Roy Blunt

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I thank you for that information. I know we all look forward to the report early next week from Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus. Even though, because of the focus on that schedule being here one day, I think it's an important day for Members to be here, and appreciate the fact that we have scheduled it in that way. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for his response. Time in the district is important to the Members. It's better used, of course, if they can have some anticipation of that time. My only suggestion would be that at this point in the year we normally don't know when we are going to finish, but it might be possible to come up with some blocks of time that even if we are working, we would know that we would not anticipate being here during those blocks of time. That would be helpful.

Mr. BLUNT. But on appropriations, we have around 3 weeks left in this fiscal year. The Senate, I believe, has only passed one of their appropriations bills. I am wondering if we can begin to anticipate in any way when we are going to have a bill or a CR, either one, that will move us to where the government continues to do what it has outlined to.

Mr. BLUNT. I appreciate that. Only a couple of other questions about the schedule that now has largely been postponed for next week. At one time, I think it was the original intent or at least my impression that the TRIA issue would be voted on, the extraordinary loss issue that might occur as it relates to insured property on Monday. I've been also told that there is now a PAYGO rule because of the way that bill has been calculated to have some potential costs. I wonder if we have anymore information about how quickly we may be able to get to this version of TRIA that we had hoped to be on the House floor next week, and I yield.

Mr. BLUNT. This week even short term was a challenge.

Mr. BLUNT. It's my understanding, also, for the leader, on that hearing, not only the Members of the committee but other Members who are not on the committee will have accommodated opportunities for seating at least to be there to hear what General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker have to say.

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for that. I was being asked by one of my colleagues, because of the importance of the Petraeus and Crocker testimony, if there was any way that could be moved to the House floor for the hearing, but I'm assuming that we'll have work going on on the House floor on these suspension bills.

Mr. BLUNT. I appreciate that answer. Another issue that my good friend and I have talked about even earlier this week is on the trade agreements throughout there. We did notice that Ways and Means Committee had a hearing scheduled on the Peru Free Trade Agreement next week, which starts a clock. It would almost inevitably bring that bill to the floor on an understood date. That hearing has been scheduled. I wonder if my friend has any information on either that agreement or the other agreements out there, particularly the agreement on Colombia.

Mr. BLUNT. I have a couple of other questions that are more in the long-range view of schedule. One would be on appropriations.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend for yielding and for managing this recognition of our colleague Paul Gillmor. Like so many people in this room, I've had lots of experiences with Paul, and they were all good, whether they were watching him represent our country in diplomatic situations in his role leading our NATO parliamentary effort, one of the leaders in that effort, or whether it was every Thursday when we had the deputy whip meeting and talked about where we ought to be going as a conference, where we ought to be going as a country. I remember Paul said to me one time, he said, you know, that's my favorite meeting of the week because that's where we talk about the future, and Paul Gillmor was a future-oriented guy who loved his family, who loved his country, who loved the concept of public service. And he performed that public service well, whether it was years in the Ohio State senate or two decades in the U.S. Congress. We will truly miss him. We are surprised at his leaving us way too early. His contributions would have continued to be great here, and the country will suffer from the loss that we feel today. I also want to reach out to his family. And as I said, Paul loved his country, but he also loved his family. And you didn't have to spend much time with him to find out that deep love he had for his sons, for his daughters, for his wife and for his extended family. And I appreciate him so much, and I'm going to join his family and his friends in missing him. His place here will be hard to fill, and his contributions have been great.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I think you will be able to characterize our remarks in one of two ways: One is that we are continuing to encourage domestic exploration; the other is we are trying to do things that reach energy independence. Following up on the bill that moved us toward energy independence that was passed in 2005 would have been a good idea. The efforts to have an energy bill this year are a good idea. But this bill imposes taxes double that already passed in H.R. 6. This would hurt our investment in energy independence and domestic supply. I don't have very many people in my district at all or in our State that are in gas and oil production. Almost everybody in our State that buys anything is in gas and oil purchasing. Things that raise gas prices, things that don't allow us to fully utilize our resources, things that continue to make us more and more dependent on parts of the world that don't like us can't be a good idea. There is nothing wrong with buying things from people who don't like you, but there is something really dumb about having to buy things from people who don't like you. We are still in that mode today. This bill heads us more in that direction. The incentives for many conservation measures are allowed to expire in this bill. I see my good friend with a bicycle on his lapel. I note that there is a tax benefit to pay people to bicycle to work. He would argue, I suppose, that we don't have enough people in southwest Missouri that bicycle to work, because we have almost no people that bicycle to work. We have lots of people that drive 50 and 60 miles to get to good manufacturing jobs, and they are not going to ride a bicycle there. They don't need more expensive gasoline to get there. Mr. Speaker, we need to move toward energy independence. This bill, regretfully, moves us toward energy dependence. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I am pleased to see this legislation on the floor this evening. I think it is critical that we pass this bill today, and many in the majority did too. I know it is not the bill that many of our friends on the other side would have liked to have had passed tonight, but I also know that they understand that there is a huge gap at this moment in the intelligence that we are watching, that we are gaining, that we are analyzing. This bill closes that gap. Earlier today would have been better to pass this bill. Three weeks ago would have been better to pass this bill. But I am grateful that we have a chance before Congress goes into a district work period for a month to get this critically important piece of legislation passed. Three weeks ago, we read the National Intelligence Estimate, if we wanted to take time to look at that estimate, and it was publicly stated during that estimate that our terrorist enemies were regrouping, that their communications had heightened, that their planning appears to be heightening; and we also understood at that time that we were not monitoring the communication that we knew we needed to be monitored because the law hadn't kept up with technology. This takes the 1978 law, it provides the same protection for Americans that they had in 1978 and 1988 and 1998. And now, as we approach 2008, it just simply lets us have the definitions of the law meet the technology of the time. The Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence have to have approval. That is a change, and it is an important change. This is no longer only one person in the executive branch, but two people, both of whom have both responsibilities and penalties if they don't make the right decision under the law. This monitors the communication of people who are initiating their communication in a foreign country. It protects Americans. That is why the FISA court was created. Americans are still protected under the FISA court, as they were under the technology of 1978. I am pleased to see this on the floor. I am glad that the majority has agreed with us, that while many of them don't like this piece of legislation, the gap was too big not to take the bill that could wind up most quickly now on the President's desk and pass it tonight. I urge my colleagues to support this, and I am grateful to my colleagues for seeing that this gap will not continue between now and Labor Day.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I thank Mr. Boehner for yielding; and I also thank my good friend, the majority leader, for being willing to accept this effort to look at the standards of how we do our business in the House. In fact, I think many of my friends on our side, and obviously your side as well, want to be sure that the work of the House is done in a way that the American people can be proud of. I think a lot of the problem that we saw last night, to our side, at least, was another indication of deciding that the normal behavior and the normal rules of the House may not apply any more. Last night's vote, I see some of my friends near the front of their House shaking their head, last night's vote is the only vote I am aware of in the House of Representatives in the 10 years and few months that I have been here that the Clerk did not write down a number which is the official end of the vote and hand it to the Speaker. The Speaker, in fact, is talking over the Clerk while the Clerk is trying to announce votes are being changed. If any Member on that side or our side, either one, has ever seen a time in the House when a vote was announced or sees one later today where the paper wasn't filled out and you wait for that paper, I would like to know when that was. You know, as the whip of the House for the last 4 years, the previous two Congresses, I remember many times thinking that I wanted the vote over; and I remember many times thinking the Clerk is writing too slow, the Clerk is turning around too slow, the Speaker is reading the paper too slow, but I don't remember it ever not happening. If that had happened, we would not have this problem. The vote on the board has nothing to do with the official tally. The Clerk keeps the official tally. During that vote, someone said to the Parliamentarian, the Parliamentarians don't run the House, the majority does. Well, that's right. The Parliamentarians don't run the House. But the Parliamentarians provide the continuity of how the House is always run. This is not the great legislative body it is because every Congress decides how they are going to run things. This isn't the great legislative body it is because those of us who, I think, if 78,000 votes in the entire country would have changed would be in the majority or the minority that we have no rights here. This is not the great legislative body it is because the majority just gets to decide. Now, there are other instances in recent days when we believe the Parliamentarian gave other advice than was taken. I don't want to create a problem for the Parliamentarian. But I do know that one night this week in debate Members of the House were told that their comments were irrelevant. Now, they might not have been the best comments in the world, they might not have been the most on-target comments in the world, but I never remember anybody in the chair ever before ruling that a Member's comments were irrelevant. We are not irrelevant here. Just because we are in the minority does not mean we are irrelevant. Just because we have a small difference between our numbers and your numbers doesn't mean we are irrelevant. That doesn't mean that the Speaker can decide to end the votes when they want to, no matter what the traditions have been of the House. It does mean, when the Speaker ends the vote, whatever the official tally is at that moment, which, by the way, is what the Clerk would write down, should be the official tally. That's why, I may not be quite to the level of outrage, but that's why I am offended by how that process worked. I have never seen it happen before; I hope to never see it happen again. If it had happened in the right way, we wouldn't be having this discussion right now. But maybe this discussion also allows us to look at our relationships with each other, our relationship with the Parliamentarian, the job of the Speaker in the chair is to create fairness. It's not to ensure that everything goes so that one side is happy and the other side is not. I welcome the acceptance of my friend Mr. Boehner's resolution by the majority leader and, I assume, the majority. I look forward to the report. I hope this creates a moment when we all begin to think about what we are doing here and how we are doing it and the obligations we owed each other. This is not a one-sided street. I understand that. Respect for each other, appreciation for each other, respect for the way business has been done here for a long time is an important part of what we all need to work to achieve, and hopefully this helps get that done.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for yielding. This is clearly a critical debate. The spirit of the chairmen, Chairman Reyes and Chairman Conyers both, are exactly right in our need to solve this. My concern is that we're not in a place where we're about to solve it yet. The very worst thing I actually think we could do is pass a bill, have the Senate pass a separate bill, all go home and say we tried to solve this problem and didn't get it solved. I'm most concerned, in this effort to get two-thirds of the Members to agree, that the Director of National Intelligence thinks this bill isn't the right bill and apparently our friends on the other side of the building are not in agreement yet that this is the right bill. I just say, whatever we do, let's not cast a vote here only so we can say we did something. Let's figure out how to do something that exactly makes a difference. Let's figure out how to do something that gets signed into law. Let's figure out how to do something so that these enemies of ours, truly we're doing everything we can to listen to what they say, to try to track their actions, to try to anticipate what they're going to do. This is clearly a very dangerous time for the country and the world. It's easier to follow up on the activities under our law of organized crime or even white collar crime than it is at this moment to follow up on the activities of our enemies in the terrorist camps of the world. I hope, Madam Speaker, that we don't just take a vote for the sake of having a vote and, if this bill does fail, we all continue to work for however long is necessary to arrive at an agreement in this building that winds up with a bill on the President's desk that winds up with our intelligence agencies doing everything they can.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Speaker, let me say when we left here last night, I have left the House frustrated, I have left the House encouraged, I have left the House proud, I have left the House not so proud. I have never the House ashamed before. Now what I just heard here this morning, I don't agree with it, the idea that somehow we have massively violated the traditions of the House and the only penalty is we will be more careful in the future. I decided for 4 years when that vote would quit as the whip. That was my job. We never stopped the vote until the Clerk handed the person the piece of paper that said what the vote was, and the vote on the piece of paper was 215-213. The remedy for the House that would solve this problem is to let the vote stand. A majority of this House voted that illegal immigrants would not receive these benefits. That is what the vote was about. All you've got to do is go back to committee, amend the bill and come back to the floor. You lost the vote. I didn't hit the gavel. I didn't speak over the Clerk who was trying to read the vote. The Chair did. The Chair decided the vote was over. It doesn't matter what that board says. What matters is what the tally was. A week of violations of the principles of the House culminated last night in such an excessive way that Republicans walked off the floor, and it was a deserved walkout. And I am ashamed of the House.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Speaker, I'm thankful to the former chairman and the ranking member for yielding to me on this bill. It seems to me that what we have here is a bill that has not benefited from the process of hearings. Most of our friends in the majority today, I assume, will vote for this bill. Most of our friends on our side are going to vote against this bill, and I believe that during the month of August the voters will have the hearings that we should have had in advance. I believe what we'll find out is this bill has needless problems in it in the name of expanding SCHIP. My good friend, Ms. DeGette, mentioned the moon mission. It does seem to me that, in this bill now, the moon is the limit. The original bill said 200 percent of poverty, with some flexibility to the States. We're in favor of extending these guidelines. The original proposal, as we understood it from the majority, was 400 percent of poverty. Families who made 80, $85,000 would get free health insurance for their children. I don't think that limit is there any more. I believe it's up to the States under this bill. If you made 1,000 times the poverty rate and your State wanted to insure you, they could do that and your initial payment from the Federal Government would be 95 cents on every dollar. We're going to offer a recommital today that extends the current SCHIP program; that gives us the time to talk about it and ways that make it better; that reinstates the current law on immigrants, where, if you come to this country, you have to have a sponsor, and you can't participate in programs like this for the first 5 years. That's been one of the workable parts of our immigration policy. We would propose we don't have self-verification, where people who are here illegally just can walk up and sign up and say I'm legally here. We'll have a doctor fix. We'll do something about the therapy caps. And, in my district, 21,033 people who would lose their choice of Medicare don't lose their choice of Medicare. Restricting Medicare benefits to pay for children's health care is not the right thing.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for the time this morning. I also want to join my good friend, the majority leader, and say how much I appreciate the work that's been done by Chairman Peterson, by Mr. Goodlatte, by the members on the committee in a bill that I had every intention of voting for as it went through the committee. I didn't like everything in it, but I did like some things in it a lot. There are some problems solved in this bill. The big problem is created in the bill in a way that I wouldn't suggest intentionally, but certainly has the effect of taking a bill that would have had a huge bipartisan vote, giving this bill great momentum in the Senate, and I think needlessly minimized the House support for this bill. Following up on Mr. Goodlatte's comments that he just made, if the budget allocation could have been done in a way that the appropriations bill we voted on yesterday, it would have had a 5 percent increase instead of a 6\1/2\ percent increase, we wouldn't be having this debate today. In fact, I would be here today with enthusiasm about the bill, though again, I would say that I don't like everything in it, but I like some things in it a lot. What happened was this bill deserved to have a chance in the committees to find the right kind of pay-fors. In the committee hearing itself, and I am quoting my friend, Chairman Peterson, exactly when he was asked about whether there would be a tax increase, he said, ``We think it will be something to do with collection of existing taxes, which has nothing to do with tax increases.'' Quoting the chairman further, ``So far as I know, there is no effort to use a tax increase that I am aware of at this point. But given all of that, we do not have jurisdiction. If we had jurisdiction to raise taxes, we wouldn't be going through some of these machinations we are going through.'' And that ends the Chairman's quote. This bill should have been in a committee to look at this pay-for. The Ways and Means Committee didn't meet. The Rules Committee didn't have the language for the pay-for when they did their markup earlier this week, according to Louise Slaughter, the chairman of the Rules Committee. We've done things here that don't just affect people who are trying to avoid taxes. What this pay-for does is abrogates our tax treaties with countries where we do business, and people who do business here. 5.1 million manufacturing jobs and millions of other nonmanufacturing jobs affected by this, mistrust in whether you can invest money in this country in the future if you're a foreign investor. Some of our Members can make a passionate case about many jobs that have been saved in their districts because a foreign country, a foreign investor who just happened to make particular sense in what they did, came in and saved those jobs. I think it's a shame that we've had to have this debate. I urge that all Members vote against the bill.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Chairman, I thank my friend for yielding. I am pleased to be here as a part of this debate. I continue to hear as these debates go on that somehow these increases are not real increases, and I continue to be mystified by that. I think if my good friend from Georgia's amendment was approved, and I voted for his cutting amendment on each of these bills, if that amendment was approved, we would still have an increase in this bill of a little over 5 percent. Now, I don't know how that calculates out to not an increase, but I am continuing to try to figure out how that is not an increase. I do know that that increase of 5 percent anywhere that I talk to Americans is an increase. And I know, more importantly, in the course of today and tomorrow that what my friend from Georgia is suggesting is that if we let this one appropriations bill grow by 5 percent, as we move on later into the discussion of the farm bill, we would have saved enough money in this 1.4 percent cut not to have a tax increase that puts the farm bill in jeopardy. The farm bill is a bill that I voted for in the past and hope to vote for this year, but it is a bill that doesn't have to include a tax increase. But the $7.5 billion over 10 years that the farm bill needs could be gained right here if we would save $750 million of the increase in this bill. I just urge my colleagues to look at what we are doing here, realize that we are jeopardizing important things by moving forward in a way that spends more money than we have to spend this year. Most of these programs are good programs. I was a college president for 4 years. I believe in college education, in everybody having one. I don't believe that the reality is as stark as our friends on the other side would suggest. I believe a 5 percent increase used wisely would make all of these programs work effectively and for the American people, and we would be making the decisions we need to make for the other things we need to do. I support this amendment.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam Speaker, I would like to ask my friend, the majority leader, for any information about the schedule for the rest of the day today. I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. BLUNT. I yield.

Mr. BLUNT. I appreciate that. On our side, I would tell the gentleman, we would not intend to call for a vote on the rule vote, which I think is the remaining business for the day, other than a voice vote.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for that and, of course, just to ask when that decision is made, the quicker we could be told what that decision is and get a sense of the schedule on that issue, the better. Also, I have one question the gentleman might have information on. In the conference on the 9/11 bill earlier this week, it appeared that the protection that the House had added for liability in what was called the John Doe action, where if you suggest someone you think is pursuing a dangerous course of action, you turn them in, then you are personally held liable, we had some protections added to our bill on that. I am told that the chairman of the conference, a member of the other body, has now said that he believes those protections would be germane, and if they are germane, we would hope that we would continue to see an argument in favor of that. But I wonder if the leader has any information on that.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for that information. I notice there is no listing at this point of an Iraq bill on next week's schedule. I also notice that FISA modernization has not been scheduled. I wonder if the gentleman has any information about the potential for either of those two issues to be on the schedule for next week.

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

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for his comments. And I also understand frustrations with the Senate process as he does and hope that we can work that out in a way that we go through the regular process.