Neil Abercrombie

Mr. ABERCROMBIE

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I hope we can bring some sanity to all this. I am opposed to this, I am opposed to this bill. If you think about it, I cannot imagine why some of my friends on this side are for this. We have been looking at working on this for several days, and in fact the past several weeks. We are getting rid of several centuries of people fighting against the king to be able to sue. You cannot say that something is groundless or frivolous. If a man or woman says this is in their interest and they can find a lawyer to take it, they should be able to do it. Let us get to the bottom line here. I have done that. I have been on that side. I was libeled once, and I went to a lawyer and, thank God, I was able to find an attorney who took my case when I did not have any money. I was a student in college. He took that case and it helped set law in the State of Hawaii because we drove the State of Hawaii back. They had all their attorneys working against me. Anybody who is tuning in across this country, this bill is against you. There are three things that define a free people: the right to have a jury trial; the right to vote; and the right to sue. The commoner can sue the king. The king in this country, the executive in this country, the big people, corporations, whoever it is, they have to stand in court against a small person. That is what this is all about. I saw the Speaker today. He says he is somewhat of a historian. Well, he is a little loose with the facts. He got on television today and said, ``Look through your rolodex and see who you have not sued today.'' What a sorry spectacle that is and what a sorry spectacle this is today. I went down to take the law boards, and I walked out before I left--I took a look at the people in the room and decided I did not want to be with them. Walked out before it was over. This is not a conservative position. I do not understand this position that is being taken by our Republican friends and, sad to say, some of my Democratic friends. We should be defending the individual's right to sue the king. That is what this is all about. You can have all of the discussion back and forth when most of the country could not even understand what you were talking about. There is a bottom line to be drawn on all of this: Can the average American take someone else into court and see who is right? You have no business telling me that my views and my desires are groundless, that they are brought in bad faith, that they are brought for the purpose of harassment. I was the one who was harassed in the case. I had a State senator who libeled me, who knew that he libeled me. It was during the Vietnam war situation, and if you do not think that can reoccur here, you are making a sad mistake. He libeled me, and he knew it. What they ended up doing it in order not to have to pay my lawyer, thank God I was able to find somebody who was willing to take my case, and he absorbed all the costs. I did not have any money. He took it on. I was glad to have him. That is what this is all about. Think about it. This bill, H.R. 988, I do not care what you do--I day to the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. McHale]--it is nothing against him individually, I say to the gentleman from California [Mr. Berman] it is not against him. I realize they are trying to go against the tide. Do you know what this is? This is trying to dull the guillotine as it comes down to chop off your neck. We are trying to see if we cannot make the car break down on the way to your execution so you have to arrive on 4 rims instead of 4 wheels. Think about this. There is not a lot of people on the floor, but if I get the chance on another amendment, I am going to come up further. The whole history of freedom is what is at stake with this. You do not have a contract to uproot the Constitution and the history of the Constitution and what brought us to this stage in America. The average person, the every-day man and woman, has a right to do down and say to somebody who is an attorney, willing to take their case, ``Will you help me? I have nothing. I don't know if I have got a case that you can win, but I feel I have been injured, I feel I have been done harm. Will you take my case, will you step up to the plate for me?'' That attorney has to think long and hard, Mr. Chairman, because that attorney does not know whether he or she can afford to do that, does not know that they can take them on. And as for settling cases, let me tell you I have been a member of a city council, and I have been a member who had to decide when we were the deep pocket with only 1 percent, and I voted every time that we were at fault to do that because that is what protected the system so the individual man and woman in this country knows that they are going to get a recourse of action that will result in justice for them.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, speaking in favor of the Porter-Farr amendment, there has been anecdotal evidence, Mr. Chairman, offered on the floor with respect to the overall bill here, 925. I would like to add to it by way of example, I hope illustrative of what might really be involved and what parallel experiences others might have. I am going to cite the example of water, Mr. Chairman. There is an assumption, an underlying assumption in this bill that questions about private property have already been resolved; that is to say, we know who owns what. I would suggest, Mr. Chairman, that is not always the case, not by a long shot. I would also suggest that if we go over the history, as we have in Hawaii, on water rights, who exactly owns the land where water coursing is concerned, where the water goes? What is the natural course that water takes? What if it is diverted? What if we have an historical situation, as we have in Hawaii, where plantations came into existence and literally changed the course of nature, took water from one place and took it to another place for economic purposes? The land which was owned or leased, in some instances, where sugar was grown, where pineapple was grown, did not have sufficient water. It was taken from elsewhere. Now we have a situation in which we have to determine whether we are going to, as sugar lands, utilization of sugar lands declines, whether we are going to return the water to its original course. If that happens, what consequences are there for landowners? In that context, in Hawaii and elsewhere in the country we have the question of watershed areas, we have the question of water conservation. We have, in fact, the question of how will water be used for municipal purposes, for private purposes, for household purposes. Once this takes place, there are immediate consequences for the land. The gentlewoman from Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder] has brought before the body, and I think it deserves reiteration now, the questions that have been raised by the Acting Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works, and I want to repeat that, the Assistant Secretary for Civil Works in the Army, addressed to Speaker Gingrich, strongly opposing the bill because of some of the kinds of questions that I have raised in the private-public sector with respect to water and how it is private, and that all questions concerning ownership that have to be resolved also exist in the wider sphere of public purpose, even going as far as to say what constitutes the national interest in terms of the military. These things are not so easily decided. Quite the opposite. The reason I support, then, the Porter-Farr amendment is that this is an assessment bill. We have kind of gotten away from what the Porter-Farr amendment actually says. It is attempting to reduce some of the questions that have been raised by our friends on the other side in opposition to the Porter-Farr amendment. This allows, in fact requires, that a private property impact analysis be made, all within the context of the fifth amendment. Mr. Chairman, let us not forget, the fifth amendment is not abandoned. I think the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Porter] raised that question in some of his previous commentary, that after all is said and done, and after all our interpretations are made, and I hope that everyone will grant that I am making mine in good faith, as I granted it to others that they are making it in good faith, that the fifth amendment must be satisfied. There can be no takings without just compensation under the fifth amendment. What constitutes that just compensation and what constitutes that taking does now and will remain a question to be decided under the full protections of the fifth amendment. In the meantime, then, what we do legislatively is very, very important as to what will be presented to the court as a fifth amendment issue, a takings issue. Therefore, I commend to the Members' attention, in conclusion, please look at the content of what the private property impact analysis says, and I think a lot of the fears and anxieties of those who favor not supporting the Porter-Farr amendment will be alleviated.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Chairman, while we were discussing these issues in here this evening, it was interesting to observe some of the newscasts tonight. Airline regulation on icing, 68 people dead, going over what needs to be done. People on television saying, ``Oh, if we only had the regulations, and after the experiments are over, we will do the regulations.'' Pesticides for home use, causing cancer in children. We need to have the regulations. It is on the news right now. It is not abstract, the way we are speaking here this evening. It is not anecdotal. These are things happening in our Nation. Carpal tunnel syndrome, back injuries, ergonomics, the science of physical mechanics: How are we going to prevent increased workers' compensation, increased costs to business, hurting our people, our health care? These are the kinds of things that will be addressed if we taken up the Brown--Brown substitute. This is what was happening realistically in our world tonight, not the overblown hyperbole that some of which was on the floor tonight. I want to say I respect the admonitions of my old friend, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Walker], earlier today about speaking about the little guy, and my new friend, the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Norwood]. who said he came here to fight and issued some of the anecdotal examples. I can have those as well in Hawaii. We have an absolute intolerance in Hawaii for contamination of our water supply. We cannot afford it. Where I live any contamination of the water supply has immediate disastrous consequences for us. So, these are issues that have to be addressed at the very time when we are supposedly diminishing regulations. I believe that H.R. 1022 will hurt the little guy, will not address some of the issues that have been presented by some of our good friends on the other side. Now is the time to move toward the kind of regulatory reform as embodied in the Brown substitute and address the real world, the real world of icing on airplanes, pesticides for home use, carpal tunnel syndrome in the work force that exists today, and the kind of regulations for health and safety we have to provide for them.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today with the cochairs of the Tourism Caucus, Mr. Oberstar and Mr. Roth, to introduce legislation based on a commitment to fairness for the working people of this Nation and a sense of the profound need for job creation. Specifically, this legislation would restore a 100-percent deduction for business meals and entertainment [M&E] and the spousal travel deduction. The decision to cut the M&E deduction and the spousal travel deduction is one of those fair-sounding ideas that can have unintended and undesirable consequences. Travel, tourism and entertainment constitute the third-largest industry in the United States. Its 1990 payroll was $83 billion and it is an industry that employs 6 million people. This is an industry whose growth Washington should support and promote. The next time you are eating lunch in a restaurant, take a look around at the business types. Here's what you probably won't see: the stereotype of obscenely rich tycoons sipping three-martini lunches. What you will see are sober, serious middle-class people doing business the American way: in face-to-face meetings. Meetings are a legitimate cost of doing business. And until 1986, the cost was fully tax-deductible. At that time, the deduction was reduced to 80 percent. The effect that has on a business may be as simple as making phone calls instead of airline flights. Yet, the ramifications are enormous. After all, when business takes its act on the road, there's a big supporting cast: airline pilots, mechanics, luggage handlers, flight attendants, waiters, waitresses, cooks and restaurant owners, food service companies and truck drivers, convention caterers and service employees, and hotel bell captains and receptions clerks. They're all middle-class working people. The people who have been victims of misguided economic policy since the 1980's. competitors an advantage over American workers and American businesses. Thousands of foreign travelers criss-cross the country every day. They and their employers know they've got to talk to Americans face-to-face to make sales here. That's why their governments--Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, France--permit 100-percent deductibility for business expenses. If we're to be competitive, we must level the playing field for our own businesses. In September 1994, a survey conducted on behalf of American Express examined the impact of the M&E deduction on company spending, and the ultimate impact on the restaurant industry. The study was taken among small and mid-sized companies where the impacts would be more pronounced. The findings indicated there is a high propensity or willingness to enforce behavioral change as the financial impact of the tax law is felt. I am sure that if a study was conducted on the spousal travel deduction the results would be similar. I ask my colleagues to support us in this effort and work with us to ensure that it is included in any middle-class tax relief legislation that comes before the 104th Congress.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Chairman, I want to follow up on Mr. Hefner's quality of life admonitions to us and I want to speak to Members like my good friend, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon], with whom I have worked on these issues. I do not think on this issue there ought to be a hawk or a dove or those kind of designations. We are all responsible members of the Committee on National Security, the Committee on Armed Services and we operate on the basis of that responsibility. And in this particular instance, no matter what designation I might come under to suit the convenience of the newspaper, Members know that we work together on these issues like the theater missile defense. I am fully in accord with that. But at the same time, I take no second place to those who want to see a quality of life. I have a special responsibility to all of the Members in the House of Representatives, I almost said in our congregation because that is the way I feel about it on the armed services and the National Security Committee; that is the way we work with one another. Out in Hawaii it is not my constituents that are being housed in these barracks and in these housing projects that the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Hefner] is referring to, it is your constituents, it is our friends, our neighbors all around the country. And I have had to struggle year in and year out and I have had the support of the people, no matter what kind of convenient designations are used, to try to upgrade this housing, to try to upgrade the quality. The gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Hefner] is correct and if we are being honest with one another we know if we move into what has been called Star Wars, into this missile defense in the heavens kind of system, we are going to be cutting the ground out from underneath those men and women now serving and their families who serve with them throughout our country. So, my plea is let us be sane and sensible about what we are doing with missile defense.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. ABERCROMBIE

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Chairman, is it the Chair's understanding that a ruling was arrived at or an understanding was arrived at with respect to the votes on Monday and the 2 o'clock versus 5 o'clock time? Because that is not clear to me.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, I am all for--if you want to complain about how far you have to go--I am leaving tonight. I will have to stay overnight in Los Angeles, get home tomorrow; leave Sunday night. I do not mind. We are doing the business of Congress here. Now the Constitution of the United States is being messed with here. I say to my colleagues, ``Now you want to be family friendly? I'm all for family friendly, but don't anybody come and tell this Member that in the name of family friendly that we are not going to do our business in a proper fashion. Every Member here is entitled and obligated to take his or her concerns to this floor under the rules, and I don't want to see 1 second of one Member's obligation and duty compromised in any way, shape, or form.'' Is this the 100-day rule, which is not in this Constitution, but in the contract that they signed and I did not sign? I say to my colleagues, ``If it takes a thousand days, 10,000 days, that's what it takes to protect the Constitution of the United States, and that's what we take.''

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Chairman, a further parliamentary inquiry. How might I go about making that inquiry? My understanding is that issue was not settled.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I spoke at a previous time on this question of the line-item veto. I think those of my colleagues who know me here in the Congress, and certainly those who have known me over my legislative career, know that while I may hold strong opinions I do not believe I have ever lectured any other Member of a legislative body in which I served on whether my ideas were superior or my views were superior. But I want to say, and I feel I must say at this juncture with respect to the line-item veto that as a legislator I find it unconscionable. The entire history of freedom and the march of freedom and democracy has been the commons against the king. We can go back to the time of the Magna Carta and the establishment of the idea of the common people being able to exert their will against the king. Or go back to the loss of what freedoms were defined as freedoms throughout antiquity to the time of the Roman Empire when the Roman Senate ceded its power to the Emperor, after the assassination of Caesar and the ascension of Octavian and Augusta, and even he wanted to give it back to the Senate and back to the people. Oh no, it was turned over to the king, and that is what this is about. No matter who is the Executive in our contemporary world, it is the legislative against the executive power. If we turn over our responsibilities to the executive, we are undermining the basis of freedom Nothing so ill becomes any legislative body as to turn over its authority and its obligations and its duties to the executive. The executive has submitted budgets, whether it is under Republicans or Democrats, and this Congress, Republican and Democrat and Independent, has always come in with a budget under that which has been presented. It is not a question, then, of whether or not we are going to exercise self-discipline. If we do not our constituents can remove us. But we are setting up a situation in which the executive will play one legislator off against another. We are setting up a situation in which the small States will have to compete against the large States. We are setting up a situation in which we are saying we as legislators are incapable of acting other than in a political fashion, but if we turn over this authority to the executive, the executive somehow will act in an objective, analytical fashion and not in a political fashion. about to embark on something which to me violates the most fundamental tenet which I hold as an elected official. There is only one thing worse in politics than being wrong, and that is being right. History and sometimes people forgive us being wrong, but we are very seldom forgiven for being right. And I am telling Members today, if we give the line-item veto to this or any other President, we are undermining democracy, we are taking everything that we hold dear in terms of freedom and turning it upside down and saying to the world and everyone in it, all of our voters, we do not believe in democracy, we do not believe in the legislative process, we do not believe in the legacy that has been handed down to us by literally the death of millions in order to provide for us the opportunity to legislate. If we have any argument about what we do, we have given in our Constitution the power of the President to veto entire pieces of legislation and we must come up with two-thirds of our voting Members in order to overturn that veto. That is incredible power that the President has. And now we want to say that on any given item, in any given piece of legislation where there is an appropriations implication, that the President is to be able to line-item veto that. This is not a State. We failed earlier to differentiate between capital budgets and operating budgets. I know how scoring goes in my Committee on Armed Services, how we include housing for our military to be included as an item of expenditures in the first year no matter how many years that housing is occupied. I can give example after example where this kind of line-item veto will undermine democracy in the particular and in general. I pray that we will not be in the situation in which we find ourselves having to say oh, if we had only done the right thing. The right thing to do is to be against the line-item veto and to stand up for freedom and democracy.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Chairman, I will do that at the proper time. I commend them to you, in conclusion, before you engage on this reckless course for which you will have to answer, read the record as entered by Senator Byrd in 1993. I am sure his office will be happy to present you with some copies. I will be happy to do the same. We can go over the entire history of the line-item veto as practiced in other times, directly attributable to the decline and fall not just of this Nation, which is what this will be, the decline and fall of this body as a honorable body engaged in legislative practice that it should be engaged in. Let us stand up for the Constitution that we swore to uphold and defend. Do not pass this amendment and bring shame on ourselves at the very time when we say we are already willing to give up what we should be hanging onto, clinging to with dear legislative life. This amendment bespeaks the disquietude that is in this body with respect to the line-item veto. It shows that we do not really mean it. If this amendment passes, this is not a line-item veto bill. It is a legislative line-item veto bill, and we will rue the day we passed it.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Chairman, as much as Hawaii was mentioned, and volcanoes, this is a good point. It makes my case, I must say, I believe why the line-item veto should not be used. We are dealing with the Pohakaka training site. All the training for the Pacific Rim takes place there. The reason for the appropriation is to see to it that our forces are ready for any contingency that occurs out there. It is not pork barrel. Just because it exists in Hawaii does not mean it is not vital to the national interests. amendment offered by mr. weldon of pennsylvania to the amendment offered by mr. skelton

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise to oppose this amendment in the strongest possible terms. I do not know how many are going to listen, I do not know how many heard before about the line-item veto. But how can you say you are for the line item veto the turn over the authority, the explicit, direct authority and obligation that we have in swearing to uphold and defend the Constitution, defend our prerogatives and obligations as a legislative body, a line-item veto, you say, and then when the President comes back with all of those line items taken out which you have just voted to give to him, say, ``But what if we don't like it? What if there are some items we don't want?'' So this is a fewer items bill you are about to pass if you have this in, not a line item. Fewer items. You want to pass a legislative line- item veto bill. One of the Members from the other side, who I believe is chairing it for the Republican Party, says, ``What if the President does something egregious? Then it comes back to us, and we get to pick 50 Members to go against everybody else and get the rest of us to go along with me on this.'' If you think deals have been cut in the Committee on Appropriations, I now see the Committee on Appropriations as the enemy of us all. Please, I have been in a legislative body too long. I understand how politics works. I am proud to be a part of that tradition. I am not going to quiver and be some craven cur down there, saying, ``Well, if the President sends us back something that we volunteered on this floor to give him, then if we find some items, we can get 49 other people to stand up with us, we will take it back.'' How can you have the gall to stand up and parade yourselves in front of the American people, talking about, ``We do not have the discipline to do anything for ourselves, we are going to have the President do it for us; however, if there are some items that are taken out that we want and we can get 49 of our buddies to go along with us, then we are going to see if we can't get the other 218 that we need to go along, and we will be able to get ours''? I warned that the small States were going to be at risk here. You know that the big States and the big-power, special interests you talk about, private interests--I do not care whether you are talking about the space station, I do not care whether you are talking about a particular item, a dam or a river, whatever it is you want to deal with the public works--this is going to open the whole thing back up again. The hypocrisy of this whole line item veto is made manifest by this amendment. I am waiting to see whether this is voted through to not, because if it is, let the record state here clearly that this means we have a legislative line item veto bill in which the deal-making and the logrolling will be something like you have never witnessed in the 200- plus years of this Republic. This is going to be the granddaddy, the mother of all pork-barrel bills, when this comes out if you folks pass this, and it is going to be on the record. And in honor of this final decline and fall of the Constitution of the United States and the House of Representatives in particular, Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to be able to enter into the Record the disquisition made in the Senate in 1993 by the Honorable Robert Byrd on the line item veto.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, to correct the record, I believe the gentleman from the 18th District of Illinois [Mr. LaHood] who surely is no rookie to the process here, perhaps unintentionally mischaracterized what has happened in terms of the history of the House. He said, if I understood him correctly, that no piece of major legislation has ever passed under open rules while the Democrat majority was in power. As a member of the Committee on Armed Services and as a member of the Committee on Natural Resources, Mr. Speaker, I can tell my colleagues that the gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums] and the gentleman from California [Mr. Miller] conducted every single piece of legislation under open rules. Every single hearing, including the budget hearings, were open. Every single Member of the then-minority who wanted to offer an amendment was able to do so, no matter how long, no matter how lengthy. That was the case. Also, Mr. Speaker, I think it is a mischaracterization not to indicate to the American people and to new Members of the House here that time was equally divided always under the chairmanships of the gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums] and the gentleman from California [Mr. Miller]. Get the facts straight, get the process right, and good legislation will follow.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Will the gentleman yield for a correction?

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Chairman, would the gentleman yield for a correction?

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Chairman, again for the benefit of new Members, and it should not have to be for old Members: As a member of the now-National Security Committee and the Armed Services Committee, can we at least have the record straight about someone who has conducted himself--I believe I can state factually on behalf of both sides of this aisle as, if not the fairest among the fairest chairmen that have ever presided over any committee, and that is the gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums]. Members, Republican and Democrat, will agree that when the gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums] became chairman, and I believe that if the gentleman from California [Mr. Thomas] will check with the members of the Committee on Armed Services--the then-Committee on Armed Services, every single amendment, every single statement, every single request for time, was honored by the gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums], and to state that hundreds of amendments had to come to this floor because they are unable to be delivered or unable to be presented in the Committee on Armed Services is utterly Amendments came on this floor because the gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums] and the majority recognized the opportunity and, in fact, the obligation of the minority to offer amendments under an open rule. I say to my colleagues, ``If you would do the same, you would do well to follow Mr. Dellums' example instead of trying to lecture us on history''----

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Will the gentleman yield for a correction?

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Will the gentleman from New York yield?

Mr. ABERCROMBIE

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, would the gentleman agree, for those of us who have served in State legislatures, who have served on county councils, who have dealt with budgets at the local level and the State level, that members of county councils, boards of supervisors, State legislators are used to dealing with a capital budget and an operating budget.

Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Thank you very much.