[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 26 (Monday, February 9, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H1073-H1077]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       OMNIBUS LAND BILL of 2009

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop) is recognized for 
60 minutes.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I appreciate the opportunity of being here. I 
appreciate being able to catch the last of the gentleman from Texas so 
I could add in, especially as he talked about my home State.
  It's unusual because, to be honest, most of everything we are talking 
about in this Nation and in Congress is the stimulus bill. Everything 
is about the stimulus bill. And it's appropriately so.
  It seems to those who are cynical here in Washington that we are 
trying to push the stimulus bill through as fast as possible in, as the 
cynics would say, an effort to try and stop people from seeing what is 
actually in there, because the more we look at it, the more problematic 
the entire bill comes.
  But today I wish to talk about a different bill, as ominous as the 
stimulus bill. In fact, it is called the Omnibus Land Bill of 2009, 
which will be coming up this week. And if you think the stimulus bill 
is being rushed through Congress, the way this omnibus land bill is 
being pushed through Congress makes the stimulus bill look like it's 
absolutely plodding through this process.
  The omnibus land bill that will be up sometime this week, supposedly, 
is over 160 different bills wrapped into one gigantic bill. Seventy-
seven of those bills have never been discussed in the House. There has 
never been a hearing, nor a markup in committee, a vote on the floor, 
of over half of those particular bills, which means if I was allowed 
this hour to talk about every one of these bills, I would have to take 
around 20 seconds apiece to go through everything that is in this 
particular omnibus land bill.
  And one must have to ask very simply, Why do it so quickly? What is 
the speed? At least in the stimulus bill we can say there is an 
emergency that we have to do something, but we can't do it here.
  So I intend to speak about this omnibus bill and say why there are 
some problems, even though I fully admit there are some very, very good 
bills in the omnibus bill. I should know that two of them are mine. And 
they are very good bills.
  Chairman Rahall of the Resources Committee has some bills in here 
that we have talk about on the floor and in committee. They are very, 
very good bills.

                              {time}  1845

  But still, 77 of them are bills that the Senate decided to put into 
this package without the House having any kind of input or hearing into 
this process.
  So I am going to be talking about the problems of this bill and the 
process of it, the cost of it, as well as the content that happens to 
fit into this particular pattern.
  Now a lot of people here in this House have been former State 
legislators. That gives us some ability to help as far as understanding 
the process of what is going on. But it also helps us to

[[Page H1074]]

understand there are other ways of doing things. I have to admit, in 
most State legislatures, this type of bill would not be allowed to come 
to the floor. Most States have germaneness laws, which simply say for 
every bill, it is one topic area, and that is because every bill 
deserves to be discussed and voted on its merits and not lumped 
together with something else to help it through the process.
  Indeed, if you have an omnibus land bill that creates a new Under 
Secretary of Energy, one can logically say what does that have to do 
with a land bill, and they would be correct. No State would allow this 
tragedy to take place.
  One of the senior Members of this body is purported to have said, I 
have yet to ask him if it is true or apocryphal, but he is purported to 
have said that if I allow you to create all of the policy decisions, 
and you allow me to make all of the process decisions, I will screw you 
over every time, which simply means whenever we play fast and loose 
with the rules of the game, our process, there are going to be winners 
and losers. We are playing fast and loose with the rules of this 
particular game.
  In the retreat that the opposition party, Democrat Party, just had, 
they made a statement. The spokesman for the Speaker said both the 
Speaker and leadership agree that it is preferable to use regular 
order, especially in nonemergency cases, and that has always been the 
intent.
  This is not an emergency bill, but we are not going through regular 
order or using the process allowed. And someone would simply have to 
ask, Why? Why are we allowing the Senate to send over a blob of bills 
in which every case possible, when there was a Senate version, the 
House version was dropped and the Senate version was put in there? Why 
is it that House amendment after House amendment discussed on this 
floor, passed on this floor, both Republican and Democrat, were simply 
eliminated by our friends on the other side of the body? Why is it that 
they said discussing House amendments would take too long?
  Some of the bills placed in this package have been sitting over in 
the Senate for 2 full years, passed in this body 2 years ago, and one 
would simply have to ask how long does it take for a Senator to read an 
amendment and why should we have a flawed version? What is the rush on 
this particular bill and who are the losers if we place this process in 
this particular order.
  One of those answers is, well, taxpayers. This bill, according to the 
Congressional Budget Office, has somewhere between a $7 billion to $10 
billion price tag. In the stimulus bill, depending on how it ends up, 
there was $2 billion put in for the National Park Service to try to put 
a dent in the backlog of National Park Service projects. I understand 
why that is there, and it is definitely needed.
  In my State, where they have those leases that were dismissed, 
unfortunately, is Dinosaur National Monument. This is the Visitor 
Center. This is one of the coolest places I have ever been. You go 
inside, and they have scraped some of the dirt off the side of the 
mountain and you can see embedded in the rock, fossil remains of almost 
any dinosaur you want. It is a fantastic site, and this Visitor Center 
is condemned and closed for years because the Park Service does not 
have the money to fix it.
  I understand why you would want to add $2 billion to try to get at 
what is estimated at around a $9 billion backlog. But what I don't 
understand is as you are trying to solve these kinds of problems and 
putting money in the stimulus bill, why do we then pass an omnibus land 
bill that adds another $10 billion worth of backlog on top of what we 
already have? Why are we trying to expand and divert the resources that 
we have instead of taking care of what we have first? That would simply 
make sense. It is, indeed, countereffective.
  Why in this land bill is there a place for a national park back east 
that will include, among the splendors of this park, a condo, a 
microbrewery and a butterfly garden which was not recommended or 
requested by the Park Service. Politically, we put this national park 
in there. When we have these kind of legitimate needs, why are we 
expanding it in this particular way?
  This bill includes another 10 heritage areas at the price tag of $110 
million. Heritage areas, when originally established, were supposed to 
be for areas that had cultural and historic significance, and they were 
supposed to be for a short time so there would be enough incentive of 
Federal money to allow locals to take over and run those areas 
effectively to promote tourism. However, what we have seen in the past 
in another omnibus bill passed last year, as well as in this bill 
again, is not only those heritage areas coming back, but instead of 
allowing them simply to lapse, having been given the boost, we are 
extending them and their time period. We are reauthorizing them. And 
what is so amazing is we reauthorize them with more money than they 
asked. If the ask was for $10 million, we gave them $15 million. And 
for what purpose?
  The founder decided it was supposed to be for a short period of time. 
We are now using these as economic development to attract tourism. That 
is nice, but the question is why should a taxpayer in South Carolina or 
Texas be required to put his tax money into economic tourism 
development in New York State? There is nothing wrong with competition 
and helping tourism, but why compel taxpayers to help the competition 
out? This is doing nothing more than diverting our resources.
  We had a nice lady come before our committee wanting a new heritage 
area in her home State, actually crossing into two States. And I asked 
her please tell me what it is about this Federal designation that would 
make it possible to make this heritage area more attractive that you 
can't do either by the State itself or by interlocal cooperation? Is 
your State not able to hire docents to lead people through? Are there 
not enough buses to bring kids there? What do you need?
  To be very honest, as well as the lady tried to answer, she never 
said there was anything except the added respect and impetus that 
having this as a Federal designation would give it. And as soon as she 
said nothing more than the fact that this would add extra prestige to 
this area, one of my staffers leaned over and said, ``Nope, the lady is 
wrong. There are 15 million reasons why this area needs Federal help. 
Each of those reasons is green, and it has a picture of George 
Washington on it.''
  I don't have a problem with heritage areas; I do have a problem with 
diverting our resources at a time when we need to focus them on what we 
already have at hand, and this bill before us will not do it.
  Why the rush? Why not put this through regular order? And more 
importantly, who loses? And I'm sorry, but I think the taxpayers of 
this Nation lose.

  There are recreation restrictions in this bill. The American 
Motorcycle Association and a broad coalition of recreation advocates 
have said the 80 new provisions in this bill that deal with their 
particular recreation opportunity will close more than 2 million acres 
of public land to ever allowing them to recreate on them again. These 
groups' members include millions of off-highway enthusiasts, 
vacationing families, and small businesses involved in the system. And 
what they have pleaded with us to do is, quoting from the letter that 
many groups signed, ``It is our sincere hope that this Congress will 
develop a thoughtful approach to managing our public lands more than 
simply eliminating public access and creating additional layers of 
bureaucracy. Continued reasonable access to public lands is vitally 
important for current and future generations.''
  There is nothing wrong with that, so why not do it? Why the rush for 
this particular bill? And who are the losers other than Americans who 
enjoy recreating on public land.
  There is another provision in this bill which deals with the State of 
Wyoming, where the delegation is not united, which will take 3 million 
acres of land that has energy potential and take them off from 
development forever. Within this, and there is some disagreement as to 
the total number, but there may be as much as 8 trillion cubic feet of 
natural gas, 300 million barrels of oil, in a tri-State area where 
there is about $800 billion worth of oil shale, whatever the numbers 
are with which you wish to agree, it is the equivalent of 15 years of 
American energy production that can be used in this particular area; 
and the question is, Why do we rush? Especially when the delegation is 
not united on this

[[Page H1075]]

point, why do we rush this bill through and who becomes the loser?
  This is only one of 19 provisions in this particular bill where areas 
are removed from potential energy exploration. Who are the losers? 
Well, I hate to say this, but as we had the energy debate this past 
year, it is very clear that it is poor people who are the losers. If 
you are rich, and I am not saying that anyone in this room today is 
rich, but energy prices are merely an inconvenience. If you are a poor 
person, on the poverty level, 50 cents of every dollar has to go to 
energy. Those are the people who have to decide whether they get energy 
or a tuna casserole, and leave those luxuries of Hamburger Helper 
behind. Those are the people who are hurt when we rush to judgment and 
pull more acreage of energy production off the table. That is not the 
way that this is supposed to be done.
  If I can have you look at this chart for just a moment, it simply 
talks about the salaries of teachers in the State of Wyoming where we 
are now going to take 3 million acres of energy off the table, and the 
State of Montana. The higher one is what are paid teachers in Wyoming 
for every area. It shows bachelor's degree, bachelor's with experience, 
master's, and master's with experience.
  The red is what is paid in Montana. You can see there are 20 grand 
extra that you can get for teaching in Wyoming. And the question I hope 
everyone asks is, Why?
  It is very simple: because Wyoming develops their resources. If a 
State wants to be able to fund their education system to pay for their 
highways, to have a good college system, and they do not develop their 
resources, there is no hope.
  When Mr. Gohmert talked about what the secretary did by taking those 
leases off the table, the State of Utah, now trying to balance their 
budget with a negative tax flow, lost $3 million overnight. That is $3 
million which could have gone to their education system and was no 
longer available simply because the secretary decided to play games 
with special interest instead of going along with the process that took 
7 years to develop.
  This chart is also one of my favorites. It is the famous blue chart. 
The area that is shaded in blue in each State is the amount of that 
State that is owned and controlled by the Federal Government. And I 
think you can see some amazing similarities. Obviously, Nevada and 
Alaska have almost 90 percent of their State owned by the Federal 
Government. At the lower end, New York and Rhode Island have less than 
0.4 percent.
  That is amazing because those of us who live in the Rocky Mountain 
West know what it is like to have an absentee landlord, or slumlord, as 
we call it, the Federal Government in charge of our land.
  Compare this chart. The States in red are the States with the most 
difficult time paying for their education. I hate to say this, but you 
can see a one-to-one correlation between the amount of Federal land a 
State has and the inability to fund education. One of the things that 
we are finding as a phenomenon in Utah is that almost every article 
that talks about the difficulty of funding education in Utah will 
always say, well, of course, we are a public land State and there is so 
much in Utah that is untaxable. Obviously, we will have a difficult 
time. And it is true.
  But that's not the way it has to be. If the Federal Government paid 
taxes on all that land at even the cheapest rate, Utah would get $116 
million every year at the lowest possible tax rate for education alone. 
About $800 million nationwide for education alone if the Federal 
Government simply allowed themselves to pay for the amount of land that 
we have taken off the table and controlled and then still treat those 
States almost in a position of slavery.
  Once again, why the rush? Why the rush to pass this bill? And who 
loses: kids, schools, and States.

                              {time}  1900

  More and more land is going to be eaten up in this bill. Already, the 
national government owns 650 million acres. I hate to say this, but 
already there are 708 wilderness areas in the United States. That is 
about 107 million acres, three more added in this bill, making it 110 
million acres. That is roughly, if you were trying to figure something 
out, if you take the States of Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia, 
that is how much wilderness we already have in this country. So the 
question ought to be how much do we really need? How much should we be 
adding? Especially when one considers, according to the Congressional 
Research Office, there are only 108 million acres developed in this 
country. Urban-suburban areas come up with 108 million acres. This bill 
will create 109-plus million acres of wilderness.
  The question is why the rush to judgment, the speed for passing this 
bill? And once again, who loses? Those wonderful heritage areas don't 
count, I might add. The National Park Service said to have a heritage 
area, it should be something historically significant. By definition in 
the Parks Service, that means a cohesive, naturally distinctive 
landscape. I hate to say this, Tennessee, the entire State, is a 
heritage area. I want you to tell me what is the cohesive, naturally 
distinctive element from the Mississippi River to the Appalachian 
Mountains that ties Tennessee together in one of these national 
heritage areas? What I think I'm saying is I know who the losers are. 
And those are the people who are funding this system.
  We have concerns of private property with this bill, simply because 
every element to try and protect private property was stripped in the 
Senate. There are very few people who know that the Secretary of the 
Interior, who is one of the few cabinet members, maybe the only cabinet 
member, that has the right to condemn property. Why? Why is that in 
there? Why is that provision given to him? Why is it that when we try 
to bring this up and everybody says, no, no, no, we will put 
protections in the law, this was one of the laws we passed already, but 
what we tried to say is when you talk about protections that we're 
putting in the law, nothing will supersede the underlying code we have 
which says that nothing contained in this section shall preclude the 
use of condemnation, which is the power the Secretary of the Interior 
has. We tried to limit and soften this. And fortunately, this House 
went along with many of those amendments. The Senate took them all out. 
Why the speed? Why the rush? And who becomes the losers?
  Oftentimes, we were told that if you create a heritage area, again, 
not a park but a heritage area, okay, there will be no kind of overt 
control on the people who have private property in those heritage 
areas. There was one that we passed last year that deals with property 
very close to the Capitol here. And the guarantee was that at no time 
would this interfere with local government or private property rights. 
And yet within 6 months of the passage of that bill, the leaders and 
organizers of that heritage area were already meeting in a letter that 
came out in the Gettysburg Times with three local communities to revise 
their outdoor signage codes. In essence, what they said is that the 
heritage area gave them extra teeth with outdoor sign regulations along 
the corridor. And they used them. One of the councilmen, actually a 
supervisor in one of the townships, quite simply said, this is an 
amazing process we are now stuck in. This township voiced apprehension 
about the agency's or this heritage area's agenda and whether the group 
plans to lobby for further land-use regulations along the corridor. My 
question is, he said, what is next? When we originally passed this, it 
was with the understanding there would be no usurping of local 
government control. This is trying to change our zoning. And the guy 
fears that new signage regulations would curb commercial development in 
his township.
  Now all these things need to be worked out. The House, to its credit, 
and Chairman Rahall, to his credit, tried to work through those issues. 
The Senate pulled them all back and sent us this omnibus bill with 
individuals without any sort of protection whatsoever. It's called 
``regulatory taking.'' What is worry to me is what we should be doing 
is making sure that every person who has private property in a 
potential heritage area is notified by the government that they will 
now be included in the heritage area and they should know what that 
entails. And yet when we tried to put that specific language in, it was 
rebuffed. But that

[[Page H1076]]

should be the very minimum, because that is exactly what happened. And 
those people with private property, they are the losers. And why once 
again, why the speed and the rush to pass this particular bill?
  One of those elements in there is one we have talked about a long 
time before. The good old Taunton River. The Taunton River project in 
Massachusetts has 35 miles of the upper Taunton which clearly qualifies 
as wild and scenic rivers, and 7 miles in the lower Taunton, which 
doesn't. Now I spent a lot of time on this floor talking about that 
bill, so I don't need to rehash everything. But the issue at hand is 
simply this, 40 years ago, we wrote a wild and scenic river bill for 
the purpose of allowing protection for scenic, recreational, 
geological, fish and wildlife, historical and cultural endeavors and to 
protect them from development. That is the purpose of a wild and scenic 
river.
  Now when I came in here last year arguing about this particular bill, 
I showed you a lot of ugly pictures found in Taunton River. I was 
overly rambunctious in my rhetoric. Fall River is not an ugly city. It 
is a very attractive one. In any city you can find bad pictures. I 
found ugly ones. The sponsor of this bill found pretty ones. The issue, 
though, is not is it ugly or pretty. The issue is if there is any 
construction, it no longer qualifies as a wild and scenic river. By the 
definition of law, if it's a wild and scenic river, within one-half 
mile of the bank, there can be no construction, only needful building. 
Look at this. There are nice homes and docks. There is a maritime 
museum. There are condominiums. There is commercial development. There 
is industrial development. All of that precludes this from ever being 
considered. Once again, the parks department did not recommend this as 
a wild and scenic river. They said in the report it was controversial. 
It was problematic. It would solve some political problems. But it's 
not what was at hand.
  And why am I railing against this provision? Not because I don't like 
the people in this area, even though I have received a signature of 
petition from 1,000 people from Fall River and the community in 
Massachusetts who are objecting to this procedure, but because of what 
this does to the rule of law. Look, we have all these great lawgivers 
around us. Hammurabi was the first one. And the addition you have, the 
importance you have of law, is you have down in writing what is the 
standard of conduct. And when a standard of conduct can be changed by 
simply a majority vote, all of a sudden, the reason and purpose for 
having the law in the first place become moot. It becomes harmful. Who 
we are harming by passing this is not just the people in this area, 
although they recognize that. It's harming all of us because what we 
are doing is saying, we will make a definition of what a wild and 
scenic river is, and whenever we can get enough votes on this floor, we 
will throw it out and do whatever we wish to do. And that is the exact 
opposite of the way a civilized society should run itself.

  Why the rush to judgment? And why, for heaven's sake, are we doing 
this? And who becomes the losers? Not just in the specific area of 
Massachusetts, but in this Nation, who becomes the losers? That is us. 
There is a National Landscape Conservation System already under 
internal investigation. I don't expect anything to come from that. But 
we should at least wait until the internal investigation is done before 
we move forward with anything.
  This bill codifies that. And it puts 28 million acres, most of it in 
the West, with another layer of bureaucracy to administer. That is not 
a new administration, it's an additional administration. And I'm sorry, 
as somebody who lives in the West, I can tell you that will make a 
difference to those of us who live in the West. This new document now 
allows the Federal Government to regulate such wonderful things as, get 
ready for this one, smellscapes. I don't know how you judge smells in a 
public park. I don't know why you would want to judge smells in a 
public park. But that is the power we are giving. Why the rush to 
judgment? And for heaven's sake, who loses in this particular process?
  We have one other element that is in there, too. We are now going to 
ban people from finding fossils on public ground. This is a bill that 
was heard in committee but was never heard on the floor of this House. 
This House did not pass that bill. It was not passed in the Senate, 
either, until it was added, once again, as another add-on to this 
particular omnibus lands bill. But before me, I have this statement of 
the Association of Applied Paleontological Sciences who are objecting 
to this bill, not that this bill can't be worked out in some way, but 
that this bill does not do it. They talk about section 5 paragraph 3 
that talks about locality and localities not being released, which is 
the exact opposite of what paleontological science should do, about 
section 8 where you are supposed to identify a fair market value for 
anything found, which you cannot do, about section 7, where people 
cannot support a false record or label or identification on something, 
and when you find it, you don't know what it is, it cannot be done, and 
section 9 where vehicles or equipment may be taken away for any kind of 
violation of 5, 8 and 7, which cannot be done.
  The problem the experts are pointing out is the bill is unworkable. 
Why is it added? Why is there a rush to pass this bill? And who 
obviously loses in this process? I could talk about things that make 
this bill as uncomfortable as the stimulus. I could ask why, in this 
omnibus land bill, will we spend $12 million to give the Smithsonian 
the chance to build a new greenhouse in Maryland to develop orchids? 
Why are we giving $5 million to a tropical botanical garden in Hawaii 
and Florida that already brings in $12 million a year at a $4 million 
profit with $59 million of assets? Why do they need another $5 million 
from taxpayers? Why are we spending $4 million, this is a wonderful 
one, to find nonlethal efforts to prevent predatory behavior by wolves, 
$4 million to create wimpy wolves, and $1 billion to save 500 salmon in 
California? There are only 500. We are spending $1 billion. I certainly 
hope these fish are never on the Oceanaire menu, because at this price, 
that is $2 million a fish to be developed.
  Why are we doing that? Is it because, as some of the myths say, if we 
don't pass this now we never will? No. Is it because this bill has been 
fully vetted? I have just gone over that. It hasn't been. It hasn't 
been in this body. Is this bill having solid bipartisan support? Then 
why are there over 100 organizations, from the chambers of commerce to 
recreation bodies to land-use bodies to public entity bodies, who are 
in opposition, not only to the content but especially to the process of 
this particular bill? And we should pass it because it is 
noncontroversial? Look, in the Congressional Research Service, the 
research arm, whatever that is, 37 times it uses the words 
``controversial'' to describe provisions in this bill. This is not a 
bill everyone has signed off on and everyone agrees to and it doesn't 
do any harm.
  We are breaking procedural processes. Bad procedure creates bad 
process and bad product. Why? Why is there a rush? Why not allow this 
to go through regular order? There is no emergency status on this bill. 
And once again, since we are rushing through the process, who wins? And 
more importantly, who loses? And there are a whole lot of people who 
lose. I would like this body, rather than passing this bill, to go 
through and cull out the provisions that truly are nonpartisan and 
noncontroversial. And there are a whole bunch of them, most of which 
have passed this body at one time or another. I would even be willing 
to go out and put in the bills that passed this body over my opposition 
because at least it was done fairly.
  But more importantly, I would like us to do something proactively, 
establish private property protections, so that anyone that may be 
included in the broad grasp of the Federal Government, whether it be in 
the area of a national park or one of the newly created heritage areas 
in which they don't know what is about to hit them, give them the right 
of protection, take away the power of the Secretary of the Interior to 
condemn property, allow individuals to be notified if they are going to 
be included in any kind of park service area, especially heritage 
areas, and make sure that people have options and true transparency. 
What we need to have is a comprehensive energy policy so we are not 
taking 19 little areas here and there, piece by piece,

[[Page H1077]]

and taking them off the plate, but rather having it be a part of a 
logical program of how we are going to become energy self-sufficient in 
this country first and then deal with these land issues.
  Why do we not establish a heritage criteria so that before any other 
group decides to create this area of getting more Federal money so they 
can promote their own tourism at the cost of other taxpayers elsewhere, 
there is a criteria of what is and what is not a true heritage area?
  And why don't we help kids with the program that we once introduced 
called ``Apple'' which simply said in all those Western States whose 
land is now controlled by the Federal Government and was never intended 
to be, if you read the enabling acts of every Western State except 
Hawaii and California, and California's was done by a law 2 years 
later, that land was supposed to be given to the Federal Government 
until such time as the Federal Government shall dispose of it, and five 
percent of the proceeds of those disposals was supposed to go to the 
State for a permanent education trust fund.

                              {time}  1915

  And I have a bill called the Apple Bill, which simply says, look, if 
the Federal Government isn't going to live up to what they said in law, 
let the States pick 5 percent of their public lands to be used for the 
sole purpose of funding education in the States. And then the disparity 
between public land States and nonpublic land States will not be so 
glowing, and that my kids will have a chance at a decent education, and 
my colleges in my State will be funded. And since I'm an old public 
school teacher, so that my retirement will actually be there when I 
need it. I have some selfish motivations as well because, you see, in 
all these bills going through here, if you ask who are the losers, I 
am. My State is harmed. My kids are harmed. My education system is 
harmed. And why, for heavens sake, the rush to judgment?
  Now, Mr. Speaker, unless the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) would 
desire a postscript--can I ask, can I inquire just how much time is 
left?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Perriello). The gentleman has 27 minutes 
remaining.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I have talked longer than I have ever done in my 
life, and hope never to top that record again. But I do have a moment 
if the gentleman from Texas would like to add a postscript.
  Mr. GOHMERT. I appreciate the gentleman yielding. One of the things 
that's been so troubling with all the promises in 2006 that, if the 
Democrats were put back in the majority, then they would be the most 
open House, this would be the most open House, everything would go 
through committee, everything would go through regular order. It has 
turned out that those have been completely hollow promises. This has 
been, from the best I can determine from the history of this place, 
perhaps the most totalitarian in the last 2 years, and it's certainly 
shaping up that way now. There's no chance for input.
  We saw in the last Congress, they even found a way around conference 
committees by just cutting House Republicans out completely, finding 
some Republicans in the Senate willing to go along, agreeing to a bill 
without the conference rule being followed, and then being sent back 
over and over and over.
  There's amendments not being allowed. The rules are being changed 
this time, stripping out so much that is proper process. All of those 
people represented by people in the minority should a chance to have 
their vote in this House, but we're rapidly building into a situation 
of taxation without representation because we're not being allowed--we 
can come to the floor and talk like this, but we're not being allowed 
to have input in these bills, and they're being rammed down the throats 
of Americans who deserve better. They deserve the transparency that has 
not happened.
  And I just appreciate so much my friend from Utah (Mr. Bishop) 
pointing out the problems with the process that has created such a 
terrible monstrosity as this bill ultimately, with some good 
ingredients in there, but ultimately a terrible monstrosity. And I 
appreciate my friend for yielding.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Reclaiming my time, I appreciate the gentleman 
from Texas (Mr. Gohmert). Once again, I think we need to--in fact, the 
gentleman from Texas probably knows there is a new word in our 
vocabulary now called ``ping-ponging'' which is the process of 
eliminating conference committee and just pinging the bill back and 
forth between Houses, without ever having to involve the minority in 
any of those messy discussions. That's a new term.
  But, once again, I would just like to conclude by asking the Speaker 
to do what her spokesman said when she said both the Speaker and 
leadership agree, it is preferable to use regular order, especially in 
non-emergency cases, and that has always been the intent.
  Putting this bill on the floor without going through regular order, 
without allowing a committee to look at it, without allowing, if it 
comes on a closed rule, comes under suspension, that's a violation of 
the process.
  And once again, I don't mind losing quite as much if the process is 
open and fair. And that's what we're asking for.
  This is not an emergency bill. We're asking for an open, fair 
process.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I know the staff will be very happy since I 
appear to be the last speaker of the day, and a chance for you to 
actually get home at a reasonable hour.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

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