[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 17]
[House]
[Pages 25731-25737]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


[[Page 25731]]

  LEGISLATIVE BRANCH APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2001--VETO MESSAGE FROM THE 
         PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES--(H. DOC. NO. 106-306)

  The SPEAKER pro tempore laid before the House the following veto 
message from the President of the United States.
To the House of Representatives:
  I am returning herewith without my approval, H.R. 4516, the 
Legislative Branch and the Treasury and General Government 
Appropriations Act, 2001. This bill provides funds for the legislative 
branch and the White House at a time when the business of the American 
people remains unfinished.
  The Congress' continued refusal to focus on the priorities of the 
American people leaves me no alternative but to veto this bill. I 
cannot in good conscience sign a bill that funds the operations of the 
Congress and the White House before funding our classrooms, fixing our 
schools, and protecting our workers.
  With the largest student enrollment in history, we need a budget that 
will allow us to repair and modernize crumbling schools, reduce class 
size, hire more and better trained teachers, expand after-school 
programs, and strengthen accountability to turn around failing schools.
  I would sign this legislation in the context of a budget that puts 
the interests of the American people before self interest or special 
interests. I urge the Congress to get its priorities in order and send 
me, without further delay, balanced legislation I can sign.
                                                  William J. Clinton.  
                                     The White House, October 30, 2000.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Sununu). The objections of the President 
will be spread at large upon the Journal, and the message and the bill 
will be printed as a House document.


                             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 on the veto message of the President to the bill H.R. 
4516, and that I may include tabular and extraneous material.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Florida?
  There was no objection.


                 Motion Offered by Mr. Young of Florida

  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I move that the message together 
with the accompanying bill, be referred to the Committee on 
Appropriations.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) is 
recognized for 1 hour.
  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield the customary 30 minutes 
to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) for the purpose of debate 
only on the consideration of this motion, pending which I yield myself 
1 minute.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute just to suggest that if we want 
to expedite the consideration and if we want to conclude the 
negotiations on all of these final appropriations bills, and there was 
only one left, but now there are two because the President sent us this 
veto, we would like to expedite it and we do so by referring this veto 
message and the bill back to the Committee on Appropriations. I think 
it is as simple as that. I do not think we need to take a lot of time 
on this issue.
  Mr. Speaker, in the event that we do require additional time, I ask 
unanimous consent that the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe), who is 
chairman of the Subcommittee on Treasury, Postal Service and General 
Government Appropriations, that he be permitted to control the time on 
our side.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Florida?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I would agree with the gentleman from Florida that we do 
not need to use too much time. However, I do think we need to use some 
time to talk a little bit about this veto, which comes as a stunning 
surprise to some of us. And also so that the American public and the 
Members of this body understand what is in this bill that has been 
vetoed, so that, as we consider this again, we will be able to consider 
those provisions very carefully.
  Mr. Speaker, last night, when the President vetoed the Legislative 
and Treasury-Postal and General Government Appropriations bill, he did 
more, in my view, than simply prolong the ongoing negotiations between 
the White House and the Congress on the remaining appropriations 
measures. He has jeopardized the funding that we have in this bill for 
our counter-terrorism efforts, funds to keep our borders safe, programs 
to keep guns out of schools, programs to trace guns in violent crimes, 
the jobs of more than 150,000 Federal employees, including one-third of 
all Federal law enforcement, and he has jeopardized our Nation's war 
against drugs.
  The President himself has stated that there is nothing wrong with the 
bill in its current form. In fact, he previously stated that, after we 
made some changes, changes that were included in the Transportation 
appropriations bill, he would sign this measure.
  However, he has now chosen to veto it because it funds the 
legislative branch and the White House ``at a time when the business of 
the American people remains unfinished.'' He has failed to sign this 
perfectly good bill because of ongoing discussions relating to 
education funding and ergonomics, issues that have nothing to do with 
the bill that he vetoed.
  It seems to me that the President's veto is more about making 
political statements than it is about making good public policy. Mr. 
Speaker, if we want to get the work of this Congress done, we have to 
take these bills one at a time.
  The President's veto message claims that these bills reflect ``self 
interest or special interests.'' Let us be clear about what the 
President is talking about here. The Treasury appropriations bill 
provides, among other things, these items:
  $2.25 billion for the Customs Service, including increases for 
expanded anti-forced child labor, money to attack drug smuggling 
groups, and new agents and infrastructure for northern border security;
  $467,000 for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 
including the use of forensic technologies to reunite families;
  $62 million to expand the Integrated Violence Reduction Strategy, a 
program to enforce the Brady law to keep convicted felons from getting 
guns, to investigate illegal firearms dealers, and to join forces with 
State and local law enforcement and prosecutors to fully investigate 
and prosecutor offenders;
  $25 million for nationwide comprehensive gun tracing; and $185 
million for our drug media campaign to reduce and prevent youth drug 
use.
  This bill also includes $186 million for Customs automation, an item 
that importers have been clamoring for. This bill provides funds to 
begin an immediate investment in our automated commercial environment 
program, a system that will help us to efficiently enforce our trade 
laws.
  And finally, this bill includes $1.8 million in support of the Secret 
Service's new initiative, the National Threat Assessment Center to help 
us identify and prevent youngsters that might commit violence in and 
around schools.
  Mr. Speaker, I do not see how the items I have just described here 
are, ``special interest items.'' These programs reflect the interests 
of all Americans, not just a few. All of us have a stake in the safety 
of our borders. All of us have a stake in the war on drugs and in 
keeping guns out of our schools.
  On July 27, when the House passed this bill, the Administration 
indicated they had several concerns regarding proposed funding levels 
for different programs. Specifically, they said that they felt they 
needed another $225 million for an additional 5,670 IRS employees, and 
they signalled that, unless that was provided, they would veto this 
measure.
  So we sat down. We negotiated in good faith with the White House. The 
House, the Senate, the Republicans and

[[Page 25732]]

the Democrats on both sides of this Congress, on both sides of this 
aisle. We added the funds for the IRS. It was not everything that the 
Administration asked for, but we also added other funds for other 
important programs. After we did this so-called fix, which the 
President signed into law as part of the Transportation Appropriations 
bill on October 23, we were told that the President would sign this 
bill.
  Indeed, I might have thought that the comment that the President made 
yesterday at his press conference when he said, ``again we have 
accomplished so much in this session of Congress in a bipartisan 
fashion. It has been one of the most productive sessions.'' I might 
have thought that he was talking about our bill, a bill he would have 
been preparing to sign.
  Obviously, as the hour of midnight approached, we found out that it 
was to be otherwise. The President's veto message says that he will not 
sign this bill until we fund our classrooms, fix our schools, protect 
our workers. The President has once again moved the goalpost in regard 
to the Treasury appropriations bill.

                              {time}  2000

  I am extremely disappointed that this Administration has gone back on 
its word to sign this bill and has, instead, chosen to use it as a 
vehicle to hold Congress hostage and make political statements 
regarding funding for education.
  But, Mr. Speaker, we are here tonight with a vetoed bill, and we are 
prepared to get this work done. Unfortunately, I notice that the 
President of the United States is in Louisville, Kentucky, for a 
congressional candidate and then doing a fund-raising event in New York 
City for the First Lady. How do we expect to get this work done when we 
are here and the President is out on the campaign trail?
  I think it is a shame that the President has placed a higher value on 
the politics of education funding than he does on protecting our 
borders, on fighting the war on drugs, in keeping guns out of schools, 
in countering terrorism.
  The President has vetoed the bill that funds 100 percent of our 
Nation's border safety in order to make political points about a bill 
that funds 7 percent of our Nation's education funding.
  This is a sad day. This bill, which has been worked on and a 
compromise has been reached, and is a good bill for the agencies that 
we have under our jurisdiction. It is sad that it is was vetoed. I hope 
we can get a quick agreement with the Administration on this.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Thomas).
  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, I just want to understand, because the 
gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe) went through a lengthy list of 
programs, extremely important ones, and identified dollar amounts 
associated with those programs.
  I believe it was implicit, but I think we really need to understand 
that every one of those programs were placed in this by bipartisan 
agreement and every one of the funding numbers were agreed to in those 
programs that the gentleman mentioned by bipartisan agreement. Is that 
correct?
  Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, that is 
absolutely correct. The amounts in there are not exactly as we would 
have wanted. In some cases, we would have wanted something lower, maybe 
a couple of cases even higher. In other cases, the President wanted 
more money, as he did for the IRS. But it was an agreement. It was a 
compromise.
  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, when the bill left, it was a bipartisan 
agreement.
  Mr. KOLBE. Correct.
  Mr. THOMAS. On the programs and the amount.
  Mr. KOLBE. That is correct.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the 
gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this 
time.
  Mr. Speaker, I voted against the Treasury-Postal bill when it 
originally was presented to the House. I did so because I thought it 
was inadequate. It came back from conference, and I opposed it at that 
point in time. We did not really have a real conference. But to the 
extent that a conference report came back, I said it was inadequate, 
and I opposed it.
  The gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe) rises, and I think correctly 
states the provisions of this bill. I think he also correctly states 
that we did, in fact, reach bipartisan agreement on this bill, and that 
in fact the bill, as it now stands, as it stood before the President, 
as it stands now is a good bill. It is a bill, in my opinion, that 
every Member of this House on either side of the aisle can support.
  It is furthermore a bill that I hope every Member of the body will 
support at some point in time in the very near future. I am not sure 
when we are going to get to that point, but hopefully in the near 
future.
  The gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe) also correctly points out, and 
the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) pointed out, if one reads the 
veto message, that the President of the United States says that he can 
sign this bill. In fact, I urged the President of the United States to 
sign this bill. I wished he had signed the bill. But he chose to make 
the point which, frankly, we have been making over and over again, 
that, unfortunately, this process did not come to really focus until 
just a few weeks ago.
  The reason it did not come to focus until a few weeks ago, and I do 
not speak just to the Treasury-Postal bill, it is because, for 8\1/2\ 
months and effectively all of September, we pretended that the 
appropriations process was not going to be a process in which all of us 
would be party, but it would be a process that simply, frankly, the 
majority party would be a party of.
  Unfortunately, when we did as the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe) 
has pointed out, come to agreement, and agree on a very good bill, we 
got it down there relatively late, i.e., 10 days ago.
  I would urge the Members, however, not to become too exercised about 
this bill. The reason I do that is because I believe we do have 
agreement. What we do not have agreement on is what the President 
discussed in his veto message, and they are important issues. They are 
unrelated, at least substantively, to the Treasury-Postal bill.
  But we know and any of us who have been in the last weeks of any 
legislative session, and I found this when I was in the State Senate 
for 12 years and I found it here for 19 years, that, unfortunately, 
issues tend to get wrapped up with one another that do not necessarily 
relate to one another substantively but clearly do politically.
  So I would urge the majority party, I would urge ourselves to try to 
come to agreement. Now both sides feel that agreements are not being 
kept. That is not a good context in which to try to get back to the 
table.
  The majority party believes the President said he would sign this 
bill. I was not in the room, therefore cannot assert that that was or 
was not the case. Some others who apparently were in the room and 
talked to the administration said that the administration said that 
they could sign this bill, but, again, I was not in the room, but that 
they were concerned, they were particularly concerned about a 
particular tax provision, and they wanted to see all the tax provisions 
considered at one time.
  Now, I hope clearly that this bill is going to go to committee and 
the veto will be considered. My suspicion is that we will at some point 
in time, hopefully in the near term, fold it in.
  But I would urge all my colleagues that, when the President says that 
it is related to other things, his desire, and I hope our desire, is to 
get the issues before the House resolved, get the issues before the 
Senate resolved, and send them to the President.
  We have just had a significant discussion about the fact that we do 
not have agreement on the Labor-Health bill. The gentleman from 
Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), who was in the room, I was not,

[[Page 25733]]

but the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), whose integrity I trust 
wholly, says that he thought they had an agreement.
  It is my understanding, although the gentleman from Florida (Mr. 
Young) did not say so in so many words, that he thought there was an 
agreement, but he needed to check it out with some people. That 
agreement fell.
  I would hope that, in the next 24 hours, and I see the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. DeLay), the majority whip, is on the floor. He and I worked 
together on a number of things. But I would hope that we could come to 
grips with the items that the President of the United States has said 
he believes are priority items.
  Whether one agrees with the veto of the Treasury-Postal bill or not, 
everybody agrees that it was not on the substance of the bill. The bill 
is a good bill. It is, however, an effort by the President of the 
United States to bring to closure the 106th Congress, to bring to 
closure the 106th Congress in a way that will bring credit to 
agreements between the parties.
  I referred earlier in discussions about the appropriations bills to 
an extraordinary speech given by Newt Gingrich on the floor of this 
House. It was a speech which I have entitled the ``Perfectionist Caucus 
Speech.'' It was a speech in which he said the American public has 
elected the President of one party, a majority party in the House and 
Senate of another party, and a very large and significant number of 
Members of the President's party.
  It is not surprising, therefore, that we find ourselves in 
substantial disagreement from time to time on substantive important 
issues. But as Newt Gingrich said in that ``Perfectionist Caucus 
Speech,'' it is the expectation of the American public that we will 
come to agreement, that we will come to compromise.
  Democracy is not perfect, and rarely do we win everything that we 
want. But the American public does expect us to agree. They expect to 
bring this Congress to a close. We argue on our side that they expect 
us to do some things that we have been talking about for an entire year 
and, indeed, longer than that in many instances to which the President 
referred, like education funding for classrooms and more teachers.
  That is really not a contentious issue. Most of us on this floor on 
both sides of the aisle know that we have a shortage of teachers, know 
that we have a shortage of classrooms, know that we would like to get 
classroom sizes down. We ought to move on that.
  Most of us say that we are for prescription drugs for seniors. We 
have differences on how that ought to occur. What the President is 
saying is we ought to come to agreement on that, because, frankly, 
seniors that are having trouble paying for prescription drugs do not 
care whether we agree on this dotting of the I's or the crossing of the 
T's. They want us to come to agreement. It is a shame we cannot do 
that.
  I see the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Norwood) on the floor. The 
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Norwood) and the gentleman form Michigan 
(Mr. Dingell) came together, worked hard, tried to come to agreement. I 
am sure the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Norwood) did not get everything 
in the Patients' Bill of Rights bill that he would have liked. I am 
equally confident that the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) did 
not get everything that he would like. But they worked together.
  Indeed, the majority of this House agreed with the gentleman from 
Georgia (Mr. Norwood) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) and 
passed a Patients' Bill of Rights. We did that in 1999, a year ago. The 
Senate passed a similar bill some 11 months ago. But we do not have 
agreement. We have not moved a bill. On an issue that almost every one 
of us is putting in ads of 30 seconds and saying we are for, but we 
have not moved the bill.
  So I would urge my colleagues, as we consider this, it is going to go 
to committee, I hope we do not have a rollcall vote on. There is 
nothing we can do about it, very frankly, one way or another. It is a 
good bill.
  The President chose to veto it to raise the issues and try to raise 
our focus and try to bring us to closure. If it accomplishes that 
objective, perhaps it was useful. It remains to be seen whether we will 
accomplish that objective. Had it been signed, we would have had a good 
bill for the Treasury Department, the General Service Administration, 
for law enforcement, to which the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe) 
referred, he is absolutely right, to counter terrorism efforts in this 
country. All of those are worthwhile objectives.
  It is a good bill. But let us not have this bill further divide us. 
Let us try to come to grips in the next 24 hours with the Labor-Health 
bill and get that to resolution and see at that point in time where we 
can move.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) for 
yielding me the time. I appreciate his giving me this opportunity to 
comment on this bill, which is a good bill, but comment as well on the 
efforts that the gentleman has been making and that others on the other 
side of the aisle have been making to try to bring us to closure, try 
to bring this Congress to a respectable close that the American public 
will benefit from.
  Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished 
gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham), a member of the committee.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, I said yesterday, and I still mean it 
today, most of the Members at this time of the year detest what goes 
on. It is the silly season. It is election season. We have some honest 
differences. I would like to cover just a couple of those differences.
  I believe with all of my heart that we are right. Maybe they believe 
that they are right on the other side of that issue. When my colleagues 
talk about school construction, many of the States have elected not to 
support Davis-Bacon or prevailing wage because of the increased costs. 
In some States, it is 35 percent down to 15 percent increase in cost. 
This legislation would force those right-to-work States to have to use 
the school construction money, using the union wage.

                              {time}  2015

  I think it is detrimental to schools because we could get more money 
for schools' quality. The unions control about 7 percent of the 
workforce. About 93 percent of all construction is done by private. And 
my friends would say, well, we want those workers to have a living 
wage.
  Well, the people that build 93 percent of our buildings in this 
country earn a good wage, and they have good quality. And our position 
is that, instead of allowing the unions to take the money, the extra 15 
to 35 percent, let us allow our schools and I will support the 
additional money. Let us let our schools keep the additional money for 
more construction, for class size reduction, for teacher pay or 
training, even technology, or where they decide, where the teachers and 
the parents and community can make those decisions.
  My colleagues have said that, well, let us save taxpayers' money at 
the local level. I worked with the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. 
Kildee), one of the finest men in the House, when I served on the 
authorization committee. He was my chairman the first year and then 
vice versa; and we worked, I think, in one of the best bipartisan ways. 
And I have a lot of respect for him. I think he is wrong a lot of 
times, but I love him.
  But they say, let us save money at a local level. Alan Bersin was a 
Clinton appointee as Superintendent of San Diego City Schools; and he 
said, Duke, would you support a local school bond? I said, Alan, that 
is the most Republican thing you could ask me to do because most the 
money goes to the school and, guess what, the decisions are made at a 
local level, not here in Washington, D.C., with all the strings.
  Only about 7 percent of Federal money goes down, but a lot of that 
controls the State and local money. Look at special education how that 
hurts some of the schools and helps people at the same time. But look 
at title I and those rules and regulations tie up.

[[Page 25734]]

  The President wants Davis-Bacon in this. We feel it is detrimental, 
it actually hurts schools, and we cannot bring ourselves to do that. We 
have special interest groups, as my colleague says. But the Democrats, 
I think their special interest groups are the unions and the trial 
lawyers and they support those issues. But the National Federation of 
Independent Businesses, Small Business Association, Restaurant 
Association, they are not bad as some of my colleagues think. These are 
the people that go out and create the jobs for the people.
  Over 90 percent of the jobs are created non-union. And we are saying, 
let the union compete with small business, let the best man win, but 
not have the increased cost of school construction. Now, that is a big 
deal. This is a big difference between most of us. You feel you are 
right. We feel that we are right. We see that it helps the schools, our 
positions; and we cannot give in to that. And the rhetoric and the 
campaign stuff that goes back and forth, we have a solid belief, and I 
want my colleagues to understand that, I believe it with all of my 
heart, and that is why I think we are here is because of those 
differences.
  But yet, the President will veto it over that. And I do not know what 
we are going to do. I do not know how long we will be here, and I think 
Members on both sides are willing to stay until we can agree with 
something. Maybe it is half. Maybe it is whatever it is.
  Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from 
Connecticut (Mrs. Johnson).
  Mrs. JOHNSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I think the people of this 
great and free democracy need to understand what is going on here 
tonight because it is unprecedented. No President, at least in my 18 
years as a Member of the House of Representatives, has ever vetoed a 
bill he supports. And I have never seen the Members of his party vote 
to support a veto of a bill they support or one whose every part was 
agreed to on a bipartisan basis. Of course, not every portion of it is 
perfect. They do not love every portion. Neither do we. But this was a 
bipartisan bill where every number was agreed to by Republicans and 
Democrats working together and where the President agreed to it as 
well.
  It is unprecedented to have a veto message in which the President 
says he supports the bill. I do not know how in good conscience my 
friends on the other side of the aisle say they are working to conclude 
the business of this Congress when they support the President in 
preventing the very bills that have to pass to wind up this session 
from passing.
  Here is an appropriations bill that we must pass to wind up our 
business. It is one we have agreed on. How can my colleagues in good 
conscience say that they are doing anything but filibustering and 
involving themselves in obstructionist actions for purely partisan 
reasons when they oppose a bill that they have agreed to and that the 
President agrees to?
  Now, let me look at the rhetoric that the President brings to the 
table in his veto message, because it is not unlike what happened on 
the floor last week, which I think is so fundamentally destructive of 
our democracy. His rhetoric intentionally mixes information from one 
bill to another until the public cannot understand and follow what is 
happening in their own democracy. To say that this bill has to be 
vetoed because we need more money for teachers is ridiculous. This bill 
doesn't fund education. That is the issue of the Health and Human 
Services, Labor, and Education appropriations (HHS) bill. It is not the 
issue of this bill.
  We will argue about whether or not we need more money for teachers 
when we discuss the HHS bill. And I am proud to say, as a Republican, 
that we put $2 billion more in the education function in that bill than 
the President even asked for, and we allow districts to use it for 
teachers if they want to, if that is what they need. But some of my 
school districts do not have classroom space, they cannot use this 
money next year for teachers, but they know exactly what they need it 
for, preschool, summer school, lots of kinds of things to help kids who 
are below grade level to catch up.
  What is wrong with flexibility? Do you not trust local government? Do 
the Democrats not trust the people of America? Is that why they have to 
uphold this veto of a different bill on which they agree and the 
President agrees because they want to hold the other bill hostage and 
make sure that local government in America has no right to say whether 
they need summer school to help their high school kids who are behind a 
grade level to catch up?
  Let us go on to their other issue here of worker safety. I am a 
strong advocate of worker safety. I voted with my Democratic colleagues 
to make sure that the ergonomics research went forward. How many of my 
colleagues, and I am looking at some of them from parts of the country 
for whom this is an absolutely incredible reversal of everything they 
ever stood for, how can they vote, how can they hold hostage a bill we 
all support to a Presidential position that will mandate on our States 
90 percent reimbursement of salary and benefits for someone injured by 
an ergonomics problem?
  I have had two carpal tunnel operations, both wrists. If I had been 
out, should I have gotten 90 percent of salary and benefits when my 
friend next to me got his foot crushed with a piece of steel and he 
gets the State rates, which is somewhere between 70 and 75 percent, 
depending on the State? Are you, my colleagues, out of your minds?
  I mean, I am for worker safety, but I am not for unfairness. It is 
wrong. This is really important. I brought this up when we debated 
this. Unfortunately, it was midnight and most of my colleagues were not 
here. But I asked them to go back and check with their small businesses 
to see how they can survive or check their State laws and see what it 
would do to have that inequity among workers.
  One can get terribly, terribly injured through a construction 
catastrophe and that injured worker would get the State's 70 to 75 
percent, whatever their State offers, in Workmen's Comp. But, under the 
President's proposal, if they get carpal tunnel syndrome, they'd get 90 
percent of salary while they are out of work. Why are you holding a 
bill up on which we have agreed to every single number for a new and 
extremely unfair and unaffordable mandate in another bill?
  Look what this bill does. I mean, my gosh, it adds $475 million so we 
can expand the anti-forced child labor initiative, attack drug 
smuggling, $10 million more for drug free communities, more money for 
the Secret Service's National Threat Assessment Center to help prevent 
school violence, better funds for the Terrorism Task Force, much more 
money to enforce the Brady bill.
  Let us put aside the partisan games. Let us override the President's 
veto. Then let us move on to the HHS appropriations bill and work these 
things out. That is what we are tasked to do by the voters of America.
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to 
explain that I thought that we had been asked if we would agree to no 
debate on the bill. We were willing to do that. But since my colleagues 
have had more speakers, we have a couple other Members who have 
indicated they want to speak.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. 
Menendez).
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. Speaker, since I have seen my colleagues on the 
other side of the aisle have an affinity, I would even have to say a 
proclivity, to quote the President's words, I would like to refer to 
the statement he made as it relates to the bill that is being 
considered for referral to committee, the bill that he vetoed.
  He said, ``We are now a full month past the end of the fiscal year, 
and just a week before election day. Congress still hasn't finished its 
work.
  ``There is still no education budget. There is still no increase in 
the minimum wage. There is still no Patients' Bill of Rights or Hate 
Crimes Bill, or meaningful tax relief for middle class Americans.
  ``Today, I want to talk about an appropriations bill that Congress 
did

[[Page 25735]]

pass. The Treasury-Postal Bill funds these two departments, as well as 
the operations of Congress and the White House. Last night, I had no 
choice but to veto that legislation. I cannot in good conscience sign a 
bill that funds the operations of Congress and the White House before 
funding our schools.
  ``Simply put, we should take care of our children before we take care 
of ourselves. That's a fundamental American value, one that all parents 
strive to fulfill. I hope the congressional leadership will do the 
same. We can, and we will, fund a budget for Congress, but first let us 
take care of the children.''
  I agree with the President. Simply put, how is it that we would hold 
ourselves up as an institution and the White House that they are worthy 
of being funded when we have a whole host of vital issues, some of 
which the President recited himself, that simply are not being funded 
and will likely not be funded before the American people go to vote 
next Tuesday?
  He goes on to say, ``We thought we had a good-faith agreement with 
honorable compromises on both sides,'' with reference to the landmark 
budget for children's education. ``That was before the special interest 
weighed in with the Republican leadership. And when they did they 
killed the Education Bill.''
  I agree with the President. Let us put our people before ourselves.
  Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 8 minutes.
  Mr. Speaker, I would just like to respond to the Member on the other 
side of the aisle who said, how in good conscience can we support this 
veto? My response is, with ease. And I will tell my colleagues why.
  The gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe) is upset. And I do not blame 
him. He is one of the good people in this House. And there are a lot of 
good people in this House on both sides of the aisle. And we treasure 
our friendships, and we treasure our associations. We also treasure a 
sense of balance, and we treasure people who keep their word at the 
highest levels as well as the lowest levels of both parties.

                              {time}  2030

  The gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe) is upset because his Treasury-
Post Office bill has been vetoed, and, along with it, although this has 
not been mentioned, the Legislative Branch appropriations bill, because 
the Treasury-Post Office bill is folded into the Legislative 
appropriations bill. If I were the gentleman from Arizona, I would be 
unhappy, too, because he wants to see his bill finished. The problem is 
that there is only one man in the country who has the responsibility to 
look out after everyone, and that is the President of the United 
States. And what the President of the United States said in the words 
that the gentleman from New Jersey just read is that, quote, ``I cannot 
in good conscience sign a bill that funds the operations of the 
Congress and the White House before funding our classrooms, fixing our 
schools and protecting our workers.''
  In other words, the gentleman from Arizona is upset because matters 
of legislative concern such as our offices, our travel allowances, our 
staff allowances are not settled. In fairness to him, he did not say 
that because he is concerned about the Treasury-Post Office bill, but I 
have had that said to me by a number of Members tonight. All the 
President has said is that I recognize that the big fellows in this 
society, the President and the Congress, because that is whose budgets 
are funded in the bill that he vetoed, remember, he vetoed his own 
budget as well as the Congress' budget. All the President says is that 
we are not going to provide the money that the big boys want in this 
society until we first take care of the needs of the little people. 
That is all he said. I agree with him.
  I would like to very much see all of this come to an end. I am sick 
of all of it. But I would simply say it was not the President who 
decided to package the Legislative and Treasury-Post Office bills in 
one package so that everything got tied up in this debate. It was some 
genius, some staffer in one of the leadership offices who decided to do 
that against the advice of the leadership of the Committee on 
Appropriations on both sides of the aisle.
  I would point out that there is one revenue item in that bill that 
the President vetoed which will cost five times as much as the entire 
cost for the tax credits for school construction contained in the bill 
which we are still trying to put back together after the majority 
leadership sandbagged the bipartisan agreement that we reached two 
nights ago.
  The bill that was vetoed cost the Treasury $60 billion over the same 
time period that it cost only $12 billion to fund the school 
construction tax credit. There is a very easy remedy for fixing the 
problem that the gentleman from Arizona is concerned about. That bill 
can easily be passed simply by referencing it in an agreement that we 
ought to be able to achieve on the Labor, Health and Education 
appropriations bill. All you have to do is to come back to the 
agreement that was hammered out two nights ago. If you do that, we will 
take care of the needs of people like this who have been so injured by 
doing their duty in the workplace that they can work no longer.
  We will take care of their needs as well as the needs of the 435 
Members of this House who would kind of like to know what their office 
allowances are going to be, what their staff allowances are going to 
be, what their travel situation is going to be, and what the budgets 
for the service agencies, for the Library of Congress and CRS and 
others are supposed to be and all of the other legitimate concerns 
mentioned on that side of the aisle.
  Mrs. JOHNSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. OBEY. I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut.
  Mrs. JOHNSON of Connecticut. I am sure the gentleman from Wisconsin, 
for whom I have very great respect, is aware that many years the 
President has signed this bill before he has had the opportunity to 
sign the HHS bill. So this is a matter of politics. It is not a matter 
of principle. He has never before said, I must hold the funding for the 
executive office and for this until that is done. That is just complete 
Presidential politics.
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I take back my time. If the gentlewoman is 
going to use pejorative terms like that, then I would simply say yes, 
this is the first time to my knowledge that the President has vetoed 
this bill because it was passed before the Labor-H bill was passed. But 
this is also the first time that we have had the majority leader and 
the Speaker of the House blow up a bipartisan agreement that had been 
signed onto by both parties. Before those negotiations ever began, I 
asked the negotiator for the Republicans on the House side and on the 
Senate side, do you have the full authority from your leadership to 
negotiate to a conclusion every item in this bill? Their answer was 
yes. And the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) said, Yes, and isn't 
that nice for a change? Now, we know it was not a change. So now we 
know that once again, after a bipartisan negotiation has been put 
together, someone in the majority party, after checking with somebody 
else decides, Well, sorry, we're going to do it all over again. If we 
cannot take each other's word in this institution, then this 
institution is not the institution that I have given 32 years of my 
life to.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I would just like to say to the gentleman from Wisconsin 
that I accept the responsibility for the fact that this debate on this 
motion may be more prolonged than might have been indicated to him by 
staff. They were corrected, believing there would be no great debate on 
this. It was my view that I needed to say some things about the bill 
that had been vetoed, and so I accept that responsibility for that, and 
I apologize if a miscommunication was made to the gentleman from 
Wisconsin.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman 
from Texas (Mr. DeLay).

[[Page 25736]]


  Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arizona for 
yielding this time to me, and I appreciate all the hard work that he 
has done on this bill. It is really unfortunate that the President 
vetoed a bill that he supports.
  I think most of us know what is going on here. What is going on here 
is politics is being placed above people. When we took the majority for 
the first time in 40 years, the minority went into denial. The minority 
has worked for 6 years to gain back the majority. They decided that 
these last 2 years was their chance because we had a six-vote margin. 
All they had to do was win a net of seven seats, and they are back in 
the majority.
  The minority leader last summer announced that they were going to run 
against a do-nothing Congress, that they would not cooperate, that they 
would try to bring down every bill that we brought to the floor that 
was of any substance. Politics. Words are really cheap, but actions 
really prove whether your words are true or not.
  All summer, while we were passing through this House all 13 
appropriations bills and getting our work done, the minority side said 
all along that there is not enough money in this, there is not enough 
money being spent. They have always wanted to spend more money, and 
they have tried to spend the surplus; and we have worked very, very 
hard all this year to keep them from spending the surplus. On the 
substantive issues, the policy issues, right, we are guilty for not 
passing their agenda. We have been passing our agenda. We locked up the 
Social Security surplus. They have been raiding it for 40 years, 
spending it on big government programs. We locked up the Medicare 
surplus. They have been spending it for 40 years, or as long as 
Medicare has been in, on big government programs. Then there was more 
surplus on the on-budget, and we said we want to take at least 90 
percent of that and pay down on the public debt with it. We are doing 
it.
  They have fought us every step of the way. We have had to bring very 
tough bills, including this TPO bill, to the floor and pass it with 
only Republican votes because they tried to bring it down knowing how 
hard it would be to pass it. Now we get into this season, and we have 
been working with the President. The President has signed seven bills 
that we compromised with him on and he has signed. But they have never 
intended to let us get out of town or to work out a bill.
  I mean, last week the minority leader put on a Scottish uniform, put 
war paint on his face and picked up a spear and declared war. Last 
night, the President put that same war paint on his face, vetoed a bill 
and declared war. They are interested in politics. They have only one 
goal and that is to take back the majority of this House. Sunday, the 
President threatened, or blackmailed the Congress by saying that he 
would veto this bill if he did not get an agreement on Labor-HHS. These 
gentlemen worked a long time, into the early morning, to come up with 
an agreement. But on every bill, and frankly we passed every bill out 
of this Congress except the Labor-HHS bill, we have got it all done, 
the problem is we cannot trust the President. Every one of those bills, 
once it has been worked out, has always been brought to the leadership 
to look at the agreement. We owe that and we have a responsibility to 
the Members that we represent to make sure that the agreement is a good 
one.
  We started looking at the agreement and then their spin doctors went 
out and said we were blowing up the agreement. We have looked at every 
agreement that our negotiators have made, and we were asking questions 
about this agreement. We were asking questions about the fact that what 
they said was the agreement on the labor provision known as the 
ergonomics actually was reflected in the language that was presented to 
us, and we did not think it was, because we read that language as doing 
nothing but codifying present law and present practice. And we thought, 
well, maybe we ought to write the language to reflect the agreement 
that was being made and we were working on that. We even compromised 
with them. They wanted $8 billion. We said, ``We'll give you 4 but tell 
us how you are going to spend it.'' To this point, 2 days later, they 
have not even given us the list of how they are going to spend that $4 
billion. How in the world do you think we could put a bill together and 
file it and answer the President's blackmail when you will not even 
give us how you are going to spend it?
  They gave some money on Democrat projects. We have yet to get the 
list of the Democrat projects. How do you put together a bill, put it 
in language and bring it down here to the floor when we have not even 
got the list? So there was no way that we could comply. And they knew 
it. They knew it, that we could comply with the blackmail of the 
President and he vetoes the bill. Pure politics. People be damned. Pure 
politics was what is going on here.
  The political atmosphere here has been so poisoned by their actions 
that it is so difficult, and I have got to tell you, this bill is back 
into play. Now we have five appropriations bills in play. The President 
asked us to talk to him about the tax bill. We said fine. Nobody showed 
up. We have been waiting 3 days to talk about the tax bill. We have 
called for 3 days asking the President to negotiate with us over 
immigration. Nobody has showed up. This morning the President's people 
were supposed to come in early to talk about this ergonomics issue and 
the language. Nobody has showed up. In fact, the President went to 
Kentucky to campaign this afternoon. Now he is in New York. How do you 
negotiate with a mirror?
  The President has no intention of making this. That is why we are 
here a week before the election. It is politics. It is time to put the 
politics aside and think about the people and do the people's business. 
I am just asking you all to come together and let us put people before 
politics.

                              {time}  2045

  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5\1/2\ minutes.
  Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to correct both the 
gentlewoman from Connecticut (Mrs. Johnson) and myself. Both of us 
indicated that this was the first time that the President had vetoed 
this bill because it was passed before other bills had passed. That is 
not correct.
  On October 3, 1995, I should have remembered it because it was my 
birthday, the President vetoed the legislative bill for precisely the 
same reason that he vetoed this bill tonight. Let us remember that the 
bill before us is the legislative appropriations bill into which was 
folded the Treasury Post Office bill. The President vetoed that on 
October 3, 1995, because he pointed out that the Congress had not yet 
finished its other work and that he was not going to allow the Congress 
to get its goodies before the rest of the country got its problems 
taken care of. So he has been consistent in that philosophy, and I 
applaud him for doing that as well on this bill tonight.
  Secondly, I am not going to bother to comment on the majority whip's 
discussion of a number of items that have nothing whatsoever to do with 
my committee responsibilities. I recognize he is well-known for his 
efforts to achieve conciliatory bipartisanship; and he is probably the 
most distinguished person in the House, obviously, in trying to see to 
it that we pass bills on a bipartisan rather than a partisan basis. His 
reputation is renowned for that. No one could possibly question that. 
Right? This is Halloween, too, right?
  Having said that, I would simply say with respect to these 
appropriation bills, the gentleman is wrong when the distinguished whip 
said that all but one bill had been passed out of the Congress by 
October 1. There were still 4 bills that the Senate had not even 
considered by the end of the fiscal year. So, again, the majority whip 
is wrong on his facts.
  I would simply say, without getting any further into silliness, that 
the basic problem is simply this: Everyone knows that the major 
obstacle on the appropriations end to our finishing our work was the 
disposition of the labor,

[[Page 25737]]

health and education bill. That bill, as Bill Natcher used to say, is a 
bill that is the people's bill. It takes care of the children. It takes 
care of the sick, and it takes care of the workers who produce the 
wonderful prosperity that enable all of us to brag about the surpluses 
that we have created.
  What is at stake here is very simple. We did have an agreement and 
the majority leadership decided that they were going to break it up. 
Now they can argue that all they want, but the fact is that that is 
what happened.
  I think if we are going to discuss values, as we have so often been 
lectured about by the distinguished majority whip, if we are going to 
talk values let me say that I can think of no value more important than 
to say to the most humble worker in this country that their health 
comes before the wishes of the national lobbyists for the United States 
Chamber of Commerce. I can think of no value more important than to let 
the most humble worker in this country know that the Congress of the 
United States and the President of the United States are not so busy 
focusing on their own needs that they will allow the needs of the 
neglected to be forgotten.
  That is what the President said in his veto message. He is saying, do 
to the least of these. That is what he is saying or as the Book some of 
us have read that reminds us to do that, what you do to the least of my 
brethren, you do for me. That is what we are trying to do when we stand 
here protecting the interests of workers who have no place else to go 
but here, no place to go but here; to be protected so that they can 
keep their bodies whole, so that they can continue to work to put food 
on the table for their families.
  Do you think that I am going to apologize for one second for 
supporting the President's veto of a bill that takes care of us before 
it takes care of them? I do not know what planet you are on, but those 
are not my values. I am proud to support his veto.
  I would say that the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe) himself has 
done his job. The President's veto in no way is a criticism of his 
work. We all know he has done an honest job of negotiating. He, like 
many of us are simply caught in the situation that we would like to see 
not exist, and that situation was caused by the majority leadership of 
his party in this House.
  Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, let me just very briefly close this debate. I know it 
has taken longer than we had intended. I know the gentleman from Texas 
(Mr. DeLay), the majority whip, will certainly be pleased with the very 
fine comments that the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) made about 
his bipartisan nature of finding solutions to appropriation bills. My 
experience has always been that the majority whip, the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. DeLay), always has been very constructive in trying to find 
those solutions.
  The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) also made reference to the 
1995 legislative bill and the veto of that for essentially the same 
reasons. Although my memory does not take me back that many votes and 
that many appropriation bills, I believe at that time when that was 
vetoed there was no agreement on the Treasury Postal Bill; and, 
therefore, the argument was we should not be passing or should not be 
accepting the legislative appropriations without an agreement on the 
appropriations that affected the executive branch, the White House and 
all the executive agencies, the White House agencies.
  In this case, they are tied together. We have them together. So 
signing this bill would have made sure that we moved forward that part 
of the final budget that would have covered these two very large 
agencies, the Congress and all of its related agencies, including the 
Congressional Research Service and the Library of Congress, our Capitol 
Police, and the Treasury, with all of its agencies, the Treasury 
itself, the Secret Service, the Customs, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco 
and Firearms, the Internal Revenue Service, the Federal Elections 
Commission and everything at the White House.
  So I think it would be very important for us to recognize that these 
are tied together and we should move forward with this.
  There is a great deal of misunderstanding or, I think, unfortunate 
misunderstanding about the events last night. I was not there, but I 
certainly understand that when an agreement is reached by appropriators 
that is on something as delicate as this, that includes language that 
is not an appropriation item, that the leadership is going to have to 
sign off on that. Apparently that last step had not been done. There 
was agreement on the basic provision, but they had not signed off on 
it.
  Mr. Speaker, I would just say that I hope we can find a solution to 
this very quickly and move this bill forward as rapidly as possible so 
these appropriations might become law.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Sununu). Without objection, the previous 
question is ordered.
  There was no objection.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young).
  The motion was agreed to.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Accordingly, the veto message and the bill 
will be referred to the Committee on Appropriations.

                          ____________________