[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 96 (Thursday, June 14, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H6411-H6419]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




PERMISSION TO FILE SUPPLEMENTAL REPORTS ON H.R. 2641, ENERGY AND WATER 
 DEVELOPMENT AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008; H.R. 2643, 
     DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES 
 APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008; AND PROVIDING FOR FURTHER CONSIDERATION OF 
  H.R. 2638, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008

  Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that:
  (1) the Committee on Appropriations be permitted to file supplemental 
reports to accompany H.R. 2641 and H.R. 2643, respectively; and
  (2) during further consideration of H.R. 2638 in the Committee of the 
Whole pursuant to House Resolution 473, the pending amendment offered 
by Mrs. Drake shall be debatable for 10 further minutes, equally 
divided and controlled by the proponent and an opponent, and 
notwithstanding clause 11 of rule XVIII, no further amendment to the 
bill may be offered except:
  pro forma amendments offered at any point in the reading by the 
chairman and ranking member of the Committee on Appropriations or their 
designees for the purpose of debate;
  An amendment by Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite of Florida regarding funding 
for border fencing and technology;
  An amendment by Mr. McHenry regarding funding for Citizenship and 
Immigration Services;
  An amendment by Mr. Ferguson regarding funding for Buffer Zone 
Protection, which shall be debatable for 5 minutes;
  An amendment by Mr. Burgess regarding funding for Secure Flight, 
which shall be debatable for 5 minutes;
  An amendment by Ms. Corrine Brown of Florida regarding funding for 
the Office of Inspector General;
  An amendment by Ms. Corrine Brown of Florida regarding funding for 
FEMA management and administration;
  An amendment by Mr. King of Iowa regarding funding for Drug Smuggler 
Lookout Posts;
  An amendment by Mr. Pearce regarding funding for Customs and Border 
Protection;
  An amendment by Mr. Shays regarding funding for sharing information 
with Interpol;
  An amendment by Mr. Kuhl of New York regarding a Western Hemisphere 
Travel Initiative study;
  An amendment by Mr. Kuhl of New York regarding a northern border 
study;
  An amendment by Mr. Conaway regarding funding for invasive species 
removal;
  An amendment by Mr. Hunter or Mr. Royce, Mr. King of Iowa or Mr. 
Franks of Arizona regarding the Secure Fence Act;
  An amendment by Mr. Carter regarding border fencing requirements;
  An amendment by Mr. Souder regarding a report on use of air and 
marine interdiction assets;
  An amendment by Mr. McCaul of Texas regarding unmanned aerial 
systems;
  An amendment by Mr. King of Iowa regarding funding for worksite 
enforcement;
  An amendment by Mr. Souder regarding funding for Deepwater;
  An amendment for Mr. Bilbray regarding funding for REAL ID;
  An amendment by Mr. Dent regarding funding for Secret Service 
protective missions;
  An amendment by Mr. Jindal regarding funding for FEMA disaster relief 
for hurricane preparedness;
  An amendment by Mr. Davis of Kentucky regarding funding for 
Commercial Equipment Direct Assistance grants;
  An amendment by Mr. Langevin regarding funding for cybersecurity 
research and development;
  An amendment by Mr. King of New York regarding funding for domestic 
nuclear detection;
  An amendment by Ms. Corrine Brown of Florida regarding airport 
employee screening pilot program;
  An amendment by Mr. McCaul of Texas regarding the MAX-HR project;
  An amendment by Mr. Thompson of Mississippi to strike section 537(b) 
relating to small business;
  An amendment by Mr. Deal of Georgia regarding limitation on use of 
funds to put out to pasture horses and mules;
  An amendment by Mr. Ellsworth regarding limitation on use of funds 
for contractors delinquent on Federal debt;
  An amendment by Mr. Hensarling regarding limitation on use of certain 
FEMA grant funds;
  An amendment by Ms. Jackson-Lee of Texas regarding a report on 
pipeline and refinery vulnerability;
  An amendment by Mr. LaTourette regarding the Western Hemisphere 
Travel Initiative;
  An amendment by Mr. Ortiz regarding limitation on funding for border 
fencing;
  An amendment by Mr. Poe regarding limitation on use of funds to 
implement plans under section 7209 of the Intelligence Reform and 
Terrorism Prevention Act;
  An amendment by Mr. Rogers of Kentucky regarding a reduction in 
funding;
  An amendment by Mr. Rogers of Kentucky regarding limitation of total 
number of airport screeners;
  An amendment by Mr. Rogers of Kentucky regarding the Davis-Bacon Act;
  An amendment by Mr. Tancredo regarding limitation on use of funds to 
carry out visa waiver program;
  An amendment by Mr. Tancredo regarding limitation on use of funds in 
contravention of section 642(a) of the Illegal Reform and 
Responsibility Act;
  An amendment by Mr. Price of Georgia regarding limitation on use of 
funds for research on global warming;
  An amendment or amendments by Mr. Price of North Carolina regarding 
funding levels;
  An amendment by Mr. Obey prohibiting funding for earmarks; and
  An amendment by Mr. Forbes prohibiting use of funds for temporary 
protective status.

                              {time}  1930

  Each such amendment may be offered only by the Member named in this 
request or a designee, or by the Member who caused it to be printed in 
the Record or a designee, shall be considered as read, shall not be 
subject to amendment except that the chairman and ranking minority 
member of the Committee on Appropriations and the Subcommittee on 
Homeland Security each may offer one pro forma amendment for the 
purpose of debate; and shall not be subject to a demand for division of 
the question in the House or in the Committee of the Whole.
  Except as otherwise specified, each amendment shall be debatable for 
10 minutes, equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an 
opponent. An amendment shall be considered to fit the description 
stated in this request if it addresses in whole or in part the object 
described.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Wisconsin?
  Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Madam Speaker, reserving the right to object, 
if the gentleman would join in a colloquy, a question has arisen as to 
whether or not when this bill goes to conference with the other body 
and there should be items that are included in the conference report 
that comes back to the House, items that were not included in either 
the Senate-passed version or the House-passed version, would those 
items be subject to a point of order when the conference report hits 
the House floor?
  Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.
  Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, my understanding, and if the gentleman will 
shortly yield to the distinguished minority leader and the 
distinguished majority leader, but my understanding of this provision 
is that it seeks to assure that there are two kinds of remedies 
available to items that are in conference. My understanding is that if

[[Page H6412]]

the Senate adopts an amendment and the conferees do not like that 
amendment, then their remedy is to oppose the Senate amendment in 
conference and refuse to accept it. The question then becomes, well, 
what is the remedy of each individual Member if something is airdropped 
that was not in either the House or the Senate bill?
  My understanding of the provision is that at that point, any Member 
has the right to raise a point of order against consideration of the 
conference report, and if that point of order is upheld by the House, 
then the conference report is sent back to the conferees for correction 
or adjustment.
  Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, I 
appreciate the gentleman's explanation, and I would be happy to yield 
to the minority leader.
  Mr. BOEHNER. Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding.
  The purpose of this remedy, a point of order on consideration of the 
conference report, is to deal with earmarks that may have not been 
considered by the House or the Senate, what we have come to term 
airdropped earmarks. There are cases where over the length of the 
consideration of an appropriation bill in the House and the Senate, 
circumstances may change and there may be a reason to put an earmark, 
if you will, in an appropriation. And to preserve the right for all 
Members to consider these earmarks, having the point of order on the 
consideration of the appropriation bill, we believed, was an 
appropriate way for any Member to bring to light one of these earmarks. 
There is 10 minutes of debate on each side, and then the House can 
decide whether to proceed with the consideration of the conference 
report or not.
  Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from 
Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the distinguished majority leader.
  Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  I would echo the comments of both Mr. Boehner and Mr. Obey. We were 
pleased to support and will be offering very shortly that protection. 
So I say to the gentleman from Kentucky, we expect to do that in the 
next few days, and his conference report, when it comes back, will be 
subject to this point of order.
  Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Let me clarify that point briefly. The 
proposed rule change will not take place until some time later.
  Mr. HOYER. It will be done very soon.
  Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. In the meantime, we are taking up this bill.
  Mr. HOYER. Yes. If the gentleman will yield further, I have indicated 
to the minority leader that no conference report will be considered on 
the floor until we adopt that amendment, but I expect to adopt that 
amendment, frankly, before your bill gets to the Senate.
  Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. So that the point of order would lie, as the 
minority leader has said, to this bill.
  Mr. HOYER. Yes, it will.
  Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. I thank the gentleman.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. I yield to the gentleman from Indiana.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Madam Speaker, I think for the edification of 
my colleagues who may not be on the floor right now, they would like to 
make absolutely sure how this procedure is going to work.
  As I understand it, when the conference report comes back, we have 
the right to raise an objection or point of order against the whole 
bill. But what about individual projects that are put in the bill? Will 
we be able to raise a point of order against each one of those projects 
that are put in the bill, that are airdropped into it in the conference 
committee?
  One of the reasons we have been debating this so strongly over the 
last couple of days is because we want to make sure that the Members 
have a right to vote on these projects. There is a considerable amount 
of money in the bill which is not designated for any individual project 
right now. So if it is the whole conference report that we have to 
raise a point of order against, that is not getting to each individual 
airdropped earmark that is put in the bill.
  Mr. BOEHNER. Madam Speaker, if the gentleman would yield further, we 
went through a great debate last year over this issue. As we all know, 
we have work to do, and to allow debate on a conference report on every 
individual issue, you get into a ping-pong effect of the House 
objecting to one issue, a Senate issue, we could send it over there, 
they would send it back, we would never get the bill finished.
  The idea behind the point of order on the conference report is to 
bring this issue to light, and if you bring an issue to light that is 
of such substance, the House may in fact vote to sustain the 
gentleman's point of order and there is no consideration of the 
conference report.
  But we have never been able to find a way to get to each particular 
item in a conference report, as the gentleman has suggested.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Madam Speaker, if the gentleman would yield 
further, I think this is very, very important. There are many of us, 
for years, that have come down and fought against individual pork-
barrel projects, and it was my understanding over the last few days 
that we were going to try to make sure we knew what was in this bill, 
and if there were earmarks in there we didn't want, we would have an 
opportunity to vote on each individual earmark.
  Now you are going to have a bill that is going to go over to the 
Senate without any earmarks in it, I would like to know also how much 
money is in here for earmarks, but it is going to go to the Senate and 
it is going to come back with airdropped earmarks in it, and we will 
not be able to vote on each one of those, as we would right now if we 
were going to debate each individual earmark that is put in the bill.
  I understand what the minority leader is saying, but this is of 
concern I think to a lot of us, because if we get the whole enchilada 
and we can't go to the individual earmarks that are put in the bill 
because they are airdropped in, we don't really have a chance to cut 
out any of the pork.
  Mr. BOEHNER. If the gentleman from Kentucky will yield further, the 
agreement that we have come to with our colleagues on the other side of 
the aisle is that for 10 of the 12 appropriations bills, the earmarks 
will in fact be listed.
  Traditionally, the Homeland Security appropriation bill has had very, 
very few earmarks in it. It won't be like you have to go through a 
whole laundry list to determine what is in it. Secondly, the bill that 
we expect to be before us tomorrow, the Military Quality-of-Life 
Veterans bill, it also has earmarks, but almost all of them have been 
scrubbed by the Department of Defense, and I think there has been an 
understanding that, given the time constraints, that these two bills 
would in fact move without earmarks but that the next 10 bills would 
have earmarks included in them.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. If the gentleman would yield further, let me 
just say that I don't know how much money is in here, is in this bill 
for earmarks that may be airdropped in. Nobody has told me how much 
money is in here.
  Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, I can tell 
you there is zero in this bill.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. If the gentleman will continue to yield, in 
the conference committee they will airdrop earmarks in and we will not 
be able to vote for those individual earmarks; is that correct? We are 
going to have to vote on the whole conference report, up or down, or 
raise a point of order against it, which is the same thing.
  Mr. BOEHNER. If the gentleman would yield, if you raise a point of 
order on the consideration of the conference report and the House 
agrees with your point of order, the consideration of the conference 
report is stopped and what in real terms happens is the conference 
report goes back to conference where the issue that was brought to 
light is dealt with.
  There are a lot of ways to deal with, let's say in your case, what 
you would call an objectionable earmark by bringing that point of order 
and having the House's support. Basically it goes back and you begin to 
deal with it.
  Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. To also clarify that, that is precisely and 
exactly what we voted on last year; is that correct?

[[Page H6413]]

  Mr. BOEHNER. This is precisely the rule that was adopted by the House 
last September.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Well, if the gentleman would yield further, 
you are our leader and I certainly won't try to object, because you 
think this is the right thing to do. But it does bother me, I have to 
tell everybody and I hope the people watching in their offices, it 
bothers me that we are not going to have a chance to vote on any 
airdropped earmarks that will be put in this bill in conference.
  I know what you are saying. I understand. But I think it is a tough 
issue for you right now. But I don't like it.
  Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Madam Speaker, I thank the minority leader 
and majority leader and the chairman for their clarification.
  Madam Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Wisconsin?
  Mr. SHADEGG. Madam Speaker, reserving the right to object, I would 
like to clarify the unanimous consent request that is before us and get 
a further understanding of any other agreements that may have been 
reached. And I would appreciate if I could clarify these points with 
the distinguished majority leader and the chairman of the 
Appropriations Committee.
  First, as I understand it, the agreement is that with respect to the 
10 bills that will come up following this bill and Military 
Construction, that is the bills that we would begin on, I presume, 
Monday, there is an agreement that all of those bills will come to the 
floor with all of the earmarks which are proposed to be placed into 
those bills added to those bills before they come to the floor.
  That is an extremely important point. That was the issue we have 
debated for the last few days. We believe that sunshine is the best way 
for us to ascertain what is in those earmarks. Admittedly, we may have 
no objection to any of those earmarks, but that is only possible if we 
know that the earmarks which are to be added to those bills are added 
to the bills before they come to the floor.
  So, I would like to know if in fact that is the agreement that has 
been reached.
  I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.
  Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, it had been the 
intention of the minority leader, the majority leader, and myself to 
try to get the House moving on this bill tonight so that we aren't here 
until 4 in the morning. Then, while this bill is proceeding, we intend 
to sit down and to lay out an additional colloquy which will walk 
Members through all of the other items that reflect any additional 
understandings that will be attendant to the appropriations process.

                              {time}  1945

  Let me simply say to the gentleman, for the convenience of the House 
so we don't keep them here until 4 in the morning, we would like a 
little time so that we work out a clear understanding that we are all 
saying the same thing, that we will shortly be back to the House for an 
additional briefing on those matters, if that still meets with the 
approval of the two leaders.
  Mr. SHADEGG. Reclaiming my time, then I guess it is my understanding, 
at least so far as the chairman of the Appropriations Committee is 
concerned, there is no agreement that all future earmarks will be added 
to the bills at this point in time?
  Mr. OBEY. That's not correct. There is an understanding that has been 
reached. It is a little more complicated than the gentleman has 
expressed. But the intent is that all of the bills will, by the time 
the bills move to the Senate, have an opportunity for earmarks to be 
attached to the bills.
  Let me just walk you through what my understanding is with respect to 
all of the subcommittees.
  Mr. HOYER. Before you do that, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. SHADEGG. I would be happy to yield to the majority leader.
  Mr. HOYER. The gentleman is going to, I think, outline our 
understanding of the agreement. But the answer to your question is yes. 
Every earmark starting with Monday forward, obviously we know that 
these two bills are moving tonight, our agreement is that every earmark 
going forward will be included in the bills.
  The only complication is both sides have recognized that on the 
Energy and Water bill, it is going to take a very substantial time, so 
that the earmarks that would otherwise be included in the Energy and 
Water bill will be included in a subsequent bill, to then be attached 
prior to the Energy and Water bill going to the Senate. But that will 
be open for full debate and amendment to remove those earmarks.
  So the answer to your question is yes.
  Mr. SHADEGG. Reclaiming my time, as I understand it, then, with 
regard to nine of the 10 remaining bills which have been mentioned by 
the minority leader, all of those bills would, in fact, have all 
earmarks listed in them before they come to the floor. Is that correct?
  Mr. OBEY. That is correct, as I understand the agreement.
  As the majority leader has pointed out, the only exception to that is 
that the Energy and Water bill needs to proceed, but it takes a longer 
period of time to prepare the earmarks. So we will complete action on 
the Energy and Water bill except for the question of which earmarks 
would be attached to that. We will then have a separate report which is 
reported to the House, and the House will then have the opportunity to 
consider those earmarks. And after that consideration is completed, 
then, only then, will that bill be sent to the Senate. So when it goes 
to the Senate, it will be one document.
  Mr. HOYER. If the gentleman will yield again to me, it is my 
understanding, as I said earlier, and Mr. Obey, I believe, the Energy 
and Water earmarks will be attached to a subsequent appropriations bill 
so that, in fact, it will have its own earmarks and the Energy and 
Water earmarks, all of which will be subject to review, notice, 
transparency and action on the floor.
  Mr. SHADEGG. Reclaiming my time, then, as I understand it, for the 
nine bills other than Energy and Water, the earmarks will be included 
on those bills before they come to the floor for debate. For the Energy 
and Water bill, because of the additional time that is required, the 
earmarks would be listed, then subsequently attached to a bill that 
comes to the floor and could be debated and challenged on the floor 
before that bill is presented to the Senate; is that correct?
  Mr. HOYER. If the gentleman will yield, and I want the gentleman from 
Wisconsin to correct me, but my understanding is they may not be listed 
because the problem is that the time to vet those, and both sides 
agree, is a longer time. But we want to move the Energy and Water bill. 
It will not move out of this House. All of the earmarks that would be 
attached to that bill will be attached to another bill, will be listed, 
will have the author and the assertations and they will be subject to a 
vote on the House floor as any other.
  So prospectively all 10 bills moving forward will have it. It is just 
that the Energy and Water will be not done together; they will be done 
separately.
  Mr. SHADEGG. Reclaiming my time, but those earmarks would be subject 
to challenge and debate here on the floor.
  Mr. HOYER. Yes.
  Mr. SHADEGG. At least a point in time before the bill is transmitted 
to the Senate; is that correct?
  Mr. HOYER. That's correct.
  Mr. OBEY. Yes.
  Mr. SHADEGG. Let me ask a second question.
  As I understand it, there is some discussion, and perhaps I should 
yield to the minority leader on this point, with regard to an attempt 
to reach a unanimous-consent agreement on each bill as that proceeds 
forward. Is that correct?
  Mr. HOYER. Yes.
  The minority leader might want to answer that as well.
  Mr. SHADEGG. I would be happy to yield to the minority leader.
  Mr. BOEHNER. I appreciate the gentleman yielding. And, yes, we on 
both sides of the aisle over the last number of years, the 
appropriators have worked through a unanimous-consent request to 
provide for the consideration of a lot of these bills, under an open 
rule. We still have an open rule. But the agreement has been, over the 
past several years, that we work through that process with the Members 
to make sure that Members have all the time they need to debate their 
amendment. But, again, it's a unanimous-consent agreement, which means 
unanimous.

[[Page H6414]]

  Mr. HOYER. If the gentleman will yield, I don't want to undermine our 
full explanation of this event, but when the minority leader says, 
``all the time they need,'' neither the minority or the majority have 
ever thought that other Members needed as much time as the Members 
think they need. So with that caveat, you can consider it in that 
context.
  Mr. SHADEGG. Reclaiming my time, with the exception of that remark, 
is the understanding as explained by the minority leader the 
understanding of the majority leader?
  Mr. HOYER. It is.
  Mr. SHADEGG. I would be happy to yield to the chairman of the 
Appropriations Committee.
  Is that also your understanding?
  Mr. OBEY. Yes. The understanding is that, as we have in the past, the 
intention is to reach unanimous-consent agreements under which each of 
the bills will be considered. And it is our hope that that time will be 
reasonably reflective of what it has been in the past.
  It is also the intention that the bill managers will be expected to 
be reasonably flexible in establishing those time limits as some modest 
additional flexibility is required.
  Mr. SHADEGG. Reclaiming my time, as I understand it, this is an 
attempt to make sure that we don't waste time on dilatory tactics; 
that, rather, we proceed through these in an orderly fashion, but if 
someone has a substantive objection, that should be accommodated; is 
that correct?

  Mr. OBEY. That's our understanding. As a practical matter, last year, 
if you take all of the appropriation bills, the House expended 
approximately 108 hours of debate. We think that somehow within time 
reasonably close to that and with reasonable flexibility between bills, 
we ought to have sufficient expression of views by the Members to make 
intelligent choices and move the people's business forward.
  Mr. SHADEGG. Reclaiming my time, I appreciate the patience of all the 
gentlemen in this conversation. I would like to just confirm two more 
facts and then be happy to the yield to the ranking member on this 
particular bill who would like to ask a question.
  The minority leader just indicated that all of these bills under the 
contemplated agreement would come to the floor under an open rule. Is 
that the understanding of the majority leader and of the chairman of 
the Appropriations Committee?
  Mr. OBEY. That's above my pay grade. That's up to the Rules Committee 
and the leadership. Let the leadership respond.
  Mr. SHADEGG. Reclaiming my time, that is not a part of the agreement? 
I thought I just understood the minority leader to state that that was 
a part of the agreement.
  Mr. HOYER. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. SHADEGG. Certainly.
  Mr. HOYER. No, it was part of the agreement. And we expect to move 
forward on open rules. But I want to make it clear and don't want to 
undermine the agreement but I want to make it clear, if we are 
subjected to what we believe were dilatory tactics, then that would not 
be consistent with the agreement and, therefore, our provision would be 
that, in lawyer's terms, the agreement had been breached. But it is 
part of the agreement.
  Mr. SHADEGG. Certainly.
  Mr. OBEY. If the gentleman would yield, let me make clear, I 
requested an open rule for the bills that have been approved by the 
Rules Committee so far, and I intend to keep doing so unless we think 
that those open rules are so abused and so far a departure from what we 
have expressed as our general intentions that some other course is 
required.
  Mr. SHADEGG. Reclaiming my time, I have just one further fact I would 
like confirmed, actually from both the majority and minority side, and, 
that is, nothing in this agreement precludes the right of any Member to 
object to a unanimous-consent agreement on each bill as they proceed.
  Is that the understanding of the minority leader?
  Mr. BOEHNER. Unanimous means unanimous.
  But I think both sides have agreed that we will work with our Members 
to ensure that they have the right to offer their amendments, that we 
try to come to some agreements on time so that the process can move 
along. But that does not mean that we are interested at all in 
infringing on any Member's right to offer their amendment.
  But I do believe that Members on both sides of the aisle want to see 
this process move along, and that's why it is under consideration for 
each of these bills that there would be some unanimous-consent 
agreement that we would come to.
  Mr. SHADEGG. Reclaiming my time, I certainly understand the intent of 
the agreement and the intent of those of us who have been engaged in 
this discussion for the last 2 days. I simply want to get clearly on 
the record that any agreement which is intended to move the body 
forward and move through these bills and to do it as we have done it in 
the past with an open rule and then hopefully at some point a 
unanimous-consent agreement, that that remains subject to the objection 
of an individual Member to say, I object to the unanimous consent.
  Mr. OBEY. If the gentleman would yield.
  Mr. SHADEGG. I would be happy to yield to whichever of you would 
prefer.
  Mr. OBEY. It is our intention with respect to open rules to make 
virtually the same request of the Rules Committee with respect to each 
bill that was made by your party when you were in the majority. And it 
is our hope that you will respond as we did in the minority by agreeing 
to reasonable time limits on each of those bills in return for that.
  Mr. SHADEGG. Certainly. And I think we will. Except, as you say, 
you're not sure if you understand what would be dilatory tactics. We're 
not sure if we understand and can't know now what we might consider to 
be a substantive amendment which you would view wasn't.
  And so I just want to confirm that the right of an individual Member 
on the minority side to object to the unanimous-consent agreement 
remains intact and hasn't been waived by any portion of this agreement.
  And I presume that's the understanding of the majority leader.
  Mr. HOYER. That is the understanding of the majority. The leader, 
your leader and I, have spent substantial time together over the last 
48 hours discussing this agreement and discussing it with Mr. Obey and 
Mr. Lewis. Clearly we are proceeding in not as a definitive way as we 
might otherwise have proceeded, and we are proceeding with reliance on 
the good faith of each to proceed in a manner that we believe 
accommodates what has been done last year and what we hope will be done 
this year and, that is, consider these bills with the inclusion of the 
earmarks in the bills in a manner that facilitates their being passed 
through this House.
  Mr. SHADEGG. I thank the gentleman for his comments. I thank all the 
gentlemen.
  I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from Kentucky.
  Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. I will be very brief. I thank the gentleman 
for yielding. On the Energy and Water bill, I'm a little confused.
  Mr. OBEY. Would the gentleman yield?
  Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. I will be happy to yield.
  Mr. OBEY. It has been suggested to me that we can clear this up by my 
simply reading the statement that we had intended to read to the House 
at a later point. If the gentleman would indulge me so I could do that, 
I think it will answer virtually all of the questions that people have.
  This is that statement.
  Mr. SHADEGG. I think it's my right to yield, and I would be happy to 
yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. OBEY. The House is now proceeding under a unanimous-consent 
agreement which in addition to the hours already covered will limit 
total time for consideration of this bill to 24\1/2\ hours. This is a 
limit of an additional 6\1/2\ hours which we will have to endure 
tonight.
  The UC agreement also allows the filing of supplemental reports to 
enable earmarks to be added to the Interior and Energy and Water 
appropriation bills without returning the bills to committee. It is 
expected that this will slow down consideration of the Interior bill by 
about a week.
  We will complete action on the Energy and Water bill on the floor 
next

[[Page H6415]]

week, but will not send it to the Senate until the House has an 
opportunity to act upon the projects that will be attached to that 
bill. That bill will probably not be sent to the Senate until July.
  This agreement is part of a larger agreement that contains the 
following additional understandings:
  There will be a unanimous-consent agreement for Military Construction 
that limits consideration of amendments and time on that bill.
  With respect to the Homeland and Military Construction bills, both 
bills will be allowed to proceed without earmarks, which, if they are 
provided, will be added in conference. The intention is that when those 
bills come back from conference, a point of order against consideration 
will be in order against any projects that were not in the House or 
Senate bill, and if those points of order are upheld by the House, the 
report will go back to the conference for adjustment.
  The Financial Services, Foreign Operations and Legislative Branch 
bills, three bills that have already been reported out of committee, 
will briefly be sent back to committee so that earmarks can be added. 
The minority party has agreed to expedited procedures to consider these 
bills once the earmarks have been attached. That will slow 
consideration of the bills by up to 2 weeks.

                              {time}  2000

  CJS will not be considered until the proposed earmarks are ready for 
attachment, hopefully before the July 4 recess.
  The Labor-HHS, Transportation, HUD and Agriculture bills will be 
considered after the July 4 recess, that is a change, in order to give 
committee staff more time to include earmarks for those bills.
  The minority has agreed that they will help facilitate reasonably 
speedy consideration of the remaining bills. The expectation is that 
the House will adopt UC agreements to place reasonable limitations on 
the time for consideration for each of the appropriations bills which 
are expected to be roughly and generally similar to the overall time 
agreements that were adopted for consideration of appropriation bills 
in the past.
  The bill managers will be expected to be reasonably flexible in 
establishing those time limits if modest flexibility is required. This 
is the understanding of the Appropriations Committee and the House 
Democratic and Republican leadership.
  The House should be pleased with this agreement because it recognizes 
the reality that there is not enough time to responsibly include 
earmarks in the earliest appropriations bills to be considered by the 
House. While providing that recognition, it assures a reasonable 
process that will provide an opportunity to question earmarks.
  Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. SHADEGG. I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky.
  Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Let me thank the chairman for that 
clarification.
  Mr. SHADEGG. Reclaiming my time, I appreciate the gentleman's 
clarification. I do have one question. As I listened to the gentleman 
explain the agreement and read it, I believe the gentleman said that it 
is the intention that there will be a point of order in place with 
regard to this bill and the MILCON bill. It is my understanding there 
is actually an agreement on that point.
  I yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner).
  Mr. BOEHNER. The rule change that has been discussed earlier on the 
point of order on the consideration of an appropriation conference 
report with regard to airdropped earmarks is expected to be offered to 
the House under unanimous consent agreement on Monday evening.
  Mr. SHADEGG. I thank the gentleman.
  We are all operating on good faith here. I simply want to establish 
that there will be a point of order in place before these two bills 
return from conference.
  Mr. HOYER. Yes. That is what I represented to Mr. Rogers, and I 
repeat it to you. Yes.
  Mr. SHADEGG. I thank the gentlemen for their patience.
  Madam Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Wisconsin?
  Mr. McHENRY. Madam Speaker, reserving the right to object, I want to 
fully understand the agreement put forward.
  I ask the majority leader and the Appropriations Committee chairman, 
as I understand it, laid out through this colloquy and this series of 
questions, there are three separate issues at hand.
  First, the House rules under that unanimous consent agreement Monday 
night, the House rules will revert to the point of order that 
Republicans put in place in the last Congress, the Congress put in 
place, that Members can lodge a point of order against earmarks; is 
that the case?
  Mr. BOEHNER. If the gentleman would yield?
  Mr. McHENRY. With all due respect to the minority leader, I was 
trying to get a commitment from the majority leader since they are in 
fact in the majority, but I would be happy to yield to my Republican 
leader.
  Mr. BOEHNER. I appreciate the gentleman yielding because we have come 
to an agreement amongst us. The rule we are talking about putting in 
place is identical to what we had last year on the consideration of a 
conference report that has earmarks in it that had not been considered 
by the House or the Senate. And that rule change will be proffered, we 
believe, on Monday evening by the majority leader.
  Mr. McHENRY. Does the majority leader concur with that?
  I am happy to yield.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank my friend for yielding.
  I want to tell my young friend from North Carolina, that is the 
representation I have now made three times. I have made it to your 
leader. I suggest you ask your leader whether he trusts me to do that.
  Mr. McHENRY. Reclaiming my time, I certainly want to understand this 
agreement, and since it is a unanimous consent put before the House, we 
need to have unanimous consent to proceed with that. I want to 
understand the three elements of this rule and since the majority 
leader does schedule the floor, Madam Speaker, I want to make sure I 
understand the agreement since you actually control the floor.
  Mr. BOEHNER. Would the gentleman yield?
  Mr. McHENRY. I would be happy to yield.
  Mr. BOEHNER. The gentleman from Maryland, the majority leader, has 
given me his word. The gentleman and I have a long relationship. I have 
not one doubt that Monday evening this unanimous consent agreement will 
be entered into.
  Mr. McHENRY. Reclaiming my time, as I understand it, there are three 
elements to this agreement. I want to actually have on the record what 
this agreement is, not simply a discussion behind closed doors, because 
as we heard earlier today, Madam Speaker, as some of us heard earlier 
today, there was an agreement reached last night and then there was a 
change of heart from the majority and leadership on the majority side. 
And I want to ensure we have a proper understanding of what that was, 
instead of what we read in the papers and the rumors we hear.
  Mr. OBEY. If the gentleman would yield?
  Mr. McHENRY. I would be happy to yield.
  Mr. OBEY. Let me correct the gentleman in one respect. There was no 
change of heart on the part of the majority leadership on anything to 
my knowledge.
  Secondly, if we are talking about trust, the fact is that I have been 
asked in this agreement to trust the word of the minority leader that 
when we describe what the conduct will be during future appropriation 
bills, that that conduct will be reasonably close to what is described 
on this paper. There is no guarantee in this paper to me that that 
conduct will be appropriate conduct.
  In this case, however, I am simply taking the word of the majority 
leader and the minority leader. If it is good enough for me, I hope it 
is good enough for you. And when the day comes that we cannot trust the 
word of the majority leader or the minority leader in this House, then 
this House is really in sad shape.
  Mr. McHENRY. Reclaiming my time, I wanted to lay before the House 
what

[[Page H6416]]

the three elements, as I understood it, are. And I have full faith. I 
know the gentleman is an honorable man. I am not questioning the 
integrity of any of my colleagues in this process. I certainly have the 
utmost respect for the majority leader and the Appropriations Committee 
chair. But I actually want to understand the agreement and the trust 
you have, and I want to make sure that the House understands what the 
agreement is.
  Mr. OBEY. If the gentleman would yield, I was not part of the 
agreement on the point of order. I am simply trusting the majority 
leader and the minority leader, and I would suspect that virtually 
every Member of this House has that same trust towards both of them.
  Mr. McHENRY. Reclaiming my time, actually the final question would 
be: Is it the intent and the commitment from the majority that future 
appropriations bills, save by tradition the legislative branch 
appropriations bill, would come to this floor under an open rule?
  Mr. OBEY. I think that question has already been answered in the 
affirmative, so long as the conduct of the House justifies open rules.
  Mr. McHENRY. I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank my friend for yielding.
  I said ``yes.'' I have said it three or four times. I will say it 
again. But I want an understanding made clear, and I will reiterate it. 
We have an agreement. We have an agreement between people who are 
trying to move America's business forward. That agreement assumes 
conduct on both sides. There are going to be open rules. But if the 
conduct that is expected on both sides is not met, I expect both sides 
will feel the agreement has been breached.
  Mr. McHENRY. Reclaiming my time, Madam Speaker, I withdraw my 
reservation of objection.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Wisconsin?
  Ms. FOXX. Madam Speaker, reserving the right to object, I have a very 
simple question.
  I think I am a very logical person. I don't understand why we are 
going to be voting on the water bill and then coming back and voting on 
the earmarks attached to another bill. That does not seem logical to 
me.
  Mr. OBEY. No. If the gentlewoman would yield, it is not going to be 
attached to another bill. The bill is already out of committee. It 
needs to proceed. It takes a great deal of time. There are a lot of 
things in that bill besides earmarks, thank God. We are trying to move 
the business ahead as fast as we can.
  What this agreement states is that we will finish all of the 
nonproject-oriented issues in that bill. We will complete consideration 
of the bill except we will then rise, and when the report is finished 
that will be attached to the energy and water bill, it will be reported 
to the full House. When it is reported to the full House, we will then 
have before the House for consideration the projects that are included 
in that report and that will be during consideration of the energy and 
water bill itself. So it will not be a separate bill, it is the energy 
and water bill.
  We are just allowing the projects to catch up to the bill. And then 
before the bill goes to the Senate, you will have a full opportunity to 
deal with the report and the energy and water bill simultaneously.
  Ms. FOXX. Thank you.
  Madam Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Wisconsin?
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Madam Speaker, reserving the right to object.
  I know that we have been discussing this for a long time, and I 
appreciate the tolerance of all involved and I am sorry that, using a 
word that was used before, that you have to endure this, but I have 
three very specific questions.
  The chair of the Appropriations Committee in his initial comments 
said about the agreement that has been worked out, that it has not been 
signed or not been agreed to because there was an issue that had yet to 
be worked out. Did I understand the gentleman correctly?
  Mr. OBEY. I honestly don't know what the gentleman is talking about. 
All I was saying is we were trying to get Members home before 2 in the 
morning by allowing this bill to proceed. We wanted to simply perfect 
the statement which I just read to make certain that everyone agreed, 
and we thought when we had more time to review that and check for any 
changes, we would come right back to the House. Instead, Members wanted 
to discuss it now. So forget everything I just said with respect to 
that other statement.
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. I appreciate that.
  My second question is: The earmarks for these two bills, Homeland 
Security and Military Construction/Quality of Life, when might we 
expect to see those or deal with those before the House?
  Mr. OBEY. There are no earmarks in this bill. I personally have no 
interest in adding them. If it happens in the process because of the 
will of the committee or the body, then they will be in the bill when 
it comes back to the House and then the gentleman's point of order will 
be in order.
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. I thank the gentleman.
  The final question I have is in the past it has appeared that the 
agreement between the majority party and the minority party regarding 
the unanimous consent and time limits on appropriations bills has 
tended to be during the process of the debate, and if the debate was 
moving along expeditiously, there was no need for a unanimous consent 
agreement.
  My question is: Is it the intent to operate traditionally as has been 
done, or is the intent to adopt a unanimous consent agreement prior to 
the bill being taken up?
  Mr. OBEY. If you will take a look at the time that was taken for 
every bill last year, that time that we have been talking about 
included the entire time for consideration of the bill. So for example, 
when we say it took 17 hours and 12 minutes for the Commerce-Justice 
bill last year, that means it took 17 hours and 12 minutes to do the 
entire bill from start to finish. Only a part of that time was 
represented by the time allocated to amendments.
  All we are saying is that it is our hope that we can keep each of 
these bills to roughly the same amount of total time. If you need some 
flexibility between the bills, the statement makes clear and the 
understanding is that we will try to show that flexibility so long as 
it is not abused.

                              {time}  2015

  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. The majority leader may be able to assist.
  Mr. HOYER. Would the gentleman yield?
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. I yield.
  Mr. HOYER. As the gentleman knows, the question was asked, has the 
unanimous consent been modified. It has not. So that whatever 
agreement, at whatever time it's reached, will have to have the 
unanimous consent of the body, each and every Member. That part will be 
the protection against any arbitrary or capricious action. We are 
pursuing that. As the minority leader said, there's been no change in 
that.
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. And I thank the leader, and I withdraw my 
reservation.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Wisconsin?
  Mr. PENCE. Madam Speaker, reserving the right to object, I want to 
commend the minority leader and the majority leader and the chairman of 
the committee for an arduous task of coming together across what is an 
increasingly very wide gulf between the two sides of this aisle and 
appreciate the difficulty of doing that?
  If I may, Madam Speaker, ask the majority leader a question just for 
clarification purposes and colloquy.
  Mr. Leader, on the point of order protection, I was directly involved 
with a handful of our own when we worked through our side changing the 
rules in the spring of 2005 for that point of order protection. It is, 
in effect, a stopgap at the point of consideration of the conference 
report. An essential element of that is that the point of order is 
debatable, and I wanted to get your assurance that as we move toward 
adopting that rule change that that point of order would be debatable. 
I believe it was for at least 10 minutes per

[[Page H6417]]

side. Without the opportunity to debate, there was no capacity for 
Members or the public to know what projects are objectionable, and that 
might prevent going forward in consideration.
  And I would welcome and yield time for your response.
  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman, first, for his comments. Secondly, 
I thank the gentleman for his question. I happen to believe, I want the 
gentleman to know, that the rule you were involved with that the 
minority leader and I have discussed is a good rule. It's a good rule 
because if something is dropped in conference that nobody knows about 
it, whatever it may be, I'm not going to mention any specific projects, 
but we've talked about some during the course of the last 2 days, we 
will in the rule provide for 10 minutes on each side. So, essentially, 
what we're doing is expanding under those circumstances by a third the 
time available for debate on a conference report.
  So it is a pretty substantial extension of time. I think to the 
extent, again, the gentleman was involved, it's an appropriate 
extension of time so that we do ensure what all want to ensure and that 
projects that do not justify inclusion in bills and this House or the 
Senate rejects them or wants to reconsider them, that we have that 
opportunity. So the debate will be included in the rules 
recommendation.
  Mr. PENCE. I thank the distinguished majority leader for that very 
direct and clear reply. The minority leader nodded his assent. There's 
very little value in point of order protection if Members do not have 
the ability to point to those aspects of the legislation that are 
objectionable.
  But I will also, and I'm prepared to yield time to the distinguished 
chairman of the Appropriations Committee for a question, I would also 
say that point of order protection obviously calls for a vote on 
whether to proceed with consideration for the entire conference report. 
It would not, and Members should be alerted, it would not be a specific 
vote on a specific objectionable project; and, therefore, the 
likelihood that a point of order would be successful, given the fact 
that appropriations bills generally have many fathers and mothers in 
this institution, is fairly remote.
  So I would say to the distinguished chairman of the Appropriations 
Committee that it certainly is not a substitute for the opportunity in 
the regular process here on the floor to challenge specific elements of 
bills, whether they be earmarks or other policy-related additions and 
programs. And so it's to that point and to this longer-term 
understanding that I wanted to ask the chairman of the Appropriations 
Committee for some further clarification. And, again, I want to 
reiterate my respect for the chairman, for the leader and my special 
respect and gratitude for the minority leader for their efforts in this 
regard.
  But with regard to your expectation, I think you just used the phrase 
that the amount of time that would be subject to a negotiation for a 
unanimous consent on each bill going forward would be a good-faith 
negotiation, and it would be based on, in your words roughly, the same 
amount of time that had been attributable to those specific 
appropriations bills in the past.
  I think the chairman made reference to 108 hours earlier in the last 
session of the last year of the Congress. I would note that we did not 
consider, to my recollection, a Labor-HHS bill during that period of 
time. I just wanted to give the chairman a respectful opportunity to 
express what your expectation of that may be because for many of us the 
opportunity to come to the floor and challenge individual provisions of 
bills and also make amendments for additions to bills is critical, and 
I would yield.
  Mr. OBEY. Let me simply say that when we compiled these numbers, 
since there was no Labor-H bill considered last year, we simply looked 
at the amount of time that it took the previous year to consider the 
Labor-H bill, and that was 12 hours and 43 minutes. So I think that in 
12 hours and 43 minutes, if Members have an objection to an earmark or 
any other provision, they are going to manage to find a way to bring it 
to the attention of the House. And if they can't figure out how, I 
would just ask that you talk to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. 
Jackson-Lee) and she will show you how to do it. She's got a lot of 
experience.

  Mr. PENCE. Reclaiming my time, I would yield to the minority leader 
for a response on this, if he would like.
  Mr. BOEHNER. As soon as I catch my breath, I will be happy to give 
you one.
  The agreement we have reached with our colleagues on the other side 
of the aisle is intended to preserve every Member's right to make 
additions, to make changes, to offer amendments to the bill. I think, 
how can I best describe this, that over the course of at least the last 
two or three years that I'm aware of, we've brought these bills to the 
floor under an open rule, and there have been bipartisan agreements, 
the unanimous-consent agreements, on how we're going to proceed. And 
the agreement that we have is basically to uphold what we've done in 
the past few Congresses.
  And so as the gentleman pointed out, what we've agreed to is 
generally, the time limits, times that were used in the past, but it's 
general. We don't know what these bills look like, some of them yet. 
We're not sure what they may contain, and so I felt constrained in 
coming to an agreement on a specific time limit because we haven't seen 
the bills, but I think there are enough of us in this Chamber who've 
worked together, who trust each other to be able to come to a 
unanimous-consent agreement that gets unanimous consent because that's 
how it works.
  Mr. PENCE. Reclaiming my time, and before I withdraw my objection, 
let me say I appreciate that clarification from the minority leader and 
from the chairman of the Appropriations Committee. I assume good faith 
by both the distinguished gentlemen, and I will say I certainly reserve 
the right to object to future unanimous-consent agreements, but I look 
forward to supporting the unanimous-consent agreement today.
  And I withdraw my reservation.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Wisconsin?
  Mr. HENSARLING. Madam Speaker, reserving the right to object, first I 
wanted to thank the distinguished majority leader, thank the chairman 
of the Appropriations Committee, thank the Republican leader for all of 
their efforts to bring us to the point where we are at the moment.
  I think we've certainly heard much about the process and procedures 
that will take place under this anticipated agreement, but I think it's 
very important to note for the entirety of the body, and particularly 
for those of us who have spent a lot of time on the floor since this 
debate ensued, that with this agreement what we will see going forward 
after these first two bills is that we will see earmarks in the bills. 
We will see transparency. We will see the ability of Members to be able 
to strike at those earmarks. That is what I believe I have heard this 
evening. That is what much of this debate has been about, lo these many 
hours. I, for one, believe that to be a good thing.
  I believe I heard that there is hopefully an expectation of open 
rules. I understand the majority leader's caveat. I understand there is 
an anticipation of UCs, as historic norms dictate. I understand there 
is an anticipation that substantive amendments will be accommodated. I 
understand that substantive amendments may be in the eye of the 
beholder and men and women of good faith must work together, and I 
understand there is an anticipation that if bills are of historic 
norms, that debate time may be of historic norms as well.
  But I did want to signal that, if I have the proper understanding, 
that I wanted to thank the majority leader, the chairman of the 
Appropriations Committee, and the Republican leader for their efforts 
to bring the ability of Members to be able to see these earmarks and 
challenge these earmarks. I assume that, as I have spoken, if any of 
the gentlemen involved believe that my understanding is incorrect, I 
would be happy to yield time to them.
  Seeing no one believing my understanding is incorrect, again, I want 
to thank them for bringing us to this point, and I withdraw my 
objection, Madam Speaker.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Wisconsin?
  Mr. FLAKE. Madam Speaker, reserving the right to object, I have a few

[[Page H6418]]

concerns. Early this year when authorizations came to the floor, 
authorization bills and the CR and also last year with appropriation 
bills and in previous years, it is a common practice to have the report 
come to the floor very late in the day. In fact, for the Intelligence 
authorization bill, I believe the report came to the floor a few hours 
after the deadline for submission for earmarks.
  What assurance do we have that reports, the committee reports that 
contain the earmarks, will actually come to the floor in a timely 
manner? Because it will be difficult to enter into any unanimous-
consent agreement on a bill if we haven't had adequate time to actually 
review the earmarks. I know there has been talk, there's always talk, 
about some 48-hour rule or 72-hour rule, but it is routinely broken. 
And is there any assurance that we can have on this side that we'll do 
better in that regard? Because the record so far this year is not good 
with regard to authorization bills.
  I know that is not your fault, but I'm concerned that we won't get 
the committee report in time to adequately review the earmarks in it in 
order to enter into a useful unanimous-consent agreement.
  Mr. OBEY. Let me say, and then be very blunt about this, this 
agreement requires a lot of trust between people. I've had to rely on a 
lot of trust on the minority leader tonight, and I expect to have the 
right to expect the same consideration from others in this House.
  We have not had much experience in the last 14 years at either 
producing or delaying reports. That has been the prerogative of the 
majority party. We're now the majority; and as you know, we had a lot 
of catch-up work to do from the last session, and we've been working 
long hours. It is not our responsibility to run the printing office. 
Sometimes we don't have control over when documents are printed. 
Sometimes the process breaks down there; sometimes it doesn't.
  All I can assure the gentleman is that we are going to try to comply 
not only with the letter but the spirit of the rules of the House.

                              {time}  2030

  When I was in the minority, I was pushing very hard to see the 3-day 
practice maintained, even though the rule had been changed to 2 days. 
We intend to continue to do that.
  Mr. FLAKE. In the same vein, we now have rules that require 
submission of a letter. You have them in the committee now. What 
assurance do we have that the letters will be released to the public? 
For every earmark that is in the legislation, will there be a letter 
with the Member's name next to it, the description of the earmark, the 
entity that is receiving it; will that be released to the public as 
soon as the committee report comes out?
  Mr. OBEY. The answer to the gentleman's question is ``yes.''
  Mr. FLAKE. With regard to authorization, I sent a staff member to the 
Armed Services Committee. The staff member could not remove the list, 
could not make copies, had to sit and actually just make notes of the 
some 680 earmarks, letter request forms that were there. Is that going 
to be the practice of the Appropriations Committee? Will copies be 
available? Can outside groups come in?
  Mr. OBEY. Let me be very frank. I haven't had time to consider any of 
these questions because I have been so tied up simply trying to move 
bills. All I can tell you is we will comply with whatever the rules of 
the House are. Frankly, at this point, I am not exactly sure what they 
are. Whatever they are, I will comply with them.
  Mr. FLAKE. I would submit that it's unacceptable. The reason we have 
this transparency, where we have letters actually requesting the 
earmark, indicating the entity that it goes to, the specific purpose 
for the earmark, is so that we make informed judgments here on floor.
  If all we can do is have one staff member go in, they have to wait 
while meetings are held, they can't go in certain rooms, they are told 
that they can only read from the list and take notes, not make copies. 
The practice in the past has been, and I am not saying that this is 
more a problem with the majority than it was with the previous 
majority, we had trouble then. But if we're going to have an open, 
transparent process, it would be nice to have, to actually think that 
you want this information out rather than holding it back as long as 
you can.
  Mr. OBEY. No one is trying to hold back information. What I need is 
time to know what that information is.
  With respect to the certifications you are talking about, they will 
be available in the committee office to the public, to Members of 
Congress, and they will meet whatever requirements, whatever other 
requirements of the rules that there are. All I can tell you is that we 
haven't given any consideration to earmarks at this point because we 
haven't had time to.
  I think the agreement that we have here tonight finally recognizes 
the fact that if we're going to proceed with these bills, that we 
simply haven't had time to produce the initial earmarks.
  We are slowing down this process considerably. I want to assure you 
that we're going to do everything we possibly can to comply with the 
spirit and the letter of the law. The gentleman knows me. I hope the 
gentleman regards me as someone who is up to his commitments.
  That's all I can honestly say.
  Mr. FLAKE. I thank the gentleman. I do hold the gentleman in high 
regard. It just seems to me that when the committee report is released, 
there is no reason for the Appropriations Committee at that time to 
make it difficult for other Members to view request letters.
  Mr. OBEY. No one is trying to make anything difficult for any Member 
to review anything.
  I don't know what experience you had under the last regime. We have 
not had an opportunity to perform on that yet.
  Mr. FLAKE. All right. I just wanted it on the record that there would 
be. We've had it with the authorizing committee already. I just want to 
make sure it doesn't happen with the Appropriations Committee.
  Mr. OBEY. With all due respect, I take no responsibility for anything 
done by any authorizing committee.
  Mr. FLAKE. Good point. Another point, you made the example of the 
education bill last year that took some 12 hours to get through. My 
expectation is that there will be a lot of earmarks in that bill and 
many others. Last year I offered a total of 39 on all appropriation 
bills.
  I was constrained considerably. Many of the amendments that I drew up 
and brought to the Parliamentarian, I was told that it would be subject 
to a point of order because the earmark was so vague, that the language 
was so vague, and that it didn't refer to a specific facility. There 
were many amendments that I wanted to bring forward and couldn't.
  I don't expect that to be the case this time because we have better 
rules in terms of the letters, the request forms, the entity that has 
to be there. So what I am saying is I expect there to be more 
amendments brought.
  I think it may be unrealistic to expect us to be constrained by last 
year's time frame. It may be longer. As long as it is subject to a 
unanimous consent agreement, and Members like myself or others who want 
to bring additional, or maybe more than were brought last year, can 
still bring those forward, then I think that's the only basis that we 
can move under.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the minority leader.
  Mr. BOEHNER. I appreciate my colleague for yielding. Unanimous 
consent means unanimous consent. It's the commitment on the part of 
myself and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to work with 
our respective Members to make sure that every Member's needs are met 
in the unanimous consent agreements.
  Now, we will be happy to work with the gentleman on his issues as we 
go through these bills. It's not intended to deny any Member's right to 
offer an amendment here on the floor.
  Mr. OBEY. If the gentleman would yield, one of the reasons I have 
been trying to explain to the House why it takes so long to carefully 
screen these earmarks, is because many of the requests that come in are 
so vague that we don't understand where that money is intended to go 
to.

  So then we have to go to the individual Member, and we have to say, 
hey, we really can't tell from your request where this is supposed to 
go. You

[[Page H6419]]

need to change your request so we know what you are talking about. Then 
we have to sort them out so we know that you don't have three people 
asking for the same thing in different language. That takes a lot of 
time.
  So if the gentleman thinks that sometimes you're confused, so are we. 
That's why we were asking for more time.
  I want to stipulate one thing. I recommended to this House a proposal 
that I thought would give us the best possibility of avoiding future 
embarrassment. This agreement indicates the House wants to go in a 
somewhat different direction.
  That means that with respect to almost all of these bills, we will 
have less time for our staff to review them than would have been the 
case under the proposal that I was suggesting.
  In my judgment, that means that we will run a higher risk of mistakes 
than we would have otherwise had, because we will not have the entire 
month of July for the staff to review these requests.
  So I am giving up on that expectation for a higher level of staff 
review so that we can continue to do the people's business and get 
through these bills in time for program managers to get funding out for 
these programs in an orderly manner.
  So a lot of us have a lot of complaints about this. I didn't invent 
the earmark process. If I had my way, there wouldn't be any, as the 
gentleman knows.
  But it's my job as chairman not to pursue what I believe. It's my job 
to try to find a balanced point in the House that I think will achieve 
consensus in the House, hopefully between two parties. That's what I 
would try to do, and I will appreciate the recognition of that fact 
from the gentleman and every other Member of this body.
  Mr. FLAKE. Duly recognized. I think that it argues for far fewer 
earmarks. You made a comment last year that I agreed to.
  Mr. OBEY. Even though the Senate is resisting, I am the person who 
ended the earmarks. I am the person who put a moratorium on earmarks 
for a year. You know that two-thirds of your caucus and two-thirds of 
my caucus were mad as hell at me when I did that.
  Mr. FLAKE. I know that.
  Mr. OBEY. I am now trying, and so is our leadership, to reduce 
earmarks by at least 50 percent.
  As you know, there are a lot of people who are angry about the fact 
that we are cutting earmarks by that much.
  Mr. FLAKE. I understand that. I know we need to move on. Let me just 
make one point. I think it is extremely important that the letters 
requesting the earmarks are made public at the quickest possible time. 
I will object to any unanimous consent request.
  Mr. OBEY. With all due respect, the letters requesting earmarks are 
not going to be made public. Let me explain what will be made public. I 
will take responsibility for every earmark that I recommend. But I have 
no intention of taking responsibility for somebody's pipe dream that we 
reject.
  Mr. FLAKE. Oh, no, I am talking about those that are approved, that 
are going into the bill.
  Mr. OBEY. I have already told you those will be available. I don't 
know how many times I have to chew my tongue, but I have already told 
you.
  Mr. FLAKE. But what I am saying is outside groups have come as well. 
They would like access. I share the gentleman's pain in trying to go 
through and review these. That's why it would be useful at the quickest 
possible time to let outside groups as well review these.
  Mr. OBEY. With all due respect, we will comply with the House Rules. 
That's the best assurance I can give the gentleman.
  Mr. FLAKE. That's what I am after.
  Madam Speaker, I withdraw my reservation.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Wisconsin?
  There was no objection.

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