[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 84 (Wednesday, May 21, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H4413-H4415]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          LEGISLATIVE PROGRAM

  (Mr. BOEHNER asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, we just finished a vote several minutes ago 
on the override of the farm bill, except that the override vote 
occurred on a bill that had never been considered by the House or the 
Senate, since the bill that we voted to override apparently is missing 
one title of the bill--or the conference report--that passed the House 
and the Senate. I am concerned about the procedures, the process, and 
the constitutionality of what we've just done.
  I would like to ask the majority leader if he can help myself and the 
other Members understand just what are we dealing with here.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, will my friend yield?
  Mr. BOEHNER. I would be happy to yield.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, clearly, what we are dealing with is an 
unfortunate situation. The unfortunate situation is that apparently--
and again I just learned about this about an hour and a half ago when 
Mr. Peterson, the chairman of the committee, told me he and Mr. 
Goodlatte were discussing this problem and how to proceed. Apparently 
what happened is title III, which I understand is not very 
controversial, but in any event, title III came up on the screen for 
the printing on the parchment that is sent to the President, but, 
unfortunately, for whatever reasons, it was not printed out and it was 
not caught in the proofing of that. Apparently, as well, the White 
House did not catch the fact that the bill was not inclusive of title 
III.
  Frankly, I have not looked at the bill to see whether there's a title 
I, II, and then goes to IV, which would have been self-evident that 
there was a missing title.
  In any event, without having researched it or talked to anybody about 
precedents, what has happened is that the House and the Senate passed 
in exactly the same form that which was vetoed by the President. Now, 
we passed more than that, but that which we have just voted on was 
passed in both Houses in exactly the form we just voted on.
  The vote, therefore, superficially, off the top of my head, without 
having researched this, is that what we have done is we have passed 
that which we originally passed through the House and the Senate and 
sent to the President, notwithstanding the President's veto, and 
something that we did also pass, which was incorporated in that bill, 
was neither vetoed nor signed by the President because, unfortunately, 
as a result of a clerical error, it was not included in the bill.
  I, in discussions with Mr. Peterson, understand that he and Mr. 
Goodlatte were in discussion on this issue when they first learned of 
it, and I don't know how long they knew about it before I found out 
about it; that, as I thought, their agreement would be that we would 
pass, subsequent to passing the initial bill, the title III either by 
unanimous consent or under the suspension calendar.
  I don't know the conversations that occurred between Mr. Peterson and 
Mr. Goodlatte. Mr. Peterson is on the floor, I know. I don't know 
exactly where he is. But it was his understanding that that would be an 
acceptable way to proceed. That was where I thought it to be.
  Mr. BOEHNER. Reclaiming my time, we may have transported to the 
President a portion of the bill that passed the House and Senate, but 
we did not send to the President, apparently, the farm bill conference 
report as passed by the House and the Senate.
  I think what's of grave concern to me is, yes, I understand that 
mistakes do happen in this process, but before the consideration of the 
override debate and vote, we were aware of the problem. And I just 
think that in deference to all Members, we could have waited before 
consideration of the override so that all the Members would understand 
just what we're dealing with and the problems that are contained 
therein. I just think that in the rush to move this override vote, we 
don't know what precedents of the House we may have stepped on and what 
constitutional problems that we may have. I would remind my colleague 
that there was a very small mistake made in the Deficit Reduction Act 
several years ago that's been the subject of a lawsuit and privileged 
resolutions and moral outrage from some of my friends on the other side 
of the aisle, which, frankly, the Deficit Reduction Act error pales in 
comparison to what we have here.
  So I would ask my colleague, I think we need to get to the bottom of 
what happened.

                              {time}  1830

  I don't know that the override that we just cast--we voted to 
override a bill that had never been considered by the House or the 
Senate, and I don't know how that is constitutional.
  I would be happy to yield to my friend.
  Mr. HOYER. Well, as I said, everything that we voted on was passed by 
the House and the Senate in exactly the same form. Obviously, I agree 
with your premise that the bill as passed out of Congress was not the 
exact same bill because of the deletion of title III,

[[Page H4414]]

apparently by error. Title III, as I understand, is not particularly 
controversial. I understand that from the discussion between Mr. 
Goodlatte and Mr. Peterson.
  So a mistake was made. A deletion was made. The President and the 
White House did not catch it. We didn't catch it. The President vetoed 
a bill. The bill that he vetoed, he sent back here. We have now said 
notwithstanding the veto, we believe the provisions that we both passed 
should in fact become law.
  Now the gentleman is correct, which is self-evident, and I can't 
disagree with your proposition that the bill was not in exactly the 
same form, and as I indicated at the beginning, because I only learned 
about this about an hour and a half ago, these are off-of-the-top-of-
my-head opinions, and are probably worth that much.
  Mr. BOEHNER. Reclaiming my time, in terms of how this problem gets 
fixed, is there some consideration for how we fix this error?
  Mr. HOYER. Yes.
  Will the gentlemen yield?
  Mr. BOEHNER. I would be happy to yield.
  Mr. HOYER. We hope to have, again, as result of discussions between 
Mr. Peterson and Mr. Goodlatte, either by unanimous consent, which may 
not be possible, or under suspension because, again, I understand from 
Mr. Peterson that title III is not a controversial title. Clearly, 
title I was controversial. Other titles were controversial. But if that 
is the case, then we can pass this by suspension tomorrow with 
suspension authority and send that to the Senate and hopefully they 
will then in turn send that to the President that title which has not 
yet been enacted or, frankly, acted on by the President, would either 
be signed by him or vetoed by him and we would consider it in that 
context.
  Mr. DREIER. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BOEHNER. Let me yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. DREIER. I thank the distinguished Republican leader for yielding. 
As the leader has said, this is a circumstance that does bring to mind 
the Deficit Reduction Act controversy which created a huge stir in this 
place and one with which we are still trying to contend.
  I just heard that the Rules Committee was scheduled to reconvene at 
6:30 this evening to report out the Duncan Hunter Defense Authorization 
bill, and I have been told that there's going to be some attempt made 
in the Rules Committee to deal with this issue in that rule. That's the 
word that we have been hearing over here.
  I thank my friend for yielding. If he would yield to the 
distinguished majority leader, I would like to have us enlightened on 
the prospect of this.
  Mr. HOYER. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BOEHNER. I would be happy to yield.
  Mr. HOYER. The only thing, as I understand it, would be to make 
tomorrow a suspension day. It's not a suspension day. So we would have 
to make it a suspension day.
  Mr. BOEHNER. If I could yield to my colleague from Missouri.
  Mr. BLUNT. I appreciate the gentleman yielding.
  I don't think, as I listen to this conversation and see it develop 
today, if we pass this section that the President hasn't seen, and the 
Senate passes the section that the President hasn't seen, and he either 
signs or vetoes it, that would be the only bill that the House actually 
passed that the President sees on this topic. It is clear if you look 
at the line-item veto case, it was clear in that case that the 
President can't selectively veto things in a part of a House bill.
  Again, think through this with me, if you will. The only thing the 
President will have seen that the House and Senate both passed as it 
stands would be this last portion.
  The concept that we can start sending bills over piecemeal because 
the House had passed this part of it is a flawed concept. Who knows 
what the House would pass if it didn't get a chance to pass the full 
bill each time. We would have passed the tax extenders today, 
unanimously, if it hadn't had the portion on it on new tax increases. 
We would have all voted for that part of the tax extenders bill. It 
wouldn't have changed that part of the bill. In fact, if we had only 
sent the President that part of the tax extenders bill, he would have 
signed it. But he probably won't sign it with this additional thing.
  When we had the Deficit Reduction Act, which, believe me, I remember 
in vivid detail, vivid detail; we had a bill that we sent to the 
Senate, the Senate clerk made a change in it and sent it to the Senate 
floor. Nobody in the Senate who voted on the bill knew that it had been 
changed, so it had no impact on the Senate vote.
  The Senate clerk got it back, realized that her change was 
inaccurate, sent it back to us just like we had sent it over to them. 
We voted on it again and sent it to the President, and didn't know 
until the signing ceremony that this had ever occurred. We didn't know 
until the signing ceremony that this had ever occurred. There was no 
action on the House at all with any knowledge any of this had ever 
occurred. In fact, none of it even occurred on the House side.
  At that time, the minority leader stood up and said:
  ``Whereas, although the Senate Enrolling Clerk mistakenly changed 
critical numbers that had major financial significance, leadership 
deliberately chose to ignore that notification and instead allowed the 
House to vote on an incorrect version of this legislation.''
  Not true, by the way.
  ``Whereas, the effect of these actions raises serious constitutional 
questions and jeopardizes the legal status of this legislation.
  ``Resolved, that the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct shall 
begin an immediate investigation into the abuse of power surrounding 
the accuracy of the process and enrollment.''
  The Speaker of the House, my friends, certified to the President that 
we were sending him a bill exactly as we had passed it. We now 
understand that clearly was not an accurate certification of what the 
House has done, and we are about to go down a path that might have the 
only action really taken by the House that the President sees in 
totality, this last segment of the bill. Why we would have moved 
forward, knowing all those facts before we moved forward, is a mystery 
to me.
  Mr. BOEHNER. I would be happy to yield to the majority leader.
  Mr. HOYER. I am looking for the exact date, but the farm bill expires 
tomorrow, and we have to extend the farm bill or go back to the 1949 
extension.
  Again, I would say to my friend I am operating with some concerns 
about the questions that are raised. But, again, I say, first of all, 
what happened in the Deficit Reduction Act is that the bill that was 
sent to the President, the provisions were never passed by the Senate.
  Every provision that was sent to the President was sent to the 
President after overwhelming votes from the House, overwhelming votes 
from the Senate in exactly the same position. Title III was passed by 
the Senate and the House, and inadvertently left out.
  In the Deficit Reduction Act, figures were changed in the bill 
subsequent to passing the Senate and never passed by the House. So I 
would suggest that the analogy between the two is not apt. In addition, 
there was no bipartisan discussion on that change.
  In this case, Mr. Peterson and Mr. Goodlatte are both on the floor. I 
didn't participate in those conversations. But I was informed by Mr. 
Peterson, because I said, have you talked to Mr. Goodlatte about this. 
He said he had. There had been significant discussions about that. 
There was concern about getting the farm bill passed because of the 
expiration of the existing authorization.
  As a result of those discussions, my personal thought was there was 
bipartisan agreement that we could proceed this way. We did proceed 
that way. I don't think I can amplify my response more than that.
  Mr. BLUNT. Would the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BOEHNER. I would be happy to yield.
  Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for his response. We may have a 
significant debate over whatever standards we were held to, that people 
are no longer held to. I will say that in that case, nobody in the 
House ever knew that any changes had been made, and it was alleged that 
somehow we were

[[Page H4415]]

going to be subject to Ethics Committee investigations.
  I would say in this case that my principal concern would be that the 
sections of the farm bill that have gone to the President, since they 
were not part of an entire bill, could be subject to all kinds of 
future litigation. I do know in the litigation that the minority 
initiated in February, 2006, 2 years and millions of taxpayer dollars 
later, we finally ended that litigation at the court of appeals level 
with the court of appeals deciding that if the Speaker and the 
President pro tempore certified that this is what both bodies passed, 
it was what both bodies passed.
  Here, we're moving forward with both bodies admitting that what this 
President has seen is not what both bodies passed. This idea that just 
because a portion of the bill has passed in a bigger bill means that 
the House was for that portion of the bill, that the Senate was for 
that portion of the bill, I don't think would stand any reasonable test 
of a way for us to move forward, and I think this bill does become 
subject to all kind of challenges from outside this building as well as 
perhaps from inside.
  Mr. BOEHNER. I would just add, what has happened here raises serious 
constitutional questions, very serious. I don't know how we can proceed 
with the override as it occurred, nor do I think we should proceed with 
some attempt to fix it until such time as we all understand what 
happened, what are the precedents of the House, and how do we move 
forward.
  As a result, I really believe that there ought to be a motion, I may 
make the motion, to vacate the vote that has occurred until we all 
understand better about what it is that we are dealing with.
  Mr. HOYER. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BOEHNER. I would be happy to yield.
  Mr. HOYER. My suggestion will be that we have another vote. We are 
going to have some other business coming. We discussed this briefly in 
the hallway. My suggestion is before we make any motions, that we take 
the time, your leadership and our leadership, let's sit down and 
discuss this and then we can come back and do whatever each decides to 
do.
  Mr. DREIER. Would the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BOEHNER. I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from 
California.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding.
  I would just like to raise one other point that should be part of 
those discussions. If I could remind our colleagues, one of the items 
that was debated vigorously during consideration of the farm bill 
happened to be the issue of the baseline numbers that were used. We are 
poised at this moment to bring up a budget resolution which will raise 
a question as to exactly what baseline level is used and what pay-fors 
might be out there. So I think that we have some very serious questions 
that are raised.
  My friend from Arizona (Mr. Shadegg) just reminded us again that for 
us to conclude, as the distinguished Republican whip has said, that 
this bill somehow would have passed identically in the exact same form 
is a real stretch. For that reason, I think that we have lots of 
questions that need to be addressed before we do proceed.
  I thank my friend for yielding.

                              {time}  1845

  Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Does the gentleman from Ohio yield for that 
purpose?
  Mr. BOEHNER. I yield back the balance of my time.

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