[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 2667-2674]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        WHAT IS GOOD FOR AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege and the 
honor of being recognized to address you on the floor of the House of 
the United States House of Representatives, the people's House, this 
people's House and this new day, this new dawn that was pledged to come 
to this 110th Congress.
  As you may or may not know, Mr. Speaker, I spend many hours here on 
the floor in these Special Orders and in debate on bills and in 1-
minutes and in 5-minutes as we engage in this dialogue and raise the 
issue of what is good for America.

                              {time}  1745

  One of the very important things about determining what's good for 
America is to have a process for America that is conducive to the right 
result, and the right result in most cases, we will agree, I believe, 
would be the will of the people: the will of the people properly 
informed, the will of people properly educated, and the will of the 
people that have access through the first amendment rights to all the 
information and all the knowledge possible.
  But, then, I would point out that we do not live in a democracy. As 
much as I have said about the reflection of the voice or the people 
here in the people's House, each one of us does have an obligation to 
listen carefully and attentively to our constituents, to the people in 
this country, and not just confined within our districts, but to listen 
to the Nation as a whole and focus on the interests of our district. 
But sometimes we have to put the Nation ahead of, sometimes, the will 
of our district.
  But this is a constitutional Republic that we serve in, not a 
democracy. I point out that our Founding Fathers had a significant 
concern, and I will say even a literal fear of democracies.
  On one of my earlier trips out here to Washington, DC, quite some 
years ago, I visited the National Archives on my first visit. As I 
waited in line to go around and be able to stand there and gaze upon 
the Declaration of Independence, upon the Constitution, upon the Bill 
of Rights in their original form, the original documents that our 
Founding Fathers placed their hands to and pledged their lives, their 
fortunes and their sacred honor, as I waited to view that for the first 
time, on display at the National Archives was a display of Greek 
artifacts.
  The Greek artifacts that had come from 2- to 3,000 years ago in the 
era where the closest thing that there has been to a pure democracy 
from the standpoint of the Greek city-states, where of-age males would 
gather together, and they would debate; they would debate the issues of 
the day. They had a number of things they put in place for stopgap. One 
of the things they found out was, you will recognize the term 
``demagogue.''
  ``Demagogue'' is a term that we use occasionally in our vernacular, 
perhaps here on the floor reluctantly, but also throughout our dialogue 
across the country. There is not a lot of history on demagogues. It is 
hard to Google demagogue and to become an expert, to look under 
amazon.com and to come up with real books that are written on real 
facts that identify demagogues in the Greek era. They are almost 
nonexistent in this Nation's literature, at least so far as I have been 
able to identify.
  But what the Founders knew and what young Americans growing up today 
and, really, all of its citizens should have an understanding of is 
that in that purer form of democracy in the Greek-city state, they had 
Greek demagogues who had such an oratorical skill that they could stand 
up in front of that small coliseum, so to speak, and make their pitch 
in such a passionate, logical and rational way that it would move the 
emotions of the Greeks within that city.
  They would not necessarily analyze the information behind that 
debate. They would not necessarily analyze the data, the calculations. 
They maybe were not even thinking for themselves. But what they would 
do is, they would listen to the demagogue that had that ability to move 
the masses with their dialogue. That, sometimes, in fact, often, took 
the Greeks off on a path that was not necessarily the best path for 
them, because they didn't stop, step back and think about where they 
were going. They were moved by the emotion.
  So a demagogue would be someone, then, who had that ability and that 
skill. When they were identified as detrimental to the best interests 
of the city-state, then they had a blackball system. That blackball 
system, again, as I recall it, was that they would each go through, and 
there would be a, let us call it a black marble and a white marble, and 
there would be one large gourd to drop the voting marble in and then 
one to discard your empty in. So each voting member of a city-state got 
two, a black marble and a white marble.
  As they went through there and as they dropped that marble in, they 
said, I want to keep this individual here in the city-state because I 
like his position, or he is good for us, or he helps out with the 
knowledge he has, whatever the reason might be, the same way we vote 
for or against Presidential candidates in a lot of ways. They would 
drop a white ball if they wanted to keep him, into the voting.
  It would actually be a piece of pottery, a smaller-necked piece of 
pottery, actually. Then they would discard the black ball in another 
piece of pottery. So no one knew how they voted; it was a secret 
ballot.
  But if that demagogue received three black balls dropped down in the 
voting piece of pottery, then that would be all that was required from 
the entire city to banish that demagogue from the city for 7 years. 
That was one of the

[[Page 2668]]

ways they protected themselves from the emotions of a democracy.
  Mr. Speaker, I bring this up because quite often, I think, in the 
classrooms of America, it is taught consistently and continuously that 
this is a democracy. We toss the term around, we are in a democracy. 
This is a democracy that goes on over and over and over again, and I 
always argue, no, this is a constitutional Republic.
  Our Founding Fathers crafted a constitutional Republic for the first 
time in the history of the world because they were shaping a form of 
government that would not have the failures of a democracy in it, but 
had the representation of democracy in it. That is why we are a 
constitutional Republic. That is why we are called Representatives here 
in the United States Congress, because we each represent about 600,000 
people.
  It isn't the 600,000 people, those that are qualified and registered, 
those that go to vote will select each one of us, and then it is our 
job to be their voice here. But the first thing that we owe our 
constituents is not to put our finger in the wind and listen to the 
polls. It isn't our job necessarily to put our ear to the ground and 
try to stay ahead of the moving public opinion, but it is our job to 
listen to that public opinion.
  It is also our job to be involved in all of the dialogue here and 
have access to all this information that is available to us here in 
this capital city, the information center of the world, from my 
experience. We owe our constituents and all American people our best 
judgment as we serve in this constitutional Republic.
  The voice of these Members here in Congress is essential. It is 
essential for the functionality of a republic, and it is essential for 
the functionality of this great Nation. In this system of government 
that we have now shaped, a tried and true system for more than 200 
years, we found a way to use this process of gathering the information 
and the data and the input from our constituents who come through my 
office every day. And I sit down with them every day that we are open 
for business here, and it is for me to gather that kind of input and 
information. Then I exchange back with them the things that I know 
about policy from sitting here.
  Then we have discussions about, well, here is our budget, these are 
our limitations, these are the policy questions. Here is the legality, 
here are some of the constitutional constraints that we have, and your 
needs are this. So how do we shape this together so that we can come 
forward with a proposal that meets the needs of my constituents or 
anyone's constituents, stays within the framework of our budget and the 
Constitution and moves this Nation forward to our destiny?
  Those are the questions that we are obligated to struggle to resolve 
here in this Congress, and we have developed a process by which we have 
many, many public hearings. We bring forward in the public hearings 
witnesses that testify into the record under oath, so that we can rely 
on the accuracy and the honesty and the veracity of their statements. 
That is some of the information.
  A lot of the other government reports and other data that come from 
nongovernmental organizations and individual citizens and the letters 
that come every day and the e-mails that come every day and the phone 
calls that come every day, we put that all together. We sort that. We 
synthesize that. We go to the subcommittee or the full committee for 
the hearings. We ask the appropriate questions so that we can probe 
into these issues to represent our constituents.
  Then, after the hearing process is done, then a bill comes forward, a 
bill comes out through the subcommittee process for a markup, and that 
markup always must allow legitimate germane amendments in order. It is 
not just a theory; it is a tried and true proven fact. The reason for 
amendments is to improve the legislation.
  The first term that you run into, as any, one step forward, to become 
a legislator, whatever level of government might be, whatever political 
subdivision it might be, is the law of unintended consequences. That is 
what happens when any of us, most often in our youthful idealism, come 
charging into the legislative process. We say, I have a law I want to 
pass, this is what I want it to be.
  You write that down, put it into the right format, and you submit 
that into the process, and immediately the wake-up call is, well, what 
about this implication and that? What happens when you unfund this side 
of it. What happens when you don't have law enforcement on the other 
side? What happens when you punish more people than you were trying to 
help because you didn't think of all the aspects?
  Well, that is the law of unintended consequences. That is what 
happens when you have a legislative process that circumvents or usurps 
this tried and true, more than two-centuries-old process that we have 
here in the United States Congress.
  This constitutional Republic cannot sustain itself if we do not have 
a regular order of doing business that guarantees the rights of each 
Member to be heard, for each Member to bring their judgment to the 
hearing process, to probe the witnesses, to put into the record the 
background that they want to gather from the witnesses they choose, as 
well, to offer amendments at committee and subcommittee level and at 
the level up at the Rules Committee.
  This is all a process to perfect legislation, to reduce, and, 
ideally, eliminate that Murphy's Law of unintended consequences, and 
also to improve the quality of the legislation so that it is far more 
effective than it may be as if just one person with their limited 
vision, their limited knowledge, limited background and limited 
understanding could bring to this legislative body.
  I have to point out, the system and the process that I have described 
here is anything, but what has been taking place in this 110th 
Congress. This is the 110th Congress that was promised to be the most 
open and the term, I believe, was ``democratic Congress in history.'' 
The leadership was going to set up a system that had rules, that 
allowed for amendments at every level, that allowed for open dialogue, 
that allowed for open hearings. In fact, the Speaker of the House is 
clearly on record time after time after time, making those kinds of 
pledges.
  Well, I will point out that has not been the case. I will get back to 
the facts of that here in a moment.
  What I would like to do is illustrate this poster that tells us what 
has been going on here in this new 110th Congress, which began on the 
4th day of January when we organized and first brought forth the rules.
  The opinion that this Congress had to live by was the promise, 
campaign promise, and they won the majority. In the first 100 hours, 
six pieces of legislation shall pass; we will do this for the American 
people, was the argument.
  So we have two different ways of keeping time. The American people 
would wonder, well, the first 100 hours, if that promise of doing these 
six pieces of legislation in the first 100 hours is so sacrosanct that 
you have to suspend, maybe temporarily, and maybe not temporarily, the 
regular order that we call it here. This really is the entire process 
that I have described: the suspension of hearings, subcommittee 
meetings, full committee meetings, rules, consideration of amendments, 
and amendments being allowed on the floor, being debated, so the 
American people can understand what this body is doing.
  That entire process has been suspended, and it has been suspended 
because the argument was made by the incoming leadership that those six 
pieces of legislation couldn't be passed within the first 100 hours if 
we went to a regular order and allowed any Member to have any voice in 
trying to improve any piece of that legislation.
  So here we are this first 100 hours. I thought, well, all right, if 
the promise of 100 hours is sacrosanct, and it is so important that 
this legislation that has never been done in the history of America has 
to be done in the first 100 hours, if that is so important, then we 
ought to know at least what the criteria are for turning it on and 
turning it off. We ought to be able to know when that 100 hours is 
over, when we will go back to regular order, and the

[[Page 2669]]

people who have campaigned and been elected to legitimately represent 
their 600,000 people will have a choice in this Congress to improve and 
perfect legislation.
  So I started the clock, and I have kept this clock from the 
beginning. You know, there are only two legitimate ways to count time. 
One of them would be the 110th Congress began when we gaveled in here 
on the 4th day of January. You could just let the clock run all through 
the day, the night, the next day, and it will just essentially tick 
when we get sine die, gavel out of the 110th Congress roughly 2 years 
from now.
  I don't think that is necessarily a fair and legitimate way, that 
keeping track of 100 hours is sacrosanct. We may give them a little bit 
different way to do that. Let us make it the legitimate way of keeping 
time, was my proposal.
  Fairly simply, when the gavel comes in here in the morning, and we 
gavel in to start our day, and we start with the prayer and the pledge, 
that is the beginning of this congressional day. When we finish these 
Special Orders and there is a motion to adjourn, and you adjourn this 
Chamber, click, with the stopwatch, time is over, that is how many 
hours it is for that day.
  Well, the Pelosi clock has a different way of keeping time. But just 
by comparison--and first I want to point out that those six pieces of 
legislation were passed not in the form I thought they were going to 
come to the floor in, probably not the form that the American people 
thought that they would be passed in, but a form that had those six 
titles of that legislation that came to this floor, passed within the 
first real 100 hours of legislation.

                              {time}  1800

  And that ended on a Friday at 11:44 a.m. when the real clock ticked 
over at 100 hours. But the Pelosi clock which was on the Web page, that 
was put up so that they would have all the time that they wanted to 
have to get this legislation done, and we just took a little picture of 
that. That clock went to 42 hours and 25 minutes. That is how much, Mr. 
Speaker, had been expired on the Pelosi clock.
  So one can only presume that this clock was a slow clock. The Pelosi 
office refuses to grant us any criteria as to when they turn their 
clock on and when they turn their clock off. The only thing we know is 
this clock was not going to run up to 100 hours until those six pieces 
of legislation were passed. So it is kind of a backwards figuring 
thing, but now it has been pulled down from the Web site of the 
Speaker, but that was the end of the game.
  So when that 100 hours is over, the request was give us some time, 
give us some patience. We need to have the suspension of our rules. We 
are going to have to go to this draconian process that no Member has a 
voice in anything until these six pieces of legislation are passed. We 
are going to have to go to that to get our six pieces passed in the 
first 100 hours.
  Well, the six pieces are passed. The 100 hours now, it is about 148-
point-something actually, where it is going to be 149 when we finish 
this up. That is how many hours that we have invested here in this 
110th Congress. But we are still under draconian martial law in this 
Congress.
  We are bringing to the floor of the United States Congress tomorrow, 
and I don't mean me, but the leadership on the other side of the aisle 
is bringing an omnibus spending bill. That omnibus spending bill is 
coming to the floor, $463 billion, without a single hearing, without a 
single subcommittee or committee meeting, without a markup, without an 
amendment; and we are going to spend $463 billion out of here tomorrow 
on 30 minutes of debate from the dissenting side and 30 minutes of 
debate from the proponents' side, and the taxpayers are going to take 
the hit.
  And I feel sorry, Mr. Speaker, for the American people. And I feel 
really sorry for the freshmen that came to this Congress, especially 
the large class of Democrats who no doubt said, I will be your voice in 
Congress. I promise you that you haven't been represented well. I will 
be effective. When I go there, I will be heard. I am going to delve 
into all of this policy and I will be there. You will see that come out 
in the language. It will go into law.
  But to this day come to the floor and I will yield to anyone, any 
freshman especially, who could come down here and say, I went to a 
hearing and I offered an amendment in a subcommittee markup or in a 
full committee or I am going to be allowed to offer an amendment here 
on the floor and it is going to improve some legislation.
  I think there was a freshman that ran some legislation here last 
week. I just don't know if she ever got to see the language before she 
came to the floor to be the sitting duck for the criticism, for the 
narrow debate that we had.
  That is the tone of where we are. The American people are being 
cheated by this process. And I will be very happy to yield to the man 
who is a judge of that, Judge Louie Gohmert from Texas.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Iowa, my good 
friend (Mr. King), for yielding.
  As may be known, I was a history major in college. I have studied a 
great deal of government history, different countries; and I would ask 
if the gentleman from Iowa might engage me in a colloquy to answer one 
question, if you are aware of the difference between the process that 
the former Soviet Union arrived at in order to appropriate money and 
the process that has been used to appropriate $463 billion tomorrow.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I am going to have to guess. I am going to turn 
this back to you for a definitive answer. My speculation would be, Mr. 
Gohmert, that Duma probably didn't see it and maybe we get to see it 
for a pro forma vote, or am I wrong?
  Mr. GOHMERT. Well, obviously, none of us have seen it. It got posted 
and we have got people trying to make sense of the 140-or-so pages. But 
the main difference that I can tell, and this is just my opinion, but 
the main difference that I can tell is that the Soviets never promised 
to have an open, fair, transparent democratic process to appropriate 
money. That is the big difference I can see. Because that is what we 
have here.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman from 
Texas for that insightful input. In other words, he is so gentle and 
subtle when he said the Soviets kept their promise because they didn't 
make one.
  And the thing that I am addressing here, Mr. Speaker, is that there 
were a lot of promises made, and the integrity in this system, that is 
what you have to function in this body. We have to give our word and we 
have got to keep our word. And when we do that, this system functions. 
When you give your word and you don't keep your word, the system breaks 
down. And the people that pay the price for that are the American 
people.
  So I would submit that all of that whole series of promises were 
subordinated to the 100 hours' promise, which turned out to be 42 hours 
and 25 minutes. Fine. I am going to grant that that stuff got done in 
100 real hours. Actually, it got done just underneath the 100 real 
hours. But the clock has ticked over by anybody's measure. It is over 
100 hours. And there was never a justification for it anyway. I mean, I 
want to be on record in this Congressional Record, Mr. Speaker. There 
is not a justification for expediting the process at the expense of the 
voice of the people.
  But that is what has been done. Well, it has been done at least under 
the promise that when the 100 hours is up and the six pieces of 
legislation are passed, we are going to then try to keep our promise on 
the most open Congress in history. As we know, you cannot expedite 
legislation very well in the process that we have now and be able to 
improve it.
  So what they have done is they have brought this 150-or-more-page 
bill that was just first available last night at 11:03 p.m. on the 
Internet. Some of our staff had actually quit work by that time and 
gone home to bed; so some of them didn't find that until this morning. 
But of those 150 or 160 pages, in there is 463-point-something billion

[[Page 2670]]

dollars of spending and it has changed a fair amount of line items, and 
what it does is it increases the spending from the Republican plan by 
$7 billion, Mr. Speaker. Seven billion. And it changes the resources 
that are committed. They go back to the districts in some places.
  We even have some locations, in our short little time of looking at 
this, where we believe that because they have underfunded and this 
budget has gone on now for almost half a year that there will be some 
agencies that may well have to pay back because of this omnibus 
spending bill. And they will come, Mr. Speaker, to the floor tomorrow, 
and they will say, Well, this is a CR. This is a continuing resolution. 
And a continuing resolution being that you pass a resolution that says 
we are going to keep funding government at the current level and all of 
its line item appropriations until such time as we can get the Senate 
to act.
  And I have to say that the Senate needs to act. We passed nearly 
every single one of the appropriation bills last year, sent them over 
to the Senate, where they sat. And so that is one of the reasons that 
we end up with this ugly monstrosity of an omnibus spending bill.
  But it would be one thing to pass a continuing resolution and say 
that stuff has been through the subcommittee, committee, the markup 
process, been to the floor, at Appropriations. We had worked our will 
on all of that. It is a different Congress, but we had worked our will 
in the 109th Congress. It would be one thing to pass a continuing 
resolution to meet those standards because that has been due diligence 
at least. It is quite another to take all of these dollars, roll them 
all up, package them up, rewrite them, and then throw them out here on 
the narrowest of notice, $463 billion, and then say, well, there won't 
be any input and there won't be any amendments and it is going to be 
strictly an up-or-down vote, and you get 30 minutes to tell us why it 
is a bad idea and try to convince our people whose arms are twisted up 
behind their shoulder blades that they are going to have to vote for 
it.
  And there they sit with a large class of freshmen. Some of them 
served in State legislatures. In fact, I would speculate that most of 
them have. And I would also speculate that not a single one of them has 
experienced a process that was so closed in its loop, that was so 
narrow in its scope, that was so draconian that the collective wisdom 
of 435 Members of Congress and all the staff and all the constituents 
and all the media input all goes for naught.
  I would be very happy to yield to the gentleman from Georgia, and I 
will pick up whenever I need to. Thank you, Mr. Gingrey.
  Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Iowa for 
leading this Iowa Special Order, particularly in regard to what is 
going to be on the floor of this body tomorrow, Mr. Speaker, and that 
is this $463 billion monstrosity that, as the gentleman has already 
pointed out, gives no opportunity for Members of this body to have any 
input.
  We heard all this rhetoric, as we started the 110th, about the need 
to pass those six per six bumper sticker issues that the Democratic 
majority had tested, had poll tested, that drew 75, 80 percent approval 
rating; so that was their justification of closing down the process and 
bundling all of those bills, H.R. 1 through 6, in a single rule, a 
single closed rule, and no opportunity for even Members on their own 
side of the aisle, the Democratic majority, the new Members of the 
Democratic majority, to have a voice and represent their constituents. 
I think it is appalling, Mr. Speaker, that they would do that.
  But, also, as we railed against that process in the first 2 weeks, we 
had the assurance over and over again of the leadership of the 
Democratic majority that once they got through with their 100 hours, 
and as Representative King has pointed out, we are up to 147 hours now, 
where is the fairness that they promised? Where is the open process? 
Here this $463 billion so-called CR or, in layman's terms, continuing 
resolution, gets posted on the Internet at 11 o'clock last night. I 
don't think that Members of this body were sitting up holding their 
breath every 15 minutes checking on the Internet to see if Mr. Obey had 
finally posted the bill so that Members could see it and look at it and 
analyze it, study it, and hopefully come forward through the Rules 
Committee. Certainly there was no committee process in what they have 
done here.
  And I do not know, maybe my colleagues can answer this question in 
just a minute, but I know the Rules Committee did meet today, and I am 
not going to hold my breath counting the number of amendments that were 
made in order.
  But this is unconscionable, Mr. Speaker. First of all, it is not a 
CR. A CR would be a continuing resolution to continue to fund the 
government at last year's level. In fact, that would indeed save money. 
That would save the taxpayers money. This is no CR. A CR is three or 
four pages long. In fact, the last time we had a CR to cover an entire 
fiscal year was under the Democratic leadership back in 1987 and 1988. 
I don't know how long those bills were, but I do not think they were 
123 pages, as this monstrosity is, Mr. Speaker.
  I have heard this thing called a lot of terms other than a CR. I have 
heard some refer to it as a ``CRomnibus.'' To me, and maybe my 
colleagues can understand this better because ``CRomnibus'' is a little 
difficult to decipher, it looks like a hooker dressed up like a nun.

                              {time}  1815

  Now, I hope everybody can understand what I am talking about there. 
This is an appalling embarrassment to this body. And the Democratic 
majority talked about, in December and leading up to the election 
before that, how, give them the opportunity to lead this body and they 
will absolutely eliminate earmarks, totally eliminate earmarks in 
finishing up the fiscal 2007 and the fiscal 2008 budget.
  This is a giant earmark, or if you want to call it an ``Obeymark.'' 
There are so many things in here. And, of course, you know we have had 
since about 9 o'clock this morning when people came to work, maybe a 
little earlier for some of us insomniacs, to study this bill. And the 
devil is, of course, in the details.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker how much time do I have left?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Cohen). Approximately 30 minutes.
  Mr. GINGREY. I thank the gentleman from Iowa. I know he is limited in 
time, and I know our colleague from Florida is here, as well, and 
possibly other Members will be coming to weigh in on this.
  But this is appalling, Mr. Speaker and my colleagues. I mean, the 
Democratic majority has talked about opening up this process and not 
doing as we did, as they say we did; but dawn of a new day, to start a 
new open process of bipartisanship. Whether they were truthful in that 
or not, I think if you say that, if you make that pledge as you ask 
people to vote or, in many instances, replace somebody on our side of 
the aisle, then you need to fulfill that contract.
  That indeed was a pledge that has already been broken. And it does 
not have to be that way. It absolutely does not have to be that way.
  So I thank the gentleman for allowing me to weigh in on this issue. 
With that, I will turn it back over to Mr. King and continue this 
dialogue with my colleagues. Thank you.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the esteemed gentleman from Georgia, Dr. 
Phil, for his input. I did not mean to imply that I was short of time 
to deal with it. So if you feel the urge a little later as well, Mr. 
Gingrey, I am open to whatever dialogue you may have to bring to this 
floor. I appreciate that input.
  We are here to represent the American people. We each represent 
roughly 600,000, for each of us 435 Members here in the United States 
Congress. There is not anybody in this Congress that would concede a 
point that there is anybody's constituents that deserve more 
representation than theirs.
  I will just say it this way. There are no one's constituents in 
America that deserve more representation than my constituents. And, 
conversely, there are no constituents out there in America that deserve 
less. That means you

[[Page 2671]]

have got to have an open process that provides for open dialogue, that 
provides for opportunities along the way to perfect legislation to 
avoid unintended consequences and to improve legislation to perfection 
if we possibly can.
  That is the process that is absolutely missing. It has been totally 
usurped. It has been a rug jerked out from underneath this entire 
Congress. And the promise of an open process is a broken promise. The 
100 hours are up, and no one knows that better than Mr. Feeney from 
Florida. I yield to Mr. Feeney.
  Mr. FEENEY. Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to my friend from Iowa and to 
my good friend from Georgia. And I, too, just got off the last campaign 
cycle, and I watched the national newspapers. I saw it in the State of 
Florida, where over and over again I heard that there was a new, 
reformed Democratic Party, people that believed very differently than 
the Republicans in charge here in Washington, that we are going to 
reform the process, make it fairer and more transparent. I heard that 
we were going to be under new management.
  Now I find it a little funny, because as I look at the chairmen of 
the committees, we have got one chairman that has been here for 56 
years in Congress. We have got chairmen that have been here for 30 
years in Congress, for 40 years that have been Chairmen before. So 
really it is deja vu in terms of who the leadership is of the important 
committees here in Congress. There is no change.
  Americans need to know they are going to go back to the Jimmy Carter 
high-tax, high-regulation, high-speed, high-unemployment, high-
inflation rates under their so-called new leadership because it is the 
same old, same old.
  But I was really intent as I was working in my office, studying some 
of the crazy things that are coming up in our committee process this 
week, Mr. King. And I heard you offer to the new members of the 
Democratic majority that say, We are going to be very different, we are 
going to be transparent, we are not going to be liberal Democrats, we 
are going to maintain a threshold on taxes.
  And yet in the very first 2 weeks, what we here have passed without 
one amendment allowed, without one committee hearing allowed, without 
any debate other than maybe an hour on this floor allowed, with the 
results preordained by a maestro--and we have to give her credit; the 
Speaker has been a wonderful leader in terms of making the trains run 
on time, which we know that people that do not engage in democratic 
processes, but engage in totalitarian processes are successfully able 
to do.
  The first thing that the new majority, conservatives supposedly or 
moderates, do is pass PAYGO, which makes its easier to pass tax 
increases. The next thing they do is pass a minimum wage bill that 
exempts American Samoa. And they pass an energy bill that actually 
increases taxes at the pump ultimately on the people in my district 
that buy gas.
  And, of course, they also gave as part of the Committee of the Whole 
here, a vote to the delegate from American Samoa who represents, he is 
a friend of mine, he is a great guy, but he represents approximately 
60,000 people who are not a State which the Constitution requires in 
order for you to have an equal vote here on the floor.
  Now, I would tell my friend from Iowa that I have football stadiums 
not far from me that hold more than 60,000 people in them. The football 
stadiums are not represented by a delegate or a vote in Congress. And 
maybe every football stadium with 60,000 or more votes under their new 
premise ought to be included
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, just an inquiry then. What are the 
odds of the people within your stadiums in Florida with 60,000 or more 
people in them, what are the odds of them paying Federal taxes compared 
to that of American Samoa?
  Mr. FEENEY. Mr. Speaker, my guess is about 80 percent of them are 
either payers of the income tax, the Medicare tax, the Social Security 
tax, or some Federal tax.
  And with respect to American Samoa, I admire them. I actually think 
that they are fortunate. I am envious. They do not pay Federal income 
taxes, as the gentleman wisely pointed out. But they have a vote here, 
just like my football stadiums with 60,000 people do not have; American 
Samoans who do not pay Federal taxes on the Federal income code do pay 
taxes.
  Now, I will tell my two great friends, I hope that I do not upset 
them here, but the States of Georgia and Iowa are two of my favorite 
States in the Union. But I happen to be very jealous; and believe that 
I was the speaker of the house of the greatest State in the country, 
the State of Florida.
  And I will have to tell you that passing budgets is a very difficult 
deal, passing appropriations bills, it is hard. I like to compare every 
budget that I have dealt with at the Federal level or the State level 
as like a Clint Eastwood movie; it is part of the good, part the bad, 
and part the ugly. The only thing that justifies a budget is the 
process.
  Where every elected member at the committee level, for all of the 
different Appropriations Committees gets to fight for his or her 
priorities, where on the House floor you allow amendments, you allow 
the entire body to sit down and figure out collectively. And democracy 
is an ugly process, but the only thing that justifies the outcome of 
budgets, which are like a Clint Eastwood movie, The Good the Bad and 
the Ugly, is the process itself.
  The process that we witnessed today in the Rules Committee, and my 
friend from Georgia alluded to the fact that the Rules Committee 
apparently has said that not one single amendment to this omnibus 
package that was passed, not by a committee, but was passed by one 
Member, this is the Pelosi omnibus package. Nobody else had any control 
or say in it. Not one Member had a chance.
  Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, just a quick point. In these appropriation 
bills that come to the floor under regular order, each one of the 13 
separate appropriations bills came to the floor with an open rule, an 
open process.
  Mr. FEENEY. Mr. Speaker, traditionally that has always been true. 
This has never happened in modern history that any historian of the 
House can recollect.
  But let me tell you exactly what has happened. I will have to admit, 
one of the very few things that I have liked in the first 60 days here 
is that the Democrats actually pledged that we are not going to have 
earmarks.
  Now, they have pledged a lot of things. They violated virtually every 
promise that they made. But the earmark pledge is something I really 
like. I was one of the outspoken critics, even of Republican earmarks 
like the Bridge to Nowhere. But I have to tell you, you have got to 
give credit where credit is due, when they will stand up and say, we 
are not going to have earmarks. I thought, you know what, I can live by 
that policy if every other Member of the House can, or we are going to 
have transparent earmarks; everybody has to be honest about what they 
are spending the money on.
  I want to read to you the definition from The Citizens Against 
Government Waste. An earmark is any proposal that does any one of the 
following seven things; if you do one of them, you are an earmark. This 
is important, because we are facing tomorrow the largest earmark in the 
history of the world under this definition that everybody uses, if you 
do any one of these things.
  If you are requested by only one Chamber of Congress. This bill 
tomorrow is only going to be requested by the U.S. House, not the 
Senate. If you are not specifically authorized by committees in the 
House. This bill has not been authorized, not one thing in it has been 
authorized by any committee.
  If there are things in the bill that are not competitively awarded. 
Nothing in this bill requires any competitive awards for the new 
spending.
  Number four, if it is not requested by the President. There are 
billions of dollars of spending in this bill that have not been even 
seen, let alone requested or reviewed by the President.

[[Page 2672]]

  Number five, if it exceeds the President's budget request or the 
previous year's funding. We have issues here that have never been 
greater than in this bill that we have not seen because it is the 
Pelosi omnibus package that nobody had a chance to see or vote on.
  Number six--remember, any one of those things makes it an earmark; 
this qualifies for all five so far--if it is not the subject of 
congressional hearings. Well, the funny thing is the Speaker and the 
Democratic leadership would not let us have a hearing on any of this 
spending. $463 billion, we have not had one minute of hearings, 1 
minute of review.
  And finally, number seven, if some of the things in the bill serve 
only a local or special interest. Now, I will leave you with this, Mr. 
King, because I really admire the points you have made. Every taxpayer 
is paying the price of this horrible process. It is not just about 
process. This is a $463 billion earmark, not because it violates one of 
the rules, but all seven rules.
  And I would finish with this. I was really offended when Republicans 
were in charge of this Chamber and we had a $250 million earmark that I 
referred to as the Bridge to Nowhere. The earmark tomorrow is 2,000 
times greater than the Bridge to Nowhere. This is the Congress that 
supposedly was going to be about reform, ending earmarks, and have 
transparency. There is not one pledge that has been made that will not 
be broken tomorrow if this bill passes.
  With that, I thank my friend.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Thank you, Mr. Feeney, for adding the clarity to 
this issue and putting the numbers down and for also listing into the 
Congressional Record the seven points, any one of which qualifies as an 
earmark, all of which will be breaking the promise tomorrow, and 2,000 
times larger than that large earmark that 80-some percent of America 
understands as the Bridge to Nowhere.
  I would point out that there is a way to address this. And I have not 
been necessarily a critic of well-managed earmarks, as long as they are 
within the budget and as long as it is a Member initiative that 
actually is researched and debated, and it is open and it is public, 
there is an opportunity to go in and strike it out.
  But the problem with the earmarks has been, they show up after it is 
too late, and the bill comes to the floor, and there is not time to 
read the bill, and not time to prepare amendments; or they come up in a 
conference, and then here comes the conference report with a whole 
stack of earmarks in there that are agreed to by the conference 
committee, but not aware, not made aware to the rest of the Members, 
and no access to it.
  So I looked at this. And I thought, how can we fix this? And we have 
done some things with earmarks. But last year, in the middle of this, 
about this time a year ago, I began grinding and churning my way 
through and created an act called the Cut Act. And I have drafted and 
filed that information; I believe that both gentlemen here on the floor 
are cosponsors of that Cut Act.
  But what that Act does, Mr. Speaker, is it recognizes that there will 
be legislation passed off the floor of this Congress, and that Members 
will not have an opportunity to act on that legislation, on that 
appropriation, and that there will be earmarks in there that are either 
identified or may be not identified, but maybe they are objectionable 
to the American people.
  And it recognizes, Mr. Speaker, that this is an instantaneous 
Information Age if we give access on the Internet to the people in this 
country, all of whom have access to the Internet in one form or 
another.
  We have not done that. We need to put sunlight on everything that we 
do. We need to let them have real-time bloggers be able to access all 
of the bills that are filed, all of the amendments that are filed. They 
need to be able to track this whole process. But then once we get that 
system set up and we provide sunlight, the Cut Act allows, recognizes 
that those appropriations bills will find their way over to the 
President's desk, and he will sign them to keep this government 
running.

                              {time}  1830

  And this is that there will be a whole collection of objectionable, 
irresponsible spending to projects that comes to mind. The bridge was 
referenced by Mr. Feeney. The Cowgirl Hall of Fame strikes me as 
something that could be privately funded if we need one. There are a 
number of others out there that are objectionable earmarks. But if we 
pass the CUT Act, and the President signs the appropriation bill and 
the bloggers light up and they start sending this in and it becomes a 
national issue, or even just a tip that goes to a certain Member of 
Congress, like Mr. Gingrey for example, we could, under the CUT Act, 
once each quarter, four times a year, provide under the rule so that a 
bill would be brought to the floor that would allow for the rescission 
of any one of those individual line items.
  So the Shell bill might come to the floor. Any Member would bring an 
amendment that would say I want to eliminate the funding for the 
Cowgirl Hall of Fame. We put it up here on the board. We vote it up or 
down. We do that to every single line item if we chose to do that, and 
it might take a long time to debate that first bill.
  Mr. GINGREY. If the gentleman would yield.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. 
Gingrey).
  Mr. GINGREY. And I hope I won't offend the gentleman, but just as he 
is pointing out, these earmarks are there but they are selected, in 
this instance, by one person. And as you start enumerating a few, like 
the ones that you have already mentioned, I have got to also say that 
the tropical rainforest in Iowa is back at $44.6 million. Now, I don't 
know how the gentleman feels about that one, but that is the whole 
point here. A CR is supposed to save money. It is literally supposed to 
save the taxpayers money, because instead of increasing the amount of 
spending at a rate of inflation or consumer price index, you go back to 
the last year and you just continue that process.
  So, in fact, if we had done that, if we had this year-long CR, we are 
talking about maybe saving $6.1 billion. But, no, what the Democratic 
leadership of a committee of one or two decides to do is under that 
budget cap authority to plus this thing all the way up from 2006 levels 
to the budget cap, and that is an additional $6.11 billion burden on 
the taxpayer.
  As I mentioned earlier, I won't repeat the phrase I used in 
referencing this bill. But people are going to call it all kind of 
things in addition to CRomnibus. But really it is a CR on steroids. 
Maybe we should call it a steroid.
  And with that I will turn it back over to the gentleman from Iowa for 
the continuation of this discussion
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Well, again I thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. 
Gingrey) for reminding me about some of the earmarks that we have out 
there. And the list is long. And my point on this is the American 
people can make that list a lot longer. And at least in theory, any 
piece of appropriation that comes across this floor that makes it 
through the process should have the majority support of the House of 
Representatives. It ought to have the majority support of the United 
States Senate. We ought to agree on that number, and it should go to 
the President for his signature. That is the process that is structured 
within our constitution. That is the process as the American people 
envision it. That is the process that we are struggling to attain here, 
that will not be, even presumed to be happening tomorrow when this--not 
a CR, but this omnibus spending bill which is a catch-all for every 
single appropriation that goes into discretionary spending for the rest 
of--until the first day of October is when this is over.
  And, again, I am so sorry for the freshmen who come here that right 
now don't know any better, and they aren't even outraged. They have 
been led, taken by the hand and led down the primrose path. And I have 
offered them time and again, come down here. I would be happy to yield. 
Tell me what legislation you have had a voice in.

[[Page 2673]]

What have you made a difference in? Did you make the promise to 
represent your constituents or didn't you? Yes, you did. Obviously 
everybody makes that promise. So didn't you have some high and shining 
ideals? When you see the flag go up over the Capitol doesn't that make 
your heart beat a little faster? Don't you get that feeling in your 
stomach and that swelling sense of pride when you look up at the dome 
and that you are here to represent the American people of the United 
States Congress?
  But my news to you is you are not representing them. You are not 
being allowed to represent them. You aren't even a voice. You haven't 
been heard. Your input is not there. The expertise that you bring with 
your background, whatever it might be, has no value in this place. It 
is just a handful of people in the cabal that decide what is coming 
down here, the same ones that make the promise that there is going to 
be that opportunity, freshman, for you to be able to have that kind of 
input.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I illustrate that and the absence of rebuttal here 
on this floor is confirmation of my statement of my position and that 
of Mr. Gingrey and that of Mr. Feeney here this afternoon. The absence 
of rebuttal speaks loudly and it echoes in my ears.
  But on the earmark part of this, that is why I drafted the CUT Act, 
so that this Congress could be able to eliminate any line item that did 
not have the majority support of the House and the Senate and the 
President, and it recognizes that the President would sign an 
appropriations bill and that money would get off his desk and go to the 
agencies, wherever it might be, and it takes them sometimes the whole 
year to spend the last dollar. And at any point where we rescinded that 
funding, it would go to reduce the national debt automatically, and 
then that fund would no longer be available to whatever entity was 
about to receive it.
  That is one way that gives Congress, the CUT Act gives Congress a 
line item veto. And that is the piece of policy that we need to get 
resolved here in this Congress, along with many others. But the open 
process, and this is going to be and has been so far, Mr. Speaker, a 
very closed process, a process so closed that I will point out that, 
not just a matter of information, I mean, I have sent my staff down to 
the majority leader's office to try to find out what the criteria was 
for the clock, or what is the criteria for providing and offering 
amendments; when is this draconian martial-law going to be lifted, this 
open process that is promised.
  And I want to point out, the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cooper) 
was doing a national television program here on the news, the beginning 
of the 110th Congress, a couple of days before we gaveled in. And they 
said to him, but you are going to suspend all the rules and you are 
going to drive all this legislation through without input from Members 
on either side. And he got kind of a funny look on his face and he 
said, well, just please, will you give us a little patience. Have some 
patience and let us get through this process. And once we get these six 
bills passed, you are going to see the most open, democratic Congress 
in history.
  Mr. Cooper, I am waiting for you, too. I would be very happy to 
yield.
  That is not the case today. The hundred hours is clearly up. The 
process is not open, and the American people are not being heard. They 
didn't decide they were going to anoint some people with a royalty 
position, whether they allege that they are the most powerful woman in 
the world or not. This is a government that rules by the consent of the 
people. And the people did not give their consent to a process that is 
not an open process, a process that muzzles 99 percent of the Members 
in this Congress.
  And clearly, they are not here to speak up because they know they 
don't have a voice and they don't have an argument. And so we are going 
to continue to push on this process. We are going to go before the 
Rules Committee. I took an amendment up before the Rules Committee, and 
there were a number of us that did. We all know the results of that, 
the charade in the Rules Committee, which is, bring your amendment up. 
You can offer your amendment up here, but before you come up here, we 
are going to tell you we are not going to accept a single one, even if 
it is some kind of revelation. If it is an epiphany that just fixes the 
whole thing, we are not going to consider it because the meat cleaver 
has come down.
  So we are going through a charade. No amendments, but come here and 
argue them anyway if you want to and we will sit through this and we 
will put one or two people up there and we will rotate and we will get 
through this process. And then we will say, why are you complaining? We 
had a rules process. You just didn't have any amendments with any 
merit. Oh, really? No amendments with any merit is the same result as 
no input into the process, Mr. Speaker. This government cannot function 
with that.
  And I will also point out that the House of Representatives is where 
all the appropriations has to start. That is what the Constitution says 
and that is what we need to follow. But this bill, this omnibus bill, 
is going to go over to the Senate, over to those 100 Senators over 
there, and you can bet that they are going to be offering amendments 
and they are going to be improving this omnibus spending bill, and they 
are going to be fixing this all the way through their process. So their 
voice will be heard. And then we will get an amended omnibus bill back 
here again, and I would submit this question, will then, Mr. Speaker, 
will it come to the floor again with no opportunity for amendments 
again? And if that is the case, why have we ceded the improvement 
process to the United States Senate?
  We are the hot cup of coffee here, and they are the saucer to cool it 
in. We are supposed to be the quick reaction force that has the 
elections every 2 years, so that vigor that comes with a new freshman 
class and that risk of being up for re-election every 2 years, it keeps 
us tuned in with our fingers on the pulse of the American people who 
can be heard in the legislative process.
  The hot cup of coffee, the quick reaction force, the storm troops 
that are going to come in and fix things quickly, especially in the 
change-over of a majority, Mr. Speaker, is just what our Founding 
Fathers envisioned when they drafted our Constitution and set up this 
miraculous system of government that we have. But the leadership in 
this House of Representatives has handed over the amendment process to 
the United States Senate which they have a legitimate claim to their 
version of it, we also have a legitimate claim to ours and a 
constitutional duty to do so that has been usurped by this decision to 
make a promise and have that promise of 100 hours be sacrosanct and 
then like that draconian approach so much of not being challenged that 
they go ahead and shut the clock off at 42 hours and 25 minutes.
  And we could go on in perpetuity until the American people revolt at 
the polls. That is what is coming. You are going to see mistake after 
mistake after mistake. One of those examples would be the Minimum Wage 
Act, American Samoa, and being exempted from the Minimum Wage Act of 
all of The states and territories of the United States of America, one 
place on the map with 60,000 people, we find out after the fact, after 
the minimum wage bill is passed, is exempted from the minimum wage. 
Well, if you can legislate wages to go up and help people, which is the 
argument that came out of this side of the aisle continually, Mr. 
Speaker, then why can't you do so in American Samoa? What is wrong with 
them that they don't deserve a raise like everybody else got in America 
that was working for a minimum wage? And the answer that I get back is, 
well, we had to do that because the tuna market there won't sustain 
this. The international competition won't sustain higher wages, so we 
would lose that to Asia or maybe South American companies that can 
produce that tuna cheaper than they can in the American Samoa.
  Well, that is called competition. And how is it that Democrats can 
understand the effect of competition and the deleterious effect of 
minimum wage on

[[Page 2674]]

a small business, large business in a small microcosm of a location 
like American Samoa? They can understand it when it is a microcosm, but 
they can't understand it when it is 300 million people in a macrocosm. 
It is the same principle that applies, Mr. Speaker. But that is a fatal 
flaw of this approach of a closed process rather than an open process. 
That is what happens, Mr. Speaker, when we don't allow for amendments. 
And then things start to smell fishy.
  What was the reason?
  I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. 
Gingrey).
  Mr. GINGREY. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I just wanted to 
point out, and I am sure the gentleman would agree with me, that there 
are things in this so-called CR that we approve of. As I look through 
the list, and of course, I have got a lot more looking to do, but as I 
see things like an increase in Pell Grants to $260 up to $4,310, I 
think that is good. And additional funding for the Head Start program. 
And I could go on and on and on. There are a number of things here that 
I see that I could vote in favor of, but there are a number that I 
would be opposed to.
  And just as the gentleman points out, especially for the new Members 
on both sides of the aisle to not have an opportunity to go through 
regular order and a committee markup process, go to the Rules Committee 
with their amendments, I am talking now about majority Member 
amendments, things that they have heard about, as you pointed out, Mr. 
King, from their constituents, as they campaigned for the very first 
time for Congress and the excitement of that, and you pointed that out 
as well. It is just sad. It really is sad. And if it wasn't so sad, it 
would be almost laughable.
  So I just want to say that, again, it is not that, as I register 
tomorrow my vote against this, it is unfortunate because there are some 
things in here that I would be in favor of. But I am going to be voting 
against the usurp of power and putting the process under the jackboot 
of the new majority.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey). 
And I will say that my sympathy and heart goes out to especially 
freshmen Members of Congress when they go back home to their town hall 
meetings, and I would just ask you, out there, and Mr. Speaker, I 
convey that message to the people in America, that when these freshman 
especially show up for their first town hall meeting, I would say to 
the citizens, stand up and ask them, what has been your input? What has 
been your impact? How have you kept your promise so far? What do you 
think of the process? What has been your involvement? Have you produced 
any amendments? Have you done anything to impact this process 
whatsoever? And their answer is going to be ``no.'' You need to 
challenge them, Mr. Speaker, to come back here and open up this 
process.

                          ____________________