[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 189 (Tuesday, December 11, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H15278-H15279]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            WHAT HAS NOT BEEN ACCOMPLISHED IN THIS CONGRESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. FOXX. Madam Speaker, I am here tonight to talk about what has not 
been accomplished in this Congress, and what it looks like we may be 
facing in an omnibus bill.
  Last week we were told that we would be here on Friday of this coming 
week, after we had been told about a month ago that we would be able to 
be in our districts on Friday. I know that I made many plans to be in 
the district, speak to school groups that had been asking me to speak, 
meet with chamber of commerce people to talk about concerns that they 
had, and to do lots of things in the district.
  We have been denied many opportunities this year to be in our 
district to hear from the folks in the district the things that are on 
their minds and what's really important in the country, because the 
majority has insisted that we stay in session 5 days a week. But if you 
look at the bills that have been passed in those days that we've been 
here, you'd see that they were not things that primarily the Congress 
needs to be concerning itself with.
  We do need to be concerning ourselves with the appropriations bills, 
funding the war on terror, taking care of tax relief for middle-income 
Americans, many, many things that we should be doing. But, instead, we 
are literally wasting our time on insignificant issues and not dealing 
with those things we should be dealing with.
  It was announced last week that we would be dealing with an omnibus 
appropriations bill. Why an omnibus appropriations bill? Because the 
majority has been unable to pass 10 of the vital appropriations bills 
that our government relies for its funding on.
  We have passed the Defense bill and the President has signed it. 
We've passed the Labor-HHS bill. The President vetoed it and the veto 
was upheld. So we are coming to the end of a continuing resolution that 
was passed that expires on Friday, and we're facing the prospect of 
lumping 11 appropriations bills together and passing them in one fell 
swoop. Well, we know that is just a recipe for disaster.
  Last week we were given the Energy bill, 15 hours before we voted on 
it, a 1,000-plus page bill, and it had all kinds of problems with it. 
Buying Lexus hybrids for the Beverly Hills police,

[[Page H15279]]

many, many things in there that the American people would not approve 
of. And I fear that in the omnibus bill we're going to see a lot of 
those kinds of things.
  Now, we don't know yet what's going to be in the omnibus bill, but in 
addition to a tremendous number of earmarks, we are probably going to 
see sanctions against Cuba weakened. We are probably going to see the 
Mexico City policy overturned. The House and Senate versions of the 
State Department appropriations bill permits grants and subsidies for 
organizations that perform or actively promote abortion as a method of 
family planning, overturning the Bush administration's Mexico City 
policy. We don't need to be doing that. The American people do not want 
us to take their hard-earned money to fund abortions.
  It is probably going to provide federally funded benefits for 
domestic partners. Before being stripped from the House-passed 
Financial Services general government appropriations bill, a provision 
would have allowed unmarried cohabiting couples in the District of 
Columbia to qualify for Federal benefits on the same basis as legally 
married couples. That provision could be brought back to life in the 
majority's omnibus legislation.
  Ending an IRS private debt collection program, the majority spending 
bill could limit funding to implement the Internal Revenue Service's 
use of private collection firms to collect unpaid taxes. The private 
debt collection initiative is expected to collect $1.3 billion in taxes 
owed to the government that would otherwise go uncollected.
  Undermining regulatory reform, a provision in the House-passed 
Financial Services general government appropriations bill, again, H.R. 
2829, would kill efforts to increase the quality, accountability, and 
transparency of the Federal Government's regulatory review process. It 
would result in a fox guarding the hen house approach to approving 
Federal rules and regulations.
  We don't need an omnibus bill. We need to vote on these bills one at 
a time, Madam Speaker.

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