Joe Barton

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New York [Mr. Solomon], chairman of the Committee on Rules, for yielding. I think the chairman understands that a number of us, on a bipartisan basis for several years, have been trying to do something to put some enforcement mechanism into the existing Budget Acts that govern our Nation. We have a piece of legislation, H.R. 2003, the bipartisan Budget Enforcement Act, that is pending before the Committee on Rules, the Committee on Ways and Means, and the Committee on the Budget. There have been a series of meetings and discussions this morning. It is my understanding that as chairman of the Committee on Rules, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Solomon] has agreed to an expedited procedure whereas this piece of legislation, perhaps as amended, will be brought to the floor for an up or down vote no later than July 24. Is that the understanding of the chairman of the Committee on Rules?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I strongly appreciate the support that the Barton-Minge amendment has on both sides of the House, and I want to point out that under the colloquy agreement, we will get that vote on enforcement no later than July 24. If we win on the floor, it will be in the reconciliation package in the conference. So I would hope we would vote for the rule.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, the number is H.R. 2003, the bipartisan Budget Enforcement Act. The gentleman from Texas [Mr. Stenholm] and the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Minge] and the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Visclosky] and several others.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, that is my understanding. This does not fence off any other legislation on the same subject, but it does commit the chairman of the Committee on Rules, the Speaker of the House, the majority leader, the majority whip, and the chairmen of the committees of jurisdiction to work in an expeditious fashion to bring this particular bill, perhaps as amended, to the floor, and perhaps at the same time other bills that deal with the same subject.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce a bill which will help improve the environment while protecting small businesses. This bill, the Small Business Remediation Act, will enable the Nation's 30,000 dry cleaners, their employees, neighbors, and customers to improve the local environment while preserving the dry cleaners' ability to preserve businesses and remain vital contributors to their communities. The bill has bipartisan support in Congress and tremendous nationwide support from the dry cleaning industry, and I urge the House to pass the legislation. For the last few years dry cleaners, one of the largest groups of small businesspeople in America, have faced substantial potential liability associated with the remediation of soil surrounding some dry cleaning businesses. This potential liability has resulted in the small business owners in the industry having trouble obtaining or renewing leases and borrowing money, or even risk bankruptcy. This potential liability is being greatly compounded by the misapplication of the Federal drinking water standard to soil remediation projects. This makes no sense, of course, but this standard is being used by States which are overseeing the remediation of some dry cleaning sites mostly because there is no other standard readily available. The Federal drinking water standard for the relevant compound-- perchlorethylene or perc--is set at 5 parts per billion. Unfortunately, while that level might be appropriate for drinking water, it can hardly be considered necessary for protection from perchlorethylene in dirt. As a result of the arbitrary, illogical situation of applying the drinking water standard in other cases, dry cleaners increasingly face clean-ups requiring staggering sums of money. In many cases, the dry cleaner may simply be forced to declare bankruptcy and walk away penniless. In such cases, the soil is not remediated, the environment is not improved, and the community is weakened. Last fall, the House Commerce Committee, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, which I chair, held hearings on this issue. We heard witnesses who testified that they had lost businesses built over a lifetime, suffered terrible emotional distress, spent millions of dollars chasing illusory risks, and been prevented from expanding their businesses because of this mismatched regulatory approach. Most disturbing, we repeatedly heard that many dry cleaners fear to pass their business along to their children, all because of the possibility of being caught in this bureaucratic web. This is not healthy for our communities or our environment. To remedy this problem, the Small Business Remediation Act would like the soil remediation standard for perc to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration standard, which is currently set at 100 parts per million. This is the standard which OSHA has found to be protective of workers who are exposed to perc in the workplace everyday for their entire working lives. The bill I am introducing today would set the remediation standard 10 times stricter than the OSHA standard. If OSHA strengthened its standard in the future, the soil remediation standard would be strengthened automatically. Therefore, it does not freeze science, and allows changes in new evidence dictates. The bill does not change the Federal drinking water standard and does not prevent States or EPA from cleaning up dry cleaning sites. Our approach will provide certainty to dry cleaners, their neighbors, surrounding businesses, banks, and the entire community. At the same time, by setting an achievable goal, the Small Business Remediation Act will lead to more efficient and timely improvements of the environment. By providing certainty, it will help focus resources on clean-ups, not lawyers. Mr. Speaker, I encourage all Members to join us in this commonsense approach to a problem that affects all American communities. By supporting the Small Business Remediation Act, Members can help improve the environment, strengthen small business, and promote the prosperity of our neighborhoods and towns.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce the Medical Device Regulatory Modernization Act of 1997, along with my colleague, Congresswoman Anna Eshoo. This legislation will improve and streamline the Food and Drug Administration's [FDA] regulation of medical devices. This is a bipartisan initiative to provide additional resources to the FDA for reviewing innovative devices and modernizing FDA regulation of the device industry. Currently, the FDA limits choice, access, and opportunities for patients. As the rest of the country moves into the 21st century, we must make sure the FDA moves with us. When the lives of millions of people are hanging in the balance, inefficiency doesn't cut it. For example, if the FDA had approved the drug interleukin-2 as quickly as it had been approved in Europe, the lives of 3,500 kidney cancer patients might have been saved. If the FDA had approved the drug misoprostal, which helps to treat gastric ulcers, up to 15,000 deaths might have been prevented. The Medical Device Regulatory Modernization Act of 1997 sets forth a formal mission statement to provide reasonable assurance of safety and effectiveness and to review devices in a manner that does not unduly impede innovation or product availability. In regards to investigational device exemptions [IDE's], the bill would require that the FDA set clear terms under which doctors could use devices in clinical trials for other compassionate purposes. It will require FDA officials to meet with medical device applicants early in the IDE process to clarify company goals and agency expectations. This legislation would also allow the FDA to recognize national and international performance standards by publishing them in the Federal Register and allowing companies to self-certify to the standards. Penalties would be levied for falsification of data, and certification data would be available for FDA inspection. Under our bill, the uses of a device specified by the FDA during clinical trials must be consistent with FDA expectations of uses during the premarket approval [PMA] process, unless the agency determines there could be harm to public health. The bill also calls for independent review for most class I and II devices, except for permanently implantable or life-sustaining products. This frees FDA resources from reviewing less complex new devices so these products could reach consumers sooner, allowing the FDA to devote more personnel to reviewing cutting-edge technologies and get those devices to the market quicker. The FDA was formed in 1927 to enforce the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act. Safety was important then and is just as important today. But delay does not mean safety. The current practices of the agency do not enable the FDA to benefit patients and consumers because decisions simply take too long. Congress needs to act, and as a result patients will receive much needed medication and medical devices more quickly. Mr. Speaker, I urge the Members of this body to join Congresswoman Eshoo and I in supporting this important piece of legislation to streamline and improve the Food and Drug Administration's regulation of medical devices.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, we are here this evening not on an historic occasion, but on an important occasion. I had hoped that I would be a part of the affirmative process to try to improve the agreement that was reached with the President and the leadership of the House and Senate. I have worked in a bipartisan fashion since that agreement was announced in principle to come up with some mechanisms to actually make the goal of a balanced budget a reality. With the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Minge] and the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Stenholm] and others of the Blue Dog Coalition, I helped put together a group of conservative Congressmen who wanted to actually put some enforcement mechanisms into this agreement. What we did was come up with the radical idea that we would take the budget agreement that came out of the Committee on the Budget and add to that some structural reforms like entitlement caps. The discretionary spending caps that were part of the 1991 agreement have actually worked. Since entitlements are 53 percent of this year's budget and are growing to be approximately 60 percent of the budget in the year 2002, we thought, let us extend that principle of capping not just to discretionary spending but to entitlement spending. We looked at the sequestration process that was used in Gramm-Rudman and decided to modify it so we had sequestration by program. The programs that were within their caps would not be sequestered but those that were growing more rapidly than the caps would be. To make sure it was a bipartisan solution, we decided to make the tax cuts, the $85 billion net tax cuts over 5 years, contingent on meeting the revenue targets. In sum, what we did was take $85 billion worth of tax cuts and say that we are going to make those subject to meeting the revenue estimates in this budget; take $5 trillion, $5 trillion of entitlement spending and cap it within the existing agreement; and say, now, let us use these enforcement mechanisms to make sure we get the budget balanced in the year 2002. Because that idea is so powerful, of having some spending restraint on entitlements with some contingency on tax cuts, that there was a possibility that a bipartisan coalition might actually come together on the floor this evening and improve the budget agreement, for whatever reason our amendment was not made in order. It was made in order to have an increase in spending through the Black Caucus, an increase in tax cuts through the Conservative Action Team on the Republican side, but the one truly bipartisan effort to improve this agreement was not made in order. So I will not be voting for the budget agreement later this evening, Mr. Chairman, but luckily, this is not the end of the process. It is the beginning of the process. The real heavy lifting is going to come later this summer when we do what is called reconciliation. At that point in time this bipartisan coalition that has come together to demand some structural reform through the enforcement mechanisms I think will be heard and will be successful. I want to commend the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Minge] and the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Stenholm] for working in a bipartisan fashion. I think we have a good framework. I am sure that at the appropriate time we will be given an opportunity to have our vote here on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, revenue increases subject to the supermajority requirement include: Income taxes, and I think we all know what a direct income tax is; estate and gift taxes; employment taxes, including Social Security and Medicare; and excise taxes, such as Superfund, aviation, gasoline. Things that would not be included under the amendment would be tariffs, user fees, voluntary Medicare premiums, the Part B premium, and bills that do not change the Internal Revenue laws even if they have revenue implications. On the question of de minimis, de minimis is one-tenth of 1 percent, which, under the current Tax Code, would be about $300 million a year. Mr. Speaker, I yield back to the distinguished gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Scott].

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, the CPI is not part of the Internal Revenue Code so it would not take a two-thirds vote. In fact, it would not even take a vote. We could do that by executive order or by regulation of the Department of Labor.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, the short answer is yes, I do claim to be a constitutional expert.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I am actually reading off my own staff briefing paper, but I am the sponsor of the amendment.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I want to tell the gentleman, when I am controlling time, I will be happy to yield. Last year we had a pretty good dialog back and forth, and we have enough time that we can do that. Mr. Speaker, on the gentleman's question of what will be covered, if the gentleman will continue to yield, I can read exactly what would be covered.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I hold in my right hand a copy of the Constitution of the United States of America. When this document was ratified by the Original Thirteen Colonies in 1787, in article I, section 9, I want to read the following sentence: No capitation, or other direct, tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to the census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken. What that meant was there could be no income tax in the original Constitution, but on February 3, 1913, the 16th amendment was passed to the Constitution that overrode that sentence that I just read. The 16th amendment says: The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States. We need to pass the two-thirds tax limitation constitutional amendment on the floor of the House of Representatives this afternoon to put back into the Constitution not an absolute prohibition against leveling income taxes but at least a supermajority requirement that will take two-thirds of the House and the Senate before we raise taxes.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I did not go to Hershey, PA, at the bipartisan retreat, but if I had and would have come on the floor for this debate this evening, I do not believe I would have used words like ``absurd,'' ``mush,'' things of that sort. I do not think they help us.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 4 minutes. (Mr. BARTON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, my good friend from Colorado meant nothing personal toward me, nor did I take it as such. So I want to be perfectly clear on that. I will say, if we are going to engage in an idea and a robust debate, that we should do so on the merits of the issue, and the issue at hand is whether we should amend the Constitution of the United States to require a two-thirds vote to raise taxes as they are defined in the internal revenue laws of this land. I would point out that in article I, section 9 of the Constitution that the Founding Fathers of the United States of America adopted, direct taxes were prohibited. Prohibited. There could have been a 100 percent unanimous vote and not had an income tax. The 16th amendment to the Constitution, which was passed on February 3, 1913, said we could levy direct taxes. I would further point out that in the Constitution, as adopted by our Founding Fathers, nowhere in there, unless it says specifically that there is a two-thirds or some sort of a supermajority vote required, does it say in the presentment clause that we have to have simple majorities. In fact, this body routinely passes many measures by a voice vote. So I think it is entirely appropriate to look at the tax burden that is currently on the American taxpayer, which averages 19 percent, which was before the adoption of the 16th amendment, and before the adoption of the first Federal income tax in 1913 it was zero, and say it is time to raise the bar a little higher. Now, I would further point out that all we have to do is look at the States as our laboratory to see if supermajorities for tax limitation work. There are 14 States that have it. It works in those 14 States. Four States have added it since the debate last year. I asked my staff to go to the States that have had it in effect for any length of time and find out if there are any States where it is not working, or is there any State that wants to repeal it, and the answer that we got back was ``no.'' The States that have it are happy with it. More States are adding to it, 40 percent in the last year, and there are another 5 to 10 States that have it. Finally, Mr. Speaker, I would point out that if we had had a two- thirds vote requirement for a Federal income tax increase the last 10 years in this Congress, we would have saved $666 billion in tax increases, because four of the last five major tax increases would not have passed. Now, I do not know about other Members, but where I come from, the idea of a tax limitation is not absurd, it is not silly, it is not mush, it is common sense. It is doing what should have been done a long time ago. And I would hope when the time comes, that we pass this with the supermajority required in the Constitution, two-thirds, to send it to the Senate for ratification.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I yield to the gentleman from Colorado.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, first, I want to thank the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Scott], and the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Canady] for their floor management of this time. They have both been gentlemen, and I think we have had a good debate. We need to get down to brass tacks now. In plain common language, what we are trying to do with this constitutional amendment is to make it more difficult to raise taxes. I have listened to the opponents very carefully this afternoon. I have yet to have any of the opponents say that the amendment would not accomplish its intended purpose; that is, if passed and put into the Constitution, it would make it more difficult to raise taxes. As Americans are scurrying around as we speak, trying to get their taxes done or that extension form filled out so they have the magic postmark of midnight, April 15, on their tax return, I think we owe it to them to do something substantively in the House of Representatives this afternoon, or this evening, to make it more difficult to raise their taxes. Now, we have pointed out earlier in this debate that in the Constitution, as adopted, there was a direct prohibition against any direct tax, a 100-percent prohibition. We could not have an income tax. The 16th amendment, passed in 1913, said we could have incomes taxes, and since that time the average tax rate on the American people has gone from zero income taxes to an average of 19 percent. Taxable income is $2.6 trillion out of $5.7 trillion personal income. American taxpayers will be sending to Uncle Sam tonight $520 billion, half a trillion dollars in Federal income taxes. We know that tax limitation works because we have 14 States that have passed some form of tax limitation. Four of those States have passed it in the last year, since this debate on the floor of the House last year. In those States, as has been pointed out repeatedly, taxes go up more slowly; State spending goes up more slowly; the economies grow faster; therefore, private jobs are created more quickly. How would the supermajority requirement work if it were to become the law of the land? It would say that an income tax increase, an estate and gift tax increase, an employment such as Social Security or Medicare tax increase, or an excise tax increase, such as the aviation tax, the gasoline tax, would require a two-thirds supermajority vote. Those are all taxes that are in the Internal Revenue Code of this country. If we wanted to do something with tariffs, user fees, voluntary part B Medicare premiums, or bills that do not change the Internal Revenue laws, we could do that without a supermajority vote. If we wanted to substitute a flat tax or a national sales tax for the Federal income tax, we could do that with a simple majority, so long as the amount of revenue intended to be raised was not greater than the current revenue of the Internal Revenue Code. We know it will work. We know we need it. We know the Federal Government is spending too much money. The gentleman from Arizona [Mr. Shadegg] pointed out that every time we raise a dollar of taxes, historically, spending goes up $1.59. It is time to act. Now, in my final summary I want to say once again that if we limit the ability to raise taxes over time, we limit the ability to spend. If we limit the ability to spend, over time we force ourselves to focus on spending reduction, not tax increases. I have not heard anybody say this amendment would not work. We know it works in the States that have it. I have not heard anybody stand up primarily on the Democratic side and say they want to raise taxes. So my assumption is that we can all vote in a bipartisan fashion to make it more difficult to raise taxes. Let us vote for the Barton constitutional amendment. Let us require a two-thirds vote to raise taxes in the future on the American taxpayer. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time. General Leave

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. (Mr. BARTON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes and 30 seconds to the gentleman from Arizona [Mr. Shadegg], who led the fight in the great State of Arizona to pass it at the State level. (Mr. SHADEGG asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time remains on each side?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas [Mr. DeLay], the majority whip.