Barney Frank

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. So that no amendment would be allowed?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, under the new regime have we now debated T-shirts more than we have debated the defense budget today? [[Page H 13094]]

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, is there any way, under the rule reported out, that the House could amend the pending amendment short of a unanimous-consent request?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I yield to the gentleman from Connecticut.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, what the gentleman from Connecticut is saying, I think we have agreement, those of us who have worked on this, we, many of us plan to vote against all amendments, even some that in other contexts we would favor because we want to get a bill to the President. That will then leave us, I think, with the job of having another round of hearings and markup and send a second bill over there. We do not want to jeopardize this bill. That is why many of us who have been working on this with all of the Perils of Pauline we have been through, we have a chance now to send the lobbying bill to become law before the end of year, and then we will start on the second round.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. As we did in the last Congress, he and I worked together, and we have achieved some reform, and I believe we will go to achieve it now. I have spoken to the chairman of the subcommittee. I wish things were different and that we had more confidence that, if we sent something back to the other body, it would not just sink into the La Brea tar pits. But given the experience, I am committed and I know more importantly the people, the chairman of subcommittee is committed. There will be a number of amendments offered that many of us will think well of, and it will be our intention I hope to bring out a second bill. But we would like to keep this one free of amendment because that is the difference between simply sending it back to the Senate and having no hope of sending it for signature.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I did want to say that the gentleman said we were arguing this bill was pristine. I did not argue that it was pristine. Indeed, the gentleman from Florida and I think it could benefit from some further amendment. Mr. Chairman, what we believe is that at this point, we jeopardize the chance to get anything if we amend it. We, therefore, are proposing not that this never be changed, but that we do it in a two-step process; that we get a bill signed into law, and that we immediately begin to take up a second round. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York [Mrs. Maloney].

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I just would like to join in and agree, although I should note that presently there are only 433 Members of this House.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York [Mrs. Lowey]. (Mrs. LOWEY asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will continue to yield, let us all hope that he is a role model for our colleagues.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the constructive spirit in which the gentleman is approaching this. I think he has a very good amendment. I have not had a chance to give a lot of thought but it seems very good to me. If I had to vote on it right now, I would vote for it. But I think it will obviously be a useful thing for us to have at the hearings, the markup. I hope something very much like it will emerge. I believe and I know my friend from Florida agrees. It is very likely that we will want to do another bill because there are a number of good ideas that have come up. I will be urging that we go forward with this, and I am very, very likely to be supporting legislation of the sort the gentleman from Michigan offered. I appreciate the spirit of trying to get this bill through that he would give us a chance to do it in that manner.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas [Ms. Jackson-Lee], a member of the Committee on the Judiciary. (Ms. JACKSON-LEE asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. McHale], one of the main sponsors of this bill.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Colorado [Mr. Skaggs].

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Bryant] who has had more to do with this bill legislatively, I think, than any Member in the House, both in the last session and in this one. (Mr. BRYANT of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the generous words of my colleague, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Canady]. The subcommittee on which we jointly serve, under his chairmanship, played a very important role in this. There was some resistance to that role when the bill that we are in effect dealing with now, the House version of a Senate bill, when the Senate bill came over it was held at the desk. The Speaker, for reasons that were never made explicit, did not want to refer it to us. I think it is fair to say that there have been people in this House who were not eager to see this bill become law, but their resistance was overcome by the persistence of a number of Members, and I think it is interesting that the reluctance never quite came out in public. The gentleman from Florida [Mr. Canady] is right when he said that sunlight can be the best disinfectant. It was, in fact, important in bringing this bill forward because there were people who wished it would go away, but it did not go away. They were not prepared to confront it. Legislation very similar to this passed the House in the previous Congress. I think the record that the former Speaker, Tom Foley, compiled in a number of areas has been insufficiently appreciated, particularly in the reform area. Under his Speakership the House did do a version of the Congressional Compliance Act, very close to what is now the law. The House did pass this bill. The two pieces of legislation, some other reforms, campaign finance reform, all ran into problems in the Senate. The procedures of the Senate are part of the problem. The Senate has very different rules than the House, and the filibuster and other rules interfered. That is why I join the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Canady], the chairman of the subcommittee, as well as the gentleman from Pennsylvania, the gentleman from Connecticut, the bipartisan group that has been actively advocating this, and my friend, the gentleman from Texas. All of us, Democratic and Republican, who have been advocates of this lobbying reform either through our committee position or through sponsorship of the bill, or both, believe that it is very important that Members join us in voting against amendments. Mr. Chairman, I want to express my appreciation to the chairman of the Committee on Rules, to the chairman of the full Committee on the Judiciary, and the subcommittee, because they did the honorable thing. It is an open rule. I suppose it is unusual for supporters of a bill to come to the floor and say, ``One, we are glad to have an open rule; two, we hope none of the amendments are adopted.'' But I think that is a position which shows respect for democratic procedures and some confidence in the House. We do believe that the adoption of amendments, no matter how meritorious, bring this bill back into the kind of perilous back and forth that they have had before. We want to explain to people, people have said, ``You are being too cautious. After all, it passed overwhelmingly.'' As the gentleman from Florida pointed out in his history, this legislation has the history of receiving more verbal support and less actual support than almost anything. Everybody is for this, but it still dies. Everybody is for it, but something happens to it, so the fact that it was not a close vote in the Senate does not mean that if we amend it and send it back, it will come merrily whispering back here. This is legislation that a lot of people do not like. If we give them opportunities to trip it up it will be tripped up. We now stand closer to changing the lobbying law in a direction that will improve it than in anybody's memory, because we now have a bill out of the Senate and it is here, and we have the power to send it to the President of the United States for his signature. Any amendment here, no matter how meritorious, will put this bill back into the Senate and cause the kind of problems that have happened before, because, as I said, it is a bill that has a lot of people laying in ambush for it. So what I want to repeat is what the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Canady] I know agrees with: We do not believe this is the end to lobbying legislation; indeed, we believe it is the beginning. We could actually pass a bill that makes reforms. We, I think, agree, and others agree with us, not that we have identical views, but we agree that further reform is necessary. Mr. Chairman, I look forward to a two-step process. We will send this bill [[Page H 13101]] to the President and he will sign it, and it will become law. We will show people we can do something. Then we will deal with some of the other very worthwhile amendments that people have had. Finally, I just want to say that among those who should be given some credit is the chairman of our Democratic Caucus, the gentleman from California, [Mr. Fazio] who through his role on the Legislative Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations pushed hard for this, and it took a lot of people to get it here. It is clearly an improvement. We should note that, to my knowledge, every organization in the private sector, in the volunteer sector that monitors lobbying from the standpoint of wanting to reform procedures agrees that we should pass this bill. There are people from a range of organizations who came to us and said, ``Yes, it could be improved. This could be made better, but do not do that now, please, because we think it is best to send this bill to the President.'' So we can tell Members that there is an overwhelming consensus from the advocates of this bill in the House, from those of us on the committee, from the advocates in the voluntary community, from the people who felt we need reform. They overwhelmingly believe that a commitment to true reform is best demonstrated by passing this bill as is, and then, under the leadership of the gentleman from Florida, fairly soon after, starting the process of hearing and markups. We may well have a second bill. However, if we do not get this one forward, I think we risk being added to the list of glorious failures in the effort to reform. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin for yielding me time. I believe it is essential to send this bill back to conference to save at least [[Page H 13058]] several billion dollars. In the first place, we should be very clear. My friend from Pennsylvania said we cannot count on our allies coming to our aid. No one has even suggested that. What this says is that America should go to everybody else's aid. There is a fundamental confusion we have today. We are not now talking about our survival against enemies like the Nazis and the Soviet Union that threatened our very ability to maintain free societies. We are talking about places where it might be useful to intervene, where it would advance things. Members have said if we intervene we want our troops to be as well armed as possible. Of course, we do. That is not in dispute. The question is will we continue to maintain this position where we are on call for everybody in the world. I was struck by Tuesday's New York Times, an article about the great success of the Asian newer economies. And it says one reason they have been able to be so successful is America's role in the cold war of defending them gave them a stable structure. It talks about how low their government expenditures were. Sure, because ours were high. This continues to be the most expensive form of foreign aid in the history of this country, because it subsidizes the military budgets of all of these wealthy nations that then compete with us, that build up trade surpluses; and we say to them do not worry we will take charge. Our disparity in military spending, with all of our allies and competitors, is overwhelming. Mr. Speaker, it is not simply some erring without cost. This is the greatest of the reverse Houdinis. Houdini used to have other people tie him in knots and his trick was to get out of the knots. That was what Houdini did. Other people tied him up and he got out of the knots. The politicians' version is the reverse Houdini. They tie themselves up in knots and then say to people gee, we would love to help you, but we are all tied up in knots. We do not really want to cut your Medicare, but we cannot really afford it. We do not really want to make it more expensive for you to go to school and raise what your kid has to pay, but we have not got the money. We wish we could do more about cleaning up the Superfund sites, we wish we did not have to have retroactive liability, but we cannot afford it. This is why we cannot afford it, because of the massive subsidies of France, and Japan, and Germany, and England, and Thailand, and Malaysia, and all those other wealthy and increasingly wealthy nations. Mr. Speaker, this bill does not have to put anybody in jeopardy. In fact, Members have said what about Bosnia. A majority of Members are apparently prepared to vote not to send the troops to Bosnia. Why then are they insisting on providing the funds to do it? The more we fund this operation, the more money we give them to take care of Bosnia, the less our chance is going to be to block the troops going there. If, in fact, we do believe there is an over-extension, and I think that is right, and in fact we do believe that it is time the Europeans not came to our aid, I do not want them to come to defend the Mexican border, I do not think we need any troops from them to come here, we need them to do something on their own behalf. Let us stop subsidizing them at the expense of Medicare, education and the environment.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Acting Speaker, I have not myself been a great defender of the real Speaker. Indeed, I thought the American people were right when they found him to be the most unpopular elected official in America. But yesterday I was ready to jump to his defense. I do not think people should be disrespectful of the Speaker. When I heard people suggest that Speaker Gingrich had said that he was going to be tougher in negotiations and do more to shut down the Government because the President had been rude to him, I was ready to leap to his defense. I said, how can you accuse Speaker Gingrich, as much as I disagree with him on policy, of being so petty, of being so personal as to say that because the President did not distract himself from the Middle East peace process to come and talk to him and take his mind off having to sit with some other Republicans, how could you claim that this man would then use that as a reason to help shut down the Government? Of course we have this problem because the Republicans have not passed the appropriations bills. It is their own lack of ability that has led the Health and Human Services Department and the Labor Department not to be there. To compound that with insensitivity is a very grave error.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Obey].

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, let me say the subcommittee chairman has been perfectly fair, and I think there is no problem.