H.R. 4299: Intelligence        N/A.............  N/A.......................  A: Voice Vote (July 19, 1994).   
                                           Auth., FY 1995.                                                                                              
H. Res. 474, July 12, 1994....  MO        H.R. 3937: Export Admin. Act   N/A.............  N/A.......................  A: Voice Vote (July 14, 1994).   
                                           of 1994.                                                                                                     
H. Res. 475, July 12, 1994....  O         H.R. 1188: Anti. Redlining in  N/A.............  N/A.......................  A: Voice Vote (July 20, 1994).   
                                           Ins.                                                                                                         
H. Res. 482, July 20, 1994....  O         H.R. 3838: Housing & Comm.     N/A.............  N/A.......................  A: Voice Vote (July 21, 1994).   
                                           Dev. Act.                                                                                                    
H. Res. 483, July 20, 1994....  O         H.R. 3870: Environ. Tech. Act  N/A.............  N/A.......................  A: Voice Vote (July 26, 1994).   
                                           of 1994.                                                                                                     
H. Res. 484, July 20, 1994....  MC        H.R. 4604: Budget Control Act  3 (D-2; R-1)....  3 (D-2; R-1)..............  PQ: 245-180 A: Voice Vote (July  
                                           of 1994.                                                                     21, 1994).                      
H. Res. 491, July 27, 1994....  O         H.R. 2448: Radon Disclosure    N/A.............  N/A.......................  A: Voice Vote (July 28, 1994).   
                                           Act.                                                                                                         
H. Res. 492, July 27, 1994....  O         S. 208: NPS Concession Policy  N/A.............  N/A.......................  A: Voice Vote (July 28, 1994).   
H. Res. 494, July 28, 1994....  MC        H.R. 4801: SBA Reauth &        10 (D-5; R-5)...  6 (D-4; R-2)..............  PQ: 215-169 A: 221-161 (July 29, 
                                           Amdmts. Act.                                                                 1994).                          
H. Res. 500, Aug. 1, 1994.....  MO        H.R. 4003: Maritime Admin.     N/A.............  N/A.......................  A: 336-77 (Aug. 2, 1994).        
                                           Reauth..                                                                                                     
H. Res. 501, Aug. 1, 1994.....  O         S. 1357: Little Traverse Bay   N/A.............  N/A.......................  A: Voice Vote (Aug. 3, 1994).    
                                           Bands.                                                                                                       
H. Res. 502, Aug. 1, 1994.....  O         H.R. 1066: Pokagon Band of     N/A.............  N/A.......................  A: Voice Vote (Aug. 3, 1994).    
                                           Potawatomi.                                                                                                  
H. Res. 507, Aug. 4, 1994.....  O         H.R. 4217: Federal Crop        N/A.............  N/A.......................  A: Voice Vote (Aug. 5, 1994).    
                                           Insurance.                                                                                                   
H. Res. 509, Aug. 5, 1994.....  MC        H.J. Res. 373/H.R. 4590: MFN   N/A.............  N/A.......................  A: Voice Vote (Aug. 9, 1994).    
                                           China Policy.                                                                                                
H. Res. 513, Aug. 9, 1994.....  MC        H.R. 4906: Emergency Spending  N/A.............  N/A.......................  .................................
                                           Control Act.                                                                                                 
H. Res. 512, Aug. 9, 1994.....  MC        H.R. 4907: Full Budget         N/A.............  N/A.......................  A: 255-178 (Aug. 11, 1994).      
                                           Disclosure Act.                                                                                              
H. Res. 514, Aug. 9, 1994.....  MO        H.R. 4822: Cong.               33 (D-16; R-17).  16 (D-10; R-6)............  PQ: 247-185 A: Voice Vote (Aug.  
                                           Accountability.                                                              10, 1994).                      
H. Res. 515, Aug. 10, 1994....  O         H.R. 4908: Hydrogen Etc.       N/A.............  N/A.......................  .................................
                                           Research Act.                                                                                                
H. Res. 516, Aug. 10, 1994....  MO        H.R. 3433: Presidio            12 (D-2; R-10)..  N/A.......................  .................................
                                           Management.                                                                                                  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note.--Code: C-Closed; MC-Modified closed; MO-Modified open; O-Open; D-Democrat; R-Republican; PQ: Previous question; A-Adopted; F-Failed.              

  Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the 
distinguished gentleman from Glens Falls, NY [Mr. Solomon], the ranking 
member of the Committee on Rules.
  Mr. SOLOMON. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time 
to me.
  Madam Speaker, it seems we have a lot of time to consume in 
Washington this week when we were supposed to be back in our districts 
speaking with our constituents about issues like health care. We have 
before us now what we call another one of those king-of-the-hill rules. 
It gives us what I call a double Spratt on the windshield of life, with 
all due respect to my good friend. Not only is the Spratt bill the base 
text for amendment purposes, it is also positioned as the last of four 
substitutes to be considered here today.
  Under the king-of-the-hill process devised by the Democrats, the last 
substitute adopted is the one reported back to the House as finally 
adopted, even though an earlier substitute may have been adopted by a 
larger vote.
  Madam Speaker, let us just picture the University of Notre Dame 
playing Slippery Rock Teachers College. They go through three-quarters 
of the football game and Notre Dame is leading 60 to nothing. It gets 
into the last 10 seconds of the fourth quarter, and lo and behold, 
because a wind storm comes up and there is a punt, Notre Dame gets the 
punt and they down the ball on their own 2-yard line. There is one last 
play to go, and Notre Dame starts the play but the center centers the 
ball over the heads of the backfield.
  It goes out of the end zone, Madam Speaker. That is a two-pointer--a 
safety--for Slippery Rock Teachers College. The game ends, and lo and 
behold, the score is 60 to 2, but Notre Dame loses. That is what king-
of-the-hill is all about.
  Mr. MOAKLEY. Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. SOLOMON. I yield to my friend, the gentleman from Massachusetts.
  Mr. MOAKLEY. Madam Speaker, the gentleman from New York may know 
something about football, but that is a terrible analogy in this case.
  Mr. SOLOMON. I do not think it is a terrible analogy at all. What it 
means is, the last team to score wins. That is what happens under king-
of-the-hill.
  Mr. MOAKLEY. If the gentleman would yield further, that Slippery 
Rock-Notre Dame thing, Madam Speaker, that is like a substitute against 
the base bill. If the substitute wins, so be it. Now that substitute 
has to go against another substitute, so it is not the same game. There 
are different votes on every one of those measures, so the king-of-the-
hill does not pit every bill against the base text, it is usually the 
substitute prior to it. The gentleman knows that. Therefore, I wish the 
gentleman would cancel that Slippery Rock game.
  Mr. SOLOMON. Madam Speaker, maybe it was Boston College.
  Mr. SPRATT. Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. SOLOMON. I yield to the gentleman from South Carolina.
  Mr. SPRATT. Madam Speaker, just last week Slippery Rock won. Just 
last week this very process produced a victory for the particular bill 
that the gentleman voted for, notwithstanding this process.
  Mr. SOLOMON. Once in a while we underdogs do win.
  Mr. WALKER. Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. SOLOMON. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania, the deputy 
chief whip.
  Mr. WALKER. Madam Speaker, what struck me about the explanation we 
just got is, what has happened, the gentleman described a game between 
Slippery Rock and Notre Dame. Then what they do is, they have a process 
by which Boston College, that is not even in the game, would win. They 
all of a sudden come back with somebody that was not even considered a 
part of the game and they win.
  Mr. SOLOMON. The gentleman is absolutely right.
  Mr. WALKER. It is absolutely ludicrous, the gentleman is right.
  Mr. MOAKLEY. If the gentleman will yield further, Madam Speaker, as 
one of the sports writers on that side of the aisle said, I have heard 
some pretty good analogies, but I have not heard them today yet.
  Madam Speaker, everybody knows that the king-of-the-hill is not the 
same vote over again. It is not A against Z, it is A against B and B 
against C and so forth, so they are votes against different 
substitutes. It may very well be that the last substitute that wins 
would be the product that we would go with.
  For example, Madam Speaker, the most favored nation issue with China, 
one bill that the gentleman is very interested in, the most favored 
position was given to the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Pelosi].
  However, Hamilton won, so this is the same situation we have here. It 
might be a little favored position, but that does not really make all 
the difference in the world. If one has a good amendment or a good 
substitute, a good amendment in the House, vote that way, and you will 
vote that Notre Dame thing all the way through the football schedule, 
instead of just playing Slippery Rock.
  Mr. WALKER. If the gentleman will continue to yield, that is a good 
explanation. Now I understand what it is. What it is, Madam Speaker, it 
is Notre Dame playing Slippery Rock gets to start with a 20-point 
advantage, and then if Slippery Rock happens to score 18 points in the 
game, they still lose because Notre Dame started off with a 20-point 
advantage under the rules. Suspiciously, that is the favored position 
they are getting.
  Mr. MOAKLEY. If the gentleman will yield one more time, Knute Rockne 
may be spinning in his grave with the explanation the gentlemen are 
making here today.
  Mr. SOLOMON. Madam Speaker, I do not want the gentleman to feel bad, 
but does he know who told me that story back in 1951? It was somebody 
named Harry Agannis. Does the gentleman remember him, the Golden Greek, 
All-American? He played for the Camp Lejeune football team, and I 
recall him giving me this analogy of Notre Dame and Slippery Rock, only 
it was Boston College, or Boston University, that he played for.
  Mr. MOAKLEY. If the gentleman will yield further, Boston College. The 
gentleman is not going to tell me that Harry Agannis was talking about 
king-of-the-hill back in 1951, is he?
  Mr. SOLOMON. Madam Speaker, he was a pretty forward-looking guy.
  Madam Speaker, let us get back to seriousness here, for just a 
minute. As I started off saying, not only was the Spratt bill the base 
text for amendment purposes, it was also positioned as the last of four 
substitutes to be considered.
  Madam Speaker, here we have the bill itself, and then we ordinarily, 
under the normal rules of the House, would have the opportunity to 
debate the bill and then offer amendments to it, or offer substitutes 
to it. But should we happen to win, should we happen to pass one of 
those substitutes, then we would take the Spratt bill, put it way over 
here to the right, and then it becomes a final substitute. It might 
pass by much fewer votes than the other substitutes did, but it is the 
one that becomes the law. That is what is wrong about king-of-the-hill.

  Madam Speaker, we Republicans often propose what I would call a true 
king-of-the-hill process. My friend, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. 
Goss] alluded to it a few minutes ago. The strongest substitute should 
be the winner, just as the true king-of-the-hill game was played when 
we were kids, the substitute which gets the most votes should be the 
winner.
  Madam Speaker, can the Members imagine the ridicule we would have 
gotten as kids if we had proposed that the rules of the game be changed 
to award the honors to the last kid up on the hill, instead of the one 
who can overpower all the others? Here we go, back to Notre Dame-
Slippery Rock, again. Yet around here, nobody blinks any more when the 
Committee on Rules brings these rules to the floor that allow for a 
weaker amendment to be the winner. We are so used to this undemocratic 
game of Democrat dock-stacking that we merely go on our way thinking 
that this is just fine and dandy. It is not just fine and dandy, Madam 
speaker.
  I think in today's game of king-of-the-hill that there should be no 
dispute over the winner, since all three of the other substitutes are 
far superior, in my opinion, to the Spratt bill and to the Spratt 
substitute, which is going to come up for votes later.
  Madam Speaker, the first superior substitute to be considered will be 
offered by the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Sam Johnson]. He proposes that 
emergency spending bills which exceed their allocations be financed by 
reducing the spending caps for the next fiscal year by the amount in 
excess. That makes a lot of sense.
  The second superior amendment to be considered will be offered by the 
gentleman from Delaware [Mr. Castle], the former Governor, someone who 
has had a lot of experience in budgets. His amendment would establish a 
reserve fund from which emergency spending bills must be financed. 
Again, this is planning for emergencies that will be coming up in the 
future.
  Madam Speaker, let us budget for these matters and pay for them, 
rather than just assume that they must be budget-busters. That seems to 
be the norm around here, bust the budget. That is why we have a $4.5 
trillion debt.
  Finally, Madam Speaker, the third superior amendment to be considered 
will be offered by that dynamic trio of the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. 
Kasich] the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Stenholm], and the gentleman from 
Minnesota [Mr. Penny]. They are truly people who try to bring some 
fiscal responsibility to this body. Their substitute amendment would 
establish a point of order, now get this, establish a point of order 
against any bill or any joint resolution designated as an emergency 
spending measure if it contains any nonemergency items.
  Madam Speaker, we all know how a certain Member in the other body 
always likes to stick all kinds of things into emergency bills that 
have nothing to do with emergencies whatsoever. Madam Speaker, we need 
a tough enforcement mechanism to ensure that extraneous pork is not 
piggybacked onto urgently needed disaster assistance supplemental 
appropriation bills.
  The Spratt bill and substitute, on the other hand, simply says that 
we will operate under existing procedures when it comes to nonemergency 
items that are stuck into emergency bills.

                              {time}  1100

  The Spratt proposal allows for a motion to strike any such provision 
and prohibits any nonemergency items that exceed a committee's budget 
allocation. Well, good morning, Madam Speaker.
  Madam Speaker, those are the rules that we have now. So all we would 
be doing is just reaffirming the rules of the House that we have now. 
But we would still have this terrible, terrible fiscal mess that we are 
in today.
  Under the House rules, appropriation bills are already considered in 
the Committee of the Whole under an open amendment process. Under the 
Budget Act, a point of order can already be made against measures that 
exceed a committee's 602(a) or 602(b) allocations. Those are the rules 
of the House today. The only thing different in the Spratt bill is a 
provision that allows--listen to this carefully--9 Members instead of 
25 to demand a record vote on striking nonemergency items. But as my 
colleagues are aware, we can easily get 25 Members to call for a vote 
on anything now by making a point of order that a quorum is not 
present.
  Madam Speaker, we all know the Spratt bill is one of several that was 
promised to a group of what I call deficit chicken hawks, not deficit 
hawks. They are called deficit chicken hawks in return for their not 
signing a discharge petition on real spending cuts, the so-called A to 
Z plan. We are going to paper the walls of this House with piddly 
budget process amendments, but they are not going anywhere in the other 
body, and we all know it.
  I ask the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Walker], how many 
legislative days are left between now and the time we adjourn on 
October 6? Would the gentleman say about 18?
  Mr. WALKER. Twenty.
  Mr. SOLOMON. Eighteen or twenty. That tells us where this bill is 
going. There is no window of opportunity for this bill to be considered 
in the other body and everybody knows it. Do not be fooled.
  I will again point out that we could have been better off considering 
this and the other measures as part of a comprehensive congressional 
reform bill, and we know which one that is, H.R. 3801. H.R. 3801 
already has various budget process reforms in it, but we will never get 
a chance to vote on them and certainly will never get a chance to enact 
them into law. Instead, we are wasting the time of this House and the 
Committee on Rules with little dribs and drabs of what I call budgetary 
birdseed that would not even fill a bird feeder.
  Madam Speaker, when will we get our priorities straight around here 
and take up the kind of bold, meaningful and sweeping congressional 
reform that the people overwhelmingly support and that all Members went 
back home and told constituents they would vote for?
  Madam Speaker, this vote today is on an Emergency Spending Control 
Act that does nothing to control spending. It is another one of those 
feel-good votes that will leave Members wondering in the morning what 
it was they really accomplished.
  I would urge my colleagues to support one or more of the alternatives 
being offered here today if we really want to make this exercise 
meaningful. I am not going to ask for a recorded vote, but I am going 
to go on record as opposing this rule. This king-of-the-hill process 
creates a Notre Dame-Slippery Rock situation which lets the losers win.
  Mr. MOAKLEY. Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to 
the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spratt].
  Mr. SPRATT. Madam Speaker, I thank the distinguished chairman, the 
gentleman from Massachusetts, for yielding me the time.
  Madam Speaker, let me respond to what my good friend has just laid 
out as the scenario for consideration of the bills before us. There is 
a single legislative measure before us, but in effect we have four 
bills before us. The origin of this is a bill called Common Cents. It 
is not A to Z, it is H.R. 4414 which contains a number of budget 
process reforms. The basic reform here proposed was we take emergencies 
one at a time, that an emergency spending bill, according to H.R. 4434, 
would only contain emergency spending related to one single emergency.
  When I took up this matter several weeks ago to try to break down 
parts of this and bring budget reform measures to the floor, I looked 
into this particular provision and what we found was that over the last 
5 years, from 1991 through 1994, both years inclusive, we had funded 
150 emergencies if we include Desert Storm. If this particular 
provision in H.R. 4434, the Common Cents bill, had been in effect, we 
would have been required to enact 150 separate laws to provide for 
emergency funding whereas only 15 had to be enacted to provide for 
these 150 emergencies. There were nine supplemental appropriation acts, 
five regular appropriation acts, and one continuing resolution. With 
those pieces of legislation, we covered all 150 emergencies.

  Madam Speaker, I prepared a bill which said basically that Stenholm-
Kasich says today. Namely, that emergency bills can only include 
emergency spending. If they include nonemergency spending, they cannot 
exceed the discretionary spending cap. But basically the object was to 
keep emergency spending bills limited to emergencies, although they 
could include multiple emergencies. I was prepared to file that bill 
and I had shared it with my colleagues, the gentleman from Texas [Mr. 
Stenholm], the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Penny], and the gentleman 
from Ohio [Mr. Kasich] when the Committee on Appropriations convinced 
me that there at least is a argument, a strong argument to be made for 
the existing procedure because there is a need for flexibility. They 
gave me two very current, contemporary examples.
  For example, Rwandan aid. The foreign appropriations bill that is 
moving through Congress right now includes Rwandan aid, $350 million. 
It was a useful vehicle for loading that emergency spending item on and 
it is completely germane to the subject of the bill.
  The second example. Aid for Georgia flood relief.
  The Labor-HHS Appropriations bill was amended in the other body to 
include aid for Georgia flood relief, and I am sure the Georgians are 
glad that that vehicle was available because we are near the end of the 
fiscal year and I am sure FEMA has probably drawn down substantially on 
its available obligatable balances. So that vehicle was used, which is 
a nonemergency spending bill, to include emergency spending which is 
desperately needed in Georgia. The Committee on Appropriations said 
this sort of flexibility on occasion more often than not is a very, 
very desirable convenience to have. We tie our hands, we make our 
process very inflexible when we need it most responding to emergencies 
and disasters if we strictly and religiously limit emergency spending 
bills or nonemergency bills so that the two cannot be mixed.
  Consequently, I filed H.R. 4906 to allow that position to be argued 
on the floor. What we have today is an array of all the logical 
positions on the spectrum concerning emergency spending. First of all, 
that is that particular position. It is basically current law, but it 
provides and underscores and emphasizes that nonemergency items should 
not be included if they are truly extraneous, if they are simply being 
piggybacked, and it does so by allowing an expedited, easy procedure 
for a motion to strike when nonemergency items are included in 
emergency spending bills that come to the floor.
  Second, the Committee on Rules has made in order the Johnson 
amendment. The gentleman from Texas [Mr. Sam Johnson ] would have us 
when we appropriate emergency spending in 1 year, in the next fiscal 
year look back, take anything in excess of the caps for that year and 
take it out of that year's discretionary spending. He has a look-back 
provision.
  The Castle amendment has a look-forward. The Castle amendment, which 
is a third alternative, has a look-forward provision. It says, let us 
determine the average over a certain period of time, 5 fiscal years, 
which we have spent upon emergency and disaster projects. Let us 
average that out and let us reserve that amount as a likely contingency 
every year. He would have us put away into a reserve account and 
appropriate out of that reserve account when and if emergencies occur.
  Stenholm-Penny-Kasich is still another alternative. It provides that 
emergency spending bills shall be related exclusively to emergencies. 
But unlike the original version which they were supporting here under 
the Common Cents bill, they agree that there could be multiple 
emergencies include in a single bill.
  Madam Speaker, we have before us today 4 clear choices. The reason I 
filed H.R. 4906 was to complete the spectrum, to allow the Committee on 
Appropriations to come here and make the argument they made to me that 
this flexibility is needed and anyone who has ever faced a disaster and 
found FEMA with no money in its pocket, no expendable balances on its 
books, knows that we need flexibility in the face of an emergency. That 
argument will be made in the well of the House today because H.R. 4906 
is the base bill, but other arguments will be made.
  The procedure that we have laid out is completely logical, completely 
fair for the consideration of each one of these. With 4 alternatives 
before us, I do not know a better procedure that the king-of-the-hill 
procedures for taking each one of them in its own term.
  Madam Speaker, I think what we have here is a fair procedure and one 
that allows for full consideration of the whole spectrum of ideas of 
how we should budget for emergency spending.
  Mr. GOSS. Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the 
distinguished gentleman from greater San Dimas, CA [Mr. Dreier], a 
member of the Committee on Rules.

                              {time}  1110

  Mr. DREIER. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Sanibel for 
yielding the time.
  Madam Speaker, I was listening to this fascinating play by play of 
the slippery rock in the Notre Dame game in which Boston College got 
involved, and I was struck with the fact that we have once again been 
discussing this issue of king-of-the-hill on a rule. I ask a very 
simple question, rhetorically on this convoluted king-of-hill process 
which has been standard operating procedure around here, and that is, 
Why is it that one bill has to have a favored position?
  As the distinguished chairman of the Committee on Rules said last 
week as we debated the MFN issue on China, clearly the Pelosi position 
did have a favored position. But the correct measure, the Hamilton 
measure, which pursued human rights through more trade and exposure to 
Western values prevailed.
  But it prevailed obviously because it was the right thing, overcoming 
the fact that it was in a less than fair favorable and equal position 
to the Pelosi proposal. So that is the reason we have said consistently 
on our side that as we look at the king-of-the-hill structure what we 
should have is a provision which simply says that the measure which 
receives the highest number of votes is the one that carries, rather 
than the last standing measure, and unfortunately the present situation 
creates a position where the last standing measure could have received 
many fewer votes than the measures that had been carried before. So I 
think it is the only fair way for us to proceed, and that is why I 
think we should stand firmly on that issue.
  As we look at this legislation itself, I am going to urge a ``no'' 
vote on the previous question. The reason I say that, Madam Speaker, is 
that as we look at this measure, it is a very integral part of 
congressional reform. H.R. 3801, in fact, includes provisions which 
deal with this, and it seems to me that we have continued along the 
line with our divide and conquer strategy which has emanated from the 
majority leadership. So I am going to urge a ``no'' vote on the 
previous question, and I hope very much we can make in order H.R. 3801, 
which is the congressional reform package that was promised last year 
and several times this year, and then proceed with the kind of changes 
in the budget structure which the American people want and we can 
include in that the whole issue of congressional reform, which 
continues to be a top priority.
  Again I thank my friend for yielding the time.
  Mr. GOSS. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I 
would like to simply quote from a distinguished Member of this body who 
is unable to be with us in this debate, but was here for the early part 
of it, but had to go to other duties. His observation to me was this:

       This appears to be the rule to give the appearance of 
     modifying our rules so that we can live under the rules we 
     can live under now if only we would enforce the rules that we 
     adopted as rules at the beginning of this Congress.

  I think that is actually what we are doing. I do not think anybody in 
America understands that, and I doubt many Members of this body 
understand that. But I actually feel no matter how far one travels from 
home, under the king-of-the-hill process it is stacked so you always 
return home, whether it is a short distance or a long distance. Today 
we have three amounts, so it is a fairly long distance. But the 
prediction is we will try to get home, because that is the favored 
position.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of our time.
  Mr. MOAKLEY. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Madam Speaker, I urge all Members to support this rule so the House 
can consider this meritorious legislation.
  Members from both sides of the aisle have expressed frustration about 
nonemergency items finding their way into emergency bills. When that 
happens, Members can often face a rather grim choice: they can vote 
against the whole measure, including the funding for the real 
emergency, or they can vote for the emergency and for whatever 
nonemergency items go with it.
  This bill will guarantee Members another option, an opportunity to 
offer amendments to strike out individual nonemergency items in the 
bill and make it easier to get recorded votes on those amendments. That 
will be an improvement over the status quo, and I urge Members to 
support it.
  This rule is also a good one. It makes in order every substitute the 
Rules Committee was asked to make in order. It provides a king-of-the-
hill so every substitute offered can be debated fully and voted upon. 
Had the Rules Committee not provided king-of-the-hill, the first 
substitute adopted would have been the last considered, and maybe some 
of the amendments would not even been offered and discussed.
  I urge all Members to support the rule and the bill.
  Madam Speaker, I move the previous question on the resolution.
  The previous question was ordered.
  The resolution was agreed to.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. DeLauro). Pursuant to House Resolution 
513 and rule XXIII, the Chair declares the House in the Committee of 
the Whole House on the State of the Union for the consideration of the 
bill, H.R. 4906.

                              {time}  1115


                     in the committee of the whole

  Accordingly, the House resolved itself into the Committee of the 
Whole House on the State of the Union for the consideration of the bill 
(H.R. 4906) to amend the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control 
Act of 1974 to limit consideration of nonemergency matters in emergency 
legislation, with Mr. Murtha in the chair.
  The Clerk read the title of the bill.
  The CHAIRMAN. Pursuant to the rule, the bill is considered as having 
been read the first time.
  Under the rule, the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Moakley] will 
be recognized for 30 minutes, and the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Goss] 
will be recognized for 30 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Moakley].
  Mr. MOAKLEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Chairman, I am delighted to bring to the Committee H.R. 4906, the 
Emergency Spending Control Act of 1994. This legislation is designed to 
improve the budget process by providing Members a solution to a problem 
associated with the consideration of emergency spending bills.
  This Government is now operating under a 5-year budget plan passed 
last year by this Congress with the President's leadership. As a result 
of that plan, the deficit is plummeting even faster than expected. The 
economy is strong. Jobs are being created. According to the Republican 
chairman of the Federal Reserve, Mr. Greenspan, the outlook for the 
U.S. economy is as bright as it has been in decades.
  One of the features of the 5-year economic plan was a freeze through 
1998 on discretionary spending. Discretionary spending funds most of 
the government itself and most government programs.
  When Congress first imposed rigid annual caps on discretionary 
spending in 1990, we realized that from time to time sudden, 
nonrecurring, catastrophic events take place which increase demands for 
government services.
  These events are typically natural disasters like floods, hurricanes, 
and earthquakes. Such emergencies cannot usually be predicted with any 
certainty. Consequently they cannot be easily or accurately estimated 
and budgeted for in advance.
  If the budget process were so rigid as to require cuts in other 
programs before Government could meet the needs of Americans left 
homeless by floods, hurricanes or earthquakes, it would in effect force 
Congress to shift the suffering caused by the emergency in question 
from one group to another. Congress could debate for days or weeks 
about what programs to cut while thousands of Americans tried to nurse 
their wounds, rebuild their lives, and recover their lost income 
brought about by the emergency.
  So, the Budget Enforcement Act allows Congress and the President to 
provide emergency assistance to those in need without bruising 
political battles over what programs to cut and whom to inflict 
suffering on instead. Under the act, if the Congress and the President 
can agree that an emergency exists for which additional spending is 
required quickly, then that spending will not count against the 
spending limits.
  Unfortunately, some additional items, which were arguably not 
emergency items, have at times found their way into emergency bills. It 
is this problem H.R. 4906 is designed to cure.
  The bill would amend the Budget Act to provide that, during 
consideration of any bill containing emergency spending, any Member 
could offer an amendment to strike out any provision which is not 
designated as an emergency.
  And H.R. 4906 would make it easier for the American people to 
determine who supported these additional, nonemergency items in the 
emergency bills by facilitating recorded votes on the amendments to 
strike them out. Under the bill, a recorded vote would be ordered on 
amendments striking out nonemergency riders if demanded by a Member and 
supported by only nine other Members. That's a total of only 10 Members 
to get a record vote, instead of the usual 25 Members in the Committee 
of the Whole or 44 in the House.
  Finally, the bill ensures that any nonemergency provisions in enacted 
emergency legislation will in fact count against the applicable 
allocations of spending the Budget Act.
  Mr. Chairman, H.R. 4906 is a carefully crafted solution to the 
problem of nonemergency provisions appearing in emergency-spending 
legislation. I commend my colleague from South Carolina, Mr. Spratt, 
for his ingenuity, diligence, and hard work in bringing this 
legislation before this body. It deserves our support. I urge all 
Members to vote for the bill.
  Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

                              {time}  1120

  Mr. GOSS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  (Mr. GOSS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. GOSS. Mr. Chairman, the distinguished gentleman from 
Massachusetts [Mr. Moakley] again referred to the 5-year plan. I am 
always worried about these 5-year plans. I am mindful in the Soviet 
Union they used to call these 5-year gosplan, the economic future plan, 
and I used to have to deny that they were any kin to me. They spell it 
differently.
  Fortunately, this plan is no comparison to what they were doing in 
the Soviet Union. But what we are doing does need a little 
modification. That is what we are about here today, trying to get a 
handle on the emergency spending and to account for it properly and 
truthfully, and make sure that emergency spending is truly emergency 
spending. Frankly, what we have today is a new part to buy off the A-
to-Z program, which we seem to be unable to get forward in its purest 
form on the floor. Many of us think we should do that. I think that 
would be something worthwhile doing if we are not going to spend time 
on more substantive matters, such as crime and health.
  Like the so-called Budget Control Act we passed several weeks ago, 
this bill has no substance. So I do not think we need to waste too much 
time on it.
  It does have two main provisions. The first allows Members to offer 
as a motion to strike nonemergency items in an emergency spending bill 
and, second, provides a point of order against any nonemergency items 
if they violate current 602(b) allocations. Good idea. We could already 
do it. But it is a good idea.
  While it may come as a surprise to those Members who are largely 
unfamiliar with the open-rule process, the standing rules of the House 
already provide for both these measures. My friend from Massachusetts, 
the distinguished chairman of the Committee on Rules, confirmed this 
fact to me as we were marking up this legislation on last Tuesday.
  Under an open rule, any Member can come to the floor and offer a 
motion to strike nonemergency funds in an emergency bill. In addition, 
under an open rule, one that does not contain a blanket waiver, that is 
an important point, one that is not protected by the Rules Committee, 
there is already a point of order against nonemergency provisions that 
violate the spending caps. So why waste time debating this measure? We 
have already accomplished what we set out to do if we just obey our own 
rules.
  I for one am hopeful that the House will adopt one of the substitute 
amendments to be offered, and that is the possible area of progress 
today. Each of these would bring us closer to establishing some fiscal 
responsibility in the emergency spending process, which is what we 
should be doing rather than giving the appearance of changing our 
rules. Although each one of these amendments comes from a slightly 
different point of view, thus each one would be an improvement over the 
base bill, they go about the legislation in a different way.
  To wit: The Johnson amendment would require that all emergency funds 
be subject to budget limits, and it includes a lookback measure which 
provides that if an emergency appropriation goes over the budget 
allocation for that year, then the discretionary spending limits for 
the next fiscal year shall be reduced by that amount.
  Now, that is not exactly a brand-new idea. Most American families who 
operate on a budget understand if the roof falls in this year and they 
have to spend the money that they were going to use for a vacation to 
fix the roof, there is not going to be money to spend for the vacation. 
We do not want the roof to fall in, but occasionally that does happen. 
And when that does happen, as we just saw did happen in northern 
Florida and Carolina and Georgia, where this little storm is coming up 
the coast now, we have people in need. We set out to bail them out, and 
that means that there may not be money for vacations. That is sort of a 
moot point anyway because we seem to have cancelled vacations this 
summer.

  But I think the analogy is clear for most Americans. If you spend it 
some place else on an emergency basis, you do not have it left to spend 
on what you thought you were going to spend it for.
  The second amendment today is the Castle amendment, which would 
similarly require emergency spending to be subject to budget limits. It 
would require Congress to set aside adequate funds within current 
discretionary caps to pay for natural disasters and other emergencies. 
Again, not a brand-new idea, called a rainy day provision or a rainy 
day fund in most family budgeting exercises. A good idea to plan ahead.
  Finally, the Penny-Kasich-Stenholm amendment would end the practice 
of loading up emergency bills with pork, such as bridges or train 
stations or some of the other things we have seen in the last year, by 
imposing the commonsense requirement that the emergency spending bills 
contain only emergency spending. Not exactly a new idea. Why not have 
emergency spending in emergency spending bills, and only emergency 
spending?
  I think we all remember the acrimonious fight over the midwest flood 
bill last year, which was sparked when the House leadership told the 
Members we could not vote on an amendment to simply pay for the funds 
we were providing. That just did not work. We got in quite a fuss about 
it.
  It took quite some time, and there was some question as to whether 
the relief would be provided on a timely basis. It was delivered on a 
timely basis, but only after a great strain here, which was not 
necessary.
  I am sure the Los Angeles earthquake bill, which was loaded up with 
nonessential items in the other body, is still fresh in many Members' 
minds. We have an opportunity here to address some or all of the 
problems we encountered with these bills, but only if we reject, reject 
the base Spratt bill and adopt one of the substitutes. Now, we have to 
reject the base Spratt bill in every instance, at the beginning in 
general debate and that when we get through with the king-of-the-hill 
process, we come back to the Spratt bill to vote on, and we have to 
reject it at that time as well.
  I think it is unfortunate that we are considering these measures 
before the National Disaster Task Force has reported its findings. It 
has been over a year since that task force has been working, and 
frankly we should have had a report back by now.
  I urge my colleagues to support the substitute amendments that will 
improve this bill.
  Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. FROST. Mr. Chairman, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from 
South Carolina [Mr. Spratt].
  (Mr. SPRATT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding this 
time to me.
  I rise to explain and urge support for the base bill, H.R. 4906, 
which is called the Emergency Spending Control Act. In a nutshell, this 
bill would make it more difficult to fold nonemergency spending into 
emergency spending bills. At present, when emergency spending bills 
come before the House, nonemergency spending items are often included. 
Some of these, I will have to admit, would not stand scrutiny in the 
normal process but they got folded into these bills and enacted because 
these bills are must-pass emergency bills.
  This bill, H.R. 4906, would not make it impossible to include 
nonemergency items with emergency projects because there are occasions, 
as I explained, when that flexibility is needed. But it would make it 
more difficult to piggyback unwarranted, extraneous items into 
emergency spending bills. Let me cover in some detail the provisions of 
this base bill.
  First of all, H.R. 4906 provides that when the House takes up an 
emergency spending bill that includes a nonemergency spending item, any 
Member may move to strike the nonemergency item and demand a recorded 
vote. If nine others support the request, a rollcall is ordered. That 
is a way of underscoring, I believe, that these should be exceptional 
procedures, inclusion of nonemergency items in emergency spending 
bills. In essence, the bill reduces the number needed to demand a vote 
from 25 to 10, but it is here to emphasize the principle.
  Second, the bill requires that all nonemergency spending proposals, 
when included with emergency spending bills, have to fall below the 
discretionary spending cap provided under both 602(a) and 602(b) of the 
Budget Enforcement Act of 1990. This only reaffirms current law and 
practice, but I think it is worth emphasizing because in a ``Dear 
Colleague'' put out by the Penny-Kasich-Stenholm supporters, it 
indicates that when nonemergency spending is included in an emergency 
spending bill, it somehow becomes transmuted and becomes exempt from 
the discretionary spending caps. Indeed, their letter says this 
spending is also exempt from the discretionary spending caps which, 
when proposed in 1990, were a key instrument of deficit reduction. This 
exemption adds to the many temptations of these matters. That is an 
erroneous statement. All nonemergency spending included in an emergency 
spending bill is subject to the spending caps by law. But this bill, to 
make it clear to everybody, including Penny, Kasich, and Stenholm, 
makes the principle explicit.
  Third, this bill would for the first time create a point of order 
when nonemergency items exceed the 602 (a) or (b) outlay allocations. 
Under current rules, a point of order can be made only when 602 (a) or 
(b) budget authority is exceeded.

                              {time}  1130

  Now I think, taken all together, these are reasonably rigorous 
conditions, but more flexible than procedures laid out in any of the 
alternatives, and I think, for example, flexibility is in order when we 
are dealing with disasters and emergencies.
  The Castle substitute would mandate a budget reserve account, which 
would have to be taken out of the discretionary spending, carved out 
below the line, below the cap which is already a tight cap. It would 
have to be taken out of that $540-plus billion allocation, reducing it, 
according to Castle's best estimates, by over $5 billion, because that 
is the average we have spent on emergencies over the last 5 years. This 
$5 billion will be stored away in a budget reserve account, and then we 
would appropriate out of it when the case or requirement arose. If it 
was not needed, if we did not draw down the full account in any fiscal 
year, then it would revert to Treasury for deficit reduction at the end 
of the year. There would be no carryover of the unexpended balance, so 
next year we would have to whack another 5 billion, plus or minus, out 
of the discretionary spending allocation. But, on the other hand, if 
the reserve account were inadequate, the Castle amendment would repeal 
the dispensation for emergency spending that we now have in the Budget 
Enforcement Act of 1990, which allows it to be made over and above the 
discretionary spending allocation. At least this is my reading of it, 
and Castle leaves us to then figure out what happens if we have a deep 
recession or war and we need emergency spending. Then we either have to 
take it out of discretionary spending, which is already strained, 
pressed tight, or we have to somehow or another invent a statutory 
mechanism for exceeding the limit.
  The Johnson substitute contains another provision which I think could 
create havoc in the House. This substitute would allow emergency 
spending in a given year, but it would force a reduction in the 
discretionary account for the next year in an amount equal to any 
emergency spending over the cap in the prior year, but because of the 
way it is drafted the Johnson substitute would force sequestration in 
the amount equal to the amount of emergency spending. In other words, 
if Congress appropriated $5 billion in emergency spending, the Johnson 
substitute would require a $5 billion reduction in the spending cap for 
the following year.
  Johnson would require, first of all, the $5 billion reduction in the 
spending cap for the following fiscal year, but, as drafted, it would 
also force a $5 billion sequestration in the year the emergency money 
is spent. So, that means that the $5 billion in emergency spending 
could really require a $10 billion cut in discretionary spending. This 
happens because the Johnson substitute repeals section 251(b)(2)(D) of 
Gramm-Rudman which exempts emergency spending from sequestration. This 
may be an unintended consequence, but, as I read the substitute, it is 
a consequence nonetheless.
  Finally, Mr. Chairman, Stenholm-Penny-Kasich is the least onerous of 
the three substitutes, but it, too, could have regrettable results 
because it would prevent us from ever, ever taking up emergency 
spending as part of a nonemergency spending bill. Does this matter? It 
matters. Just last week, when we put Rwandan aid in the foreign 
operation bill, a germane bill, a moving vehicle, and, in light of the 
dire humanitarian need, the best way to ensure timely approval, it 
mattered in the other body when we were able to add Georgia disaster 
relief.
  So, this flexibility is needed, and that is why I think the base bill 
is a better choice or the best choice of the three, and I urge support 
for it.
  Mr. GOSS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished 
gentleman from Iowa [Mr. Nussle] a member of the committee.
  (Mr. NUSSLE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Florida [Mr. 
Goss] for yielding this time to me.
  Really what we have today with regard to emergencies is five issues. 
We want to prevent, we want to plan, we want to provide, we want to 
pay, and we want to eliminate pork, and that is the reason that the 
special task force was appointed by the leadership last year to deal 
with emergencies because we were not preventing disasters from 
happening when we knew we could mitigate problems. We were not planning 
ahead as a country recognizing that, hey, folks, earthquakes happen, 
hurricanes happen. We were not providing assistance to victims quickly 
enough. Everyone from an affected area can tell us that. We were not 
paying for our disasters, and we know now about all the pork barrell 
that was hidden in the bill.
  The task force was established by the leadership, and the 
Republicans, I will tell my colleagues, are ready to come forward with 
a report. Their report will include the provisions that we discuss here 
today. But the House needs to explain today to the people of this 
country our position on whether or not we should plan, and whether or 
not we should pay, and whether or not we should have pork.
  I say to my colleagues, ``I understand that the gentleman says that 
there will be panic in the House, but imagine yourselves sitting around 
the kitchen table dealing with a flood, maybe the flood up to the rim 
of that kitchen table, panicking, trying to figure out how to now pay 
your bills, how to deal with this disaster. We do not have a disaster 
pending right now, the likes of which we saw last year, although there 
are people in peril around our country. They want to know we are not 
going to panic, but we are going to plan, provide and pay.''
  Mr. Chairman, we need to explain to victims that have been shaken to 
death, or have been blown away, or flooded up to their hip boots, why 
we have no coordinated plan for prevention, why this country is in 
shock that disasters even happen. We do not plan ahead. We need to 
explain to victims why they are held hostage to politics, to CNN and to 
pork barrell spending, and of course politicians with wrinkled brows 
like to walk around fields that have been flooded and promise victims 
help when they know full well that their colleagues are going to have 
pork. We have to explain to them why in the world, why in the world 
that a fingerprint agency, or that a Union Station, or some kind of 
special project for some election-worried politician is more important 
than flood assistance, why that with no hearings, and no committee 
meetings, and no public disclose, how these bills just kind of slip 
through. People want to know that. They want to know how those 
decisions are made.
  Under this rule, which has been called king of the hill, it has 
really stacked the deck. We cannot explain to that person who sits 
around their kitchen table and worries, but for that family that does 
sit around the kitchen table, and wants to be responsible and 
accountable, we need to plan, and we need to eliminate the pork. These 
bills here today do that. We should do more than just tell them, 
``Well, we may just vote on these bills.'' That is not good enough.
  Mr. GOSS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished 
gentleman from California [Mr. Thomas].
  (Mr. THOMAS of California asked and was given permission to revise 
and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. THOMAS of California. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from 
Florida [Mr. Goss], my colleague, for yielding this time to me, and I 
want to briefly revisit the discussion that took place under the rule 
because, although the substance of this particular bill is important, I 
think far more important is the underlying understanding of the public 
and its growing awareness of the concept of the so-called king-of-the-
hill. It is important because we are going to face other very extreme 
and important measures in the near future; the health bill is the first 
one that comes to mind. I have been intimately involved in building 
health care, so I am very concerned about the kind of rule that it will 
come to the floor under.
  In Sunday's New York Times, August 14 edition, there was an editorial 
about king-of-the-hill, and of course we know that it is a misnomer, it 
is not king-of-the-hill. It is whichever measure was voted on last that 
passes wins.
  The Democratic leadership has complained mightily about what has 
happened to the discharge petition process. I can say that the reason 
the discharge petition process is now in its current state of a number 
of bills at the desk getting signatures to be discharged is because the 
Democratic leadership would not respond to the will of the House. I 
say, ``You keep that lid on the kettle as it tries to boil over, and 
what you get is the result of the discharge petitions at the desk. I 
can tell you the king-of-the-hill is next.''

                              {time}  1140

  The arguments that I heard in terms of support for the king-of-the-
hill, if you were the average American listening to this debate, are 
absolutely absurd. It clearly is an enormous advantage for the 
Democrats, with the control they have in the House and on the Rules 
Committee, to place a bill which may not be the best bill in an 
advantaged position under the rule, and providing that whichever one 
passes last wins--not that it got the most support, but the one that 
was voted on last passes.
  That was exactly the point of the New York Times editorial, although 
it refers generally to the health care debate. But the last paragraph 
of that article is a general statement about the king-of-the-hill 
process, and it says: ``Before the House can begin to create an 
acceptable bill''--any bill, including this one--``Members need the 
freedom to amend the bills that their leaders will put before them. If 
the leadership insists on imposing king-of-the-hill procedures, the 
outcome will be anything but lordly.''
  Let me tell you, you act as though you are in a conundrum and there 
is no other way to deal with this issue. There is clearly another way 
to deal with this issue, which is another problem that the leadership 
of this House has not fairly or fundamentally addressed, and that is 
what we call in the world I used to be in, the academic world, 
plagiarism. If you want to find out which bill should be the underlying 
bill, take the bill that was introduced first dealing with the concept.
  Interestingly enough, the Democrats have argued that this underlying 
bill, with the king-of-the-hill structure from the Rules Committee, is 
H.R. 4906. This bill was crafted in the Rules Committee.
  The gentleman mentioned another bill, H.R. 4434, which is called the 
commonsense bill. Well, guess what? H.R. 3266, A-to-Z, came first, and 
this is what happened: What happens a lot of times around here is that 
if somebody has a good idea and they introduce it as a bill--for 
example, the A-to-Z bill, introduced as H.R. 3266--the first bill that 
goes in gets H.R. 1, and the second bill gets H.R. 2, so at least in 
this congressional session, H.R. 3266 was introduced before any of the 
other bills that were discussed.
  What happens is that the Democrat leadership sees a good idea coming 
along and they are afraid that it may gain momentum, so they introduce 
their own bill in an attempt to circumvent, cut off, deny that earlier 
original idea.
  I think we need some kind of an understanding that the House needs to 
honor intellectual property rights, just as we are doing in these 
international treaties, General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade, and 
others, so that if somebody gets an idea first, you ought not play 
games in the Rules Committee and come up with a weakened version, a 
modified version, and give it a preferential position in the 
discussion, as they have done.
  If you are looking for a way out of the conundrum you have built for 
yourself in terms of how to deal with these issues, why not show a 
little respect for intellectual honesty and say the first bill 
introduced is the underlying bill? All other bills coming later, those 
that try to modify, would be considered later. If you want to hang onto 
king-of-the-hill, at least be intellectually honest about it and get 
the numbers of the bills that were introduced first as the underlying 
bills.
  Mr. FROST. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from 
Illinois [Mr. Durbin].
  (Mr. DURBIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. Chairman, I have the dubious distinction of 
cochairing a task force on emergencies with the gentleman from Missouri 
[Mr. Emerson]. He and I will be able to tell the Members, after months 
of deliberation, that this is an extraordinary subject and although 
many of my colleagues and those listening will view this topic as dry 
as dust--in fact, it deals in very real terms with human tragedies and 
disasters that come to the United States that must be dealt with--I am 
afraid that some of the suggestions that are being made today are being 
made in a vacuum. Some of the amendments that will be offered on the 
floor today do not take into consideration our past experience. I think 
we as legislators have a responsibility, when we deliberate serious 
topics like this, to consider our past experience before embarking on 
what appears to be a very simple answer.
  When it comes to dealing with disasters in the United States, I can 
tell the Members that it is a very complicated situation. Let me give a 
couple of examples. One of my colleagues--I believe it is the gentleman 
from Delaware [Mr. Castle]--has suggested that we should set aside some 
type of an emergency reserve account, a rainy day fund. To most people 
who try to put a little savings in the bank to take care of unforeseen 
circumstances, it is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, and I frankly 
think it is a reasonable thing to do. But how much money should we put 
into this account? If we use past experiences as a guide, if we use an 
average, we might say that we spent about an average of $3 to $5 
billion a year on disasters in the United States. But I would say, from 
the testimony before our task force, that the potential for future 
liabilities resulting from disasters is way beyond that.
  In fact, we have had testimony before us to suggest that a major 
earthquake in San Francisco could result in a liability of some $60 
billion, and $88 billion in Los Angeles. If Hurricane Andrew had struck 
Miami, we would be dealing with a price tag of about $50 billion. We 
have been very lucky in this country. We have had disasters, and people 
have suffered, but the potential for losses is even greater.
  The potential for disasters cannot be overlooked when we talk about 
these so-called rainy day funds and get very honest and serious about 
how far they will go.
  There is another suggestion from my colleague, the gentleman from 
Texas [Mr. Sam Johnson] that we should be reducing the spending in next 
year's budget cycle by whatever we spent for disasters in the previous 
year. On its face, it sounds like a perfectly reasonable suggestion, 
but there are two very serious problems here.
  In the first instance, if we accept his approach, we would have to 
cut out in next year's spending about $12 billion if we are going to 
take out what was spent this year on disasters. Half of that money will 
come from the Department of Defense. I wonder if the gentleman from 
Texas knows that. About $6 billion under the gentleman's bill would 
have to be cut from next year's defense appropriation in order to 
conform with his amendment.
  Let me also suggest to the gentleman that the problem goes far beyond 
that. We have a situation here where creating this reserve account and 
trying to guess what is going to occur in the future is a very 
difficult thing to do. The gentleman from Texas may recall when he 
considers the implications of his amendment that we went through Desert 
Storm and Desert Shield several years ago. The Bush administration 
declared it an emergency. We then appropriated over $42 billion for 
Desert Storm and Desert Shield. Eventually, we were paid back by our 
allies, but the gentleman from Texas with his amendment would have 
required us in the next fiscal year to cut that much out of spending 
even though we knew we were going to get the money paid back to us. So 
on the surface what the gentleman says sounds very reasonable, but our 
human experience and our experience here in the Congress suggests that 
it is a little more complicated.
  I urge my colleagues--who, when told that there is a bill on budget 
reform, say, ``I'm for it; what is it?''--to stop and take a look at 
it. I think frankly the gentleman from Texas has a good idea, but in 
practical application it has some very serious flaws and problems with 
it. Perhaps we can work on improving it. But until then, I hope that my 
colleagues will read this very carefully and understand that we are 
dealing not with a very simple issue here but a very complicated one.
  Mr. GOSS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the very distinguished 
gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich], our chief budgeteer.
  Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman's yielding time.
  Mr. Chairman, I would first of all tell the Members that this bill 
that we have today, the Penny-Kasich-Stenholm bill, is our third effort 
to try to bring some significant budget reforms to the House of 
Representatives.
  I do appreciate what the gentleman from Illinois had to say about the 
difficulty of trying to plan for emergencies and providing a separate 
fund, and I think it probably is a difficult process. That is why I 
believe that we ought to keep these emergency bills clean, as a 
starter, and that is essentially what we are trying to do today in the 
proposal that the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Stenholm], the gentleman 
from Minnesota [Mr. Penny], and I are offering.

                              {time}  1150

  Let me just show you that in the last emergency bill that passed this 
House, as that bill left the House of Representatives to provide money 
for the earthquake in Los Angeles plus a number of other earthquakes, 
and, by the way, I would tell you our bill is slightly modified, 
because we do provide that more than one emergency can be in an 
emergency bill. What we want to say though is the only money that 
should be in an emergency bill is money for the emergency. Any 
nonemergency money should not be attached to an emergency bill.
  Why? For a number of different reasons, one of which is you get these 
nonemergency items on this fast moving emergency bill, you do not have 
the scrutiny you ought to have, and then we wake up on Monday morning 
and in the paper are stories like I am about to tell you.
  The emergency bill that provided money for the earthquake in 
California, after it came back from the Senate, it added $1.4 million 
to fight potato fungus. It added $2.3 million for FDA pay raises. It 
had $10 million for a new Amtrak station in New York. It had $40 
million for the space shuttle. It had $20 million for a fingerprint 
lab. It had $500,000 for U.S. Trade Rep travel. It also contained some 
other items like $5.2 million for the Bureau of Public Debt.
  What we are saying is these programs, whether they are good or bad, 
ought to be done in the normal appropriation process. They should not 
be included on the fast track with emergencies.
  I think the public clearly wants this. I hope that the House clearly 
wants that the only thing we are going to say is when we have an 
emergency, we will provide money for that emergency, and we will attach 
no other riders to that bill. That is what we are asking for.
  Now, people can say, for example, in the Spratt amendment, which we 
have to defeat under this king-of-the-hill rule, well, you can come to 
the House floor and you can try to eliminate these programs if you do 
not like them. But let me explain to you, to the Members of this House, 
the difficulty that we have.
  As you can see, the potato fungus and the FDA and the Amtrak and the 
Space Shuttle and the fingerprint lab and the U.S. Trade Representative 
were all added in the Senate. So what happens is these get added in 
the Senate. We end up in a conference committee, the bill comes back to 
the House of Representatives, and the only way for us to fight any of 
these additions is to kill the conference report, which would mean that 
we would have to come to the House floor and we would have to vote 
against aid to earthquake victims in California in order to strip out 
the potato fungus funding, if we felt it was not necessary.

  That is a choice that no one wants to be in. I can tell you that even 
the efforts made by my courageous colleague, the gentleman from Iowa 
[Mr. Nussle], and my colleagues, the gentleman from Texas [Mr. 
Stenholm] and the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Penny], in an effort to 
try to pay for the last earthquake, many of our colleagues were upset 
because it appeared as though we were trying to slow down aid to the 
earthquake victims, which clearly no one in this House was interested 
in doing. But there was no way to fight this, coming back from a 
conference committee, other than to defeat earthquake aid. That is not 
a choice anybody wanted to make.
  How do we avoid this? How do we avoid loading these bills up with 
items clearly not related to the emergency?
  The way in which we do it is we say we are going to have a clean 
emergency. If there is an earthquake in California, let us meet day and 
night and get the money provided. Let us not load it up with a bunch of 
other things. If we need these other provisions, let us put it in a 
separate supplemental bill, put it on the regular track, and then 
approve it separately.
  I think this is a very big step in restoring public confidence in the 
credibility of the spending patterns of this body and the U.S. Senate.
  So what I would argue is that you all need to come to the House 
floor, if you are concerned about riders, which I know your 
constituents are, you should vote for the Kasich-Penny-Stenholm 
amendment. You should defeat the Spratt amendment, which is nothing 
other than current law. If you want to go against the status quo, if 
you want to suggest that emergencies only ought to contain emergency 
funding, that we ought not put potato fungus or FDA pay raises in an 
emergency bill, vote for Penny-Kasich-Stenholm. Reject Spratt. And that 
way we can make a significant difference in public credibility when it 
comes to our spending patterns in this body.
  Mr. MOAKLEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 8 minutes to the gentleman from 
Wisconsin [Mr. Obey], the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations.
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I have very seldom in the history of the 
House seen a more misleading presentation than I just witnessed in this 
well, and I will explain in a moment why it is misleading. But first I 
want to put in context what it is we are being asked to do today in 
this seance.
  Let me start by saying that I think everybody in this House 
recognizes that there has been a terrible deficit problem facing this 
country. We never had a deficit larger than $74 billion until Congress 
passed the Reagan budget proposals in 1982, which took us to deficits 
of almost $300 billion. We have been trying to get out from under ever 
since.
  But I think it is safe to say that anyone who analyzes the budget 
understands that the root of the fiscal problems facing the United 
States cannot be found in the appropriation portion of the budget. 
Because whether you look at appropriated funds in real dollar terms, or 
as a share of the budget, or as a portion of the economy, you will see 
that they have declined--in contrast to entitlements, which is the 
problem in creating the deficits that we deal with today.
  A decade ago discretionary spending, which is what we appropriate, 
equalled 11 percent of gross domestic product. It will be 8 percent 
this year. It will be 6.5 percent by the end of the decade.
  Under the 5-year budget agreement we are living under, we are under a 
5-year freeze in nominal dollars. That means that we will be, in real 
dollar terms, shrinking what we spend in the appropriations process by 
10 percent over the next 5 years. That is going to require some 
draconian reductions.
  The House this year in the appropriation bills which we passed cut 
395 programs below last year's level. And I am not talking about 
cutting the rate of increase; I am talking about cutting actual 
spending below the amount that was spent last year. Three hundred and 
ninety-five programs. Thirty-six Federal programs were eliminated 
altogether. Those bills were $10.8 billion below the 1993 budget, $5 
billion below the President, and $3.9 billion below this year's budget 
resolution.
  Now I want to get to the specific amendments at hand. We are told 
that to deal with this problem we ought to pass the Johnson amendment, 
for instance. The Johnson amendment claims that what it does is that if 
we have to appropriate $10 billion in emergency supplementals, it 
claims that we will then in the following fiscal year have to cut a 
similar amount out of the next fiscal year's appropriated amounts.
  That, however, is not what the Johnson amendment does. Because the 
Johnson amendment has a drafting error, as everybody knows. That 
drafting error means it requires you to double cut. It requires you to 
take a $11 billion cut this year, and another $11 billion cut next year 
if that amendment passes. So it requires you to cut $2 out of the 
budget for every dollar that you spend in an emergency supplemental. 
That may make sense to somebody on this floor; it does not make sense 
to me.
  Second, the Castle amendment has a grain of sense to it. I, frankly, 
of the three amendments, would prefer a version of the Castle amendment 
to any of the three before us today.
  But the Castle amendment is also flawed. The Castle amendment says we 
ought to have a rainy day fund. I agree with that. We do have one this 
year of about $800 million. I think it ought to be larger. If I have 
anything to say about it next year, it is going to be larger.
  But the problem with the Castle amendment is that it says OK, we are 
going to have a rainy day fund, and if we have emergencies, we are 
going to fund them out of that fund. But there is no limit to the 
amount that has to be put into that fund.
  In other words, if you have a nuclear war, you can still not make an 
exception. You still have to reduce funding to accommodate for the 
emergency spending. So what starts out as a reasonable idea becomes 
ludicrous on its face, because you make no exceptions. You put no 
limits above which we will recognize it is a genuine emergency, which 
has to be funded as such.
  The Stenholm amendment is merely inconvenient, because the Stenholm 
amendment is meant to do something which is good. The Stenholm 
amendment is meant to avoid some of the riders that we sometimes see 
attached around here. But because of the way it is drafted, it goes way 
too far.
  What it says, for instance, is we cannot put an emergency item in a 
regular appropriation bill, even if there are no other riders.

                              {time}  1200

  We just got done doing that, because we felt that the fastest way to 
deal with the Rwanda disaster problem was to put it in the foreign 
assistance bill which was moving through here at that time.
  What harm was there in that? We simply solved the problem in the most 
expeditious manner possible.
  Now I want to get to the comments of the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. 
Kasich].
  The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich] has pointed to a number of 
additional items that were added in emergency bills and would lead 
Members to believe that that meant that the deficit went up because of 
that. The fact is that what he did not tell Members is that every 
single one of them was offset by a rescission.
  If Members take a look at what CBO says, this will spell out that 
between 1991 and 1994, including the time period mentioned by the 
gentleman, that we provided $700 million more in deficit reducing 
offsets than were provided by add-ons of a nonemergency nature. So even 
if we argue with an individual item, and I certainly do, do not be 
deceived by the prior speech. Do not believe that we have not offset 
those funds; we have. We have, in fact, cut the deficit by an extra 
$700 million below the amount that we would have been required in order 
to offset fully all of the items cited by the gentleman.

  I do not mind it when anybody tries to make a point in legislative 
debate. I do mind when in the process they do not let facts get in the 
way of their making a point. Facts ought to govern, not ideology and 
not political claims.
  The fact is that in the supplemental that the gentleman was talking 
about last year, in the 1994 supplemental, we offset every single 
dollar that he had on that chart and then some. And I think that good 
faith requires that that be made quite clear on this House floor.
  In summary what I would simply say is that I think the Castle 
amendment offers us the possibility of eventually working out a 
rational compromise, because I do believe in the principle of having a 
rainy day fund. The question ought to become, what is a reasonable size 
and at what point do we recognize we have a legitimate emergency on our 
hands?
  I do not believe it is rational for this House to say that even in 
time of a nuclear war, we are going to require offsets. How far do 
Members think we would have gotten in World War II, if we had had to 
operate under those budget items? I do not think we would have won the 
war that way, my colleagues. So it seems to me that if we want to 
pursue these ideas, fine, but pursue them in a constructive, rational, 
and disciplined way.
  What is going on here today is these are three free votes. Members 
get a chance to vote three times in a ``let's pretend'' manner, to 
pretend they are cutting the deficit. We all know these bills are not 
going anywhere. I agree with the gentleman on that side of the aisle 
who said this is a colossal waste of time. I think it is an outrageous 
waste of the House time. I really believe we ought to get down to the 
serious business of designing that a rainy day fund really ought to 
look like.
  Mr. GOSS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished 
gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich].
  Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, first of all, no one ever argued that these 
were not paid for in some way. They should not be included on the fast 
track with an emergency bill and not undergoing the general scrutiny 
like the rest of the appropriation bills.
  No. 2, I resent the fact that the Senate adds potato fungus and I 
have to kill the whole earthquake in order to strip it out.
  No. 3, CBO came out and they studied supplemental appropriations in 
1980's, the way in which we paid for them.
  Do Members know what CBO said? Over half of the rescinded funds were 
unlikely to have been spent if they had remained available and were 
scheduled to lapse in the near future. In other words, these 
rescissions are a sham. They are a sham. This money would not have been 
spent, and now they are trying to claim they are paying for it. The 
simple fact of the matter is that if we had not loaded it up, we would 
have had lower deficits in this country.
  The bottom line is, do not attach, do not attach these programs to 
emergencies. Do not let the Congress of the United States attach riders 
to bills like earthquake assistance. That is really the bottom line.
  Mr. MOAKLEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from 
Wisconsin [Mr. Obey].
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I point out the $1.4 million item the 
gentleman is talking about was not added by the Senate. It was in the 
President's budget. It was not an add on. I do not mind if the 
gentleman wants to make the fact, but I wish it had something to do 
with the truth.
  Mr. MOAKLEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from 
Texas [Mr. Stenholm].
  (Mr. STENHOLM asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. STENHOLM. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
  Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, while it is in fact true that the potato 
fungus, I am not against fighting potato fungus, was added, was in the 
President's budget, it was added in the Senate when the emergency bill 
went.
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, at the request of the President. It was in 
the budget.
  Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will continue to yield, I 
said that this was put in in the Senate. That is exactly right. The 
gentleman is not correct. That is what I said.
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman is wrong.
  Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to come to the floor to 
debate proposals to reform the process by which we consider emergency 
spending. There clearly is widespread concern about the current process 
of enacting emergency appropriations bills. Today, the House will have 
an opportunity to consider several proposals to improve this process.
  The Budget Enforcement Act of 1990 established a ``safety valve'' to 
allow Congress and the President to meet unexpected needs. When we 
passed the Budget Enforcement Act in 1990, few of us anticipated that 
we would utilize the emergency provision 16 times to spend $90 billion 
within 4 years. Excluding the funds for Desert Storm that were 
ultimately offset by foreign contributions, we have added over $30 
billion to the national debt through emergency spending legislation. In 
addition, as the Washington Post noted in an editorial earlier this 
week, ``emergency bills have been vehicles to which (appropriators) 
have often been able to add other projects that might have failed to 
withstand scrutiny on their own.''
  We will have the opportunity to vote on two thoughtful proposals that 
would end the practice of adding emergency spending bills to the 
deficit. I personally support both of these amendments because I do not 
believe that we should add more than $6 billion to the deficit each 
year for unexpected emergency spending. It seems to me that if we are 
going to pass several bills spending billions of dollars in disaster 
relief each year, we should set up a procedure to provide funding for 
disaster assistance through the regular budget process instead of 
relying on an unrestricted, ad hoc process.
  Representative Sam Johnson will offer an amendment based on 
legislation he and I have introduced which will effectively require 
Congress and the President to offset increased spending for emergency 
spending through spending cuts in the next year. This will give 
Congress and the President time to come up with offsetting spending 
cuts through the regular process instead of being forced to find 
offsets in the relatively short window in which emergency spending 
bills are considered.
  Representative Mike Castle will offer an amendment replacing the 
current process of exempting emergency spending from spending 
restraints with a reserve fund for the regular funding of disaster 
assistance. This proposal will force Congress to plan for emergencies 
when we put together the budget resolution each year instead of 
pretending that the need for disaster assistance can't be anticipated 
and included in the regular budget.
  Since emergency spending is exempt from budget constraints, there is 
a temptation to spend money in emergency appropriations bills with less 
review than normally occurs. Requiring that Congress pay for emergency 
spending bills instead of adding the costs to the deficit will force us 
to be more responsible in appropriating disaster relief. We will be 
less likely to pass emergency appropriations for items that may not 
truly deserve the emergency designation and will subject expenditures 
for emergency relief to greater scrutiny.
  Both of these bills will be criticized for not providing Congress 
with the flexibility to deal with large, unexpected emergencies that 
cannot be funded within regular budget constraints. The criticism 
ignores the fact that if a crisis occurs, requiring that we spend 
beyond the discretionary spending caps, we could enact legislation 
increasing the caps. Disaster relief should be provided outside budget 
rules and added to the deficit only as a last resort, instead of as an 
automatic matter of course.
  If we take our votes on the Johnson and Castle amendments and the 
House is not willing to take the step of requiring that we pay for 
emergency spending bills, we should at least stop these bills from 
becoming a vehicle for unrelated items to piggyback on. At the Rules 
Committee last week, there was widespread agreement that there is a 
problem with unrelated extraneous items being slipped into emergency 
appropriations bills. None of us like to read on Monday morning about 
pork-barrel items that were included in emergency appropriations bills 
after they were signed into law. Public cynicism about Government 
is increased by reports of stories of questionable spending items that 
sailed through Congress as part of an emergency spending bill. We need 
to deal with this problem for the sake of the institution.

  The base bill reaffirms the ability which Members of the House 
currently have to strike nonemergency items from the bill. However, the 
base bill suffers from four fundamental flaws.
  First, the provisions of the bill can be waived by the Rules 
Committee. Current House rules allow a motion to strike items from 
appropriations bills, but supplemental appropriations bills often are 
considered under rules that strictly limit amendments. For example, the 
rule for consideration of the supplemental appropriations bill for 
Midwest flood relief did not allow any amendments. The base bill would 
still allow the Rules Committee to report a rule preventing members 
from offering amendments to strike nonemergency items from emergency 
appropriations bills.
  Second, the base bill creates the presumption that nonemergency items 
should be included in emergency appropriations bills. Since emergency 
appropriations bills usually are considered rapidly, members rarely 
have the time to review the merits of individual non-emergency items. 
The result will be to allow spending to continue to flow to 
nonemergency items through emergency appropriations bills with little 
or no review.
  Third, the base bill does not apply to extraneous legislative, 
nonspending items that are slipped into emergency appropriations bills. 
Although this abuse is not as common, there have been several 
substantive policy changes made through emergency supplemental 
appropriations bills.
  Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the base bill lets the other 
body off the hook because it does not apply to conference reports. The 
base bill does not address the issue of extraneous items added to 
emergency bills in the other body at all. Since the only opportunity 
the House has to vote on these items is as part of a conference report, 
the base bill before us today would have no effect on extraneous 
spending items added to emergency spending bills by members of the 
other body.
  In contrast, the Kasich-Stenholm-Penny substitute would significantly 
clean up emergency appropriations bills. Our amendment would prohibit 
extraneous items from being included in emergency appropriations bills 
and conference reports. We would prevent the other body from 
embarrassing us by adding extraneous items to emergency spending 
conference reports.
  Mr. Chairman, if we are serious about cleaning up the emergency 
spending process, we must pass the Kasich-Stenholm-Penny amendment and 
defeat the Spratt substitute.

                              {time}  1210

  Mr. GOSS. Mr. Chairman, I am happy to yield 3 minutes to the 
distinguished gentleman from Delaware [Mr. Castle].
  (Mr. CASTLE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  The CHAIRMAN. The Committee will rise informally in order that the 
House may receive a message.

                          ____________________