Roy Blunt

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Reclaiming my time, a couple of other thoughts. I thank you for that information. On the conference reports that are upcoming, the 9/11 conference report is there.

Mr. BLUNT. I was going to ask about lobbying reform, if you thought there was a chance for that. Water Resources or the competitive science bills, do you have a report on where those might be?

Mr. BLUNT. I would also ask, I believe we announced last week, Madam Speaker, we thought that we were going to have the Science-State- Justice-Commerce bill up next week, and now we are not. Is there any particular reason for that that you can share with me on that? I yield for a response.

Mr. BLUNT. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend for that. And I do believe that the protracted discussion we had and the agreement we made on transparency on these bills is a good thing. Next week's being a week where we will be leaving for a district work period, we won't have a chance for this colloquy, and I am wondering if you have any sense yet of where we will be the week we come back after the Independence Day break. Should we anticipate any appropriations bills that week or do you have other work that we might get to that week? And I would yield.

Mr. BLUNT. I appreciate that. And I appreciate also that generally that is the way that it usually works out on a week where we are coming back from being in our districts the week before. Last week you said that we should anticipate an announcement on an omnibus energy bill by the Fourth of July recess. I am wondering if you have any more information on that. And I yield.

Mr. BLUNT. And would that also include a sense of when that bill would actually be on the floor when we make that announcement prior to the Fourth of July break? And I yield.

Mr. BLUNT. And what I believe would be my last question is on the related Ways and Means energy tax bill that I believe in that committee has about $16 billion of tax increases in it as part of the energy package. Would that come up earlier than the rest of the energy package, or do you expect that to be on the floor at essentially the same time? And I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. BLUNT. And I believe the gentleman said that you really don't have a sense whether these bills would be on the floor in July or not, and if they are not on the floor in July, then we would look at sometime later in the year; is that correct? I yield.

Mr. BLUNT. That was not a question designed to go back and try to in any way create a problem. I think I did not hear what you said properly the first time.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentlelady for accepting, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. This amendment is really another test of the Congress' commitment to fiscal discipline. Today we're considering a State and Foreign Operations bill that is close to another record increase. I think it is below the President's number, but I've voted on a number of bills over the last several years that were below the President's number. And the fact is the President's number was too high, 9\1/2\ percent increase over last year's spending is too high. We can cut more than that, we can cut back to last year's spending, we can cut a percent, we can cut 2 percent, we can cut, go maybe even below last year's spending, but 9\1/2\ percent over last year's spending is too much money for this bill at this time. Not very many American families saw an increase last year of 9\1/2\ percent. First, you have to figure out where these massive increases are going. Fourteen and 15 percent increases for the U.S. Agency for International Development, $203 million, or a 17.6 percent, increase for the United States contribution to various international organizations. Second, you have to look at where this wasteful spending is going. We're funding things in this bill at increased levels like the International Copper Study Group in Lisbon, Portugal; the International Lead and Zinc Study Group at Lisbon, Portugal; the International Hydrographic Organization at Monte Carlo; the International Rubber Study Group in London, England; the International Tropical Timber Organization at Yokohama, Japan. A 9\1/2\ percent increase in a budget that American families will pay for, where not very many American families got a 9\1/2\ percent increase. We're going to have some legitimate debates about increases on spending in this country. I think increases on spending in other countries at this level are unacceptable. This is an important debate to have, it's an important vote to have. I encourage the gentleman to continue to make these kinds of principled stands.

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for yielding. And this is a good debate. It's a little more spirited at moments than I think it could be. In fact, I didn't mean to speak again on this until I heard the second-grade math explanation from my good friend, Mr. Obey. And I did pretty good in second-grade math. I even did fairly good in 12-grade math. And I did okay in college math. But second-grade math was a little bit of a stretch, I thought, because I tried to follow the second-grade math outline we had on why this was actually, according to some group, a cut in spending. According to my friend, Mr. Obey, if I heard this right, if you took inflation, and then you took the population growth of the world, I thought that was an interesting element to the equation, and then if you took the deficit as a percentage of the economy, that that actually might be a cut. This spending is 9\1/2\ percent over last year's spending. I've never seen the President's numbers so praised by our friends on the other side as it's been tonight. It may be the only time that the President had either a perfect number or a number that was just slightly too high. In fact, I understand this is $700 million less than the President's number. That's a lot of money. But it's not as much money as the $2.6 billion this is over last year's spending. That's a lot more money. Now, this is a 9\1/2\ percent increase. And somebody else said, is this going to be the baby that's going to break the bank? Probably not. But if every one of these bills goes up, it's going to have a big impact. And my good friend, Mr. Hoyer, said the government today is larger than the government you inherited, pointing at us. And then I guess the point is, and we're going to make it bigger. I didn't get that at all. The government's larger than the government you inherited, he said, pointing to us. So we're going to increase these spending bills, this one by 9\1/2\ percent. Very few American families got a 9\1/2\ percent increase last year. And almost none of them got to take the rate of inflation, the population growth somewhere, and whatever they had as a percent of the entire national economy and decide how that number added up. This is a 9\1/2\ percent growth in the foreign assistance part of the budget. This amendment says, let's just do a little less than we did last year and see if we can't make up with that with efficiency. One of the other amendments said, let's just do what we did last year. But this is a $2.6 billion growth. Let's not anybody be confused that that's a cut, or it relates to some complicated formula, or somehow if you didn't understand second-grade math, you would realize this wasn't a real increase. This is an increase. This is too much of an increase. We need to start doing the kinds of things on this bill and the other bill that hold the line, as we did hold the line on the discretionary non-defense budget in the past Congresses. We looked at the entitlement programs in the past Congress. None of that's happening in this Congress. So those programs are going to grow until we're told the budget's balanced. And by the way, in 35 of the last 39 Congresses, the budget wasn't balanced. And in seven of those, that was our fault, and the circumstances we dealt with. In the other 28, the majority party's party was in control. We need to be doing better. We need to start now. This is real growth that families couldn't just pass off as some complicated formula. We shouldn't either. We should be able to cut this budget by the one-half of 1 percent that the gentlelady from Colorado has suggested.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Chairman, nearly 25 years ago, President Ronald Reagan was given the option of signing what was at that time a little-known international treaty promising to bring the world's countries together to seamlessly and equitably manage the vast expanses of ocean covering the Earth. That accord, all 17 parts, 320 articles, and 9 annexes of it, was known the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. It was presented to the President as a key national security imperative, an important economic opportunity, and a powerful message of cooperation and trust to send to our current and future friends around the globe. Mr. Chairman, it didn't take President Reagan more than a few days to separate the rhetoric from the reality. He rightly interpreted the Law of the Sea Treaty, LOST, as a direct affront to American sovereignty and envisioned, presciently, as it turned out, that it might some day be used as a tool by foreign governments to exercise direct authority over American interests, activities, and industries. President Reagan not only refused to sign the treaty, he fired the staffers that were responsible for negotiating it in the first place. More than a generation later, there is talk in the U.S. Senate that they may dust off this stale treaty once again and bring it to a vote. Before it does, I believe this House has an obligation to take a close look at one element of this accord, which will impact the way American companies invest in new technology, it will impede their ability to produce new energy, and has long-range implications. Mr. Chairman, the amendment I have at the desk tonight will ensure that none of the funds spent in the State and Foreign Operations budget are used to support what's called the International Seabed Authority. It's a semi-autonomous, unelected body of the United Nations with authority to directly levy taxes and fines against American operators with or without their approval. Worse still, it would have the power to force a direct transfer of minerals and technology rights from the American companies that develop them to any competitor it sees fit. The Treaty's collision course with autonomous American Government is obvious, Mr. Chairman; the Seabed Authority is not only an obvious and very direct example of a U.N. effort to raise revenue without the input of the United States Government, but the Authority would also disincentivize private investment in offshore energy exploration which, in our current energy climate, is something this Congress should be working to avoid at all costs. We need all the energy we can get, whenever and wherever we find it. Submitting ourselves to an unelected, unaccountable, international ocean bureaucracy when it comes to distributing what American companies rightly explore doesn't strike me as the thing to do 25 years ago or today. Tonight, Mr. Chairman, I've come to the floor to ask my colleagues to consider the implications of ceding unprecedented authority to an agency of the U.N. without proper oversight, without legitimate safeguards, and without a whole lot of concern about the economic and security well-being of the United States. I urge adoption of this amendment, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I am here in support of this amendment. This amendment is one of the things that we have to look at, one of the alternatives, to just stop this spending spree that we see ourselves on. In just over 6 months the new majority has passed and paved the way for over $100 billion in increased spending. We already enacted $6.1 billion of new spending in the continuing resolution and $17 billion of new spending in the supplemental. And these appropriations bills have over $80 billion in new spending. As Everett Dirksen once famously said, ``A billion here, a billion there, before you know it you're talking about real money.'' And here we're talking about $100 billion of new spending. Mr. Campbell's amendment only proposes that we reduce this spending in this particular bill to the President's level. This bill increases spending by $1.3 billion over last year, 4.3 percent higher than last year. If you add this increase to the increases already proposed and passed by House Democrats last week, we are spending $20.7 billion, or 15.6 percent, more than last year. Where is all this money going to go? In this bill, $682 million, or a 35 percent increase, for operations and maintenance within the Corps of Engineers; $1 billion, or a 4 percent increase, to the Department of Energy; $108 million, or an increase of 13 percent, for salaries and expenses at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. These are excessive changes in spending that this bill doesn't justify. The only thing this amendment does is say let's go back to the President's level. Let's go back to an amount of money that, while it still provides for our immediate advances in energy and water, doesn't do this in a way that American taxpayers can't pay for it. And how does this majority intend to pay for it? The budget that would pay for it has, unarguably, the second biggest tax increase in American history, and arguably, the biggest tax increase in American history. In other words, there is no question that we intend to spend $217 billion more money that has to be raised from new taxes. And it's still an open question as to how close we're going to let that get to $400 billion. Now, this is the question: Are the American taxpayers going to be asked to provide 217 billion to 400 billion new dollars, or are we going to simply take this bill as the first step back to the President's level? This is a good amendment. This amendment deserves the approval of our friends. I hope our friends on both sides of the aisle, the conservative Democrats, the Blue Dogs, stand up with most of the Republicans to make this amendment happen.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I appreciate that. I would ask my friend, on the Energy and Water bill that we expect to do next week, it is my understanding we will come back at a later time and finish that bill, once time has been adequate to allow projects that would have otherwise gone in at some time even later than House passage.

Mr. BLUNT. I will be glad to yield, and I am not trying to be unusually prescriptive in describing that.

Mr. BLUNT. I thank my good friend for that. We are interested in that. We will continue to talk about that both on the floor and off. It would certainly be one of my goals. By this time next week if we have any information on that, we can begin to get a sense of meeting those deadlines. Under this process, as the leader well knows, a number of things have to be done. There is very little flexibility in the time frame once you start the clock on a particular agreement, and the clock has to start right here in the House of Representatives. I look forward to that. I thank my friend for the information.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Speaker, I take this time for the purpose of inquiring about next week's schedule. I yield to my good friend, the majority leader, for information about the schedule next week. In light of the agreement we reached this week, any sense you could give us at all about the remaining 10 appropriations bills would be helpful.

Mr. BLUNT. I thank my friend for that. I would also ask, this was covered extensively last night, but just to verify this one more time as we look at the schedule for these appropriations bills and for next week, on Monday of next week, we intend under unanimous consent to reinstate the rule that we had at the end of the last Congress that would provide for a point of order on any projects that are put in a conference report that we hadn't had an opportunity to see prior to that. That would happen on Monday?

Mr. BLUNT. That is the way I understand it, my friend, and our agreement at this point is for these appropriations bills, although in our rule last year we also extended that to authorizing bills. As you know, we don't want to continue that discussion, but the agreement we made this week, the majority leader is fully in compliance with the agreement we made so we can move forward with these appropriations bills with the understanding that while now we will have a significant opportunity to look at the remainder of the specific Member projects or earmarks in the bill, we also would have an opportunity to have a debatable point of order on the conference report if those appear. I would also like to ask about energy. I know in previous discussions on the floor at the end of previous weeks, I believe we discussed the likelihood that there would be an energy bill on the floor by July 4. I know in either this week's schedule or future scheduling that the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, the Ways and Means Committee, and the Energy and Commerce Committee have all delayed some markups that they had intended, and I am wondering if the leader has a sense of what that means in terms of an energy bill on the floor, and also that bill on the floor in light of the appropriations works we just discussed.

Mr. BLUNT. I thank you for that response. In addition to that, every indication I have up to this point is that those energy bills would go through the regular order of the committee. Is that what the leader and the majority still anticipates?

Mr. BLUNT. On another topic where we had some discussions that indicated there would be an effort to have a vote before the August work period on the topic of trade. And of the agreements out there, generally the discussion was that there would be a significant effort made to have the Peru agreement on the floor in July. I know these take a significant amount of time because of the various things that have to be done in this trade promotion authority process. I am wondering on trade if my friend has a sense where those items might be.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I just suggest that our former speaker does know the rules. He does put his time in on the work here. But by pointing out the exceptions, he also points out the vast majority of the time that the projects we had in the bill were in the bill. They could have been debated. In the long process that the gentleman has now suggested we would go through, Mr. Chairman, the one thing that is not included in that process, where apparently people can file responses, they can do this, they can do that, they will not have the chance to debate on the House floor. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time. Motion to Rise Offered by Mr. Blunt