[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 139 (Sunday, October 29, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H11492-H11495]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         FURTHER CONTINUING APPROPRIATIONS FOR 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. 119) 
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 119 is as follows:

                             H.J. Res. 119

       Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
     United States of America in Congress assembled, That Public 
     Law 106-275,

[[Page H11493]]

     is further amended by striking the date specified in section 
     106(c) and inserting ``October 30, 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 will recognize the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young).
  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Mr. Speaker, this is another one of those one-day CRs. We find 
ourselves here in the House Chamber on Sunday night because the 
President of the United States refuses to sign a continuing resolution 
longer than 24 hours. This resolution is to provide for one more day of 
continuing government funding until tomorrow night.
  I would report briefly that the negotiations are ongoing this 
afternoon, negotiations with both parties and both Houses of the 
Congress. We will be meeting with the representatives of the White 
House later tonight. We would make every effort possible to conclude 
those negotiations sometime before tomorrow morning and hopefully be 
able to write this final bill and to file it in the House sometime 
tomorrow night and possibly have it on the floor Tuesday. That is why 
we are here tonight, Mr. Speaker.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

                              {time}  1830

  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, while I am told the Packers lost, my only consolation is 
I guess the Vikings did too.
  Mr. Speaker, we are now faced with the need to pass the eighth 
continuing resolution, I believe, of the year. Well, let me back up and 
just make an observation.
  The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) said we are here tonight 
because the President refused to sign any continuing resolution longer 
than 1 day. Let me respectfully disagree with that statement. We are 
here because the House worked all year, diligently, and passed all 13 
appropriation bills.
  The problem is that those bills had no attachment to reality. Those 
bills were fashioned, as they were, in order to allow the majority to 
continue its pretense that the surpluses would be large enough that we 
could provide very large tax cuts and still balance the budget and pay 
down the debt and provide all of the funding that the Congress intended 
to provide for its discretionary programs. The Congress, in the month 
of October, at least the House itself, did not finish action on a 
single appropriation bill, and now we are faced with the necessity to 
do a year's worth of work in 1 month's time.
  The reason the President indicated he would not sign continuing 
resolutions longer than 1 day is because virtually no progress was made 
for the first month after he had signed a series of longer continuing 
resolutions, and he felt that it was necessary to try to bring things 
to a head so that this body would in fact get its work done. Article I 
of the Constitution gives us the requirement to get our work done on 
basic things like the budget. The Congress has not done so. There are a 
number of bills that still have not yet gone to the President's desk.
  So now we not only are dragging in terms of schedule, but because a 
whole range of other issues were not dealt with by this House and by 
the authorizing committees, we now have 313 separate authorization 
items which we are being asked to include in this bill by various 
persons within this institution. We are supposed to go through all of 
those items between 6:30 tonight and 10 o'clock tonight.
  I am going to let somebody else say with a straight face that they 
will know what they are doing in dealing with all of those bills. I am 
one of the four that is supposed to deal with them, and I certainly do 
not know what all of them are.
  The good Senator can tell me to stop speaking if he wants, but he is 
a guest in this House. Let me simply say that I am not going to stop 
speaking until I have finished my statement.
  I would simply ask Members to recognize that this is not a 
responsible way to run a railroad. I hope it never happens again, and I 
would hope that tonight, as we enter that room, that we have a flexible 
response from the Republican leadership to the White House offer 
yesterday to end this impasse.
  The White House has laid out a fairly straightforward proposition for 
ending the divisions, at least on the major bill that divides us, the 
Labor-Health-Education bill. I would hope that we would have 
flexibility on the part of both sides as we are in those negotiations.
  Mr. Speaker, let me simply say I regret as much as anyone the fact 
that Members have to be kept here, but had we had a series of honest 
appropriation bills and sensible orders from the House leadership to 
begin with over the first 8 months of this year, all of this chaos 
would not be necessary.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I just want to reiterate, we could have passed a 
continuing resolution on Friday that would have kept us going until 
Monday night, and Members could have been home Saturday and Sunday in 
their districts tending to their district business. But the President 
refused to sign one that would take us until Monday night, so we are 
here doing it on Sunday to get to Monday night. So that is the real 
reason.
  Regarding the argument that my friend, the gentleman from Wisconsin 
(Mr. Obey), makes about where we are in the process, the House 
Committee on Appropriations had concluded all of its appropriations 
bills in July, early July, and we had them all through on the floor. We 
had them all through on the floor, and 12 of the 13 were passed through 
this House. The 13th was prepared to be passed, but it was pulled off 
of the schedule in July, and we did not take it up again until we came 
back from the August recess.
  The House has done its job. But what has happened here, as the 
gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) has mentioned, is how many requests 
we have had from Members of the House on both sides of the aisle, 
Members of the Senate on both sides of the aisle, from the President of 
the United States, some of them just coming over, many slipped in the 
doorway in the last couple of days. So we have had to deal with all of 
these issues.
  That, plus the fact that we have spent hour after hour, day after 
day, on amendments to bills in the House that had nothing to do with an 
appropriations bill, that were not germane, that were subject to a 
point of order; but as a courtesy to the minority, we allowed them 
hours and hours and hours of extra time on those amendments that we 
knew were not even in order. In fact, in most cases, the sponsor of the 
amendment withdrew the amendment after the delaying tactics of using up 
that time.
  Now, that is why we are here. Let us be honest about it. We are here 
because the President will sign only a one-day CR per day, and we are 
here because there have been certain delaying tactics that have kept 
this House behind its appointed schedule.
  Now, we ought to get this CR through here quickly so the other body 
can pass it tonight and the President can have it and sign it in time 
for the government to continue tomorrow.
  There is another reason. Every hour that we spend on this floor now 
takes the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) and myself, who are 
negotiators for the House, away from the negotiating table. We have 
Senators waiting in another room, waiting for us to come back to try to 
continue those negotiations, to go over the list of requests made by 
our colleagues here in the House, to see if we can agree to them or if 
we cannot agree to them.
  So these unnecessary delays are keeping us from concluding our 
business. That is one reason that the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. 
Obey) and I, whether we like it or not, are going to be here until the 
late hours tonight, Sunday night, and probably into the early hours of 
Monday morning, if we are going to get this product completed and filed 
by tomorrow night.
  Mr. Speaker, I wanted to advise the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. 
Obey) that at this point I have no further requests for time and will 
reserve the balance of my time so that we can conclude this CR.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

[[Page H11494]]

  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I do not want to prolong this, because the gentleman and 
I need to get back to the negotiations, but I do want to respond to one 
point he said. He has made much of the fact that the majority was so 
kind and gracious that they gave the minority an opportunity to debate 
amendments which were not in order.
  Let me say that that itself is the problem, because the majority used 
the Committee on Rules to prevent us from offering amendments that 
would have made those appropriation bills real. They prevented us from 
offering those amendments because they knew if we brought them to the 
floor they would have enough Republican support, along with our 
support, to pass. So, instead of giving us the opportunity to get a 
vote on items that we thought were necessary, they said, no, we will 
not give you the right to vote on them. All we will do is give you an 
opportunity to talk on them for a little bit. So that was the second 
best option. It was the only option we were given.
  So I think, in fact, the gentleman's remarks illustrate how arbitrary 
the majority was in assuring that the minority would never be able to 
produce amendments that would make these bills real. That is why we are 
stuck here tonight.
  The other point I would simply make is that the majority has now 
passed appropriation bills which have taken these bills billions of 
dollars above the level of the amendments that we tried to offer that 
they said were not in order in the first place because they supposedly 
exceeded the budget resolution. The majority itself has now exceeded 
their own budget resolution by almost $40 billion. So the idea that 
somehow we had a real legislative process going on on those 13 bills is 
a joke.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to make the point that all of the 
appropriations bills that we brought to the House floor were under an 
open rule, an open rule, and the rules of the House prevailed.
  I would just like to say to my friend, the gentleman from Wisconsin 
(Mr. Obey), that when we did allow that extra time of debate on 
amendments that were not even in order, that is the courtesy we showed 
to the minority that when they were the majority party they never 
showed to us.
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.
  MR. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, that is a distinction without meaning, because 
the fact is the gentleman says we were given amendments that we could 
offer under an open rule. But in fact that was a closed rule, because 
of the nature of the budget resolution, which was so artificially low 
in order to make room for your ``let's-pretend-tax-cut,'' that the 
rules were then used to preclude us from offering amendments that 
otherwise would have been in order under an open rule, and you know 
that as well as I do.
  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, that is a good 
spin on that subject, but check the record. They were open rules.
  Mr. Speaker, I just ask for a vote on the CR, so we can get about the 
rest of our business tonight.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Thornberry). 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 engrossment and third reading of the resolution.
  The joint resolution was ordered to be engrossed and read a 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 342, 
nays 7, not voting 83, as follows:

                             [Roll No. 575]

                               YEAS--342

     Ackerman
     Aderholt
     Andrews
     Armey
     Baca
     Bachus
     Baker
     Baldacci
     Baldwin
     Ballenger
     Barcia
     Barrett (NE)
     Barrett (WI)
     Bartlett
     Bass
     Bentsen
     Berkley
     Berman
     Berry
     Biggert
     Bilbray
     Bilirakis
     Blagojevich
     Bliley
     Blumenauer
     Blunt
     Boehlert
     Boehner
     Bonilla
     Bonior
     Bono
     Borski
     Boswell
     Boyd
     Brady (PA)
     Brady (TX)
     Brown (OH)
     Bryant
     Burr
     Burton
     Buyer
     Callahan
     Calvert
     Camp
     Canady
     Cannon
     Capps
     Cardin
     Carson
     Castle
     Chabot
     Chambliss
     Chenoweth-Hage
     Clement
     Clyburn
     Coble
     Coburn
     Collins
     Combest
     Condit
     Cook
     Cox
     Coyne
     Cramer
     Cubin
     Cummings
     Cunningham
     Davis (FL)
     Davis (VA)
     Deal
     DeGette
     DeLauro
     DeLay
     DeMint
     Deutsch
     Diaz-Balart
     Dicks
     Dixon
     Doggett
     Doolittle
     Doyle
     Dreier
     Duncan
     Dunn
     Edwards
     Ehlers
     Ehrlich
     Emerson
     Engel
     English
     Eshoo
     Etheridge
     Evans
     Everett
     Ewing
     Farr
     Fattah
     Filner
     Fletcher
     Foley
     Fossella
     Frelinghuysen
     Frost
     Gallegly
     Ganske
     Gejdenson
     Gekas
     Gephardt
     Gibbons
     Gilchrest
     Gilman
     Gonzalez
     Goode
     Goodlatte
     Goodling
     Gordon
     Goss
     Graham
     Granger
     Green (TX)
     Green (WI)
     Gutknecht
     Hall (OH)
     Hall (TX)
     Hansen
     Hastings (WA)
     Hayes
     Hayworth
     Herger
     Hill (IN)
     Hill (MT)
     Hilleary
     Hinojosa
     Hobson
     Hoeffel
     Hoekstra
     Holden
     Holt
     Hooley
     Horn
     Hostettler
     Hoyer
     Hunter
     Hutchinson
     Hyde
     Inslee
     Isakson
     Istook
     Jackson (IL)
     Jackson-Lee (TX)
     Jefferson
     Jenkins
     John
     Johnson, Sam
     Jones (NC)
     Jones (OH)
     Kelly
     Kildee
     Kind (WI)
     King (NY)
     Kingston
     Kleczka
     Knollenberg
     Kucinich
     Kuykendall
     LaHood
     Lampson
     Largent
     Larson
     Latham
     Leach
     Lee
     Levin
     Lewis (CA)
     Lewis (KY)
     Linder
     LoBiondo
     Lofgren
     Lowey
     Lucas (KY)
     Lucas (OK)
     Luther
     Maloney (NY)
     Manzullo
     Markey
     Mascara
     Matsui
     McCarthy (MO)
     McCarthy (NY)
     McCrery
     McDermott
     McGovern
     McHugh
     McKeon
     McKinney
     McNulty
     Meeks (NY)
     Mica
     Millender-McDonald
     Miller (FL)
     Miller, Gary
     Minge
     Mink
     Moakley
     Mollohan
     Moore
     Moran (KS)
     Morella
     Murtha
     Myrick
     Nadler
     Napolitano
     Neal
     Nethercutt
     Ney
     Northup
     Norwood
     Nussle
     Oberstar
     Obey
     Olver
     Ortiz
     Ose
     Packard
     Pallone
     Pascrell
     Pastor
     Paul
     Payne
     Pease
     Pelosi
     Peterson (MN)
     Peterson (PA)
     Petri
     Phelps
     Pickering
     Pitts
     Pombo
     Pomeroy
     Porter
     Portman
     Price (NC)
     Pryce (OH)
     Quinn
     Radanovich
     Rahall
     Ramstad
     Rangel
     Regula
     Reyes
     Reynolds
     Rivers
     Rodriguez
     Roemer
     Rogan
     Rogers
     Rohrabacher
     Ros-Lehtinen
     Rothman
     Roukema
     Roybal-Allard
     Royce
     Rush
     Ryan (WI)
     Ryun (KS)
     Sabo
     Salmon
     Sanders
     Sandlin
     Sanford
     Sawyer
     Saxton
     Scarborough
     Schaffer
     Schakowsky
     Scott
     Sensenbrenner
     Serrano
     Sessions
     Shadegg
     Sherman
     Sherwood
     Shimkus
     Shows
     Simpson
     Sisisky
     Skeen
     Skelton
     Slaughter
     Smith (MI)
     Smith (NJ)
     Smith (TX)
     Smith (WA)
     Souder
     Spence
     Stabenow
     Stearns
     Stenholm
     Strickland
     Stump
     Sununu
     Sweeney
     Tanner
     Tauscher
     Tauzin
     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)
     Waxman
     Weldon (FL)
     Weldon (PA)
     Weller
     Wexler
     Whitfield
     Wicker
     Wilson
     Wolf
     Woolsey
     Wu
     Young (AK)
     Young (FL)

                                NAYS--7

     Baird
     Barton
     Capuano
     Costello
     DeFazio
     Dingell
     Miller, George

                             NOT VOTING--83

     Abercrombie
     Allen
     Archer
     Barr
     Becerra
     Bereuter
     Bishop
     Boucher
     Brown (FL)
     Campbell
     Clay
     Clayton
     Conyers
     Cooksey
     Crane
     Crowley
     Danner
     Davis (IL)
     Delahunt
     Dickey
     Dooley
     Forbes
     Ford
     Fowler
     Frank (MA)
     Franks (NJ)
     Gillmor
     Greenwood
     Gutierrez
     Hastings (FL)
     Hefley
     Hilliard
     Hinchey
     Houghton
     Hulshof
     Johnson (CT)
     Johnson, E. B.
     Kanjorski
     Kaptur

[[Page H11495]]


     Kasich
     Kennedy
     Kilpatrick
     Klink
     Kolbe
     LaFalce
     Lantos
     LaTourette
     Lazio
     Lewis (GA)
     Lipinski
     Maloney (CT)
     Martinez
     McCollum
     McInnis
     McIntosh
     McIntyre
     Meehan
     Meek (FL)
     Menendez
     Metcalf
     Moran (VA)
     Owens
     Oxley
     Pickett
     Riley
     Sanchez
     Shaw
     Shays
     Shuster
     Snyder
     Spratt
     Stark
     Stupak
     Talent
     Tancredo
     Thompson (MS)
     Visclosky
     Watkins
     Watts (OK)
     Weiner
     Weygand
     Wise
     Wynn

                              {time}  1921

  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.

                          ____________________