Further Continuing Appropriations, Fiscal Year 2007

FURTHER CONTINUING APPROPRIATIONS, FISCAL YEAR 2007

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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate Mr. Obey, who was the ranking member in the last Congress, and who worked with Mr. Lewis to try to pass our appropriation bills and, in fact, we passed all but one of the appropriation bills. Unfortunately, we reported the Labor Health bill, which is the largest bill, other than the Defense bill, in June, and it failed to ever get to the floor of this House because it included minimum wage, and that was not favored by the majority.

Now that we are in the majority, we are left with unfinished business. The gentlelady from Virginia mentions cutting something. We haven't cut anything. As a matter of fact, we have added $1 billion.

If you had passed your appropriation bills, you may have been able to fund at appropriate levels. But you did not pass your appropriation bills. Yet, we hear on the floor today constant complaining from the other side of the aisle that they don't like the way we fixed their failures.

Well, very frankly, I think the American public will. First of all, the American public will be pleased that we are acting, that we are moving on this legislation, which is, essentially, the funding of 9 appropriation bills that failed to move through the House of Representatives and the Senate and to the President as they should have.

Mr. Obey has worked very hard with Senator Byrd. I know Mr. Lewis' staff has been very engaged in this as well. I know the Senate staff has been engaged in it. And I am hopeful that this bill will not only pass this House with a very handy vote.

There are many people in this House, on the Republican side of the aisle who asked to achieve exactly what Mr. Obey has achieved in this bill. He has taken care of the veterans. He has taken care of veterans health. He has taken care of, for the first time in 4 years, trying to get college students Pell Grants that will give them some additional help to fund their college costs. When we had that vote on the floor of this House, we had 124 Republicans join us in that vote. This is one additional step in trying to get college students a more affordable education.

Mr. Obey has moved in a number of areas to make our investments more productive and a better return for the American people. And this bill will provide for getting last year's business done that was left undone, so that we can move on to have what Mr. Wamp wants, and I want, and Mr. Obey wants and Mr. Lewis wants. That is, full and open discussion of the bills in subcommittee, in the full committee and on this floor. I think that is what we will have.

But ladies and gentlemen of this House, we need to complete last year's undone business. It wasn't our fault that it was not done. But whoever's fault it was, it is not useful to say that it is your fault or my fault or somebody else's fault. It is useful to say we need to move forward. We need to fund government services. We need to fund the priorities of the American people. That is what this continuing resolution does.

I congratulate Mr. Obey, and I urge all of our colleagues to support this bill so we can finally, one-third of the way into the fiscal year, finally do what we should have done by September 30 of 2006.

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Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for his comments, but I want to say, first of all, when he talks about $463 billion, I read in the newspaper today where OMB was very pleased that we stayed within the caps imposed by the Republican-passed budget. We took the Republican-passed budget, we took those numbers, we stayed within those caps. That is exactly what you did, Mr. Lewis, when you were chairman of the committee because that was the direction from the Budget Committee. I am understanding that the White House even said that they were pleased with the fact that we stayed within the numbers when you talk about spending.

Secondly, let me say that you and I both served on the Appropriations Committee for a long period of time. In recent years, of course, we have not passed all the appropriation bills in the calendar year, much less the fiscal year, and we would pass omnibus appropriation bills with hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars larger than this bill. One was passed January 31, the other was passed February 5. They were passed as conference reports with 1 hour of debate and no amendments, in which substantial legislative language had been added in conference and not vetted on this floor or in committee.

I understand the gentleman's representations, but he and I have been here a long time and we have a long history of knowing what has transpired in the past. This is a process that was required by the failure of the last Congress to do its work. It has been done in a way that tries to get it done so that we can get on to do exactly what the gentleman wants for the 2008 bills, give them a full airing, full hearings. And I predict to my distinguished and very close friend, Mr. Lewis, we are going to have a lot more hearings as we did when we were in charge, we had more hearings than we have had.

We are going to have oversight, and we are going to have careful scrutiny of the taxpayers' dollars. And I look forward to joining my friend in that process in the regular order. We are doing this so that we can get on to that process to do exactly what the gentleman suggests because it is the right thing to do. And I look forward to working with him on that process.

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