[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 18]
[House]
[Pages 25814-25823]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




          FURTHER CONTINUING APPROPRIATIONS, FISCAL YEAR 2000

  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I 
call up House Resolution 334 and ask for its immediate consideration.
  The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:

                              H. Res. 334

       Resolved, That upon the adoption of this resolution it 
     shall be in order without intervention of any point of order 
     to consider in the House the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 71) 
     making further continuing appropriations for the fiscal year 
     2000, and for other purposes. The joint resolution shall be 
     considered as read for amendment. The previous question shall 
     be considered as ordered on the joint resolution to final 
     passage without intervening motion except: (1) one hour of 
     debate equally divided and controlled by the chairman and 
     ranking minority member of the Committee on Appropriations; 
     and (2) one motion to recommit.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaTourette). The gentleman from 
California (Mr. Dreier) is recognized for 1 hour.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciate the overly large and 
enthusiastic crowd here to enjoy this debate.
  Mr. Speaker, for purposes of debate only, I yield the customary 30 
minutes to my very dear friend, the gentleman from south Boston and 
extend condolences to him with the outcome of last night's game, and 
pending that I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, 
all time yielded will be for the purposes of debate only.
  Mr. Speaker, this rule provides for the consideration of H.J. Res. 
71, making further continuing appropriations for the fiscal year 2000 
and for other purposes, under a closed rule, waiving all points of 
order. The rule provides that the joint resolution shall be considered 
as read. It provides for one hour of debate, equally divided and 
controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee 
on Appropriations, and it provides for one motion to recommit.
  As my colleagues know, Mr. Speaker, the previous continuing 
resolution expires at the end of the day on Thursday, the day after 
tomorrow, and a further continuing resolution is necessary to keep the 
government operating while Congress completes the few remaining 
appropriations bills that have yet to be sent to the President or have 
been vetoed. H.J. Res. 71 simply extends the October 21 deadline to 
October 29.
  Mr. Speaker, contrary to what some may contend and I suspect what we 
may hear in the next hour, we are, from an historical perspective, 
ahead of schedule. Let me say that again. We are ahead of schedule on 
our appropriations work. Congress, under both Democratic and Republican 
majorities, regularly utilize continuing resolutions as a method of 
keeping the government functioning while negotiations continue. In 
fact, only three times, let me say that again, Mr. Speaker, only three 
times in the last two decades, the last 20 years, has Congress passed 
all 13 appropriations bills by the fiscal deadline. And, with the 
constraints that we are dealing with now, the Balanced Budget Agreement 
of 1997, I think that it is very, very appropriate that we are exactly 
where we are.
  Despite the best efforts of the President and some of the minority, 
we are committed to passing all of the appropriations bills without 
borrowing one dime of the Social Security Trust Fund, again an 
unprecedented issue, and this very short-term continuing resolution is 
necessary so that we can, in fact, achieve that very important 
objective.
  The continuing resolution was thoroughly vetted by the joint 
leaderships of the House and the Senate, the Committees on 
Appropriations, and the White House. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I am going 
to urge my colleagues to support it, and I urge them to try and keep 
the rhetoric at as low a level as possible.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. MOAKLEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  I thank my colleague and my very dear friend, the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Dreier), the chairman of the Committee on Rules, for 
yielding me the customary half-hour, and I yield myself such time as I 
may consume.
  I am very happy to hear the chairman say that we are ahead of 
schedule, but evidently the Republicans must have added 3 months to the 
calendar, because I do not know how we can be ahead of schedule on the 
schedule we are on.
  Mr. Speaker, this rule provides for the consideration of the second 
continuing resolution to come before the House this year. This will 
enable the Federal Government to remain open until October 29, despite 
my Republican colleagues' inability to finish the 13 appropriation 
bills by the day they were due.
  Mr. Speaker, I understand that appropriations bills take an enormous 
amount of time and an enormous amount of work, but the October 1 
deadline has been in effect for years and it should not come as any 
surprise that these bills were supposed to have been completed and sent 
to the President before that day. In fact, every single fiscal year 
since my Republican colleagues took control of the Congress, we have 
had to pass continuing resolutions to keep the Federal Government open. 
Otherwise, the Federal Government would shut down like it did in 1995; 
and Mr. Speaker, the American people are not going to stand for that 
again.

[[Page 25815]]

  So far, we have passed five appropriations bills that have been 
signed into law: Legislative branch, Transportation and Military 
Construction, Treasury-Postal, Energy and Water. Two await action at 
the White House: Agriculture and Defense. The Senate is working to pass 
VA-HUD. Two have already been vetoed and must be rewritten: District of 
Columbia and Foreign Operations. Two have yet to pass the House: 
Interior and Commerce-Justice. And, Mr. Speaker, one has not even been 
reported out of subcommittee, and that is Labor-HHS.
  But, there is reason to be optimistic. Today, President Clinton has 
invited our Republican colleagues to join with the Democratic leaders 
at the White House to try to resolve some of these outstanding 
appropriation issues. I commend President Clinton for reaching out to 
my Republican colleagues, and this will be the first time they have met 
with the President on appropriations; and despite this late date, Mr. 
Speaker, I wish all of them well in their negotiations.
  Although I am sorry my Republican colleagues have not finished their 
work, I will support this second continuing resolution because the 
American people deserve a government that is open for business 24 hours 
a day. I urge my colleagues to support this bill.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
Indian Rocks Beach, Florida (Mr. Young), the distinguished chairman of 
the Committee on Appropriations, who has worked long and hard; he and 
his committee have worked long and hard.
  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I really had not planned to speak 
on the rule because I thought we might handle the rule quickly and then 
get to the continuing resolution, but when my dear friend from 
Massachusetts mentioned the fact that he disagreed with the gentleman 
from California (Mr. Dreier) that the Republicans had kept the 
appropriations schedule on track, he said they changed the calendar by 
about 3 months. It was not us that did that.
  I remember when the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Moakley) and I 
were both here in 1974 when the Democrats did that. The fiscal year 
used to begin on July 1. They could not get the job done, despite the 
fact they had massive majorities in the House. So they just changed the 
date of the fiscal year from the first of July to the first of October.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, I would like to also say to my friend, the 
gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Moakley) and any others who are 
concerned about the pace, the House Committee on Appropriations had 
reported out 12 of the 13 appropriations bills before the end of July, 
plus the two supplementals. The only bill that we did not report out 
was the Labor-HHS bill. And of all of the bills we reported out, we 
passed them all before the August recess in the House, all but the VA-
HUD bill. And the VA-HUD bill was held up out of respect for a member 
on the Democrat side who requested that we postpone consideration of 
that bill, and we were more than happy to do it. So the House has 
pretty much done its job on appropriations ahead of schedule.
  So I just took this time to remind my very dear friend from 
Massachusetts that the House appropriators have done a pretty good job 
in keeping the train on the track and keeping it running on time. There 
have been some other situations that have slowed us down somewhat, but 
we are overcoming those too. And we are prepared, before this week is 
over, to have all of the conference reports on the President's desk.
  Mr. MOAKLEY. Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to hear the chairman say we 
are ahead of schedule. If we are, what are we doing here?
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 12 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. 
Obey), a gentleman who has a very, very good memory, and who is the 
ranking member of the Committee on Appropriations.
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, the first thing we ought to do is dismiss the 
piece of fiction that we just heard from my good friend from Florida 
(Mr. Young). He just told this House that because the Congress could 
not pass a budget on time back in the 1970s, that it simply added 3 
months to the fiscal year. That is absolutely, totally not true.

                              {time}  1100

  It is interesting to me how people sometimes continue believing in 
fictions that they themselves have invented if they repeat those 
fictions often enough, and I think this is one such case.
  The fact is that what happened in the mid-seventies is that the 
Congress redrew the entire budget process and when they did that they 
put into motion a change that would be effective 2 years later, which 
would simply change the fiscal years which used to run from July to 
July. They simply changed it to run from October to October because 
Congress was not getting its budget done in July and August. That is 
what they did.
  There was no invention of an additional 3 months, and the gentleman, 
if he does not understand that, certainly should.
  Now, why are we here in this charade? We are here because our work is 
not done. This is not the first time; that is absolutely true. If we 
are behind, it is not the fault of the gentleman from Florida (Mr. 
Young). It is not the fault of the Committee on Appropriations.
  We are here, in my view, and I am trying to be as unbiased about this 
as possible, we are here basically for four reasons. First of all, 
because a budget deal was signed by the President and the congressional 
leadership 3 years ago which was a public lie. That budget promised 
that the Congress was going to make across-the-board cuts averaging 13 
percent over 5 years' time in real terms. I said at the time that was a 
public lie, that the Congress would never do that to education or 
health care or defense, and I think events have demonstrated my 
criticism to be correct.
  The second reason we are here is because, as Senator Stevens noted in 
the conference yesterday, the Congress got behind by 3 months because 
it was busy trying to impeach the President and drive him from office. 
So that slowed us down by 3 months. Then we were slowed down another 6 
months because our majority friends in the Republican Party tried to 
pass a tax bill that gave 70 percent of the benefits to the wealthiest 
5 percent of people in this country, those folks who make over $100,000 
a year, and that huge tax got in the way of our being able to do 
anything to strengthen Social Security or Medicare or to add to our 
support for education and health care.
  It also meant that they had no time to fix Social Security and no 
time to fix Medicare, something the President asked us to do in his 
State of the Union message. Then the problem was compounded by the fact 
that the Republican majority added $14 billion above the amount the 
Pentagon asked for, first for the supplemental that went through here a 
few months ago and then in the regular defense bill.
  Having spent such a huge amount of money on Republican priorities, 
there was not then enough room in the budget to meet the President's 
priorities for land legacy, for smaller class size, for the social 
services block grant, and for cops on the beat and other programs that 
the President thinks are important.
  Yet, to pretend that there was enough room in the budget to do all of 
the things that have been promised, our Republican friends invented 
some $40 billion worth of gimmicks in their budget to pretend that they 
are not blowing money like crazy. They invented the 13-month concept. 
What they are saying is they are going to write checks for $27 billion, 
but they are going to tell people: ``Do not spend the money until after 
October 1 so that it will show up on the books for the next year rather 
than this year.'' That is simply a $27 billion gimmick, which makes the 
budget look a lot better than it is.
  Second, they then told the Congressional Budget Office, which is 
supposed to be our neutral scorekeeper, they have told them: ``Boys and 
girls, just

[[Page 25816]]

ignore what you really think these programs are going to really cost 
and simply tell us in your official bookkeeping that they are going to 
cost $14 billion less than you think they are going to cost us. So that 
hides another $14 billion.
  Then what they have done is they have produced what they call 
``emergency'' spending, because under our ridiculous budget rules if we 
call a program an emergency spending item then that spending does not 
count under the budget ceilings that we have imposed upon ourselves. In 
the past, we had gimmicks like that to the tune of about $3 billion a 
year, and they were primarily for programmatic reasons because there 
were some programs like the low-income heating assistance where we 
needed to know a year in advance how much money we were going to spend, 
so we appropriated a year in advance.
  But they have converted that advance appropriation device into a 
device simply to again hide massive amounts of spending, and this small 
chart I have here demonstrates that while we used to have about $3 
billion a year in that hidden advanced spending, in this year's budget 
that they are recommending we have $27 billion. That sets a new record 
for irresponsible accounting, as far as I am concerned.
  Then what they say, after they have done all of that and adopted all 
of those gimmicks to pretend that the budget gap is much smaller than 
it really is, then they say: ``Now we are going to jump across it with 
only a 1 percent cut and we are going to make everything sweet.'' That 
is like saying you can jump across the Grand Canyon because you define 
it as only 10 feet wide, but when they jump it is going to be a long 
fall, and I hope that is understood.
  Now, what they are doing to cover their tracks is they are inventing 
this phony argument about Social Security. So the Republican Party that 
tried to kill Social Security in the cradle when it was first passed by 
President Roosevelt, the Republican Party that has tried to turn 
Medicare and Social Security over to the insurance companies by 
privatizing Social Security, the party that has for years tried to pass 
tax cuts which got in the way of our strengthening Social Security or 
Medicare--it in fact took money out of Medicare in order to pay for 
those tax cuts--that party is now claiming at this late date that it is 
somehow going to be a strong defender of Social Security.
  I would like to say I think nothing is more appalling in this debate 
than the decline in the quality of debate as represented by the Social 
Security issue. The term ``spending Social Security'' could not be more 
misleading, and I would like to make a series of points that I do not 
think many people really dispute in order to show exactly how hollow 
this whole discussion really is.
  First of all, no one is proposing spending any of the revenues 
collected for Social Security on anything other than Social Security 
beneficiaries, and they know it. If they assert otherwise, they are not 
telling the truth.
  Second, the reserves in the Social Security Trust Fund are large and 
growing rapidly. At the end of last month, they exceeded $850 billion. 
They are rapidly approaching a trillion dollars. They will be over a 
trillion dollars before Christmas of 2000. One hundred percent of those 
reserves are in U.S. securities, and my colleagues know it. Neither 
party is offering a proposal that would change where we invest our 
Social Security reserves at any time over the next decade. All Social 
Security reserves will continue to be invested in U.S. treasuries, and 
my colleagues know that.
  This Government ran huge deficits in the '80s and '90s in the non-
Social Security side of the budget, and they were so large that the 
entire budget, including Social Security surpluses, was in deficit. 
Overall public debt exploded during that period. The best measure of 
that is that public debt as a percentage of our total national income 
jumped from 26 percent to more than 50 percent between 1980 and the 
mid-1990s.
  That forced us as a country to make huge, heavy annual interest 
payments that weakened our ability to eventually meet our obligations 
for a strong defense, for investments in science and education, and to 
see to it that we would be in good shape fiscally to pay back Social 
Security when the baby-boomers retired.
  I want to point something else out. Every budget submitted by 
Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, during the 12 
years they held the White House, resulted in deficits in the non-Social 
Security side of the budget that exceeded the surplus in Social 
Security trust funds by a wide margin.
  In 2 years, the Congress appropriated more money than Reagan and Bush 
requested, but in most years they appropriated less; and overall during 
those 12 years the Congress appropriated much less than they requested. 
That means that the on-budget deficits exceeded the surpluses in the 
Social Security Trust Fund for every one of those years. It means that 
those deficits can be directly attributed to the budget that they 
submitted and, again, my colleagues know that as well as I do.
  In contrast, the budget submitted by this President has caused a 
dramatic reduction in the size of the on-budget deficits. In fiscal 
1998 the on-budget deficit dropped to less than $30 billion. Since the 
Social Security Trust Fund collected $99 billion more than it paid out 
in that year, the overall unified government budget ran a $69 billion 
surplus!
  Social Security surpluses exceeded on-budget deficits by more than 
two-thirds in that year. That was the first time that Social Security 
surpluses were larger than the on-budget deficits since the reform of 
Social Security in 1980.
  In fiscal 1999, the story got even better, and it is going to be even 
better next year. The fact is that when we end the baloney between both 
parties, what we are going to find out is that we will have over a 3-
year period paid down the public debt by over $250 billion, and despite 
all of the baloney and rhetoric to the contrary, that is the single 
best thing that will have happened to Social Security since Alan 
Greenspan and Claude Pepper saved it in the '80s by redrafting several 
provisions of the program.
  So go ahead and cover the tracks if my colleagues want, or try as 
hard as they can. The fact is that the numbers indicate that good 
things, not bad things, are happening to Social Security. It has taken 
a long time for us to turn the corner on deficits; and what we ought to 
be doing is explaining to the American people in an honest way how we 
have gotten here and how we can make the situation even better rather 
than pretending that a crisis exists when, in fact, there is not one.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from 
Westerville, Ohio (Mr. Kasich), the chairman of the Committee on the 
Budget, to explain this to the American people in an honest way.
  Mr. KASICH. Mr. Speaker, I frankly am not particularly interested 
today, although I do enjoy a good Doris Kearns historical piece on 
Presidents in the 1940s, I am not all that interested in for today's 
purposes in what happened in the 1940s or what happened in the 1970s 
or, frankly, what even happened in the 1980s, although I think it is 
pretty clear at least in the 1980s Ronald Reagan came to power and 
reduced marginal rates. Imagine this, some people in America were 
paying 70 percent of what they earned, the marginal rate of 70 percent 
of what they earned, to the Government.
  He also brought a package to the floor in 1981 that not only reduced 
the taxes on the American people, reduced those marginal rates that 
were choking us, and we might remember we had that famous malaise 
speech by Jimmy Carter who said that the answer to America's problems 
were that we ought to get out of our cars and start riding bicycles, 
and we ought to turn our thermostats down and buy more sweaters and 
that we were in a period of malaise, and Reagan came in and said, no, I 
think if we cut taxes and cut spending, we, in fact, could get things 
moving again.
  He did spend more money on defense. Thank God, he spent more money on 
defense, because just this last week I

[[Page 25817]]

read an interview by Vaclav Havel in one of the current magazines, 
Vaclav Havel talking about freedom and liberty, and thank God we used a 
strong American defense to set people free, millions and millions of 
people who at one point it was only a dream that they could actually 
think freely, yet alone have the right to vote.
  Nevertheless, I am not even concerned today about the 1980s. I am 
concerned about where we are today. In 1993, we began the fight to try 
to balance the budget. In 1997, I along with Senator Domenici and some 
folks from the White House, Erskine Bowles, John Hilley, who I give 
great credit to, put together a program that called for a balanced 
budget by 2002. I do not think we can take credit for all of the good 
economic news that we have today by a long shot, but I think it is 
clear that we contributed to the good economic news, contributed to 
lower interest rates in America, which has moved us far ahead of the 
curve to the point today where we have a unique opportunity to use the 
good news of budget surpluses in a way that can leverage everybody's 
futures, particularly those who are baby-boomers and baby-boomers' 
children.

                              {time}  1115

  What is the debate about today? I stayed pretty much out of this 
debate because it is he said, she said, more Washington talk, more 
reasons for people to pay attention to the movie actors that want to 
hold public office because they are so sick and tired of listening to 
us squawking and campaigning back and forth.
  But I think the time has come, in light of the fact that the 
President is going to meet with congressional leadership today, to talk 
about what the debate is all about. It is really, frankly, pretty 
simple.
  The question is, at the end of this fiscal year when we look back, 
will the Republicans have done something that has not been done before 
in my lifetime; and that is, not to take money out of the Social 
Security surplus. We are committed not to do that. We are committed to 
say that we will preserve all of the money being collected from Social 
Security.
  Now, some people argue that that is really good for our senior 
citizens. Well, it is, rhetorically speaking. But our senior citizens 
are going to get their money. The beauty of the surplus in Social 
Security is it, number one, not only allows us to pay down some of the 
national debt, which we are doing aggressively, but it also gives us 
the opportunity to be in a position of where we can take these 
surpluses and use it to transform Social Security for three 
generations.
  If we take the Social Security surplus and spend it on additional 
programs, we are putting the baby boomers and their children in a deep 
hole. In order to save Social Security and to transform it for three 
generations, we are going to need a lot of dollars.
  Frankly, I have got a program that would save Social Security, but it 
would involve being able to take advantage of the huge surplus we have 
today for purposes of being able to set Americans free to control more 
of the Social Security taxes they pay.
  Now, what does the President want to do? Well, the President, first 
of all, wants to raise some taxes. I have got to tell my colleagues the 
revenues in America are going to go up by 50 percent over the next 10 
years. We do not need tax increases. Frankly, we need tax cuts, because 
conservatives believe we ought to run America from the bottom up, that 
the more money one has in one's pocket, the more power one has.
  Let me just suggest for a second that we should not be raising taxes. 
I, hopefully, will come to the floor in a special order and talk about 
that. The issue is whether we will allow the President or people who 
like to spend in this town to take money out of the Social Security 
surplus. We are committed as a party to not doing it.
  The proof will be in the pudding. If our appropriation bills move us 
into Social Security, we are going to cut them all across the board to 
keep us out of Social Security.
  Why do we want to do this? We want to do this because, number one, we 
want to pay down debt. Number two, we want to save Social Security for 
three generations. Thirdly, we want to change our spending habits. We 
want to clean up the waste and the duplication and the institutional 
paralysis that has set into this city.
  So as we go through this debate, my colleagues should keep their eye 
on the ball. The eye on the ball will mean this: Did the Republicans 
keep their word to keep us out of Social Security? Will the President 
constantly push us to try to raid that Social Security fund. We ought 
not to raid it. It is not right for seniors today, and it is 
particularly not right for the baby boomers and their children 
tomorrow. We need to ensure a healthier and more stable economy for the 
United States.
  Mr. MOAKLEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from 
Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts for 
yielding me this time.
  Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the presentation of the 
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kasich), the chairman of the Committee on 
Budget. I tend to agree with him, as the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. 
Obey) said earlier, that the who struck John and back and forth is 
really not of much interest to the American public.
  But the budgets that people submit are of interest because they 
presumably do suggest policy. The chairman of the Committee on Budget 
historically has offered budgets, also when it was Democrats in charge 
and so that budget would not have been adopted, which suggested 
spending either all in the sense that we exceeded the Social Security 
surplus or most of the Social Security surplus in his own budgets 
submitted to the committee and/or the House.
  It is not, I think, very useful as the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. 
Obey) pointed out, to pretend that, to date, we have not passed bills 
which, if ultimately enacted, would not spend Social Security revenues. 
They would in the sense that we would exceed the off Social Security 
surpluses in our total spending proposals.
  What we are here today to do is pass a continuing resolution. We are 
here today to pass a continuing resolution which will give us one more 
week to try to complete our job. I want to say to my friends on the 
other side of the aisle who now talk about going down to the White 
House, I am pleased they are doing that.
  But their leader about whom we have read so much recently said that, 
in effect, they were going to pass appropriation bills, hold the Labor, 
Health bill, and negotiate with the President with him on his knees.
  I do not think the American public are interested in that kind of 
political discourse. I think they expect honest discussions between the 
White House and the Congress. I think they expect and deserve an honest 
treatment of this budget process, not threats, not pretense, not 
emergency funding which, as was pointed out by the gentleman from 
Wisconsin, is now in the neighborhood of $20 billion plus.
  As my friend, the chairman of the committee, who in my opinion is 
supporting this policy, but is not the author of this policy, knows 
full well, it will have deep and drastic and adverse consequences next 
year.
  So in the name of responsibility, we are creating a major problem in 
the next year. Everybody on the Committee on Appropriations knows that. 
Everybody who knows anything about the budget knows that to be the 
case.
  The fact of the matter is Social Security is in better shape now 
because of, frankly, the 1990 budget agreement, the 1993 budget 
agreement, and, yes, the 1997 agreement.
  But let me say something about the 1997 agreement that has become the 
Holy Grail. The premise was we would still be in deficit today of the 
1997 agreement. We were wrong. Happily, we were wrong. We have done 
much better than we thought we were going to do. We are in surplus, not 
in deficit.
  So the premise underlying the 1997 agreement is not presently 
applicable.

[[Page 25818]]

That does not mean, therefore, that we ought to prolifically spend. We 
ought not to.
  But in fact, the President of the United States in February came to 
this House and said we are going to be paying down a substantial 
portion of our surplus on the national debt, the first time it has been 
done.
  Ronald Reagan and George Bush asked us to spend more money than we 
spent in those 12 years. The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) said 
that. I reiterate it. No one on the floor denies it because it is the 
fact.
  So that in terms of all this fiscal discipline that we hear about 
from our friends on the Republican side of the aisle, that may be, but 
their Presidents, Mr. Reagan and Mr. Bush, whom I supported in many of 
their policies, in particular their build up of defense, which I 
thought was appropriate, signed every nickel that was spent. We never 
overwrote a veto to spend more money. Never. Never.
  The gentlemen on the Republican side say, well, the President will 
not let us do this, so the President is doing this, that, and the other 
because he vetoes it. Yes, that it is true. The President has a lot of 
power. Ronald Reagan signed every nickel that was spent and put us $4 
trillion in additional debt. Were we responsible? Yes, we were. But, 
clearly, it could not have been done without Reagan's and Bush's 
signatures.
  In 1990, we adopted a program. In 1993, without any Republican help, 
we adopted another program. As a direct and proximate result, we have a 
surplus. Let us deal with it responsibly.
  I am going to vote for this CR to give us another 8 days. But let us 
go down and discuss with the President positively and productively, not 
in a way that tries to bring the President or the Congress to its 
knees. The American public does not want us there. They do not deserve 
to have us there.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire of the Chair how much time is 
remaining on each side.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaTourette). The gentleman from 
California (Mr. Dreier) has 19\1/2\ minutes remaining. The gentleman 
from Massachusetts (Mr. Moakley) has 10\1/2\ minutes remaining.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to yield 1 minute to the 
very distinguished and hardworking gentleman from Scottsdale, Arizona 
(Mr. Hayworth), a member of the Committee on Ways and Means.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Dreier), the chairman of the Committee on Rules, for yielding me this 
time.
  Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the gentleman from 
Maryland (Mr. Hoyer). I am so glad he abstained from the who struck 
John argument of historical revision. Mr. Speaker, the question before 
us today is, not who is going to drive whom to their knees. The 
question before us today is this: Are we going to continue to cut the 
American people off at their knees in terms of asking for more and more 
of their money, in terms of going back to these old habits of spending, 
saying that the 1997 agreement was predicated on the notion that 
surpluses would not be as plentiful so now all bets are off?
  I listened with interest to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) 
whom I have a great deal of respect, and while he bemoaned the quality 
of congressional debate, I must tell him and my colleagues, Mr. 
Speaker, that the question I hear from my constituents has to do with 
the sanctity and safety of Social Security.
  We have made history. As the Congressional Budget Office pointed out, 
for the first time since 1960, this Congress was able to generate a 
surplus and not use a dime of the Social Security surplus. Let us 
continue that. Support the rule. Support the continuing resolution. Let 
us work together.
  Mr. MOAKLEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman 
from Texas (Mr. Doggett).
  Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I sincerely believe that we could yield all 
of the time available to Democrats this morning to our Republican 
colleagues, and they could talk all day long and not convince the 
American people that this is anything other than the most do little, do 
nothing Congress since Harry Truman's day. In the words of one 
distinguished congressional historian, this Congress has a ``rendezvous 
with obscurity.''
  This Congress has wasted its time. It has wasted the time and the 
hopes of the American people. It has not done its work. There are many 
examples that can be cited of that, but let me give my colleagues just 
two.
  There is one piece of legislation that this body must consider every 
year, and that piece of legislation provides the Federal funds to 
assure that our children have an opportunity to participate in the Head 
Start program. It provides the funding for the United States Department 
of Education.
  True, until recent months, the Republican majority in this House had 
as a top objective to abolish the Department of Education and the 
Federal commitment to education. But now, hopefully, they support it. I 
suppose that they support the educational technology funding in that 
bill, the funding for student financial assistance to give our young 
people who are willing to work to get a college education the 
opportunity to get that education. All of the funding for special 
education is continued in this measure.
  It is this same bill that provides the Meals on Wheels program and 
other assistance to our seniors, that funds the National Institutes of 
Health, which conducts vital research that we are hearing from so many 
people across the country that they want to see upgraded with reference 
to cancer, with Parkinson's disease, with diabetes, with neurological 
disorders.
  It is this same bill that funds the Children's Health Insurance 
Initiative that is so important to reach the millions of our youngest 
citizens who do not have any health insurance. Of course, this bill 
also provides the funding for the Centers for Disease Control and 
Prevention.
  This piece of legislation is a very interesting piece of legislation 
because it is not really caught up in the conflict between the 
President and the Republican leadership. The President does not 
schedule bills in this House. The President does not have a vote in 
this House. We find ourselves today with the fiscal year having ended, 
having another 3 weeks, and this Republican leadership, which is so 
boastful and so proud of their successes this morning, has not brought 
the bill that does all these things to the floor.
  It has never even given the House of Representatives an opportunity 
to consider and debate the bill that deals with all of these vital 
national issues. It has no one, absolutely no one but itself to blame 
for having failed to provide us an opportunity to consider this bill.
  Let me add that, though they are here asking for yet another week to 
address this issue, they still have not even scheduled consideration of 
this important bill. That is not the fault of the President of the 
United States. It is certainly not the fault of the Democratic minority 
that stands here ready to consider this issue. It is quite clearly the 
sole responsibility of the Republican leadership that chose, on 
education, on health care, to never even bring to the floor of the 
House this piece of legislation.

                              {time}  1130

  They had a whole year to do it. They had an additional 3 weeks to do 
it. And here we are near Halloween, and we have yet to have either 
trick or treat. We have no bill even scheduled to address that issue.
  Let me give example number two. Some of us feel that a key to the 
economic success of this country has been technology, and that the 
research and development tax credit is helping provide opportunity for 
America to have more research, more emphasis on technology in this 
country and thereby more good jobs.
  I was across the hall here a few weeks ago in the Ways and Means 
Committee considering the extension of that research and development 
credit. Of course, we Democrats had already offered to the House a 
fully-paid, not robbing grandmother's and grandfather's Social 
Security, but a fully-

[[Page 25819]]

paid research and development tax credit on a permanent basis. And yet 
here we find ourselves months after that credit expired and the 
Republicans, once again, have failed to present it to the House. They 
have failed to present that research and development tax credit to the 
House.
  The only gap in the availability of this important credit in its 
history was during this Republican leadership, back in 1996. Yet we 
find ourselves today with even a Republican lobbyist saying in today's 
paper that they think that credit is ``in serious jeopardy.'' Once 
again, like the funding for education and health, Republicans do not 
even have the measure to extend the research and development tax credit 
on the schedule of this House.
  If this continuing resolution is only going to continue the same kind 
of inaction that the Republicans have given us for the last 3 weeks and 
for the last few years, we are going to find ourselves right back here 
in another week debating the same thing.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to 
tell my friend, as he and my Democratic colleagues know very well, the 
R&D tax credit was in the bill the President vetoed, and the President 
requested $34.7 billion for education, the Labor-HHS bill has $35 
billion for education.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Savannah, 
Georgia (Mr. Kingston), the leader of the theme team.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this 
time.
  I am also confused by the comments of the previous speaker. The bill 
to which he is referring to that funds Head Start and so many valuable 
education programs is included in this continuing resolution, which we 
will be voting on today. And I certainly hope, in the name of the 
children and those programs, he plans to vote in the affirmative.
  I am further confused when he talks about no achievements by this 
Congress. We passed the lockbox, and because of the lockbox, which says 
we will not spend Social Security funds for anything but Social 
Security. For the first time in history this Congress, or at least 
first time in recent history, this Congress, and this chart shows it, 
has not spent any Social Security funds on anything but Social 
Security.
  Now, in contrast, the President of the United States said in January 
let us make Social Security the number one priority and has yet to 
introduce a bill. So I would ask my Democrat friends where their bill 
is. I know there is a lot of lockstep going on over there with the 
White House, but where is their bill? If they are concerned about 
Social Security, where is their bill?
  The Educational Flexibility Act, giving teachers in the classrooms 
more control and bureaucrats in Washington less control, we passed 
that. That probably was offensive to many of these Democrats. Missile 
defense system, protecting the United States of America, passed by this 
House. Probably nothing big to Democrats. A 4.8 percent pay raise for 
our military people, trying to close the 13 percent pay gap, which has 
done nothing but grow under the current anti-military administration. 
No problem, because these folks do not like that kind of thing.
  What I also do not understand is why the Democrats want to give the 
executive branch so much more power over the legislative branch. I can 
see maybe for partisan reasons why they have to go with the President 
sometimes, but they go with the President every time. They need to 
stand up. They represent districts, not the White House. I think they 
should go back to their districts, and if people say do whatever the 
President says, then they should keep acting the way they are. But I 
suspect that the folks in my Democrat friends' districts, just like 
mine, do not send me to Washington to be a one-party water carrier. 
They want us to do what is best for them and what is best for the 
United States. But here my friends go really abdicating their power as 
legislators and giving it willingly to the executive branch in the name 
of party politics.
  We made a budget agreement in 1997. Now, an agreement, by definition, 
has to have two parties. And we all popped corks, drank champagne, 
hugged each other, Democrat and Republican, brotherly love and all that 
over at the White House, and said we have a budget agreement. And I 
will say this, the gentleman from Wisconsin did not vote for that 
agreement, neither did I, but the majority of Democrats, the majority 
of Republicans did, and the White House signed off on it. Why is it now 
only up to the Republicans to carry on this agreement? Why can the 
Democrats not live up to what they said they were going to do in 1997? 
Why are we having this dialogue? Why are we having this fight?
  Let us get over Ronald Reagan and George Bush. Guilty as charged. The 
deficit went up. And as the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) said, 
it is the responsibility of the Democrat Congress. But let us do what 
we can today for 1999 and the year 2000. Let us balance the budget and 
not do it out of Social Security.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from 
Louisville, Kentucky (Mrs. Northup), a very, very distinguished 
colleague and a hard working member of the Committee on Appropriations.
  Mrs. NORTHUP. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to join in 
this debate. I had not really intended to do it until I looked at the 
monitor in my office and heard the claim that we all know that every 
single penny of Social Security that has been spent is backed up by a 
treasury bond. I had to come over and say that that would matter. That 
would be important if there was an asset to back up those IOUs that we 
have put into Social Security.
  The truth is, there are no assets to back up the Social Security IOUs 
of $1 billion that we are going to get to in the year 2000. The fact is 
that we have no intention of ever selling off one of our schools, 
selling off one of our locks and dams, selling off any of the assets to 
cash in those bonds. The fact is that there are no assets to back them 
up.
  This would be just like me, the mother of six children, taking my 
children's college tuition and putting in an IOU in their college fund 
and going out and buying new clothes and saying that I am leaving them 
with an IOU. For what? I cannot sell off my clothes to pay off their 
tuition someday. And that is what we have done in Social Security. We 
have put in an IOU and we have spent it on programs, one program after 
another, all of which, when the money disappears, there is no way of 
recapturing it. There is no asset we can hold on to and that we can 
hand back to our kids in the year 2010 when we start needing to spend 
more than we are taking in.
  Instead, we are going to have to look at my six children and all of 
the rest of our children and tell them that we need them to pay more 
taxes this year and more the next year and more. And we are going to 
expect them not only to pay all that Social Security money back, we are 
going to expect them to keep all the new programs that we have started 
going too, not just the programs we have now, but any one of the new 
40, 60, 80 programs that this administration and our Democratic 
colleagues have asked us to fund.
  So we are asking our kids to do two things: fill up the Social 
Security bank that we have raided and keep all these programs that we 
started going with tax dollars they do not have.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from 
Kentucky (Mrs. Northup) to make at least one more salient, important 
point.
  Mrs. NORTHUP. Mr. Speaker, I am sorry, I thought we were running out 
of time here; but I would like an opportunity to also talk as a member 
of the Committee on Appropriations and what it is like to be on 
appropriations this year and move bills through.
  From the very first day of this year when we started talking about 
302(b) allocations, that is the amount that we are allowed to spend, we 
had our Democratic colleagues saying, Oh, come on, you know we're going 
to spend more than this. Oh, come on, you know we can't stay within 
these caps. Oh, you know we're going to spend more. It was like 
constant taunting every single day. Yet we quietly passed the bills as 
best we could.

[[Page 25820]]

  But one of the previous speakers is correct, we have a very narrow 
margin, and it means that we are constantly building a consensus on 
this side of the aisle. And every day it was no help. It was sort of 
like someone might treat an alcoholic that is reformed by saying, Come 
on, have a drink. Have a drink. You know you're going to have a drink 
sooner or later. Why have this pain for 6 months and then finally give 
in; let us go on and lift these budget caps now. But we have worked as 
hard as we can and as straightforward as we can.
  I want to say the other thing that I heard every step of the way, 
which is could we please have one more day before we bring things to 
the floor. One member of Appropriations after another has walked up 
here and suggested that we should be more family friendly and that we 
should finish at 6 o'clock so that everybody can go home. We have had 
one Member after another saying why are we staying over till Friday 
when we could do this next week when we come back; people complaining 
because we are here on Mondays in these debates and trying to pass 
these bills.
  So every day, every day for 6 months, it has been let us put it off 
until next week; could we have more time for amendments. And to now 
come in and criticize that we have not finished all these bills 
already, when we have to depend on 218 votes out of our very slim 
majority, is very difficult. So I want to congratulate our chairman of 
the Committee on Appropriations, who, with a very calm demeanor and a 
confidence that if good people of good will put their heads together, 
they can find a good solution, hung in there and got us this close to 
the finish.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
Langley, Washington (Mr. Metcalf).
  Mr. METCALF. Mr. Speaker, our Nation is currently involved in a 
rather new debate over protection of the Social Security surpluses, a 
debate that Republicans initiated at the beginning of this Congress.
  Secondly, for the past 30 years, Congress and the President have been 
using surpluses from the Social Security Trust Fund to mask the deficit 
in the overall Federal budget. All but 4 of these years the Democrats 
controlled the Congress.
  Third, it is the Republicans who have proposed and passed 
overwhelmingly in the House the Social Security lockbox, which 
Democrats in the Senate are filibustering.
  Fourth, Democrats are using fancy accounting in their own 
accusations. They add up everything that the House and Senate have 
passed this year rather than everything that has been enacted this 
year.
  My Democrat friends know that not a penny can be spent until it is 
enacted, and that requires approval of both Houses of Congress and the 
President. As is usual in the budget process, there are many demands on 
the limited amount of Federal dollars which the legislative process 
sifts through, setting priorities and spending no more than is 
allowable under the law.
  At the end of the day, the Congress will pass all appropriations 
bills without dipping into the Social Security surplus.

                              {time}  1145

  Mr. MOAKLEY. Mr. Speaker, will you kindly inform both myself and my 
chairman how much time is remaining.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaTourette). The gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Moakley) has 6 minutes remaining, and the gentleman 
from California (Mr. Dreier) has 10 minutes remaining.
  Mr. MOAKLEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 7 minutes to the gentleman from 
Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) the ranking member of the Committee on 
Appropriations.
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding me the time.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to just make three points in closing.
  First of all, we continue to hear the fiction that our good friends 
on the majority side of the aisle have not yet ``invaded'' the Social 
Security Trust Fund.
  The Congressional Budget Office, as my colleagues know, is the agency 
that is charged with the responsibility to keep them honest and to keep 
us honest, on both sides of the aisle. They are supposed to estimate 
what our actions have cost. If we take a look at their web site and if 
we print it out, this information will appear on page 13. If we take a 
look at their web site entitled ``Congressional Budget Office's Current 
Status of Discretionary Appropriations,'' we will see about two-thirds 
the way down the page under the title Addendum that, without the 
gimmicks of directed scoring, which hide at least $12 billion, that we 
have current status of spending totaling $606.6 billion for 
appropriation bills. That does not include any of the increases that 
the conference has put into the Labor, Health, Education bill.
  That compares to the $592 billion, which is the amount that the 
Congress can spend without touching the Social Security surplus. That 
means, in plain English and in plain mathematics, that counting what 
they have done with the earned income tax credit, they have in their 
terms ``invaded'' the Social Security surplus to the tune of $14 
billion. And if they eliminate the earned income tax credit action, 
which their side says it intends to do, then they have invaded it to 
the tune of $23 billion.
  Now, that is a fact; and all the hops, skips, and jumps that they 
perform cannot hide that fact.
  Second, I would simply respond to the previous speaker, who said that 
the reason that the House is in such a mess on our budget issues is 
because they only have a few votes above 218 so they have such a narrow 
margin that it is understandable that they have had to struggle.
  I would point out that there are 435 votes to be had in this House, 
not 218. The gentleman from Florida (Chairman Young) correctly 
recognized that. And that is why on the supplemental which he first 
brought to the committee and on the first four appropriations bills 
which he first brought to the committee, we had bipartisan agreements 
on those bills and those bills were not just going to receive 218 
votes, they were going to receive at least 300 votes because a lot of 
us were going to vote for them.
  But then what happened is the process got hijacked. It got hijacked 
by their majority whip, who decided that they were not being 
confrontational enough. And it got hijacked by the confrontational 
element in their caucus personified by, among others, the gentleman 
from Oklahoma. And when all was said and done, they took five bills in 
a row which started out to be partisan and turned them into partisan 
vehicles which we can no longer support because they unilaterally made 
changes in those bills, and they disregarded the President's priorities 
in the process.
  In my view, when this is all said and done, there is only one way 
this is going to be worked out. That is that, in the end, they are 
going to have to sit down with us and with the White House, they are 
going to have to give respectful attention to the President's 
priorities, and we are going to have to give respectful attention to 
their priorities. That is the only way in the end that adults settle 
their differences.
  So what I would suggest we do is pass this continuing resolution, 
quit the prattle and get on with the process of actually working out 
those differences.
  Mr. MOAKLEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of the time.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise, obviously, in strong support of this rule; and I 
am here to say that we, in fact, are meeting our constitutional 
obligations.
  In my opening statement, I talked about the fact that we are ahead of 
schedule. We are ahead of schedule because, if we look at the number of 
years that we have had to go well into Christmas before we had settled 
the appropriations bills, there are numerous times when we have had to 
do that.
  We are looking today at a one-week extension going to the 29th of 
October. The chairman of the Committee on Appropriations (Mr. Young) 
has worked long and hard, and we are trying to have a bipartisan 
consensus here. We

[[Page 25821]]

vetted this continuing resolution with our friends in the other body, 
with the White House. So we are simply proceeding with what is the 
proper constitutional role for dealing with our important work of 
completing these 13 bills.
  So I urge my colleagues to support it. We have a chance to make 
history here by making sure that we do not go into the Social Security 
Trust Fund. We are working very hard to ensure that that does not 
happen, that we do not go into the Social Security Trust Fund.
  I hope my colleagues will first support this rule and then support 
the continuing resolution so that we can get this work down.
  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. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 334, 
I call up the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 71) making further continuing 
appropriations for the fiscal year 2000, and for other purposes, and 
ask for its immediate consideration in the House.
  The Clerk read the title of the joint resolution.
  The text of House Joint Resolution 71 is as follows:

                              H.J. Res. 71

       Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
     United States of America in Congress assembled, That section 
     106(c) of Public Law 106-62 is amended by striking ``October 
     21, 1999'' and inserting in lieu thereof ``October 29, 
     1999''. Notwithstanding section 106 of Public Law 106-62, 
     funds shall be available and obligations for mandatory 
     payments due on or about November 1, 1999, may continue to be 
     made.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 334, the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) and the gentleman from Wisconsin 
(Mr. Obey) each will control 30 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young).


                             General Leave

  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all 
Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend 
their remarks and that I may include tabular and extraneous material on 
H.J. Res. 71.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Florida?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume in support of H.J. Res. 71.
  Mr. Speaker, this is a clean continuing resolution that would extend 
the present CR until October 29. In addition, it includes a provision 
so that affected Government agencies would have the authority to 
develop, prepare, and make the November monthly payments for mandatory 
programs such as Social Security and veterans' pensions.
  This is necessary because this CR extension will expire near the end 
of the month and financial managers will not be able to begin their 
payment process without the assurance that the funds will be available 
to make the payments.
  That is the CR, pure and simple, Mr. Speaker. We need the additional 
time. We have several vetoes from the President that we are dealing 
with. The balance of the appropriations bills that have not been on the 
President's desk will be there very shortly.
  Mr. Speaker, since we have made all of our political speeches during 
the consideration of the rule, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished 
gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).
  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, I rise in favor of this continuing 
resolution in order to keep the Government open. But I am also here to 
remark on the sorry state of affairs that this Congress finds itself 
in.
  We have a Republican majority unable to get its work done resorting 
to accounting gimmicks to cover their tracks and to hide the fact that 
they have already dipped into Social Security. And they would like to 
cover that up.
  The facts would seem undeniable. The Republicans' own Congressional 
Budget Office has already confirmed that the majority has spent up to 
$13 billion of the Social Security Trust Fund this year. A more recent 
estimation puts the raid on Social Security at $24 billion. But 
Republicans deny these facts and instead have embarked on a cynical 
strategy to pretend that their goal is to protect Social Security.
  It will not work because the American people are smart and they can 
spot a political ploy a mile away. They know that asking the Republican 
majority to safeguard Social Security is like asking the fox to watch 
the hen house.
  Yesterday it was the majority leader who led Republicans in that 
mantra to protect Social Security, the very same majority leader who in 
1984 called Social Security ``a bad retirement'' and a ``rotten trick'' 
on the American people, the same majority leader who once said ``I 
think we are going to have to bite the bullet on Social Security and 
phase it out over a period of time.''
  Well, one might say that that was 15 years ago and maybe he has 
changed his mind on Social Security. Give the guy a break.
  Okay, let us fast forward to 1994 when the majority leader said this 
about Social Security: ``I would never have created Social Security.''
  Privatizing Social Security has been a long-held goal of the majority 
leader and other Republican leaders. Now they want the American people 
to believe that this budget impasse is because they want to save Social 
Security.
  This budget impasse has nothing to do with Social Security. This 
budget impasse has to do with the Republican majority's true goal, to 
pass a massive tax cut that goes directly and primarily to the 
wealthiest Americans. That is why we cannot meet our obligations to our 
children, our parents, our teachers, our veterans, because Republicans 
have other plans for that money, a tax cut to bring comfort to the 
comfortable.
  After all, there are people out there who need to remodel their 
yachts. There are corporate CEOs who just cannot eke by on their $10 
million a year in salaries. That is who the Republican tax cut and 
budget would help. And to use senior citizens and Social Security as a 
smoke screen is shameful.
  A few months ago, a bipartisan majority in this House voted to lock 
up the Social Security Trust Fund. Now this Republican majority has 
picked the lock on the lockbox.
  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes.
  Mr. Speaker, what is important is not what happened yesterday, it is 
what should happen today and tomorrow. But before I get to that, I just 
want to address one comment made by my good friend, the gentleman from 
Florida (Mr. Young), in comparing who has done what in achieving 
previous completion on budget action.
  The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) has pointed with great pride 
to what happened in fiscal year 1997 as proof that in those days the 
Republican majority finished all of its bills on time. That is, in 
fact, the reverse of what happened.
  What happened in 1997 is that they had a huge train wreck early and 
the damage was so bad that they simply gave up trying to legislate 
normally.
  If we read the Congressional Quarterly account of what happened that 
year, I assume people think that is a neutral account, we will see in 
the 1996 almanac on page 10-21 that Congressional Quarterly indicates 
that ``When Republicans returned from their August break after Labor 
Day, it was far from clear how or whether they could get their spending 
bills enacted by the start of the fiscal year.

                              {time}  1200

  ``At that point only one fiscal 1997 spending bill, for agriculture, 
had become law. GOP troubles extended beyond deep disagreements with 
Clinton. For one thing, Republicans had difficulty among themselves 
settling on a game plan.''

[[Page 25822]]

  It goes on to discuss what happened, and what happened was very 
simply this: Five appropriation bills never went to conference. Those 
five bills wound up being wrapped into one overall omnibus 
appropriation, the base bill of which was the defense bill. What 
happened is the Republican majority, in the words of CQ, was so anxious 
to get home for reelection that they simply wrapped it all up in a one 
big huge package and went home.
  To call that a model of orderly process is indeed turning reality on 
its head. I just wanted to bring that to the attention of the House.
  We have a problem here. I think that problem is rooted in two 
factors. Number one, we have had the Republican majority fashion most 
of their appropriation bills in such a way that it would allow them to 
pretend this year that they had room for a giant tax cut, and they went 
home in August and found out that the public understood that that in 
fact was not the case, the public had other priorities, such as 
education, fixing Social Security and fixing Medicare. Yet what has 
happened is because this House spent so much time trying to pass that 
tax bill, we have appropriation bills that still have not become law.
  Secondly, we are operating under a budget agreement in 1997 that in 
my view was the largest public fib in the history of this Congress, 
going back to 1981 when we had another very large public fib on 
budgeting. The problem is that 1997 deal promised that this Congress 
was going to make reductions in spending that it in fact has never been 
willing to make under the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. And 
as a result what has happened is that today we are struggling under a 
massive fiction. That massive fiction is that we have spent about $40 
billion less than we have actually spent in the appropriation bills. 
And so now, in a desperate effort to cover up that fact, the House 
leadership is trying to divert attention to a phony Social Security 
debate that does not in fact exist in the real world.
  In my view we have two choices: We can continue to pass continuing 
resolutions once a week that are monuments to our own impotence, or we 
can simply get down to business and decide we are going to toss aside 
the phoniness and the fiction and get to the reality. The reality is 
not have we met each other's accounting standards. The reality is not 
how much political damage can we do to each other. The reality that we 
ought to be concerned about is what are we doing in an honest fashion 
to attack the education problems facing this country, to attack the 
health care needs facing this country, to attack the science research 
problems facing this country, to defend the country's national interest 
through both the defense budget, which is the military side of our 
foreign policy influence, and what we are doing to advance our national 
interest diplomatically through the other parts of our foreign policy 
effort.
  The sooner we come to honest agreements about that, the sooner we can 
all quit this sterile debate and get on with the business of being 
legislators rather than politicians. That is what I would respectfully 
hope that we do.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  During the consideration of the rule, the House heard a lot of 
political rhetoric, some of which was fairly accurate, some of which 
had no accuracy whatsoever. But I am not here today to fight a 
political battle. That is for the campaign trail. I am here today to do 
the people's business. They want their business done. That is what we 
are doing. We are moving appropriations bills through this process. It 
is not easy. This is the smallest majority that any majority party has 
had in the House for nearly 50 years. So of course it has not been 
easy, especially when the President is of a different party than the 
majority in the House.
  But this is not the place to fight out those battles. Today we extend 
the continuing resolution until the 29th of October, so that the 
government can continue to function and that the people who work for 
the government can continue to get paid, and the obligations that our 
government has continue to be met. We can do our campaigning at another 
time, at another place. We were not sent to do our campaigning in this 
chamber. We were sent to do the people's business.
  And so I would ask for support of this continuing resolution so that 
we can have those meetings with the President, so that we can have 
those conference reports sent to the President's desk, so that we can 
get the President's vetoes and that we can deal with the vetoes and try 
to reach an accommodation with the President, because he plays a 
constitutional role in this issue, although somewhat belatedly. I 
recall having asked him back in April if he would be willing to get 
engaged in this budget process and received no answer to this day. But, 
anyway, I would hope that the House will approve the CR so that we can 
get on with the balance of the people's business.
  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my 
time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaTourette). All time for debate has 
expired.
  The joint resolution is considered as having been read for amendment.
  Pursuant to House Resolution 334, the previous question is ordered.
  The question is on the engrossment and third reading of the joint 
resolution.
  The joint resolution was ordered to be engrossed and read a third 
time, and was read the third time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the passage of the joint 
resolution.
  The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that 
the ayes appeared to have it.
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a 
quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not 
present.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Evidently a quorum is not present.
  The Sergeant at Arms will notify absent Members.
  The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 421, 
nays 2, not voting 11, as follows:

                             [Roll No. 510]

                               YEAS--421

     Abercrombie
     Ackerman
     Aderholt
     Allen
     Andrews
     Archer
     Armey
     Bachus
     Baird
     Baker
     Baldacci
     Baldwin
     Ballenger
     Barcia
     Barr
     Barrett (NE)
     Barrett (WI)
     Bartlett
     Barton
     Bass
     Bateman
     Becerra
     Bentsen
     Bereuter
     Berkley
     Berman
     Berry
     Biggert
     Bilbray
     Bilirakis
     Bishop
     Blagojevich
     Bliley
     Blumenauer
     Blunt
     Boehlert
     Boehner
     Bonilla
     Bonior
     Bono
     Borski
     Boswell
     Boucher
     Boyd
     Brady (PA)
     Brady (TX)
     Brown (FL)
     Brown (OH)
     Bryant
     Burr
     Burton
     Callahan
     Calvert
     Campbell
     Canady
     Cannon
     Capps
     Capuano
     Cardin
     Carson
     Castle
     Chabot
     Chambliss
     Chenoweth-Hage
     Clay
     Clayton
     Clement
     Clyburn
     Coble
     Coburn
     Collins
     Combest
     Condit
     Conyers
     Cook
     Cooksey
     Costello
     Cox
     Coyne
     Cramer
     Crane
     Crowley
     Cubin
     Cummings
     Cunningham
     Danner
     Davis (FL)
     Davis (IL)
     Davis (VA)
     Deal
     DeGette
     Delahunt
     DeLauro
     DeLay
     DeMint
     Deutsch
     Diaz-Balart
     Dickey
     Dicks
     Dingell
     Dixon
     Doggett
     Dooley
     Doolittle
     Doyle
     Dreier
     Duncan
     Dunn
     Edwards
     Ehlers
     Ehrlich
     Emerson
     Engel
     English
     Eshoo
     Etheridge
     Evans
     Everett
     Ewing
     Farr
     Fattah
     Filner
     Fletcher
     Foley
     Forbes
     Ford
     Fossella
     Fowler
     Frank (MA)
     Franks (NJ)
     Frelinghuysen
     Frost
     Gallegly
     Ganske
     Gejdenson
     Gekas
     Gephardt
     Gibbons
     Gilchrest
     Gillmor
     Gilman
     Gonzalez
     Goode
     Goodlatte
     Goodling
     Gordon
     Goss
     Graham
     Granger
     Green (WI)
     Greenwood
     Gutierrez
     Gutknecht
     Hall (OH)
     Hall (TX)
     Hansen
     Hastert
     Hastings (FL)
     Hastings (WA)
     Hayes
     Hayworth
     Hefley
     Herger
     Hill (IN)
     Hill (MT)
     Hilleary
     Hilliard
     Hinchey
     Hinojosa
     Hobson
     Hoeffel
     Hoekstra
     Holden
     Holt
     Hooley
     Horn
     Hostettler
     Houghton
     Hoyer
     Hulshof
     Hunter
     Hutchinson
     Hyde
     Inslee
     Isakson
     Istook
     Jackson (IL)
     Jackson-Lee (TX)
     Jenkins
     John
     Johnson, E.B.
     Johnson, Sam
     Jones (NC)
     Jones (OH)
     Kanjorski
     Kaptur
     Kasich
     Kelly
     Kennedy
     Kildee

[[Page 25823]]


     Kilpatrick
     Kind (WI)
     King (NY)
     Kingston
     Kleczka
     Klink
     Knollenberg
     Kolbe
     Kucinich
     Kuykendall
     LaHood
     Lampson
     Lantos
     Largent
     Larson
     Latham
     LaTourette
     Lazio
     Leach
     Lee
     Levin
     Lewis (CA)
     Lewis (KY)
     Linder
     Lipinski
     LoBiondo
     Lofgren
     Lowey
     Lucas (KY)
     Lucas (OK)
     Luther
     Maloney (CT)
     Maloney (NY)
     Manzullo
     Markey
     Mascara
     Matsui
     McCarthy (MO)
     McCarthy (NY)
     McCollum
     McCrery
     McDermott
     McGovern
     McHugh
     McInnis
     McIntosh
     McIntyre
     McKeon
     McKinney
     McNulty
     Meehan
     Meek (FL)
     Meeks (NY)
     Menendez
     Metcalf
     Mica
     Millender-McDonald
     Miller (FL)
     Miller, Gary
     Miller, George
     Minge
     Mink
     Moakley
     Mollohan
     Moore
     Moran (KS)
     Moran (VA)
     Morella
     Murtha
     Myrick
     Nadler
     Napolitano
     Neal
     Nethercutt
     Ney
     Northup
     Norwood
     Nussle
     Oberstar
     Obey
     Olver
     Ortiz
     Ose
     Owens
     Oxley
     Packard
     Pallone
     Pascrell
     Pastor
     Payne
     Pease
     Pelosi
     Peterson (MN)
     Peterson (PA)
     Petri
     Phelps
     Pickering
     Pickett
     Pitts
     Pombo
     Pomeroy
     Porter
     Portman
     Price (NC)
     Pryce (OH)
     Quinn
     Radanovich
     Rahall
     Ramstad
     Rangel
     Regula
     Reyes
     Reynolds
     Riley
     Rivers
     Rodriguez
     Roemer
     Rogan
     Rogers
     Rohrabacher
     Rothman
     Roukema
     Roybal-Allard
     Royce
     Ryan (WI)
     Ryun (KS)
     Sabo
     Salmon
     Sanchez
     Sanders
     Sandlin
     Sanford
     Sawyer
     Saxton
     Schaffer
     Schakowsky
     Scott
     Sensenbrenner
     Serrano
     Sessions
     Shadegg
     Shaw
     Shays
     Sherman
     Sherwood
     Shimkus
     Shows
     Shuster
     Simpson
     Sisisky
     Skeen
     Skelton
     Slaughter
     Smith (MI)
     Smith (NJ)
     Smith (TX)
     Smith (WA)
     Snyder
     Souder
     Spence
     Spratt
     Stabenow
     Stark
     Stearns
     Stenholm
     Strickland
     Stump
     Stupak
     Sununu
     Sweeney
     Talent
     Tancredo
     Tanner
     Tauscher
     Tauzin
     Taylor (MS)
     Taylor (NC)
     Terry
     Thomas
     Thompson (CA)
     Thompson (MS)
     Thornberry
     Thune
     Thurman
     Tiahrt
     Tierney
     Toomey
     Towns
     Traficant
     Turner
     Udall (CO)
     Udall (NM)
     Upton
     Velazquez
     Vento
     Visclosky
     Vitter
     Walden
     Walsh
     Wamp
     Waters
     Watkins
     Watt (NC)
     Watts (OK)
     Waxman
     Weiner
     Weldon (FL)
     Weldon (PA)
     Weller
     Wexler
     Weygand
     Whitfield
     Wicker
     Wilson
     Wise
     Wolf
     Woolsey
     Wu
     Wynn
     Young (AK)
     Young (FL)

                                NAYS--2

     DeFazio
     Paul
       

                             NOT VOTING--11

     Buyer
     Camp
     Green (TX)
     Jefferson
     Johnson (CT)
     LaFalce
     Lewis (GA)
     Martinez
     Ros-Lehtinen
     Rush
     Scarborough

                              {time}  1242

  So the joint resolution was agreed to.
  The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

                          ____________________