Roy Blunt

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I have a further parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Chairman. The further parliamentary inquiry is, am I accurate in believing that all of these votes can be revoted once we rise from the Committee of the Whole?

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Chairman, on the vote just taken, the Chair announced the vote as 422-3. Should the Chair not have delineated the vote to properly reflect that the vote was 418-3 of those Representatives representing the several States as specified in the Constitution, and that the votes of those Delegates not representing States was 4-0?

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. This legislation authorizes $10 billion in spending to the EPA. And, frankly, the EPA spends a lot of money that could be spent in different ways. In the EPA budget last year $47,459,367 was spent in projects in foreign countries. I would suggest, in supporting the gentleman's amendment, that probably you could find $10 million there and, if you couldn't find it there, you could find it somewhere else. Currently, the EPA has paid for things that establish a coal bed methane clearinghouse in the People's Republic of China or developing or producing a television documentary in China, in Chinese, on mercury pollution or improving environmental monitoring quality and capacity in the Ukraine. They may all be good things, but none of them as important to American taxpayers as the proposal today. This proposal would allow this bill to move forward, but require the EPA to find the $10 million for this new program by evaluating the value to the American people and the American taxpayer of their old program. I think the money that is there to do this can be found elsewhere. I particularly am grateful to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Roskam) for bringing this to the floor as one of our first opportunities to talk about PAYGO for spending. If we are going to do things that meet the new priorities of the country, it is also an opportunity every time to look at the current spending and to reprioritize what the Federal Government has been doing.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I may move to strike the last word as I run through the time here, if I do. I am grateful to the gentleman for bringing this amendment. I think it is exactly the kind of fiscal responsibility that many of us on both sides of the aisle talked about during our campaigns. It is an important thing to have before the Congress. We have talked about PAYGO for taxes, but this is really PAYGO for spending. This is trying to reprioritize the spending of the Federal Government, to look at spending we are doing now as the first way to pay for spending we should be doing in the future. I haven't heard anything in the debate today that doesn't suggest that we need to move forward with the bill that the chairman has brought to the floor, that the committee has brought to the floor, that there is a lot of interest in amending this bill in ways that make it better. But there is no real discussion that the underlying bill doesn't do the kinds of things we need to be looking for as we move toward energy independence. Millions and billions of dollars, however, are authorized with no real requirement for fiscal discipline. In one of the votes we have taken this year in the early bills, the 6 for '06, the implementation of the 9/11 Commission, when we finally weeks after the vote got the cost estimate of the vote, the cost estimate was an estimate of $30-or- so billion over 5 years. And so we need to be sure that we are doing things that make sense with the people's money. I think President Reagan, who would have been 96 this week had he lived, said that a government has never voluntarily reduced its size. One of the ways we can at least maintain the size of the government is, we look at new and worthy things to suggest that the size of the government would not grow just because the needs of the government are changing. In this bill we ask for the authorization----

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I am. Or other select committees but that one, specifically.

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for yielding back. I know many of my colleagues on the floor assume that yielding that time gave you a good chance to talk about the last few weeks, and there are things to talk about. But I am sure you are getting plenty of discussion from all of the Members of the House, including the Members of the majority, about the schedule. I think that the determination for next week, which I believe would have been the first 5-day week we have had scheduled to work all 5 days, I think the determination of next week shows the leader's willingness to look at the facts of the week, rather than to be pinned down to a standard that doesn't necessarily let the Members do all of the work they need to do in the various places they need to do it. I am glad to see that change.

Mr. BLUNT. I would also like to say, Mr. Speaker, as it might make that answer easier for the future, I did not mean in any way to set a standard for future weeks. But I was thinking in terms of this week, looking at 2 days of suspensions, 1 day of a bill that we have had on suspension before, even though it would have a rule, that I would think it would not be an unreasonable goal for us to set to get our, particularly our west coast Members, on the way home on late Thursday afternoon, rather than having to wait until Friday morning. But I would also assume, having done both of the jobs you have held in the last few months, that there will be times when we will not necessarily need to be here on Friday, but to meet that goal we may have to work late enough on Thursday that many Members would not be on Thursday flights. I clearly understand that.

Mr. BLUNT. I understand.

Mr. BLUNT. That is all I need to know.

Mr. BLUNT. Would you expect that the Thursday schedule would meet the standard that we have been trying to set on the Friday schedule, if we can at all?

Mr. BLUNT. I thank my friend for that information. I am sure that all of our Members, as they hear the news about the ability to work in their districts on Friday, will be hoping to be on a plane Thursday night or Friday morning. I am not sure that I listened carefully to your sense of what would be the end of the day on Thursday since we would not be here on Friday. I am sure you said that, but if you would repeat.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time I have here, does the gentleman have a sense on the specific Select Committee on Global Warming and the Environment, or whatever it might be called, when that issue may come to the floor as a question?

Mr. BLUNT. Again, reclaiming my time, just to be sure I am right on this, the funding resolution would come before the entire body before the appropriating committee would decide to do their allocation out of this one billion-plus dollars? I yield to my friend.

Mr. BLUNT. And if I understand what my good friend said, that money would be available, but would be authorized specifically by the funding resolution that would come from the House Administration?

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his response. I would say that while we don't want to debate the bill again that we voted on today, all of the Republicans voted for the motion that would have improved the bill. Certainly the option of the February 15 deadline has impact. I don't even want to argue the point that some of our Members then voted for final passage, but all of our Members would have liked to have had a more wide-ranging debate on the points that were raised in the motion to recommit that all of our Members voted for. We also noted in the bill we just passed that rather than allocating funds to Members' committees and other offices of the House, this bill, essentially a bill that contained the funding for half of the discretionary spending, provided a lump sum in excess of $1 billion. I think the exact quote that I will refer to for the leader was ``to be allocated in accordance with the allocation plans submitted by the chief administrative officer and approved by the Committee on Appropriations.'' A pretty wide-ranging ability to now set specific allocations and for the Appropriations Committee to approve those. I am wondering specifically, does the majority intend to use these funds to create a new committee that is not currently in existence or currently authorized? I will yield to my friend for a response.

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

Mr. BLUNT. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for the information. I don't want to belabor the point. I certainly do want to join him in sharing this sense of how hard our Members do work and where they work. We talked about this at great length a couple of weeks ago. And I think the early discussion of being on the floor of the House 5 days every single week was widely enjoyed by the late-night comedians and others. And I said at that time, and I still believe, our problem is not that the Members of Congress don't work 5 days a week. Frankly, our problem is that too many Members of Congress work 7 days a week. And on those times when we don't have work in Washington and can be in the district, people want to meet with Members in their office. It does give Members a chance to, during the normal workweek, relate to people, activities, and ongoing events that they otherwise can't relate to. I think almost all of our Members are more than willing to take time on a Saturday to meet with people who normally work Monday through Friday. Frankly, most of the people that you would want to meet with see that as a much greater imposition than the Members of Congress who really do work more than 5 days a week at home and in Washington. The work of the Congress is important work, and it doesn't all occur here on the floor of the House while we are voting, nor does it all occur in Washington. I would like to yield to my friend, the ranking member on the Rules Committee. He has an observation, I think.

Mr. BLUNT. I would be pleased to yield to my friend, the majority leader, for a response to that.

Mr. BLUNT. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, I think the point my good friend from California is making, and I would like to emphasize, is we hope we are now moving to rules that are open when possible, that allow amendments when an open rule is not possible. I think the point he was making was that hopefully this just isn't to go on the record and say, as my good friend just did, well, once we allowed you an amendment that the Member decided he didn't want and then you complained about that. We don't want this to be cited as, well, don't you remember the time we gave you the open rule on a bill that passed unanimously without amendment in the last Congress? It is time to move on. My good friend from Maryland knows my high regard for him, and I am going to do my very best, at these weekly opportunities to talk about the schedule, to not just complain about the process. But I do know that my friend, who has been here longer than I have and understands and appreciates the process in the House, knows that it is to everybody's advantage if we get to the place where we are debating these bills, where the ideas that are brought to the floor can stand the challenge of debate and amendment, and we need to get there. As I said last week, I am prepared to look forward, as disappointed as I was about the way the previous few weeks have been handled, but there are only so many weeks that you can just be satisfied to think that, well, I am hopeful that next week will be better, and I guess here we would be hopeful that the open rule would not just be the example of the open rule we got on this kind of bill, but the beginning of real debate and real opportunity to amend in this Congress. I would like to yield again to my friend.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend from Maryland.

Mr. BLUNT

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

Mr. BLUNT. I thank my friend for his response. I would like to inquire further on the topic of the continuing resolution. I know the appropriations chairman has said that that would be a resolution that would not have earmarks in it. First of all, is that still the position of the majority that there would be no specific Member-oriented, district-oriented earmarks in this CR?

Mr. BLUNT. And with that caveat, otherwise should we anticipate this will be a CR that just extends the current CR? Would we expect to see either policy or additional funding language in the CR?

Mr. BLUNT. I yield.