[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 113 (Wednesday, August 4, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H6983-H7018]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




DEPARTMENTS OF COMMERCE, JUSTICE, AND STATE, THE JUDICIARY, AND RELATED 
                   AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2000

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 273 and rule 
XVIII, 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. 2670.

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                     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. 2670) making appropriations for the Departments of Commerce, 
Justice, and State, the Judiciary, and related agencies for the fiscal 
year ending September 30, 2000, and for other purposes, with Mr. 
Hastings of Washington 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 Kentucky (Mr. Rogers) and the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Serrano) each will control 30 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers).
  Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 12 minutes.
  Mr. Chairman, H.R. 2670, making appropriations for the Departments of 
Commerce, Justice, and State, the Judiciary, and related agencies for 
fiscal year 2000, provides funding for programs whose impact ranges 
from the safety of people in their homes, to the conduct of diplomacy 
around the world, to predicting the weather from satellites in outer 
space.
  Mr. Chairman, this bill requires a very delicate balancing of needs 
and requirements, from ongoing activities and operations of the 
departments and regulatory agencies, to new areas of concern like 
preparing to respond to the threat of domestic terrorism or beefing up 
worldwide security for our embassies overseas, to special funding 
requirements like the decennial census.
  This year, our capacity to respond to all of these needs is tempered 
by the fiscal restraint under which we are forced to operate. The 1997 
budget act for 5 years imposed spending restraints in each of those 5 
years, in other words, budget caps, spending caps, beyond which we 
cannot exceed. We all went home after we passed that Budget Act of 
1997, most of us voted for it, both sides of the aisle, and we crowed 
about how we were saving America's fiscal integrity, and we did.
  Mr. Chairman, the piper is at the door waiting to be paid for that 
party, and this bill represents the piper. This is a very, very austere 
bill. We are having to live with those budget caps and yet maintain 
some very, very critical agencies of this government, a little bit like 
as I told in the full committee, the old drunk back home that was 
arrested for setting his bed on fire at the rooming house where he 
lived, he came into court and the judge asked for his plea, and the old 
fellow said, ``Well, your honor, I plead guilty to being drunk, but 
that doggone bed was on fire when I got in it.'' I am telling my 
colleagues that these budget caps are with us. We have to live with it. 
And we will.
  We have had to carefully prioritize the funding in this bill and make 
very hard judgments about how to spend these limited resources.
  The bill before the Committee today recommends a total of $35.8 
billion in discretionary funding that comes from three places: $27.1 
billion is general purpose discretionary funds; $4.2 billion is from 
the violent crime trust fund; and $4.5 billion is emergency funding.
  Leaving aside the Census, and oh, how I wish I could leave aside the 
Census, the bill is $833 million below current spending and $1.3 
billion below the CBO's freeze level for fiscal year 2000.
  For the Department of Justice, the bill provides $18.1 billion, $6 
million above current spending. Increases are provided to maintain 
current operating levels of key law enforcement agencies. FBI, DEA, 
U.S. Attorneys, U.S. Marshals, U.S. Bureau of Prisons all are 
maintained at their current operating level. And we address a severe 
detention space shortfall in the Bureau of Prisons and the INS with 
this bill.
  These increases are offset by a decrease in funding for COPS, from 
$1.4 billion to $268 million. I would point out that that $268 million 
is the full authorization level set in law for the final year of the 
current program. That is all we are allowed by law to appropriate, and 
we did.
  Local law enforcement and criminal justice block grants are 
maintained at or near last year's level, $1.3 billion more than the 
administration requested. That assures that your State and local law 
enforcement agencies, your sheriffs, your police departments, continue 
to have the resources to fight crime in your districts.
  The major program increases in the bill can be counted on two 
fingers, and they are both in Justice, $100 million for 1,000 new 
border patrol agents, which the administration refused to request, and 
$22 million for the Drug Enforcement Administration, equaling the 
administration's budget request.
  I would point out and remind Members that the latest statistics on 
violent crime in the United States show that America is now suffering 
the least number of violent crimes since we have been keeping records. 
I would like to say to my subcommittee members over those years, and 
the full committee members, and the full Congress, a big thank you on 
behalf of the American people for staying with funding for these law 
agencies over these years to enable America now to have the lowest 
crime rate in recorded history.
  For the Immigration and Naturalization Service, we continue to 
provide resources for the naturalization backlog reduction initiative, 
for the detention shortfall, and for the border patrol, and we continue 
to hope against hope that the most mismanaged and unmanageable agency 
of the Federal Government, the INS, will dig its way out of its 
continuing state of crisis. They cannot claim money as a cause, because 
we have given them all the money they can spend and more, to be frank. 
We have doubled this agency's budget in 5 years, tripled it in the last 
10 years, and yet it manages now to perform crisis after crisis.
  In the Department of Commerce, we provide full funding for the 2000 
decennial census. All the money is there.

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Every penny that is needed by the Department of Commerce and the Bureau 
of the Census to conduct the decennial census is in this bill. Make no 
mistake. For those who have been crying all of these years for adequate 
funding for the decennial census, and after we had pleaded with the 
administration to furnish us the dollar figure of the request for a 
full census, only 7 weeks ago, months and months behind schedule, they 
finally coughed up the figure. That figure now in this bill, $4.5 
billion, is an increase of $3.5 billion over current spending, no 
restrictions. ``Do the census. You got the money.''
  In the rest of the Commerce section, we provide $3.6 billion, which 
is $500 million below fiscal year 1999. We include current operating 
levels for the National Weather Service and avert commercial service 
office closings overseas, which are more than offset by decreases in 
low priority NOAA programs and the termination of the Advanced 
Technology Program.
  Judiciary, $3.9 billion, an increase of $272 million, maintains 
current operating levels.
  State Department and the Broadcasting Board of Governors, $5.7 
billion, $1.3 billion below current appropriations, including 
emergencies.
  We include $568 million, Mr. Chairman, for the costs of worldwide 
security improvements to our embassies, places where Americans work 
overseas, and we replace vulnerable embassies started in 1999 with 
emergency funding.
  We include $351 million for the third and final year of U.N. arrears, 
subject to authorization, the amount agreed to by the White House and 
Congress in the pending authorization.
  It abolishes two agencies, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and 
the U.S. Information Agency. We merge them into the State Department.

                              {time}  1300

  Most of the related agencies are frozen at 1999 levels; 141 million 
for the LSC; for SBA, 734 million, a $15 million increase over fiscal 
1999. And we continue our emphasis on funding disaster loans, a 
function that SBA has continued to raid to fund salaries and expenses 
over the last 3 years. This is the second year we have been required to 
send them a message on that issue.
  This is the bare bones of the recommendations before my colleagues 
today. It is based on a freeze with reductions where we could, and 
increases above fiscal 1999 where needed to maintain operations of 
critical law enforcement and other agencies. We give no ground on the 
war on crime and drugs. We provide the resources to State and local law 
enforcement that has helped bring the violent crime rate down for 5 
straight years to its lowest level since Justice began tracking in 
1973. We fully fund the 2000 census. We pull our weight with respect to 
meeting the need for fiscal restraint and more.
  Mr. Chairman, this bill represents our best take on matching needs 
with scarce resources to do the right thing.
  I want to thank the ranking minority member, the gentleman from New 
York (Mr. Serrano), who has been a very effective and a very valued 
partner and colleague on this bill. He has been a quick study. He is 
brand new on the subcommittee and brand new as ranking member, and this 
is a complicated bill with a lot of coverage, and he has spent a lot of 
late nights working getting ready for preparing to help bring this bill 
to the floor. I want to thank him for his good work.
  I also want to thank all of the members of the subcommittee: the 
gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe), the gentleman from North Carolina 
(Mr. Taylor), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula), the gentleman from 
Iowa (Mr. Latham), the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Miller), the 
gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Wamp), the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Dixon), the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mollohan), and the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Roybal-Allard) for all of their help 
and assistance.
  And let us take a moment to extend our deepest sympathy to the 
gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mollohan) and his family on the loss 
of his father who preceded Alan, of course, as a Member of this body 
and on this subcommittee. Our hearts go out to Alan and all of his 
family, and I thank him for his valued help in preparing this bill.
  Finally, I want to thank my full chairman, the gentleman from Florida 
(Mr. Young), the ranking member, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. 
Obey). They have been marvelous in helping us move this bill forward. 
We have tried very hard to produce the best bill we possibly could 
within the resources we had to work with. I think it is a good bill; it 
is a fair bill. It is austere, but I think it is fair, and I urge all 
Members to support it.

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[[Page H6994]]

  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Chairman, today we take up H.R. 2670, the bill making 
appropriations for the Departments of Commerce, Justice and State, the 
Judiciary, and several related agencies. It has been a great personal 
pleasure for me to work with our chairman, the gentleman from Kentucky 
(Mr. Rogers) and with the other members of the subcommittee. Special 
thanks also to my ranking member, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. 
Obey).
  The gentleman from Kentucky's (Mr. Rogers) many years on this 
subcommittee have given him tremendous knowledge, both broad and deep, 
of the wide variety of topics under the subcommittee's jurisdiction. 
His stewardship of the subcommittee is marked by his fairness and 
attentiveness to the interests and concerns of Members. I have also 
benefited greatly from the guidance of the former chairman and ranking 
Democrat of the subcommittee, the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. 
Mollohan), who has spent so many years on this bill. I know all my 
colleagues join me and the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers) in 
sending their condolences to Alan and his family on the loss of his 
father, Robert Mollohan, who served with such distinction in this body.
  I must also say a word about our very professional and able staff who 
have worked long and hard, including nights and weekends, to get us to 
the floor so quickly after the decision on offsets. More on that later. 
They enabled us to begin putting a bill together. Since we are on 
first-name basis, I will do it this way. On the majority side they are 
Jim and Jennifer, Mike and Cordia and Christine, with Kevin and Jason 
from the office of the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers). On our 
side we have Sally and Pat, who have done just tremendous work on my 
behalf, and of course all of my personal staff under the leadership of 
Lucy Hand.
  As my colleagues know, Mr. Chairman, this year I was catapulted from 
not on the subcommittee at all to ranking Democrat. Learning this large 
and challenging bill practically from scratch has made this an 
interesting and educational year for me.
  As the chairman has explained, the bill includes budget authority of 
about $35.7 billion. This is certainly much better than our initial 
302(b) allocation, but it is still about $3 billion short, below the 
budget request. The manner in which the chairman allocated funds among 
the major accounts was for the most part fair and evenhanded, and I 
applaud his efforts to minimize staff cuts and facility closings.
  But the bill still has problems. The biggest problem is simply the 
inadequacy of the subcommittee's allocation. This bill underfunds 
important programs. It does not fund important Member and 
administration initiatives, and still has to use gimmicks to stay under 
the allocation. It is ironic that House and Senate Republicans pointed 
to forecasts of huge on-budget surpluses to justify passing their bills 
to make massive backloaded tax cuts; but forecasts of future economic 
activities are unreliable at best, and, more important, the surpluses 
mostly depend on Congress sticking with the deepening appropriations 
cuts enacted in the Balanced Budget Act, which, incidentally, I did not 
support. The gimmicks used to make this bill look as if it is under the 
FY2000 cap show how unlikely it is that these spending cuts will 
materialize over the next decade.
  The main gimmick, of course, is the emergency designation for the 
census. This provision, imposed on the committee by the Republican 
leadership, is a misuse of the emergency designation; we have known 
that a census would be required in 2000 for about 200 years. It also 
means spending the Social Security surplus.
  On more specific provisions, the bill provides the Census Bureau with 
the resources it needs to do the 2000 census and the necessary quality 
checks on it. This is a tremendous accomplishment, and I am very proud 
of the work that both sides of the aisle did on this.
  While I am pleased that the bill includes funding for the U.N. 
arrears, I am very concerned that the bill underfunds our U.N. 
accounts. This may cost us our vote in the General Assembly and, with 
it, any leverage we might hope to exercise over management and budget 
reforms at the U.N. The bill is $95 million short of the request for 
arrears, creates new arrears by cutting funding for peacekeeping, and 
conditions $100 million of our payments on a time-consuming 
certification process. But if we do not pay the U.N. $352 million by 
December 31, our General Assembly vote will automatically, and we mean 
automatically, be lost.
  The most troubling shortfall and the major exception to the 
relatively evenhanded treatment of other agencies is the real cut to 
SBA salaries and expenses, which would have a drastic impact on the 
agency. If enacted, the SBA estimates it would require a reduction in 
force of 2,400 employees or 75 percent of SBA's work force. Apart from 
effectively closing down activities vital to our Nation's small 
businesses, it would also hamper SBA's ability to monitor a loan 
portfolio totaling $45 billion. By the end of this process, this 
devastating cut must be restored.

  The Legal Services Corporation, too, was grossly underfunded in what 
has become an annual ritual. The bill provides only $141 million, less 
than half of last year's level, and 200 million below the President's 
request. Each year for the last 3 or 4 years this level has been 
proposed, and each year there has been an amendment raising the level 
to $250 million or so. And so it will be again this year.
  Other important examples of underfunding includes the COPS program, 
over $1 billion under the request; the Equal Employment Opportunity 
Commission, frozen at $33 million below the request; the Civil Rights 
Commission, also frozen at $2 million below the request; the National 
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, half a billion under the 
request; and the State Department, half a billion under the request.
  Unfunded initiatives include the 21st century policing initiative or 
COPS II, the anti-drug initiative on the State or local law 
enforcement, efforts to combat terrorism and cybercrime, the advanced 
technology program, the new markets initiative, the Lands Legacy 
initiative, the tobacco lawsuit, and the Pacific Salmon Recovery 
initiative.
  Mr. Chairman, in closing I think the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. 
Rogers) has generally done a good job distributing funds within a much 
too small allocation. The meager size of the bill and the programs and 
initiatives that cannot be fully funded within the total remain 
problems, and the administration has raised serious concerns with the 
bill, many of which I have mentioned, and has suggested that it would 
be vetoed in its present form.
  However, Mr. Chairman, I look forward to working with my chairman to 
address these problems. I am hopeful that by the time we bring a 
conference report to the floor we will have more money to work with so 
that we can restore much-needed resources to the important programs in 
this bill and to accommodate requests for important initiatives.
  Let me say, so that I am clear, that this is so important to me that 
I am giving my vote to this bill in support of the chairman's desire to 
make this a better bill. I cannot account for the rest of my Members 
who may feel that this bill, as it stands, will not get any better, and 
we will see quite a large number of Members voting against it. I 
personally will vote for it in the hope that we can achieve our 
objectives. If we cannot achieve the improvements that I hope for, I 
will oppose the conference report. If the President vetoes the bill, I 
will vote to sustain his veto. But for now I choose to move the process 
along, and I will support H.R. 2670.
  Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman I yield such time as he may consume to the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Youngc), the very effective chairman of the 
full committee who has done a wonderful job this year bringing these 
bills to the floor.
  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the bill and 
to pay a special tribute to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers) 
and the gentleman from New York (Mr. Serrano), the ranking member, 
because as we get to the end of the appropriations process for the 13 
regular

[[Page H6995]]

bills, the job gets a little more difficult, and they have done a 
really outstanding job in bringing us a bill that we should pass here.
  The gentleman from New York (Mr. Serrano) mentioned he wants to make 
it a better bill. He will be an important member of the conference 
committee as will the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers) who will 
chair the conference committee.
  But they have got a good bill now. Could they use more money? Why 
sure. Back in our homes we could all use more money, at least most of 
us could. And in our businesses, we all could use more money. The 
government loves to have more money.
  But we took on the responsibility of trying to stay within the budget 
cap, at least balance the budget and stay at or below last year's 
level, and that is what the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers) has 
been able to accomplish. I know there are some disagreements and some 
differences in how we got where we are, but let me tell my colleagues 
where we are.
  First off, Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee on Appropriations 
really have a special responsibility to this House and to the Nation. 
Of all the legislation that we consider in this House, the only bills 
that really have to pass, that must pass, are the appropriation bills, 
and the appropriators have recognized that responsibility, and I am 
happy to report that as we pass this bill today, we will have passed 
through the House 11 of the 13 regular appropriations bills.
  The 13th bill we had put off by agreement until we resume our sitting 
in September, and the VA-HUD bill that we were scheduled to consider on 
tomorrow, we have delayed consideration out of respect for our 
colleague, the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mollohan) due to the 
loss of his father yesterday. So we will put off that bill until we 
reconvene in September.

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  We will have done 11 regular bills before we break for the recess. We 
have done two supplementals. We will have done two conference reports 
by the time we pass this bill today. So 11 plus 2 is 13, plus 2 more is 
15 important measures that the appropriators have brought to this House 
and passed through this House.
  We also expect, Mr. Chairman, to have 3 more conference reports ready 
on regular bills before this week is over.
  We have done a good job. There have been some disagreements, some in 
subcommittee, some in full committee, some on the floor. But, Mr. 
Chairman, this committee has had to consider, and I want all Members to 
pay attention to this, this committee has had to consider requests from 
Members, and Members have every right to come to this body to represent 
their districts and to represent what they believe is right for 
America, for some $80 billion in requests to add money over the budget. 
In most of those cases, while most of them were good projects that 
should have been considered, we did not have the money to fund them.
  Despite the fact we had to say no to an awful lot of Members because 
we did not have the money to fund the program that they wanted to fund 
exactly the way they wanted it, and again I want all Members to listen 
to this, Mr. Chairman, the Transportation appropriations bill passed 
with a vote of 429 to 3; the Energy and Water appropriations bill 
passed with a vote of 420 to 8; the Military Construction 
appropriations bill passed with a vote of 418 to 4; the Defense 
appropriations bill passed with a vote of 379 to 45; the Interior 
appropriations bill passed with a vote of 377 to 47; the District of 
Columbia appropriations bill passed with a vote of 333 to 92; and the 
list goes on. The bills have been receiving great bipartisan support.
  The appropriators have done a good job, have brought good 
appropriations bills at or below last year's level, which is the first 
time that has happened, except for national defense, where we did have 
increases that were necessary because of the many, many deployments 
that our troops have been required to conduct in the last 6 or 7 years.
  So I support this bill. It is a good bill. I understand that in 
conference the gentleman from New York (Mr. Serrano) will have an 
opportunity to work further on the bill, but with the leadership of the 
gentleman from Kentucky (Chairman Rogers) and the tremendous staff that 
we have on this subcommittee, I am satisfied that the end result will 
be a product that most of us can support.
  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from 
Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), the distinguished ranking member of the 
committee.
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.
  Mr. Chairman, let me say the remarks that I will make are in no way 
intended to criticize either the distinguished chairman of the 
subcommittee or the distinguished ranking member. They have both done 
the best job they can under the circumstances. The problem is that the 
circumstances are ridiculous.
  Let me cite first my concerns with the specifics of this bill. This 
bill, despite evidence that community policing has been of great 
assistance in lowering the crime rate, this bill effectively ends the 
Cops on the Beat program. It provides the last remaining money that is 
needed to fund that program, but it does not fund the follow-on program 
that is meant to put additional police on the streets in our 
communities, because it is not authorized. If this Congress does not 
provide that money, it is a serious mistake.
  This bill would take a number of actions which I think are extremely 
mean-minded in terms of the way it deals with the poor and with 
minority groups in our society. The bill effectively terminates the 
Legal Services Corporation. The funding provided would effectively 
result in a 3-year phaseout of that corporation.
  The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, it cuts $33 million or 
11 percent below the request. We ought to be doing more to enforce the 
law against discrimination, not less in real terms.
  The bill eliminates the entire $20 million requested for the Justice 
Department to initiate litigation against the tobacco industry to 
recover Federal costs for smoking-related illnesses under Medicare.
  The bill effectively will provide for the loss of the U.S. voting 
rights in the General Assembly in the United Nations. That is 
definitely not in our national interest.
  It provides very deep cuts in environmental programs, such as our 
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration programs and the 
National Weather Service, and it has an outrageous provision which, in 
a gross abuse of the Budget Act, pretends that somehow the Congress did 
not know we were going to have to appropriate over $4 billion to run 
the decennial census. That abuse of the budget process by declaring 
those funds to be emergency funds outside the normal limits of the 
budget process discredits the committee.
  I believe in the committee having the right when we have a legitimate 
emergency to declare one and to move forward to meet that emergency, 
but if we pretend that amounts that we know we are going to spend on a 
regular basis are actually emergency appropriations, we lose the right 
to have people view our request with credibility when we make requests 
for a legitimate emergency designation.
  The problem with this bill is simply that it is not real. It is yet 
another bill that allows the majority in this House to maintain the 
fiction that we can afford to pass out $1 trillion in tax cuts, two-
thirds of the benefits of which are going to the highest income 10 
percent of the people in this country. It pretends that we can do all 
of that, but there is a hidden assumption. That hidden assumption is 
that the government is going to take everything that we do in the 
appropriations process, the education programs, the health programs, 
the anti-crime programs, and that we are essentially going to carve 
those up by at least 20 percent.
  Right now we spend about $1,100 per person to provide those kinds of 
services to the American people. If we can hold the defense budget to 
the level that the President has asked, we will only see under this and 
other bills provided by the majority, we will only see that cut to $780 
per person. That is a huge per-person reduction in services for 
education and health and environmental cleanup and the rest.
  If the Clinton budget numbers for the military budget are not held 
and if in

[[Page H6996]]

fact we spend more on defense, as this committee has already done, then 
what we are providing by way of those investments per person in this 
country will drop from over $1,100 per person to just over $600 per 
person.
  Does anybody really believe that this Congress is going to make those 
kinds of cuts? That is a false promise, that is a phony promise, and I 
do not think we ought to be making promises this institution does not 
have any intention of keeping.
  That is why this bill is going to be vetoed by the President. This is 
another one of the appropriations bills which is on a short route to 
nowhere.
  I would remind you, we have only 18 legislative days left before the 
beginning of the next fiscal year. We need to have our work done. This 
is going to delay our ability to get our work done. That is why I think 
we ought to vote against the bill on final passage.
  Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to a very hard 
working Member of this subcommittee, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. 
Latham).
  Mr. LATHAM. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman very much for 
yielding me time.
  Mr. Chairman, I rise today in strong support of the Commerce, 
Justice, State, Judiciary appropriations bill for this next fiscal 
year.
  The gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers), the chairman of our 
subcommittee, has worked with Members on both sides of the aisle to 
craft a bill that I think properly reflects this Congress' priorities, 
particularly in the area of law enforcement.
  Each year there are new and greater challenges confronting law 
enforcement officials throughout this Nation. In order to be 
successful, Federal, State and local law enforcement need to work 
together in a coordinated effort to combat criminals that are 
increasingly better organized, more lethal and more technologically 
advanced.
  To assist local law enforcement in every Members' districts, this 
bill once again provides $523 million in local law enforcement block 
grants that the administration, again this year, tried to eliminate in 
its budget submissions.
  In my home State of Iowa, like many States throughout the Midwest and 
the West, it has become inundated with the methamphetamine production 
and trafficking. In fact, the tri-state Siouxland region of Iowa, 
Nebraska, and South Dakota has become the meth distribution center of 
the country, where the drug costs up to $30,000 a kilo.
  According to DEA officials, more than 20 Mexican organizations run 
operations in this region and supply 90 percent of Iowa's meth. This is 
no happenstance. These people actually sat down, set up a marketing 
plan in the U.S., targeted the upper Midwest, and are executing this 
marketing plan with this poison to our families and our children.
  Mr. Chairman, even though we have the cartels active in the area, 
domestic producers are also a very significant problem. In 1994, Iowa 
law enforcement officials seized one clandestine meth lab. In 1996, it 
had risen to 10. Despite the increased awareness of the problem, this 
year in Iowa we will have over 300 meth labs seized in the State.
  The bill before us today provides greater resources for the DEA to 
focus on the meth epidemic in America's heartland. The DEA is funded at 
more than $1.2 billion, which includes funds targeted at meth 
production and trafficking, and funding is provided to assist small 
communities in my district and throughout rural America with the 
expensive and technologically challenging removal of hazardous waste 
generated from clandestine meth lab sites.
  The bill directs $35 million in resources to local law enforcement in 
the war on meth, to the COPS Meth Drug Hot Spots Program. Included in 
this funding is the innovative tri-state meth training center in Sioux 
City, Iowa, which provides police officers in rural areas with training 
and comprehensive counter-drug operations that their communities would 
not be able to afford or have access to.
  Continuing our efforts to stem the flow of illegal aliens, this bill 
once again provides funding for 1,000 new Border Patrol agents.
  I would like to take the remainder of my time to thank the chairman, 
who has done a fantastic job and been so responsive to the needs of 
rural America, and I think for this entire country in his outstanding 
efforts as far as law enforcement, and also thank the ranking member, 
the gentleman from New York (Mr. Serrano). It has been a pleasure to 
work with you in your first year on the committee. I look forward to 
working together very, very closely in conference and to get a bill 
that passes with an overwhelming vote.
  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
Ohio (Mr. Sawyer).
  Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from 
Ohio.
  The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Sawyer) is recognized for 
3 minutes.
  (Mr. SAWYER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. SAWYER. Mr. Chairman, timeliness is critical to the census. The 
Census Bureau needs full funding on October 1st. Delay will irrevocably 
degrade the accuracy of the count. A lot of work has been done to make 
the census better than previous ones. I know the problems of 1990, I 
went through the process with a number of us here, and I do not want to 
see them repeated again.
  Without timely funding, the advertisements for the awareness campaign 
will not be aired when people will hear them; they will be aired at 3 
in the morning when nobody is listening. That is what happened during 
1990 when we missed 8.4 million people and double-counted another 4.4 
million. The Bureau needs to screen and hire and train hundreds of 
thousands of workers for its 520 offices and 12 regional centers. 
Without timely funding, staffing and operations of those offices will 
be delayed, and that will compromise the quality and the accuracy of 
the census.
  Without timely funding, the work of local governments in developing 
the critical address lists will be crippled. If those address lists are 
not complete, we will miss large numbers of people and vital 
information that is needed for addressing national and local policies. 
We simply cannot afford to do that again.
  There is an enormous part of this census that depends on the accurate 
and timely execution of the work. That is why timely funding is so 
important.
  Let me just add one final note. There appears to be a 
misunderstanding about the 2000 census plan. There will not be two 
censuses, there will be one, starting with the direct count using the 
mail and the follow-up visits, two operations for which the Bureau has 
prepared since its first unveiling of its 2000 plan in 1996.
  Next there will be a large 300,000 household quality check survey to 
account for people missed and to eliminate double counting. The need to 
visit all unresponsive households and the addition of several field 
canvassing activities, unfortunately, are the most costly, labor 
intensive, and time-consuming aspects of the census. That is why it is 
important that it be done on time.
  It is one census with one count using both direct and statistical 
methods. The census planning a sample quality check operation like the 
survey first proposed, but at a lower cost.
  Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. SAWYER. I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky.

                              {time}  1330

  Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, is the gentleman satisfied that in this 
bill we adequately fund the census in order for the census to be 
maintained and conducted appropriately?
  Mr. SAWYER. Mr. Chairman, the critical question is whether or not 
what we have done in the House will meet timely resolution with what is 
being done in the Senate, and whether or not the rest of the bill can 
withstand administration scrutiny. That is what is at stake. It is not 
the quality of the work that has been done by the gentleman from 
Kentucky.
  Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, the question is, is there enough money in 
the bill to do the census?
  Mr. SAWYER. I believe there is, Mr. Chairman.
  Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
Ohio (Mr. Regula), a very hard working member of our subcommittee.

[[Page H6997]]

  (Mr. REGULA asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. REGULA. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this 
time.
  I want to say that the chairman of the subcommittee and the ranking 
member and the staff have done an excellent job under the constraints 
that were put on the subcommittee in terms of the amount available.
  Mr. Chairman, this funds a very diverse range of projects. I would 
just like to address a couple of them that I think are very important. 
But first, I would mention embassy security and additional Border 
Patrol agents. Those are certainly two items that needed additional 
funding and received it.
  The two I want to mention, one is the JASON program and the other is 
our trade functions. The bill provides an additional $1 million in 
funding over last year's base for the U.S. Trade Representative's 
office, because this is a very important function in terms of opening 
up markets for U.S. goods. I think Ambassador Barshefsky has done an 
outstanding job as the USTR and has been very aggressive in getting 
markets open to U.S. products, and I am pleased that we can not only 
support them with last year's numbers, but add $1 million to their 
budget.
  The second item under the trade issue is the ITA, the International 
Trade Administration. They too, as part of the Commerce Department, 
have continued with the important programs, including the Import 
Administration, which enforces our U.S. trade laws. We have had a 
number of cases in which they have ruled in favor of American goods to 
prevent unfair trade practices and dumping into our market and taking 
jobs away from American workers. Those two things, opening foreing 
markets and protecting U.S. jobs against unfair trading practices, are 
critical to the expansion of our economy and the job base and 
maintaining well-paying jobs.
  The other item is the JASON project. This is an exciting program. 
JASON is pioneering in terms of interactive TV. This is the way in 
which a classroom in Ohio or Kentucky or New York can take the 
electronic school bus to sites all over the world. Thus far, JASON has 
taken students to the Yellowstone National Park and compared the 
thermals there, with thermals in Iceland. They have taken students to 
the bottom of Monterey Bay. They have taken students to the rain forest 
in Brazil. So students in a classroom, in our case in Ohio, could 
interact through the medium of TV to talk to these people in Monterrey 
Bay or in the rain forest.
  This is an exciting program, and I think it is going to be the 
future. I can see when the agencies around this city, the National 
Gallery, the Smithsonian, the Kennedy Center, the Holocaust Museum will 
be doing a lot of this type of work with classrooms throughout the 
Nation. We provide $2 million for the JASON program. Next year they 
hope to take students into outer space and deep sea laboratories and 
juxtaposite the outer space with the deep sea laboratories in one 
program, so students can compare what is not only happening up in 
space, but what is happening on inner space, namely the bottoms of the 
oceans or in the deep sea areas.
  So it is a great project. I am pleased that we have the funding for 
this in the bill. This is the third year, and I believe it is a 
pioneering effort that will bring great benefits to the education 
programs of this Nation.
  I would like to commend the Chairman for putting together a bill 
under very difficult circumstances this year.
  The Commerce, Justice, State Appropriations bill contains many 
diverse functions from Federal law enforcement programs, to trade 
negotiation and enforcement programs, to diplomatic functions, to the 
funding of our Federal Judiciary.
  Under the tight funding caps, an effort was made to keep most 
programs and agencies at last year's levels so that no program or 
personnel reductions would be necessary. There are program enhancements 
to ensure embassy security and to provide additional border patrol 
agents, in addition to the funding needed to do the enhanced Census 
work required by the recent Supreme Court decision.
  I would like to discuss two issues of particular interest to me--
funding for our national trade functions and funding for an innovative 
educational partnership with the JASON program.
  The bill provides an additional $1 million in funding over last 
year's base for the U.S. Trade Representative's office so that the 
important work of opening foreign markets for U.S. goods is continued. 
The U.S. market remains the most open market in the world and it is 
critical that we ensure that other nations reciprocate by opening their 
markets to U.S. goods.
  The Commerce Department also contains important trade functions 
within the International Trade Administration (ITA). The bill provides 
funding sufficient to continue the important program within ITA 
including the Import Administration which enforces our U.S. trade laws 
against unfair foreign imports. Also with ITA is the U.S. Foreign 
Commercial Service which provides technical and practical assistance to 
help U.S. companies enter foreign markets.
  Expanding markets for U.S. goods and protecting domestic industries 
against unfair foreign imports are two important functions of our 
Federal Government. These functions are critical to ensure a level 
playing field in the global marketplace and to maintain well-paying 
jobs for American workers.
  The bill also provides $2 million to continue the exciting 
educational partnership that has developed between the JASON program 
and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The 
partnership allows Federal research on oceans to be used in the 
interactive educational JASON program. This program seeks to excite our 
elementary, junior high and high school students into pursuing careers 
in the sciences.
  Next year the students will be studying ``extreme environments'' 
focusing on outer space and deep sea laboratories and comparing the 
science related to both of these environments.
  Every year after studying the course materials, the students take the 
electronic school bus on a virtual scientific expedition using 
interactive communications technology. This innovative program 
represents the future of our education system.
  I urge members to support the Fiscal Year 2000 Commerce, Justice, 
State Appropriations bill.
  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from 
Oregon (Ms. Hooley).
  Ms. HOOLEY of Oregon. Mr. Chairman, I thank the Chair, and I thank my 
ranking member for allowing me this time.
  I rise today in opposition to this bill. I do not think this bill 
reflects our national priorities. I am concerned about this bill's 
commitment to reducing crime. This bill virtually eliminates the COPS 
program, which is the community policing program, despite the fact that 
law enforcement groups all over the country strongly support it. It is 
no accident that the national crime rate is at its lowest that it has 
been for 25 years. We can credit the drop in crime to strong local 
efforts, in partnership with the Federal Government. The COPS program 
has been a critical part of that partnership. Yet, this bill decimates 
COPS.
  The COPS program has funded positions for 100,000 officers across the 
Nation, 50,000 of which are out on the beat right now, and the rest are 
being trained and certified. But what I do not understand is when we 
are enjoying unmitigated success in reducing the crime rate, why would 
we now choose this time to change our tactics? My local police officers 
support the COPS program, my county officials support this program, my 
neighbors support this program, and so do I.
  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
Washington (Mr. Baird).
  Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this 
time.
  Mr. Chairman, I rise today with very serious concerns about this 
legislation. Despite all of the rhetoric about being tough on crime, 
this bill cuts the program to put 100,000 police officers on the street 
by $1 billion. Despite all of the rhetoric by my colleagues on the 
other side of the aisle just last night about needing stronger science 
before instituting new regulations, this bill would make extensive cuts 
in science and technology programs.
  Despite our nearly unanimous claims that we support small business, 
this bill cuts SBA funding to a level that could lead to the 
elimination of up to 75 percent of current staff.
  And, here is the topper. Despite 200 years of advance warning on the 
need for conducting a census next year, this bill designates the 
decennial census as ``emergency spending.'' It does all of this at a 
time when Members of this body are finalizing a package of tax

[[Page H6998]]

cuts totaling $792 billion that the people do not think is needed, when 
they think we really ought to be working on balancing the budget and 
reducing the debt.
  Mr. Chairman, this is a cynical, desperate approach to continue this 
appearance of this Congress is balancing its budget by staying in the 
caps while in reality, spending the surplus on tax breaks.
  Now, that being said, I do want to point out one area where we do 
agree, and that has to do with funding for methamphetamine programs. 
The other body provided less money, and I am grateful that this 
committee has chosen to include the full thirty-five million dollars 
requested by the President for the state and local methamphetamine 
grant program at the Department of Justice. But here is the problem. We 
need more.
  In my home State of Washington, the number of methamphetamine labs 
has increased by 400 percent in the first 6 months of 1999, a 400 
percent increase. Methamphetamine is produced oftentimes in clandestine 
labs and oftentimes in our rural communities. This leads to huge 
problems in cleaning up the hazardous sites and, of course, in the use 
of the material itself. So far this year, the Washington State 
Department of Ecology has already identified 322 labs and dump sites, 
nearly passing the 349 that were identified in all of 1998.
  Law enforcement officials know of this problem. We need to fully 
support funding to solve this problem, and I will work with this 
committee to make sure we increase funding for methamphetamine 
treatment and prevention.
  Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
Florida (Mr. Miller), who is a member of our subcommittee, but 
incidentally and coincidentally is chairman of the Subcommittee on the 
Census of the Committee on Government Reform.
  Mr. MILLER of Florida. Mr. Chairman, it has been a pleasure to serve 
with the gentleman this year on the Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, 
State, the Judiciary and Related Agencies and to bring this 
appropriations bill to the floor today, which I very strongly support.
  The Republican leadership of this House has always made a commitment 
to the American people that we will provide the resources needed by the 
Census Bureau to conduct a full enumeration in accordance with the 
Constitution and the law, and we have provided that in a timely manner.
  Today, this Congress will fulfill that commitment, and we provide 
every dollar requested by the Census Bureau for the decennial census.
  I would for a minute like to explain how we got to this point today. 
While my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have said that the 
cost of the census has increased by $1.7 billion because of the 
Republican court challenge, nothing could be further from the truth. We 
took the administration to court because we believe that the plan they 
were putting forward violated the law and the Constitution. To be 
intellectually honest, any additional costs associated with the census 
are because of the original plan put forth by the administration was in 
violation of the law, and that is the truth, plain and simple.
  It is also important that we take into account what the cost would 
have been had the administration's illegal plan not been challenged in 
a timely manner. There was a real chance that the entire 2000 Census 
could have been voided by the Supreme Court. This could have forced us 
to hold up reapportionment and redistricting to allow the Census Bureau 
time to conduct an emergency census at a cost of billions and billions 
of dollars.
  Mr. Chairman, I am sure every Member of this body, regardless of how 
they feel about sampling, is at least gratified that we found out now 
and not later that the Clinton-Gore plan was illegal. There is no doubt 
that it will always cost more to be thorough and accurate than it does 
to cut corners and take a risky short cut.
  While some are critical of the mechanism being used to fund the 
census, it seems to me that the most important thing is that we are 
paying for the census to be done correctly. Republicans have always 
given the Census Bureau the money it needs. In fact, in each of the 
appropriation bills for the past several years, we have given the 
Census Bureau more money than the administration has requested. In 
fact, this fiscal year 1999, we gave the Bureau almost $180 million 
more than requested by the administration. The Republicans made a 
promise to pay a full count census, and today, we are fulfilling that 
promise. Promise made, promise kept.
  Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support final passage of the 
Commerce, Justice, State, the Judiciary and Related Agencies 
appropriations bill.
  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from 
New York (Mrs. Maloney).
  Mrs. MALONEY of New York. Mr. Chairman, no matter what we do, we must 
fund the decennial census, and we have to stop putting the census in 
jeopardy. The Census Bureau needs full funding by October 1. The 
administration has requested $4.5 billion in order to count everyone in 
America. The bill before us contains all but about $11 million of that 
request, and I commend the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers) and the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Serrano) and the gentleman from Florida 
(Mr. Miller), the chairman of the Subcommittee on the Census of the 
Committee on Government Reform for providing that money.
  Almost as important, this bill contains none of the onerous language 
prohibiting the use of modern scientific methods which has been in 
previous Commerce-Justice-State funding bills that have held up two 
budgets and led to one presidential veto of a disaster relief bill 
because of the antisampling language attached to it.
  The Census Bureau plans to use such methods to conduct a quality 
check on the raw census field counts. These more accurate numbers can 
and will be used for nonapportionment purposes like redistricting and 
the distribution of hundreds of millions of dollars in Federal funds.
  Mr. Chairman, we have been debating the census for an entire decade. 
No one should be surprised. But Congress failed to allow for the census 
in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, and now, we find ourselves in the 
embarrassing situation of declaring the census unanticipated. This is 
not an emergency. We have done the census every 10 years since 1790. 
The majority is about to put together and pass a huge tax cut. They 
should pay for the census out of that, rather than resorting to an 
accounting trick and declaring it an emergency.
  Mr. MILLER of Florida. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?
  The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentlewoman has expired.
  Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from 
New York (Mrs. Maloney).
  Mr. MILLER of Florida. Mr. Chairman, if the gentlewoman will yield, 
the question was raised by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Sawyer) and the 
gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney) about timing on October 1. As 
I have said in the past, I will work with the chairman and the 
leadership to make sure the funding is going to be there on October 1 
if a CR, which happens historically, on this bill is necessary. Because 
I agree and I understand the problem, and as we have in the past, we 
have always worked to make sure that money flows.
  Mrs. MALONEY of New York. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, as the 
gentleman knows better than most people, the tight time frame that the 
Census Bureau is on, all that needs to be done, and it is very strictly 
marked down on a tight time frame.
  The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. 
Maloney) has again expired.
  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 10 additional seconds to the 
gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney).
  Mrs. MALONEY of New York. Mr. Chairman, what bothers me is if the 
bill is vetoed, as the President has said he will do, then that will 
put in jeopardy the time frame of getting the money to the Census 
Bureau on time.

                              {time}  1345

  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
Washington (Mr. Dicks).
  Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I would like to engage the distinguished 
chairman of the subcommittee in a colloquy.

[[Page H6999]]

  Mr. Chairman, I want to commend the Committee on crafting a bill 
which I feel is extremely fair under the circumstances. Given this, I 
know that funding any new initiatives or requested increases was all 
but impossible. However, there are three key programs which are vitally 
important that I would like to continue to work together on as the bill 
moves through conference.
  The administration requested funding for a Pacific Salmon Recovery 
Fund which would assist the four West Coast States of Alaska, 
Washington, Oregon, and California, and help them respond to the recent 
Endangered Species Act listings of 13 salmon and steelhead populations.
  Our region has been extremely hard hit by these listings, and is 
responding with both local and State money, but the Federal money 
requested by the administration is imperative, given the complexity of 
this species and the densely populated areas they impact.
  Related to the coastal initiative, the National Marine Fisheries 
Service has requested an increase for expanded workload on the West 
Coast for Endangered Species Act requirements. Without the necessary 
consultation and permitting, routine growth in our region will come to 
a standstill.
  Lastly, the United States and Canada recently reached agreement on 
the Pacific Salmon Treaty, which sets harvest restrictions and 
conservation measures between the two countries. To implement this 
agreement, the administration has requested appropriations for two 
endowment funds to assist with resource conservation and targeted 
buybacks.
  Given the importance of this treaty in addressing over-harvest, I 
remain optimistic that this, too, may be revisited.
  It is my strong hope that the gentleman can agree to continue to work 
with me on these issues as the bill proceeds in conference. I would be 
happy to work with the gentleman.
  Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. DICKS. I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky.
  Mr. ROGERS. I would be happy to work with the gentleman, Mr. 
Chairman. I know how important the gentleman feels this is to his State 
and region. We will be happy to continue to work with him.
  Mr. DICKS. I thank the gentleman. I commend him for his work on the 
bill.
  I want to compliment the ranking member, who has also promised he 
would work with us on this important issue.
  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Wu).
  (Mr. WU asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. WU. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman from Washington 
for bringing such an important issue to the forefront of the debate.
  Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of efforts to provide much-needed 
resources to the Pacific Coast Salmon Recovery Fund. This fund will 
help local efforts in Oregon, and across the Pacific Northwest, to 
restore native salmon runs.
  I also want to commend Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber and Washington 
Governor Gary Locke for their hard work and interstate cooperation on 
this issue.
  Salmon are a cultural icon in the Pacific Northwest; indeed, they are 
part of our identify. But salmon are also a national treasure, and more 
importantly, they are an indicator species. Like the canary in the coal 
mine, the health of salmon tell us volumes about how clean and safe our 
rivers and streams are.
  Steep declines in Northwest salmon have led to several species 
listings under the Endangered Species Act. The four H's which have 
contributed to the consistent decline of salmon are habitat, 
hatcheries, hydro and harvest: Only by making sound investments in the 
programs that address these four H's, will we be able to bring salmon 
back.
  The Pacific Coast Salmon Recovery Fund, which was included in the 
President's Budget at a level of $100 million, will support local 
initiatives to save salmon. It will help give states the ability to 
improve habitat, and bring salmon back. The Pacific Coast Salmon 
Recovery Fund will help local communities continue efforts such as mass 
marking, which help commercial and sport fisherman determine the 
difference between habitat fish and wild fish. Mass marking can reduce 
the amount of wild fish that are mistakenly taken and thus continue 
economic stability by harvesting hatchery fish. Finally, the Pacific 
Salmon Recovery fund could help local communities build Fish ladders, 
purchase fish friendly turbines and continue with mitigation around 
dams.
  These are just a few examples of important initiatives that people in 
Oregon and the Northwest have taken upon themselves to restore salmon. 
All of these local initiatives are in desperate need of federal help.
  Several species of salmon are on the verge of extinction, and we now 
find ourselves with a choice to make. Are we going to honor the 
commitments we have made to our children? Will they have the chance to 
enjoy clean water and healthy streams in the future? Will they inherit 
a healthy ecosystem that includes indigenous salmon? Or are we going to 
stand idly by and let salmon vanish?
  By funding the Pacific Coast Salmon Recovery Fund, we can continue 
the process of helping coastal states recovery salmon. I want to work 
with my friend from Washington, Mr. Dicks, and the entire subcommittee 
to help ensure that the Pacific Coast Salmon Recovery Fund is funded at 
the maximum possible level, and that Oregon gets its fair share.
  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from 
Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).
  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to 
me.
  Mr. Chairman, I also want to praise the gentleman for the excellent 
work that he has done on this bill.
  With that, and saying that I am opposed to the bill, I will lay out 
the reasons why I am opposed to the Commerce-State-Justice 
appropriation bill.
  It is my view in this effort that in order for the Republican 
leadership to fund a massive tax cut, that this bill will ultimately do 
harm to the most vulnerable people in our society, to minorities and to 
communities attempting to make their streets safe. This bill cuts in 
half the funding for the Legal Services Corporation, which is the 
Republican leadership's attempt to phase out this program.
  It zeros out the hiring portion of the COPS program, meaning 50,000 
fewer police officers will be on our streets. This bill freezes the 
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which will hinder the agency's 
efforts to reduce the backlog of discrimination complaints.
  Funding for the Civil Rights Division under Justice is so low that it 
will tie the hands of investigators looking into prosecuting criminal 
civil rights cases, including hate crimes. The list goes on. The bill 
eliminates the Advanced Technology Program in order to pick a fight 
with the administration. It decimates funding for the Small Business 
Administration's work force, causing a reduction in force of more than 
2,400 Federal employees, or 74 percent of the SBA's work force.
  It eliminates the entire $20 million to help the Justice Department 
initiate litigation against the big tobacco companies in order to 
recover Federal costs for smoking-related illnesses. It freezes State 
Department funds.
  It pretends to deal with U.N. arrearages, but makes them subject to 
authorization, so if the authorizing bill gets held up, the U.S. could 
lose its voting rights in the General Assembly. It guts the NOAA and 
the National Weather Service.
  Mr. Chairman, I believe that we ought not to vote to gut legal 
services, to gut civil rights, our police forces, or the Small Business 
Administration, or research on advanced technology. Vote no on the 
Commerce-State-Justice appropriation bill because I believe that it has 
America's priorities upside down.
  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
New York (Mr. Meeks), my friend, colleague, and neighbor.
  Mr. MEEKS of New York. Mr. Chairman, I would like to engage in a 
colloquy with the ranking member, the gentleman from New York (Mr. 
Serrano).
  Mr. Chairman, I want to commend the committee for including report 
language recognizing the tragic killing of Amadou Diallo in the Bronx, 
New York, in the gentleman's district. However, I still feel the need 
for additional report language regarding police brutality.
  In the committee report's section dealing with the Bureau of Justice 
Statistics, the committee directs BGS to implement a voluntary annual 
reporting system of all deaths in law enforcement custody, and to 
provide a report to the committee on its progress no later than July 1, 
2000.
  Although this is a start in addressing this problem, I ask for report 
language

[[Page H7000]]

that instructs the Attorney General to do three things: Evaluate and 
collect data in regard to police brutality; not later than September 
15, 2000, to report the findings; and third and most importantly, make 
recommendations to Congress regarding effective strategies to combat 
such brutal acts.
  It is not enough for a statistical report to be issued like the one I 
have in my hand. We need recommendations to solve this problem, and we 
need to work hand in hand with the Attorney General.
  I just ask the gentleman, will he help to work on that to make sure 
it is in the reporting language?
  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. MEEKS of New York. I yield to the gentleman from New York.
  Mr. SERRANO. I thank the gentleman for his concern. Mr. Chairman, we 
have worked together on this issue. This is a very serious issue, to 
the point where the gentleman and I gave ourselves up for arrest during 
demonstrations that took place in New York. We did not do that lightly. 
We took that very seriously at this stage in our development as human 
beings, and at this stage in our careers.
  I give the gentleman my word that on the way to passage and signature 
of this bill, to approval by the President, I will do whatever I have 
to do to see that we make changes in the language that will fit the 
gentleman's request and our desire.
  Mr. MEEKS of New York. I thank the gentleman from New York, and I 
appreciate his hard work.
  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Chairman, I just wanted once again to thank the gentleman, my 
chairman, for his work, and for the way he has treated me in these 
dealings. I have made it clear to the chairman that this is a very 
difficult bill; one, however, that I personally support, and I will try 
in my support of this bill to send the chairman and the majority a 
message that I stand ready, willing, and able to work with them to make 
this bill a better bill.
  However, I have to state that with the problems that this bill has, 
it still does have a very positive statement about the Census, one that 
I support, one that I know is necessary, and one that I thank the 
chairman for.
  Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute.
  Mr. Chairman, let me close with thanking the gentleman from New York 
(Mr. Serrano). As I said, he is a new member of the subcommittee, as 
well as being the new ranking member of the subcommittee, and that is a 
heavy chore dumped in his lap overnight. But he has carried it out 
admirably and with good humor. He makes the heaviest of tasks a lot 
lighter because of his sense of humor and his joy, and he is a joy to 
work with.
  I appreciate very much the work that he has done on this bill with us 
all year long. He has attended every hearing, and I think we had 23 or 
so hearings covering a broad expanse of the government. But the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Serrano) educated himself on those matters 
as the hearings came up, and participated brilliantly, and he has been 
a real asset. I mean that sincerely, and I appreciate his work.
  I appreciate his support for the bill. That takes a good deal of 
courage, and I really appreciate that kind of commitment.
  Mr. SALMON. Mr. Chairman, Webster's dictionary defines the word 
emergency as, ``an unforseen combination of circumstances or the 
resulting state that calls for immediate action.'' In the past, 
Congress has passed emergency spending legislation to address pressing 
needs resulting from natural disasters, wars or other unforseen crisis. 
But today, the House will consider legislation to expand the definition 
of ``emergency'' to fund, of all things, the census.
  Now, maybe I'm just naive. Or maybe I just don't get it. But from 
what I understand, the federal government has been conducting the 
census every ten years since 1790. In fact, the authority of Congress 
to do so is explicitly enumerated in the Constitution. Over 200 years 
later, how can anyone with a straight face really say that census 
funding is something unforseen--an emergency?
  If funding for the census is truly an emergency, what is not? What 
about the Departments of Treasury, Justice or State? Like the census, 
these are a core responsibility of the federal government. Should we 
use emergency spending to fund these departments? Where does it end?
  Unfortunately, this isn't the first time Congress has used emergency 
spending to bypass spending limits. The Omnibus spending bill passed 
last year contained about $20 billion in speciously classified 
emergency spending. I voted against that bill for the same reason that 
I will oppose this legislation today--because it is fiscally 
irresponsible.
  It's time to end this charade. We impose budget caps for a very 
simple reason--to control spending. If we are not willing to respect 
those caps, let's not use a bunch of fancy budget gimmickry and smoke 
and mirrors to fool the American people into believing that we are. 
Let's have an honest vote--up or down--on whether or not we are willing 
to abide by the agreement we passed in 1997. At least that way, the 
American people will know who is serious about controlling spending and 
who is not.
  I urge my colleagues to support the Coburn Amendment.
  Mr. BARRETT of Nebraska. Mr. Chairman, I rise to thank the 
distinguished Chairman of the Commerce, Justice, State, and Judiciary 
Subcommittee, the Ranking Member, and all members of the Subcommittee 
for the inclusion of a $500,000 appropriation for planning and site 
money for a Immigration and Naturalization Service's (INS) detention 
center in Grand Island, Nebraska.
  Unfortunately, the national INS office has been slow to respond to 
the urgent need for enhanced enforcement, including additional 
detention facilities, in the interior. Various economic and geographic 
circumstances are attracting large numbers of illegal aliens to 
Nebraska and other interior states. In response, INS launched 
enforcement initiatives in Nebraska and along the Interstate 80 
corridor. However, INS does not currently have detention facilities in 
our state to house illegal aliens. That's why I am pleased the Chairman 
recognizes the importance of locating a detention facility in my 
district, Nebraska.
  In closing, I want to once again express my appreciation to the 
Chairman for his attention to Nebraska's concerns and his efforts 
toward improving INS administration, enforcement, and service.
  Mr. PACKARD. Mr. Chairman, I would like to express my strong support 
of the FY2000 Commerce, Justice, State and Judiciary appropriations 
bill for FY2000. Approving this legislation would provide $585 million 
in funds for State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP).
  SCAAP was established as a way to reimburse state and local 
governments for the costs of incarcerating illegal criminal aliens. 
These funds are distributed at the discretion of the Department of 
Justice to those states most afflicted by this problem.
  Mr. Chairman, California shoulders approximately half the costs 
associated with criminal aliens in the entire nation. It is clear to me 
that at both the State and Federal level for the containment of those 
criminals are staggering and should not be made the responsibility of 
the California taxpayer alone.
  Mr. Chairman, illegal immigration is a problem the Federal government 
should be addressing. Neither California nor any other state should be 
made liable for the federal government's failure to restrict the entry 
of illegal immigrants. I encourage my colleagues to support H.R. 2670, 
the Commerce, Justice, State, Judiciary Appropriations Bill.
  Mr. DAVIS of Virginia. Mr. Chairman, the Commerce, Justice, State 
Appropriations bill contains a number of provisions of importance to 
the people of my district. Two National Weather Service (NWS) programs 
in particular are of critical importance: the funding level for the 
Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) Build 5, and the 
reductions in base operations dollars. I would ask that the Members of 
the conference committee support these critical programs during 
conference.
  AWIPS is a key component of the National Weather Service multiyear, 
multi-billion dollar modernization effort. AWIPS capabilities have 
enabled NWS forecasters throughout the country to provide more timely, 
accurate forecasts and warnings to the American people. The capability 
of this new technology was most recently demonstrated during the May 
tornado outbreak in Oklahoma and Kansas. The investment of new 
technology, as represented by AWIPS, has saved lives.
  Funding AWIPS Build 5 is crucial to the continuing success of NWS 
modernization. Longer lead times for severe weather warnings is but one 
example of the many benefits of the Build 5 program. An increase of as 
little as 4 minutes of lead time can mean the difference between life 
and death for people in the path of a tornado. I hope the Conference 
committee Members will also support this initiative.
  NWS base operations funds provide the wherewithal to staff the 
offices, analyze the data, gather the time critical information needed 
to produce the warnings and forecasts on

[[Page H7001]]

which all Americans rely. The NWS is committed to becoming a ``No 
Surprise'' weather service, and the key to accomplishing that goal is a 
combination of the latest technology coupled with sufficient personnel 
to operate and understand it. Cuts to base funds cut bone, not fat, Mr. 
Chairman, and I would ask the members to the conference committee to 
remember that as this legislation proceeds to conference.
   Mr. Chairman, the NWS is a critical federal agency. The work of the 
men and women at offices across the country affects each and every one 
of use every single day, twenty-four hours a day. Let's give them the 
resources needed--both in terms of personnel and technology--to 
continue to do the tremendous job, which we have become accustomed.
  Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the effort this 
bill represents to increase security at America's embassies around the 
world. I have seen my share of our embassies, and know the Americans 
and national employees who work there to be courageous people who are 
committed to their work, and who deserve the support of this Congress 
and our State Department.
  I comment Chairman Rogers and Mr. Serrano for their work on this 
bill, and for their commitment to see that we do everything in our 
power to deter attacks like those on two of our embassies last year--
and that no future attack, if one occurs, produces such carnage.
  I particularly appreciate their efforts to see that the situation at 
our embassy in Cambodia is addressed. As I have told the Committee, the 
State Department, and others, I recently visited Cambodia and was 
shocked to see how exposed it is to almost any threat. The building is 
virtually on top of a busy street, with no setback, and is shared with 
non-embassy organizations. It would not take a bomb to do severe 
damage; even a hand grenade tossed from the street would certainly kill 
Americans and Cambodians who work there.
  Mr. Chairman, after 30 years of civil war Cambodia is now achieving 
peace. But while there is no longer the threat of war, the country is 
far from stable; street violence and public unrest had been common 
until recent months and the U.S. embassy was one site of Chinese 
demonstrations after the United States mistakenly bombed Beijing's 
embassy in Belgrade.
  I appreciate that the Committee does not want to list which embassies 
are vulnerable in report language that it traditionally uses to give 
direction to government officials. But I want to thank the Committee's 
members for whatever they can do to get the State Department to do 
something to make Embassy Phnom Penh safer.
  In my view, too much attention is being focused on a few Cadillac 
solutions that turn a handful of embassies into impenetrable 
fortresses--but leave all the rest not a whit safer. I think money 
invested in relocating our embassy in Cambodia, as our outgoing 
ambassador has suggested, would be money well spent, and I hope the 
Committee and its staff will keep pressing until we get a solution that 
is more responsible than the State Department's suggestion to our 
ambassador that he move the embassy to another country.
  I am hopeful about the United States' relations with Cambodia, and 
believe we now have an unusual opportunity to help close the door on 
the wars and genocide that have devastated it for 30 years. Many 
hurdles remain to helping its suffering people, but few of them could 
set back U.S. policy as an attack on our embassy could--even if, by 
some miracle given the building's situation, no one was hurt.
  Mr. Chairman, I will continue to urge this Administration to look for 
an immediate remedy to this disaster-waiting-to-happen. Not only is 
that essential to the safety of some of the hardest-working foreign 
service officers I have met during my many years of focusing on 
humanitarian issues; it is also important for our efforts to aid some 
of the poorest people in the world.
  Mr. Chairman, my thanks again to the Committee for its achievement in 
providing money needed to secure America's embassies.
  Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to comment on H.R. 
2670, the Commerce, Justice, State, and the Judiciary Appropriations 
Act of 1999. This bill contains funding for the Department of 
Commerce's (DOC) Science and Technology programs as well as legislative 
guidance on some key project management issues at the Department of 
Commerce.
  In May of this year, the Committee on Science passed H.R. 1552, the 
Marine Research and Related Environmental Research and Development 
Programs Authorization Act of 1999, and H.R. 1553, the National Weather 
Service and Related Agencies Authorization Act of 1999. H.R. 1553 has 
since passed the House on May 19th and awaits Senate action.
  In H.R. 2670, NOAA is funded at $1,959,838,000 and contains transfers 
of $67,226,000. Within this amount, the National Weather Service (NWS) 
is funded at $599,196,000, which is a 7% increase over the FY 1999 
enacted. Chairman Rogers noted that the NWS is the highest priority 
within NOAA and I concur with his comments. The protection of our 
citizens' life and property from severe weather must be NOAA's highest 
priority.
  This bill funds the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research at 
NOAA at a level of $260,560,000. I concur with Chairman Rogers' 
assessment that this office should not be funding duplicative social-
science and human dimensions research, and should fund hard 
computational science that has real benefit to the American taxpayer. 
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has a social science program area 
that is capable of making these assessments and I consider social 
science research at NOAA to be a low research priority.
  I am pleased that the National Sea Grant College Program is funded at 
$58,500,000, which is $7,000,000 above the President's request. Sea 
Grant's cost-sharing approach with states provides greater bang for the 
research buck and in tight fiscal times it is the best way to stretch 
research dollars.
  Finally, I am extremely gratified that Chairman Rogers decided not to 
fund the Fisheries Research Vessels that were in the NOAA request. The 
Commerce Inspector General and the Government Accounting Office have 
pointed out time and time again the need for outsourcing NOAA fleet 
operations. While NOAA is making some progress in the oceanographic and 
hydrographic outsourcing areas, there is little to no progress in the 
fisheries research area. I urge NOAA to examine the use of UNOLS 
vessels to support fisheries research. NOAA should closely examine the 
Dorman report which pointed out that the need for these ships is 
questionable.
  H.R. 2670 funds the National Institute of Standards and Technology 
(NIST) at $436,686,000 for FY 2000. This amount is $300,270,000 below 
the President's request and $210,464,000 below the FY 1999 enacted 
amount.
  The Advanced Technology Program (ATP) at NIST is terminated in H.R. 
2670. As I have stated in the past, until fundamental reforms are made 
to ATP that will ensure that federal grant funding is not simply 
displacing private capital investment, I do not think the program 
should be funded. The Science Committee and the full House passed just 
such structural changes to the program last year, but unfortunately the 
Senate did not act on them. The changes would not only prevent the 
displacement of private capital, but would increase private sector 
matching requirements for the program. Congresswoman Morella has once 
again introduced legislation, H.R. 1744, the National Institute of 
Standards and Technology Authorization Act of 1999, to fix the problem 
and authorize ATP. I am hopeful that this time the bill will be 
enacted.
  The Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) at NIST is funded at a 
level of $99,836,000 in H.R. 2670. I am pleased that the bill fully 
funds MEP at the President's.
  Finally, the construction account at NIST is funded at $56,714,000 
for FY 2000. This will provide $44,916,000 of the required funds for 
the Advanced Measurements Laboratory. Unfortunately, funding AML at 
this level will not allow NIST to begin construction of the project 
during FY 2000. The AML is necessary due to the precise measurements 
required for establishing standards associated with today's 
increasingly complex technologies. It is my hope that additional 
funding may become available during the Conference to allow 
construction of AML to begin during Fiscal Year 2000.
  Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The CHAIRMAN. All time for general debate has expired.
  Pursuant to the rule, the bill shall be considered for amendment 
under the 5-minute rule.
  The amendments printed in House Report 106-284 may be offered only by 
a Member designated in the report, and only at the appropriate point in 
the reading of the bill, shall be considered read, debatable for the 
time specified in the report, equally divided and controlled by a 
proponent and an opponent, and shall not be subject to amendment.
  During consideration of the bill for amendment, the chair may accord 
priority in recognition to a Member offering an amendment that he has 
printed in the designated place in the Congressional Record. Those 
amendments will be considered as read.
  The Chairman of the Committee of the Whole may postpone a request for 
a recorded vote on any amendment, and may reduce to a minimum of 5 
minutes the time for voting on any postponed question that immediately 
follows another vote, provided that the time for voting on the first 
question shall be a minimum of 5 minutes.
  The Clerk will read.
  The Clerk read as follows:

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in

[[Page H7002]]

     Congress assembled, That the following sums are appropriated, 
     out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, 
     for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2000, and for other 
     purposes, namely:

                         DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

                         General Administration


                         salaries and expenses

       For expenses necessary for the administration of the 
     Department of Justice, $79,328,000, of which not to exceed 
     $3,317,000 is for the Facilities Program 2000, to remain 
     available until expended: Provided, That not to exceed 43 
     permanent positions and 44 full-time equivalent workyears and 
     $8,136,000 shall be expended for the Department Leadership 
     Program exclusive of augmentation that occurred in these 
     offices in fiscal year 1999: Provided further, That not to 
     exceed 41 permanent positions and 48 full-time equivalent 
     workyears and $4,811,000 shall be expended for the Offices of 
     Legislative Affairs and Public Affairs: Provided further, 
     That the latter two aforementioned offices shall not be 
     augmented by personnel details, temporary transfers of 
     personnel on either a reimbursable or non-reimbursable basis 
     or any other type of formal or informal transfer or 
     reimbursement of personnel or funds on either a temporary or 
     long-term basis: Provided further, That the Attorney General 
     is authorized to transfer, under such terms and conditions as 
     the Attorney General shall specify, forfeited real or 
     personal property of limited or marginal value, as such value 
     is determined by guidelines established by the Attorney 
     General, to a State or local government agency, or its 
     designated contractor or transferee, for use to support drug 
     abuse treatment, drug and crime prevention and education, 
     housing, job skills, and other community-based public health 
     and safety programs: Provided further, That any transfer 
     under the preceding proviso shall not create or confer any 
     private right of action in any person against the United 
     States, and shall be treated as a reprogramming under section 
     605 of this Act.

  Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last 
word for the purposes of entering into a colloquy with the subcommittee 
chairman.
  Mr. Chairman, let me first say that I appreciate all the hard work 
that the gentleman and his committee have done on this measure.
  As the chairman knows, the recent listings of the nine salmon and 
steelhead runs in the Pacific Northwest as endangered has resulted in 
substantial delays in the processing of jeopardy reviews under the 
Endangered Species Act by the National Marine Fisheries Service.
  This backlog has already caused important local transportation 
projects to be delayed, and has even put Federal highway funding for 
some of these projects at risk of expiring.
  In some cases, such as the replacement of traffic lights in Richland, 
Washington, these projects have no discernible impact on endangered 
species. I know the gentleman shares my support for the measures, which 
will reduce this backlog within existing resources. The NMFS has 
previously entered into cooperative agreements with State agencies to 
use State employees to process these reviews more quickly.
  Will the chairman work with me to encourage NMFS to continue these 
efforts to reduce delays without increasing the number of NMFS 
employees?
  Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky.
  Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for bringing this to 
our attention. I certainly share the gentleman's concern about these 
delays. As the gentleman knows, the committee was forced to make some 
very difficult decisions in this bill. Where steps can be taken to 
address these problems without additional Federal funding, I am eager 
to see them taken, and will assist the gentleman in that.
  I will be very pleased to work with the gentleman to encourage NMFS 
to modify this matter in that direction.
  Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. I thank the chairman, and I look forward 
to working with the chairman on this issue.
  The CHAIRMAN pro tempore (Mr. Whitfield). The Clerk will read.
  The Clerk read as follows:


                         counterterrorism fund

       For necessary expenses, as determined by the Attorney 
     General, $10,000,000, to remain available until expended, to 
     reimburse any Department of Justice organization for (1) the 
     costs incurred in reestablishing the operational capability 
     of an office or facility which has been damaged or destroyed 
     as a result of any domestic or international terrorist 
     incident; and (2) the costs of providing support to counter, 
     investigate or prosecute domestic or international terrorism, 
     including payment of rewards in connection with these 
     activities: Provided, That any Federal agency may be 
     reimbursed for the costs of detaining in foreign countries 
     individuals accused of acts of terrorism that violate the 
     laws of the United States: Provided further, That funds 
     provided under this paragraph shall be available only after 
     the Attorney General notifies the Committees on 
     Appropriations of the House of Representatives and the Senate 
     in accordance with section 605 of this Act.


               telecommunications carrier compliance fund

       For payments authorized by section 109 of the 
     Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (47 U.S.C. 
     1008), $15,000,000, to remain available until expended.


                   administrative review and appeals

       For expenses necessary for the administration of pardon and 
     clemency petitions and immigration related activities, 
     $84,200,000.

  Mrs. MORELLA. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
  Mr. Chairman, I wanted to ask permission of the Chair and of my 
esteemed colleague and chairman of the Subcommittee on Commerce, 
Justice, State, and Judiciary if he would engage in a brief colloquy 
with me.
  Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman's longstanding support of 
the laboratory programs and the research facilities at the National 
Institute of Standards and Technology, known as NIST. As the gentleman 
knows, NIST's unique mission of promoting our Nation's competitiveness 
requires world-class state-of-the-art facilities to provide precise 
measurements for today's increasingly complex technologies.
  As a result, an expedited NIST construction of the Advanced 
Measurement Laboratory has been an important goal for both my 
Subcommittee on Technology and, indeed, the gentleman's subcommittee. 
Over the past 2 years the Committee on Appropriations has supported the 
AML, appropriating well over half the total needed to complete the 
project.
  But while H.R. 2670 includes $44 million for the AML, that is not 
enough to begin construction in fiscal year 2000.

                              {time}  1400

  So while I appreciate the budget constraints imposed upon the 
Subcommittee, it is my understanding that the Committee is still fully 
committed to the AML construction. I would like to hear from the 
gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers) if that is correct, Mr. Chairman.
  Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman from Maryland yield?
  Mrs. MORELLA. Indeed, I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky.
  Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, the gentlewoman is correct. The Committee 
has continued to support the construction of the laboratory within the 
availability of existing resources.
  Mrs. MORELLA. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the clarification of the 
gentleman from Kentucky and ongoing support for this. This is really 
important.
  Should additional funds become available in conference with the 
Senate, it is my hope that a portion of those funds can be used to 
begin AML construction in fiscal year 2000.
  The CHAIRMAN. The Clerk will read.
  The Clerk read as follows:

       In addition, $50,363,000, for such purposes, to remain 
     available until expended, to be derived from the Violent 
     Crime Reduction Trust Fund.


                      office of inspector general

       For necessary expenses of the Office of Inspector General 
     in carrying out the provisions of the Inspector General Act 
     of 1978, as amended, $42,475,000; including not to exceed 
     $10,000 to meet unforeseen emergencies of a confidential 
     character, to be expended under the direction of, and to be 
     accounted for solely under the certificate of, the Attorney 
     General; and for the acquisition, lease, maintenance, and 
     operation of motor vehicles, without regard to the general 
     purchase price limitation for the current fiscal year: 
     Provided, That up to two-tenths of one percent of the 
     Department of Justice's allocation from the Violent Crime 
     Reduction Trust Fund grant programs may be transferred at the 
     discretion of the Attorney General to this account for the 
     audit or other review of such grant programs, as authorized 
     by the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 
     (Public Law 103-322).

                    United States Parole Commission


                         salaries and expenses

       For necessary expenses of the United States Parole 
     Commission as authorized by law, $7,380,000.

                            Legal Activities


            salaries and expenses, general legal activities

       For expenses necessary for the legal activities of the 
     Department of Justice, not otherwise provided for, including 
     not to exceed

[[Page H7003]]

     $20,000 for expenses of collecting evidence, to be expended 
     under the direction of, and to be accounted for solely under 
     the certificate of, the Attorney General; and rent of private 
     or Government-owned space in the District of Columbia, 
     $355,691,000; of which not to exceed $10,000,000 for 
     litigation support contracts shall remain available until 
     expended: Provided, That of the funds available in this 
     appropriation, not to exceed $18,166,000 shall remain 
     available until expended for office automation systems for 
     the legal divisions covered by this appropriation, and for 
     the United States Attorneys, the Antitrust Division, and 
     offices funded through ``Salaries and Expenses'', General 
     Administration: Provided further, That of the total amount 
     appropriated, not to exceed $1,000 shall be available to the 
     United States National Central Bureau, INTERPOL, for official 
     reception and representation expenses.
       In addition, $147,929,000, to be derived from the Violent 
     Crime Reduction Trust Fund, to remain available until 
     expended for such purposes.
        In addition, for reimbursement of expenses of the 
     Department of Justice associated with processing cases under 
     the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, as 
     amended, not to exceed $3,424,000, to be appropriated from 
     the Vaccine Injury Compensation Trust Fund.


               salaries and expenses, antitrust division

       For expenses necessary for the enforcement of antitrust and 
     kindred laws, $57,368,000: Provided, That, notwithstanding 
     any other provision of law, not to exceed $57,368,000 of 
     offsetting collections derived from fees collected in fiscal 
     year 2000 for premerger notification filings under the Hart-
     Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 (15 U.S.C. 
     18(a) note) shall be retained and used for necessary expenses 
     in this appropriation, and shall remain available until 
     expended: Provided further, That the sum herein appropriated 
     from the General Fund shall be reduced as such offsetting 
     collections are received during fiscal year 2000, so as to 
     result in a final fiscal year 2000 appropriation from the 
     General Fund estimated at not more than $0.


             salaries and expenses, united states attorneys

       For necessary expenses of the Offices of the United States 
     Attorneys, including intergovernmental and cooperative 
     agreements, $1,161,957,000; of which not to exceed $2,500,000 
     shall be available until September 30, 2001, for (1) training 
     personnel in debt collection, (2) locating debtors and their 
     property, (3) paying the net costs of selling property, and 
     (4) tracking debts owed to the United States Government: 
     Provided, That of the total amount appropriated, not to 
     exceed $8,000 shall be available for official reception and 
     representation expenses: Provided further, That not to exceed 
     $10,000,000 of those funds available for automated litigation 
     support contracts shall remain available until expended: 
     Provided further, That, in addition to reimbursable full-time 
     equivalent workyears available to the Offices of the United 
     States Attorneys, not to exceed 9,044 positions and 9,360 
     full-time equivalent workyears shall be supported from the 
     funds appropriated in this Act for the United States 
     Attorneys.


                   united states trustee system fund

       For necessary expenses of the United States Trustee 
     Program, as authorized by 28 U.S.C. 589a(a), $114,248,000, to 
     remain available until expended and to be derived from the 
     United States Trustee System Fund: Provided, That, 
     notwithstanding any other provision of law, deposits to the 
     Fund shall be available in such amounts as may be necessary 
     to pay refunds due depositors: Provided further, That, 
     notwithstanding any other provision of law, $114,248,000 of 
     offsetting collections derived from fees collected pursuant 
     to 28 U.S.C. 589a(b) shall be retained and used for necessary 
     expenses in this appropriation and remain available until 
     expended: Provided further, That the sum herein appropriated 
     from the Fund shall be reduced as such offsetting collections 
     are received during fiscal year 2000, so as to result in a 
     final fiscal year 2000 appropriation from the Fund estimated 
     at $0: Provided further, That 28 U.S.C. 589a is amended by 
     striking ``and'' in subsection (b)(7); by striking the period 
     in subsection (b)(8) and inserting in lieu thereof ``; and''; 
     and by adding a new paragraph as follows: ``(9) interest 
     earned on Fund investment.''.


      salaries and expenses, foreign claims settlement commission

       For expenses necessary to carry out the activities of the 
     Foreign Claims Settlement Commission, including services as 
     authorized by 5 U.S.C. 3109, $1,175,000.

  Mr. ROGERS (during the reading). Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous 
consent that the remainder of the bill through page 12 line 16 be 
considered as read, printed in the Record, and open to amendment at any 
time.
  The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from 
Kentucky?
  There was no objection.
  The text of the bill from page 9, line 1 through page 12, line 16 is 
as follows:


         salaries and expenses, united states marshals service

       For necessary expenses of the United States Marshals 
     Service; including the acquisition, lease, maintenance, and 
     operation of vehicles, and the purchase of passenger motor 
     vehicles for police-type use, without regard to the general 
     purchase price limitation for the current fiscal year, 
     $329,289,000, as authorized by 28 U.S.C. 561(i); of which not 
     to exceed $6,000 shall be available for official reception 
     and representation expenses; of which not to exceed 
     $4,000,000 for development, implementation, maintenance and 
     support, and training for an automated prisoner information 
     system shall remain available until expended; and of which 
     not less than $2,762,000 shall be for the costs of conversion 
     to narrowband communications and for the operations and 
     maintenance of legacy Land Mobile Radio systems: Provided, 
     That such amount shall be transferred to and administered by 
     the Department of Justice Wireless Management Office.
       In addition, $209,620,000, for such purposes, to remain 
     available until expended, to be derived from the Violent 
     Crime Reduction Trust Fund.


                              construction

       For planning, constructing, renovating, equipping, and 
     maintaining United States Marshals Service prisoner-holding 
     space in United States courthouses and federal buildings, 
     including the renovation and expansion of prisoner movement 
     areas, elevators, and sallyports, $4,600,000, to remain 
     available until expended.


 justice prisoner and alien transportation system fund, united states 
                            marshals service

       Beginning in fiscal year 2000 and thereafter, payment shall 
     be made from the Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation 
     System Fund for necessary expenses related to the scheduling 
     and transportation of United States prisoners and illegal and 
     criminal aliens in the custody of the United States Marshals 
     Service, as authorized in 18 U.S.C. 4013, including, without 
     limitation, salaries and expenses, operations, and the 
     acquisition, lease, and maintenance of aircraft and support 
     facilities: Provided, That the Fund shall be reimbursed or 
     credited with advance payments from amounts available to the 
     Department of Justice, other Federal agencies, and other 
     sources at rates that will recover the expenses of Fund 
     operations, including, without limitation, accrual of annual 
     leave and depreciation of plant and equipment of the Fund: 
     Provided further, That proceeds from the disposal of Fund 
     aircraft shall be credited to the Fund: Provided further, 
     That amounts in the Fund shall be available without fiscal 
     year limitation, and may be used for operating equipment 
     lease agreements that do not exceed 5 years.


                       federal prisoner detention

       For expenses, related to United States prisoners in the 
     custody of the United States Marshals Service as authorized 
     in 18 U.S.C. 4013, but not including expenses otherwise 
     provided for in appropriations available to the Attorney 
     General, $525,000,000, as authorized by 28 U.S.C. 561(i), to 
     remain available until expended.


                     fees and expenses of witnesses

       For expenses, mileage, compensation, and per diems of 
     witnesses, for expenses of contracts for the procurement and 
     supervision of expert witnesses, for private counsel 
     expenses, and for per diems in lieu of subsistence, as 
     authorized by law, including advances, $95,000,000, to remain 
     available until expended; of which not to exceed $6,000,000 
     may be made available for planning, construction, 
     renovations, maintenance, remodeling, and repair of 
     buildings, and the purchase of equipment incident thereto, 
     for protected witness safesites; and of which not to exceed 
     $1,000,000 may be made available for the purchase and 
     maintenance of armored vehicles for transportation of 
     protected witnesses.


           salaries and expenses, community relations service

       For necessary expenses of the Community Relations Service, 
     established by title X of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 
     $7,199,000 and, in addition, up to $1,000,000 of funds made 
     available to the Department of Justice in this Act may be 
     transferred by the Attorney General to this account: 
     Provided, That notwithstanding any other provision of law, 
     upon a determination by the Attorney General that emergent 
     circumstances require additional funding for conflict 
     prevention and resolution activities of the Community 
     Relations Service, the Attorney General may transfer such 
     amounts to the Community Relations Service, from available 
     appropriations for the current fiscal year for the Department 
     of Justice, as may be necessary to respond to such 
     circumstances: Provided further, That any transfer pursuant 
     to the previous proviso shall be treated as a reprogramming 
     under section 605 of this Act and shall not be available for 
     obligation or expenditure except in compliance with the 
     procedures set forth in that section.

  The CHAIRMAN. The Clerk will read.
  The Clerk read as follows:


                         assets forfeiture fund

       For expenses authorized by 28 U.S.C. 524(c)(1) (A)(ii), 
     (B), (F), and (G), as amended, $23,000,000, to be derived 
     from the Department of Justice Assets Forfeiture Fund.

  The CHAIRMAN. Are there amendments to that portion of the bill?


                    Amendment Offered By Mr. Serrano

  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.
  The Clerk read as follows:


[[Page H7004]]


       Amendment offered by Mr. Serrano:
       Page 12, line 19, after the dollar amount, insert the 
     following: ``(reduced by $23,000,000)''.
       Page 14, line 7, after the dollar amount, insert the 
     following: ``(reduced by $20,000,000)''.
       Page 18, line 18, after the dollar amount, insert the 
     following: ``(reduced by $44,000,000)''.
       Page 21, line 21, after the dollar amount, insert the 
     following: ``(increased by $44,000,000)''.
       Page 22, line 21, after the dollar amount, insert the 
     following: ``(reduced by $32,000,000)''.
       Page 65, line 17, after the dollar amount, insert the 
     following: ``(reduced by $24,000,000)''.
       Page 72, line 5, after the dollar amount, insert the 
     following: ``(reduced by $10,000,000)''.
       Page 93, line 25, after the dollar amount, insert the 
     following: ``(increased by $109,000,000)''.
       Page 94, line 1, after the dollar amount, insert the 
     following: ``(increased by $108,110,000)''.
       Page 94, line 2, after the dollar amount, insert the 
     following: ``(increased by $890,000)''.

  Mr. SERRANO (during the reading). Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous 
consent that the amendment be considered as read and printed in the 
Record.
  The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from 
New York?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, my amendment would increase the 
appropriation for the Legal Services Corporation to $250 million. Of 
this increase, $108 million would be for the LSC's basic field programs 
and required independent audits and $900,000 would bring the Office of 
Inspector General up to the fiscal year 1999 level to assist in 
improving case reporting.
  To offset the increase and assure that the amendment is outlay-
neutral, it would cut $23 million from administration of the Justice 
Department's Asset Forfeiture Fund, $20 million from the FBI's National 
Instant Check System, $32 million from the salaries and expenses of the 
Bureau of Prisons, $24 million from the salaries and expenses of the 
Federal Judiciary, and $10 million from the salaries and expenses of 
the Department of State, and transfers $44 million within the 
Immigration and Naturalization Service.
  These are not easy cuts to make. But each can be justified. The cut 
of 53 percent contained in the bill would virtually abandon our long-
standing Federal commitment to the legal protection of low-income 
Americans, including children, the elderly, and the victims of spousal 
and child abuse, arbitrary government action, and consumer fraud.
  A reduction of the fiscal year 2000 funding level to $141 million 
would result in severe reductions in services to most clients. The 
number of cases closed would fall, and families would actually be 
turned away and denied access to the court. There would be a decrease 
in the number of neighborhood offices resulting in no offices providing 
legal assistance to clients in thousands of counties throughout the 
United States.
  Especially hard hit would be the millions of poor people living in 
rural areas in the South, Southwest, and large parts of the Midwest. 
The number of Legal Services Corporation attorneys serving the poor 
would be drastically reduced with just one LSC lawyer for every 23,600 
poor Americans in the year 2000.
  The Legal Services Corporation, Mr. Chairman, was created in 1974 
with bipartisan sponsorship and signed into law by President Nixon. The 
Legal Services Delivery System is based on several principles: local 
priorities, national accountability, competition for grants, and a 
strong public-private partnership.
  This corporation has been a success with real programs to help low-
income women who are the victims of domestic violence. LSC-funded 
programs have helped millions of children living in poverty by 
providing lawyers who represent children and their parents in civil 
cases, helping them to avoid homelessness, to obtain child support or 
supplemental security income, and to find a safe haven against violence 
in the home.
  Significant services are provided to the elderly who, because of 
their special health, income, and social needs, often require legal 
assistance.
  Mr. Chairman, the Legal Services Corporation provides a valuable, 
even essential, service to the Nation's low-income families that would 
be reduced by the funding level in this bill.
  I urge my colleagues to support this amendment to give LSC more 
resources to meet the legal needs of the poor. This is without a doubt 
the most important amendment of the day and one that I know can have 
bipartisan support on behalf of people who need it and on behalf of 
those principles we stand for in this country.
  Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this 
amendment.
  Mr. Chairman, we are all familiar with the purported purpose of the 
Legal Services Corporation, which is to help the needy when they have 
problems with an eviction or some other legal action and they do not 
have the financial resources to turn to an attorney and get the legal 
assistance that they need.
  Indeed, that is a purpose for the Legal Services Corporation that I 
believe I support and the vast majority of the Members of this House 
would support. Certainly the people who will rise in opposition to this 
amendment would agree to that, that if that were the purpose, the sole 
purpose of the Legal Services Corporation, then there would be 
unanimous support for the Legal Services Corporation, and there would 
be no call for reducing their funding.
  But the fact of the matter is that the Legal Services Corporation has 
engaged in a lot of other legal activity other than what they purport 
to do. Indeed, I believe they file legal briefs challenging our welfare 
reform legislation that this body passed and the President ultimately 
signed, which I believe most Americans today would now say has been a 
fabulous success.
  I could go on and on and list all of the various left-wing causes 
that the Legal Services Corporation has decided to sign up to over the 
years.
  Now, I have had their members come into my office and say we are 
getting away from that, we are going to just strictly apply ourselves 
to the bread and butter issues of helping those poor people with the 
legal representation that they needed.
  Frankly, I had seen a trend in that direction in my State. But now we 
have reported to us by their own IG and the GAO that they have been 
falsifying their records of caseloads for the last I do not know how 
many years, and that they are not actually representing the number of 
people that they are supposed to be representing.
  Indeed, we have been informed that they are actually doing about half 
the amount of work that they have been claiming to the Congress that 
they have been doing.
  I have been here for 5 years now, and this to me has been one of the 
most outrageous misrepresentations of any agency in the 5 years that I 
have been here. I must say it is probably one of the worst in this 
century.
  I applaud my colleagues on the Committee on Appropriations. They did 
the appropriate thing. The data comes in and says, no, the Legal 
Services Corporation is doing half the amount of work that it is 
supposed to be doing. Therefore, we will cut their appropriation in 
half. We will fund them at the level that they are actually doing.
  Therefore, I strongly encourage my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this 
amendment. Support the committee mark in this area. It is the right 
thing to do, and it is the right thing to do for all of the working 
people in this country who get up every morning and work very, very 
hard and typically do not have enough money at the end of the week to 
pay all of the bills that they need to pay.
  We are entrusted with the sacred responsibility to be able to take 
the hard-earned dollars of the American taxpayers and spend it 
appropriately; and to give an agency that has been falsifying their 
records an amount of money consistent with their falsified volume to me 
is absolutely unconscionable.
  I urge my colleagues in the strongest way to vote against this 
amendment and support the original committee mark in this area.
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last 
word.
  Mr. Chairman, I have just come to the floor from a hearing in the 
Committee on Judiciary dealing with the Hate Crimes Prevention Act. As 
I listened to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Weldon), although his 
arguments are pertaining to the amendment of the

[[Page H7005]]

 gentleman from New York (Mr. Serrano) of which I rise to support, and 
I appreciate his distinguished leadership on this issue, the sound is 
similar.
  For the opponents of the hate crimes legislation were making a number 
of legal arguments, a number of arguments that would question Congress' 
rightness in doing this for fear that it would be difficult to 
prosecute or that the courts would argue or the courts would find this 
law unconstitutional.
  Those of us who profess to support it recognize that the courts may 
have their chance at the legislation. But we also recognize that people 
were dead. James Barrett is dead. Matthew Shepherd is dead. A gay man 
is dead. We realize that the Congress had to act.
  In this instance, I support the Legal Services Corporation because 
poor people should have equal access to legal services. Whether they 
are Indians on America's reservations; whether they are citizens on the 
border in Texas; whether they are African-American single mothers in 
the inner cities of Houston or all over this Nation, we must provide in 
a manner that is responsible and efficient the kinds of services that 
are the privileges of the rich.
  If any of us have ever entered into the halls of a courtroom, and I 
practiced law for a number of years and presided as an associate judge 
for the Municipal Court of the City of Houston, I know the pain of 
those who do not have adequate representation, the pain of those who 
come into a system that is confusing and intimidating. Our legal 
services are officers and attorneys who work in the shadow of poor 
working conditions, poor money as compared to their counterparts in the 
private sector, but they work with compassion and dedication.
  I cannot imagine this Congress opposing the opportunity to say to 
America that, because one is not born with all of the attachments of 
privilege and wealth that one does not have the opportunity to receive 
justice, as I would not want to tell the Jewish person or the black 
person or the Hispanic or the gay or lesbian person that they cannot be 
protected by the laws of this land in a hate crimes act, as we tried to 
tell African Americans in not being for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 
and the Voter Rights Act of 1965.
  We have a better and a higher calling, and I believe that this 
amendment of the ranking member is a good amendment, a fair amendment, 
and I would ask my colleagues to support it.
  Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of 
words.
  Mr. Chairman, I practiced law for 27 years. I was a city attorney of 
Pinebluff, Arkansas, for 2 of those years. I saw how the Legal Services 
Corporation was doing a good job in rural America.
  I stayed with this program up until right now. I stayed with it 
because of what the lawyers, my fellow lawyers, were telling me were 
the circumstances. It reminded me of what the circumstances were at 
home.

                             {time}   1415

  But now I can see that people who had other ideas were just using the 
poor people. I would like to see how they, if they were given the case, 
would handle the misrepresentation. In other words, if we went to these 
political activists, if that is what we want to call them, or the 
people that use the poor people to try to get other things done, I 
would like to see what case they would make as to whether or not the 
money we have appropriated over the years, based on their figures, 
should be returned; how they would handle that and what they would call 
it. I think it would be very clear that they would have an excellent 
case.
  We have seen the Legal Services Corporation used for exotic theories 
and almost for law school type circumstances where they say, let us try 
this, let us try this, let us see if we can do this and that, and that 
all comes from idleness. I think the only way to bring the Legal 
Services Corporation back to focusing on poor people and trying to help 
them in their only touch, sometimes, with justice, in the municipal 
courts and smaller claims courts all across the country, is just to 
reduce the size of the appropriations; make them, Mr. Chairman, 
understand what their purpose is and get back to the principles. 
Otherwise, we are going to just promote misrepresentation and 
government bureaucracy, and I think that is a disservice to the poor 
people.
  Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of 
words.
  Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to cosponsor this amendment with the 
ranking member, the gentleman from New York, and the gentleman from 
Minnesota (Mr. Ramstad). Our preceding speaker referred to or used the 
metaphor about cooking the books. Well, if somebody is cooking the 
books, we should get new cooks, not go and blow up the kitchen.
  Last year, Legal Services Corporation provided support to 258 local 
agencies in every county and Congressional District in America. That 
support is a lifeline for hundreds of thousands of people with no other 
means of access to the legal system.
  Who are these people that rely on Legal Services? Over two-thirds are 
women, and most are mothers with children. They are women, women 
seeking protection against abusive spouses, who oftentimes have their 
personal safety at risk along with the personal safety of their 
children. They are children living in poverty and neglect. They are 
elderly people threatened by eviction or victimized by consumer fraud. 
They are veterans denied benefits, and small farmers facing eviction. 
Everywhere in rural America this is occurring.
  These are the people who will be hurt if this amendment is not 
adopted today. If Legal Services is forced to absorb the huge cuts made 
in committee, nearly a third of the 890 neighborhood Legal Services 
offices will have to close. This will leave one lawyer to serve every 
23,600 poor Americans. Over 250,000 people in need of legal services 
will have to be turned away.
  Nevertheless, we have already heard from some critics that we should 
cut the funding for the program. Why? Because some local grant 
recipients overstated the number of cases they handled back in 1997, 
chiefly by reporting telephone referrals to be cases. Never mind the 
fact that the agency itself uncovered the problem, brought it to 
congressional attention and moved speedily to correct it. Never mind 
the fact that despite the cries of fraud and abuse, neither LSC nor its 
affiliates derived any financial gain from the erroneous reports, 
because case numbers have no bearing on the program's funding levels. 
Allocations are based on eligible population living in each service 
area, not on the number of cases handled or referred. This has been 
pointed out repeatedly. However, the allegations continue.
  There is a real irony here. Those who criticize LSC for counting 
referrals as cases fail to appreciate that referrals are what an agency 
does for the thousands of needy people when it is unable to provide 
services. And even without the proposed cuts, referrals must be made in 
many thousands of cases because current funding meets only 20 percent 
of the need. So if my colleagues want to eliminate referrals, I can 
tell them how to do it. Give the Legal Services Corporation the 
resources it needs to do the job more fully.
  Instead of doing this, the committee voted to make further cuts that 
will devastate the program. Our amendment does not fully restore 
funding to last year's level because we could not find sufficient 
offsets in the bill. Moreover, some of the offsets we are using come at 
the expense of other legitimate and worthwhile programs. I am troubled 
by this, as is the gentleman from New York (Mr. Serrano) and the 
gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ramstad).
  I hope that after we pass the amendment, and I hope we will, that we 
can work with the White House and our Senate colleagues to fully 
restore the funding for Legal Services and restore some of those 
offsets as well. Meanwhile, I urge my colleagues to support the 
amendment. It is a critically important vote, and it is the right thing 
to do.
  Mr. RAMSTAD. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of 
words.
  Mr. Chairman, I join in sponsoring this amendment to prevent the 
draconian 53 percent cut in Legal Services' funding. If the committee's 
attempt to wipe out Legal Services prevails, our poorest most 
vulnerable citizens will have no civil justice, and those sacred

[[Page H7006]]

words ``equal justice under law'' etched across the street on the 
Supreme Court building will be meaningless.
  Congress has already cut Legal Services 30 percent since 1995. If we 
enact this 53 percent cut on top of that 30 percent cut, we would 
devastate thousands of domestic violence victims, children, seniors, 
and people with disabilities who depend on Legal Services for their 
mere survival.
  Although as sponsors of this amendment, Mr. Chairman, we would prefer 
to restore funding to last year's level, a problem with finding 
sufficient offsets means this amendment, which I am sponsoring, still 
represents a $50 million cut from last year's funding level of $300 
million.
  Now, some have argued that funding for the Legal Services Corporation 
should be drastically cut because five legal aid programs, of the 258 
programs total, allegedly overstated the number of low-income clients 
they serve. Mr. Chairman, it is time to look at the facts.
  GAO found absolutely no evidence of fraud or intentional 
misreporting. Let me repeat that. GAO found absolutely no evidence of 
fraud or intentional misreporting. The Legal Services Corporation has 
already taken action to eliminate the confusion about what constitutes 
a case for reporting purposes and it is aggressively enforcing the 
reporting guideline.
  The truth is, as the previous speaker and cosponsor of this amendment 
pointed out, no financial incentive exists to overstate the number of 
cases they handle because funding is not based on the number of cases 
but on the number of people in the area living at or below the poverty 
level. So there is absolutely no incentive for Legal Services to 
overstate the number of cases.
  Mr. Chairman, it is also time to set the record straight about the 
misleading outdated charges by people on this floor who ignore the fact 
that the Legal Services Corporation was reformed by Congress in 1996. 
In 1996, we enacted tight restrictions on the Legal Services 
Corporation, so there are no class action lawsuits, no lobbying, no 
legal assistance to illegal aliens, no political activities, no 
prisoner litigation, no redistricting representation, no collection of 
attorneys' fees, and no representation of people evicted from public 
housing because of drug charges. These restrictions are in permanent 
law, as we all should know, and are restated in this bill.
  These tight restrictions are not limited just to Legal Services 
Corporation funds. Legal aid programs cannot even use State or private 
funding on these purposes if they receive just one penny from the Legal 
Services Corporation. They cannot use State or private funding on these 
purposes that have been banned by the Congress by law. If they violate 
these restrictions, attorneys can be disbarred, programs lose their 
funding and their ability to apply for funding in the future. So we 
have appropriate sanctions to deal with any abuses.
  Now, some critics here have already pointed to a few isolated cases 
that appear to be abusive. In these cases that have actually been 
documented, not the rumors and the innuendoes, but the cases that have 
actually been documented, either no Legal Services Corporation funding 
program was involved or the Legal Services Corporation is enforcing 
sanctions against the abuses, as they should.
  But even with all the alleged abuses that have been talked about by 
critics of Legal Services, these represent a mere handful of 
aberrations in a program with countless success stories, Mr. Chairman, 
of service to domestic violence victims, to children in need of 
support, to seniors and people with disabilities in danger of losing 
the services that they need for their survival.
  Mr. Chairman, let us not shut the courthouse door to poor people in 
America. Let us not give our most vulnerable Americans the heave-ho. 
Let us give poor people and vulnerable Americans their day in court 
just like every other American. If our justice system is only 
accessible to people with means, it cannot truly be just. I urge my 
colleagues to support fairness, to support equality under the law by 
restoring Legal Services funding.
  Mr. MINGE. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of 
words.
  Mr. Chairman, I would like to begin by associating myself with the 
remarks of my colleague, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ramstad). He 
has eloquently spoken of the importance of the Legal Services program 
and of the phony nature of the attacks against the Legal Services 
program.
  I would like to focus my comments on a couple of other dimensions of 
the Legal Services program. First, I think it is worth noting that the 
Legal Services Corporation is 25 years old this year. Twenty-five years 
represents the commitment that we have made at the Federal level to 
equal access to the law.
  I have personally participated in various aspects of the Legal 
Services program for 32 years, going back to the mid-1960s, actually, 
34 years. I first became acquainted with it as a student in law school. 
Upon finishing law school, I joined with other attorneys in Minneapolis 
in forming a volunteer attorney program. I worked with the Legal 
Services Corporation as a law school faculty member, and then as a 
country lawyer I was on the Legal Services board in our rural area of 
Minnesota and also again worked with the volunteer attorney program.
  My service is not unique, Mr. Chairman. There are thousands and 
thousands of lawyers around the country who have volunteered millions 
of hours of time to provide volunteer legal services to those in our 
country who cannot afford access to the legal system.
  Now, some may say if there are all of these volunteer attorneys, why 
do we need this Federal money? Well, I can assure my colleagues that 
the ability of volunteers to handle the caseload is not adequate to the 
demands that are made upon the programs. It simply is not there. And 
the established program is important in coordinating the work of the 
volunteers, in making sure that they have some of the basic resources 
that are necessary for adequate representation. The Legal Services 
Corporation and the individual programs around the country are serving 
a vital need in even this coordination function.
  Going beyond that, I think that it is critical that we understand the 
importance of equal access to the law in this country. It is one of the 
fundamental concepts in our Democratic form of government that 
everybody has access to the political and the legal processes of our 
Nation. If we lose this quality of equal access to the law in America, 
we compromise our commitments to our Democratic form of government. 
Once people feel that they are consigned to the trash heap of being 
unable to obtain redress for their legal grievances, they lose faith in 
our Democratic form of government.
  And we may say, well, it is the ballot box that they have access to. 
But I would like to emphasize that the arena in which we are working, 
the legislative branch, the elected officials, is only part of our form 
of government.

                              {time}  1430

  The rest of it is the judicial system. And redress of grievances is 
as important a function of the judicial system and our ensuring people 
that they have access to the judicial system is as important as 
ensuring them that they have access to the ballot box. We cannot 
compromise this feature of our democratic form of government without in 
my opinion undermining our democratic form of government. For this 
reason, I urge that all of us maintain a commitment to this very 
important program.
  I would also like to point out that in funding this program, we are 
not funding some lavish program that has highly compensated employees. 
We are funding a program that is employing people at very modest levels 
of compensation. Often what we find is that the attorneys in the Legal 
Services program serve a few years and go on into private practice 
because they say they cannot afford to continue to work in a program 
that provides modest compensation. If you compare this to the Medicaid 
and the Medicare programs in our country, you will find that the 
professional, the university, the postgraduate educated folks are not 
highly compensated members of their profession. They are very humbly 
compensated. So we, I think, have a very economical program. We are 
getting a very good return on our dollar.
  I again urge support of the amendment.

[[Page H7007]]

  Mr. LATHAM. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of 
words.
  Mr. Chairman, this debate really, let me assure my colleagues, is not 
about the attributes of the volunteers at home who do good work, I 
believe, for their clients who need their assistance. This debate is 
all about integrity. This debate is all about honesty.
  Let me give my colleagues a little bit of background of what happened 
this year. I had an individual come to my office who worked for Legal 
Services to explain to me, because of my position on this subcommittee 
on appropriations that funds Legal Services, exactly what had happened 
in 1997 and 1998 and exactly what had happened when we were going 
through the process last year of appropriating additional dollars for 
Legal Services.
  This individual, who happened to be in part working with the 
Inspector General at Legal Services and with the Inspector General at 
Legal Services, had audited five different agencies, local agencies, 
and found that they had overreported their cases in those five by 
90,000 cases. If anyone will remember the debate last year on Legal 
Services about how many times people would stand up here and say that 
Legal Services did 1.9 million cases last year and this justifies our 
appropriation.
  So after this individual, who was with the Inspector General, came to 
my office to tell me what had happened, we ordered a GAO report to look 
at just six more local agencies. When they looked at those six 
agencies, they found that another 75,000 cases were falsely reported. 
So in total now, Mr. Chairman, we are up about 165,000, 170,000 cases, 
or 50 percent of the total cases reported by these 11 agencies.
  Now, the question is, should they have told us last year before we 
made the appropriation for Legal Services that their numbers were 
totally bogus? They say, ``No, we don't have any cause to report to you 
on a timely basis.'' I would respectfully submit the fact that under 
the Inspector General statute, they in fact were required to report to 
Congress and the Legal Services board was required to report to us 
exactly the phony numbers that they had derived and that they put to 
Congress. And when they were questioned during the appropriations 
process, they continually denied that they had held back this 
information until in fact I was able to lay the facts out.
  We wonder why this would happen. The reason is, Mr. Chairman, the 
Inspector General at Legal Services, which the board admitted to the 
committee, said that his job was in jeopardy, and in fact what 
happened, he did not report to Congress as it is stated in statute that 
he has to if there are dramatic changes, he did not, because he was 
afraid of losing his job at Legal Services.
  Again, Mr. Chairman, this is not about what Legal Services does. This 
is about integrity and honesty to Congress. Every Member here should 
show the disdain toward Legal Services which they showed toward you as 
a Member of Congress, to flat out come to us with false numbers and 
then say once again, ``No, these are true'' until they were presented 
with the facts and then they say, ``Well, wait a minute, it doesn't 
matter what we said, because our appropriation isn't based on that, 
anyway.''
  This is a personal affront to every Member of Congress. If you 
believe that Congress can now go forward and talk to any other Federal 
agency and say that they have to be accountable but say to Legal 
Services, ``It doesn't matter what you tell us because it's okay 
because you have a role that people like, that you're helping poor 
people, so it's okay no matter what you tell Congress to justify the 
money.''
  Mr. Chairman, that is what it is about. It is about honesty and 
integrity. I personally have supported Legal Services in the past. You 
can check my record. I have voted to increase funding. But I will not 
do so this year. The reason is, because I will not be insulted once 
again.
  Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of 
words.
  Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of this amendment to eliminate 
the proposed draconian 53 percent cut in the appropriations for Legal 
Services.
  Legal Services Corporation makes a real difference in the lives of 
those low-income Americans who need legal representation. Without the 
Legal Services Corporation, we would truly have the best legal rights 
that money can buy. It is bad enough that we have failed to enact 
campaign finance reform, so that Will Rogers' quip that we have the 
best government money can buy has more than a slight ring of truth. 
Without Legal Services, only those with money would have any real 
chance of finding justice in our courts.
  There may be Members of this House who do not worry about the ability 
of low-income people to receive basic Legal Services. The annual 
assault on Legal Services Corporation would suggest that this is the 
case. In fact, the Legal Services Corporation does the opposite of what 
the money-driven politics which too often tends to rule this House 
these days would command. The Legal Services Corporation helps the poor 
and powerless assert their rights against the wealthy and powerful. It 
represents tenants against landlords, it represents victims of toxic 
pollution against corporate polluters, it represents those who have 
suffered discrimination against those who discriminate, it represents 
victims of domestic violence against those who perpetrate domestic 
violence. No wonder it is so unpopular.
  But, Mr. Chairman, the poor, just like the wealthy, should be 
entitled to fair legal representation. A right without a ability to 
enforce it legally is not meaningful. If any Member of this House had a 
dispute or a legal problem, he or she would seek out the best legal 
services he or she could afford or could raise the money to afford. So 
there is a general recognition that to have meaningful rights, you need 
competent legal representation in this society.
  In criminal proceedings, that need is so obvious that the 
Constitution requires publicly funded counsel. But that requirement has 
not been deemed to extend to protection of rights outside the criminal 
court, to family court, housing court or civil court. That is the job 
of Legal Services. We are not forced by the Constitution to do this, 
but simple decency and a commitment to equal justice under law should 
be enough. It was enough for President Nixon and for the bipartisan 
coalition that brought Legal Services into being and it should be 
enough now.
  Some have argued that Legal Services Corporation has failed to live 
up to Congress' expectations for record keeping and accounting. Some 
have argued there is some waste and fraud and even abuse in Legal 
Services. I believe the wild claims that LSC is wasting or misusing 
large sums of taxpayers' money bear little relation to reality. But 
imagine if we applied the sort of rigorous accounting rules and this 
reasoning, the kind of reasoning we heard from the last speaker, to 
some other programs, like, for instance, the Defense Department. No one 
has ever suggested that because there is obviously waste, fraud and 
abuse in the Pentagon, we should abolish the defense budget, zero out 
the defense budget. That would be absurd.
  Mr. Chairman, there is incredible cynicism in this country. The 
newspapers, the press have pointed out that the polls show that people 
feel that government responds to the rich and the powerful, that we do 
not particularly care about what ordinary people think. There is 
substantial truth to this. Who gets their phone calls returned from 
Congress or the executive branch more quickly, the ordinary voter or 
the $100,000 contributor? The answer is obvious. That is bad enough in 
the legislative and executive branches. Only the Legal Services 
Corporation prevents this from also being true in our courts of law, in 
the judicial branch, too.
  We must adopt this amendment to protect the honesty and the integrity 
of the judicial branch and to protect the faith of our citizens and the 
fact that if they are hauled before the judicial branch, if they need 
the services of the judicial branch and if they cannot afford legal 
representation on their own, they will have the ability to have fair 
representation.
  This amendment must be passed to protect the integrity and the 
honesty and the due regard of our people for the judicial branch of 
government and for what we claim to be our regard for equal justice 
under law.

[[Page H7008]]

  I urge my colleagues to adopt this amendment.
  Mr. ARMEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of 
words.
  Mr. Chairman, equal access under the law. Equal justice for all. The 
compassionate Nation providing legal resources to obtain these things 
for the poor and the itinerate in this population. These are great 
principles. They are honorable principles. They are principles we all 
embrace and principles we are willing to support. These are principles, 
Mr. Chairman, that we have entrusted to the Legal Services Corporation. 
We have said, ``This is an important job. It is a job where you are 
trusted to reflect the heart, the compassion, the commitment of the 
American people. Do it right. Be of service. Make us proud.''
  Mr. Chairman, the Legal Services Corporation has failed in this duty. 
They have failed in such a way as to inflate the statistical data for 
the purpose of getting more of that money that might be otherwise used.
  Mr. Chairman, in February of 1999, John McKay, the President of Legal 
Services Corporation said, and I quote, ``Case statistics play an 
essential role in budget requests and the performance plan submitted by 
the Legal Services Corporation to Congress each year.''
  He went on to say, ``Therefore, the reliability of case 
statistics''--therefore, the reliability of case statistics--
reliability, that it be true and accurate. That is what ``reliability'' 
means here. True and accurate reporting of real cases really handled 
that reflect our compassion and our commitment to equal justice under 
the law for all Americans. ``The reliability of case statistics 
submitted by programs to LSC is vital to obtaining continued Federal 
funding for Legal Services.'' This type of information holds great 
promise for securing increased Federal funding.
  I could not agree more. Give us great reliability, and we will 
fulfill great promise for increased funding. But what did we find out? 
The Inspector General of Legal Services Corporation and the General 
Accounting Office audited 11 grantees. What did they find out? These 11 
grantees reported 370,000 cases handled. The IG and the GAO 
invalidated, either because the case was not handled, it was merely a 
phone call and a referral or that the case was in fact a case taken on 
by Legal Services for somebody with means not intended to be covered by 
this service under the law or that the case was counted more than one 
time, 175,000 invalid cases.

                              {time}  1445

  That is not the judgment of the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Armey). 
That is the General Accounting Office, the accountability test.
  The committee, quite rightly, saw this, took Mr. John McKay at his 
word and engaged in a further endorsement not only of what this agency 
is supposed to do but the standard by which they should demonstrate 
their achievement as reported by the agency themselves and cut their 
budget back to their actual caseload. A fair thing to do. A necessary 
thing to do.
  Accountability is not a passing fancy, my colleagues, in the 
Government of the United States. We are given a trust to create 
agencies of compassion and service and then to hold them accountable to 
the fulfillment of that promise and the law by which we created.
  Agencies that fail in their duty should not be rewarded. Yes, indeed, 
if our favorite charity was not in fact doing the things for which we 
voluntarily give our money, we would cut back. And we, as Members of 
Congress, given the trust to represent the compassion of the American 
people, must do the same for a Federal Government agency that does not 
fulfill its promise.
  That is what is going on here. Do not reward them for giving us data 
that is not reliable for inflating the caseloads.
  Now, Mr. Chairman, one final observation. If we are going to in fact 
restore money to Legal Services Corporation by this amendment in order 
to let them continue to operate in such a fashion as to report so many 
more cases than they actually do, where does this amendment suggest we 
take the money? From all funds to run the seized asset program vital to 
the battle against drug traffickers. Twenty million from the FBI's 
investigative expenses, 44 million from INS border enforcement, 44 
million from violent crime initiative, 32 million from Federal prisons, 
and 10 million from operations of the Federal Court.
  This is a serious moment in oversight accountability and service, Mr. 
Chairman. Are we in Congress going to take money from these agencies 
with these precious necessary duties so important to the safety and 
security of our citizens and say, no, we will take that fund away from 
them and give it to an agency that has been proven to squander their 
money and report falsely?
  Mr. Chairman, for me to falsely represent my misdeeds is 
unacceptable. But, Mr. Chairman, for me to exaggerate and falsely 
report my virtue in the quest for the taxpayers' dollar is wholly 
unacceptable and frankly undignified.
  Let us vote for the dignity, the service, and the compassion of the 
American people through its government and vote down this amendment.
  Mrs. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite 
number of words.
  Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the amendment of the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Serrano).
  I can understand why the gentleman from New York (Mr. Serrano) 
entered that amendment, because he has had first-rate experience with 
some of the pious platitudes I hear on this floor. He has seen some of 
the things that are happening. He is not basing all of his opinion 
merely on statistical data.
  My mother used to have an old saying, ``Figures do not lie but liars 
figure.'' We find that out a lot of times when we look at things in the 
Congress.
  I just heard a litany of abuses of the Legal Services system, one of 
which said 11 particular programs in Legal Services abuse the 
statistical count.
  What about the 258 others? Are they to go down because 11 of them 
went out of the way? 250,000 cases we are looking at. So what are the 
opponents of the Legal Services program voting against? They are voting 
against the rights and interest of one in every five Americans who are 
potentially eligible for legal services.
  My colleagues are against their right to contest evictions when the 
slum lords put them out. They are willing to protect them so that they 
can contest foreclosures on these poor people, to obtain access to 
health care. They are willing to protect them because of these 11 
people who abuse the law. They are trying to keep them from seeking 
redress, which anyone in this country should have, for child support 
and custody matters, to pursue unemployment or disability claims, or to 
protect their family members from domestic violence, one of the biggest 
problems we have in this country.
  The Legal Services opponents are voting against some four million 
Legal Services clients. I see them every day in my community. Most of 
my colleagues see them in their community. I am not the only one.
  So remember, we are representing people here. We are not representing 
some numbers that someone has put together to make us believe that 
there is this widespread abuse. I say to my colleagues, there is not.
  My colleagues are overlooking the family members which they talk so 
much about, family values. If we believe in family values, let us then 
protect some of these poor and middle-class people who cannot afford to 
protect their families. They are voting against the elderly people of 
this country who comprise 10 percent of Legal Services clients. They do 
not know which way to go. They cannot go to another attorney.
  Simply put, they are voting against equal justice under the law. I 
could give my colleagues all kinds of cases which would refute what we 
have heard on the floor today regarding the liability and validity of 
numbers.
  I am saying to my colleagues to look at the 11 cases. Yes, they 
should be punished. But do not cut their budget down to $150 million. 
Look at all the money we spend here in the Congress. We spend it on 
widgets and gidgets and everything else. Yet we cannot look at these 
poor families that need legal services.
  They have met some success over the years, Legal Services has. In 
1995, we gave them $415 million for legal services. That was not a 
whole heck of a lot, but at least we gave it to them.

[[Page H7009]]

  In 1996 we cut them to $278 million, slowly deescalating this 
wonderful agency. At the end of 1994, Legal Services programs funded by 
the LSC operated more than 1,200 neighborhood offices and they employed 
4,500 attorneys.
  These attorneys are not making a big amount of money either. They are 
working for the good of the people. By the end of 1996, we closed down 
300 offices and the number of attorneys was cut by 900.
  Where are we going to send these people? We cannot send them to a 
big, highly-paid lawyer. Where are we going to send these senior 
citizens who have no redress?
  So in Florida there are about 106 million people living at or below 
the poverty level. They qualify for LSC-funded programs. In the Miami 
area alone, there are 350,000 poor citizens who are eligible and depend 
upon Legal Services programs.
  Walk the streets of Miami with me and my colleagues will see those 
who came there, some by boat, some by ship, some forced there; and they 
cannot get any help because here in the Congress we quibble over $250 
million.
  I say to my colleagues it is a travesty of justice. I hope that we 
will vote for the Serrano amendment and forget about this litany of 
statistical misinformation.
  Mr. GEKAS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of 
words.
  Mr. Chairman, I rise to support the amendment that has been offered 
to reinstate some of the funds for Legal Services. I do so with great 
pain and reluctance. Because many times in the past, even though I have 
always supported the right of the poor to have and to gain access to 
the court systems of our country, I have felt that there were certain 
abuses, alleged or actual or real, within the Legal Services 
Corporation and its grantees that cried out for reform.
  We have succeeded many times to bring about such reforms. Those 
reforms are still in the play book. We must bring more accountability 
to Legal Services. But until we do, we cannot immediately put a 
finishing touch on the Legal Services' attempt to serve those people 
who are already on the books and who are yet to come.
  I looked very carefully at the report of the committee, which I think 
is one of the finest analyses accompanying a decision by an 
appropriations committee that I have ever seen, and it seems to me that 
the language of the report serves as our next set of duties in the 
questions of the Legal Services Corporation.
  The committee report talks about the serious concerns about the case 
service reporting and associated data reports, all those things that 
have been repeated by both the proponents and the opponents of Legal 
Services.
  There is no question about it, we need accountability. There are 
abuses rampant in what we have seen already on the record in this 
proceeding.
  It is my reasoning that we ought to consider all of this as 
allegations for the time being that the report by the committee, as 
excellent as it is, should constitute an indictment against the Legal 
Services Corporation and that we should, as fact-finders, proceed down 
the line with hearings and other oversight capacity to make sure that 
this never occurs again.
  Now, if we consider this an indictment, that means that we should not 
consider the Legal Services Corporation at this moment or the grantees 
guilty. We give them the benefit of the doubt, assume their innocence 
until they are proven guilty, and then move to the rest of the calendar 
in this remaining first year of this session and in the next session to 
determine the truth of the allegations, and then in next year's 
allocation and appropriation, in that time, to make the corrections 
that are absolutely necessary.
  This is an indictment that the Legal Services Corporation shall not 
avoid, and we have the duty to pursue this indictment. We have already 
determined in the Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law 
that we will have an oversight hearing on the Legal Services 
Corporation on Wednesday, September 22, 1999, at 2 p.m. We are doing so 
in following the lead of the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers) and 
the Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, State, and Judiciary because of 
the findings of that committee; and that committee set of findings will 
also be part of the hearing that we intend to conduct.
  At all times, we will keep in constant touch with the gentleman from 
Kentucky (Mr. Rogers) to make sure that this indictment against the 
Legal Services Corporation be fully fleshed out in a full trial before 
the American people to guarantee that the money will go to serve the 
poor, to guarantee access of the court system to the poor, and to make 
sure that accountability for it and accountability by the professionals 
shall be a part of the next era of Legal Services.
  Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I know there are a number of speakers on 
either side waiting to be heard. But I wonder, in the interest of time, 
if it might be possible to set some sort of time limit on the time 
devoted to this amendment. We have a number of other amendments 
waiting.
  I ask unanimous consent that we have a time limit of 30 minutes for 
all debate on this amendment and amendments thereto divided equally 
between both sides.
  The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from 
Kentucky?
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object, I appreciate 
the desire of the chairman to set a reasonable time limit. But I think 
there are probably more Members here wishing to speak. So if he would 
amend his unanimous consent request to, I think, an hour, that may be 
satisfactory.
  Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I think if we did 40 minutes it would be a 
reasonable time.
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. Chairman, continuing to reserve my right to object, I 
believe we have too many Members on the floor.
  The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from 
Kentucky?
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. Chairman, I object.
  Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my unanimous consent request.
  The CHAIRMAN. Objection is heard.

                              {time}  1500

  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of 
words.
  Mr. Chairman, first let me compliment the ranking member on this 
amendment which I support which would restore the moneys that have been 
cut or recommended to be cut from the Legal Services Corporation.
  It is interesting. I listened to some of the opponents, and the Legal 
Services Corporation has enjoyed bipartisan support throughout its 
history and for good reason. There are many Republicans and Democrats 
who are coming to the well today to speak in favor of this amendment 
because we understand the importance of equal access to our legal 
system in our rule of law.
  We are looked upon around the world as the beacon of hope for 
democracy and freedom, in part because of our rule of law. Our rule of 
law does not mean anything unless we have equal access to justice, and 
the Legal Services Corporation helps provide that equal access to 
justice.
  The Legal Service Corporation is a conduit of funds that go into our 
local communities. They are used for basic services in our legal 
system, to get child support payments, or to get protective orders 
against abuse, or to help get benefits that people are entitled to, 
low-income Americans; they are entitled to that rule of law, to the 
access to our legal system.
  Now the bill before us, Mr. Chairman, would cut the funding to the 
Legal Service Corporation by 53 percent, to $141 million.
  Mr. Chairman, for a period of time I chaired the Maryland Legal 
Services Corporation, and as a private attorney I handled pro bono 
cases; and, yes, there is a responsibility on the private sector to 
help make access to justice a reality for all people in our community, 
but government must play a principal role.
  The last time that we had a major cut in 1995, I can tell my 
colleagues what happened in my own State of Maryland. The Maryland 
Legal Services had to close two offices, and there was drastic cuts 
which necessitated further closings, eliminating about 20 attorney 
positions, forcing Legal Aid to handle about 6,000 fewer cases. I can 
tell my colleagues today that we can handle about 30 percent of the 
need in our community of people who come forward for help, and in many 
of those

[[Page H7010]]

cases we have to conclude those issues through legal advice only 
because we do not have the support necessary to pursue a court remedy.
  That is not equal access to our justice system. That is wrong. We 
should do better, and we can do better.
  We have looked at the Maryland statistics, and this is true around 
the Nation. We know that we are not meeting the need that is there. We 
know in every State in the country there are people being turned away 
today, and let me remind my colleagues the Legal Service Corporation 
provides some of the funds for the local programs, and we want to 
penalize the local programs and our constituents and penalize our 
system of justice because of an audit report that quite frankly I do 
not think is the real reason why this cut is being brought forward. 
Many of the people that are supporting it have never supported the 
Legal Services Corporation. They will look for any reason to reduce 
that budget.
  Mr. Chairman, access to our legal system by every American, no matter 
how poor, is vital to the liberties that this Congress is supposed to 
protect and promote. If my colleagues will vote against this amendment, 
they are voting against fairness and access to our justice for people 
in this country who are most in need. It would be a shameful stance for 
this body to provide such a drastic cut.
  Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support the amendment offered 
by the gentleman from New York (Mr. Serrano).
  Mr. MILLER of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite 
number of words.
  Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment for several 
reasons. First of all, I have a philosophical difference with my 
colleagues on whether this is a Federal responsibility. I do not 
disagree with the previous speaker about the need for access to legal 
services, but we are talking about State court issues and not the 
Federal court issues. So the question is: Why is the Federal Government 
taking this responsibility?
  So I just have a question, why we need to do it. At the Federal court 
level I definitely could support it or this type of program, but the 
State court level, this should be a State and local responsibility.
  The second reason I have a problem with this particular amendment is 
the way we are trying to fund it. The gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. 
Rogers) had a very tight number to work with, and we all recognize 
that; and he had to make some tough choices, and what this amendment 
does is it cuts programs from essential Federal programs.
  For example, it is going to cut $44 million from the Border Patrol. 
We have all agreed we need to tighten our border, and now we are going 
to cut 44 million?
  The National Instant Check System. We have all been fighting over the 
gun issue. We all agree, I think, that we should have an instant check. 
And now our colleagues want to take $20 million away from that? How do 
we even do it if we want to check for guns if they are going to take 
the money away when we start going after the issue of gun shows unless 
it is a funded program?
  We are going to take $44 million from the violent crime reduction 
program and the Federal prisons, $32 million. Well, let us see. Let us 
just turn some more prisoners loose and cut the Federal prison system.
  So it is wrong to make these cuts.
  And, finally, the third reason I am opposed to this is what the 
gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Latham) and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Armey) talked about, and that is this issue of credibility of the Legal 
Services Corporation. GAO and the Inspector General both issued reports 
that really question the credibility there as an oversight 
responsibility. We need to make sure that the money is being spent in 
the right manner and wisely, and the Legal Services Corporation has not 
been straight with the subcommittee.
  So Mr. Chairman, I have serious concerns about whether this program 
should even exist, and I very much disagree with the gentleman, the 
ranking member, for taking cuts from programs that are already cut too 
much already, and I urge opposition to this amendment.
  Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, let me renew my unanimous consent request.
  I think the number of speakers has diminished somewhat. If each of 
them would restrict their comments maybe to 3 minutes apiece, I think 
we can be through in a reasonably short period of time.
  Could we agree to a 30-minute limit of time divided equally?
  The CHAIRMAN. Is that a unanimous consent request?
  Mr. ROGERS. That is a unanimous consent request.
  The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from 
Kentucky?
  Mr. BERMAN. Reserving the right to object, Mr. Chairman, under my 
reservation I yield to the ranking member of the subcommittee, the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Serrano), for any thoughts he has.
  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I understand the gentleman's request, and 
we all want to finish as quickly as we can, but there are just on this 
side too many speakers.
  Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BERMAN. I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky.
  Mr. ROGERS. If I can inquire, how many speakers does my colleague 
have?
  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would continue to yield, 
we know of at least about a dozen who want to speak now, and all the 
courtesy should be given to them. So it is a problem at this point.
  Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I only see three on the gentleman's side. 
There is maybe four on my side.
  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman can take my word for it. 
They are here if their time comes to speak.
  Mr. ROGERS. Well, can we agree on any time limit, Mr. Chairman?
  Mr. BERMAN. Under my reservation of objection, Mr. Chairman, I would 
ask the gentleman, for the life of me I never understand why when we go 
to the Committee on Rules we do not come out with a set time limit so 
that time can be allocated at the beginning based on the demand for 
people to speak, but at this particular point I just think we are not 
quite ready to entertain this. I suggest submitting it in a little 
while, but we are not quite ready, and so I object.
  The CHAIRMAN. Objection is heard.
  Mr. BERMAN. I move to strike the requisite number of words, Mr. 
Chairman.
  Mr. Chairman, I would like to take a moment just to review the 
bidding on the Legal Services Corporation.
  In 1981 this program took an unbelievably deep cut which it took 11 
years, until Fiscal Year 1993, to get back to where it was in 1981. In 
Fiscal Year 1995, we finally reached the $400 million level on Legal 
Services Corporation appropriations, a level which served nowhere near 
50 percent of the population then living in poverty in terms of legal 
services programs.
  Since that time the program has been reduced to the present level of 
300 millions, so the bill in front of us which the gentleman from New 
York (Mr. Serrano), the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ramstad), the 
gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) seek to amend is a 53 
percent cut for a program that is already $100 million less than it was 
in Fiscal Year 1995. This is a massive cutback in an essential program.
  All the laws we have to protect consumers and tenants and employees, 
our whole quality of life, these are rendered virtually meaningless for 
low-income people if they cannot get a lawyer to advocate on their 
behalf.
  When I hear the leader talk about the different sins of the Legal 
Services Corporation, and on each one there is an answer, there is a 
different interpretation; I believe there is a fairer interpretation. 
What I do know is that the distinguished majority leader has opposed 
the Legal Services Corporation every year with the GAO report, without 
a GAO report, with an Inspector General comment, without an Inspector 
General comment. The majority leader does not like the program.
  Now there is an alternative to Legal Services Corporation. It is 
creating the most massive bureaucracy of enforcers of these laws one 
could imagine at a time when we surely do not want to do that to 
regulate and control every aspect of commercial and landlord-tenant and 
other kinds of private relationships to make sure that low-income 
people are getting a fair shake.

[[Page H7011]]

  I suggest this program is the most efficient and most effective way. 
It utilizes the skills of tremendously talented people who get very low 
wages. No one in this Chamber would work for the salaries that these 
people are working for. These people could make factors of two and 
three times as much money going off in the private sector, but their 
commitment to serve low-income people allows them and motivates them to 
serve in these kinds of jobs.
  The American people and the low-income people in this country are 
getting tremendous service from this. We talk about case numbers. One 
can have a case that involves a phone call for 20 minutes and an 
interview for 15 minutes and a letter that takes another 10 minutes, or 
one can have a case that takes hundreds of hours of research and 
judicial time and court time and deposition time and discovery time. To 
get into a clinical analysis of numbers of cases and then make 
automatic assumptions about budget makes no sense whatsoever in terms 
of the real world of the legal practice of these people who again, I 
repeat, are working at far below the incomes that their talents would 
justify.
  I myself think the amendment in front of us is much too low; $250 
million is not an acceptable figure. That would leave a cut of $50 
million from the already too low level we are at this year. I myself do 
not like the offsets, but I know that in a conference committee we can 
change the offsets, we can continue this effort; and if my colleagues 
believe in what the Legal Services programs represent in this country, 
they have to vote aye on this amendment, and I urge an aye vote.
  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BERMAN. I yield to the gentleman from New York.
  Mr. SERRANO. I would just take time from the gentleman to clarify a 
point.
  This amendment does not cut any funding from the Border Patrol. My 
amendment merely shifts funding from one INS account to another, a 
shift of $44 million that is budget-authority neutral. This shift is 
necessary to keep this amendment outlay-neutral in total.
  Mr. BERMAN. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, just to add one thing. 
There are other offsets, some of them I have to admit I do not like, I 
would not have chosen. But I have to sympathize with the subcommittee, 
too. I could not come up. The cap for this subcommittee is woefully 
inadequate to meet the needs of the Commerce Department, the Justice 
Department, the State Department and Legal Services Corporation. It is 
woefully inadequate to do that. Any offset is going to pay a price, but 
the principle here is the principle, do we continue our commitment to 
legal services for the poor? I urge an aye vote on the amendment.
  Mr. DOOLITTLE. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of 
words.
  Mr. Chairman, I hold my colleague from California in high regard, but 
I just have a different opinion about this. I agree with the majority 
leader. It is just unbelievable to me that we are talking about cutting 
FBI funds, the funds for the INS, which we believe goes to the Border 
Patrol, for the violent crime reduction programs, for the Federal 
prison system, even cutting judges' salaries in order to fund this 
Federal legal services program. Whatever happened to the States? 
Whatever happened to volunteerism? Why do we have to have the Federal 
Government step in and fill every little nook and cranny?

                              {time}  1515

  We are in the era of downsizing and of moving power back from the 
Federal Government to the States. It is not as though there are not 
well-established programs and many, many attorneys across the country 
already donating their time. So, please, I support helping poor people 
as well as anyone else. It does not require increasing the budget of 
the Legal Services Corporation.
  I heard my friend who spoke earlier from Florida talk about giving 
them the benefit of the doubt. They do not deserve the benefit of the 
doubt. This is an entity that has repeatedly abused its authority, and 
now we find evidence that they have intentionally and wrongfully 
inflated their statistics with the intent to secure more funding. So we 
are going to turn around and give them more funding, when we have 
caught them red-handed deceiving the Congress about how much work they 
actually do?
  This is just outrageous. I commend the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Armey) for his speech against this amendment, and I hope we will all 
join with him.
  We are about setting priorities. This is not a high priority. In 
fact, this agency deserves to be punished for the clear abuses it has 
committed. We should not reward them. What are we going to say to these 
arrogant Federal bureaucrats if we allow them to lie and then to be 
blessed with a huge increase in funding as a result of that lie? I 
think it is very, very bad policy.
  I think I should remind Members that this agency, we as a Congress 
actually had to get involved and tell the Legal Services Corporation 
through legislation that they could not get involved in redistricting, 
that they could not get involved in abortion litigation or prison 
litigation on behalf of prisoners' rights or welfare litigation or pro-
union advocacy or union organizing; they could not get involved in fee-
generating cases or representation of public housing tenants charged 
with possession of illegal drugs or against whom eviction proceedings 
had begun as a result of illegal drug activity; we had to tell them 
they could not get involved in representing illegal aliens.
  It is outrageous. So we told them. Hopefully they are complying, 
although we will see. But now they are inflating their own statistics.
  I think it is interesting that the President of Legal Services, Mr. 
McKay, earlier this year no less had this to say: ``Case statistics 
play an essential role in the budget request and performance plans 
submitted by the Legal Services Corporation to Congress each year. 
Therefore, the reliability of case statistics submitted by programs to 
Legal Services Corporation is vital to obtaining continued Federal 
funding for Legal Services. This type of information holds great 
promise for securing increased Federal funding.'' Then we find out that 
they have just about 50 percent less clients than was represented.
  It is outrageous, Mr. Chairman. We should oppose this amendment.
  Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of 
words.
  Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment. To the Members of 
the House, I have just listened to the very scathing critique of 
another colleague who supports the majority leader's position, but I 
rise to point out that this request is still $50 million short of last 
year's funding level. What we have here is still a reduction, even with 
the amendment skillfully put together by the gentleman from New York in 
a bipartisan way.
  Let me tell you that in Michigan, these Legal Service corporations do 
wonderful work. Wayne County Legal Service, headed by attorney Linda 
Bernard, has been working for years and years on a very important 
mission and does great work. They get rave reviews constantly.
  This request, even though short $50 million of last year's funding 
level, is still $90 million short of the administration's request, so I 
do not think we are doing anything as dramatic as one of the speakers 
indicated.
  Are we trying to punish the poor or deprive them from legal access? 
This amendment says restore funding.
  As it is written, we cannot help but notice that the bankruptcy 
reform that the majority supported, that the majority leader supported, 
gives big companies and powerful creditors even more power, and at the 
same time they impose dramatic cuts on Legal Services representation 
for the poor. What are we revealing about this Congress? Fortunately, I 
am told that most of the Members of the House and the other body 
support some modest improvements.
  So we have to remember that during last year's impeachment 
proceedings, it was the majority that clamored about ensuring equal 
access to justice and equal access to the courts. The cuts in this 
bill, however, only ensure unequal access to the court.
  Remember, the Legal Services Corporation is only representing some of 
the people that are eligible. It is not

[[Page H7012]]

that everybody eligible for Legal Services that is getting them. We are 
still very much short of providing all of the work and representation 
they need.
  Now, these are not bureaucrats. Somebody referred to them as 
bureaucrats. These are members of the bar who have sacrificed in many 
ways, not just financially, but to work the long hard hours. I have 
visited some of these people. They work long hard hours on cases that 
will not bring them fame, certainly not fortune. So to merely pass them 
off as some kind of a government apparatus is really not doing fairness 
and demeans the whole concept of this organization.
  Happy birthday, Legal Services Corporation. You are 25 years old, and 
there are still people trying to beat your brains out. Perhaps you are 
doing too good a job to those who do not want the poor to be 
represented. But I am sure that there is a spirit larger than some of 
the language and debate that I am hearing here.
  So, despite repeated attempts to reduce Legal Services, and, from 
some people's point of view, let us face it, to kill Legal Services, to 
get rid of it entirely, we feel that there is strong support in both 
bodies for this Legal Services mission.
  Join us in this bipartisan effort to show that democracy can work in 
the Legal Services area.
  I commend all of the Members who have created this amendment, the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Serrano), the gentleman from Minnesota 
(Mr. Ramstad), and the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt), and 
I think that they will be rewarded in the end.
  I urge the Members to support the Serrano-Ramstad-Delahunt amendment 
seeking funding for the Legal Services Corporation at the level of $250 
million. This is a modest request that is still $90 million short of 
the Administration's request and $50 million short of last year's 
funding level.
  As it is written, this bill demonstrates the hypocrisy of the 
Majority's position. They use bankruptcy reform to give big companies 
and powerful creditors even more power, and, at the same time, they 
impose dramatic cuts on the Legal Services Corporation to take power 
away from those who have none. Moreover, during last Congress's 
impeachment proceedings, the Majority clamored about ensuring equal 
access to justice and equal access to the courts. The cuts in this 
bill, however, only ensure unequal access to justice. If the Majority 
truly is interested in empowering those who most need legal assistance, 
the powerless, it will support this modest increase in funding for the 
LSC.
  Only in March, Majority Members of the Judiciary Committee promised 
to hold a hearing on what level of funding the LSC should receive. Yet, 
here we are, 5 months later, and no such hearings have been held. Now, 
we are left debating the future of the LSC, at the last possible 
minute, on the House floor. We cannot allow the Majority to constrict 
the LSC until it can no longer function.
  Despite repeated attempts to reduce or kill legal services funding, 
we have learned that the full House and Senate are strongly supportive 
of the Legal Services mission, which is to assist non-profit 
organizations that provide legal services to individuals living in 
poverty.
  And the need for Legal Services continues to be overwhelming even 
though we live in a time of great economic prosperity. There are still 
35 million Americans living below the poverty line and 10 million 
additional individuals with income below 125% of the poverty level. 
This means almost 1 in 5 Americans is eligible for LSC-funded services.
  If we increase funding for the Legal Services Corporation, we will 
enable it to address over 1.6 million issues annually involving 
critical legal problems for clients and their families, including 
employment disputes, individual rights, consumer fraud, and assistance 
to veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
  Nearly 30% of the requested increase is needed to provide a small 
cost of living adjustment, while the remaining 70% would fund 
initiatives to help victims of domestic violence and children, and to 
expand the use of technology to promote client self-help.
  I urge all of my colleagues to vote in favor of this common sense 
amendment.
  Mr. UPTON. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of 
words.
  Mr. Chairman, I would like to make a couple of points. Legal Services 
was in need of reform, desperate reform, and I have got to tell you 
that in 1996 that happened. There are strong penalties for those that 
abuse the system. In fact, you can lose your license. You can be 
disbarred.
  In 1995, Legal Services was cut by one-third, and that cut is in 
essence still in place. In fact, if the Serrano amendment does pass 
today, there will still be a $50 million cut in 2000 versus 1999. It 
does not go quite far enough.
  Some here today have talked about some abuses. As far as I know, they 
are pretty old abuses. They were corrected, rightly so. The gentleman 
from Pennsylvania (Mr. Gekas) who spoke a little bit before me talked 
about some of the abuses, and he was quite proud, rightly so, of the 
efforts that were made.
  Some here today may have heard from some of their farmers, and 
goodness knows I have a lot of folks in agriculture in southwest 
Michigan. Last year, I wrote more than 4,000 of my farmers asking them 
for specific cases of abuse that they could tell me about involving 
Legal Services. Do you know how many responses I got back? None. Not a 
single farmer responded back with a single case of abuse, period.
  Lawyers are expensive. They are costly to any family, whether you be 
rich or poor.
  Let me tell you about a couple of the cases I found out, my local 
Legal Services, what they have done back in Michigan this year. The 
Berrien County Legal Services, my home county, intervened to assist a 
home-bound elderly woman who was ready to sign an unfair contract for 
home improvement. Not only did this widow avoid, thank goodness, 
because of the efforts of Legal Services, but she avoided entering into 
that agreement, and had she done so, the contractor would have ended up 
owning all of the equity in her home. Wrong. She got help, and she 
deserved it.
  Another case, Legal Services helped a 76-year-old woman adopting her 
8-year-old great granddaughter that she had raised from birth, even 
though the adoption was contested by the girl's father, her real 
father, who is serving time in prison and, in fact, had never seen his 
daughter. Legal Services succeeded in keeping this young girl in a 
stable home environment that she had known from birth. Those are the 
cases that Legal Services does every day of the week.
  We have heard a little bit about padding some of the cases here, and, 
rightly so, perhaps. It is troublesome. But I have to tell you, the 
funding for all of these counties comes based on the poverty level in 
your counties. It is not by level of cases. It is based on need.
  This is a program that works. If it does not work, Members of this 
House should go to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde), the chairman 
of the Committee on the Judiciary, who has proven his moxie, has proven 
he has the votes to get things done, bring those abuses to the 
Committee on the Judiciary, and, if they are true, he will fix them. I 
have confidence in the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde).
  There are lots of statements around here that are chiseled into 
buildings. ``Equal justice under law.'' Let us not ask that brick layer 
to take that statement off the wall and instead put in ``no justice for 
some.''
  Without this amendment, the brick layers may as well go back to work. 
Let us not close the courthouse doors. Let us not take away rights that 
the middle class and the rich are able to be able to pay for, whether 
it be adoption or custody or even doing a will. That is not right.
  This amendment, even if it passes, still reduces Legal Services by 
almost 20 percent. A $50 million cut in a $300,000 program is still 
going to throw a lot of people out of work.
  Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of 
words.
  Mr. Chairman, today I want to speak in support of the Serrano-
Ramstad-Delahunt amendment to restore funding to Legal Services 
Corporation. If this amendment is not accepted, the Legal Services 
Corporation will suffer yet another devastating blow.
  As currently written, this bill provides only $141 million for Legal 
Services Corporation. This proposal is $159 million less than the 
current appropriation and $199 million less than the administration's 
request. Such a reduction would crush an already vulnerable Legal 
Services, thereby rendering it even more difficult to provide Legal 
Services for those who most need it.
  Let us be clear: Legal Services has already been cut to the bone. 
This worthy program cannot survive another massive reduction in funds. 
We have

[[Page H7013]]

cut Legal Services from a budget of $415 million in fiscal year 1995 to 
$283 million in fiscal year 1998. I know that there are people who just 
do not like legal aid, so they have decided to devastate it by 
attacking it every year with cuts, cutting it to the bone so it cannot 
operate. It is not fair.
  The effects of these cuts are already being felt by those low-income 
clients that depend on Legal Services organizations. In California, the 
Legal Services Corporation provided Legal Services to 217,015 clients 
in 1997. Those represented included our most vulnerable citizens, 
including the elderly, battered women, and families who are barely 
surviving poverty.

                              {time}  1530

  However, if the Serrano-Ramstad-Delahunt amendment is not accepted, 
we, as legislators, would effectively be abandoning the longstanding 
commitment to legal services for the poor.
  Let us put a face on it. Who are we talking about? We are talking 
about renters. Do my colleagues know that still in America there are 
unscrupulous landlords who turn off the water, who put padlocks on the 
doors, who set people out on the sidewalk. They would rather do this 
than go through the expense of going through the courts, and if they 
went to the courts, many times, the renters would be found to be within 
their rights to refuse payment. In California, we have Deduct and 
Repair. If one is living in run-down rental units, if the water is not 
working, the electricity is not working, one can repair it and deduct 
it from the rent. Some landlords do not like that. So we have people 
who depend on Legal Services. We have the elderly, as just described, 
who are oftentimes tricked into signing contracts, and they cannot get 
out of them alone. They cannot get to the courts. They do not have any 
money.
  We have people who are tricked into signing contracts that my 
colleagues and I, if we saw them, would be outraged by them, but it is 
legal services who is there to help. The more we cut them, the more 
exposed these very vulnerable populations are.
  To make matters worse, in my own State, the State of California, many 
of the poor are already without service because of Governor Pete 
Wilson's veto of the State Bar Fee Authorization in 1997. The poor in 
California have been failed by their governor, and this amendment is 
their last hope. Moreover, the deep cuts in Legal Services will mean 
that whole sectors of our society will be left without access to Legal 
Services Corporations. In many poor and rural regions of the country, 
there will be no publicly-funded legal assistance available to the 
poor. We must not forget that 40 percent of the 23 million people over 
18 who live in poverty in this country are the working poor, and they 
also depend on Legal Services, organizations for legal assistance.
  Now, I know there are some who do not know a lot about this, and they 
may think that the poor are just in these inner cities depending on 
these services. I am amazed at how many legislators are representing 
poor districts that are not cities, that are in suburban communities, 
in rural communities, and they act as if they do not have the poor. 
They are simply not getting their representation.
  There are many poor farmers who need legal services, who have lost 
everything, who have nowhere to turn. And the legal services are there 
for them in some areas, but with these kinds of cuts, we are not going 
to have them in those poor, rural communities.
  The American public supports a federally funded Legal Services 
Corporation for those individuals who would not otherwise be able to 
afford an attorney's services in certain civil matters. The provision 
of adequate Federal funding for legal services cannot be provided 
elsewhere.
  Mr. Chairman, I would ask for support for this very important 
amendment.
  Mr. WHITFIELD. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of 
words.
  Mr. Chairman, I want to give my thanks to the gentleman from Arizona, 
who is a member of the committee.
  I rise to oppose this amendment on behalf of farmers of all income 
levels in Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and throughout the 
southeastern United States. This agency, under the leadership of 
President John McKay, has abused its legislative mandate and has misled 
the U.S. Congress, as many people have talked about, on its caseload. 
We could spend a lot of time talking about the caseload, but I want to 
talk about an aspect of the Legal Services Corporation that continues 
to create problems, particularly in the Southeast, as well as other 
parts of the country.
  Section 504 of the law states that none of the funds appropriated in 
this act to Legal Services may be used to provide legal services for or 
on behalf of any alien, unless the alien is present in the United 
States.
  Now, that should be clear to anyone, and we want aliens who are 
working in the U.S. under some agricultural program to have access to 
the courts. And they do have access to the courts. But when they leave 
and they go back to Mexico or wherever they may go, the law states that 
they cannot be bringing lawsuits while they are not present in the U.S.
  But, despite that, the President of the Legal Services Corporation, 
John McKay, has said that he will not penalize any Legal Services 
Corporation if they misinterpret the phrase, ``is present in the United 
States.'' He wants it to say, ``was present in the United States.'' Mr. 
McKay goes on to say that he has absolute discretion to determine what 
laws to enforce and how.
  Now, the Legal Services Corporation, as a result of that, has ignored 
the statutory authority that is even in the bill this year. It was 
there last year and he ignored it, and it was there the year before and 
he ignored it, and the legal services lawyers from North Carolina were 
videotaped on an illegal trip to Mexico to recruit clients to sue 
farmers in North Carolina, in Kentucky, and other States. Paralegals 
were sent passing out brochures saying that you have these rights that 
need to be pursued in court. And not only that, but when they find 
these clients, they send threatening letters to farmers throughout my 
district in which they are saying, if you will pay $4,763 to one 
farmer, $14,289 that another farmer receives, $26,000, $65,000, 
$73,000, if you will pay this money, then we will not proceed in court.
  Now, a lot of these farmers do not believe that there is any legal 
basis to file the suit, so they defend themselves in suits filed in 
Kentucky, in Tennessee, in North Carolina, and in many cases, the local 
judges grant a summary judgment for the farmer. And then what happens? 
Well, then the legal aid lawyers go to Texas Federal court and they 
file lawsuits there.
  So when the farmers try to get it transferred to a Federal court in 
Kentucky or North Carolina, then the judges say, no, I am not going to 
transfer it. So then the farmers have to hire lawyers in Texas, they 
have to go to Texas for depositions, they have to go to Texas for 
lawsuits for the case to be tried, and it costs large sums of money, 
and many of them end up settling and some of them have even gone into 
bankruptcy because of this abuse.
  The sad thing about this is, many of the plaintiffs are not present 
in the U.S., even though the law specifically says, you must be present 
when the lawsuit is filed. And John McKay has repeatedly ignored that, 
has repeatedly disavowed that and has said, I will interpret the law 
the way I want to interpret it.
  Mr. Chairman, there is something wrong when we have a system that is 
taking tax dollars from hard-working, law-abiding taxpayers to have 
suits filed against them in violation of the law that is there. I 
realize we live in a particularly permissive society, but I hope we 
have not reached the point where we not only condone a Federal agency 
misleading Congress about its caseload, but we reward them when we 
discovered that they provided false testimony, and then we turn our 
head when we know that the agency is violating Federal law.
  Now, the President says he is going to veto this, and I would urge 
him if he does, I want to take him to Kentucky, Tennessee, North 
Carolina, and he can talk to the farmers about why he is vetoing it.
  Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of 
words.
  Mr. Chairman, the Legal Services Corporation celebrates its 25th 
anniversary this year. For 25 years, legal services has provided 
critical legal aid

[[Page H7014]]

to low-income people, including children, the elderly, and victims of 
domestic abuse. In those years, legal services has helped low-income 
Americans fight unjust eviction from their apartments, arbitrary 
government actions, and consumer fraud. And reflecting their level of 
concern for low-income Americans, the Republican leadership has slashed 
funding for the Legal Services Corporation.
  The Republican leadership is prepared to give a $792 billion tax 
break to the rich. It is also trying to cut $159 million in legal aid 
to the poor. The other side of the aisle argues that those who pay 
little in taxes should get no tax relief, and some of them argue that 
those with little recourse to our legal system should get no legal aid, 
but not all of them. The gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ramstad) and 
others who have spoken today have stood up for legal services and have 
stood up for the principle of equal justice under law.
  The bill before us cuts funding for the Legal Services Corporation in 
half. Mr. Chairman, with this cut, more than 250,000 families will be 
denied access to legal counsel in the courts, and there will be only 
one Legal Services Corporation for every 24,000 low-income Americans. 
This drastic cut to Legal Services funding will hurt hundreds of 
thousands of Americans, particularly those who live in rural areas, 
because legal services programs will have to close neighborhood offices 
and limit their services.
  I believe that claims that Legal Services is misrepresenting the 
number of people it has helped are vastly overstated and have been 
properly addressed, but it is the latest excuse for those who year 
after year after year after year come to this floor to do just what 
they are trying to do today and cut out legal aid for the poor.
  We should listen to the scores of businesses, religious 
organizations, seniors' groups and victims' advocacy groups that 
support the Legal Services Corporation.
  Mr. Chairman, I would have thought that legal services for the poor 
to help ensure equal justice under law was a conservative ideal, an 
ideal rooted in our Constitution. I believe it is simply wrong to slam 
the courthouse doors shut on the poor simply because they do not have 
the money to obtain legal counsel.
  In Maine, one of the great advocates for legal services for the poor 
is a man named Howard Dana. He was appointed to the Legal Services 
Board, I believe, by President Reagan, and year after year after year 
in the 1980s he fought to make sure that the Legal Services Corporation 
remained in existence and was adequately funded. He was and remains a 
conservative Republican. As I said, this is a conservative ideal: equal 
justice under law. He is now a distinguished judge on the Maine Supreme 
Court, and I know he stands by the beliefs that he held as a member of 
the board.
  Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to remember that although Legal 
Services attorneys may not be convenient, they may be inconvenient, for 
landlords, for corporations, and even for this government, 
inconvenience is no argument for subverting a fundamental principle of 
our Constitution. I urge my colleagues to support the bi-
partisan Serrano-Ramstad-Delahunt amendment which would restore funding 
for the Legal Services Corporation. All Americans deserve equal justice 
under law, not just those who cannot afford it. Keep the courthouse 
door open for all Americans.
  Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, in the interest of time, I ask unanimous 
consent that all debate on this amendment and all amendments thereto be 
concluded in 30 minutes, and that the time be equally divided on either 
side of the aisle.
  The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from 
Kentucky?
  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I have spoken to the chairman, and we do 
not object.
  There was no objection.
  The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers) and the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Serrano) each will control 15 minutes.
  Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
Arizona (Mr. Kolbe).
  Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this 
time. I rise in opposition to this amendment.
  Mr. Chairman, others have spoken here today about the improprieties 
or, some would say at the very least, the inconsistencies that we have 
seen in the caseload figures that have been provided by the Legal 
Services Corporation. Others have said, well, that is not really how 
they get their funding, they get it from the level of poverty that is 
found in each of the areas where legal services are provided.
  But the fact is, we have seen some wild variations in the caseloads, 
and we do know that the Inspector General and even the Chairman of the 
Legal Services Corporation, has himself acknowledged that there are 
tremendous discrepancies in the way caseloads these are reported.
  Now, some say it is because there are no real guidelines. Well, I 
believe the Board has a responsibility to promulgate those guidelines 
to make sure that it is clear so that we know what cases are being 
accepted or how they are being disposes of so that we can have 
consistent statistical data on which to make the judgment in the 
subcommittee that I serve on level of funding for the Legal Services 
Corporation.

                              {time}  1545

  We also heard the gentleman from California talk about how over the 
years Congress has had to take action against the Legal Services 
Corporation for meddling in areas where Congress has demonstrated clear 
legislative direction. Instead, too often the Legal Services 
Corporation has attempted not to implement legislative intent, but to 
block the actions of Congress. We heard about that most dramatically, 
in the memory of most of the Members of Congress, in the area of 
redistricting.
  I want to talk about another area where this is going on, legislation 
that we passed a few years ago dealing with migrant farm worker 
programs, and the very limited guest worker programs with foreign 
countries.
  These are very heavily constricted programs with a lot of 
regulations, a lot of rules which must be implemented in order to 
comply with them. They have to advertise; they have to show that there 
is no work force available.
  Even with all these hurdles to clear, what we have found is that 
Legal Services Corporation in almost every area and every State, has 
filed all kinds of actions to block any approval of these worker 
programs. The result is none, virtually none, have been approved. Less 
than 1 percent of the potential need for migrant workers, giving people 
jobs here in the United States to work, have actually been approved by 
the Labor Department. What we hear time and again from farm 
organizations is they just do not initiate the process because they 
know they are going to be blocked by the Legal Services Corporation.
  I want to finally discuss where the author proposes to find offsets 
for restoring this money to the Legal Services Corporation. The 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Serrano) has told us the money does not 
really come out of the Border Patrol, that this is really a shift from 
one account to the other.
  I will acknowledge that this is true. But there is a definite cut in 
the National Instant Crime Check system for the FBI, there is a 
definite cut in the Federal prison system, and there is a definite cut 
in the judicial services.
  Mr. Chairman, these funds are absolutely vital in order to carry out 
the legal system for those who need it most. Who needs it most except 
those who are the most impoverished? If we do not have a judicial 
system that works to put criminals behind bars, who is going to suffer? 
Those who are the most poor. If we do not have a judicial system that 
has the staff to process cases, who is going to suffer? Those who are 
the most poor. If we do not have a system to do crime checks, who will 
be the victims of crime? Those who are the most poor.
  Mr. Chairman, I urge that we defeat this amendment. I urge that we 
keep the cuts that the committee has judiciously imposed on the Legal 
Services Corporation.
  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel).
  Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Chairman, I thank the distinguished ranking member 
of the subcommittee for yielding

[[Page H7015]]

time to me, and for bringing this excellent amendment to the House, 
which I strongly support.
  The Serrano-Ramstad-Delahunt amendment would avoid a devastating 53 
percent cut in Federal support for the Legal Services Corporation. This 
money is desperately needed in our communities, and we must support the 
Serrano amendment.
  I heard the majority leader speak, questioning the reliability of 
case statistics offered by the Legal Services Corporation. I would like 
to share with him and the House some case statistics from the Legal Aid 
Society of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, where I come from.
  In 1995, they received about $300,000 in Federal money for their 
legal aid program. This year they are receiving under $200,000, a one-
third cut. If this bill goes through unamended, they will realize 
another $100,000 reduction in funding, so a two-thirds reduction from 
1995 in Federal support.
  This has a very real impact on the quality of legal services offered 
in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, as it obviously does in every 
county throughout this country. They have had to reduce their caseload 
in my county by over 250 cases out of a couple of thousand, and if 
these funds are further reduced, as the bill proposes, another 200 or 
300 cases will be reduced from their annual caseload.
  I heard the gentleman from California (Mr. Doolittle) talk about 
where are the States in volunteerism? In my county, the county 
commissioners have offered up more money as the Federal Government has 
reduced funding. The Bar Association has offered up money and pro bono 
time to make up for Federal cuts. But they cannot take the place of the 
Federal money, and the caseloads are going down.
  The gentleman from California (Mr. Doolittle) said we should punish 
the bureaucrats. This is not about punishing bureaucrats. The 
bureaucrats will not be punished, it is the people that receive and 
need the legal services that will be punished. Who are these people? 
They are about two-thirds women: poor women; women that need help with 
protection from abuse cases; women that need help with consumer 
protection cases; women that need help with employment problems, 
financial problems, foreclosures. These are the people that the 
majority would punish if this bill is unamended and if the cuts are 
passed as the bill proposes.
  We have a principle in this country of equal justice for all. To 
achieve that, we need equal access for all to the courts. We must pass 
this amendment.
  Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from 
Maryland (Mrs. Morella).
  Mrs. MORELLA. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman for yielding time to 
me.
  Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of this amendment. The Legal 
Services Corporation is important to assisting vulnerable people in our 
society. This is a little bit of what I will address.
  Women and children are among the vulnerable who, without assistance, 
often find themselves in abusive situations that they cannot control. 
The impact of these situations is significant, and it could well result 
in homelessness and the loss of necessary financial resources for food, 
maintenance, and health care.
  To give one example from my own district, which is Montgomery County, 
Maryland, as a result of domestic violence and in fear for her safety 
and that of her five children, a woman left her husband of 15 years. He 
had been the primary support for the family.
  She was able on her own to obtain housing, although it was neither 
decent nor safe. Still, because of her financial situation, she was 
threatened with eviction. Local legal services helped her to get 
Section 8 housing, and the family was able to relocate to decent 
housing with adequate space. This stabilized the family during a very 
disruptive and unsettling time.
  Millions of children are the victims of abuse from their parents and 
others who are responsible for their care. This abuse goes on somewhere 
in the country every minute of the day, and Legal Services in Maryland 
represents children who are neglected or abused, such as neglect or 
abuse which ranges from a child being left alone by a parent, not being 
provided a nutritional meal, to physical or sexual abuse that results 
in severe injury and, all too often, death.
  Legal Services has helped the infant that has been abandoned at 
birth, the child who is left unattended, the child who is beaten, 
burned by cigarette butts because he would not stop crying, or scalded 
by hot water to teach him a lesson. These children are vulnerable, and 
without the protection of the law they would be endangered and lost.
  Legal Services advocacy on behalf of children assures that they will 
not be the subject of abuse, and it helps to secure services for 
children, such as housing support, health care, food, educational 
programs, and necessary counseling.
  The work of Legal Services on behalf of families and children touches 
at the heart of what we value most in this country: decent housing, 
adequate health care, food, a safe environment. Because of the 
importance of safety in our society, Legal Services programs have 
supported legislation to prevent abuse and protect the abused.
  In general, the States are not allocating funds for civil legal 
services for poor citizens. Without this federally funded program, the 
most vulnerable members of our society will not have the ability to get 
inside the courtroom door to seek judicial protections of their rights. 
We must assure that sufficient funds are available. This amendment 
restores some of the amount that Legal Services needs, not even the 
total amount that could be used.
  I certainly urge support for this modest amendment.
  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from 
Ohio (Mr. Kucinich), who has been patiently waiting for over 2 hours to 
speak.
  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding time 
to me.
  Mr. Chairman, I want to say at the outset that I, too, am offended by 
the false reports which are alluded to by my colleagues. It is 
repugnant that any agency should submit information to the government 
which is anything less than accurate.
  I can understand why some would be so offended about the abuses 
cited. However, I am even more offended by poverty, poverty which locks 
people out of opportunities for justice, poverty which humiliates 
people when they cannot be represented, poverty which makes people 
invisible when courts would take action in their absence; poverty which 
would deny the poor legal representation.
  How many of those who have been in this Chamber can imagine what it 
is like to need an attorney but have no access to help because one 
cannot afford it? Indeed, if a Member of Congress is subject to legal 
process in the performance of his or her duties, he or she will receive 
legal assistance from the Office of General Counsel at no cost. How 
could we deny those who we represent, who have much less recourse, how 
could we deny them access or claim to the resources of the country?
  Mr. Chairman, there is a level of condescension and condemnation of 
the poor and judgment which is inappropriate here, because this is not 
only about whether we will see full legal services for the poor and 
whether Legal Services for the poor will survive. Moments like this 
instruct us as to the health of our democracy and its ability to 
survive.
  At a time when Members of Congress are prepared to give 70 percent of 
a multi-billion dollar tax cut to the top 5 percent of the people who 
make over $200,000, this Congress should be more gentle with the have-
nots on such basic issues as legal representation.
  Somewhere in America there are poor and working poor who are 
concerned about whether they will have representation on issues of 
consumer debt, defective products, insurance coverage denial, 
assistance on family violence, eviction defense, illegal lockout 
defense, utility cutoff defense, housing discrimination defense, 
disability benefits defense.
  Legal Services is there for them, and this Congress ought to be here 
for Legal Services. The poor have a right to a decent legal 
representation. The poor already are at a disadvantage in all legal 
situations. They tend to lack education; they tend to lack knowledge of 
the system; they tend to be, because of the sting of poverty, a bit 
disorganized.
  We will be challenged by a higher test here, and which resonates with 
a

[[Page H7016]]

very old question that was put forth about 2000 years ago: When I was 
hungry, did you feed me? When I was naked, did you clothe me? When I 
was thirsty, did you give me water?
  Let me add in that spirit, as we move towards the 21st century, when 
I was poor and I needed help, did you give me access to legal 
assistance? Let this Congress meet that test. Vote for the amendment.
  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Davis).
  (Mr. DAVIS of Illinois asked and was given permission to revise and 
extend his remarks.)
  Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman 
for yielding time to me.
  It seems to me that here we are once again, the same old wine with a 
new bottle; the same lemon, just a new twist; the same target, the 
poor, a new weapon: Take away not just legal representation, but take 
away hope, take away faith, take away belief in a system. Take away the 
idea that you, too, can receive justice, notwithstanding the size of 
your wallet or your pocketbook or your purse.
  There is a legal assistance office down the hall from my district 
office, and I see people go in with their heads down, wondering what is 
going to happen. But then I see them turn around and leave, and they 
are walking differently. They now have hope. They have spoken with an 
attorney. They have spoken to someone who seemed to understand their 
plight, to know what they are going through, to know what it is all 
about.

                              {time}  1600

  I have seen people in Housing Court, no lawyer, no attorney, 
wondering what is going to happen. I have seen them in Juvenile Court. 
No attorney, no lawyer, not knowing.
  I say to my colleagues today that we have an opportunity to reverse a 
trend. Rather than attack the poor, let us give aid and comfort to the 
development of our judicial system by helping everybody in this country 
know that they, too, can receive justice. Let us vote in favor of the 
amendment and extend justice to all.
  Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
Washington (Mr. Nethercutt).
  Mr. NETHERCUTT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Kentucky 
(Chairman Rogers) for yielding me the time.
  I rise in support of the amendment which freezes Legal Services 
funding essentially from last year. But I rise more importantly in 
support of John McKay whose name has been taken in vain here today.
  John McKay is from my State, an excellent lawyer with a great 
background in history in our State. He decided to come out of private 
practice and come to Legal Services to head it up, to bring it back to 
its core mission. So I have taken a bit of concern and offense at 
people who have discredited John McKay.
  John McKay is a decent, honorable, certainly not a deceitful man. He 
is a good lawyer and good person trying to do a tough job.
  Now, Legal Services Corporation has its problems. It has had its 
problems in the past. It has allegations of problems today. John McKay 
is trying to fix those problems. He is not the cause of the problem. He 
is trying to fix them.
  So he is a good person with a tough mission, and we ought to help him 
accomplish that mission to bring this Legal Services Corporation 
nationally back to its core mission of helping people who are poor.
  In my State of Washington, the Legal Services Corporation is doing a 
fine job. I have had Justice Richard Guy of the Supreme Court come to 
my office. Attorney Bill Hislop, who is head of our Bar Association in 
Spokane, Washington; Jim Bamberger who has worked very hard for Legal 
Services; Nancy Islip, these are good people trying to make the core 
mission of Legal Services effective.
  I have had my problems with Legal Services. I have had good 
conversations with these people who are in charge in my State. I think 
they have been very responsive.
  The farm community is less burdened by the Legal Services Corporation 
practices of the past than they are today. That is progress. That is 
progress at the hands of John McKay.
  If one is poor in this country and one is hungry, our government 
provides one with food. One can get it immediately. If one does not 
have housing, the government helps one. But if one has legal problems, 
one cannot go to law school and get help.
  The Legal Services Corporation provides the poor with this kind of 
help, and we ought to insist on accommodation by this corporation, but 
we ought to support them.
  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Dooley).
  (Mr. DOOLEY of California asked and was given permission to revise 
and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. DOOLEY of California. Mr. Chairman, I rise in favor of this 
amendment to restore funding for the Legal Services Corporation. I 
represent a district in the San Joaquin Valley of California that, 
despite the good economic times in our State and our Nation, is plagued 
by 14 percent unemployment.
  I represent many people who are poor and, therefore, do not have the 
ability to access our judicial system. Their only option, oftentimes, 
is legal assistance through the Legal Services Corporation.
  Mr. Chairman, if a low-income elderly person is unfairly evicted from 
their home, if a young mother is unable to collect child support or is 
a victim of abuse and must go to the courts to intervene, they have no 
opportunity if they cannot afford legal representation.
  I find it somewhat ironic that the same week that this Congress will 
be considering a huge tax cut bill of almost $800 billion, that 
Republicans think is important to cut funding, or some Republicans 
think it is important for cut funding for one of the most important 
programs that assist the poorest of our citizens.
  The Legal Services Corporation fills our constitutional obligation to 
provide the poor with competent legal representation. Our country was 
founded on the principles of equal opportunity. If we turn our back on 
the poorest families and deny them access to due process, we are 
trampling on the principle of equal justice under the law.
  I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.
  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, who has the right to close?
  The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers) has the right 
to close.
  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the remainder of the time.
  Mr. Chairman, let me first say that I understand that there have been 
some concerns about the offsets to pay for this change. Whenever we 
have a bill that is as difficult as this one, it is very difficult to 
come up with offsets. I certainly understand the concern about those 
offsets.
  However, those offsets, as we know, are not cast in stone right now. 
I commit myself to all of those Members, especially my ranking member, 
the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), that I will continue to work 
with the chairman to make sure that the offsets later on and in 
conference are acceptable to as many people as possible.
  But I repeat, it is very difficult to come up with this kind of a 
change, this kind of an amendment and, at the same time, be able to 
come up with offsets that will make people happy.
  Having said that, let me just say that so many of the speakers today 
have spoken the truth; that, if there is a program, if there is an 
agency, if there is a concept that speaks to the core of who we are as 
a Nation, it is the Legal Services Corporation.
  To suggest that someone under our system of law and our system of 
government cannot get the proper help, the proper representation simply 
because they are poor, that is outrageous, should not be tolerated, and 
should never be brought up at all.
  Sure, there have been problems with that agency at times. There have 
been problems with every single agency. But we have not decided to get 
rid of all agencies we have problems with. My God, there have been 
problems with Congress, and no one would suggest getting rid of 
Congress. Although there are some people who suggest getting rid of 
Congress, but we are not going to pay attention to them.
  My point is that what we do best in our society, in my opinion, is to 
help

[[Page H7017]]

those who find it difficult to help themselves. All of us want to take 
care of the middle class. All of us want to keep our economy growing so 
that people at the top can hopefully generate some wealth for the rest 
of the Nation.
  But if one cannot walk into court with proper representation because 
one is too poor to do so, and this Congress is somehow responsible for 
that happening to that person, then we have a lot to be ashamed of.
  This is an issue that comes up every year; and every year, people on 
that side of the aisle try to destroy this program. This program should 
not have been funded at this level. I should have been able to find $50 
million more, maybe $100 million more to cover the people that are 
needed.
  But story after story after story indicates that this is a program 
that serves the have-nots in our society. They are the people that we 
have to protect.
  As I look at the Chairman of the Committee of the Whole, and I see 
behind him our flag, I realize how many times we get up on this floor 
on amendments to protect the physical well-being of the flag. Well, I 
suspect that the flag stands for more than itself. It stands for taking 
care of all Americans.
  I think if that flag could speak to us today, it would tell us that 
we need to take care of the poor. In this case, that is what we are 
doing. That is why I think my colleagues should support this amendment, 
and this amendment should not be about a partisan fight. It should be a 
bipartisan effort.
  Let us do what is right. Let us support the amendment and give us a 
very strong vote.
  Mrs. LOWEY. Mr. Chairman, I strongly support this amendment. Cutting 
the funding of the Legal Services Corporation to $141 million would be 
a disaster for families living in poverty across this nation.
  Legal Services attorneys deserve our thanks. They help our poorest 
and most vulnerable citizens navigate the complicated bureaucracy of 
our court system in search of justice and fairness.
  Many of my colleagues may not think of Legal Services as a women's 
issue, but it is. More than two-thirds of the clients served by Legal 
Services are women. The funding cuts in this bill will force Legal 
Services to abandon many of the critical legal services that it 
provides to poor women, particularly victims of domestic violence.
  Mr. Chairman, for the past 25 years, Legal Services have held the 
courthouse doors open to clients seeking legal protection from abusive 
spouses. In fact, family law--which includes domestic violence cases--
makes up over one-third of the cases handled by legal services programs 
each year.
  In addition to helping domestic violence victims, the lawyers at the 
Legal Services Corporation help poor women to enforce child support 
orders against dead-beat dads. They also help women with employment 
discrimination cases.
  Slashing funding for Legal Services means barring the door of the 
courthouse for tens of thousands of women who have nowhere else to turn 
for help.
  As the Legal Services Corporation celebrates its 25th Anniversary, we 
must not abandon these women to violence and abuse and greater poverty. 
Please support Legal Services, protect poor families and vote for the 
amendment.
  Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. Chairman, it is with very strong reservations that 
I support Mr. Ramstad's amendment to the Fiscal Year 2000 Commerce, 
Justice, State, and the Judiciary Appropriations Act that restores $109 
million in funding to the Legal Services Corporation.
  As a practicing attorney in Georgia for over two decades, I had the 
opportunity to view firsthand the multitude of services provided by 
public legal services personnel throughout my state. While I have been 
critical at times of the Georgia Legal Services Program, they do 
provide indigent citizens of my state needed legal services.
  While I support the legal services provided to the indigent by the 
hard working men and women of programs like the Georgia Legal Services 
Program, I rise today to register my deep dissatisfaction on the 
actions of individuals within the Legal Services Corporation.
  Last year on October 21, Congress approved $300 million for the Legal 
Services Corporation, a $17 million increase that I supported. At the 
time of this vote, Congress was relying on the accuracy of legal 
services case statistics provided by the Corporation. As a result of 
subsequent audits and investigations, it is evident that for months 
prior to this vote Corporation officials knew that the case numbers 
given to Congress were both false and inflated, deliberately 
withholding that information from Congress. This is absolutely 
inexcusable and those providing false information to Congress should be 
fired immediately.
  With regard to the serious mismanagement at the Legal Services 
Corporation, I would like to associate myself with the report of the 
Appropriations Committee. In their report to accompany H.R. 2670, the 
Committee raised serious concerns about the case service reporting and 
associated data reports submitted annually by the Corporation to the 
Congress. Additionally, the Committee found that substantial 
inaccuracies in these submissions, as documented by the Corporation's 
Office of Inspector General and the General Accounting Office, and 
directed the Corporation to make improvement of the accuracy of these 
submissions a top priority.
  To continue receiving my support and provide assurances that the 
Corporation is proactively addressing its problems, I support the 
Committee's directive that the Corporation submit its 1999 annual case 
service reports and associated data reports to Congress no later than 
April 30, 2000 in order to provide my colleagues with the information 
necessary to consider the Corporation's budget for fiscal year 2001.
  Mr. RODRIGUEZ. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the 
amendment to restore $109 million in funding for the Legal Services 
Corporation. But even with this increase, there would only be $250 
million available for LSC programs across the country. This would still 
be insufficient to meet our needs across the country, but it is a step 
in the right direction.
  Even with this year's funding level of $283 million, Legal Services' 
resources are over-extended. We must send a more positive signal to the 
dedicated staff who stretch every dollar to provide basic legal 
services for the poor.
  Many of our legal protections today came from the cases made possible 
by Legal Services. Protections such as due process, voting rights, 
property rights, women's rights, and many other areas came from Legal 
Services Corporation litigation. On a day to day basis, Legal Aid 
bureaus across the country help ensure that individuals have access to 
the most basic legal services.
  In today's society, whenever a single person's rights are violated, 
everyone is in danger. To guard against such infringement, people need 
competent and timely legal advice. For the less fortunate, this is no 
different. LSC affords them the ability to protect their rights just as 
anyone else.
  What are we construing here? Voting rights, employment right, access 
to education, freedom from discrimination, due process . . . the list 
goes on. What price tag can we put on these most precious commodities 
of our democracy?
  I urge my colleagues to raise the level of LSC funding. I ask my 
colleagues to vote their CJS pocketbook for freedom.
  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, there are no further speakers on this side 
of the aisle, and I yield back the balance of the time.
  The CHAIRMAN. The question is on the amendment offered by the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Serrano).
  The question was taken; and the Chairman announced that the ayes 
appeared to have it.


                             Recorded Vote

  Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.
  A recorded vote was ordered.
  The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--ayes 242, 
noes 178, not voting 13, as follows:

                             [Roll No. 370]

                               AYES--242

     Abercrombie
     Ackerman
     Allen
     Andrews
     Bachus
     Baird
     Baldacci
     Baldwin
     Barcia
     Barrett (WI)
     Becerra
     Bentsen
     Berkley
     Berman
     Berry
     Biggert
     Bishop
     Blagojevich
     Blumenauer
     Boehlert
     Bonior
     Borski
     Boswell
     Boucher
     Boyd
     Brady (PA)
     Brown (FL)
     Brown (OH)
     Camp
     Canady
     Capps
     Capuano
     Cardin
     Carson
     Castle
     Chambliss
     Clay
     Clayton
     Clement
     Clyburn
     Condit
     Conyers
     Costello
     Coyne
     Crowley
     Cummings
     Danner
     Davis (FL)
     Davis (IL)
     Davis (VA)
     DeFazio
     DeGette
     Delahunt
     DeLauro
     Deutsch
     Diaz-Balart
     Dicks
     Dingell
     Dixon
     Doggett
     Dooley
     Doyle
     Edwards
     Ehlers
     Engel
     Eshoo
     Etheridge
     Evans
     Farr
     Fattah
     Filner
     Forbes
     Ford
     Fowler
     Frank (MA)
     Franks (NJ)
     Frelinghuysen
     Frost
     Ganske
     Gejdenson
     Gekas
     Gephardt
     Gilman
     Gonzalez
     Gordon
     Green (TX)
     Greenwood
     Gutierrez
     Hall (OH)
     Hastings (FL)
     Hill (IN)
     Hilliard
     Hinchey
     Hinojosa
     Hoeffel
     Holden
     Holt
     Hooley
     Horn
     Houghton
     Hoyer
     Hulshof
     Hutchinson
     Inslee
     Jackson (IL)
     Jackson-Lee (TX)
     Johnson (CT)
     Johnson, E. B.
     Jones (OH)
     Kanjorski
     Kaptur
     Kelly
     Kennedy
     Kildee
     Kilpatrick
     Kind (WI)

[[Page H7018]]


     Kleczka
     Klink
     Kucinich
     Kuykendall
     LaHood
     Lampson
     Larson
     LaTourette
     Leach
     Lee
     Levin
     Lewis (GA)
     Lipinski
     Lofgren
     Lowey
     Lucas (KY)
     Luther
     Maloney (NY)
     Markey
     Martinez
     Mascara
     Matsui
     McCarthy (MO)
     McCarthy (NY)
     McCollum
     McGovern
     McIntyre
     McKinney
     McNulty
     Meehan
     Meek (FL)
     Meeks (NY)
     Menendez
     Millender-McDonald
     Miller, George
     Minge
     Mink
     Moakley
     Mollohan
     Moore
     Moran (KS)
     Moran (VA)
     Morella
     Murtha
     Nadler
     Napolitano
     Neal
     Nethercutt
     Oberstar
     Obey
     Olver
     Ortiz
     Owens
     Pallone
     Pascrell
     Pastor
     Payne
     Pelosi
     Peterson (MN)
     Phelps
     Pickett
     Pomeroy
     Porter
     Portman
     Price (NC)
     Pryce (OH)
     Rahall
     Ramstad
     Rangel
     Regula
     Reyes
     Rivers
     Rodriguez
     Roemer
     Ros-Lehtinen
     Rothman
     Roybal-Allard
     Rush
     Sabo
     Salmon
     Sanchez
     Sanders
     Sandlin
     Sawyer
     Schakowsky
     Scott
     Serrano
     Shays
     Sherman
     Shows
     Sisisky
     Skelton
     Smith (WA)
     Snyder
     Spratt
     Stabenow
     Stark
     Strickland
     Stupak
     Tauscher
     Thompson (CA)
     Thompson (MS)
     Thurman
     Tierney
     Towns
     Traficant
     Turner
     Udall (CO)
     Udall (NM)
     Upton
     Velazquez
     Vento
     Visclosky
     Walsh
     Waters
     Watt (NC)
     Waxman
     Weiner
     Weldon (PA)
     Wexler
     Weygand
     Wilson
     Wise
     Woolsey
     Wu
     Wynn

                               NOES--178

     Aderholt
     Archer
     Armey
     Baker
     Ballenger
     Barr
     Barrett (NE)
     Bartlett
     Barton
     Bass
     Bateman
     Bereuter
     Bilirakis
     Bliley
     Blunt
     Boehner
     Bonilla
     Bono
     Brady (TX)
     Bryant
     Burr
     Burton
     Buyer
     Callahan
     Calvert
     Campbell
     Cannon
     Chabot
     Chenoweth
     Coble
     Coburn
     Collins
     Combest
     Cook
     Cooksey
     Crane
     Cubin
     Cunningham
     Deal
     DeLay
     DeMint
     Dickey
     Doolittle
     Dreier
     Duncan
     Dunn
     Ehrlich
     Emerson
     English
     Everett
     Ewing
     Fletcher
     Foley
     Fossella
     Gallegly
     Gibbons
     Gilchrest
     Gillmor
     Goode
     Goodlatte
     Goodling
     Goss
     Graham
     Granger
     Green (WI)
     Gutknecht
     Hall (TX)
     Hansen
     Hastings (WA)
     Hayes
     Hayworth
     Hefley
     Herger
     Hill (MT)
     Hilleary
     Hobson
     Hoekstra
     Hostettler
     Hunter
     Hyde
     Isakson
     Istook
     Jenkins
     Johnson, Sam
     Jones (NC)
     Kasich
     King (NY)
     Kingston
     Knollenberg
     Kolbe
     LaFalce
     Latham
     Lazio
     Lewis (CA)
     Lewis (KY)
     Linder
     LoBiondo
     Lucas (OK)
     Maloney (CT)
     Manzullo
     McCrery
     McHugh
     McInnis
     McIntosh
     McKeon
     Metcalf
     Mica
     Miller (FL)
     Miller, Gary
     Myrick
     Ney
     Northup
     Norwood
     Nussle
     Ose
     Oxley
     Packard
     Paul
     Pease
     Petri
     Pickering
     Pitts
     Pombo
     Quinn
     Radanovich
     Reynolds
     Riley
     Rogan
     Rogers
     Rohrabacher
     Roukema
     Royce
     Ryan (WI)
     Ryun (KS)
     Sanford
     Saxton
     Scarborough
     Schaffer
     Sensenbrenner
     Sessions
     Shadegg
     Sherwood
     Shimkus
     Shuster
     Simpson
     Skeen
     Smith (MI)
     Smith (NJ)
     Smith (TX)
     Souder
     Spence
     Stearns
     Stump
     Sununu
     Sweeney
     Talent
     Tancredo
     Tauzin
     Taylor (MS)
     Taylor (NC)
     Terry
     Thomas
     Thornberry
     Thune
     Tiahrt
     Toomey
     Vitter
     Walden
     Wamp
     Watkins
     Watts (OK)
     Weldon (FL)
     Weller
     Whitfield
     Wicker
     Wolf
     Young (AK)
     Young (FL)

                             NOT VOTING--13

     Bilbray
     Cox
     Cramer
     Jefferson
     John
     Lantos
     Largent
     McDermott
     Peterson (PA)
     Shaw
     Slaughter
     Stenholm
     Tanner

                              {time}  1628

  Mr. DICKEY changed his vote from ``aye'' to ``no.''
  Messrs. STARK, HOUGHTON, and BACHUS changed their vote from ``no'' to 
``aye.''
  So the amendment was agreed to.
  The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
  Stated for:
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Chairman, on rollcall No. 370, I was unavoidable 
detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.''
  Stated against:
  Mr. SALMON. Mr. Chairman, on Roll No. 370, the Serrano amendment to 
the Departments of Commerce, Justice, and State, the Judiciary, and 
Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2000 (H.R. 2670), I intended to 
vote ``no.''

                              {time}  1630

  Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
  Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from New York Mr. Engel for a 
colloquy.
  Mr. ENGEL. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to engage in a colloquy with my 
colleague from New York (Mr. Serrano), ranking member of the 
subcommittee, along with the gentleman from Kentucky (Chairman Rogers).
  Mr. Chairman, today I wish to express my support for the New York 
Botanical Garden. The district of the gentleman from New York (Mr. 
Serrano) and mine encompass a large portion of the Bronx in New York. 
The New York Botanical Garden has been located in my district. It is 
currently located in the district of the gentleman from New York (Mr. 
Serrano) which borders mine.
  Mr. Chairman, those who have been to New York know that the Botanical 
Garden is considered by many to be the jewel of the Bronx as well as an 
institution renowned for its support and development of advanced 
research and graduate studies in plant biology.
  I, along with 17 of my colleagues from New York, have urgently 
requested that $5 million be appropriated for construction of a new 
plant studies research laboratory at the New York Botanical Garden. The 
Botanical Garden is currently recognized as a premier institution in 
botanical research in the United States.
  The facility which houses advanced botanical studies laboratories, 
however, has become obsolete. A new facility is desperately needed to 
continue to attract top scientists and researchers from around the 
world.
  As I am sure the chairman and ranking member are aware, $1 million 
has been included in the Commerce-Justice-State appropriations bill of 
the Senate. I urge them to maintain or increase this level of funding 
during the conference committee.
  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. ENGEL. I yield to the gentleman from New York.
  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I thank my colleague from New York for 
expressing his support for the Botanical Garden and want to assure him 
that funding for the new facility is of high importance to me.
  The Botanical Garden has been instrumental in maintaining our place 
as a world leader in plant research. Without this new plant research 
facility, the Botanical Garden may lose its preeminent status in 
botanical studies, forcing many of its scientists and scholars to 
conduct that research in countries with adequate facilities.
  I want to reassure my colleague from New York that maintaining or 
increasing the $1 million in the Senate appropriations bill for the new 
plant studies research laboratory is of the highest priority with this 
Member.
  Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. ENGEL. I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky.
  Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I understand the interest of the two 
gentlemen, including the ranking minority member. I will be pleased to 
work with them as we go through this.
  Mr. ENGEL. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The CHAIRMAN. The Clerk will read.
  The Clerk read as follows:




  

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