[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 154 (Friday, September 29, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H9720]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             {time}   1615
                        REPORT CARD ON CONGRESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr.  Everett). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Doggett] is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, what we have seen here in the House of 
Representatives today is truly remarkable. With the Federal fiscal year 
drawing to a close, the Republican leadership had a responsibility to 
put on President Clinton's desk 13 appropriations bills. How did they 
do?
  Well, they got 2 of 13. Where I come from, 2 out of 13 is not a very 
good grade. In fact, I do not even know that it is high enough to earn 
an F. Down in Texas we would probably give it an F-minus for 2 of 13 
bills, and the quality of Republican leadership that it represents. And 
when you look at those two bills, you find the quality is as sorry as 
the quantity.
  The first bill they sent over there was the legislative 
appropriation, protect the Congress first, worry about the rest of the 
country last. And the second one was a military construction bill so 
loaded with pork barrel you could hear the pigs squeal all the way to 
Arlington, TX.
  Today, this Republican leadership has had a truly unparalleled 
accomplishment, perhaps in the entire history of this country. They 
have come forward with conference reports on two appropriations bills 
for consideration in this House this afternoon, and they have had two 
appropriations conference reports defeated. Two up two down. Two very 
down. In fact, the last one of those appropriations bills, they could 
not even command a majority of the Republican Members, much less the 
Democrats.
  So, here we are this afternoon, exactly 1 week after Speaker Gingrich 
went up to New York and declared ``I do not care what the price is. I 
do not care if we have no executive offices and no bonds for 60 days. 
Not this time.''
  We have had plenty of alarming rhetoric, but not very much 
responsible leadership. On appropriations, that leadership is 2 bills 
out of 13, as this fiscal year draws to a close this weekend.
  Much of this is because at every stage in the budget process, the 
Federal Budget Act, the statute on the books, has been looked at as 
something to flaunt, something to ignore, something to violate from top 
to bottom. The keystone of this Republican plan to balance the budget 
is to take $270 billion out of the Medicare system.

  Can you believe that at this late date the Republicans at the end of 
the fiscal year have yet to even introduce the bill, to take that $270 
billion out of the pockets of America's seniors and America's disabled? 
They have not even filed the bill that is the centerpiece of their 
budget.
  From at least the first morning that the Committee on the Budget 
considered their budget, it was presented on a take-it-or-leave-it 
basis. Bipartisanship was out the window, because they had their plan 
and they were going to accomplish it no matter how many seniors or 
disabled people or people they viewed as powerless got in the way and 
got run over.
  What about that great successful campaign ploy, the Contract on 
America? Well, they have not had quite as much success once they rolled 
it out here in the Congress. We have had 2 bills passed out of 11 in 
the planning. The first one was to repackage a Democratic idea that 
would have been law at the beginning of this Congress if the 
Republicans had not killed it last time. It is called the Congressional 
Accountability Act. It is a good bill. It passed on day 1 of this 
Congress and became law.
  The second, an unfunded mandates bill, which passed with significant 
Democratic support. We have a third bill, a line-item veto bill, but 
Speaker Gingrich is afraid that President Clinton will use it to slash 
and slice out some of that pork barrel that has been put into the bill. 
So he held up and delayed appointing conferees for that bill.
  So we have two bills passed, two bills dead and gone, and seven 
lingering somewhere in the legislative process.
  But nowhere has the lack of leadership been more obvious than when it 
comes to lobby control, when it comes to gift ban, with the 
relationships between legislators and lobbyists, when it comes to 
ethics. There we find, as we have just heard this afternoon, that the 
lobbyists they want to control are the Girl Scouts, the National 
Council of Senior Citizens, Catholic Charities, and the YMCA.
  What about the polluters, what about the lobbyists who keep writing 
special loopholes in the Tax Code? What about those that loaded up 
these bills with pork barrel? That lobby control is nowhere. It has not 
been brought to the floor of this House. And we have the chairman of 
the Committee on Ethics telling us in her own words this week the 
letter of the law is not compelling to me; my goal is to have a process 
that the committee members feel good about.
  Well, America does not feel good about what this Congress is not 
doing or what it is doing, and the way it has ignored ethics and 
proceeded to pursue a right wing extremist agenda.

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