Tom DeLay

Mr. DeLAY

Mr. DeLAY. Inclined.

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, will the House be in order? The gentleman cannot hear.

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's yielding. Yes, we do have a bill that was marked up in the Committee on the Budget that we are looking forward to considering in the near future. There has been a lot of discussion about that bill. The process by which we would consider it has been widely discussed. However, I believe that the chairman of the Committee on the Budget would prefer to wait until the budget resolution conference report has been completed and passed before we consider that bill. So it is very difficult for me to give the gentleman any sort of time frame, but as soon as the budget is passed, I think we can anticipate within a matter of weeks the Budget Enforcement Act coming to the floor.

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's yielding. I just speak for this gentleman that I would like to see a Budget Enforcement Act come to this floor. I think it is vitally needed for fiscal discipline in this Congress, and I would anticipate, whether the budget passes or not, that we would see a budget enforcement bill come to the floor.

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

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's yielding to me. I think it is way too early in the process on this particular bill to be talking about even process or amendments or substitutes or even trying to speculate what the Committee on Rules would do. We do not even know what form the bill would come out of the Committee on Rules at this particular time. There is a lot of work that is being done on the bill. But I can assure the gentleman that we would give his side of the aisle every consideration for amendments and/or substitutes to this very important bill.

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's yielding to me. And I am looking forward to talking to the Governor of Maryland, a former very distinguished member of this body, Bob Ehrlich. He is a very close friend of ours, and we are very glad to see him, but he also knows the rules of the House, that one cannot lobby on the floor House, because he served here. As to the highway bill, the gentleman is very correct. This is a very important jobs bill. It is very important to all of us here in the House. It is very important to us because it is not just the most important jobs piece of legislation, it is a vital part of our economic agenda, along with tax relief and our 21st century careers initiative and competitiveness packages and all the other things that we are trying to do, energy bills. So we really want to see this bill, and we want to see it enacted into law. We are having a little trouble with the other body. The other body has repeatedly asked to go to conference. Unfortunately, there is a group over there that will not let them go to conference, and we are having a difficult time in the other body going to conference. We can always go to conference here, but we would like to see the Senate go to conference first so that we can get the process moving.

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

Mr. DeLAY. His understanding may be a little late because as of almost over a week now, both the Republicans in the House and the Republicans in the Senate have given up trying to come up with a number agreed to by the President and have decided to go to conference. The minority on the Senate side has been informed of that fact. We are ready to go to conference to work out whatever the number may be within conference, to work out all the other disagreements between the two bodies, and they are ready to go to conference. I do not want to speak for the other body, but it is the minority that is refusing to allow the majority over there to go to conference.

Mr. DeLAY. If the gentleman would yield, we can move this bill and move to conference as quickly as we want to. Unfortunately, in the other body, the minority wants certain concessions before they even go to conference. The reason for conference is everybody getting in a room between the two bodies and work out their differences, not make side deals or those kinds of deals outside the conference before they allow their body to go to conference. So when the minority decides to go to conference over in the Senate, we will go to conference and we will have a highway bill.

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

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, on that point I would just say this is a different issue. Both Democrats and Republicans want this highway bill, and in the case of the Medicare bill that the gentleman describes, the names that he listed, none of those names wanted the Medicare bill.

Mr. DeLAY. They wanted a bill that was impossible to pass, and there was no use in wasting our time.

Mr. DeLAY. Ours passed.

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 12:30 p.m. on Monday, May 17, 2004, for morning hour debate and further, when the House adjourns on that day, it adjourn to meet at 9 a.m. Tuesday, May 18, for morning hour debate as though after May 31, 2004, thereafter to resume its session at 10 a.m.

Mr. DeLAY

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I offer a preferential motion.

Mr. DeLAY

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, this week, the House will make history, taking up the first of eight components of the most ambitious and forward-looking economic agenda in a generation. For the next 8 weeks, the House will debate and pass legislation that will begin the process of remaking our economy for the new century. Rather than treating individual policy initiatives in a vacuum, the American Careers Initiative takes a comprehensive approach, treating health care, energy, education, taxes, regulation and lawsuit abuse reform as parts of a broader economic agenda. For the next 2 months, the House will focus on one of the eight components of the Careers Initiative each week, starting tomorrow with Health Care Security. First, we will pass legislation to reform medical malpractice liability laws to protect good doctors, nurses, and hospitals from predatory trial lawyers and their abusive lawsuits, lowering the cost of health care. Second, we will pass the Small Business Health Fairness Act, which will allow small businesses to enjoy the same economies of scale now used by large corporations, organizations, and labor unions in their health plans. Third, we will make Flexible Spending Accounts even more flexible, by allowing account owners to hold on to some of their unspent health savings year to year or even roll some of that money into a new health savings account. We will do all of these things not simply because they are good health care policies, but because they make for greater economic policies. By reducing the threat of abusive lawsuits, more doctors will continue to see patients and thereby help to reduce the crisis in health care access. By allowing small businesses to reduce the cost of employee health insurance, those businesses will in turn use their savings to invest in new products and hire new employees. And by expanding the utility of Flexible Spending Accounts, we will promote more health care competition and help Americans save money on their insurance costs. All of these new policies will help break down the barriers between the American people and the affordable quality health care that they demand. And they will also break down the barriers between them and the thriving competitive and prosperous 21st-century economy that they deserve.

Mr. DeLAY

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

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I just had brief consultations with the chairman of the Committee on Rules, and he is inclined to recommend to his committee that the amendments to these bills be in the nature of a substitute.

Mr. DeLAY. I am afraid I cannot answer that question. I have not read as of yet those three bills, so I cannot answer that question as compared to bills from last year.

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would continue to yield, that is correct. I am under the impression that H.R. 4279, the flexible spending accounts bill, has been considered in committee. But medical liability and the association health plan bills are bills that we have passed in this House before.

Mr. DeLAY. If the gentleman would yield, ``exactly'' is too stringent a word for me to answer. Exactly, I do not know. I am advised that these two bills have passed the House floor and are substantially the same.

Mr. DeLAY

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that when the House adjourns today, it adjourn to meet at noon on Monday, May 10, 2004; and further, when the House adjourns on that day, it adjourn to meet at 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday, May 11, for morning hour debates.

Mr. DeLAY

Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the ranking member, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) and the chairman, the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) for bringing this resolution to the floor. When I spoke to the chairman of the Committee on Armed Services, I asked him what we should do about this incident. There was a lot of discussion about a lot of things, but we were talking about doing this resolution. I told him at the time that we wanted to make sure that this was bipartisan, and he expressed himself that we needed to have a resolution that condemned the actions at Abu Ghraib prison but, at the same time, we needed to talk about our troops. That is what this resolution does. When others tried to come in and impose politics into the resolution, it was rejected. This resolution is exactly written the way it should have been written, and I congratulate the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) for doing it the right way. The alleged abuses inside Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq are an outrage. They are crimes by any definition of any terms in any culture, and their perpetrators must be dealt with swiftly and fully. Our government has a responsibility to find out exactly what happened, what went wrong, and make sure it never happens again. But while we meet that responsibility, we cannot allow these shameful crimes to undermine or distract the American people or ourselves from the task, the clear moral imperative at hand. Operation Iraqi Freedom, whatever difficulty we have faced since the end of major combat, has been an absolute good for the cause of human freedom in the world. The men and women serving the United States in Iraq won the swiftest and most humane military campaign in history, and they turned from that victory in major combat to a protracted, difficult, and bloody guerilla war against terrorist insurgents that still takes American lives every week. We must, I say to my colleagues, we must not forget that while we have this chance to speak with one voice condemning what has happened in the Iraqi prisons, the war still rages. Attempts to politicize the abuse revelations will rightly be seen by our enemies as opportunities to recruit, to propagandize, and to incite. The world must know that the abuses we have seen in recent days do not reflect the views, policies, or fabric of this Nation. Our men and women in uniform are fighting today. Indeed, American blood is flowing in Iraq as we speak, and it is, therefore, incumbent on this body to offer our support for our troops and their mission all the more strongly today. Our troops are changing the world and building a future for the people of Iraq, sacrificing more than most of us can know for the survival and success of liberty. They are the finest ambassadors, wherever they go everywhere in the world. They are the only thing that separates us from another 9-11. And in their time in Iraq, our servicemen and women have helped to rebuild schools, hospitals, food security systems, and infrastructure. They are an Army of charity. They are laying down their lives and their futures so that others might have themselves the freedom that we all take for granted. ``Greater love hath no man than this, Mr. Speaker.'' Our heroes must know that even in these troubling times, that love is returned.