[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 135 (Friday, December 8, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H9155-H9158]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FURTHER CONTINUING APPROPRIATIONS, FISCAL YEAR 2007
Mr. LEWIS of California. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution
1105, I
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call up the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 102) making further continuing
appropriations for the fiscal year 2007, and for other purposes, and
ask for its immediate consideration.
The Clerk read the title of the joint resolution.
The text of the joint resolution is as follows:
H.J. Res. 102
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled, That the
Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2007 (Public Law 109-
289, div. B) is further amended by striking the date
specified in section 106(3) and inserting ``February 15,
2007''.
Sec. 2. Section 102(c) of the Continuing Appropriations
Resolution, 2007 (Public Law 109-289, div. B) is amended by
adding at the end the following new paragraph:
``(5) Activities under the `Chemical Demilitarization
Construction, Defense-Wide' account.''.
Sec. 3. Section 114(b) of the Continuing Appropriations
Resolution, 2007 (Public Law 109-289, div. B) is amended by
striking ``and December 1, 2006,'' and inserting ``December
1, 2006, January 1, 2007, February 1, 2007, and March 1,
2007,''.
Sec. 4. Section 125 of the Continuing Appropriations
Resolution, 2007 (Public Law 109-289, div. B) is amended by
striking ``Partner Purchases'' and inserting ``Partnership
Purchases and International Space Station/Multi-User System
Support''.
Sec. 5. Section 126 of the Continuing Appropriations
Resolution, 2007 (Public Law 109-289, div. B) is amended by
inserting ``(1)'' after ``except that'', and by inserting
before the period at the end the following: ``, and (2)
amounts made available under section 101 for departments and
agencies that have been apportioned pursuant to this section
prior to November 17, 2006, may be at a rate for operations
not exceeding the current rate''.
Sec. 6. Section 101 of the Continuing Appropriations
Resolution, 2007 (Public Law 109-289, div. B) is amended by
striking ``as of October 1, 2006'' each place it appears in
subsections (b) through (e) and inserting ``as of November
15, 2006''.
Sec. 7. The Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2007
(Public Law 109-289, div. B) is amended by adding after
section 132 the following new sections:
``Sec. 133. (a) Section 44302(f)(1) of title 49, United
States Code, shall be applied by substituting the date
specified in section 106(3) of this division for `August 31,
2006, and may extend through December 31, 2006'.
``(b) Section 44303(b) of title 49, United States Code,
shall be applied by substituting the date specified in
section 106(3) of this division for `December 31, 2006'.
``Sec. 134. The authority provided by H. Res. 135 (109th
Congress), as adopted on March 14, 2005, shall continue in
effect through the date specified in section 106(3) of this
division.
``Sec. 135. The rule referenced in section 126 of Public
Law 109-54 shall continue in effect for the 2006-2007 winter
use season through the date specified in section 106(3) of
this division.
``Sec. 136. In addition to any other transfer authority of
the Department of Veterans Affairs, up to $683,970,000 of the
funds made available to the Department by this division may
be transferred to `Veterans Health Administration--Medical
Services' during the period covered by this division.''.
``Sec. 137. Notwithstanding any other provision of this
division and notwithstanding section 601(a)(2) of the
Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 (2 U.S.C. 31), the
percentage adjustment scheduled to take effect under such
section for 2007 shall not take effect until February 16,
2007.''.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hayes). Pursuant to House Resolution
1105, the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis) and the gentleman from
Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) each will control 30 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from California.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I
may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I bring before the House a continuing resolution for
fiscal year 2007. This CR, which is clean, runs through February 15,
2007. Only necessary technical anomalies are included.
This CR will fund the agencies in the nine remaining bills awaiting
conference at the lower rate the House passed, Senate passed, or
current fiscal year 2006 level.
We have been working closely with both leadership and Chairman
Cochran on this CR to ensure that all essential functions of the
government continue without interruption.
With regard to veterans medical care funding, the VA presently has
approximately $600 million left over from fiscal year 2006. However,
should the VA need additional resources between now and February 15, we
are providing the VA and the Secretary with the authority to transfer
funds from within other Veterans Affairs accounts.
When we passed this CR the last time, my hope was it would provide a
strong motivation for Congress to complete its work in regular order. I
was hopeful that our colleagues in the Senate would complete their work
on the floor so we could move the remaining individual conference
reports before the end of this legislative session.
I want the body to know that the Appropriations Committee has been
strongly committed to bringing to this floor individual conference
reports. That has not occurred. Each and every individual bill should
have come to the floor and gone to conference with the Senate and been
sent to the President. From the beginning of our process, Chairman
Cochran and I pledged to pass funding bills in regular order. We also
stated publicly we would not, I repeat, not, support an omnibus bill in
any form.
The House Appropriations Committee passed each of the 11 subcommittee
bills out of the full committee by June 30, and with the exception of
the Labor-HHS bill, all of the bills off the House floor by the July 4
break.
Similarly, the Senate passed each of its bill out of the full
committee to ensure timely consideration on the Senate floor.
The Appropriations Committee has remained committed to moving these
bills individually and within the framework of the budget resolution.
My colleagues, the Appropriations Committee has kept its word. The
breakdown of regular order this cycle, indeed the failure to get our
bills done, should be fairly placed at the feet of the departing Senate
majority leader who failed to schedule floor time for the consideration
of appropriations bills.
Senator Cochran and I were convinced that moving bills individually
was the only way for us to get back to regular order. Lacking regular
order, there is a tendency for the remaining bills to become Christmas
trees and for spending to grow out of control, having individual
Members do with a Christmas tree what they might. In our view, that is
simply not acceptable.
Let me make one personal comment aside: my appropriations colleague,
Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi, could not have been a better
partner as we attempted to bringing regular order to the appropriations
process. The Senator of Mississippi was poorly served by his own
leadership.
I would prefer to return to Congress in January as chairman of the
Appropriations Committee but look forward to working with the new
chairman of the committee, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey).
Until then, I urge my colleagues to support this CR and I would like
to close my remarks by wishing all of my friends a Merry Christmas and
a happy new year.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 10 minutes.
Mr. Speaker, this resolution tonight is a blatant admission of abject
failure by the most useless Congress in modern times. That we do not
have a budget before us is certainly not the fault of the gentleman
from California, the distinguished chairman of the committee.
This House passed every single appropriation bill except the Labor-
Health appropriation bill, before the July 4 recess.
The problem is that the budget resolution which defined what would be
contained in those appropriation bills was so wildly unrealistic that
moderate Republicans in this House rebelled and would not, for
instance, agree to support the budget resolution until a promise was
made that $3 billion in additional funding would be found in order to
correct some of the shortfalls in education and health and worker
protection programs.
In addition, as the gentleman from California has said, when these
bills went over to the other end of the Capitol, the United States
Senate, they ran into the decision of the Republican majority leader to
avoid having the Senate take votes on any controversial issues in the
domestic portion of the budget.
As a result, we are here tonight with not a single dollar having been
appropriated to any government program that has anything whatsoever to
do with the domestic operations of this government. That is a
disgraceful performance. And so we are left with the
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choice of passing this continuing resolution or having the government
shut down.
I want to contrast that with the condition that we left the
government in when the Democrats lost the majority in 1994. In 1994 I
was chairman of the Appropriations Committee and when we lost the
election, we had still managed to complete every single appropriation
before the end of the fiscal year. We did that because we had reached a
bipartisan agreement between the then-majority Democrats and the then-
minority Republicans on the allocation of appropriated dollars to each
of the subcommittees. And it was that bipartisan cooperation which
allowed us to pass every single bill in the allotted time.
Now we are here with Governors unable to plan, State legislatures
unable to plan, mayors being unable to plan, families being unable to
plan, because they do not know what the final disposition of the entire
domestic budget is going to be.
And so now the Congress is going to leave town and when the Democrats
assume control next January, we are going to have to pass 2 years of
appropriation bills in 1 year. We will do our best to do that; but I
must say to my majority party friends that I think that by this act of
abdication, they have given up any right to criticize in any way
whatever devices we have to use in order to dispose of the unfinished
business of this Congress come next January.
{time} 2115
We will do our best, but we have very few decent options. And I find
it ironic, as the gentleman from California at least obliquely
referenced, I find it ironic that the Senate majority leader found time
to publicly diagnose Terri Schiavo's case from the Senate floor. I find
it ironic that the majority leader in the Senate found the time to
insert 40 pages of language into the defense bill last year
indemnifying the entire pharmaceutical industry. He insisted on having
that language inserted, although it had never been cleared by anyone in
the conference and the conference had already finished its work before
that was inserted. So he had plenty of time to do that, but he didn't
manage to find the time to schedule the appropriation bills on the
Senate floor, and as a result, we are here with this mess tonight.
The most fundamental obligation of the Congress under the
Constitution of the United States is to decide what activities the
government needs to engage in and to provide the financing for those
activities. That is the purpose of appropriation bills. And when the
Congress fails to pass that legislation, it fails in its principal
obligation to the taxpayers.
So I simply want to say that Senator Byrd and I expect to have an
announcement next week on how we will attempt to deal with the
leftovers from this congressional session.
But I would simply ask one thing of my friends on the majority side
of the aisle: Please spare me. Don't have the gall to go to the
American public 2 years from now and ask once again to be put in charge
of handling the Nation's budget when the decision has been made at the
highest levels of the Republican Party tonight to walk away from our
collective responsibility to pass this legislation before we adjourn.
The President is entitled to have his new budget considered anew. He
is entitled to have the decks wiped clean so that he can start fresh;
and with all due respect, I think we are also entitled to be able to
start fresh so that come January, we can consider the President's new
budget and not have to turn to last year's problems. We are not going
to be given that opportunity, and the President isn't going to be given
that opportunity. That is a shame. But at this point we have no choice
but to support this resolution.
I do want to say one thing. Speaking of unfinished business, I am
pleased to see that this resolution at this point does contain the
suspension of the congressional COLA until such time as the minimum
wage is increased. I know the distinguished minority leader, Ms.
Pelosi, had asked that that be done. This resolution does not complete
the linkage, but it does suspend that COLA until February 17, I believe
the date is, which gives us an opportunity to pass the minimum wage
bill in January before it goes into effect. I hope we meet that
obligation so that we can see to it that as Congress receives its COLA,
the lowest-paid workers in this country also get a benefit.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my
time.
Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank).
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from
Wisconsin, who has done such an extraordinary job in trying to bring
fairness and coherence in this process. Unfortunately, he will soon be
in the business to do so, although carrying the burden that he has to
get out from under.
I first want to join him in saying that I am glad to see we finally
recognize the incongruity of pay raises for ourselves and no minimum
wage increase. Many of us tried to argue that on logical grounds and on
moral grounds. It is interesting to see that the loss of 30 seats
apparently succeeded, where morality and logic was less persuasive. But
I will take it any way I can get it.
Then I also want to congratulate my colleagues on the other side for
their consistency because they end this Congress governing in the same
way in which they carried on for 2 years: frankly, incompetently,
without respect for democratic procedures, and with a willingness to
inflict harm on the most vulnerable members of our society.
Earlier today we voted on packages of things that in a Democratic
legislature, for example, Iraq, we would not have had all lumped
together. Members who opposed some and supported others would have had
a chance to say so. Today we got have one continuing resolution, as the
gentleman from Wisconsin said, we have no choice but to vote ``yes'' so
that the government does not stop acting.
But let us take a look at what they have done. I have a particular
responsibility in my committee for housing. The one housing program
that the Republican Party has not undone is the section 8 program. But
we have today a resolution that substantially and deliberately provides
fewer dollars for the section 8 program than the housing authorities of
this country need to meet their existing commitments. This is a budget
that goes into, what, January of this current fiscal year. Months will
have gone by in this current fiscal year, and you are funding section 8
at significantly less than your president asked for for this fiscal
year, significantly less than is needed to meet commitments. And in
January housing authorities will be faced with dilemmas. They may be
told by HUD that they cannot continue to service what they are now
doing.
There is section 8 project-based assistance you put forward in a bill
here which is $636 million below what your President asked for just to
meet existing commitments. And housing authorities that have
jurisdiction over projects which house elderly people and disabled
people may be in turmoil and there will be uncertainty. We will
probably be able come to their rescue; but why should we have to? Why
should we create, Mr. Speaker, you and your colleagues, a situation in
which this difficulty exists and we have to come to the rescue? Why
such little regard for the poorest people in this country, the most
vulnerable? Why are they going to be treated this way, as pawns, so you
can avoid having to make difficult decisions, Mr. Speaker?
So I just want to echo what the gentleman from Wisconsin said about
the inappropriateness of this. I do want to point out in particular
what happens here. And let me say to those Members on the other side
who supported this rule and supported this approach, I will predict
now, Mr. Speaker, that many of them will be hearing from the housing
authorities and from section 8 residents in January complaining of the
uncertainty, complaining of the difficulty. You will have no
justification in claiming that it wasn't your fault, those of you who
voted to send this procedure. So please be ready to explain to people
in January why you so callously, Mr. Speaker, disregarded once again
the interests of the poorest people in the country.
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Mr. LEWIS of California. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my
time.
Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes.
Mr. Speaker, in closing, I just want to congratulate the gentleman
from California for doing his dead-level best to fulfill his duties in
getting all of these bills through, even though he received precious
little cooperation from many other key players on Capitol Hill. I would
simply point out that it is not his fault that the budget resolution
which was adopted by the majority party was so highly unrealistic that,
in the end, the majority party in this House could not convince their
Senate brethren to vote for the same legislation that was required by
that budget resolution. And I want to simply say that I think the
Record demonstrates that both of us on both sides of the aisle did
everything that we could procedurally to get these bills through the
House. We reached time agreements on amendment after amendment, on bill
after bill. Sometimes time agreements were so tight that Members were
significantly angered by how little time they had to debate these
bills. But even though we often opposed the content of the bills, we
worked together to move them because we recognized that we had a
responsibility to make decisions and to finish the job, whether we won
or lost. Unfortunately, the gentleman did not have enough allies on his
side of the aisle, and so we are stuck with this leftover mess. We will
do our best in January and February to clean it up, but it is not going
to be a very pleasant couple of months.
Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Speaker, when Congress passed SAFETEA-LU--the
legislation that reauthorizes the Federal surface transportation
programs--in 2005, it recognized the need to significantly increase
Federal investment for highway, highway safety, and transit programs.
In fact, the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation
Equity Act: A Legacy for Users, SAFETEA-LU, increased the overall
investment in surface transportation programs by more than 40 percent,
with a significant part of that increase guaranteed to take effect in
fiscal year 2007.
Earlier this year, the House passed H.R. 5576, the Transportation,
Treasury, and Housing and Urban Development, TTHUD, appropriations
bill, which meets SAFETEA-LU's funding guarantees. It provides an
increase of $3.4 billion for the Federal-aid highway programs and an
additional $474 million for the transit programs over the fiscal year
2006 SAFETEA-LU funding levels.
It is now more than 2 months since the start of fiscal year 2007, and
the Republican-led Congress has not enacted the TTHUD appropriations
bill. Instead, H.J. Res. 102 provides funding for the highway, highway
safety, and transit programs through February 15, 2007. The resolution
funds these programs at the fiscal year 2006 level. Thus, all of the
highway and transit investment increases guaranteed by SAFETEA-LU are
put on hold. If this approach is continued and the continuing
resolution is extended through fiscal year 2007, SAFETEA-LU's
guaranteed highway funding will be cut by $3.4 billion and its transit
investment slashed by $474 million.
Under a long-term continuing resolution, the National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration, NHTSA, and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety
Administration, FMCSA, safety programs will be funded at substantially
lower levels than guaranteed in SAFETEA-LU. NHTSA stands to lose up to
$21.7 million. At a time when more than 43,000 people are dying in
roadway crashes each year, we simply cannot afford to shortchange an
agency tasked with making our roadways safer. Likewise, FMCSA could
lose almost $27 million that would be spent on motor carrier safety
programs and grants. It is essential that we properly fund these
critical programs.
The highway, highway safety, and transit programs differ from most
other Federal programs in that they are supported by user fees.
Motorists who drive on our highways pay the fees when they pump gas.
They willingly pay the fees because they rely on a commitment by the
Federal Government to use the money so collected to finance our highway
and transit programs. In other words, users have already paid for the
investments authorized in SAFETEA-LU and funded in the House-passed
TTHUD appropriations bill. However, the Republican-led Congress's
failure to enact this legislation in a timely manner will shortchange
funding for critical transportation projects.
Transportation projects are usually high-cost undertakings that take
several years to complete. Certainty in funding--especially Federal
funding--is critical to their success. Relying on short-term, stopgap
measures, such as continuing resolutions, does not provide the
certainty that State departments of transportation need to plan for
their construction projects in the upcoming season. And for northern-
tier States, where construction seasons are short, delays in providing
adequate Federal funding can severely disrupt their process for
contract bidding, directly affecting next year's construction season.
Continuing resolutions also provide great uncertainty for transit
programs. The Federal Transit Administration, FTA, has delayed the
release of transit formula apportionments and other new grants until a
final TTHUD appropriations act is enacted. The continuing resolution,
coupled with FTA's policy, is resulting in many transit agencies being
unable to advance badly needed transit projects.
According to the Federal Reserve, housing construction is currently
very weak throughout the country. Congress should do everything within
its power to ensure that transportation infrastructure investment is
not disrupted through congressional inaction, placing an additional
burden on this sector of the economy. Hundreds of our small businesses
and thousands of our workers could be put at risk as a result. I urge
Congress to fulfill its responsibilities in passing appropriations acts
and to honor the funding guarantees established in SAFETEA-LU.
Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my
time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hayes). All time for debate has expired.
The joint resolution is considered read for amendment, and pursuant
to House Resolution 1105, 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 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. LaHOOD. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, further
proceedings on this question will be postponed.
____________________