Dick Gephardt

Mr. GEPHARDT

Mr. GEPHARDT. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. GEPHARDT

Mr. GEPHARDT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas [Mr. DeLay].

Mr. GEPHARDT. Mr. Speaker, could the gentleman also give any indication about the schedule for Tuesday and Wednesday so that Members who might want to suggest amendments to bills could get ready to do that?

Mr. GEPHARDT. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. GEPHARDT. Mr. Speaker, I ask the gentleman from Texas, is this the last vote for the evening? How late will we go tomorrow, and what might be the schedule for Thursday.

Mr. GEPHARDT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman.

Mr. GEPHARDT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. I yield to the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Roemer].

Mr. GEPHARDT

Mr. GEPHARDT. Mr. Chairman, this is the most important amendment in this whole block of crime bills that we are considering. As you consider it, I want to take you back in time a few months to the period when we were working on the crime bill, after we had lost the ability to bring it up in the House and we had a bipartisan agreement with Republicans and Democrats, negotiating to bring about a bill that we could pass last fall. Those negotiations went on between my office and now Speaker Gingrich's office, and we arrived at a bipartisan agreement that ensured that we would get 100,000 new police, community police, on the streets of America. We made that decision. In my district, 80 of those police are now on the street. Seventeen thousand across the country are already out either being trained or already on the street preventing crime and cracking down on crime. One of the reasons Government gets a bad name today is that we make decisions often in a bipartisan way, as we did last fall. And then before we even have a chance to see if the action will work, we pull back, we change. We say, we did not want to do that. We want to do something else. It would be a tragedy, after we have made this decision, to now back up and say, no, it is a no-strings block grant, you can do anything you want. I was in my district over the weekend. I went out with the community police that had been hired. And all of them asked me, is this funding going to be taken away? Are new decisions going to be made? The chief of police of St. Louis asked me, Are we going back to the way you did it in the 1970's, with LEAA, when a no-strings block grant built alley lights in St. Louis and a new promenade in front of the Mississippi River, rather than flesh and blood police who could walk through communities? And there I stood on Sunday with Officer Vise, in front of the head of the neighborhood association. And she talked about what it meant to have on the streets on a daily and nightly basis this young man who was a newly trained policeman that all of the people of the neighborhood could relate to and talk to and give information to. And she said how wonderful it was to create the confidence of the people in that community to fight crime. And now, just 2 weeks after this young man is on the beat stopping crime in that community, are we going to take him away? How wrong that would be. We have got a block grant for prevention. We put it into the bipartisan bill. We can keep that in. But let us not back up on this decision on police. The American people believe crime is the No. 1 problem in the country, and they want to stop crime from happening in their communities. And police are known, community police especially, as the best way to prevent crime. Let us keep it moving. Let us keep going forward. Vote for this amendment. Vote again for the bipartisan bill we passed last year, and let us stop crime in America in the best way that we know to do it.

Mr. GEPHARDT

Mr. GEPHARDT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the contributions and work of Jerrel D. Smith of St. Louis, MO. Jerrel Smith, vice president, environmental, safety, and health for the Union Electric Co. of St. Louis, MO, retired on January 31, 1995. He will assume a new role as environmental policy consultant to the senior management of the Union Electric Co. In his 37 years of service to Union Electric Co., Mr. Smith has played an active role in assisting Federal, State, and local legislative and regulatory entities in establishing environmental protection. During his career, he has participated in the formation and implementation of many environmental laws. Of particular note was his work with us on the Clean Air Act, which will help us achieve reductions in air pollution in a way that achieves tough new standards in a cost-effective manner. This work will save ratepayers in eastern Missouri many millions of dollars. of Jerrel Smith. We thank him for his continuing contributions to the development of effective national policies--and wish him best of luck in his new endeavors.

Mr. GEPHARDT

Mr. GEPHARDT. I thank the gentleman. I have a couple of questions. First, I want to reiterate the 3 p.m. time on Thursday. I know a lot of Members on both sides have travel plans, and so you are really trying as we did today to get done by 3. Is that my understanding?

Mr. GEPHARDT. Could the gentleman give us some sense of what kind of rule? Would there be an open rule providing for consideration of the National Security Restoration Act?

Mr. GEPHARDT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New York, the chairman of the Committee on Rules.

Mr. GEPHARDT. I thank the gentleman. Obviously we want as open a rule I think as can be put together. We would be happy to consult with you. The gentleman from California is well equipped to do that and we will hope for a good result. Can I just make one other comment and perhaps pose a question. I want to say to the gentleman that we have encountered a continuation of serious problems with committees meeting at the same time that committees are on the floor. I want to commend the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde] for negotiating with the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Conyers] in trying to work out a hearing schedule in their committee that would accommodate both of them and many of their members being on the floor through the continuation of the consideration of these crime bills. But I would say to the gentleman that as you know, having this 100-day calendar requirement, which we do not necessarily share--we understand the majority's desire to meet this promise, but I do not think any of us should believe that meeting that promise should get in the way of what is a reasonable schedule for Members to be able to meet. It is not reasonable if we cannot work out accommodations so that Members can both make their assignments in committee and meet their responsibilities here on the floor. In that regard, and in a spirit of trying to work this out, it would be very helpful to the minority if the majority when they are able to do it could give us a complete calendar schedule of how you are trying to meet this 100-day requirement so that we can make sensible suggestions to the extent we can for how all of this can work. I am getting very spirited objections from my Members who are truly distraught because they are not able to meet their responsibilities to vote in the committee, and we all know we banned proxy voting, and that is the regime we are operating under, and also meet the responsibilities on the floor. And the gentleman knows the tension is high on these matters, and we will do everything in our power to work this out. But we need as much advance information as we can get.

Mr. GEPHARDT. Just one additional question. Could the gentleman tell us what time votes will begin on Tuesday, February 21, which is the first day back after the President's Day recess? The schedule says 5 p.m. I am wondering if that is something that we can rely on at this point.

Mr. GEPHARDT. I yield to the gentleman from Indiana.

Mr. GEPHARDT. Mr. Speaker, my request is for the purpose of inquiring about the schedule. I yield to the distinguished majority leader to inquire about the schedule for the rest of this week and next week.

Mr. GEPHARDT. I yield to the gentleman from Indiana.

Mr. GEPHARDT

Mr. GEPHARDT. I thank the gentleman.

Mr. GEPHARDT. Mr. Speaker, I take this time to inquire of the majority leader about consultations we have been having on trying to work out a procedure for the consideration of the rest of the crime bills. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the distinguished majority leader.

Mr. GEPHARDT. I thank the gentleman. I would just like to add some other items that we have been discussing. One was that we would like to be able to have an hour of general debate on the prisons bill by unanimous consent, if we can get it, on Wednesday. We would also hope to have the House convene at 9 a.m. on Friday and would be willing to agree to limit 1-minutes, if that would be helpful to get us started on that day at an earlier point. Obviously, we have got to get some unanimous-consents to get rules up. We would like to finish the criminal alien deportation bill on Friday so that Monday could be dedicated to the law enforcement block grants, along with Tuesday. Obviously, we have to get a unanimous- consent. And we have to agree to the rule. We would like to have open rules, but we are willing to agree to some time limits which we can talk among ourselves with the Committee on Rules about so that we can assure everyone that we can finish these bills when the gentleman would like to finish them on the schedule. But having an open rule and requiring us to discipline the amendment process would be a good way for us to proceed.

Mr. GEPHARDT

Mr. GEPHARDT. Mr. Chairman, I ask to proceed out of order for the purpose of inquiring about the schedule for next week and the rest of the day.

Mr. GEPHARDT

Mr. GEPHARDT. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. GEPHARDT. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, and I will not object, I wanted to say I misspoke in my explanation of the arrangement in saying all the amendments would have 30 minutes. It is my understanding that we are intending to have 1 hour for the Orton amendment alone.

Mr. GEPHARDT. I thank the gentleman. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. GEPHARDT. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, and I will not object, but I want to inquire of the majority leader, it is my understanding that what we are trying to arrange here is a system for voting, in consideration of the rest of the line-item veto bill on Monday, so we can start at 2 p.m., have amendments with a 30-minute time limit for the amendments that are left, have an hour time limit on the substitutes that are left, that we would not begin the consideration of the Stenholm substitute until 5 o'clock, and that the order of voting when the voting would begin would be on the amendments first and then ending finally with the Stenholm substitute, and then on to final passage of the bill. Is that generally a correct statement?