Roy Blunt

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Madam Chairman, I am in opposition to the bill. It goes without saying that the authors of our Nation's founding document understood better than most that freedom to practice one's religion represents one of the most fundamental, most inalienable rights bestowed on us. It was, after all, the reason that many came to America, the reason that many fought to found America. The Founders made sure to include the free exercise of religion among the first rights they included in the Constitution. While the Founders saw the Constitution as a means of ensuring religious freedom and that that be protected at all levels, this bill, innocently enough, named the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, would actually have the effect of rolling back these protections, depending on where you happen to work. Perhaps even worse, it deliberately sets out to create a constitutional conflict between one's right to religious freedom and another's right to sue you for practicing it. Madam Chairman, the tension this bill could create is not difficult to foresee in practice. For instance, if you chose to keep a Bible at your work station or perhaps even display in your cubicle a verse you found particularly meaningful, the legal question is simple created by this legislation: Can one or more of your coworkers seeing that passage, seeing that Bible, understanding there are passages there about homosexuality, bring suit against you and your employer on the grounds that mere presence of religious symbols constitutes a ``hostile workplace'' in which they are being forced to work? The answer, it seems to me, depends more on where you work than whether or not the Bible's position on your desk is offensive. Employees, for example, at Southwest Baptist University, where I was the president before I came to Congress, would be exempt from the standards of this measure because they have a relationship with a specific denomination. But employees of either a Christian bookstore or a Muslim bookstore would be granted no such dispensation, potentially being forced to choose between upholding the faith positions upon which they are based and on which they acquire customers and complying with a law that says the free exercise of religion can be abrogated by a whim of Congress. This is the wrong decision for us to expect them to make. We are told, however, that any of the legal questions here will be decided and settled in court. The very reason the Constitution established this exercise of religion as the first of all the amendments is so these issues would not have to be settled in court. There is really no reason here to create a new protected class. This bill puts this newly protected freedom on a collision course with the oldest of all the protected freedoms, the freedom of religion. The inevitable upshot of pitting two classes of people against each other, one protected by the Constitution, the other by Congress, is litigation, and lots of it. We don't need to create more reasons for litigation in the country. We don't need to create differences from court jurisdiction to court jurisdiction. We need to go back and look at this issue again. We need to defeat this bill today. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I thank him for his hard work, the hard work of my good friend, the chairman of the committee, Mr. Levin, of Mr. Herger, for working to bring this important bill to the floor. Americans can and do compete all over the world. They can and do compete successfully all over the world. And it's particularly important that we compete in our own neighborhood. Many of us, over the last several years, have begun to look at what's happened in the last two decades to our neighbors to the south and their relationships with us, and we saw those relationships drifting away. One way to strengthen those relationships is to strengthen this opportunity to work together, this opportunity to trade together, this opportunity to have legal systems that encourage investment and trade. And we can do that. The point's been made already by speakers on both sides of the aisle that for some time now, Peru, Colombia, Panama, the CAFTA countries that are now moving in and have moved into a permanent trade relationship with us, for some time now they've been able to ship all of the things into our market without duties that they could possibly ship into our market. In fact, as we've discussed these trade bills in the past, I've had Members on both sides of aisle ask me, well, if they can send everything in here they want to send in, why would they even want this arrangement? Of course, the reason is not the immediate economics to them, because the immediate economics to them are already very good. The reason is the long-term tie and relationship of their economy to our economy, the strength it gives them in this hemisphere to be a partner, a trading partner with the United States. And we see that happen. The projection on this opportunity alone is that U.S. exports to Peru will increase by over $1 billion a year; not much projection on increase early on from Peru, because, remember, they're already sending everything here that they want to without tariffs. This removes the barriers not for them; they've already been removed. This removes the barriers for us. And our neighborhood's important. Our hemisphere is important. The United States has been blessed in many, many ways. And as we see the opportunities grow for people in all of the Americas, that's actually good for us. One billion dollars in exports means $1 billion in manufactured goods from this country, some services from this country going to Peru. And I think that Peru should only be the beginning of what we do over the next few months. Following on CAFTA, Peru, Panama, Colombia, all of which have, at this moment, the access to our markets they would have after the agreement, we need access to their markets. We need that permanence of relationship. We need that reaching out to say that we are in this hemisphere together, we are in a global economy, and the part of that economy that we should all benefit from the most is the economy closest to us. And Mr. McCrery and Mr. Rangel have worked hard to establish a framework here that's the framework for the work we do tonight and tomorrow but also is the framework for what we do in the rest of this Congress. I urge my colleagues to look not just at the economic impact of these agreements but also the geopolitical impact, the impact in our neighborhood, the impact in our hemisphere, the opportunity of these countries to work to eliminate illegal trade and particularly to eliminate illegal drug trade, the opportunity in these countries to open their markets to us as we have opened our markets to them. I urge my colleagues to give support to this agreement as we look at the future of other agreements and other opportunities. Americans can compete. Americans are competing. And this agreement will prove the American ability to compete in yet one more country.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam Speaker, the House passed the Military Construction- Veterans bill on June 15, over 140 days ago. The Senate passed a bill on September 6, sent it over to the House, and immediately appointed conferees. The minority appointed their conferees. But up to now, we have never had conferees appointed on this bill, which means this bill that the President has announced he would sign could have become law before October 1. It means that military families, veterans, and retirees could be receiving the benefits of up to $18.5 million every single day since October 1. This tactic of holding veterans funding hostage creates a dangerous precedent. What controversial, unrelated policies could go on this bill in the future? Madam Speaker, let's stop this practice today before it starts.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for that. And, Mr. Speaker, I will just say we are continuing to be more than willing to be helpful, the minority is, I am individually, to try to solve these problems. I want to repeat one more time, I think we would have been better off if we had taken these 2 days that we now would have liked to have had before we voted instead of now being at the mercy of the Senate to decide whether they are going to give us time to negotiate with each other or not. But we haven't, and, hopefully, we can continue to work for a good conclusion.

Mr. BLUNT. And the amount of money involved there?

Mr. BLUNT. And your intention is for that to be under the PAYGO rule to be paid for.

Mr. BLUNT. I would.

Mr. BLUNT. Well, I would only say my concern on that would be when the majority says ``facilitate the work of the House,'' that may mean to further restrict the ability of the minority; and, of course, we would object strenuously to that. Another topic that, I don't believe, it may or may not have been mentioned, was the AMT patch topic. Did you mention that as something you expect to come up next week?

Mr. BLUNT. I appreciate my friend's comment there, and I agree totally that a leader of France who has been so open and receptive to America as an ally and a friend deserves that kind of welcome in the joint session of Congress next week. I hope we have the kind of presence here that would indicate our opportunity and our optimism about the Sarkozy government. On appropriations, I wonder if you have any update on the Labor-HHS conference and the conference report, if you have any sense of that yet.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend, the majority leader, for information about next week's schedule.

Mr. BLUNT. I appreciate that information. I'm sure that we would be, at least I'm confident we would be more than happy to work with the majority so that we don't run into a needless last-minute crisis on the 16th in the almost unavoidable circumstance now that we don't have all of the appropriations bills done by then, and I would think the earlier that process starts, the better off we are. And I would yield.

Mr. BLUNT. I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. BLUNT. We will be glad to continue work on that. And in regard to the failure to provide time on the Senate side, it seems to me that's a very interesting contradiction to our desire to provide time over here to change the bill. I will assure my friend we are working in good faith to try to address the less than a handful of issues, though they are all important, that we think need to be addressed, from who benefits from this program to how you determine your eligibility and legal presence in the country to benefit, to how you work effectively to see that adults are moved off the program. We are more than willing to work on that. We have been trying to work on that all week. And, of course, our request just a few days ago was the reverse of the problem that now we see is a problem in the Senate, which was give us some time to work this out. We were denied time on this side. Apparently the Senate has also been denied time to work this out. And, once again, I think we have headed toward a needless conclusion to this debate that could have been prevented if we would have all engaged more effectively before we sent the bill to the Senate.

Mr. BLUNT. If I could ask a question in that regard, do you anticipate some changes in the Senate bill so that it comes back here? I was assuming, based on your other information, that if the Senate passed the same bill the House had passed, it would go directly to the President.

Mr. BLUNT. Well, if we want to try to determine the motives of each other, which is, I suppose, what we do in this place, that's one thing. But you're the one that started that. What we were trying to do, I'll advance again, was to take the Veterans bill out of the tug of war that always went on over the Housing bill, and that's what we did. Now, your assertion that that's because we didn't like Housing, I don't agree with that. I do agree with the idea that we thought that the Veterans bill did not need to be needlessly held back by a bill that was assured to always be intensely debated. And that's why we did that. And that's why we passed the bill. And that's why if we would have passed this bill 60 days ago when it came over from the Senate, military families and veterans would have $18.5 million every day that they haven't had the last 32 days now. On the other issue, I don't have any reason to believe that the President is not for all of those health care issues you talked about. That's not what this veto will be about. I know I'm for advancing all of those, partly because I've benefited from research in some of those. But I think you said at the first of the year, and you were right when you said it, that the best way to advance these bills is one at a time. Now, I think I'm hearing a different argument than that today. But I agree with your first-of-the-year view of this; and I would hope, after this process, we can get back to that. Another thing I wanted to ask about, I read in one of the Capitol Hill newspapers this week that the majority continues to look at the possibility of limiting the minority's right, and it has been a right of the minority since 1822, to have the opportunity to have a motion to recommit at the end of the bill. I will point out, I believe yesterday, on the bill we dealt with yesterday, the first substitute that the minority had been allowed in this entire Congress, the last day of the 10th month of the Congress, we finally get a substitute. No question, we've had to maximize our use of the motion to recommit because, while we appreciate the amendments we had on the bill today, we haven't had many amendments before today. And while we appreciate the substitute we had yesterday, we had had no substitutes before yesterday. I'm wondering if the gentleman will want to talk a little bit about any discussions going on, the majority has going on, about limiting the 1822 right of the motion to recommit. And I would yield.

Mr. BLUNT. I think there is. Well, we'll see. We'll see if that's what happened. I have a couple more questions, but I would yield on that point.

Mr. BLUNT. I thank my friend. Looking backwards at this, I think that my friend is right that there was a pattern that developed with the bill that included the Veterans bill that we didn't like. And so in the Congress that started in 2005, we tried to restructure that so that that would not happen in the future. We were trying to break that pattern, and, in fact, we did. And in 2005, that bill passed individually, as did every other bill. In 2006, unfortunately, that was not the case, and there was a penalty to be paid for that, and I guess we paid it. But we were trying to break that pattern of coupling veterans benefits with something that was much more controversial than veterans benefits. It was part of at that time Veterans Administration and Housing and Urban Development, and so we took Veterans and put them with the Military Construction so that military families, military personnel, veterans and retirees would all be in a bill that we hoped would be the least controversial of all bills and not be the subject of that packaging to get those most controversial things done. Frankly, I think the 2005 experience showed that we were on the way to achieving that. My concern on this would be exactly that, that the pattern of using the veterans benefit bill, to couple that with bills that are less popular, and not only appropriations bills, but I can certainly see, even in this Congress, that bill becoming the host for authorizing bills that are not popular, I think is a very unfortunate development and I regret it. I wish that we could have stayed with the pattern that we tried to create in the last Congress and successfully did create in the first year of the last Congress. Again, as we look back on history, this is the first time in 20 years that not a single bill has passed now. Also, when we coupled bills together in the 10 years I was here, we coupled those bills together to try to get a signature rather than anticipating a veto, and we got those signatures.

Mr. BLUNT. The press reports today were that that conference would not likely include the elements of the Defense appropriations but still would include the Veterans and the Military Construction appropriations bill. Is that my friend's sense of where they are headed on that bill?

Mr. BLUNT. So that would be the AMT patch?

Mr. BLUNT. I thought maybe you did. Does the gentleman have any more information about that than he has already given?

Mr. BLUNT. Well, of course the stated goal of the majority earlier this year to move these bills one at a time would be my preference, and if Defense is not part of that conference report, it seems to me it's only one bill away from being done the right way. I would have preferred to see it the other way.

Mr. BLUNT. I think the view of that, if we were debating the bill, which we won't do, I assure you, would be that this kind of tax relief actually produces tax revenue. But in a static scoring model you don't see that revenue. Do you have any more information about November's schedule? I know next week. You said you anticipated we would work Friday of next week.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I certainly don't intend to lecture my good friend from Wisconsin on this process. He works hard. Between him and Mr. Lewis, they probably have forgotten more and have also understood more about this process maybe than any other two Members that have ever served. But the fact is when Congressman Lewis was the chairman, we actually took veterans out of the appropriations bill they had been in for years because we thought they had been used in a way that was not appropriate. We took veterans out of VA-HUD and made it part of Veterans and Military Quality of Life for the specific reason that we didn't want to see that process that had gone on for too long continue. In 2005, the first year we did that, Chairman Lewis and his committee brought that bill and every other bill to the floor one bill at a time. In fact, this is the first time since 1987, 20 years ago, that we have been in this part of October without a single appropriations bill having passed the House floor. Clearly, if we were voting to go to conference on Labor, Health and Human Services, the motion before us, I would have some enthusiasm for getting at least one conference started. I would also be arguing that the conference we should be going on would be the ones for the bills that have been over here the longest, and one of those two bills following Homeland was, I think we call it now Military Construction and Veterans. But it is still a military quality of life bill. It still affects military families. It still affects retirees. It still affects veterans. And it is a bill that not only the President has said he would sign but this House passed 138 days ago. The Senate passed it almost 2 months ago and named their conferees 2 months ago. This is a bill that does have increases for veterans. Every bill in the 10 years I have been here has had significant increases for veterans, none more so than this, to the point that the increases for veterans and military families and military construction in this bill, about $18.5 million a day, so if today we just multiplied that by 31, that is how much money hasn't been spent in the last month on military families, on military retirees, on military veterans, on people serving that would have been affected by military construction. It's high time we went to conference on that bill. But what we don't want to start here is a process where we take our veterans and our military families and our retirees and we use them as a vehicle to have another political debate. As I understand, all I know is what I hear on the floor and read in the paper on this, that the plan is to take three bills, two of which almost every Member of this Congress voted for, add to them a bill that was as divisive in floor debate as any bill we debated, and have this three-car pile-on or this three-car pileup, this three-bill pileup that I think sets an unfortunate precedent for how we use veterans and military families. I wish we were going to conference on a number of bills today, and I wish we were committed to do these bills in the way that both the chairman and the ranking member have argued effectively over years now that we should be doing these bills.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman. That's very helpful information for our Members on the time we will be working and the information for next week. And I yield back.

Mr. BLUNT. But the following week, the week after we do Trade Adjustment Assistance is what the gentleman is saying.