    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
    [November 3, 1999]
    [Pages 1958-1962]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Message to the House of Representatives Returning Without Approval
    Appropriations Legislation for the District of Columbia and Labor,
    Health, and Education Programs
    November 3, 1999

    To the House of Representatives:
        I am returning herewith without my approval H.R. 3064, the FY 2000
    District of Columbia and Departments of Labor, Health and Human
    Services, and Education, and Related Agencies appropriations bill.
        I am vetoing H.R. 3064 because the bill, including the offsets
    section, is deeply flawed. It includes a misguided 0.97 percent across-
    the-board reduction that will hurt everything from national defense to
    education and environmental programs. The legislation also contains
    crippling cuts in key education, labor, and health priorities and
    undermines our capacity to manage these programs effectively. The
    enrolled bill delays the availability of $10.9 billion for the National
    Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, and other
    important health and social services programs, resulting in delays in
    important medical research and health services to low-income Americans.
    The bill is clearly unacceptable. I have submitted a budget that would
    fund these priorities without spending the Social Security surplus, and
    I am committed to working with the Congress to identify acceptable
    offsets for additional spending for programs that are important to all
    Americans.
        The bill also fails to fulfill the bipartisan commitment to raise
    student achievement by authorizing and financing class size reduction.
    It does not guarantee any continued funding for the 29,000 teachers
    hired with FY 1999 funds, or the additional 8,000 teachers to be hired
    under my FY 2000 proposal. Moreover, the bill language turns the program
    into a virtual block grant that could be spent on vouchers and other
    unspecified activities. In addition, the bill fails to fund my proposed
    investments in teacher quality by not funding Troops to Teachers ($18
    million) and by cutting $35 million from my request for Teacher Quality
    Enhancement Grants. These programs would bring more highly qualified
    teachers into the schools, especially in high-poverty, high-need school
    districts.
        The bill cuts $189 million from my request for Title I Education for
    the Disadvantaged, resulting in 300,000 fewer children in low-income
    communities receiving needed services. The bill also fails to improve
    accountability or help States turn around the lowest-performing schools
    because it does not include my proposal to set aside 2.5 percent for
    these purposes. Additionally, the bill provides only $300 million for
    21st Century Community Learning Centers, only half my $600 million
    request. At this level, the conference report would deny after-school
    services to more than 400,000 students.
        The bill provides only $180 million for GEAR UP, $60 million below
    my request, to help disadvantaged students prepare for college beginning
    in the seventh grade. This level would serve nearly 131,000 fewer low-
    income students. In addition, the bill does not adequately fund my
    Hispanic Education Agenda. It provides no funds for the Adult Education
    English as a Second Language/Civics Initiative to help limited English
    proficient adults learn English and gain life skills necessary for
    successful citizenship and civil participation. The bill underfunds
    programs designed to improve educational outcomes for Hispanic and other
    minority students, including Bilingual Education, the High School
    Equivalency Program (HEP), the College Assistance Migrant Program
    (CAMP), and the Strengthening Historically Black Colleges and
    Universities program.
        The bill underfunds Education Technology programs, including
    distance learning and community technology centers. In particular, the
    bill provides only $10 million to community based

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    technology centers, $55 million below my request. My request would
    provide access to technology in 300 additional low-income communities.
    The bill provides $75 million for education research, $34 million less
    than my request, and includes no funding for the Department of
    Education's share of large-scale joint research with the National
    Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health on early
    learning in reading and mathematics, teacher preparation, and technology
    applications.
        The bill does not fund the $53 million I requested to provide job
    finding assistance to 241,000 unemployment insurance claimants. This
    means that these claimants will remain unemployed longer, costing more
    in benefit payments. The bill also provides only $140 million of my $199
    million request to expand services to job seekers at One-Stop centers as
    recently authorized in the bipartisan Workforce Investment Act. The bill
    funds $120 million of the $149 million requested for efforts to improve
    access to One-Stops as well as continued support for electronic labor
    exchange and labor market information. It funds only $20 million of the
    $50 million requested for work incentive grants to help integrate
    employment services for persons with disabilities into the mainstream
    One-Stop system.
        The bill also does not provide funding for Right Track Partnerships
    (RTP). I requested $75 million for this new competitive grant program.
    Designed to help address youth violence, RTP would become part of the
    multi-agency Safe Schools/Healthy Students initiative, expanding it to
    include a focus on out-of-school youth.
        The bill provides $33 million less than my request for labor law
    enforcement agencies, denying or reducing initiatives to ensure
    workplace safety, address domestic child labor abuses, encourage equal
    pay, implement new health law, and promote family leave. In particular,
    the bill provides an inadequate level of funding for the Occupational
    Safety and Health Administration, cutting it by $18 million, or 5
    percent below my request.
        The bill also fails to provide adequate funding for the Bureau of
    International Labor Affairs (ILAB). The bill funds ILAB at $50 million,
    $26 million below my request. The bill would prevent ILAB from carrying
    out my proposal to work through the International Labor Organization to
    help developing countries establish core labor standards, an essential
    step towards leveling the playing field for American workers.
        The bill's funding level for the Bureau of Labor Statistics is $11
    million less than my request. The enrolled bill denies three important
    increases that would: (1) improve the Producer Price Index, which
    measures wholesale prices; (2) improve measures of labor productivity in
    the service sector; and, (3) improve the Employment Cost Index, used to
    help set wage levels and guide anti-inflation policy. It also denies
    funding for a study of racial discrimination in labor markets.
        The bill denies my request for $10 million to fund AgNet, even
    though the Senate included report language that supports AgNet in
    concept. AgNet, an Internet-based labor exchange, would facilitate the
    recruitment of agricultural workers by growers and the movement of
    agricultural workers to areas with employment needs.
        The bill would cut the Social Services Block Grant (SSBG) by $209
    million below FY 1999 and $680 million below my request. The SSBG serves
    some of the most vulnerable families, providing child protection and
    child welfare services for millions of children. In addition, the
    failure to provide the Senate's level of $2 billion in advance
    appropriations for the Child Care and Development Block Grant would mean
    220,000 fewer children receiving child care assistance in FY 2001. The
    bill also fails to fund my National Family Caregiver Support program,
    which would provide urgently needed assistance to 250,000 families
    caring for older relatives.
        By funding the Title X Family Planning program at last year's level,
    family planning clinics would be unable to extend comprehensive
    reproductive health care services to an additional 500,000 clients who
    are neither Medicaid-eligible nor insured. The bill also fails to fund
    the Health Care Access for the Uninsured Initiative, which would enable
    the development of integrated systems of care and address service gaps
    within these systems.
        The bill fails to fully fund several of the Centers for Disease
    Control and Prevention's (CDC) critical public health programs,
    including:
        childhood immunizations ( - $44 million), so that
                approximately 300,000 children may not receive the full
                complement of recommended childhood vaccinations;

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        infectious diseases ( - $36 million), which will impair
                CDC's ability to investigate outbreaks of diseases such as
                the West Nile virus in New York;
        domestic HIV prevention ( - $4 million);
        race and health demonstrations ( - $5 million), which will
                impair better understanding of how to reduce racial
                disparities in health; and,
        health statistics ( - $10 million) for key data collection
                activities such as the National Health and Nutrition
                Examination Survey and health information on racial and
                ethnic population groups.
        The Congress has failed to fund any of the $59 million increase I
    requested for the Mental Health Block Grant, which would diminish
    States' capacity to serve the mentally ill.
        In addition, the Congress has underfunded my request for the
    Substance Abuse Block Grant by $30 million, and has underfunded other
    substance abuse treatment grants by a total of $45 million. These
    reductions would widen the treatment gap in FY 2000 and jeopardize the
    Federal Government's ability to meet the National Drug Control Strategy
    performance target to reduce the drug treatment gap by 50 percent by FY
    2007.
        The bill provides only half of the $40 million requested for
    graduate education at Children's Hospitals, which play an essential role
    in education the Nation's physicians, training 25 percent of
    pediatricians and over half of many pediatric subspecialists.
        The bill underfunds the Congressional Black Caucus' AIDS Initiative
    in the Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund by $15 million,
    thereby reducing current efforts to prevent the spread of HIV. By not
    fully funding this program, the scope of HIV/AIDS prevention, education,
    and outreach activities available to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS in
    minority communities will be more limited.
        The bill fails to fund Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA)
    program management adequately. These reductions would severely impede
    HCFA's ability to ensure the quality of nursing home care through the
    Nursing Home Initiative. The bill does not adequately fund the request
    for Medicare+Choice user fees. This decrease would force HCFA to scale
    back the National Medicare Education Campaign. The Congress has not
    passed the proposed user fees totaling $194.5 million that could free up
    resources under the discretionary caps for education and other
    priorities.
        The bill includes a provision that would prevent funds from being
    used to administer the Medicare+Choice Competitive Pricing Demonstration
    Project in Kansas and Arizona. These demonstrations which are supported
    by MEDPAC and other independent health policy experts, were passed by
    the Congress as part of the Balanced Budget Act in order to provide
    valuable information regarding the use of competitive pricing
    methodologies in Medicare. The information that we could learn from
    these demonstrations is particularly relevant as we consider the
    important task of reforming Medicare.
        The bill contains a highly objectionable provision that would delay
    the implementation of HHS' final Organ Procurement and Transplantation
    rule for 90 days. This rule, which was strongly validated by an
    Institute of Medicine report, provides a more equitable system of
    treatment for over 63,000 Americans waiting for an organ transplant; its
    implementation would likely prevent the deaths of hundreds of Americans.
    Since almost 5,000 people die each year waiting for an organ transplant,
    we must be allowed to move forward on this issue and implement the rule
    without further delay.
        The bill does not provide any of the $9.5 million I requested for
    HHS' Office of the General Counsel and Departmental Appeals Board to
    handle legal advice, regulations review, and litigation support, and to
    conduct hearings and issue decisions on nursing home enforcement cases
    as part of my Nursing Home Initiative. This would increase the backlog
    of nursing home appeals and impair Federal oversight of nursing home
    quality and safety standards. A reduction in funds for enforcement is
    inconsistent with the concerns that the GAO and the Congress have raised
    about this issue.
        The bill cuts funds to counter bioterrorism. It funds less than half
    my request for CDC's stockpile, limiting the amount of vaccines,
    antibiotics, and other medical supplies that can be stockpiled to deploy
    in the event of a chemical or biological attack. In addition, the bill
    does not include $13.4 million for critical FDA expedited regulatory
    review/approval of pharmaceuticals to combat chemical and biological
    agent weapons.
        The bill provides full funding of $350 million in FY 2002 for the
    Corporation for Public

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    Broadcasting. However, the bill provides only $10 million of the $20
    million requested for the digital transition initiative in FY 2000. This
    funding is required to help the public broadcasting system meet the
    Federal deadline to establish digital broadcasting capability by May 1,
    2003.
        The enrolled bill delays the availability of $10.9 billion of
    funding until September 29, 2000. While modest levels of delayed
    obligations could potentially be sustained without hurting the affected
    programs, the levels in the enrolled bill are excessive, resulting in
    delays in NIH research grants, delays in CDC immunizations for children,
    and delays in the delivery of health services to low income Americans
    through community health centers and rural health clinics.
        The bill also seriously underfunds critical Departmental management
    activities in the Departments of Labor and Education and the Social
    Security Administration (SSA). For Education, these reductions would
    hamstring efforts to replace the Department's accounting system and
    undermine the new Performance-Based Organization's plans to streamline
    and modernize student aid computer systems. Reductions to the Department
    of Labor (DOL) would undercut the agency's ability to comply with the
    requirements of the Clanger-Cohen and Computer Security Acts, adjudicate
    contested claims in several of its benefits programs, and examine and
    update the 1996 study on Family and Medical leave policies. For SSA, the
    reductions would result in significantly longer waiting times for
    disability applicants and millions of individuals who visit SSA field
    offices.
        In adopting an across-the-board reduction, the Congress has
    abdicated its responsibility to make tough choices. Governing is about
    making choices and selecting priorities that will serve the national
    interest. By choosing an across-the-board cut, the Congress has failed
    to meet that responsibility.
        This across-the-board cut would result in indiscriminate reductions
    in important areas such as education, the environment, and law
    enforcement. In addition, this cut would have an adverse impact on
    certain national security programs. The indiscriminate nature of the cut
    would require a reduction of over $700 million for military personnel,
    which would require the military services to make cuts in recruiting and
    lose up to 48,000 military personnel.
        In adopting this cost-saving technique, the Congress is asserting
    that it will not have to dip into the Social Security surplus. However,
    this cut does not eliminate the need to dip into the Social Security
    surplus.
        For these reasons, this across-the-board cut is not acceptable.
        In addition to the specific program cuts and the 0.97 percent
    across-the-board reduction, the bill contains a $121 million reduction
    in salaries and expenses for the agencies funded by this bill,
    exacerbating the problems caused by the bill's underfunding of critical
    Departmental management activities. If, for example, the $121 million
    reduction were allocated proportionately across all agencies funded in
    the Labor/HHS/Education bill, HHS would have to absorb an approximately
    $55 million reduction to its salaries and expenses accounts, Labor would
    be cut by about $14 million, Education by about $5 million, and SSA by
    some $45 million. This would dramatically affect the delivery of
    essential human services and education programs and the protection of
    employees in the workplace.
        With respect to the District of Columbia component of the bill, I am
    pleased that the majority and minority in the Congress were able to come
    together to pass a version of the District of Columbia Appropriations
    Bill that I would sign if presented to me separately and as it is
    currently constructed. While I continue to object to remaining riders,
    some of the highly objectionable provisions that would have intruded
    upon local citizens' right to make decisions about local matters have
    been modified from previous versions of the bill. That is a fair
    compromise. We will continue to strenuously urge the Congress to keep
    such riders off of the FY 2001 D.C. Appropriations Bill.
        I commend the Congress for providing the Federal funds I requested
    for the District of Columbia. The bill includes essential funding for
    District Courts and Corrections and the D.C. Offender Supervision Agency
    and provides requested funds for a new tuition assistance program for
    District of Columbia residents. The bill also includes funding to
    promote the adoption of children in the District's foster care system,
    to support the Children's National Medical Center, to assist the
    Metropolitan Police Department in eliminating open-air drug trafficking
    in the District, and for drug testing and treatment, among other
    programs. However, I continue to

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    object to remaining riders that violate the principles of home rule.
        I look forward to working with the Congress to craft an
    appropriations bill that I can support, and to passage of one that will
    facilitate our shared objectives.

                                                          William J. Clinton

    The White House,

    November 3, 1999.