Roy Blunt

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. We are for extending these good tax policies on research and development, we are for extending these good tax policies on energy research particularly. As Republicans, as conservatives, as people who actually brought these tax policies to the table to start with, of course we are for them. Now a 1-year extension is not the right amount of time. We can debate that. I hope we have time to because this is not the last day we are going to see this bill. If you're really serious about energy research, try to go to borrow money with a 1-year plan. You can't borrow money with a 1-year plan. You can't take a chance with a 1-year plan. You can't hire people with a 1-year plan. Surely, everybody here knows that. If we were really serious about extending these policies, we would be sending signals that we are committed to these policies for a long time. But we are for the policies that we are talking about in current law. We are not nearly as excited about the new things that are added; the tax breaks for lawyers who have taken a case on contingency and now want taxpayers to subsidize their dealing with that case by these new ideas in the Tax Code. But we are for the continuation of good policies. But we are not for believing that to continue good tax policies, you have to pay for those by taxing other people. If these tax policies are good enough for now, they are good enough to continue to be the policies of the future. This House decided last year on the alternative minimum tax that, well, we don't want more people to slip into that bad tax situation so we are going to move forward without having taxes that replace what would happen if we didn't try to maintain the current status of taxes. That is what we are for, maintaining current policies, giving them as much life as possible, and not assuming that other taxpayers have to suffer in an economy that we need to be sending signs of growth and productivity to, not signs of more ideas for the Federal Government to increase taxes. I hope we can come back to a bill that extends good policy, that does it for a longer period of time, and doesn't seem to feel it's necessary to tax other people to extend policies that are working in the Tax Code today.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I appreciate the gentleman yielding. I don't think, as I listen to this conversation and see it develop today, if we pass this section that the President hasn't seen, and the Senate passes the section that the President hasn't seen, and he either signs or vetoes it, that would be the only bill that the House actually passed that the President sees on this topic. It is clear if you look at the line-item veto case, it was clear in that case that the President can't selectively veto things in a part of a House bill. Again, think through this with me, if you will. The only thing the President will have seen that the House and Senate both passed as it stands would be this last portion. The concept that we can start sending bills over piecemeal because the House had passed this part of it is a flawed concept. Who knows what the House would pass if it didn't get a chance to pass the full bill each time. We would have passed the tax extenders today, unanimously, if it hadn't had the portion on it on new tax increases. We would have all voted for that part of the tax extenders bill. It wouldn't have changed that part of the bill. In fact, if we had only sent the President that part of the tax extenders bill, he would have signed it. But he probably won't sign it with this additional thing. When we had the Deficit Reduction Act, which, believe me, I remember in vivid detail, vivid detail; we had a bill that we sent to the Senate, the Senate clerk made a change in it and sent it to the Senate floor. Nobody in the Senate who voted on the bill knew that it had been changed, so it had no impact on the Senate vote. The Senate clerk got it back, realized that her change was inaccurate, sent it back to us just like we had sent it over to them. We voted on it again and sent it to the President, and didn't know until the signing ceremony that this had ever occurred. We didn't know until the signing ceremony that this had ever occurred. There was no action on the House at all with any knowledge any of this had ever occurred. In fact, none of it even occurred on the House side. At that time, the minority leader stood up and said: ``Whereas, although the Senate Enrolling Clerk mistakenly changed critical numbers that had major financial significance, leadership deliberately chose to ignore that notification and instead allowed the House to vote on an incorrect version of this legislation.'' Not true, by the way. ``Whereas, the effect of these actions raises serious constitutional questions and jeopardizes the legal status of this legislation. ``Resolved, that the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct shall begin an immediate investigation into the abuse of power surrounding the accuracy of the process and enrollment.'' The Speaker of the House, my friends, certified to the President that we were sending him a bill exactly as we had passed it. We now understand that clearly was not an accurate certification of what the House has done, and we are about to go down a path that might have the only action really taken by the House that the President sees in totality, this last segment of the bill. Why we would have moved forward, knowing all those facts before we moved forward, is a mystery to me.

Mr. BLUNT. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, for his work to bring this bill to the floor, and for the moments the entire House is taking to recognize those who have sacrificed for us and the homecoming 35 years ago of our good friend, Sam Johnson, and others. Those who have served in this way have served with particular challenges to their courage and have seen their faith and their families' challenged as well. Recently in another ceremony in this building reflecting on the Holocaust, the speaker at that ceremony, the White House chief of staff, mentioned his father, a prisoner in another war, World War II, who all the time he was in a prison camp in Germany refused to take off the dog tag symbol that identified him as a Jew. We all know that story of our colleague in the Senate who saw the guard draw a symbol of a cross on the ground as he had released him from the particular painful way he had been bound to be left overnight and then quickly erased that symbol of his faith. We've read, many of us, our friend Sam's story about not only his challenge and his strength and faith, but also how his own family didn't know for months and months whether he was alive or dead, and that was a story that was all too frequent among our heroes who served us and served in this capacity. They kept the faith, they honored their country. The stories go on and on and on about the flag that was found and destroyed and the man who had pieced that flag together in a Vietnamese prison camp was brutally beaten, and as soon as he could regain enough strength and consciousness, he began to get little pieces of cloth and put a flag back together again. That kind of service, that kind of honor, that kind of courage, that kind of patriotism is what we recognize today; and particularly those of us who serve with Sam Johnson get to recognize it every day as we see him come courageously to the floor serving his country again.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I think we've already passed this bill in this Congress 345-76 or something like that. And I'm not surprised we're seeing it again. We're not seeing answers to the energy problems we face. Gas prices reached another high yet today. $3.79 a gallon is the average in the country. American families and small businesses are paying $1.46 per gallon more today than they were paying when Nancy Pelosi became the Speaker. In 2006, the minority leader at that time, Nancy Pelosi, said, Democrats have a commonsense plan to bring down skyrocketing gas prices. Well, for weeks now Republicans have been asking what that commonsense plan was, and we've given up on that; and so we will begin in the next new days going ahead and rolling out our plans as to what we think we could do to do something about these prices. This bill was not an answer last year. It is not an answer this year. NOPEC is no answer. NOPEC is no policy. NOPEC actually means more dependence. Why we would want to continue to head down the road of more dependence on oil from outside the United States is amazing to me. Ninety-one percent of all Americans commute to work using an automobile. And the increase in gasoline costs for the 3.3 million Americans who drive at least 50 miles each day to work has increased by $1,200 since this Congress began its work 16 months ago. I had a roundtable in my district last week with people, a lot of whom probably at the table I was at, the average was a drive of about 45 or 50 miles; and if you're working at a job that pays by the hour and you're driving 45 or 50 miles a day, you really don't have a choice. Where I live and where many of our Members live, there is no mass transit, there is no bus, there is no alternative other than to get there in your own car or to ride with somebody else. And so you're now either paying an extra $100 a month just to get to work or you're somehow sharing that $100 with the person you figured out how to ride with. The average American drives about 15,000 miles per year, and that means the average Americans are now paying almost $700 more for gasoline than they were when this new majority took over. The upcoming Memorial Day weekend is really known as the traditional start of the summer driving season. It's only 4 days away, and 9 out of 10 trips made during that summer travel season are made in an automobile, 9 out of 10 family vacations occur in an automobile; and we're setting record prices every day. In fact, this is the twelfth consecutive day for an all-time record gas price increase. Last week was the ninth consecutive week for an all-time gas price increase record. And we have NOPEC back on the floor. Mr. Speaker, it's time we got bills on the floor that did the things that need to be done to get the country heading in the right direction. Republicans have sponsored those bills, Democrats have sponsored those bills. But where are they? They don't have a hearing in the Energy Committee, they don't have a place on the floor, and gas prices continue to go up. We need to do things that promote clean and reliable power generation. We need to do things that improve expanding American energy production. We need greater energy efficiency, greater conservation, and in the short term, we could do things like we finally did last week on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and like we've urged this Congress to do which is to abandon the 18\1/2\ cent Federal gas tax for the summer driving months and at least have that kind of impact on the driving public as we take another hundred days to try to find a real solution. We are not going to find the solutions by repeating work we did last year. Americans are tired of these gas prices going up. This Congress should do something about it. It can't do something about it without energy bills on the floor that do more than study a problem that we all know only makes the dependence on foreign countries worse. Let's reduce dependence, let's encourage research, and let's do what we can to get America moving again with energy policies that make sense for American families and American workers.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. This week, we're in the week before we break for our annual Memorial Day work period. Historically, this has been a time when we recognized those who have served and those who are serving, those who are willing to give even their life to help protect the freedom of this country. This is a time-honored tradition in our country. It's today that we finally come to the floor, after literally months and months of a request for this funding for troops, nearing the deadline where troop withdrawal notices or troop furlough notices and other furlough notices would go out, and we come to the floor with a bill that puts restrictions on the troops. We come to the floor with a bill that does, in fact, finally meet those funding needs of the troops. And we come in a way that doesn't allow us to have any different ideas, have any amendments to these provisions that are brought to us today. This is an extraordinary procedure in the way we have handled supplementals in the past. The only supplementals that have ever been brought to the floor in the last 20 years, with a closed rule, were supplementals where both sides agreed that we had to immediately respond to an immediate emergency, and it was a bipartisan agreement. There is no bipartisan agreement on the way this bill is brought to the floor. And because of that, it does not meet the needs of the troops as it should. The restrictions are wrong. The time line is wrong. Even the GI benefits that all of us believe need to be updated to meet the needs of today's military, as opposed to yesterday's military, doesn't have transferability of those benefits, the thing that spouses and people in the military and dependents in the military would like. It isn't designed for a military that's a volunteer Army. There is a better House provision, but are we allowed to offer that House provision? No.

Mr. BLUNT. We get to say yes or no because everybody in this building knows that this bill will never become law. We've waited till the week before Memorial Day to bring a bill to the floor that will not become law. The majority leader announced earlier today that maybe it will be the middle of June before we get to a bill that would actually get to the President's desk and become law, when furlough notices have gone out. This is a shameful way for us to meet the needs of our troops, and I hope we'll get down to business next week and see if we can't actually pass a bill that will meet the needs of our troops.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. LaTourette was probably working on the Coast Guard issues in the farm bill. I would like to ask the gentleman on the supplemental, I noticed in a number of printed reports that one of the reasons we didn't get to the supplemental was that the Blue Dogs were claiming some credit that the PAYGO issue, which you and I actually discussed last week, was a problem. At that time you thought that we might be able to waive PAYGO for both the GI portion of the supplemental and the unemployment insurance portion of the supplemental. I wonder where we are on that topic of PAYGO as it relates to those two issues. Is that a decided issue yet, and how would you expect that it may be decided?

Mr. BLUNT. I am told if we went to the new budget, there might be some additional PAYGO items, but the current budget makes that farm bill more workable. So I think that might be the case.

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for that. When you look at the anticipated spending and the scoring on those bills, both of them add so many new things to the benefit area that there's very little money spent in the first year. And since it takes that long to really get the new system up and running, I would just suggest again that the closer we are to a system that the military can be supportive of, both individuals in the military and the institutions, I think all of us want to take a step forward on those things that relate to servicemen and women and particularly those servicemen and women that may have been left out of past benefits for those who served. That would relate most directly to the National Guard and the reserves who are called up maybe for multiple periods of time but never for a long enough period of time at one consecutive time of full-time service to qualify for past benefits. We want to do that, but certainly we want to do that in the very best way, particularly when you look at how long it takes to retool the way that these benefits are made available for that to happen. Since it appears at this point that we'd have no alternative to bring, in this case, a better House alternative to the floor, I hope we are putting the right set of building blocks together to really build a better future for those who serve and are willing to put their lives at risk and their other activities on hold for us.

Mr. BLUNT. That's right. Mr. Goodlatte and Mr. Peterson have talked to both of us a lot about this bill, and I think it's coming to some conclusion now.

Mr. BLUNT. I was fortunate enough to have a meeting with Secretary Gates this week, and he, of course, encourages us to get this supplemental done quickly because, otherwise, they immediately get into trying to transfer funds around and things that may be available but do create huge management problems. I do hope we can get this done before the Memorial Day break, as you suggested we would.

Mr. BLUNT. I yield.

Mr. BLUNT. You mentioned the other alternatives to the so-called Webb bill, and the Herseth Sandlin bill that is cosponsored by Mr. Boozman on this side, I'm told by our Members and frankly some people from the Pentagon that it has some real merit over the other bill. Since we don't have any options in that bill, at least the bill we were talking about this week, no options to bring alternatives to the floor, I would hope that we could look at all of the alternatives in that part that benefit our servicemen and women and be sure we're bringing the best alternative the House has available to it to the floor next week.

Mr. BLUNT. I hope we can get it done.

Mr. BLUNT. Based on the increase in prices, if in fact that would have the same impact as a gas tax holiday, maybe we should do both. I suspect there would be substantial support on the floor to do both. The only other item I am going to mention today is the Colombia Free Trade Agreement. It was 1 year ago tomorrow that the House, the Senate and the administration made an agreement on trade. That was about a year after the Colombia Free Trade Agreement had been negotiated. We have not passed that agreement yet and don't have any schedule on the floor. I would hope that we will continue work to get the Colombia Free Trade Agreement and the other trade agreements but particularly the Colombia agreement to the floor and do that in the spirit of the agreement that the Speaker and administration and Senate negotiators announced a year ago. I would yield.

Mr. BLUNT. I'm also wondering, as we approach the Memorial Day recess and we have had this series now of days of the highest gasoline prices ever, will there be any legislation on the floor to reduce the price of gasoline as we go into Memorial Day and the other summer driving seasons?

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for that. I would like to find something to do that would have this impact as we get into this driving season. I know that Mr. Ryan introduced a bill today that would take the money that otherwise would have been used for earmarks on both sides of the aisle and use that to offset the loss of revenue to the highway trust fund of a gas tax holiday. That would be one of the things that we could do in the next 2 weeks that should have immediate impact at the pump by Memorial Day if we did it before that Memorial Day break. But if we could do something to reduce gas prices, that would be a major thing.

Mr. BLUNT. I would yield.

Mr. BLUNT. I thank my friend for that information. Is it likely on the two conference reports you mentioned that the farm bill conference report will come before the budget conference report?

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend from Maryland, the majority leader, to tell us about next week's scheduled bills.

Mr. BLUNT. I would.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman. I think we've brought some ideas in the last couple of weeks to the floor on bills that didn't necessarily relate to this and we will probably have more that we will be talking about. I yield back.

Mr. BLUNT. I appreciate that. And I do recall those discussions. Also, the tax policies that encourage purchases that create jobs are in place. And as all of us on the floor here know, the initial checks that go out as part of the stimulus package are going out in the next few days over the next couple of months. And that, hopefully, will be helpful. On the supplemental, anything that we can do, that I can do, that our side can do to encourage going through the committee in the regular process, we would like to do that. In the last 20 years, under both Democrats and Republicans, there have been 36 supplementals. All but seven of them went through the committee. And those seven did not go through the committee based on a bipartisan decision that Katrina or 9/ 11 or some other event had occurred where Members on both sides of the aisle essentially said we know what needs to be done here, we're in agreement with it, let's take a bill to the floor. In the other 29 instances where there was not bipartisan agreement, every supplemental went through the committee. In the 12 years that we were in the majority, there were 20 supplementals. None of them had a closed rule, all of them except the ones I mentioned by bipartisan agreement went through the committee, and 10 of them had an absolutely open rule where we brought the supplemental to the floor and the rule essentially said bring on every amendment that you want to and we'll debate it until the amendments are exhausted. That's a time-honored process not just under the Democrat majority, but under the Republican majority. I'd like to again encourage that we do whatever we can do to further that discussion that you suggested may be going on now that would have the committee option as one of the options.

Mr. BLUNT. I have one other question that wasn't on a list and not on an immediate schedule, but one of our Members from Oregon (Mr. Walden) had asked me if I would bring up with you the topic of H.R. 3058. It's a bill sponsored by Mr. DeFazio from Oregon on public lands, communities transition. It was introduced last July, voted out of Resources in December. The Agriculture Committee has now discharged the bill. This involves schools in western lands, very important to our western Members on both sides. Mr. Walden has asked me to ask you, first of all, is there any information about when that might be scheduled? And secondly, to make the request that that bill be scheduled. I would yield.