[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 65 (Wednesday, April 23, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H2560-H2561]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page H2560]]
 CORRECTING THE ENGROSSMENT OF H.R. 2634, JUBILEE ACT FOR RESPONSIBLE 
             LENDING AND EXPANDED DEBT CANCELLATION OF 2008

  Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that in the 
engrossment of H.R. 2634 the Clerk be directed to execute the second 
instruction in the amendment conveyed by the motion to recommit as 
though it read ``all that follows on that line'' rather than ``all that 
follows.''
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Holden). Is there objection to the 
request of the gentleman from Alabama?
  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to 
object, it is important for the membership to understand what we have 
here, a need for the House to correct sloppy legislation, a use of the 
legislative process to score political points rather than to achieve 
public policy goals.
  This is not a problem caused by the ranking member of the full 
committee, the gentleman Alabama. If you want to look at this as one 
big circus, today is the day that the gentleman from Alabama gets to 
clean up after the elephants. And I mean elephants.
  What we have here, Members may have read this a week ago, there are 
people who specialize in writing recommittal motions that are not, in 
my judgment, constructive contributions to the legislative process but 
are ``gotchas.'' And what happens is we work in committee, as we did on 
this bill to provide debt relief to poor countries, the gentleman from 
Alabama has been a stand-out advocate for debt relief for poor 
countries when his party was in the majority and now.
  We worked together and came up with a very good bill. In fact, a 
large number of the groups that support fair treatment for the poorest 
in the world are going to celebrate that bill tonight. Fortunately, 
because we were able to fix this, they have something to celebrate. We 
almost ruined their celebration.
  Because what happened was after all of the collaborative efforts in 
the Committee on Financial Services, as we finished the legislative 
process, after we adopted several amendments, including a manager's 
amendment that was predominantly constructed for the Republicans' 
concern, a Republican amendment offered by the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Rohrabacher), one offered by the gentleman from Florida 
(Mr. Hastings), we got a recommittal motion.
  Now the way things have unfortunately worked around here, no one got 
to see, on our side, the recommittal motion until minutes before we had 
to debate it, and we have only 10 minutes. It was a policy statement 
that said no debt relief should go to anyone whose government has 
business interests with Iran.
  By the way, Condoleezza Rice just came back from meeting with the 
Gulf Council, in which she was urging them to give debt relief to Iraq; 
and they don't want to give debt relief to Iraq apparently for a number 
of reasons, but one of them, you can read it in today's Washington Post 
and yesterday's New York Times, is Iraq has too many dealings with 
Iran. Now they weren't technically covered by our bill, but if you are 
going to set forward the principle for the United States Congress that 
you don't give debt relief to people who do business with Iran and 
other people apply that principle, you won't get debt relief for Iraq 
because they have those relations given their proximity, the religious 
commonality, et cetera.
  But to go back to this request and the need for it, the recommittal 
motion was so badly drafted that it knocked out many parts of the bill. 
In fact, the House took three votes last week: Two to adopt the 
Republican amendments and then one to adopt a Republican recommittal 
that killed the two Republican amendments.
  I thought, well, maybe they didn't notice that we had amendments, but 
as the Parliamentarian had pointed out to us, this amendment was so 
sloppily drafted in the urge to score political points and not consult 
with anybody, I think, on either side in terms of committees, that it 
also killed some parts of the bill. It didn't simply do the amendment. 
You might say, well, they drafted to the bill and didn't look at the 
amendments. It killed parts of the bill.
  I am going to withdraw my reservation, Mr. Speaker, because this is 
an important bill. But will no one learn from this? Can we not stop 
this process of ambush and last-minute recommittal motions that are not 
part of a constructive legislative process but are drafted purely to 
make political points and drafted badly and drafted not in consultation 
with any substantive knowledge?
  So we are here today to undo much of the effects of a recommittal 
motion. We are here today because of ``gotcha'' politics that the 
minority leadership played, not the committee leadership, but the 
minority leadership.

                              {time}  1045

  And so I would hope that they might have learned from this. And let 
me be clear, Mr. Speaker, my original intention was not to agree to 
this because I thought they just killed the Republican amendments. 
Luckily for them, they were even more incompetent in proposing that 
than I had thought they were, and they killed vital parts of this bill 
that we both need. So I am constrained to help them undo their own 
mistake.
  And I would express the hope, probably in vain, that instead of 
continuing to use the recommittal motion in a way that has no 
constructive legislative purpose, but is truly to try and advance 
partisan agendas, that we can get a collaborative effort. That doesn't 
mean the recommittal motion shouldn't really put issues into play, of 
course they should; that's partly what it's for. There's no need to 
hold it until the last minute. If we had had an hour's notice, we could 
have found that error. I found the error, but by the time I found it it 
was too late, we had already wrote it. So I hope out of this--I don't 
have a lot of hope, but I do hope--that those who have sort of taken 
the legislative process hostage by their need to politicize recommittal 
will learn from this. And I hope this is the last time we have to come 
here and correct this.
  And I will just as I close predict again, it wasn't just badly 
drafted in the technical sense, I will predict that we will hear that 
if the United States Congress adopts as a principle that no debt relief 
goes to a country that has business with Iran, it will undercut 
Secretary Rice's efforts to get the Gulf Cooperation Council to give 
debt relief to Iraq. And I believe that we will not only have to 
correct this procedurally, we will have to correct it substantively.
  Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Massachusetts?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, in closing, let me thank the chairman for 
his willingness to allow this unanimous consent request.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Without objection, the gentleman from 
Alabama is recognized.
  There was no objection.
  Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, as I said, in closing, I want to thank 
Chairman Frank of the full committee for his willingness to allow this 
unanimous consent request to be adopted. And as he would agree, this 
allows this very important piece of legislation to go to the Senate.
  He and I and this body are joined, I think, in a bipartisan way to 
see that these 24 countries, heavily indebted poor countries, that 
hopefully this legislation will make its way through the Senate to the 
President, where he will sign it.
  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BACHUS. I would yield.
  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Well, I hope that's the case. The 
gentleman mentioned the 24 countries. But if any of those countries 
emulates Iraq and perhaps buys oil from Iran, they won't get the debt 
relief under this recommittal. So I hope we can also correct that 
error.
  Mr. BACHUS. Absolutely. And as the chairman knows, if this becomes 
legislation, then the Treasury Department would negotiate with these 
countries individually and come back to the Congress on an individual 
basis for approval. But it has, in the past, these efforts by the 
Congress, our legislation has had tremendously beneficial effects in 
alleviating poverty and suffering in these very poor countries. And I 
know

[[Page H2561]]

that is the goal that both the chairman and I share.
  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. If the gentleman would yield one more 
time. And I appreciate, as I said, we had a bipartisan approach at the 
committee level. Partisanship took over at the recommittal process. I 
was glad to cooperate with the gentleman in correcting that. And I 
would just say to the gentleman, in the words of the song, ``It's his 
party and he can cry if he wants to.''
  Mr. BACHUS. Well, I'm a great believer in quoting Psalms.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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