David Dreier

Mr. DREIER

Mr. DREIER. I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I would like to say to my good friend from Mississippi-- and I know my friend from Florida is raising concerns about this as well--this underscores procedurally the challenge that we are facing when we have one individual making these kinds of decisions that should be made by Democrats and Republicans in the House of Representatives. When we listen to this argument put forward about spending and about the fact that this 2,500-page bill is theatrical, you bet. I mean, you bet, Mr. Speaker. It is theatrical to hold up a 2,500-page bill, but it's a way to graphically underscore what is taking place here. Now, my friend said that he is interested and concerned about the fact that everyday people have priorities on transportation and on a wide range of issues. National security is again, to me, priority number one. Yet, Mr. Speaker, in this 2,500-page bill, we have a 63 percent increase in funding for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Mr. Speaker, I don't believe that everyday people who constantly, over the past year or two, have been focusing on trying to rein in their spending believe that a 63 percent increase on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an appropriate utilization of this money. So that is the reason, Mr. Speaker, that we point to this. Now I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished ranking member of the Subcommittee on Transportation and Housing, my good friend from Iowa (Mr. Latham).

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I might consume, and I would be happy to engage in a colloquy with my very good friend. Let me say that obviously the appropriations process is a challenging and difficult and messy one, but I think that it's important to note a few things as we look at last summer. My friend will, I'm sure, acknowledge--and I would be happy to yield to him--that never before in the history of the Republic have we had the kind of structure put into place that prevented Members from offering amendments that we did through this appropriations process. I am happy to yield to my friend.

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. DREIER. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DREIER. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. DREIER. I thank my friend for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I congratulate him for his remarks. Basically it's what I'm going to say when we begin the process here. But one of the arguments that has been propounded and was utilized up in the Rules Committee last night was that when we completed our work here in the House of Representatives, that it was our friends on the other side of the Capitol who did not comply with the kind of schedule that we had. And the fact is, it's important to remember that there are 58 Democrats and two Independents who organize with the Democrats in the United States Senate, giving them a total of 60 votes, and they have complete control. And so the notion of somehow saying, ``Well, we had to get our work done. We had intended to avoid an omnibus if we had been able to complete our work, but it's those guys over on the other side of the Capitol who failed to meet their responsibilities'' is a very, very specious and weak argument to make in light of the fact that they have control of everything now. And I thank my friend for yielding.

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Worcester for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I might consume. (Mr. DREIER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend's comments, and it appears to me that no matter how colorful or creative I am that I probably won't be as persuasive with him as I hope I am with others in pointing to how absolutely ridiculous it is that we are here doing what we are doing with this. And this is really a challenge. I'm told that this weighs more than a baby, in fact. The child of the woman sitting right behind me says this weighs more than her baby. It is 2,500 pages that we have been given in this omnibus appropriations bill which we were promised would not be utilized as a process if we shut down all of the appropriations bills, which, if I could remind everyone, we did last summer. Actually, Mr. Speaker, I would like to call my colleagues' attention to today's date. Today is December 10. For those keeping track, we are now 71 days past the end of the fiscal year, 71 days overdue in completing work on our constitutionally mandated power of the purse. How far along in the process are we at this date, 71 days into the fiscal year? Well, five of the 12 appropriations bills have been enacted into law. With time quickly running out and over half of its work left undone, the Democratic majority has chosen to cram six of our remaining seven spending bills into this one massive half-trillion dollar bill. The underlying measure before us today spends $500 billion of the taxpayers' money on disparate issues and agencies, from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to the FBI to infrastructure to veterans programs. My friend is absolutely right. Of course, I supported the Homeland Security bill. It's one of the top priorities that we have. In fact, there's nothing more important than the security of the United States of America, so I supported that. But that doesn't mean that I'm supportive of taking it when it should have gone through the regular process, which is what the gentleman with whom you're speaking right now promised we were going to be able to do if we had this closed, structured process for considering appropriations bills, and yet here we are with this omnibus bill. They were kind enough, kind enough now, by virtue of having this as a conference report, to grant us an entire hour of debate for this 2,500- page measure that's before us. Mr. Speaker, that works out to just about $7.5 billion for every minute of debate that we're going to be allowed on the bill, $7.5 billion. And I'm sure the American people will feel completely confident that 1 hour to debate a $500 billion measure, half of the discretionary spending that we've got before us, is enough. Actually, an hour for oversight and accountability of their hard-earned taxpayer dollars at a time, Mr. Speaker, when virtually everyone I know is engaged in cutting back. They're engaged in cutting back spending. Why? Because of the economic downturn through which we're going. And what is it that has happened? We've seen an 85 percent increase in nondefense discretionary spending. An 85 percent increase at a time when families across this country are working very hard to figure out how they can make ends meet. Now, as I have said repeatedly throughout the appropriations process, legislating is not a pretty business. It's not unusual for our work on the Federal budget to extend beyond the close of the fiscal year. It's not unprecedented to consider several appropriations bills in one package. And it's happened under both political parties. The debate that takes place here on the House floor is often heated. That's the way it's supposed to be. The task, Mr. Speaker, of forging consensus and compromise in the face of competing views and priorities is all part of the legislative process. Furthermore, spending the taxpayers' money is a very, very enormous responsibility that we have. Article I, section 9 of the Constitution places that responsibility in our hands. It demands, it demands, Mr. Speaker, a great deal of deliberation, which is not always compatible with setting timetables. Deliberation, Mr. Speaker, is not always compatible with setting timetables. Ultimately, Mr. Speaker, getting it right is more important than getting it done by September 30. In light of this, the fact that we have arrived at December 10, 71 days after the end of the fiscal year, having completed only five of the 12 appropriations bills, is not surprising, based on what we've seen here, or even necessarily problematic. But there is far more to this story, Mr. Speaker. At the very outset of this process 6 months ago, the Democratic majority announced that they would be foregoing the messiness of real debate. And I'm very pleased that my friend from Wisconsin, the distinguished Chair of the committee, is here on the House floor. In their calculation, concluding by September 30 was more important than getting things done right. Rather than a lengthy, deliberative, accountable process, they chose to pursue a neat and tidy one that shut out real debate, shut out real debate, but did conclude on time for our work here in the House. Democrats and Republicans alike were denied the opportunity to participate. True to their word, they made the unprecedented move of closing down the entire appropriations process. Now, Mr. Speaker, everybody in this House who is a first-termer or they've been here as long as my friend Mr. Obey has been here--he's been here almost 200 years, I think. He's been here a long, long period of time. And he knows that never before, never before in the history of this Republic have we seen the process shut down as it was shut down last summer. We have had rank-and-file Members, again Democrats and Republicans--Mr. Speaker, this is not simply my attempt to stand up for Republicans. We've been standing up for Democrats who have been denied the opportunity to offer amendments as well, and it's very, very unfortunate. By endeavoring to take the messiness out of the legislative process, they took out the real debate, they took out the accountability, all in the name of a deadline, a deadline that came and went 71 days ago. Seventy-one days ago was when that deadline arrived, Mr. Speaker. And here we are scrambling to consider half of the entire discretionary budget in one single 2,500-page bill with one single hour of debate. As I said, that's $7.5 billion per minute of debate that's going to be allowed on this. Our traditional deliberative process is messy and lengthy and ugly for the sake of good results. The Democratic majority set out to sacrifice good results for the sake of expediency. What we have gotten is the worst of both worlds: neither timely nor deliberative action. Neither timely nor deliberative. And as we've seen time and again, bad process begets bad substance. It's no coincidence that the Democratic majority has been blocking all accountability of their spending practices. The deficit has skyrocketed to nearly $1.5 trillion. That's larger than the entire Federal budget was just a decade ago. And our national debt, as we all know, exceeded $12 trillion, and the unemployment rate is double digit at 10 percent. The fact that this outcome is not surprising does not make it any less grim. We can't go on recklessly spending money that we simply don't have, piling mountains of debt upon future generations. Unless and until this Democratic majority returns to regular order and open debate, the taxpayers will continue to see their hard-earned money spent unwisely and our country saddled with an ever-growing level of crippling debt. Mr. Speaker, I have to say that we constantly hear the finger of blame. I was managing last night the rule for general debate on this massive 1,279-page bill that re-regulates virtually everything when it comes to the delivery of financial services, and I constantly heard the finger of blame being pointed at the Republicans. We need to remind ourselves that the Republicans have not been in control of the House of Representatives since 2006. Mr. Speaker, what that means is that we have gone through now 3 full years, 2007, 2008, and 2009, under a Democratic majority. So as we continue to hear this argument that somehow Republicans are to blame for all of these problems, it is a very, very specious one. I'm going to urge my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, in the name of accountability, in the name of deliberation, and in the name of good results, to defeat this rule. We can do better. Mr. Speaker I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. DREIER. I thank my friend for yielding. Let me just say, Mr. Speaker, that the gentleman obviously didn't listen to the remarks that I just provided here reminding Members that while we continue to get the finger of blame pointed at us for the last 3 years, this institution where the power of the purse exists, the people's House, has been in the control of the Democratic Party, not the Republican Party.

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I yield my friend an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. DREIER. If I could reclaim my time, Mr. Speaker, let me just say that the problem we had was this: The first appropriation bill came forward, it was a total of 20 minutes of debate. Twenty minutes of debate took place, Mr. Speaker, and then all of a sudden the process was shut down and Mr. McGovern and I and our other Rules Committee colleagues were forced upstairs to take the first step towards shutting down the process. So let's say that this extraordinarily dilatory process lasted 20 minutes before we took the first step towards shutting this place down. The second thing, Mr. Speaker, is that as we talk about the sacrosanct September 30 end-of-fiscal-year date, that's only part of it. The only reason that we point that out, recognizing that under both Democrats and Republicans through a difficult appropriations process in the past, we have clearly had to go beyond that September 30 deadline for the end of the fiscal year. And the problem was that when we were told that we would not exceed that because we were shutting down the process. So, unfortunately, we lost both the opportunity for deliberation and this sacrosanct deadline that was constantly held up as the raison d'etre here for this kind of action. The third point is, as my friend, the distinguished Chair of the committee, went through the 95 amendments that were offered in committee, the 160 amendments that were made in order on the House floor for consideration, Mr. Speaker, with all due respect, the selection of those amendments in the hand of one individual Member of this institution--not those of us on the House Rules Committee. Yeah, we ultimately, with the majority vote in the House Rules Committee, saw our Democratic colleagues put the stamp of approval on it, but the decision of what amendments were made in order was made by one person, the distinguished Chair of the Committee on Appropriations. That's where the decisions were. Now, Mr. Speaker, under the historic tradition, the tradition of consideration of appropriations bills, knowing how sacrosanct article I, section 9 of the Constitution is, Members of the House had the chance, as Mr. Flake said in his remarks, to stand up and offer amendments. One of the things that we believe strongly about, with the 85 percent increase that we have in nondefense discretionary spending; not those issues that the gentleman pointed to that we of course agree to in a bipartisan way--the national security of the United States of America--but in the multifarious other areas, there is a real desire for Members to stand up and have a chance to offer amendments that might be able to bring about, with a scalpel, some kind of spending reduction because we've gone through such huge increases. And so, Mr. Speaker, I have to say that it's very, very troubling to hear these kinds of arguments. Mr. Kirk, to whom I'm going to yield in just a moment, has the 2,500 pages very, very gingerly propped up there on the lectern. At this time, I am happy to yield 2 minutes--which, based on the level of spending in this 2,500 page bill, will amount to $15 billion since we're spending $7.5 billion per minute--to my friend from Highland Park.

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire of the Chair how much time is remaining on each side?

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time, the 30 seconds, to simply say that in the name of fairness, there are both Democrats and Republicans who are opposing this rule. Why? Because Democrats and Republicans have been shut out of this process. On the Republican side, Mr. Speaker, we believe that an 85 percent increase in nondefense discretionary spending is outrageous when the American people are struggling to make ends meet. Only the Federal Government, as my friend from Indiana said, would proceed with a dramatic increase in spending when businesses across this country are working to bring about reductions. There are shared priorities that we have on national defense; on transportation. But the notion of a 63 percent increase for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or $375 million for the Clean Technology Fund is not the route to go. Defeat the previous question. Defeat this rule. Over the last few months, the American people have written and called their Members of Congress or they've made their opinions known at town hall meetings to ask their Congressmen whether they will pledge to read bills before they vote on them. The reason is that the people are upset after finding out the majority leadership forced Congress to vote on a number of sweeping and very expensive bills without giving Members time to understand or really even to read the bills. For example, we were forced to vote on the final so-called ``stimulus'' bill, on the omnibus appropriations bill, and on cap-and- trade with less than 24 hours to read the bills; in some instances, much less than 24 hours. And that's no way to run this House. Our constituents are rightly upset. You would think, Mr. Speaker, this would not be an issue, as the distinguished Speaker is on record as saying in A New Direction for America, ``Members should have at least 24 hours to examine bills and conference reports before floor consideration.'' It's even on her Web site; yet, time and time again, the distinguished Speaker and majority leadership have refused to live up to their pledge. That is why a bipartisan group of 182 Members have signed a discharge petition to consider a bill that would require that all legislation and conference reports be made available to Members of Congress and the general public for 72 hours before they be brought to the House floor for a vote. That's why today I will be asking for a ``no'' vote on the previous question so that we can amend this rule and allow the House to consider that legislation, H. Res. 554, a bipartisan bill by my colleagues, Representatives Baird and Culberson. By voting no on the previous question, Members will still have an opportunity to debate and consider this conference report, but if the previous question is defeated, it will also allow for separate consideration of the Baird-Culberson bill within 3 days. So we can vote on the conference report and then, once we are done, consider H. Res. 554. Mr. Speaker, I would like to insert the text of the amendment and extraneous materials immediately prior to the vote on the previous question. Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question and on the rule.

Mr. DREIER

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this rule. It's been fascinating to listen to the debate here, and a lot of hyperbole has come forward. We have heard terms like the ``Republican recession,'' and ``Wild West mentality.'' And the fascinating thing that I have just been talking to a couple of my staff members about is much of the legislation which is being criticized so harshly was signed into law by not George W. Bush but the President before George W. Bush, President Bill Clinton. So I think that we should recognize that there has been a lot of bipartisanship in creating what we all admit have been excesses. Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, we found that the regulators were asleep at the switch. The name Bernie Madoff was thrown out earlier. The fact of the matter is we know that the regulators were asleep at the switch when it came to dealing with that. We can look at a wide range of other areas where inadequate oversight took place. The question that we have before us right now is do we want to create what many of us are concerned about, and that is unintended consequences? One of the things that we have found over the past year plus has been a tremendous contraction in credit. Individuals who want to utilize their credit cards or start a business, buy a home, have been having real difficulty gaining access to credit. We've seen this contraction take place. My concern, as we look at this legislation, is that we're going to take this contraction of credit and make it permanent. We will basically be making it permanent. Why? Because we are going to codify a regulatory structure which is going to undermine the ability of the American people to have access to the best quality product at the lowest possible price. A lot of things have been said and done over the past year which I think lead us to be overreacting. This massive expansion of government. We can start with the stimulus bill, cap-and-trade, this 2,500-page bill that we just reported out with all these appropriation bills that had an 85 percent increase in nondefense discretionary spending. This is not a way to encourage and lay the groundwork for us to get our economy moving again. So I am very concerned about that. I want to talk about one particular amendment, Mr. Speaker, that I offered in the Rules Committee, and that amendment dealt with a huge inequity that unfortunately took place when the economic downturn began. We unfortunately have seen a lot of financial institutions go under. One of them that went under very early on was a California institution known as IndyMac Bank. At that time, which was July of last year, we found that we had the $100,000 guarantee and that was it. Shortly thereafter, as more institutions went down, we increased that level to $250,000. My colleague Ms. Harman introduced an amendment which I offered in the Rules Committee earlier today which would simply have allowed us to have a chance to debate that. There are just under 9,000 depositors and a total of $233 million that would be making these individuals whole who have been depositors because the depositors in other financial institutions, Mr. Speaker, were able to have the $250,000 guarantee provided, and yet these depositors at IndyMac, victimized in the same way that these other depositors were with the failure of institutions, were unfortunately prevented from being able to do that. We simply wanted the House to debate that amendment so that we'd have the chance to make these hardworking men and women from not only California but across the country who happened to be depositors at this institution to be able to receive what every other depositor who dealt with a failed institution following its failure was able to face. I offered Ms. Harman's amendment, I was happy to join with her in doing that, and on a party-line vote, we as Republicans said that this amendment should be made in order; the Democrats chose to vote en masse against allowing a debate to take place for these hardworking individuals who had deposits that were in excess of $100,000. So, Mr. Speaker, in light of that and the unintended consequences which I right now am foreseeing, I hope very much that we can defeat this rule. Defeating the rule, because so many amendments that should have been made in order were not made in order, will allow us to come back and put into place a very, very decent work product that can end this contraction of credit and get our economy back on track.

Mr. DREIER. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DREIER. I just want to say that the issue of transparency and disclosure is what we are focusing on with the alternative that we put forward. This bill does not do that at all. I thank my friend for yielding.

Mr. DREIER

Mr. DREIER. At this time I am happy to yield 2 minutes to my very good friend, the former Rules Committee member from Charleston, West Virginia (Mrs. Capito).

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I yield my friend an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, at this juncture I am happy to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Savannah, Georgia (Mr. Kingston).

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, at this time I am happy to yield 2 minutes to a hardworking member of the Financial Services Committee, the gentleman from Wantage, New Jersey (Mr. Garrett).

Mr. DREIER. Let me just say to my friend, if I might, Mr. Speaker, that we are winding down. If the gentleman has no further speakers, we are prepared to close.

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, at this time, I am happy to yield 2 minutes to a very hardworking member of the Committee on Financial Services, my friend from Texas (Mr. Hensarling).

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.