Further Continuing Appropriations, Fiscal Year 2005
FURTHER CONTINUING APPROPRIATIONS, FISCAL YEAR 2005 -- (House of Representatives - November 24, 2004)
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Mr. HOYER. Reserving the right to object, Mr. Speaker, I want to say that this was not unanticipated. I rose during the consideration of the rule on Saturday and said, "But the fear of the American people," referring to the bill that was to be considered pursuant to the rule that was then under consideration, "is in the dead of the night, in the cloudiness of quick consideration that many things are included in these bills which perhaps both Houses would not have put in there, as has happened too frequently during the course of this Congress, or that either House really knows is in there."
I said that on Saturday.
Later that day it was discovered on the floor of the Senate legislation which had been discussed in this House but the ramifications of which, the meaning of which, the effect of which was really not known. That is of great concern. The chairman of the Committee on Finance in the Senate said it was "an outrage." JOHN MCCAIN said "the process is broken."
Mr. Speaker, nine of 13 appropriation bills were included in the pages of the legislation that is before me here on the desk. Now, this is approximately 1,500, 1,600 pages. The bill is actually between 3,300 and 3,400 because the bill has fewer words per page on it. Seventy-five percent of the bill which we considered, which included the language which has brought us here today, 75 percent of that bill had never been on the floor of the United States Senate, never considered, never debated, never open to the public's review. Seventy-five percent of the bill that was brought to this floor.
Mr. Speaker, the issue here today is not the granting of unanimous consent to ensure that the government keeps running until the 8th of December. We are all going to be for that. That is the appropriate thing for us to do. Nor is, in my opinion, the staff work. We have an extraordinarily excellent staff on the Committee on Appropriations, led by an extraordinary leader of judgment, of wise counsel, and great integrity who was forced, along with staff, to work in an incredibly telescoped fashion.
So 75 percent of the bills were never considered on the Senate floor, one of the bills never on the House or Senate floor, and one never even reported out of the Senate subcommittee. In addition to that, and some may not know this even at this point in time, there were three major authorization bills included in this bill that have never been debated on the floor in terms of their effect: the Satellite Home Extension Reauthorization Act, the Snake River Water Rights Act, and the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act.
My presumption is, and I have not talked to each one of the ranking members of each committee, the Resources Committee in two of the cases, Committee on Energy and Commerce in the third, my presumption is that they agreed and therefore did not object to their inclusion.
In addition to that, we deleted provisions that were approved in the House, approved in the Senate, one affecting millions of Americans on minimum wage. This House directed the conference to keep it in by a significant majority vote. The Senate adopted it. It was dropped without really any ability to discuss it, as my ranking member on the Committee on Appropriations said, in conference.
I have been on the Committee on Appropriations not as long as the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. OBEY), but a significant number of years, 23 to be specific, and was used to going to conference, to sitting at the table representing the 662,000 people I represent and saying I believe that we ought to do A or B. There was no opportunity given by this procedure to do that.
Now the sad fact is that this is not an abberation. As the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) pointed out, this is the way we do appropriation bills now. Last year we did not adopt the majority of the appropriation bills until the following calendar year; the year before that until the following calendar year, once in January and once in February. My goodness, it is November 24 today. We are doing it early, one could say.
But the fact of the matter is this has become the practice of this House, the practice of this House not to have conferences, not only on appropriation bills, but not to have conferences on Ways and Means and tax bills that affect millions and millions of Americans, not to have conferences even when we refer bills from the floor back to a conference. And we have found last year a bill being reported back that had never gone to that conference notwithstanding the vote of this House to send it to conference, and no conferee had an opportunity to say anything about the bill.
Mr. Speaker, the lamentable fact is we are here because of a process that is undermining this democratic institution. We are here because we are not taking the time to include all interested parties, including the American people, in the consideration of this legislation. We have closed rules, closed conferences or no conferences, conferences called without Democrats being included, dropping items approved by both Houses, and adding measures not approved by either House. This is unfortunate.
Mr. Speaker, as I said, we are not going to object to this unanimous consent. It is the appropriate request to make. The good news for the American people is, as the gentleman from California (Mr. Matsui) has observed, it will give us an opportunity to do something that has been vetted, that has been considered, has been considered in the open with due hearings, on television, in a bipartisan fashion, reported out, and I refer of course to the 9/11 Commission report.
This report seeks to prevent another tragic attack on the United States of America and the loss of 3,000 souls within hours, within minutes. This report was unanimously adopted. This report was passed overwhelmingly by the other body with less than four people opposing it, and it came to a conference, essentially, a meeting: the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez) on our side, a number on the other side of the aisle. The Senate came together. Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins came together and agreed and were overwhelmingly supported by their Senate colleagues. They said we have a bipartisan agreement to make America safer.
Governor Kean and our distinguished former colleague, Lee Hamilton, said we must act now. They said that in July.
Mr. Speaker, we have not acted. But as a result of what we do today, we will come back to this House on the 6th or 7th of December with an obligation to act on the omnibus appropriation bill, but it will give us an opportunity to do the right thing and pass the 9/11 Commission report which is overwhelmingly supported.
I will tell my friends in this body, I was somewhat dismayed at the Speaker's spokesman when he said that what good was it to pass a bill that the majority of the conference did not support. I will tell my friends in this House, without fear of contradiction, not one, and I invite anybody to come to the floor to contradict me, if the 9/11 Commission report is put on this floor as reported out of the Senate and as agreed to in the conference committee on this bill, it will be passed overwhelmingly in this House.
And I will say to my friend, the spokesman for the Speaker, the good is that the American people will be well served, whether or not a majority of your conference agrees. That is the good. That is why we are here. That ought to be our focus. And because of this happenstance, this mistake, this rightfully-to-be-reconsidered provision that was put in the bill without due consideration, or, if given due consideration, inartfully drawn by someone not in this body, then we will be advantaged because we will have an opportunity to respond to the American public's concern and the unanimous recommendations of the 9/11 Commission and to the support of the President of the United States who asked this to pass.
Now, Mr. Rumsfeld, our Secretary of Defense, says he is supportive of the President's view that it ought to pass. Now, if we have the President, we have the Secretary of Defense, we have the overwhelming majority, I do not know of anybody on our side of the aisle who is going to oppose it. Maybe there are some. And I am sure that there are certainly sufficient Members on your side of the aisle to ensure 218 votes to pass such a unanimously and supported recommendation to make America safer.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend from Wisconsin under my reservation.
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Mr. HOYER. Reclaiming my time under my reservation, I thank the gentleman for his comments and would join him in reiterating the fact that the fault lies not in the staff. The fault lies not in the objective in this particular provision that was trying to be attained. It was that a significant, very harmful mistake was made. Whoever made it made it, as the gentleman from Wisconsin has pointed out, in the press of a process which did not give time for reflection, so that, having been caught at a time when we did not then have time to correct it because the rush to judgment was in place, we now have taken that time, and I think that is a good thing. I appreciate the staffs helping us get to that point on both sides of the aisle.
I want to say, secondly, that our Founding Fathers set up a process, Mr. Speaker, that was not as efficient as authoritarian regimes claim to be. If you have the votes and you can jam something through, so be it; but our Founding Fathers, Mr. Speaker, wanted a reflective process, a process where there was full and fair consideration in both Houses, because their concern was that democracy would work if everybody had the opportunity to see it and to participate in it.
This process of thousands of pages of bills being passed within hours under a martial-law rule did not allow that process to occur, and the result was inevitable, that things would be passed unknown to this body, unknown to the American public and of great concern to them which would not have enjoyed a majority of support in this House or the Senate if they had been fully aired.
Hopefully, this will be an object lesson which will lead us to a process more open, more open to minority views, with time given to staff and Members to digest, to reflect, and to make wise judgments.
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Mr. HOYER. Reclaiming my time under my reservation, I thank the gentleman for his comments and would join him in reiterating the fact that the fault lies not in the staff. The fault lies not in the objective in this particular provision that was trying to be attained. It was that a significant, very harmful mistake was made. Whoever made it made it, as the gentleman from Wisconsin has pointed out, in the press of a process which did not give time for reflection, so that, having been caught at a time when we did not then have time to correct it because the rush to judgment was in place, we now have taken that time, and I think that is a good thing. I appreciate the staffs helping us get to that point on both sides of the aisle.
I want to say, secondly, that our Founding Fathers set up a process, Mr. Speaker, that was not as efficient as authoritarian regimes claim to be. If you have the votes and you can jam something through, so be it; but our Founding Fathers, Mr. Speaker, wanted a reflective process, a process where there was full and fair consideration in both Houses, because their concern was that democracy would work if everybody had the opportunity to see it and to participate in it.
This process of thousands of pages of bills being passed within hours under a martial-law rule did not allow that process to occur, and the result was inevitable, that things would be passed unknown to this body, unknown to the American public and of great concern to them which would not have enjoyed a majority of support in this House or the Senate if they had been fully aired.
Hopefully, this will be an object lesson which will lead us to a process more open, more open to minority views, with time given to staff and Members to digest, to reflect, and to make wise judgments.
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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.