Tom DeLay

Mr. DeLAY

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, this week the House will take up two bills that, in addition to strengthening our economy and improving the quality of American family life, will send a very real message of accountability to two industries not lately known for it. Opponents of the Personal Responsibility in Food Consumption Act and the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act may dismiss them as meaningless symbols, but American families know better. The American families know that the raw greed that fuels both abusive lawsuits and vulgar broadcast programming has punctured the boundaries of reasonable tolerance. People have tired of hearing about yet another loopy scam cooked up by predatory trial lawyers to sue some unsuspecting company for some imaginary offense; and at the same time, people have grown weary of the junk that comes across our television screens. For years we have chastised Hollywood, cajoled Hollywood, and begged Hollywood to shape up. Yet in both cases, the entertainment industry and trial lawyers, either out of arrogance or ignorance or both, have chosen to ignore these pleas. Mr. Speaker, this week the House will send a very clear signal to one and all: enough is enough. Predatory lawsuits undermine our economy; offensive television programming undermines the moral imagination of our children; and both undermine the fundamental human value of personal responsibility. Lawyers and broadcasters may not care about their moral responsibilities, Mr. Speaker; but under these bills, if they do not at least start to fake it, they are going to pay. Under the Personal Responsibility in Food Consumption Act, Congress will declare, as if we should have to, that restaurants are not responsible for the tummy aches that their customers suffer when they eat too much. Under the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act, television broadcasters who have thumbed their noses at the FEC's maximum obscenity fine of $27,500 per offense will soon have to reassess the actions of their respective thumbs and noses in the face of maximum fines of $500,000 per offense. So after years of trying the American people's patience, predatory trial lawyers and irresponsible broadcasters are going to be held accountable for their actions. It is Responsibility Week here in the House, Mr. Speaker; and thankfully for the viewers at home watching C- SPAN, there will not be a half-time show.

Mr. DeLAY

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, the House will convene on Tuesday at 12:30 for morning hour debates and 2 p.m. for legislative business. We will consider several measures under suspension of the rules, and a final list of those bills will be sent to Members' offices by the end of the week. Any votes called on these measures will be rolled until 6:30 p.m. On Wednesday, the House will convene at 10 a.m. We plan to consider H.R. 339, the Personal Responsibility in Food Consumption Act. In addition, we plan to consider H.R. 3717, the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act. Finally, I would like to remind all Members that we do not plan to have votes next Friday, March 12. I will be happy to answer any questions that the gentleman from Maryland has.

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield, I believe the gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young) is in the process of working with the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar), the ranking member, and members of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure to develop a product that can move through this House before the Easter recess and be signed into law as quickly as possible. So if we back away from our Easter recess, I would hope that the committee would, within the next couple of weeks, be marking up a bill so we can get it to the floor before the Easter recess.

Mr. DeLAY. It is a jobs bill, a very important jobs bill to all of us here in the House. We want to do what we can to create these jobs and get them going as fast as possible. To answer the gentleman's question about whether it is a 2-year bill, a 6-year bill, what is the amount here or there, I am not advised, quite frankly. There are discussions about all of that. I do not think any decision has been made along those lines. The gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar) and the gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young) are still discussing that, but I am sure they soon will come to some sort of understanding as to how we will proceed.

Mr. DeLAY. It is my understanding after a lot of discussion that Chairman Nussle and his Budget Committee members are working furiously to complete all their hearings and be prepared to mark it up possibly as early as next week. I would imagine moving the budget resolution to the floor the week after the committee reports its resolution out of the committee.

Mr. DeLAY. I am encouraging the minority to present substitutes so that we can have a very healthy debate about the future of this country and how we would as a House decide that the importance of the budget is such that we can come to some sort of agreement as a House to move a budget along.

Mr. DeLAY. As the gentleman knows, the Committee on Ways and Means has reported a bill out, H.R. 2896, the American Jobs Creation Act. This was reported last year. But we continue to work with the committee and the other body and the administration to bring that bill to the floor in a form that not only meets our obligations to the WTO but also ensures the continued competitive position of all U.S. companies. I anticipate that we will bring such a bill to the floor in the very near future.

Mr. DeLAY. The gentleman knows that it is the tradition of the House to keep Ways and Means tax bills very tight. We have always as a tradition discouraged amendments, but we have encouraged substitutes. I cannot speak for the Committee on Rules; but if there are alternatives in the form of substitutes, then they will be taken into consideration.

Mr. DeLAY. That tradition remains the same, I would say to my friend from Massachusetts.

Mr. DeLAY

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that when the House adjourns today, it adjourn to meet at noon on Monday, March 8, 2004.

Mr. DeLAY

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that when the House adjourns on Monday, March 8, 2004, it adjourn to meet at 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 9, for morning hour debates.

Mr. DeLAY

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the business in order under the Calendar Wednesday rule be dispensed with on Wednesday next.

Mr. DeLAY

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary may have until midnight on Friday, March 5, 2004, to file a report to accompany H.R. 339.

Mr. DeLAY

Mr. DeLAY. Madam Speaker, tomorrow the House Committee on the Budget will hold its Members Day hearings as the congressional budget-writing process kicks into high gear around here. As usual in election years, politics will play a decisive role in that budget debate. This is not entirely a bad thing. Congress' annual priority-setting document is a good tool, a test Americans can use to judge the competing fiscal visions of the two parties. Unfortunately, only one party seems to have done its homework for this test. The Republican majority, led by the gentleman from Iowa (Chairman Nussle) of the Committee on the Budget, is working to craft a conference-wide budget that embodies the shared values and priorities of our party. The Democrat leaders, on the other hand, seem unwilling to go to all that trouble. Nobody seems to know. Rather than take hard positions on hard issues, the Democrat leadership appears ready to turn their backs on those issues and their constituents and leave the American people guessing as to their core values. On the other hand, the Republican Party's values are clear to everyone who asks. They are the same values that have guided our party and our Nation through difficult times in the past: security, prosperity, and families. Republicans believe the job the Federal Government is to do is to preserve, defend, and support these three great pillars of American democracy. They will all be there in our budget: resources and policies to fight and win the war on terror and defend our homeland; protect the economy from Democrat tax hikes on parents, married couples and working families, while anchoring discretionary spending; maintain the global competitiveness of the national economy and encourage companies to create jobs here in the United States; and protect and defend American families from a culture of violence and self-indulgence that creeps deeper into our society every day. Whether people agree with us or not, Republicans will at least have the courage to lay our vision out for everyone to see; and as we move forward in this debate, we can only hope that the Democrats show the budget process and the American people the same respect.

Mr. DeLAY

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the business in order under the Calendar Wednesday rule be dispensed with on Wednesday next.

Mr. DeLAY

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that when the House adjourns today, it adjourn to meet at noon on Monday, March 1, 2004.

Mr. DeLAY

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that when the House adjourns on Monday, March 1, 2004, it adjourn to meet at 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 2, for morning hour debates.

Mr. DeLAY

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for bringing this bill to the floor. It is a very important bill, and it is a very timely bill. This bill has passed the House twice in two different Congresses. It is a bill that desperately needs to become law, because, Mr. Speaker, Laci Peterson had a son. He was never born, he never spoke a word or took his first steps, but he was real. Whoever killed Laci Peterson also killed her son, and to deny that is to deny truth. That unborn victims of violence are separate victims of violence is not a matter of interpretation, it is a matter of plain fact. A child could tell you that a man who kills a pregnant woman and her unborn child takes two lives. Unborn victims of violence feel their own pain, suffer their own wounds and die their own excruciating deaths, and with this legislation before us, we have the opportunity to say so. We have the opportunity to say that in this Nation unborn children targeted by violent men are guaranteed justice under the law, just as their murderers are guaranteed justice under the law. The Unborn Victims of Violence Act is a matter of common sense and common decency. It should and will pass this body by an overwhelming, bipartisan majority, and make right in the law what is now blatantly and indefensibly wrong. Mr. Speaker, I do not question the motives of those who plan to vote no. But to those who oppose this bill and support the substitute, support increased penalties for attacks against pregnant women without acknowledging the second victim of such attacks, I do ask this: Why? Why are the attacks against pregnant women like Laci Peterson so egregious? Why should they merit harsher penalties? Why do all people in all cultures, naturally, instinctively, recoil at such attacks? It is the vulnerability of the pregnant mother, to be sure, but it is also the innocence and the very being of the unborn child. Civilized society has an obligation to punish injustice, no matter the size, strength or political inconvenience of its victim. Laci Peterson's son may have been robbed from this world before he ever touched it, but, Mr. Speaker, he was here. Today he may be looking down on us from the nurseries of Heaven, protected for eternity by the God who knit him together in the womb, nestled in the loving embrace of the mother who gave him his name, but before Conner Peterson was taken, Mr. Speaker, he was here. Conner Peterson was here. Vote yes, and have the courage to say so.

Mr. DeLAY

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maryland for yielding to me. Mr. Speaker, the House will convene on Tuesday at 12:30 p.m. for morning hour and 2 p.m. for legislative business. We will consider several measures under suspension of the rules. A final list of those bills will be sent to Members' offices by the end of the week, and any votes called on those measures will be rolled until 6:30 p.m. On Wednesday, the House will convene at 10 a.m. We plan to consider H.R. 1561, the Patent & Trademark Fee Modernization Act. In addition, we plan to consider H.R. 3752, the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act. And, finally, I would like to remind all Members that we do not plan to have any votes next Friday, March 5. I thank the gentleman for yielding and will be happy to answer any questions he may have.

Mr. DeLAY. If the gentleman will continue to yield, I would just remind the gentleman the House passed a 4-month extension. It has been over in the Senate for some time. The Senate is having trouble with their rules to keep extraneous matters off of that bill, and they want to change the time of the extension. So, unfortunately, we informed the Senate that the House has finished its business; and in order to accommodate the Senate with the 2-month extension, we would have to work with the minority to come up with a unanimous consent request to do that, because holding Members around for votes would be impossible. The Senate has a dilemma on their hands, and they are trying to work through it.

Mr. DeLAY. Again, if the gentleman will continue to yield, we are working through that issue. There are people that have great concerns about extending the 9-11 commission on our side of the rotunda. That is one of the problems that we are having with the highway extension bill, is they want to stick the 9-11 commission extension on to it. We feel strongly that we cannot do a unanimous consent request to deal with that issue under present circumstances. So we are working through this. The Senate thinks that they can pass such an extension, and the House will have to deal with it if and when that occurs.

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, the Committee on the Budget has held their hearings and hopes to hold a markup in the next couple of weeks. We hope to keep the House on a schedule that allows us to complete a conference report by April 15. A lot of work is being done on both sides of the aisle. This process is, as far as we are concerned, on time for an early consideration of the budget.

Mr. DeLAY. If the gentleman would yield, that is what we expect, and that is what we hope to do.