[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 137 (Friday, October 27, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H11362-H11368]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          FURTHER CONTINUING APPROPRIATIONS, FISCAL YEAR 2001

  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to the provisions of 
House Resolution 646, I call up the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 117) 
making further continuing appropriations for the fiscal year 2001, and 
for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the 
House.
  The Clerk read the title of the joint resolution.
  The text of House Joint Resolution 117 is as follows:

                             H.J. Res. 117

       Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
     United States of America in Congress assembled, That Public 
     Law 106-275, is further amended by striking the date 
     specified in section 106(c) and inserting ``October 28, 
     2000''.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 646, the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) and the gentleman from Wisconsin 
(Mr. Obey) each will control 30 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young).
  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I would just point out that this is another one of those 
1-day continuing resolutions.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, ``Groundhog Day.'' That is what it feels like to me. 
Last night, almost the last bit of business we did, we passed a 1-day 
resolution continuing the government. This morning, because there is 
obviously not much to do on the floor, we have an early motion to again 
continue the government for another day. This is ``Groundhog Day.''
  How many times have we gone through this now? Is this the seventh 
time? I frankly have forgotten.
  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. If the gentleman will yield, I believe this is 
the third 1-day CR, the seventh overall.
  Mr. OBEY. The fifth one. All right. I want to make it clear that I 
think that the gentleman from Florida has done everything he possibly 
could to exercise his responsibilities in a responsible manner. And I 
think that his counterpart in the other body, the gentleman from 
Alaska, has also done everything he could to live up to his 
responsibilities. The problem is that they have been under orders from 
their leadership since day one of this session to peddle a national 
fiction. And that fiction has been that this Congress was going to 
spend about $40 billion less than it actually intended to spend. And 
now having spent 10 months passing bills out of this Chamber that the 
other side knew were fictions, last week we finally came to fess-up 
time and last week this House voted to raise the allowable spending 
levels by about $40 billion. We have been trying to negotiate our 
remaining differences. We thought 2 days ago that we were very close to 
closing our differences on the Commerce-Justice bill.

                              {time}  0915

  But then, for some reason, the leadership decided to throw away a day 
yesterday. So, despite the fact they were told the President would veto 
the bill that the House intended to send to him, they decided to ram it 
at him again one last time.
  The issues that divide us on that bill are five:
  First of all, a bill which is supposed to protect our precious 
coastal land areas from environmental degradation, instead has been 
turned into a bill which would allow you, literally, to build oil 
refineries on the sea coast, on the beaches, in the sensitive coastal 
areas in any State in the Union except Alaska. I am sorry, it would 
allow it in

[[Page H11363]]

Alaska too. What it would not allow in Alaska is to have any Federal 
money spent to deal with the sensitive issue of coastal zone 
protection. So that is one anti-public interest problem with that bill.
  The second is that it also contained language which pretended to do 
something to assure Americans' privacy on the Internet, but in fact 
opened up holes big enough to drive 65 foot trucks through. There were 
20 of our friends on that side of the aisle who voted with us yesterday 
against that bill, and some of them indicated that that was the reason, 
and I salute them for it.
  Then the third issue dividing us on that bill is the question of 
whether or not we are going to treat immigrants who have been in this 
country for years equally if they come from countries like El Salvador, 
as opposed to whether they come from Nicaragua.
  One Member stood on the floor yesterday and defended the different 
way we treat those souls by saying in effect, well, it is different if 
they fled Central America coming from Nicaragua because they were a 
communist dictatorship, it is different than if they fled Central 
America to run away from a right-wing dictatorship that we had in El 
Salvador at the time.
  I remember that right-wing dictatorship. I remember when there were 
officials going on television and fingering our own ambassador for 
assassination. The stories have now come out about how General Vides 
Casanova and others lied through their teeth to every Congressional 
delegation that went down there, and lied through their teeth to the 
press, to their own society, and had full knowledge of the 
assassinations of Salvadorean citizens that were occurring at the hand 
of that government and that military.
  There are some advantages to having been around here for a fair 
amount of time, because you remember those things, and you take certain 
lessons from them, and the lesson that I take from that is that if we 
are to show mercy to people who are in flight from despotic 
governments, that mercy ought to be even-handed, because you are just 
as dead if you are killed or assassinated by a right-wing militia as 
you are if you are assassinated by a left-wing militia. We have seen 
too much of both in that region. We have got one left that we want to 
get rid of, and we all know who it is. I do not mean in terms of 
getting rid of the human being; I mean getting rid of him in occupying 
the power that he now holds.
  Then we have another problem with that bill. That problem is that our 
Federal Treasury has expended billions of dollars over the past 
generation paying the costs that have been incurred by American 
taxpayers because of what tobacco products have done to American 
veterans and to Americans who are now senior citizens. That has cost 
Medicare and Medicaid billions of dollars, and yet there is language in 
the State-Justice bill which says that not one dime of funding in that 
bill can be used to pursue in court redress against an industry that 
lied to the public and lied to the Congress about the effect of their 
product.
  I am one of those people who used cigarettes. I used to smoke three 
packs a day, at the same time that I worked with asbestos. I did not 
know, but the company did, that asbestos caused cancer, and I did not 
know that there was a synergistic effect between asbestos and tobacco, 
which meant that you have probably a four or five times greater chance 
of getting mesothelioma or lung cancer, one of the two, one of which 
our former colleague, Mr. Vento, just died from, there was that much 
greater chance of dying if you used cigarettes and were exposed to 
asbestos.
  Johns Manville knew since 1939 what the problem was on asbestos, and 
the tobacco companies have known for a long time what the tobacco 
problem is, and yet the only dollar difference that we had in that bill 
yesterday between the majority and the minority was whether or not we 
ought to be able to appropriate a tiny amount of money to pay for the 
lawsuit that could have the possibility of bringing billions of dollars 
into the Federal Treasury to help us defray those costs. So the one 
thing that could have helped increase our surplus, out of all of the 
things we were doing yesterday, that was knocked out of the bill.
  Then you get to our differences on Labor-HHS and Education. There we 
have an argument about what the spending levels ought to be for 
education. This Congress has spent billions of dollars above what the 
President has asked in a variety of areas. Some of that I think is 
defensible, and some is not. But we are now being told, sorry, we are 
not going to put one dime above what we have already put in the 
education bill to meet your additional requirements for education. That 
is what we are being told. So we continue to have an argument about 
what level of funding we ought to have for special education, for 
teacher training, for smaller class size initiatives, for school 
modernization, for Pell and a number of other issues.
  Then we have the issue that the President is trying to get attended 
to by this Congress on the issue of school construction as opposed to 
modernization. There we have a $125 billion backlog. The President is 
trying to attack 20 percent of that backlog, and so far he is meeting 
resistance.
  Then we have the issue of whether or not workers are going to be 
protected from the dangers associated with repetitive motion injury in 
the workplace, the single most expensive problem in American industry 
today, the lost time and the costs associated with repetitive motion 
industries.
  This is despite the fact that this committee, the Committee on 
Appropriations, passed out to the House last year and the House adopted 
legislation which promised that we would not again delay the efforts of 
OSHA to promulgate the regulation to protect those American workers. 
Despite that promise in writing, this House welched on that promise. It 
is trying to bar going ahead with that provision.
  Then we have several other issues that still divide us. On that 
score, the House sent the President a tax bill yesterday which was 
doomed from the start. It was a blind alley piece of legislation, 
because the President said he is going to veto it, because far too many 
of the benefits, again, go to the cream, the folks at the top layers, 
and all too few of those dollars go to low income people, and the 
minimum wage hike is being held ransom to many of those rewards.
  There are a lot of items in that tax bill I do not have any objection 
to, but there are some that are outrageous. And that bill is a Trojan 
horse. It is a Trojan horse.
  So, we are stuck here, passing these one day resolutions, because 
this House still refuses to come to a compromise mode and work out 
differences with the White House. So we have no choice but to pass this 
resolution. But I thought it was important before we relinquished the 
floor on this issue to summarize what the main issues are, and the main 
issue on the appropriations side as I see it is still education, 
education, education.
  Here I think we have something interesting going on in the country. 
We have a stealth campaign being run by the other side. This is a 
Congress under the leadership of our friends on the other side, this is 
a Congress which over the last 5 years has tried to cut presidential 
budgets for education by $13.5 billion. Lest you say, oh, we are just 
talking about increases, they also tried to cut the education budget 
below previous years' spending levels by over $5.5 billion. On four 
different occasions they tried to make those cuts in existing spending 
levels for education.
  Now, because the polls show that education is an important issue, all 
of a sudden they have got a presidential candidate out there who is 
sort of a Trojan horse, who puts a benign face on the party, in hopes 
that people will look at that genial smile, rather than looking at the 
record of his fellow party members in this institution over the past 5 
years.
  I think the fight we are having on education now dramatizes, once 
again, what you folks on the other side of the aisle would really do if 
you had full power to govern. I think the last 6 years, in terms of you 
are trying to abolish the Department of Education, in terms of you are 
trying to cut back on education funding, in terms of you are trying to 
squeeze every opportunity you could out of the session to pass anti-
environmental riders on appropriation bills, it is clear to me that 
that is what your road map is, long-term.

[[Page H11364]]

  So we are not fighting here about a day or two or three; we are 
continuing to try to fight for the priorities that we think are 
important to meet the needs of the American people. We are going to 
have more than 1 million additional kids in schools over the next 
decade. We are not doing enough about it. That is what we are trying to 
correct. And as soon as the majority recognizes that the President is 
serious on this issue, we may finally have a resolution of those 
issues.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman 
from California (Mr. George Miller).
  Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman 
for yielding me time, and I thank him for the points that he raised, 
both about the legislation yesterday and the Commerce-State-Justice 
bill, which I join him in urging the President to veto.
  As one who represents a coastal state whose district is on the edge 
of San Francisco bay, it is a tragedy that that legislation did not 
provide the funding necessary so that we can implement our Coastal Zone 
Management Plan to deal with non-point source pollution, the runoff 
that comes from our cities, our farmlands, from the logging areas 
upstream, that are devastating water quality in our rivers, in our 
bays, and along our coast.
  Last year, California had beach closures over 3,000 times, some as 
long 6 to 12 weeks, and a few that were in fact permanent. The impact 
of that on our economy and tourism is the same kind of impact where 
they have had that kind of situation along the East Coast, where 
beaches have had to be closed because of water quality.
  The single biggest polluter at this point is non-pointed source 
pollution, the runoff, whether it is the Chesapeake Bay or Santa Monica 
Bay or the Gulf of Mexico, where that runoff is collected in the 
Mississippi River, sent down to the Gulf of Mexico and has created a 
dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico that is thousands of square miles, 
where simply life cannot live in those sections of the Gulf of Mexico.

                              {time}  0930

  I would hope that the President would veto that.
  The gentleman also mentioned immigrants. I find it rather interesting 
on the front page of the Business section of the Washington Post, it 
says ``Sweet Harvest for Virginia's Vintners'', for the wine industry 
in Virginia, a Sweet Harvest.
  When we open up the paper on the inside and we see who is harvesting 
those grapes, it is Gerardo Chavez. Gerardo Chavez is harvesting those 
grapes. Yet the other side decided that they were not going to provide 
for the fair treatment of immigrants; they were going to distinguish 
between those people who came here from Cuba and Nicaragua and El 
Salvador.
  The gentleman quite correctly points out, we now see that they were 
fleeing governments in El Salvador that not only were involved with 
fingering, and we were involved with fingering El Salvadorans citizens 
who then disappeared, were tortured and killed, but now, of course, we 
see the direct relationship between their involvement and the killing 
of the religious women from America.
  Those families have had to live with that tragedy now for over a 
decade as we have tried to get to the bottom of that case. And it turns 
out now, of course, high Salvadoran officials and the security police 
and armed forces knew about that and covered it up all of those years. 
That is the government that these people were fleeing.
  Many of those people who fled those governments now are working very 
hard in the American economy and, yet, we are going to deny them the 
rights to try to provide for legal and permanent residency and give 
them the right to prove their situation, rather than send them off back 
to the country and let them try to prove that from overseas. That 
treatment of immigrants is inexcusable.
  We could not run the economy of this country for a day if the 
immigrants decided to sit down. We could not run the economy of 
California for 5 minutes if the immigrants did not show up for work, 
whether it is our tourism economy, whether it is our agricultural 
economy, whether it is our manufacturing economy, that is the simple 
fact of the matter. We ought to start dealing with these people in a 
fair and equitable fashion.
  The gentleman also mentioned the continued attack. Many times people 
ask, what are we arguing over? What is it? We are just bickering. We 
are just arguing back and forth. This is about whether or not people 
who go to the workplace will be protected from damages to their nerves 
and to their muscles and to the skeletal system from the repetitive 
motion in the workplace.
  We are all familiar with this. Members of Congress are familiar with 
this. Flight attendants now wear braces on their wrists and on their 
arms and on their hands because of repetitive motion. The checkers in 
the supermarket wear braces on their hands and their elbows because of 
repetitive motion.
  If we go to Home Depot, we will see people wearing back braces to try 
to prevent repetitive motion. We will see people wearing braces on 
their hands, machine operators, lathe operators, people who go to work 
everyday and work very hard, and, yet, the Republicans are absolutely 
committed to not letting those regulations go in place, that not only 
will save those companies millions and millions of dollars in worker's 
compensation claims, but it will extend these individuals work lives so 
they can provide for their families so they will not have to take a job 
that pays them less, or they will not have to leave the workforce and 
live on disability.
  Yet, in spite of what the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) pointed 
out, in spite of the written promises, they are reneging on that, and 
they are fighting the President on that matter.
  We are staying here for very real reasons that impact American's 
families, whether it is the kind of schools that their children go to 
and the failure to provide some help for those districts that want to 
construct schools but may not have the resources to do it, to provide 
them some interest breaks on those bonds so they can construct those 
schools.
  Because the evidence is very clear, you can take a child from almost 
any economic or socioeconomic setting, from any background, and you put 
them with the first-class qualified teacher, with a first-class 
curriculum and in a first class school, and they learn like just about 
anyone else. We ought to, in fact, make sure that we can carry that 
out.
  These fights are real, but they are about the future of the American 
family. It is about whether or not Medicare is going to be there for 
them, or whether or not we are simply going to reimburse the HMOs and 
the insurance companies that overpromised and failed to deliver to the 
senior citizens or those that just simply closed up shop and left 
hundreds of thousands of senior citizens in different regions of the 
country without a health care plan.
  Let us remember what the original plan was. The original plan by the 
Republicans was if we joined an HMO, a Medicare HMO, we could not come 
back to the regular system. We almost shut the government down over 
that debate, but we prevailed and President Clinton prevailed to make 
sure that senior citizens that went to an HMO if it did not serve their 
needs could come back to the Medicare system.
  If that law that they wanted then, that we fought and extended to 
Congress over, was in place, those people would be with no health care, 
no Medicare, because they would have chosen to go into a system that 
turned out to be a fly-by-night operation.
  I just have one question to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey). 
Continuing resolutions, this one for 24 hours or for 48 hours, we had 
one a few days ago for 4 days, the last continuing resolution was for 4 
days and everybody went home. I thought continuing resolutions were 
supposed to be the President gave us some additional time to get the 
work done.
  People are saying now that we are going to pass these continuing 
resolutions and people are going to go home again. I just do not 
understand how we go forward with these kinds of continuing resolutions 
that basically enable everyone to go home. I would hope that we would 
take that into consideration as Members vote on this CR.
  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to say to the gentleman from California (Mr. 
George Miller), who just left the well, that we are doing 1-day CRs 
because

[[Page H11365]]

the President of the United States has told us that he would not sign 
anything other than a 1-day CR; so that is their decision.
  We understand the power of the Presidency, and so we are prepared to 
accommodate that.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Cunningham), a member of the Committee on Appropriations.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, I do not think our side was even going 
to talk on this. The partisan bickering, the rancoring that goes on 
here, I think that the American public can see what we are facing from 
our colleagues on the other side. They want to stay, all right. They 
want to stay not over policy, but for politics.
  Do you know what I am most resentful about? That the other side and 
the last few speakers that talked about said that Democrats are the 
only ones that really care about education. The Democrats say they are 
the only ones that really care about school construction or Medicare or 
Medicaid or prescription drugs.
  I worked most of my life here on this House floor. I fight, every 
ounce of my survival, to make sure that those issues are taken care of, 
not only for our children, but for our seniors as well.
  The gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), the Speaker of the House, 
is a teacher and a coach. In his heart and in his mind and in his soul, 
he cares deeply about education.
  I was a teacher and a coach both in high school and in college. It is 
one of the main focuses that I have. And for the other side to say 
that, we are so mean and rotten because of our policies. Well, let me 
tell you what the politics of this are. We will stay and fight for 
education. We will stay and fight for prescription drugs and for our 
seniors and health care.
  I will not allow the other side to mislead, for example, on school 
construction. We could have school construction today. Our schools are 
crumbling. For 30 years, they had control of the education process. 
What is the outcome? We have some very good teachers and very good 
schools, which I am very fortunate in my district to have, in North San 
Diego County.
  I have been to teacher awards, but across this Nation, we are last in 
math and science. That is a crime.
  Mr. Speaker, we have to hire outside people with Ph.D.s to come in to 
our country to take over high-level and high-tech jobs because we do 
not have enough Ph.D.s; that is a crime.
  But my colleagues on the other side would rather cater to the unions 
than to come out with education dollars.
  Let me give you an idea. Why do you think they want school 
construction out of Federal dollars? Their campaigns are loaded with 
union boss money. I was in 18 districts over the last 3 months, the 
minimum amount that the unions had put against any one of those 
candidates was a million dollars. They do not want to give up that 
lifeblood.
  School construction out of Federal dollars falls under Davis-Bacon, 
the union or the prevailing wage, that costs about between 15 percent 
to 35 percent more for those States that have it. Let us waive Davis-
Bacon just for school construction. Let us let the schools keep that 
money and build more schools or teacher training or teacher pay or 
class-size reduction.
  But do you think my colleagues would do that? Absolutely not. We had 
it on the D.C. bill. Do you care about children? Do you care about 
schools, or do you care about your union bosses?
  Well, I think it is very evident, because they will not. They know 
that many Republicans have union districts. When we bring it to a vote, 
we lose it because of the unions.
  ``The power,'' they talk about campaign finance reform; what a joke. 
What a joke.
  I ran out of time the other day on education. But just like Goals 
2000, they wanted the power for education to reside here in Washington, 
D.C. Goals 2000 is a good example.
  There are 14 wills in the previous bill. A will for a lawyer means 
you will do this. One of those wills, you have to establish boards to 
see if you fall in the guidelines of Goals 2000. They say it is only 
voluntary, but only if you want the money.
  Well, you establish a board to see if you are within the guidelines, 
then they send it to the regular Board of Education. The board sends it 
to the principal. The principal sends it to the superintendent. Then 
you have to send all of that paperwork, hours of labor, to Sacramento, 
CA.
  Now, think about all the schools in California. Sending all of that 
paperwork to Sacramento. Think of the bureaucracy you have to have in 
Sacramento just to go through the paperwork. Then where do they send 
it? They send it back here to the Department of Education.
  Now, think about all the schools in the United States sending all of 
that paperwork back here to the Department of Education. Think of the 
bureaucracy that they have to have back here. Then there is paperwork 
flow back and forth.
  And so what happens? We get less money for education because of the 
bureaucrats in Washington, DC, because of the rules and the 
regulations. Federal education only covers about 7 percent of the 
funding, but it controls much of the funding from the State and local 
districts, and that is what my colleagues want.
  They want government control of education, government control of 
private property. You want government control of health care. You want 
government to control everything. Not mean-spirited, that is what you 
believe. We believe in people, and we are willing to stay here and 
fight for people of this country and have the rights of choice 
decisions for theirselves.
  Yes, we will stay back and fight, Mr. Speaker. We will fight for the 
people, not the union bosses.


                Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Pease). Members are reminded that 
remarks in debate should be addressed to the Chair and not to others in 
the second person or by name.
  Members are further reminded that they are to refrain from the use of 
profanity in debate.
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1\1/4\ minutes.
  Mr. Speaker, there is nothing partisan about citing the record. The 
public needs to know if there are any real differences between us, and 
I think I cited those differences without rancor and with accuracy and 
without questioning motives.
  Mr. Speaker, let me simply say that I do find three things strange.
  Our friends on the majority side brag about the fact that they raised 
education 50 percent during the time they have controlled the Congress, 
that is only because we defeated them in their efforts to cut education 
by huge amounts. We eventually forced them to add $15 billion back to 
education spending.
  On prescription drugs, they say they are for prescription drugs. But 
the record demonstrates they have been trying for a year to block a 
comprehensive benefit under Medicare and would target their package 
only to those at the near poverty level.
  As far as the patients' bill of rights is concerned, their 
Presidential candidate claimed that he had been in support of the 
patients' bill of rights when, in fact, as Governor of Texas, he vetoed 
it, and then the second time around, when his tail feathers were being 
singed by public opinion, he let it become law without his signature.
  Mr. Speaker, I think the record is clear on the divisions that are 
keeping us here.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from 
Missouri (Mr. Gephardt), the distinguished Minority Leader.
  (Mr. GEPHARDT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)

                              {time}  0945

  Mr. GEPHARDT. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this continuing 
resolution, our seventh in 5 weeks. But I deeply regret that we have 
reached this point. We should never have found ourselves in the mess 
that we are in, and we must stay here and work each day until we 
complete the business required by the law and for the American people.
  Let us do the rare thing and come together in a bipartisan fashion to 
accomplish some meaningful things for the American people. Let us stop 
closed-door partisan meetings. No more sending up bills at 7 a.m. with 
only a few hours for review.

[[Page H11366]]

  No more tax breaks for special interests and lopsided bills that we 
know the President will not sign.
  There is a list of missed opportunities in this Congress. Republicans 
killed the bipartisan hate crimes law supported by large majorities of 
both houses. They support the pharmaceutical companies by refusing to 
let us even vote on a bill that puts prescription drug benefits in the 
reliable world of Medicare. Partisan tax packages are put together 
without consultation or negotiation with the President or Democrats in 
Congress.
  Just yesterday, Republicans brought up a tax package that gave a lot 
to the HMOs and not enough to patients, people, hospitals, nursing 
homes, and home health care agencies.
  Minimum wage increases are put in bills that give maximum benefit to 
special interest. And this week, Republicans tried to give more tax 
help to wealthy bondholders through school construction bonds that do 
not give public schools the incentives or the help they need to 
modernize their schools.
  So we have amassed a record of partisanship with virtually no 
accomplishments. We still have time in the few remaining days of this 
session to work until the last hour of the last day. We can pass the 
Latino and Immigrant Fairness Act. We can pass the bipartisan hate 
crimes bill. We can pass a school construction credit that will really 
help local districts relieve the burden on local property taxpayers who 
may be willing to vote for bonds under those circumstances so that we 
can get smaller classroom sizes.
  We can pass an enforceable, effective Patients' Bill of Rights. We 
can pass a prescription medicine program under Medicare that will allow 
everyone in a voluntary and universal way to be able to access that 
very important benefit.
  We could pass campaign reform that gets rid of the flood of soft, 
non-Federal money in the campaigns. We could get meaningful gun safety 
legislation that would take the danger out of our classrooms and our 
other public institutions.
  We still have an opportunity in these last days to get all of those 
things done, or at least some of them done. And so I plead with my 
friends on the other side of the aisle, and my side of the aisle, let 
us work together in the remaining hours of this session. Let us produce 
legislation that will be signed by the President and that will help all 
the people of this country.
  Time is not yet up. We can do this. But to do it, it takes a spirit 
of bipartisanship and communication and working together to get these 
things done.
  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my 
time.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to compliment the minority leader again today, as 
I did the last time that he made this same speech calling for 
bipartisanship and all working together. I am all for that. I think we 
ought to do that. But it is interesting. Almost immediately after he 
made the speech last week, all we heard from his side of the aisle was 
more partisan attacks, not even related to the issues that we were 
dealing with.
  Of all of the things that we have heard talked about today, I do not 
think more than one or two of them had to do with appropriations. We 
are here today to deal with an appropriations matter, not all of these 
other issues, these authorizing issues, these legislating issues. I 
find it difficult to keep track of what bill is before the House when 
we hear all of the rhetoric that in my opinion is purely campaign 
rhetoric.
  I think that those campaign speeches that we just heard this morning, 
I think that is about the 69th time that I have heard those same 
speeches in the last 60 days, and I think we should give them all a 
number. We could save the time of the House so that we could get about 
our business if we just took each one of their arguments and gave it a 
number. When they stand up, say ``Argument Number 2, Argument Number 
10,'' we could save a lot of time, because we have memorized their 
speeches. Those speeches that should have been reserved for the 
campaign trail, because that is where they belong, not in this House 
where the people's business has to come first.
  We are also criticized for working at night. We work a lot of nights. 
We work all day long. And we work at night too. And not only the 
Republican side; the Democrats do too. Despite some of the accusations 
about secret meetings, in all of the negotiations the Republican 
Majority and the Democratic minority have been involved together and 
most of them have included representatives of the President from the 
White House.
  We have tried to be as totally fair as we possibly could be. We did 
not learn that was the right thing to do from the time that we were the 
minority, because we were never given those kind of opportunities. We 
were never allowed to participate in the decision-making, and so we 
vowed that the minority party would have the opportunity that we did 
not have as a minority when we gained the majority. And I think we have 
been pretty true to that. I do not think that there is any room for any 
criticism that we have excluded the minority from any of these 
conversations.
  Now, it is suggested that we ought to do everything that the 
President wants. Well, we are trying to accommodate the President, 
because he is the President and he has as much power at this stage of 
the appropriations process as two-thirds of this House and two-thirds 
of the Senate. Because if he decides to veto a bill, it takes two-
thirds of the House and two-thirds of the Senate to override that veto. 
So he becomes very powerful in this process and that is why we have 
worked very diligently with the President's representatives to try to 
accommodate him to the best of our ability.
  Mr. Speaker, I will give an example on education. We have proposed in 
our legislation to provide considerably over a billion dollars more 
money for education than the President requested in his budget. The big 
holdup has been, we believe, that the local school officials, the 
elected school boards, in our counties and our districts should have 
the opportunity to decide if they need new school buildings? Do they 
need more teachers? Do they need more special education? Do they need 
books? Do they need supplies? They should make those decisions, not 
somebody sitting here in Washington.
  The minority side would like people to believe that Republicans 
really do not support education. That is just as phony as it can be. We 
are strong supporters of education. Let me give an example. Most of my 
colleagues in the House are very much aware that for all of the years 
that I have been here, I have spent most of my time dealing with 
national defense issues, national security and intelligence. And that 
is a fact. I have spent a lot of time on that because that is important 
to our Nation. If we do not have a secure Nation, we do not have much 
else.
  But after making all the speeches about national defense, let me 
suggest this. If we are going to sustain our position in the world due 
to high technology and state-of-the-art weapons and systems, and if we 
are going to sustain the ability of our young men and women to function 
with these systems and to operate them, we have got to have the best 
educational system possible. And I know that our strong national 
defense, our strong intelligence capabilities, our strong state-of-the-
art technology, and the creation of new technology, do not happen if we 
do not have a strong and effective educational system.
  Republicans believe that. That is why we are so committed to having a 
very strong educational system.
  One of the issues that the minority leader mentioned just a few 
minutes ago was about the tax bill. That is not what is before us this 
morning. But he mentioned some of the groups that might have been 
affected by that tax bill. But one of our colleagues on our side, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas) just the other day read off a 
list of the people and the groups who supported the tax bill, and the 
groups that he mentioned were all supporters of the tax bill. They did 
not oppose it. They supported it.
  It is interesting when the government has a huge surplus of money, 
there are those who believe that surplus belongs to the government. 
Wrong. Wrong. That surplus belongs to the taxpayers of this great 
Nation. And just because it is there does not mean that the government 
should spend it. So the tax bill I think is supported dramatically by 
the American people.
  Now, if we have a large surplus, how did it come about? We came into 
this

[[Page H11367]]

Congress as a majority party a few years back determined to balance the 
budget. We met all kind of resistance. We were told that we cannot do 
it, and we did not get much support from the other side to balance the 
budget. But we balanced it, and today they will stand and take credit 
for it.
  We turned the tables on those who were downsizing our national 
defense, and we began to rebuild. We began to replace spare parts that 
were needed. We began to create a much better quality of life for 
people in our military. We gave them the largest pay raise last year, 
another pay raise this year that the Congress initiated, but the 
administration is taking credit for it. We balanced the budget. We have 
a surplus.
  Mr. Speaker, since I became chairman of the Committee on 
Appropriations, we have not spent one dime out of the Social Security 
Trust Fund, and yet there are those candidates running around the 
country today saying, ``Oh, be careful of those Republicans. They are 
going to destroy your Social Security.'' Not true, Mr. Speaker. That is 
a phony argument and a phony accusation. We are the ones who stopped 
the raid on the Social Security fund.
  We have a record to be proud of in our appropriations bills. We are 
proud of that record too because this House of Representatives under 
our leadership passed all of our appropriations bills a long time ago. 
The holdup and the delay has not come from the House. The additional 
spending, the additional projects have not come from the House.
  But, Mr. Speaker, one of the biggest problems is all of the 
extraneous material, the 69 campaign speeches we have heard in the last 
2 months. Those campaign speeches have talked about policy issues that 
some people would like to decide on in an appropriation bill. Well, 
there is a regular order in this House of Representatives on how we 
deal with those issues. We have numerous authorizing committees that 
have the jurisdiction and the responsibility to deal with those big 
issues. It has long been a practice that appropriation bills are 
appropriation bills and we do not legislate on appropriation bills, 
unless there is an exceptionally valid reason to do so.
  But now they want us to take all of the philosophical issues that are 
out there and lump them on to an appropriation bill without hearings, 
without the opportunity for the House to deal with those issues 
directly. They want to lump them on to an appropriation bill. And why 
is that? Because appropriation bills have to pass. If appropriation 
bills do not pass, then the government does not function.
  Mr. Speaker, we have approached our responsibilities in what I think 
is a very responsible way. I would prefer not to be here today with 
this one-day continuing resolution. We tried to meet yesterday with 
representatives from the President's office. They were not available to 
us yesterday so that we could work on the last bill. There is only one 
bill left out there. We hope to meet all day today with the 
administration and with the minority party on that one bill. And if we 
have to, we will go into the night. And if it takes going into the 
night, we are going to do it. And then we will be accused, of course, 
of doing something in the dark of night. But if we are going to work 16 
or 18 hours a day, a lot of that time is dark time.
  We are going to work to get the people's job done. We are not here to 
make political campaign speeches in this House. We are here to do our 
job in a responsible fashion. We are here to put the people's business 
above politics. When we leave here, we will go home and that is where 
we will do our politics.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask for a ``yes'' vote on the CR, and I yield back the 
balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Pease). All time for debate has expired.
  The joint resolution is considered as having been read for amendment.
  Pursuant to House Resolution 646, the previous question is ordered.
  The question is on the engrossment and third reading of the joint 
resolution.
  The joint resolution was ordered to be engrossed and read the third 
time, and was read the third time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the passage of the joint 
resolution.
  The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that 
the ayes appeared to have it.
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a 
quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not 
present.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Evidently a quorum is not present.
  The Sergeant at Arms will notify absent Members.
  The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 366, 
nays 13, not voting 53, as follows:

                             [Roll No. 563]

                               YEAS--366

     Abercrombie
     Ackerman
     Aderholt
     Allen
     Andrews
     Archer
     Armey
     Baca
     Bachus
     Baker
     Baldacci
     Baldwin
     Ballenger
     Barcia
     Barrett (NE)
     Barrett (WI)
     Bartlett
     Bass
     Becerra
     Bentsen
     Bereuter
     Berkley
     Berman
     Berry
     Biggert
     Bilirakis
     Bishop
     Blagojevich
     Bliley
     Blumenauer
     Blunt
     Boehlert
     Boehner
     Bonilla
     Bonior
     Bono
     Borski
     Boswell
     Boucher
     Boyd
     Brady (PA)
     Brady (TX)
     Brown (FL)
     Brown (OH)
     Bryant
     Burr
     Burton
     Buyer
     Callahan
     Calvert
     Camp
     Canady
     Cannon
     Capps
     Cardin
     Carson
     Castle
     Chabot
     Chambliss
     Clayton
     Clement
     Clyburn
     Coble
     Coburn
     Collins
     Combest
     Condit
     Conyers
     Cook
     Cooksey
     Coyne
     Crane
     Cubin
     Cummings
     Cunningham
     Davis (FL)
     Davis (IL)
     Davis (VA)
     Deal
     DeGette
     Delahunt
     DeLauro
     DeLay
     DeMint
     Deutsch
     Diaz-Balart
     Dicks
     Doggett
     Dooley
     Doolittle
     Doyle
     Dreier
     Duncan
     Edwards
     Ehlers
     Ehrlich
     Emerson
     Engel
     English
     Eshoo
     Etheridge
     Evans
     Everett
     Ewing
     Farr
     Filner
     Fletcher
     Foley
     Forbes
     Fossella
     Frelinghuysen
     Frost
     Gallegly
     Gejdenson
     Gekas
     Gephardt
     Gibbons
     Gillmor
     Gilman
     Gonzalez
     Goode
     Goodlatte
     Goodling
     Gordon
     Goss
     Graham
     Granger
     Green (TX)
     Green (WI)
     Greenwood
     Gutierrez
     Gutknecht
     Hall (OH)
     Hall (TX)
     Hansen
     Hastings (FL)
     Hastings (WA)
     Hayes
     Hayworth
     Herger
     Hill (IN)
     Hill (MT)
     Hilleary
     Hinojosa
     Hobson
     Hoeffel
     Hoekstra
     Holden
     Holt
     Hooley
     Horn
     Hostettler
     Houghton
     Hoyer
     Hulshof
     Hunter
     Hyde
     Inslee
     Istook
     Jackson (IL)
     Jackson-Lee (TX)
     Jenkins
     John
     Johnson (CT)
     Johnson, E. B.
     Jones (NC)
     Jones (OH)
     Kanjorski
     Kelly
     Kennedy
     Kildee
     Kilpatrick
     Kind (WI)
     King (NY)
     Kleczka
     Knollenberg
     Kucinich
     Kuykendall
     LaFalce
     LaHood
     Lampson
     Lantos
     Largent
     Larson
     Latham
     LaTourette
     Leach
     Lee
     Levin
     Lewis (CA)
     Lewis (GA)
     Lewis (KY)
     Linder
     Lipinski
     LoBiondo
     Lofgren
     Lowey
     Lucas (KY)
     Lucas (OK)
     Luther
     Maloney (CT)
     Maloney (NY)
     Manzullo
     Markey
     Mascara
     Matsui
     McCarthy (MO)
     McCarthy (NY)
     McDermott
     McGovern
     McHugh
     McKeon
     McKinney
     McNulty
     Meehan
     Meek (FL)
     Meeks (NY)
     Menendez
     Mica
     Millender-McDonald
     Miller (FL)
     Miller, Gary
     Minge
     Mink
     Moakley
     Moore
     Moran (KS)
     Moran (VA)
     Morella
     Murtha
     Myrick
     Nadler
     Napolitano
     Neal
     Nethercutt
     Ney
     Northup
     Norwood
     Nussle
     Oberstar
     Obey
     Ortiz
     Ose
     Owens
     Oxley
     Packard
     Pallone
     Pascrell
     Paul
     Payne
     Pease
     Pelosi
     Peterson (MN)
     Petri
     Phelps
     Pickering
     Pickett
     Pitts
     Pombo
     Pomeroy
     Porter
     Portman
     Price (NC)
     Pryce (OH)
     Quinn
     Radanovich
     Rahall
     Ramstad
     Rangel
     Reyes
     Reynolds
     Riley
     Rivers
     Rodriguez
     Roemer
     Rogan
     Rogers
     Rohrabacher
     Ros-Lehtinen
     Rothman
     Roukema
     Roybal-Allard
     Royce
     Rush
     Ryan (WI)
     Ryun (KS)
     Sabo
     Salmon
     Sanchez
     Sandlin
     Sanford
     Sawyer
     Saxton
     Scarborough
     Schaffer
     Schakowsky
     Scott
     Sensenbrenner
     Sessions
     Shadegg
     Shaw
     Sherman
     Sherwood
     Shimkus
     Shows
     Shuster
     Simpson
     Sisisky
     Skeen
     Skelton
     Slaughter
     Smith (MI)
     Smith (NJ)
     Smith (TX)
     Smith (WA)
     Snyder
     Souder
     Spence
     Stabenow
     Stearns
     Stenholm
     Strickland
     Stump
     Sununu
     Sweeney
     Tancredo
     Tanner
     Tauscher
     Taylor (MS)
     Taylor (NC)
     Terry
     Thomas
     Thompson (CA)
     Thornberry
     Thune
     Thurman
     Tiahrt
     Tierney
     Toomey
     Towns
     Traficant
     Turner
     Udall (CO)
     Udall (NM)
     Upton
     Velazquez
     Vitter
     Walden
     Walsh
     Wamp
     Waters
     Watt (NC)
     Weldon (FL)
     Weldon (PA)
     Weller
     Wexler
     Weygand
     Whitfield
     Wicker
     Wilson
     Wolf
     Woolsey
     Wu
     Wynn
     Young (AK)
     Young (FL)

                                NAYS--13

     Baird
     Capuano
     Costello
     DeFazio
     Dingell
     Ford

[[Page H11368]]


     Frank (MA)
     Hilliard
     Kaptur
     Miller, George
     Pastor
     Stupak
     Visclosky

                             NOT VOTING--53

     Barr
     Barton
     Bilbray
     Campbell
     Chenoweth-Hage
     Clay
     Cox
     Cramer
     Crowley
     Danner
     Dickey
     Dixon
     Dunn
     Fattah
     Fowler
     Franks (NJ)
     Ganske
     Gilchrest
     Hefley
     Hinchey
     Hutchinson
     Isakson
     Jefferson
     Johnson, Sam
     Kasich
     Kingston
     Klink
     Kolbe
     Lazio
     Martinez
     McCollum
     McCrery
     McInnis
     McIntosh
     McIntyre
     Metcalf
     Mollohan
     Olver
     Peterson (PA)
     Regula
     Sanders
     Serrano
     Shays
     Spratt
     Stark
     Talent
     Tauzin
     Thompson (MS)
     Watkins
     Watts (OK)
     Waxman
     Weiner
     Wise

                              {time}  1018

  Mr. GUTIERREZ changed his vote from ``nay'' to ``yea.''
  So the joint resolution was passed.
  The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
  Stated for:
  Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 563, I was inadvertently 
detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

                          ____________________