[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 13]
[House]
[Pages 18762-18763]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


[[Page 18762]]

     WAIVING SECTION 132 OF LEGISLATIVE REORGANIZATION ACT OF 1946

  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I 
call up House Resolution 266 and ask for its immediate consideration.
  The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:

                              H. Res. 266

       Resolved, That upon the adoption of this resolution it 
     shall be in order to consider in the House a concurrent 
     resolution waiving the requirements in section 132 of the 
     Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 that the Congress 
     adjourn sine die not later than July 31, 1999. The concurrent 
     resolution shall be considered as read for amendment and 
     shall not be subject to debate. The previous question shall 
     be considered as ordered on the concurrent resolution to 
     final adoption without intervening motion.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Pease). The gentleman from California 
(Mr. Dreier) is recognized for 1 hour.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the 
customary 30 minutes to my very good friend, the gentleman from Dallas, 
TX (Mr. Frost), pending which I yield myself such time as I may 
consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is 
for the purpose of debate only.
  Mr. Speaker, this rule simply makes in order a concurrent resolution 
waiving the requirement in section 132 of the Legislative 
Reorganization Act of 1946 that Congress adjourn sine die no later than 
July 31.
  As my friend from Dallas knows, this requirement that Congress 
adjourn by the end of July is a relic of a bygone era, although many of 
us wish we actually could adjourn by July 31. The last time that the 
Congress did it was July 31, 1956.
  In fact, a decade ago, my friend from Boston, the distinguished 
ranking minority member of the Committee on Rules, tried desperately to 
repeal section 132, going so far as to get legislation passed in the 
House, only to have it not considered by our friends in the other body. 
I hope we can actually resurrect that effort in a bipartisan way and I 
hope that we can move ahead with this rule in a very timely manner.
  I urge its adoption.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. FROST. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California for 
yielding me the customary half-hour, and I yield myself such time as I 
may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I support this rule and the resolution allowing the 
House to continue to work beyond the statutory deadline of July 31.
  We have a lot more work to do and the American people want us to get 
it done.
  The American people want us to pass a Patients' Bill of Rights to 
ensure no one is denied medical services regardless of the bottom line.
  The American people want us to pass campaign finance reform to take 
our political system back from the powerful special interests and give 
it to the American citizens.
  The American people want us to protect Social Security and Medicare 
before they collapse beginning in the year 2015.
  The American people want us to finish the Juvenile Justice bill in 
order to get the funding in place now to protect our schools before 
classes start up in the fall.
  Although we only have another week before Congress goes into recess, 
I hope my Republican colleagues will consider taking up these important 
issues before any others.
  I urge my colleagues to support this rule.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Following last November's election, many people predicted that our 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle, especially here in the 
House, would focus their energies on partisan attacks rather than 
legislative accomplishments.
  Rather than engage in partisan battles, we on this side have focused 
on a straightforward plan of what we call governing conservatism. It is 
designed to address the critical national issues such as saving Social 
Security and Medicare, restoring our national defense, improving public 
education for our children and providing tax relief to the hardworking 
Americans who have created a $3 trillion surplus.
  I am very proud to report that we have in the past 6 months made real 
progress on each of these important fronts, often with very strong 
support from our friends on the other side of the aisle.
  The House has passed, as we all know, Social Security lockbox to make 
sure that every dollar in payroll taxes is set aside to save Social 
Security and Medicare. The President recently came on board with his 
announcement of support of the concept that we have been pushing for 
quite a while.
  We passed the National Missile Defense Act, an emergency defense 
spending bill and legislation to address the lax security at our 
Nation's nuclear labs, all three of them moving forward on national 
security and military readiness priority agendas. I am happy to say 
that the President has been largely supportive of all three of those 
measures.
  We have passed the Education Flexibility Act to allow the States to 
be creative and use Federal education assistance to craft effective 
local solutions to education needs, and I am very happy that the 
President signed that into law.
  Now we are moving forward to provide meaningful tax relief to 
American families, that question that was raised by my friend from 
Dallas just a few minutes ago.
  Just like our Social Security lockbox, ballistic missile defense and 
education flexibility, we are going to continue to do our doggonedest 
to work with the President to make sure that we can provide legislation 
that proceeds with our legislative goals and at the same time gains his 
signature.
  Mr. Speaker, while this majority prefers bipartisan accomplishments, 
we are equally prepared to deal with partisan attack and obstructionism 
if that does in fact take place.
  Unfortunately, the minority leader recently made it completely clear 
that stopping the Congress from getting things done in order to win 
back the five seats that people have talked about in next year's 
election is the number one, top priority for our friends. The thing 
that is troubling is that the idea of writing off the next 15 months in 
the name of partisanship is both disappointing and surprising. We are 
going to stick with the people's business, getting things done for the 
country.
  In just the past few weeks, we are proud of the historic bipartisan 
Y2K litigation reform that I and a few of my colleagues had introduced 
back on February 23, have been working on for over a year. We e-mailed 
that bill down to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and the President signed it 
into law.
  As we all know, the House, with a very bipartisan majority, passed 
the Africa trade bill; and just this week, something I have spent many 
years working on, year after year, and I hope someday we will be able 
to end the annual battle on maintaining something that the President 
wanted and we provided even more Republicans for it this year, and, 
that is, maintaining normal trade relations with the People's Republic 
of China.

                              {time}  1430

  We are also on track to meet the pledge of the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Hastert), very close to it at least, by getting 12 of 13 
appropriation bills done before we adjourn next Friday. Most of those 
appropriation bills have passed that we have gotten through so far with 
again strong bipartisan majorities.
  So, Mr. Speaker, let me just say that this majority is moving the 
ball forward on key priorities of the American people. We are very 
proud of the things that we have been able to do by gaining bipartisan 
support for what have been our legislative initiatives. Again,

[[Page 18763]]

whenever we possibly can, we are going to continue to seek support from 
our colleagues on the other side of the aisle. But remember, if they 
do, in fact, subscribe to what was outlined by the minority leader in 
that Washington Post article last week; and they want to obstruct our 
efforts here, we are willing to fight hard to make sure that we get the 
people's work done, and with that I will, as we continue with what I 
hope will only be 1 week beyond the stated goal, at least until we 
adjourn in August, I will urge support of this rule.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the 
previous question on the resolution.
  The previous question was ordered.
  The resolution was agreed to.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 266, I call up 
the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 168) waiving the requirement of 
section 132 of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 that the 
Congress adjourn sine die not later than July 31, 1999, and ask for its 
immediate consideration in the House.
  The Clerk read the title of the concurrent resolution.
  The text of House Concurrent Resolution 168 is as follows:

                            H. Con. Res. 168

       Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate 
     concurring), That, notwithstanding the provisions of section 
     132(a) of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 (2 
     U.S.C. 198(a)), the House of Representatives and the Senate 
     shall not adjourn for a period in excess of three days, or 
     adjourn sine die, until both Houses of Congress have adopted 
     a concurrent resolution providing either for an adjournment 
     (in excess of three days) to a day certain or for adjournment 
     sine die.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 266, the 
concurrent resolution is considered as read, is not debatable, and the 
previous question is ordered to final adoption without intervening 
motion.
  The question is on the concurrent resolution.
  The concurrent resolution was agreed to.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

                          ____________________