David Dreier

Mr. DREIER

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the majority leader.

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, at this juncture I would like to yield 30 seconds to my good friend, the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman).

Mr. DREIER. I yield to the gentleman from Arkansas.

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, I would simply say that this measure is designed to deal with lobbying and ethics reform for the first branch of government, the legislative branch; and it is for that reason that we have not gotten into the executive branch issue to which my friend referred. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire of the Chair how much time is remaining on each side.

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, in light of the fact that I have 8\1/2\ minutes remaining and my colleague from Rochester has 15\1/2\ minutes remaining, I think it would be probably useful for us to proceed with hearing some of her arguments.

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, would the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I would reclaim my time.

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I am going to ask the gentleman from Minnesota to proceed, and then if my friend from California would like to ask me a question or something, as soon as we are done with the gentleman from Minnesota, I will be happy to yield to my friend from California.

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to a hardworking member of the Rules Committee, the distinguished chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, my good friend, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Putnam).

Mr. DREIER. My recommendation is that you not touch it.

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, let me just say that we are, with this package, going to implement real reform. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Lincoln Diaz- Balart), the very distinguished vice chairman of the Rules Committee who has long been a champion of institutional reform.

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, it was 11:00 this morning that I first called up the rule for consideration of this extraordinarily important lobbying and ethics reform measure. As I began my remarks, I talked about the fact that over the past 4 months, we have been meeting with outside organizations. We have been meeting with Democrats and Republicans in this House. We have been meeting with congressional experts to glean as much information as we possibly can from a wide range of sources. The point I want to make is we began at about 11:00 this morning. I felt at that point we had a great deal of input over the past 4 months since we began dealing with this critically important issue which has to do with the credibility of this institution. As we began that debate, I thought why don't we get a little more input; and so for that reason, I moved to withdraw the resolution, and that is exactly what we did. We decided to proceed with more input from Members on this issue. And having gained more information, more input from our colleagues, we are now reconvening and further considering this important measure. You know, the issue of reform is something of which I have been very, very proud over the years I have been privileged to serve here. The Republican Party is the party of reform. We have led reform initiatives for Congress after Congress, and what we are doing here today is another indication of our strong commitment to the issue of reform. We know that there is a problem of corruption. We also know that it is not a one-party issue. It is a problem that has existed on both sides of the aisle. I remember a quote from our very distinguished former colleague who served as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Dan Rostenkowski, who one time said, You know, if everybody is unhappy with a piece of legislation, it is probably a pretty good bill. And that is exactly what is the case right here. I do not know of anyone who is ecstatic with this piece of legislation. I have read the editorials out there from some of the people who have provided me with input on this issue. I have listened to Democrats, and I will tell you, since January, I could not come to the House floor without a Democrat coming up to me and saying, You cannot ban privately funded travel. We must continue to maintain privately funded travel. It is critical. And yes, I have heard similar statements from our side of the aisle. I mention the fact that there was input from outside organizations. Some have been very critical of this legislation, Mr. Speaker. But I am pleased that some of the harshest critics of this legislation have been able to have a great deal of input in this legislation. I have been very proud to have had meetings with the leadership of Common Cause, Democracy 21 and other organizations. One of the recommendations that came to us from Mr. Wertheimer was that we prevent registered lobbyists who are former Members of Congress from having access to the House floor and the gym. We, I am very happy to say, with a strong bipartisan vote, were able to make sure that we prevented former Members of Congress who are registered lobbyists from having access to the floor and to the gym. One of the concerns out there has been the lack of transparency when it comes to the campaign contributions that lobbyists make and the lobbying activity that they engage in. That was another recommendation that was put forward by the leadership of Democracy 21 and Common Cause. I am very pleased that in this legislation we include that issue, and we address it to make sure that transparency and accountability is addressed, and we do bring this forward. Could we do more? Of course we could do more. I hope in conference we will be able to address these issues when we move ahead with this. I also want to say that the issue of reporting from lobbyists, and it is done right now under current law on a semiannual basis, it was the recommendation of the leadership of Democracy 21 and of Common Cause that we go from semiannual reporting to quarterly reporting. I know there were a wide range of other recommendations that those and other organizations made that have not been incorporated, but I get back to the argument that we have been able to take a number of very important issues that have been put forward by Democrats and Republicans and include them in this legislation. Would I like to do more? Sure, I would like to do more. I hope very much that as we take this bill, passing it out of this House and go to a conference with our colleagues in the Senate, that we will be able to do more. I see the distinguished former chairman of the ethics committee Mr. Hefley here, and I know he has a number of concerns. I have already told him that as we take this first step in addressing the issue of moving ahead to a conference, I want to address the concerns that Members have that have not heretofore been addressed in this first process in the legislation and do that. Now, over the past 4 months we have seen five committees of jurisdiction hold hearings and markups on this issue. The Rules Committee, with which I am the most familiar, held three original jurisdiction hearings, and we held a markup on this legislation. We had 13 outside witnesses who came and provided their recommendations to us, and we had input from a wide range of Members as we went through this process. I know that our colleagues on the Judiciary Committee, on the Government Reform Committee, Mr. Hastings, who is chairman of the ethics committee and also has been very involved working with the Rules Committee on this, and also Mr. Ehlers, chairman of the Administration Committee, have all worked diligently so we can put together a piece of legislation which will allow the American people to have a greater opportunity to see what it is that takes place here, to ensure that the tragic problems of corruption that we have witnessed will never happen again. That is our goal. I believe this legislation provides bold, strong, dynamic reforms which will move us in the direction towards doing just that. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentlewoman from Rochester, New York (Ms. Slaughter), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only. (Mr. DREIER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 783 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. DREIER. I was smiling as I presented it.

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

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, if the gentlewoman will continue to yield, I would say that input from her side has been very important. And, yes, I have over the past few hours been talking to a number of Democrats who have been providing recommendations to me as well, and I thank my friend.

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, let me just say again, as we know very well in this institution, listening to Members talking about a wide range of issues is a very important thing. We have been talking about, over the past few hours, some of the concerns that were raised by a number of our Members. The issue of increasing transparency and accountability is very important, and I will say that I believe this package with this excellent rule that we are coming forward with to allow us to debate a wide range of issues is the right thing to do and will provide the best structure for our first step as we prepare to move to a conference with our colleagues in the Senate.

Mr. DREIER

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the ordering of the yeas and nays be vacated with respect to the motion to suspend the rules and adopt H. Con. Res. 357, and the motion to suspend the rules and adopt H. Con. Res. 349, to the end that the Chair put the question de novo on each.

Mr. DREIER

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield 2 minutes to my colleague, the gentleman from California (Mr. Royce).

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw the pending resolution.

Mr. DREIER

Mr. DREIER. David Price is the ranking member. He has worked very hard.

Mr. DREIER. Thank you very much, Jack. Let me begin by extending congratulations to our friend Matt, and you all are obviously absolutely brilliant in choosing to honor him. As I look around this Chamber, I can't tell you how much I wish many of you were back. I can't tell you which ones exactly, but there are more than a few of you that I wish were back for many, many, many different reasons. I want to thank Jack and Jim and David. As I listened to George Hochbrueckner and Bill Goodling talk about the Congress to Campus Program, I couldn't help but think about the fact that you all have been so intimately involved and supportive of a program that is taking place today right here in the Capitol, and that is the development of our House Democracy Assistance Commission. A year ago this month, we unveiled this bipartisan commission that Speaker Hastert and Minority Leader Pelosi came together to form, I think it may have been the last time they met, but the fact is they came together to form this commission which is designed to build on the fact that there are so many emerging democracies all over the world. We right now are hosting delegations from Macedonia, the Republic of Georgia, Indonesia and the newest country on the face of the Earth that was established in 1999, East Timor. The idea behind this, of course, as so many of you know, was to create over and above the National Endowment for Democracy and the Democratic Institute and the Republican institute, it was to build direct parliament-to-parliament relationships with these new democracies. Now, I often quip that after they see us in operation, they may want to go back to totalitarianism in their countries, but frankly many have been able to benefit greatly from having spent last week in the States, in congressional districts, in congressional offices, meeting with chambers of commerce, the media, a wide range of other groups and this week here in Washington. At noon today, we are having our farewell gathering for these parliamentarians and we are also going to be expanding this into a number of other countries. I am going to be going to Kenya and Liberia and Lebanon. Obviously, we are going to focus on Afghanistan and Iraq. I simply wanted to come by to express my appreciation to the many of you who have gotten involved in this very important issue. Obviously, you have the opportunity to take a little more time in working on this. But it is critical for us to do it. Congratulations. It is great to see you all. Thanks very much for including me. Thanks, Jim.