[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 203 (Monday, December 18, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H15056-H15061]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                JOURNAL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hastings of Washington). Pursuant to 
clause 5 of rule I, the unfinished business is the question of the 
Chair's approval of the Journal of December 14, 1995.
  Pursuant to clause 1, rule I, the Journal stands approved.
  
[[Page H15057]]


  DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 
1996--VETO MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (H. DOC. NO. 
                                104-147)

  The SPEAKER pro tempore laid before the House the following veto 
message from the President of the United States:

To the House of Representatives:
  I am returning herewith without my approval H.R. 1977, the 
``Department of the Interior and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 
1996.''
  This bill is unacceptable because it would unduly restrict our 
ability to protect America's natural resources and cultural heritage, 
promote the technology we need for long-term energy conservation and 
economic growth, and provide adequate health, educational, and other 
services to Native Americans.
  First, the bill makes wrong-headed choices with regard to the 
management and preservation of some of our most precious assets. In the 
Tongass National Forest in Alaska, it would allow harmful clear-
cutting, require the sale of timber at unsustainable levels, and 
dictate the use of an outdated forest plan for the next 2 fiscal years.
  In the Columbia River basin in the Pacific Northwest, the bill would 
impede implementation of our comprehensive plan for managing public 
lands--the Columbia River Basin Ecosystem Management Project. It would 
do this by prohibiting publication of a final Environmental Impact 
Statement or Record of Decision and requiring the exclusion of 
information on fisheries and watersheds. The result: A potential return 
to legal gridlock on timber harvesting, grazing, mining, and other 
economically important activities.
  And in the California desert, the bill undermines our designation of 
the Mojave National Preserve by cutting funding for the Preserve and 
shifting responsibility for its management from the National Park 
Service to the Bureau of Land Management. The Mojave is our newest 
national park and part of the 1994 California Desert Protection Act--
the largest addition to our park system in the lower 48 States. It 
deserves our support.
  Moreover, the bill would impose a misguided moratorium on future 
listings and critical habitat designations under the Endangered Species 
Act. And in the case of one endangered species, the marbled murrelet, 
it would eliminate the normal flexibility for both the Departments of 
the Interior and Agriculture to use new scientific information in 
managing our forests.

  Second, the bill slashes funding for the Department of Energy's 
energy conservation programs. This is short-sighted and unwise. 
Investment in the technology of energy conservation is important for 
our Nation's long-term economic strength and environmental health. We 
should be doing all we can to maintain and sharpen our competitive 
edge, not back off.
  Third, this bill fails to honor our historic obligations toward 
Native Americans. It provides inadequate funding for the Indian Health 
Service and our Indian Education programs. And the cuts targeted at key 
programs in the Bureau of Indian Affairs' are crippling--including 
programs that support child welfare; adult vocational training; law 
enforcement and detention services; community fire protection; and 
general assistance to low-income Indian individuals and families. 
Moreover, the bill would unfairly single out certain self-governance 
tribes in Washington State for punitive treatment. Specifically, it 
would penalize these tribes financially for using legal remedies in 
disputes with non-tribal owners of land within reservations.
  Finally, the bill represents a dramatic departure from our commitment 
to support for the arts and the humanities. It cuts funding of the 
National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities so deeply as to 
jeopardize their capacity to keep providing the cultural, educational, 
and artistic programs that enrich America's communities large and 
small.
  For these reasons and others my Administration has conveyed to the 
Congress in earlier communications, I cannot accept this bill. It does 
not reflect my priorities or the values of the American people. I urge 
the Congress to send me a bill that truly serves the interests of our 
Nation and our citizens.
                                                  William J. Clinton.  
  The White House, December 18, 1995.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The objections of the President will be 
spread at large upon the Journal, and the message and bill will be 
printed as a House document.


                      Motion Offered by Mr. Regula

  Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Clerk will report the motion.
  The Clerk read as follows:

       Mr. Regula moves to refer the veto message and bill to the 
     Committee on Appropriations.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Regula] is 
recognized for 1 hour.
  Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 15 minutes to the gentleman from 
Wisconsin [Mr. Obey] for purposes of debate only, and yield back 30 
minutes.

                              {time}  1800

  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I did not understand the motion of the 
gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Regula]. Is the gentleman trying to yield back 
half of the debate time?
  Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, that is correct. There will be 15 minutes on 
our side and 15 on the side of the gentleman from Wisconsin.
  Mr. OBEY. So is the gentleman asking unanimous consent to yield back 
half the time?
  Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, I do not think we have to do that. I think I 
control the entire hour, and therefore, I can yield back 30 minutes and 
yield 15 to the gentleman from Wisconsin and retain 15 on our side.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. (Mr. Hastings of Washington). The gentleman 
from Ohio is correct; the gentleman from Ohio controls the time.
  Mr. OBEY. I understand that, Mr. Speaker, but he will have 15 and we 
will have 15?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. That is correct.
  The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Regula] is recognized.


                             General Leave

  Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may 
have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on 
the veto message of the President to the bill, H.R. 1977, and that I 
may include tabular and extraneous material.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Ohio?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, I think the President's last sentence 
is the one that I would quote. President Clinton said: ``I urge the 
Congress to send me a bill that truly serves the interests of our 
Nation and our citizens.''
  Well, I want to say, Mr. President, we have already done that. For 
reasons that I do not quite understand, the President has chosen to not 
accept this bill.
  I think it really boils down to this: That if you listen carefully to 
the veto message, it clearly says we must spend more money, more for 
arts, more for various other programs, and I would like to go through 
the veto message and point out some of the facts that are not quite 
accurate in this message.
  Perhaps the best answer on this is the truth. It says that we need to 
protect America's natural resources--well, the bill, 1977, does that 
very well--our cultural heritage, and promote the technology we need 
for long-term energy conservation and economic growth.
  I would point out that this bill provides 80 percent more money than 
we did in 1988 for energy conservation. A lot of this is corporate 
welfare, the very thing the President is opposed to, and yet here he is 
vetoing a bill on the strength of what we are saying to the private 
sector that many of these programs should be funded.
  The President mentions other services to Native Americans. I would 
point out that in our negotiations with the White House, we put $27 
million more, more than they requested. Here he is vetoing this on the 
basis that there is not enough for the Native American programs. Then 
we see about clear-cutting in the Tongass National Forest. I have 
looked at the bill and I do not find the words ``clear-cutting.'' I do 
not 

[[Page H15058]]
know where that idea came from. Apparently we had an imaginative veto 
message-writer.
  Then: Require the sale of timber at an unsustainable level. Again, 
there is no detail. Dictate the use of an outdated forest plan for the 
next 2 fiscal years.
  Let me point out that our bill reduces the cut as provided in that 
forest plan from 450 million board-feet to about 420 million board-
feet, and actually, we only put in enough money for 320 million board-
feet in fiscal year 1996. The Columbia River Basin was designed to move 
forward so that people in that area would know what was going to happen 
in terms of land-use planning, and I think it is only fair that they 
have that opportunity.
  The California Desert is mentioned in here. Well, under the present 
program operated by the Park Service, we had 38 big horn sheep that 
died as a result of mismanagement. All we said to the Park Service in 
the bill is, give us a plan. We put the money in for the plan. We say, 
in the meantime, let BLM operate it. They have been doing it very well; 
we did not have 38 big horn sheep dying when BLM was in charge.
  So Park Service, come out with a plan and we will be glad to look at 
it and see if we can put it in the right place.
  Then we talk about the Endangered Species Act. Let me point out that 
the Endangered Species Act has not been authorized, and that has been 
true for the last couple of years. When the present minority was the 
majority, they did not choose to reauthorize the Endangered Species 
Act, and under the Rules of the House, we cannot appropriate for bills 
that are not authorized.
  This is the reason. We put the money there subject to an 
authorization. So I think it is incumbent on the Members of this House 
to get an authorization bill, and if so, the money is there to manage 
the endangered species.
  I mentioned the energy conservation program, 80 percent more than in 
1988, a very large growth over the last several years. We finally took 
a look because we want to manage these programs better to see what 
works and what does not and what should be done in the private sector, 
and we found that, clearly, many of these programs should have a 
responsibility in the private sector.
  Then we talked about historic obligations toward Native Americans 
with $27 million over what the negotiators requested. I would point out 
that Indian health services are ahead, more than last year. In every 
instance, we have attempted to put in responsible amounts for the 
various programs.
  To veto this bill on the basis of we just do not spend enough money, 
that is the essence of the message, I think clearly that is not what 
the American people want as far as more spending.
  Mr. LIVINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. REGULA. I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana.
  Mr. LIVINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, I am absolutely incredulous that after all of the effort 
the gentleman from Ohio has undertaken with all of the members of the 
subcommittee and all of the members of the Committee on Appropriations 
and all of the Members of this House, to undertake this bill and 
carefully craft it in conjunction with the Senate, put it through three 
times in the House of Representatives, because the Senate had trouble, 
and we had difficulty making sure that there was a compromise between 
the Western States and the environmentalists and those concerned about 
Native Americans, that after all of this difficulty, the President sees 
fit to veto the bill, from what I can understand, for totally specious 
reasons.
  I have heard the veto message, and the President is constitutionally 
capable of vetoing this bill; and because of this message, we will send 
it back to committee. But I cannot assure the President that he is 
going to get a bill that is any better than the one that left this 
House. In fact, I dare say it could be worse, because as I understand 
the gentleman's comments, we have given more money than he even asked 
for for Native Americans, and yet he says it was not enough.
  We have tackled the Tongass forest timber cut, and answered many of 
his problems, as pointed out by the gentleman from New York [Mr. 
Boehlert], the last time the bill came through.
  In the energy conservation effort, there is more money in it than 
there was in 1988, as the gentleman pointed out. That is corporate 
welfare. I happen to believe that that is wasted money, it is corporate 
pork, but it is the President's priorities. We put the money in for the 
President.
  Now, he has vetoed this bill, for Lord knows what reason, and we are 
going to have to send it back; and evidently, the President is content 
to tell the 133,000 people who work for the Interior Department or work 
under the jurisdiction of this bill, have a good Christmas, but do not 
worry about going to work, because I don't care. I live in the White 
House, and I am going to a very nice Christmas with my family.
  I just have to say that I am indeed incredulous. I think that this is 
a miserable way to govern, and I hope that the American people 
understand. We put a good, decent, well-organized, welcome, promised 
bill on the table, on the desk of the President of the United States, 
and he chose to veto it for specious reasons and put all of these 
people out of work.
  I thank the gentleman for yielding to me.
  Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his contribution. 
He is absolutely right. As we see visitors being turned away from 
national parks, from the Smithsonian, from the National Gallery, what 
in fact the President is doing is holding the American people hostage 
for his own political purposes. The people who pay for these 
facilities, the people who enjoy these national treasures are being 
denied access simply because the President hopes to gain some political 
advantage.
  It is clear that if you look at the numbers, we have responded to 
these programs as effectively as possible, given the budget and 
numbers, and this message is, loud and clear, just spend more money, do 
not worry about whether it is managed well. The answer to all of the 
problems is simply to pile on the debt for future generations, spend it 
today, let them pay for it tomorrow.
  We vote here with a voting card; as I have said to people, it is the 
world's greatest credit card because we vote now and we send the bill 
to future generations. This is a classic example of doing that.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 6 minutes.
  Mr. Speaker, I think we ought to make very clear what is happening 
here tonight. Last week the Congress adjourned without passing the 
continuing resolution that would have kept the Government open, and if 
you took a look at what happened around this town over the weekend, you 
saw that both the Republicans and the Democrats in the Senate stayed in 
town and talked with each other about the budget. You saw the House 
Democrats stay in town and in fact we were in meetings for some 11 
hours over the weekend, trying to find ways that we can help resolve 
the problem.
  However, my understanding is that our good friends on the Republican 
side of the aisle in the House were told they could leave town: There 
would be no votes until late Monday. That is fact No. 1.
  Fact No. 2 is that because there is no continuing resolution now in 
effect, you do have significant portions of the Government shut down. 
Now, what is going on is that evidently the Republican message team in 
their caucus has decided that there ought to be 15 minutes or half an 
hour debate on this bill on the next bill so that people can play pin 
the tail on the President in terms of having another cat-and-dog fight 
about who is to blame for the shutdown of Government. That is what is 
going on. So we have an artificial debate here that we do not even need 
to have.
  Under normal processes, this bill would simply be referred to the 
committee with no debate and no vote, unless the majority party decided 
they wanted to try to override the veto. So what is going on here is 
another one of those little debates that further, I think, discredits 
the Congress in the eyes of the American people; and I think that is 
regrettable, but since we are here, I have no choice but to try to 
expose what is going on.
  Now, what is happening, and what you will hear for the next 20 
minutes 

[[Page H15059]]
is, our Republican friends will be trying to tell the country, through 
the TV cameras focused here on this floor, that somehow the President 
is to blame for the shutdown of Government, even though the reason the 
Government is shut down is because they would not allow a continuing 
resolution to come to the floor to keep it open. So they are trying to 
shift attention from their lack of performance on the CR to this bill.
  The President had every right to veto this bill. He told the Congress 
ahead of time if they sent it to him in this form, he would veto the 
bill. He gave them forewarning of that. In his veto message he points 
out that, among other things, his reason for doing so is because what 
this bill does for clear-cutting in the Tongass. That is an important 
policy issue.
  We do not just serve as accountants in the Congress, believe it or 
not. We and the President also have to make an occasional decision, 
believe it or not, on policy; and the President chose to stand on 
principle and veto this bill for, among other reasons, because of what 
it does to clear-cutting in the Tongass.
  I am not going to debate that here tonight because there is no reason 
for us to debate that. What we should be doing tonight, rather than 
having a meaningless half-hour debate on this vote, is simply passing a 
continuing resolution so that people who work for the Government for a 
living can do their jobs.
  That is what we should be doing. But instead, we will get this sham 
debate which substitutes a motion for movement. It is not going to do 
anybody any good.
  I would simply make one additional point. The reason we are stuck 
here tonight is because the policy arguments that are going to be 
worked out after the President's veto should have been worked out 4 
months ago. However, because the majority party felt that they had to 
first pass their contract items, and then because they chose to load up 
the Interior bill and the HUD bill with a bunch of extraneous measures 
that had no business in an appropriation bill, we spent the last 4 
months in a debate between Republicans in the House and Republicans in 
the Senate on a lot of these policy matters.

                              {time}  1815

  The Interior bill was brought down a number of times because people 
on both sides of the aisle said that it was not the right bill to 
present to the President.
  All I will say tonight, and I would prefer that we not be saying 
anything at all, because as I said, this is a meaningless debate on a 
bill that is going nowhere except to committee.
  What ought to happen tonight is that instead of having this 
meaninglessss ``who shot John'' debate, we should simply have a motion 
on this floor to pass a continuing resolution to keep the Government 
open while these differences between the President and the Congress are 
resolved. That is the rational thing to do. It is the nonpolitical 
thing to do. But evidently we are not going to do it.
  About the only other thing I can see that would make any sense in the 
Christmas season is at this point to take up a collection in the House 
so that we could buy a toy train for the folks who are running the 
House these days, because they certainly cannot run a real one.
  Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
Washington [Mr. Nethercutt], a member of the subcommittee.
  Mr. NETHERCUTT. Mr. Speaker, I was interested to listen to the 
previous speaker's comments about not wanting to have this debate or 
not needing to have this discussion tonight. But to the contrary, as a 
freshman member of this subcommittee I can certainly attest to the hard 
work that was engaged in to try to reach a reasonable compromise on 
this massive Interior bill that has to deal with the Nation's public 
lands. What has to be said here is that after a great deal of debate 
and discussion and grave consideration given to the good and the bad of 
this bill, we came to the President with a darn good bill.
  And talk about pinning the tail on the donkey, I think precisely 
where the tail needs to be pinned is downtown. The President vetoed a 
very good bill for some specious reasons, in my judgement, not the 
least of which was one affecting my area of the country, the eastern 
side of the State of Washington in the Pacific Northwest.
  The East Side Ecosystem Management Study was a reason that the 
President identified as part of the veto message. This astounds me, 
simply becuase this is a study that the taxpayers have paid $24 million 
on and really have not seen any reports of its results or any 
scientific findings that are to be presented.
  What we did, in the analysis of the subcommittee and the full 
committee, in the House as well as the Senate, was to say to the Bureau 
of Land Management and the Forest Service, give us your science, let us 
see what we spent $24 million on in this Congress. We have even given 
them another $4 million to give more time for public input and more 
publication of the scientific findings.
  So for the President to stoop as low as he did in using a study as 
the reason for a veto is astounding. I think it emphasizes the fact 
that this bill should not have been vetoed, it should not have been 
vetoed for this reason, and it was an improper act on the part of the 
President.
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
Colorado [Mr. Skaggs].
  Mr. SKAGGS. I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time.
  Mr. Speaker, why are we here talking about this December 18? We 
finally sent a conference report to the President on this bill 2\1/2\ 
months late. Why was it 2\1/2\ months late? Because the folks on this 
side of the aisle insisted in jamming all manner of ill-considered and 
ill-conceived policy matters into this bill.
  That is one reason we need a continuing resolution, because of the 
delay and the delay and the delay in getting the work of this place 
done on time, because they could not reach agreement between the right 
wing and the extreme right wing within the Republican conference on 
many of these policy issues. That is why a bunch of the appropriations 
bills are not done.
  We need a continuing resolution. Why do we not have a continuing 
resolution? Because of the illogic over here in saying to the President 
of the United States, even though our homework is late, we want extra 
credit. We are insisting on concessions on other things even though it 
is our fault for not having gotten our work done on time.
  How in the world does that make any sense to the American people? It 
makes none.
  The responsibility for being in the fix that we are now in, with this 
bill being vetoed and with no continuing resolution, relates entirely 
to the misguided policies of trying to jam extraneous policy matters 
into these appropriation bills, not getting them done on time and then 
saying, ``Not our fault, and besides, we would like some additional 
concessions, Mr. President, if you please.''
  Let us get back to what really needs to be done here, which is 
getting this Government open, acknowledging responsibility, being 
accountable for not having run the House of Representatives responsibly 
as the majority party is supposed to be doing.
  Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from 
California [Mr. Lewis].
  Mr. LEWIS of California. I appreciate my colleague yielding me the 
time.
  Mr. Speaker, I wanted to mention that in the statement by my 
colleague from Ohio, he mentioned the East Mojave as one of the reasons 
the President outlined for vetoing this bill. The work done on the East 
Mojave was a reflection of many of the major efforts made by my 
colleague from Ohio. He went out of his way to try to find compromise 
wherever possible to see if we could not put this bill in a form that 
would make sense. Obviously the President's people have not given him 
solid information regarding what is going on in that area. Instead of 
harming the environment, my chairman's compromise is attempting to 
solve the problems that have been created by the Park Service 
mismanagement of the area.
  Let me make that point very clear. The House had created a scenic 
area, not a park. The House in turn had directed the Park Service to 
live with long-standing multiple use of the area. 

[[Page H15060]]
Instead, they began putting up no trespass signs. Instead, they began 
excluding families from the area. In the process, their mismanagement 
led to the death of 38 bighorn sheep. They died as a result of 
mismanagement and a lack of a plan.
  The gentleman created the opportunity for a plan by providing money 
for that planning process. The gentleman responded to the President's 
people in developing that plan. And the President was led to believe 
that something else was the case.
  The chairman has done a very fine job, deserves support and 
recognition from the President, not a slap in the face by way of a veto 
pen.
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
Montana [Mr. Williams].
  Mr. WILLIAMS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member for yielding me 
the time, and agree with him that obviously our friends on the right 
are trying to play pin the tail and they are hopeful that it hits the 
occupant of the White House.
  We have heard about Corrections Day. This is nonsense day. I have not 
heard much, during the numerous times of debate on this legislation, 
about a new effort in America called AmeriCorps. I want to spend my 
remaining time addressing the House on AmeriCorps.
  AmeriCorps, as many Members know, is patterned after the old wildly 
successful CCC camps. There are 1,200 AmeriCorps camps in the United 
States with thousands of young people. They are involved in helping the 
Red Cross and Boys' Club, and this bill kills it.
  There are thousands of young people in the United States working on 
AmeriCorps, building homes for the homeless under Habitat for Humanity, 
and this bill kills it. There are thousands of young people working in 
our parks and our playgrounds and our forests and our streets and our 
nursing homes, and this bill kills it.
  What did Speaker Gingrich say about the participants, the young 
Americans who participate in AmeriCorps? He said, ``They become not 
only useless, they become dangerous.''
  And he is not the only one on the far right, among our friends on the 
far right, who do not know what is right about AmeriCorps.
  Some say the cost of AmeriCorps is $30,000 per client, per corpsman. 
That is not right. They are paid a minimum wage, and then they are 
given a $4,700 scholarship. That does not come to anywhere near 
$30,000.
  So this bill and/or the other bill that is going to be before us 
tonight kill AmeriCorps, and I encourage my colleagues to vote against 
this and the other, for that and other reasons.
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
Illinois [Mr. Durbin].
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. Speaker, why did this bill arrive on the President's 
desk 75 days late? It arrived there because it became the playground of 
special interest groups while it was still on Capitol Hill.
  The longest-running taxpayer ripoff in the history of the United 
States is the Mining Act of 1872. It allows companies, in many cases 
foreign companies, to mine taxpayer-owned land in the United States and 
not to pay the taxpayers adequately for that. So we have been engaged 
in a battle for a long time with those special interest groups.
  Unfortunately for my colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle, 
many of them, most of them, supported the mining interests, wanted to 
keep this ancient law on the books, this law that gave a windfall to so 
many companies. So this bill was dragged down time after time after 
time when these special interest groups kept running into resistance on 
Capitol Hill.
  The next thing you know, the committee failed to meet its deadline of 
October 1, then they failed to meet a November 1 deadline, then they 
failed to meet a December 1 deadline. And finally, finally, finally in 
the middle of December, they submitted their bill to the President.
  Part of it was right. They finally got part of this Mining Act of 
1872 provision correctly, but there are other parts that were not 
right. Unfortunately, this bill turned out to be an environmental 
disaster when it was sent to President Clinton.
  I am sorry to say that, too, because the gentleman from Ohio, who is 
a friend of mine, is a moderate person on his record on the 
environment. In fact, he has been very good on many of his votes, in 
fact occasionally very, very good in his votes.
  But he is an endangered species, just like those addressed in the 
bill, a moderate Republican committed to the environment. He has 
labored long and hard to fight off the worst of the environmental 
provisions in this bill, but unfortunately for my colleague from Ohio, 
he just could not keep all of the bad provisions out, and forced a veto 
by President Clinton for good reason.
  The American people want change in this Government but they want us 
to protect our natural resources. We only get one crack at it when it 
comes to national parks, when it comes to species and plant life in 
this country. It is something the American people expect us to do 
right. When the special interests railroad through a bill and put in 
these awful provisions, the President was right to veto it.

  Having said that, though, this veto has nothing to do with shutting 
down the Government. The Republicans understand, we all understand, a 
simple temporary spending bill called a continuing resolution could 
keep this department, every department that is touched by this bill and 
all the other departments that have been closed in business.
  But my friends on the Republican side of the aisle do not want that 
to happen. This Christmas gift to 200,000 Federal employees is no 
temporary spending bill, send them home without pay, with the promise 
that maybe they will get paid at some future date.
  Well, tonight they are trying to blame President Clinton for that. 
They should not. They ought to blame the special interests for dragging 
this bill down and making it 75 days late. They ought to blame their 
own leadership for failing to pass a continuing resolution which would 
keep the Government in business.

                              {time}  1830

  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the remainder of my time.
  Mr. Speaker, I have known the gentleman from Ohio a good long time 
and the gentleman from California a good long time, and they are both 
fine legislators and they are both tough adversaries. I know that 
especially on the bill which will come up next that we have had some 
very tough issues and some very heated words exchanged on the floor and 
in committee between various Members in the House.
  Having said that, I know full well that if these bills had been left 
to the judgment of the gentleman from Ohio and the gentleman from 
California without extraneous political pressures intervening, that 
both of them would probably by now have become law, and I think that 
both bills would have been in better shape by far than the bills which 
the President was forced to veto.
  None of us can do anything about the circumstances in which these 
bills are being debated. But I do simply want to take this time to say 
that after we discuss all of these bills tonight, after we discuss this 
bill and the VA-HUD bill which is coming next, and the vetoes of both 
of them, there is remaining one action which we could take which would 
do something real to open the Government tonight. That would simply be 
to pass House Joint Resolution 131, which is at the desk, which is 
introduced by the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Gephardt], myself, and 
the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Murtha], which would simply keep 
the Government open from now until January 26, so that we could, in 
fact, resolve the many differences which remain between the White House 
and the Congress on these bills and many others. As you know, the 
majority leader in the Senate even indicated at one point his 
preference for a longer continuing resolution than that. I happen to 
think he was right when he said that.
  What we have now is the miserable spectacle of a series of 2- and 3-
day CR's, intermittent Government shutdowns, all for the purpose 
apparently of the leadership of the this House gaining some leverage in 
the other discussions going on over the budget. I think that is 
illegitimate.
  The reason the Government is shut down has nothing whatsoever to do 
with the budget discussions about 7-year budget figures going on in 
other 

[[Page H15061]]
places in this building. The reason the Government is shut down is 
simply because the appropriation bills did not work their way through 
Congress in a timely fashion and, when they did, they were burdened 
with special-interest provisions which required the President to veto 
them, and in several cases were burdened with reductions so savage 
that, in fact, in the other body they would not even take them up.
  So I would simply say that despite all of the hyperbole we will hear 
tonight, if we want to do something constructive for the people we 
represent after that debate is finished, we will see something similar 
to House Joint Resolution 131 brought out so that Government can stay 
open while we resolve our differences. That is the rational thing to 
do.
  Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
  Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, just to keep the record straight, we 
do not deal with mining reform in this bill. We put in, as requested by 
the administration, a moratorium on the issuance of patents, and this 
puts a hold on any new giveaways until such time as the authorizing 
committees deal with the mining.
  Let me also point out that we are up over last year on parks, on the 
Smithsonian, the things that the public enjoys. We make sure they have 
access to them, that they have an opportunity to use those, the 
National Gallery and the forests and fish and wildlife, recreation 
facilities.
  We really divided this bill into three categories: The must-do's, the 
need-to-do's, and the nice-to-do's, and some of the nice-to-do's had to 
fall out. Why? Because we want to reduce the deficits. It is that 
simple.
  In this bill we are $1.4 billion less than in 1995 in budget 
authority. We are $600 million less in spending, in actual outlays, in 
fiscal 1996. It was tough, frankly, and the President is saying, ``Hey 
you are not spending enough money.'' But I do not think it is fair to 
the young people, to future generations, to borrow money and saddle 
them with paying for all of the nice-to-do's. Energy conservation, 
where you fund programs for private companies, maybe it is nice to do. 
But should we be borrowing the money to pay for these? I do not think 
so.
  I think what the President is saying is his veto message is very 
simple: ``You are not spending enough money.'' But I believe that the 
American voters said in 1994, in November, ``We want less spending. We 
want the budget balanced. We want the deficit reduced. We do not want 
to saddle future generations with our bills.'' It is that simple.
  I have to agree with them. I do not think we should saddle future 
generations. We took a hard look at every program and said, ``How can 
we manage this a little more effectively?''
  The Committee on Appropriations are the managers of Government. They 
determine how much money should be expended on various programs, and we 
said these are nice to do but they are not a value that makes it a good 
policy to borrow money to pay for them, and certainly I think that we 
did a responsible job.
  I regret that the President did not carefully examine the bill, for 
example, saying that it provides clear-cutting in the Tongass. Totally 
wrong. There is not a word about clear-cutting in the Tongass. We 
reduced the cut, as a matter of fact, from the present level, and I 
regret that the veto message does not more accurately portray the real 
facts of this bill and that the American people are denied the 
benefits.
  I would say to my colleagues, vote ``yes'' on the motion to refer 
this to the committee.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hastings of Washington). Without 
objection, the previous question is ordered on the motion.
  There was no objection.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the 
gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Regula].
  The motion was agreed to.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

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