John Dingell

Mr. DINGELL

Mr. DINGELL. The consequences of the behavior of the BATF in these kinds of cases is that they are not trusted. They are detested, and I have described them properly as jackbooted American fascists. They have shown no concern over the rights of ordinary citizens or their property. They intrude without the slightest regard or concern. Now, if you want a more recent event, take a look at what they did in Waco, TX. Is that a defensible event? Scores of Americans were killed because of ineptitude by BATF acting under legal process, as they said, and that whole matter is going to be suppressed after scores of Americans have been killed because of the ineptitude and crass misbehavior of the BATF. Now, let us take a look at what this legislation does. H.R. 666 says that there is no defense in the courts against that kind of behavior by BATF or anyone else. The amendment offered by the gentleman from Missouri says that BATF is not included within that rubric. They are not protected in their misbehavior and they must defend their cases on the basis of the propriety of their behavior as now defined under law. Remember, all that the law now says is that before you raid a man in his home you have to do it incident to a valid arrest or you have to do it with a arrest or search warrant. I do not think that is excessive in a free society, in one where we expect the ordinary citizen to be secure and protected in his home. Now, what is a citizen to do if he is improperly raided under H.R. 666? There is nothing, literally nothing, that the ordinary citizen can do. The only defense which a citizen has under this kind of improper raid by BATF or by any other agency, State or Federal, was to have the information and the evidence improperly seized suppressed. H.R. 666 sanctifies misbehavior, and it makes such yard, and such seizure of property presumptively valid. It eliminates any question of propriety by the authorities. Now, it is fair to say that with regard to criminal misbehavior, that law enforcement agencies are able to and have consistently watched wrongdoers over a long period of time. They built their cases with care. Having built their cases with care, they then go to court and get a proper warrant. Then they would proceed to execute the warrant. H.R. 666, if enacted, will be applied to the ordinary citizen, not to the hardened criminal, but rather to the law-abiding citizen who has a rifle or shotgun in his closet or hanging over his mantlepiece or under his bed, and he is going to be the victim of this kind of legislation. His protection of home, property and personal security will be ended. This is bad legislation. It has been said today it does not affect the fourth amendment. In point of fact, it blows a huge hole in the fourth amendment. What it says is that a raid conducted improperly without proper warrant, or without warrant at all, is presumptively valid, and the burden then shifts on to the defendant who has been wronged by his Government, by the agencies of his Government, acting under either no process or improper process to defend himself. The wronged citizen is compelled to retain a lawyer. He is compelled to go through a long and costly court procedure, and he cannot, under H.R. 666, get protection afforded him by the requirements for a proper search. He cannot have property seized under an imperfect search warrant, or no search warrant excluded from the trial. That is literally the only defense that a citizen has against improper behavior in terms of search and seizure by law enforcement personnel. The attack on H.R. 666 is not an attack on law-abiding citizens. It is an attack on wrongdoers. It is a bad piece of legislation. I urge the legislation be rejected, and I urge the amendment offered by the gentleman be adopted.

Mr. DINGELL. I am just curious. The gentleman is chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary. I am curious why he is in such a rush to get this bill on the floor before he has looked at the kind of misbehavior that I have described or the kind of misbehavior that the gentleman is now describing.

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment. Mr. Chairman, the basic legislation before us is bad legislation. It would cause a raid by the BATF or any other agency of Government, to be presumptively valid if there was any property which was seized pursuant to the warrant. That means any firearms owner, owner of a shotgun, sporting ammunition, sporting weapons of any kind, or target weapons in this country is subject to being raided without the slightest semblance of a defense as to the illegality of the search or seizure, whether the law enforcement authority has a warrant or not. Mr. Chairman, let me read some words from William Pitt which I think we should keep in mind as we consider the fourth amendment, which is at least as precious as the first and the second. Here is what William Pitt had to say, a great British parliamentarian: The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the force of the Crown. It may be frail, its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it: the storms may enter, the rain may enter, but the King of England cannot enter; all his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement! What I am saying, Mr. Chairman, is that in this country, until this legislation, under interpretations of the Constitution by conservative courts, not by a congregation of radicals, the ordinary citizen was able to assume that he was protected in his home against improper raids and against improper procedures under warrants, or lacking warrants, by law enforcement persons entering his home. Under this legislation that will no longer be so. A man had a right to assume that he was secure in his person, in his property, in his home, and he had the right to know that he was protected by the courts. H.R. 666 would do away with those protections, and particularly so in the case of owners of firearms and sportsmen in this country who use their firearms solely for law-abiding purposes, legitimate sporting and hunting and self-defense purposes. Now, having said those things, let us look a little bit at what it is that BATF has done over their history. I want my colleagues to go back with me to the raid that was performed on the home of a law-abiding citizen by the name of Kenyon Ballew. BATF first entered an apartment upstairs where they held a shotgun at the head of some 8-year-old children. When they found they had raided the wrong place, they then went downstairs, and they broke through a back door in the man's home which was never used. It was essentially a back door. They seized the man's wife and threw her into the hall in only her underpants. Mr. Ballew was coming out of the shower with a cap and ball revolver seeking to defend his home and his wife against a noisy band of intruders who bore no indicia of their service as law enforcement officers. Indeed, the event was classed as a training exercise. Mr. Ballew was shot in the head, and he is today, if not dead, still a cripple and still partially paralyzed, incapable of speech. This whole unfortunate matter was covered up under the aegis of Mr. Connelly, the then-Secretary of the Treasury. My colleagues on the majority side of the aisle will remember Mr. Connelly. I want to tell you about what they did after the raid was concluded. They went outside, still dressed as hippies with beards and in scruffy clothes, and at which time they first put on their BATF armbands to show that they were law enforcement officers engaged in proper exercise of their legal authority, and that they had given proper warning to the individual of their authority which, in fact, they had not. I want to tell you a couple of other things about the BATF. BATF ran a citizen of the State of New Jersey off the road while he was driving down the road in New Jersey with his wife and kids. They beat him up. Then they found that they had attacked the wrong citizen, and then they said, ``If you report this to anyone, we will be back and give you some more.'' Now, I want to tell you about an innocent collector, whose home they raided. They seized all of his valuable firearms, all legal, took them, put them in barrels, damaged them, that is the firearms. The citizen then had to sue to recover the firearms which were his lawful property, and whose proper ownership was never contested by the BATF or anybody else. But the law-abiding citizen had to go to court to sue, to recover property improperly taken from him. The records of BATF are rich with this sort of abuse of the rights of citizens. [Mr. Dingell] has expired. (By unanimous consent, Mr. Dingell was allowed to proceed for 4 additional minutes.)

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DINGELL

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to introduce today, along with my colleagues, Mr. Condit, Mr. Moorhead, and Mr. Oxley, the Ticket Fee Disclosure Act of 1995. This legislation, if enacted, will provide American consumers appropriate and timely disclosure of convenience fees, service charges, and other amounts often added to the face value of entertainment and sporting event tickets, including huge profit markups by so-called ticket brokers and others who sell tickets on the secondary market. It also will result in a comprehensive report to the Congress from the Federal Trade Commission on practices by operators of facilities, performers, and sellers and resellers of entertainment and sporting event tickets, along with recommendations to achieve better ticket disclosure, information, access, and value for consumers. The number of entertainment and sporting event tickets sold in the past few years has escalated rapidly. Based on testimony our committee received last year, the number of such tickets sold annually easily exceed 2 billion. As ticket sales have increased, so too have the methods used to sell and market such tickets. Indeed, with the advent of the communications superhighway, sellers of entertainment tickets likely will create additional avenues for selling tickets that are not feasible today. This legislation does not inhibit these new and innovative approaches nor does it inhibit the growth of the entertainment and sporting industries or of the marketing and ticketing service industries that support them. This legislation creates no new regulations nor does it impose unreasonable burdens on business. Rather, this simple legislation merely seeks to inform the ordinary consumer who contemplates purchasing these tickets of any additional fees or charges that are added on to ticket prices. This legislation makes it unlawful for persons who sell or resell entertainment or sporting event tickets: First, to fail to disclose to the purchaser--prior to the purchase of any such ticket--any fee, charge, or other assessment to be imposed in excess of the face amount of the ticket, and second, to fail to have the amount of any such fee, charge, or assessment printed on the ticket or on a receipt evidencing any such ticket sale. Under the bill, this requirement will be enforced by the Federal Trade Commission, an independent agency that has authority over unfair and deceptive commercial practices under the Federal Trade Commission Act (15 U.S.C. 45, et seq.). As well, State attorneys general are empowered under the bill to enforce the requirement on behalf of affected residents in their States. In this regard, the bill parallels other commercial practices legislation developed by the Committee on Energy and Commerce during the past few years, including the Telephone Disclosure and Dispute Resolution Act, enacted in 1992, and the Telemarketing and Consumer Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act, enacted last year. Under the Federal Trade Commission Act, the FTC is authorized to issue cease and desist orders in appropriate cases and to impose civil penalties for each violation of the law. I also have modified last year's bill by adding an important provision that directs the Federal Trade Commission to conduct a study of ticketing practices, including an examination of relationships between and practices of various persons involved in entertainment and sporting events. I believe an indepth examination of ticketing practices by the FTC is clearly warranted, based on testimony and evidence presented to the Subcommittee on Transportation and Hazardous Materials at its September 29, 1994, hearing on this subject. For example, I have real concerns about the impact on ticket consumers of exclusive contracts between building owners and others that limit options of potential competing services. As well, I have many questions about the manner in which tickets are held back by many participants in the ticket food chain, so that consumers are denied any opportunity to purchase many tickets through conventional means--that is, the box office or through authorized ticket sellers--or are forced to pay exorbitant prices from ticket brokers or scalpers who mysteriously acquire the best seats in the house. If tickets are made available to the public, why are so many tickets simply unavailable to the normal consumer who cannot afford scalper's fees? This long-overdue report from the Commission should inform the Congress whether further action is necessary to provide consumers of entertainment tickets with better disclosure, information, access, and value. At the subcommittee's hearing last fall, representatives of consumer interests and of ticket sellers indicated their support for the disclosure provisions in the bill. Unfortunately, because of the press of other business, no further action was taken with respect to the legislation. I look forward to prompt consideration and enactment of this modest legislation so that American consumers will be better informed about add-on charges they pay for entertainment and sporting event tickets and so all of us will be informed about how to achieve better disclosure, information, access, and value for ordinary consumers who seek to purchase such tickets.

Mr. DINGELL

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Speaker, for more than a decade I had the honor of chairing the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. That subcommittee regularly exposed waste, fraud, and abuse committed at the taxpayer's expense. We found defense contractors charging $600 for toilet seats, and billing the Government for the expense of boarding dogs. Environmental contractors who were supposed to clean toxic waste sites were instead wasting taxpayer money on lavish parties, reindeer suits, and clown costumes. Universities used Federal research dollars to pay for yachts and 19th century Italian fruitwood commodes. The Nation's Governors were baldly raiding Medicaid funds to build prisons, pave roads, or cut their own deficits. The experience of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee teaches us that behind almost every wasteful Government project, questionable Government contract, or skewed Government regulation stands a long line of interests, palms extended. The entertainment industry honors excellence with its Golden Globe Awards. To honor excellence in bilking the taxpayer, I am today announcing the Golden Grab Award. We will be giving such awards periodically, a statue of a human hand, palm out, extended. I expect that the 104th Congress will give us a wealth of candidates for the Golden Grab. Already, Rupert Murdoch has shown that he can collect world leaders with book contracts the way children collect baseball trading cards. Nominations are now open for the inaugural award. Winners will have their names engraved on a statue in the form of an outstretched hand, palm up.

Mr. DINGELL

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I hope my colleagues heard the remarks of the gentleman from Hawaii, because he is talking good sense. I do not intend to elaborate on what it was that he said about this amendment. But, rather, I want to remind my colleagues about who we are, why we are here and what we are. I would never support a line-item veto for a Republican President. But I would never support a line-item veto for a Democratic President either. We have been engaged in a headlong rush over the last 3 weeks or so now to pass the contract on America. This is a remarkable device, because essentially it says a lot of things. It says that when we passed legislation to clean up the environment or deal with the problems of the health of our people or to take care of the young or the unfortunate or the poor, we really did not mean it. And where we mandated the States to do something, we really did not mean that either because, after all, now they are complaining. We only give the States $750 billion a year, and the local units of government get a large part of that. And were we to take that back, we could balance the budget very comfortably. But I want to talk a little bit of history to my colleagues, because history is important. As George Santayana observed, ``He who does not learn from history is doomed to repeat it.'' That means if you do not listen to what happened in the past and you do not learn from it, you are going to make the same mistakes. And you are probably going to pay the same price. My old Daddy used to tell me, Son, there are two kinds of people: there are those who learn from experience and those who learn from the experience of others. It started at one point in history back around about 1500, when the British parliament and the British people were involved in an intense controversy with the king who said that he ruled by divine right, not by the gift of the people. And that began a battle which culminated with the works of Oliver Cromwell, the great commentator, the man who pulled down the British monarchy. Why? Over the budget. Over the purse, over the power of the people to have control of their budget and their moneys. That is why. And just a few years later, about 200 years later, a little more, the United States was formed, the colonies. Why? For exactly the same reason, over taxation without representation. We can spend our careers here denigrating and criticizing this institution, and I would say those who do this deserve to be denigrated, because this is a great institution. I would urge my colleagues to stand up for the constitution, for the powers of the people. I do not believe any President ought to have the line-item veto power. I think that what it constitutes is a wonderful power that he can use to swing every one of us by the ear or the nose. And he can cut deals that are as every bit or more corrupt than those which my colleagues complain about. This is a public body. It is a public institution. We try to do our business in the public with openness, with respect for our constituents. Are bad things done here? Of course, this is a human institution. As my colleagues may remember from history, the good Lord got one bad apostle out of 12. But by the large the Members here are keenly aware of their duties and their responsibilities. Now, I know my new colleagues came in here running against the institution. Well, perhaps after they have served here for a while, particularly the Members on the majority side of the aisle, they will recognize that there is something more at stake here than they might like to admit at this time, the Constitution. We take an oath at the beginning of every session to support and defend the Constitution of United States. The Constitution was founded on a couple of very important principles, one man, one vote, and that the power of the purse resides in the people. We carry that delegated responsibility. This body has over the years I have served here been so sensitive that in the old days they would not let the Senate start a piece of legislation which would appropriate money. It is important that we know why this power is here. It is important why we know we must defend it. There is a constant tension between the executive and the legislative. A weak legislative encourages the encroachment of the executive. Again, I do not care whether it is a Republican or Democrat in the White House. It is not in the interest of the country, nor is it in the interest of this legislative body to afford the line-item veto power to the President of United States. Let him consider the legislation we send him. Let him veto it.

Mr. DINGELL. This was not a struggle which was won easily. In England it cost the head of one king and the throne of another. And it caused a revolution which caused thousands of British subjects to die. It caused a war between the United States and Great Britain, a war which we all revere, which is an essential part of our history, which reminds us of how Americans died at Valley Forge and elsewhere. Why? Because they wanted independence, because they wanted self- government, because they wanted representative government, and because they wanted the ability to control their own destiny and their own purse. Members can criticize the way we spend the money, but remember, we are all answerable to the people. Every 2 years we go home and we talk to them about the budget. Mr. Chairman, I have heard my colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle talk about the budget and how irresponsible Congress is. Again, as George Santayana says, ``He who does not learn from history is doomed to repeat it.'' Let me remind Members that during the 12 years of Republican presidency, between 1980 and the commencement of President Clinton's administration, the Congress of the United States cut President Reagan's budget every year except one. Every year except one, the President's budget was cut up here. The complaint that we heard from Mr. Reagan and then from Mr. Bush was an interesting complaint. They complained that we were taking money from defense and educating kids. They complained that we were taking money from defense and other boondoggles. Mr. Chairman, they complained that we were taking money from some things like foreign aid and military expenditures and putting it into health, or the needs of senior citizens, or research into health, or into protecting the environment, or into doing things that were going to make this country better. Mr. Chairman, I would tell my colleagues, when I go to Europe and talk to the Europeans, or when they come here to me, they say: We do not understand you in the Congress, and we do not understand your country. When we spend money to educate a child or to build a college or university, or to build a road, or to improve the country, or to build some kind of a navigation project or something of that kind, or when we spend money on research for health or for the betterment of people, or to take care of our senior citizens, or to enable our country to better compete, we regard that as an investment. In this country, according to what I have been hearing here lately, this is pork. This is subject to a line-item veto. It is criticized. Well, it is not. We are really the conservators of the well-being of this country. It is our responsibility to see to it that we invest in the future. We are not just spending the treasure that belongs to the youngsters who are going to come. We are making investments on their behalf in their education, in the infrastructure of their country. We are building them roads and highways. We are doing other things that are making this a better and richer place in which they will live. Mr. Chairman, I would ask my colleagues here to recognize both the constitutional responsibility of Members of this institution, but also to understand what it is that we are doing here, and to try and look at it in a little more expansive way. Do not look at the small end of the telescope, look through the end that is going to reveal to you what the future is, and what our goals and our purposes are. The saddest thing about this first 30 days of this Congress has been the small-mindedness and the small vision reluctance to do the things that are necessary to make this a better country, to build, to take care of our young, to make a better environment, and to do other things, and a concentration on minute matters of small importance. Reject the amendment and reject the bill.

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Chairman, if it is in the public interest that we should have the power of the purse, we should also have the responsibility for it. And we should bear both. If we come to a decision that something is a good project and the President does not like it, let him veto it. Let him send a veto message up here and let us deal with it as the Founding Fathers intended. This question of the line-item veto is like a lot of other things, a matter which was discussed in the convention in Philadelphia. They looked to see how the purse should be managed and by whom, and they came to the conclusion that it, first of all, should be in the Congress and, second of all, that the primary power for that should be in the House of Representatives. Again, I have heard a lot of Members talk about how corrupt this institution is. There seems to be a great deal of that sort coming from the majority side of the aisle. That is not a majority view in the country, and it should not be a majority view in the country. And it should not be a majority view here. If there is something wrong, let us clean it up. But let us not throw away the constitutional powers of United States, the Congress of United States, the people of United States. Let us not give them to a President or anybody else unless we are convinced that that is the proper carrying out of our constitutional responsibilities. I assure you, it is not. The Constitution is to be protected by all of us. We take an oath on that point. And we should understand that the protection of the power of the purse and the protection of the prerogatives of the House of Representatives are an essential and important part of that oath. I would urge my colleagues to reject the amendment, and I would urge my colleagues to reject also this outrageous piece of legislation which does nothing other than to denigrate the House, the Congress, and to confer power upon the President of United States, which was the subject of a long struggle between the people and the sovereign and a part of a long struggle on the part of the people of United States.

Mr. DINGELL

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, as the debate concludes, it is becoming painfully clear that this House is responding not to the needs of the country, but to the needs of doing a bunch of things in 100 days. I was a small boy when the Democrats dealt with the 100 days of the New Deal. Those were important times. The country was going broke. A third of our population was out of work. Better than a third of the country was ill- President. Homes and farms were being foreclosed. Businesses were going down the drain. The suicide rate was up. They responded in 100 days. However, there is nothing like that challenging the country at this time. What we are doing is rushing to pass an assortment of legislation ill-considered here, worse considered in committee. This legislation has never had hearings in the committee of jurisdiction. We are responding to a demand which is viewed on that side of the aisle as being very important. However, we are not considering the basic responsibility that we as Members of this body have, and that is to legislate well. It would be my hope that when the 100 days that we are dealing with now is recalled, it will be a time like the 100 days of the New Deal when people remembered it as a time of greatness, when the Congress responded well to a desperate challenge and to great concerns on the part of the people; not, not I say, as a period during which the Congress, in a prodigious rush, without the slightest attention to the details and the concerns that the people have, or the need to legislate well, would be properly addressed. We witnessed not only this legislation brought to the floor without hearings, but we have watched attempts to change the rules of the House, so that the chairman of the committee can announce that hearings are going to be held on a particular piece of legislation, in 5 minutes, and be there or forfeit your chance to participate. In our committee we were about to have hearings on a piece of legislation to address a major concern of my colleague, again on that side of the aisle, and we were going to deal with the problem of tort reform. But we are not going to hear from the Securities and Exchange Commission on the impact on investors, and indeed the proposal was going to absolve people who act with arrogant recklessness from any liability for suits under the securities laws. How is that to be justified? Or the widow who has lost a husband could not be the named complainant in a lawsuit to protest a wrong which was done to her. I think that is unwise. We are now considering legislation to have risk assessment on a whole broad array of statutes not identified in the bill, and each of these statutes is different. No concern is being given to the impact of this one-size-fits-all piece of legislation, a bill which would treat food and drug orders, with regard to removal of things like blood contaminated with AIDS from the system of commerce in this country, the same as it would treat regulations relative to first-class mail. I think that is an unwise course of action, and it is one that this Congress, in its responsibility to its people, and indeed in its responsibilities to itself, should avoid. I just want my colleagues to know at the end of 100 days we are still going to be here, the country is still going to be here, the business of the Congress is still going to be before us. People are going to judge us by what we do and how well we do it, not whether we rush through to get a piece of legislation to this floor to pass it, to send it to the President's desk. That is not the test. The test is are we legislating wisely and well? The laws we pass address the well-being of 270 million American people. They deal with their financial security, they deal with their health, they deal with the safety of their environment, they deal with things like nuclear safety, and food and drugs which will affect this generation and future generations. And they are going to impact, believe it or not, often times adversely upon the industry of this country, which thinks it is going to be benefited by some of these regulations. Bad regulations are also bad for industry, but regulations which cannot be brought forward to address the legitimate concerns of industry are going to be banned or barred or mutilated by the process in which we are now engaged. I would tell my colleagues that the process upon which we are engaged now is one which may look good at the end of 100 days, it may not look too good at election time next year, but it is going to look a lot worse when the cold light of history shines upon the efforts of this 100 days, when it is found that we proceeded carelessly when we passed legislation, when we did not consider the concerns and needs and future of the people.

Mr. DINGELL

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Moakley], for his assistance and hard work on this particular matter, and also my good friend, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Solomon], chairman of the Committee on Rules. He and I have had a great friendship over the years. Although we have had some splendid differences which we have argued out for him knows no bounds. He is a valuable Member of this body, and I thank him and salute him for having worked this matter out. Mr. Speaker, this started out as potentially a very bad situation. The rules of the House have always functioned to provide notice, not only to the Members, the minority, but very frankly, to the people, because the business that is done here very intimately affects every American. The purpose of the notice requirement was to permit people to come forward, to be heard on matters of concern on the conduct of their Nation's business. As it originally started out, the rules change would have virtually eliminated the requirement for adequate notice to the American people, to the Members of this body, and to the minority. Happily, through the wisdom of the gentleman from New York [Mr. Solomon] and the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Moakley], and because of the hard work that has occurred on the part of a number of Members and staff people, we have been able to resolve that difference so now notice is given, 7 days, but also that opportunity for waiving that under good, sensible practice has been accomplished. I want to say, Mr. Speaker, that again, we owe a debt to the gentleman from New York for his cooperative and decent approach to the concerns we felt. It also is so that we can look now to a situation where his concerns with regard to the ability of the business of the majority being properly conducted can properly be met under this. I think one lesson we can all learn from this is that by working together we can resolve the problems that exist between us on this side of the aisle and on that side of the aisle, and that we can come together to address the concerns we all feel. When we do that, we can say that we have solved not only the problems of one side but also the other; also, Mr. Speaker, to observe that the result is a good one, because here the requirements of notice remain. They can be waived upon consultation with the minority. They also can be waived on a vote of the committee with a working quorum present, so this is a good resolution. It is one which I hope will be an example of how the body can and should work together in a fashion to resolve our concerns in a bipartisan spirit of comity and cooperation. Having said that, Mr. Speaker, I again want to express my appreciation to the gentleman from New York and the gentleman from Massachusetts, my good friend, the gentleman from California [Mr. Mineta], who was a tower of strength on this, the gentleman from California [Mr. Miller], and the other Members on both sides of the aisle who have worked together to resolve what could have been a nasty problem in a way which does serve the public interest, serves the interests of this institution, and sees to it, yet, that people who have a concern about legislation will have an opportunity to participate in the process by coming from places as far away as California and Alaska in time to participate and to have their views heard as the Congress works its will on important legislative questions.

Mr. DINGELL

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

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Chairman, is this motion subject to debate?

Mr. DINGELL

Mr. DINGELL. This language of this says that the chairman, not the committee, may determine that there is good cause to begin the hearing sooner. The committee has no say whatsoever in this matter. Now, I have no problems with allowing the chairman to send out the announcement. That is one of the concerns of my good friend from New York, but I have great objection to not allowing adequate notice to the members of the committee about holding this matter more quickly. This has been something that has always been very jealously guarded by the minority. The the gentleman from New York will remember that, as will the gentleman from Texas, the majority leader. I understand that. This is simply a question of basic fairness, because members have to have the time and ability to prepare to produce witnesses, to do things necessary for the orderly operation of the committee, and for their proper participation. I seek no advantage. I seek only fair treatment. I know the gentleman, because of his sense of fairness, is going to give it to me. I hope he understands the point I am raising. The point I am raising is not objection to the fact the chairman sends out the notice. The objection I raise is the question is the chairman may then essentially, because of the language, the way the resolution is written, simply waives that without any recourse by members of the committee. Then the members of the committee, the ranking minority member, the minority will have no opportunity to solicit witnesses, to prepare for testimony, to prepare themselves to ask questions or to do any of the other things that are necessary including asking for the day's hearings, which is one of the treasured rights the gentleman from New York during his days in the minority so vigorously and properly defended.

Mr. DINGELL. Have there been any hearings on this matter in the Committee on Rules?

Mr. DINGELL. The distinguished gentleman from New York is, of course, as always right. But this time regrettably only partly right, because the way the rules work the notice is given by the committee. Now this would change it so that both the notice and the discretion as to the handling of the notice lie in the chairman of the committee. There is no collegiality in the question of waiver. I have no objection to requiring the chairman of the committee to give notice. I think that is fine, and if the gentleman wishes to clarify that part of his concerns with regard to ambiguity that is fine. But, I think that it is important that the collegiality of the waiver should continue. And I would observe to my good friend that during the dozen years that I have run a committee around this place that it was always my practice to consult most carefully with the Republicans when they were in the minority and that they had no objection to when and how that question was waived. The rule, for the protection of the minority now, and did before, and prior to this change, required that the minority have opportunity to participate in the question of whether the waiver was going to be given with regard to the 7-day notice. Now there is a strong reason why this is the rule. First of all, the minority has need first of all to know what the majority intends to do. Second of all---- Parliamentary Inquiry

Mr. DINGELL. I have a couple of more questions. I will be delighted to yield to the minority leader if he desires as long as I can continue my reservation.

Mr. DINGELL. Continuing under my reservation, I note that there have been no hearings in the Committee on Rules on this matter; is that correct?

Mr. DINGELL. Further under my reservation, I note that that change in the rules of the House has not been subject to hearing in the Committee on Rules; is that correct?

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object, and the gentleman from Massachusetts and the gentleman from California also reserve the right to object. Mr. Chairman, I have some questions I would like to ask of the leadership of the majority under my reservation. I note that one of the items that is scheduled is an amendment to the rules of the House. Am I correct on that?

Mr. DINGELL. That has always been required to be done by the vote of the committee. It was done by the vote of the committee, not by the whim of the chairman, and that is the change that I find so difficult.

Mr. DINGELL. Will the gentleman yield further?

Mr. DINGELL. The concern I have, the question of waiver is never laid before the committee and there is a strong reason for this. I want my colleagues to understand. The minority has from time to time desired to put, to bring witnesses before it, which without adequate notice they cannot do, that have to come from different parts of the country, sometimes from abroad and sometimes from places as far away as Alaska and California. Having said that, there is also the problem that for the minority to ask for a day's hearings we have to do it during the time that the hearings are actually going on. And if they do not have time to do these things, the minority is effectively stifled.

Mr. DINGELL. I have never been able to get to the point of my concern, and I want to share it with my good friend from New York, for whom I have enormous respect, I want you to know.

Mr. DINGELL. If the gentleman will continue to yield, I am only stressing what was a matter of concern to the minority, and it was a matter of concern which I respected in my actions during the day I was committee chairman, and that was to see the minority was fully informed and that questions like waiving of notice were always carefully and fully discussed, and that the minority was fully satisfied with regard to these matters. reiterate, to changing the rule so that the minority, rather so that the chairman may call the meeting. That is fine and I understand the gentleman's concern, and I am going to be accommodating on that.