Gil Gutknecht

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. How long do we have to wait? Lord, Lord, how long will it be? When will they tell us how much is enough? We have already gone over the spending caps.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. If you could just give us the numbers. How far apart are we in the numbers?

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman mentioned those States, Montana, Delaware, Alaska, North Dakota, Wyoming and Vermont. But he did not say combined, all of those States combined. Now, I do not think there is anybody in INS who thinks this is a very good idea. I do not think there are many Americans who think that is a very good idea. The other issue is ergonomics. Certainly we have got to make some allowances for people who have repetitive motion injuries. No question about that. But the policy that was being attempted to be foisted down our throats could have had devastating impacts on small businesses. And so, we are not eager to do that. We are willing to negotiate. We are willing to meet the President more than halfway. The question is, is he? And so far we have not seen a whole lot of flexibility from the White House. Clearly what they are trying to do is hold us hostage. I am proud of the fact that our leadership said, no, we are not going to do that. We are not going to play that game anymore. We are not going to bust the spending caps the way we have in the past. So I am glad that we are still here. I would rather be home. My wife would love to have me home. She was so lonely, she hates to fly, but last week she was willing to get on a plane and fly out here she said because she was starting to miss me, believe it or not. But I think the people's business is important, and I think we should not allow the poison of partisan politics right before an election to get us to accept a bad deal for the American people. So I am proud that we are here. I am proud of what we have accomplished in the last 6 years. And hopefully we will have a chance to continue that kind of progress, whether it is balancing the budget, continuing to make certain that our welfare system encourages work and personal responsibility, a whole long list of things that we have missed over the last 6 years. We cannot turn our backs on that now.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. They may have been agreed to by the negotiators, but ultimately you have to get 218 votes around this place. Some of us are a little upset about how much we have spent already, as the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) indicated already.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, I just want to first of all say I am really proud of what this Congress has done, and I am proud of what we are doing right now. And I do not know if most people understand what the reason is that we are still here in Washington on just a few nights before the general election, but I honestly believe that there were people down at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue that thought, well, if we just hold them hostage in Washington, eventually we will get the Members to say, we got to go home and campaign, we got a campaign going on, we got to get out of here, we got to get out of here; and the longer they held us hostage, the more that they could extract in terms of more spending, in terms of policy changes. I am proud of the fact that we said no, no, we are not going to do that. We are more than willing to meet the President more than halfway. We are more than willing to relax the spending caps, which some of us do not think was a very good idea. But we do not think it is a very good idea to give blanket amnesty to over four million illegal aliens. We think that is a very bad idea. And I think most of our constituents believe that is a very bad idea.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. I respect the work the gentleman from Texas has done on the budget. Generally speaking, we agree on a lot more things than we disagree on. But on this whole issue of the budget, the four of us, I would suspect, in a matter of a few hours could probably work out the final details of this budget, language on what we are going to do to reunite families and still preserve the basic notion of our immigration policy. Even on ergonomics, I think we could probably work out language that would be satisfactory to the four of us. But that is not the real question. The real question is, would the President sign it? I think that is where we have the real problem. Because the President has basically played this game of chicken, believing that we would ultimately cave on very important policy questions. He was wrong. He miscalculated this year. Some of us said, no, there is a line beyond which we simply will not retreat. I think we have spent too much money this year. I think you agree with me on that. I think we should have kept those spending caps. I think we can legitimately meet the needs of the Federal Government and all the people who depend upon it for $1.86 trillion. That is what our spending agreement was with the Senate. We have gone over those spending caps already. We can point fingers and say it was the Republicans in the Senate or it was the Republicans in the House or it was the administration or it was this guy or that guy. But we could reach that agreement between the four of us, and I suspect within a few hours we could have that agreement worked out. But I will also suspect the President would not sign that bill.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Let me just complete my thought here. Our colleague from Texas was quite upset that we had raised the spending caps, and so am I. But as far as I can remember, the President has signed the Defense bill. He did not quarrel with that. So we really are left with this question. Perhaps the gentleman from Wisconsin can tell us how much would be enough? How much more spending do we have to agree to?

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, whether it is illegal aliens or ergonomics, they are policy questions which I am not certain would pass.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. I just want to come back to this point. Does anybody in this House believe that if we had an up-and-down vote on blanket amnesty for over 4 million illegal aliens, does anybody here believe it would pass? So why are we talking about it in the conference? Where did this come from? I do not think it was our negotiators who said, What we ought to really do is give blanket immunity, blanket amnesty to 4 million illegal aliens. I understand that is one of the sticking points. Maybe I am misinformed. Maybe I do not know what is going on in those conference committees. But our negotiators come back and say, We don't want to do this but the White House is saying we've got to do that.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, I just want to come back. Apparently we are very close to an agreement on how much is enough: $645 billion, is that right? The gentleman from Wisconsin, is that the final number, $645 billion?

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, the question that everybody is trying to wrestle with is why are we still here? Let me, first of all, say everyone is entitled to their own opinion. They are not entitled to their own facts. Let me just offer my opinion as to why we are still here. It really does come down to some fairly simple questions, and the first one is how much is enough? Now, the Committee on the Budget worked out with the Senate earlier this year a budget agreement that said we could legitimately meet the needs of the Federal Government for about $1.9 trillion. The President of the United States wants more, and no matter how much more we give him he keeps moving the bar. Even today we do not know how much the President really wants to spend, but it is not just about spending. The President thought that in our eagerness to get home and campaign that we would roll, we would roll over and he would get what he wanted on ergonomics, on blanket amnesty for illegal aliens. Know what? He was wrong. I am so proud of the House of Representatives and our leadership because we said no. We are not going to give in to even more spending. We are not going to give in to blanket amnesty for illegal aliens, and we are not going to give in to a bad ergonomics policy that hurts small business.

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Madam Speaker, last week my wife went out to lunch with some of her friends and she told them that Gil was still in Washington and that they were still negotiating the final details of the budget, and they were surprised to learn that. In fact, we now know that most Americans are somewhat surprised that Congress is still in session. The rumor started back in September that perhaps the President would hold the Congress hostage here in Washington, perhaps to gain some political advantage, perhaps to force some kind of a showdown and perhaps even a government shutdown. But, to the credit of the leadership here in the Congress, we have been pleasantly persistent, we have been negotiating in good faith, and, as a result, we have many of the details worked out. Frankly, I think the ones that are remaining are more about partisan politics than anything else, and simply trying to embarrass the Congress. As you can see by this chart, these numbers are kind of small, but, frankly, in terms of what we have appropriated versus what the President requested, the differences really at this point do not seem to be very large. We have appropriated more for national defense than the President originally requested and a little bit less in a few other categories, and, as a budgeteer, I have to say I am a little surprised we are actually spending more than we originally said in our original budget document. One of the things I thought was important was we ought to make it clear that the Federal budget should grow at a rate slower than the average family budget. For the most part, that has been what has happened. But this year, of course, Washington has a big budget surplus, and, guess what happens when Washington has a big budget surplus? People want to spend it. This is not a partisan issue either. There are Republicans who want to spend the surplus, there are Democrats who want to spend the surplus, and certainly the people down at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue want to spend that surplus. So what has happened is the Congressional leaders have said that at least 90 percent of that surplus ought to go to pay down debt, because all of us believe there is something fundamentally immoral for this generation to leave a debt to the next generation. As a result, we will have paid off $350 billion in publicly held debt, in fact, we have right now, and by the end of next year that number could well exceed $500 billion worth of debt held by the general public that this Congress will have paid off. That is good news. But the President seems to be a moving target, because as soon as we agree to one thing, the President says, oh, no, what I really want is more money here. We really need to spend more money on this. Now the issue of school construction comes up. As you can see, in terms of education we are spending about exactly as much money as the President requested. The problem is not how much are we going to spend on children, the question is who gets to do the spending? Many of us feel very, very strongly that if you are going to authorize more money to be available for school construction, that those decisions ought to be made by the people who know the children's names. We do not think it ought to be done by the Department of Education, because the record of the Department of Education is not good. For the third consecutive year, the Federal Department of Education has failed its audit. In fact, last year we are told by our own accounting office, the General Accounting Office, there is about $100 million that the Department of Education cannot account for. Now, we do not think it is a good idea to turn even more authority over spending school bond money to the Federal Department of Education. We feel pretty strongly about that. We also feel pretty strongly that it would be a huge mistake to grant blanket amnesty to millions of illegal aliens. Now, we are willing to allow families to be reunited, we are willing to make accommodations. We are willing on spending and policy issues to meet the President more than halfway. But sometimes he will not even accept ``yes'' for an answer. Clearly, some people in this town are putting partisan politics above the needs of the American people. The real question comes down to this, and we have never gotten a clear answer from the administration or from our friends on the left here in Congress: How much is enough? We are willing to spend, and we believe that $1.9 trillion is more than enough to meet the legitimate needs of the American people, the Federal Government and those who depend upon it. We believe that $1.9 trillion is fiscally responsible. We are still spending more than I would like to see spent. But the President continues to say, well, that is not quite enough. But he will not give us a number. We are more than willing to meet the President more than halfway, but we are not willing to compromise America's future. We want to take at lease 90 percent of that surplus to pay down the publicly held debt. Most importantly, that is what the American people want us to do. We are more than willing to compromise and meet with the President and work out some agreement that is in the best interests of the American people. The real question is, is he?

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, I want to come back to close on my story about the State legislature and about how virtually every governor works with their State legislature. At the end of the session, the legislative leaders and the Governor sit down and they decide how much the pie is going to be, how much the State is going to spend. And once that decision is made and there is an agreement made, it takes a matter of about 48 hours for the various committees to work out how much goes to transportation, how much to education. That is what we need to do here at the Federal level; and hopefully, we can have better bipartisanship next year.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, my colleague from Texas says that we are agreed, but I do not know if the President is agreed, because he has never told us exactly how much he wants to spend in some of these areas that are still being negotiated. Let me just come back to my point about the State legislature.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, I want to come back to this question. I will be happy to yield time to any of my colleagues who are here on the floor, but I really do think this is the question: how much is enough? I say that because I was a member of the State legislature in Minnesota; and I must say, since I came to Washington 6 years ago, and we have always had a situation where the President was of the Democratic Party and the Congress, since I came, has been in control by the Republicans, and that has caused more friction perhaps than it really should. But I was in the State legislature when we had a Republican Governor and a democratically controlled legislature, and we were somehow able to get things done. I mean I do not understand why it is that we have to have this grid lock. I do think this is part of the question, and I also agree that there are other questions that need to be resolved. But it seems to me, and I agree with my colleague from Texas, reasonable people ought to be able to work this out. We said originally in our budget resolution, we thought we could legitimately meet the needs of the Federal Government and all the people who depend upon it for about $1.86 trillion. My colleague has pointed out that we have already exceeded those spending caps. That bothers me. But we are all now saying, at least most of us are saying, that what we at least ought to do as we see more and more surpluses piling up, this year, at least, that 90 percent of that surplus ought to go to pay down debt. I think just about everybody agrees with that. When we look at basic things, there is not that much to argue about. It comes down to some simple things, as we saw on the chart. The numbers we have in terms of education are almost identical to what the President asked for. This is not a debate about how much we are going to spend on children. It is a debate about who gets to do the spending. We simply believe more of those decisions ought to be made by people who know the children's names. I do not think that is an unreasonable thing. Then we are having this debate about whether or not we ought to grant blanket immunity to illegal aliens. I do not think many people in this room right now think that is a very good idea. In fact, I think if we polled the people back in southeastern Minnesota, they would say that is a crazy idea. But now the President is threatening to veto the Commerce, State, Justice appropriation over that issue.

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, I think a lot of the American people are surprised that the Congress is still in session. I think a lot of people back in my district cannot believe that we have not resolved our differences. This chart is a little hard to read, but it follows on with what the gentleman from Arizona was talking about. What it shows in red is what the President requested in each of his budget requests per category. On Education, Labor, HHS, the chart is about the same. Agriculture, right on down the line. In fact, in one of the areas in the Defense budget we are actually giving more than he requested. By the time we are done with this bill that we debated so hotly tonight, at least the motion to instruct, we are going to give the President significantly more than he originally requested, which leads to the real question that not only we in Congress but the American people, and frankly, members of the working press, ought to be asking the President of the United States: How much is enough? Now, we have been willing to meet with the President to negotiate in good faith. We have met him more than halfway. But we should not be in session today. How much is enough, Mr. President?

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, I was not going to speak on this. But listening to some of this heated rhetoric, I really feel compelled to respond. I cannot really understand why these people are so opposed to this bill. In fact, we heard our colleague from New Jersey just a few moments ago say that this would not work. I have to ask, what are we afraid of? What is wrong with allowing 100 percent deductibility for health insurance for the self-employed? I mean, as far as I am concerned, this Congress should have done that a long time ago. Look at the other provisions in this bill. Now, I must tell my colleagues that I am not a big fan of some of these omnibus bills and putting a lot of things that may not be related into the same bills. But the truth of the matter is, as I look through the provisions of this bill, virtually every one of them is going to benefit somebody. Now, we do not have many HMOs in my district. I would like to have HMOs. I would like to give people more choices. Now, we can argue whether too much went to this particular group and too much went to the other. There is no such thing as a perfect balance. But I think, on balance, this is a very good bill. This does a lot of things for an awful lot of people. I think the hospitals, the nursing homes, the people back in my district are going to be very happy with this bill. Now, how we got into this mess we can all debate about. But this is the right thing to do. And I have to ask my colleagues, what are they afraid of? What is it in this bill that somehow is going to make matters worse for people who need health care, for people who need to go to nursing homes, for people who want to deduct their health insurance premiums, for those people who want to make larger contributions to their IRAs. I mean, with the long list of good things that is in this bill, I am somewhat surprised at the incredibly heated rhetoric that we are hearing on this rule. So I stand in strong support of this rule and in support of the underlying bill.

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I have been listening to some of this debate today about importation and reimportation. I would like to talk for a minute about how I got involved in this debate. It was because our own Food and Drug Administration has been and even to this day is sending out threatening letters to senior citizens who try to save a few bucks on prescription drugs. That is how I got into this debate. Now, some people are saying, well, it does not go far enough; and some people are saying it goes too far. I am reminded of what Winston Churchill said the day after the invasion at Normandy. He said, ``This is not the end. This is not even the beginning of the end. This is simply the end of the beginning.'' This debate on opening up the market and creating more competition for prescription drugs is not over. This is the beginning. But, at least, for the first time in 8 years, the Congress is sending a clear message that the threatening letters to seniors for trying to save a few bucks on prescription drugs is going to end. And if it does not end, by the grace of the voters in my district, I will be back and I will be working with people from all sides of the aisle. I do not like some of the restrictions that were put on in the conference committee. But I know this, we have made more progress in the last 3 weeks on this issue than this administration has made in 8 years. And I think it is good progress, and I think we are going to see prescription drug prices coming down. Let me just show my colleagues this chart again. Look at what people pay in the United States compared to the rest of the world. Why are we sending threatening letters to seniors? This bill may not be perfect, but it is a giant step in the right direction. I congratulate the gentlewoman from Missouri and those of my colleagues who had the courage to stand by and fight for this issue because I think, in the years to come, we are going to see prescription drug prices in the United States come down dramatically. I would hope we will do this on a bipartisan basis. I do not think saving money for seniors is a partisan issue.

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

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Minnesota for offering this resolution tonight. This hardly seems possible. It seems just a few months ago that Bruce was strong and healthy and vigorous. I would see him in the House gym in the morning. He loved to go for a swim, and so did I. And he would be in the pool when I got there at 7 o'clock and he would still be in the pool when I left. He was probably in better condition than virtually any other Member here in the Congress. And to think that this terrible disease drained the life out of him in such a short period of time just really does not seem possible. In many respects, Bruce Vento typified, I think, the best of public service. And I think those of us from Minnesota do have a special pride for the kind of public service that Bruce Vento believed in. In many respects, the way he died also symbolized the way he lived. He was prepared to fight for what he believed in, even against insurmountable odds, as he fought these last several months against a disease which would not surrender. But he was passionate about those things. And I have come to respect and admire him so much for the way that he would fight even on those issues on which we disagreed, and as a member of the Minnesota delegation, the institutional wisdom that he brought on all of the issues that affected our entire State and when we worked together on issues that were important to Minnesota, we all worked together and we all listened when he spoke and we all appreciated his wisdom. The contributions that he made on the environment and so many other issues will be remembered for many, many years to come. There is an expression up above the Speaker's rostrum, a quote from Noah Webster and it closes with these words: ``So that we in our day and generation may not perform something worthy to be remembered.'' Well, Bruce Vento will be remembered, because he performed many things in this body worthy to be remembered. Bruce Vento will be remembered and ultimately he will be succeeded. But he will never be replaced. We can only hope and pray, and I will say that as he approaches the next part of life's journey, that he will be greeted with these words, ``Well done, o good and noble servant.''

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. I would just thank the gentleman again for this special order. If I could just say that the two of us came in 1994 and hopefully, with the blessing of our voters in our district, we are going to be back next year to continue to fight in that Teddy Roosevelt tradition, to create more competition, whether it is in the pharmaceutical industry, whether it is with packers and stockyards, because at the end of the day one of the rules of the Federal Government is to ensure that there will be adequate competition, that there will be a level playing field, and that everybody has a chance to succeed in this marketplace. So we are going to be back next year, regardless of what happens on either of these issues. We are going to continue to press the envelope, and the spirit of Teddy Roosevelt is still alive and well here in Washington.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, my experience, I think the gentleman from Iowa is referring to, is that I am a licensed and bonded auctioneer. Yes, I can spit it out pretty fast. I would like to illustrate, 10 years ago, about 80 percent of the livestock in the United States was sold either in what we call a spot market or in some kind of an auction format. That has now changed that 80 percent of livestock today is sold under some kind of a contract. Now, I am not totally opposed to contracts, but we have a number of problems with contracts. One is transparency. Many times one producer, independent producers living right across the road from each other, both could have contracts with the same packer, and neither may know what the other's contract really is.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Iowa for yielding to me. I thank him for this special order, and I thank him for this bill. I want to say a special thank you to our colleagues in the Senate, particularly Senator Grassley for his hearing in September, on September 25, where he highlighted this report. I want to point out to people who may be watching who the General Accounting Office is. The General Accounting Office is basically our auditors; and many times, they file reports. We send them out to investigate different agencies to find out if they are really doing their jobs. Altogether too often they do a beautiful job of coming back with a report and recommendations, and the reports wind up sitting on some desk somewhere and gathering dust. So I want to say a special thank you to our colleagues over on the other body for at least saying this time we are going to do something about it, this time we really mean it. I want to talk a little bit about the Packers and Stockyards Act. It goes back about 70 years, and it was designed to protect individual producers. It was not designed to protect the packers and the stockyards. As the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Ganske) mentioned, and I do not want to become repetitive, but what we have seen in the last 10 years especially is a tremendous change in what has happened in the livestock industry. Frankly, from my perspective, and listening to the gentleman from Iowa speak earlier, we came here together in 1994, and I have always thought in many respects we both come from what I thought was the Teddy Roosevelt wing of the Republican parties, whether it is fighting for open markets and more competition for prescription drugs, which I think we are winning, and I am not so certain. We seem to be waging a war, not only against the pharmaceutical industry, but the FDA itself, and sometimes our own leadership makes our job even more difficult. But the important point is we understand that markets are more powerful than armies and that competition is good. I was reading about Teddy Roosevelt this weekend; and the more one reads about him, the more interesting he is. But he really and deeply and fiercely believed that competition was a good thing, that it brought out the best, whether it was on the sporting fields or whether it was in business. He fought literally all of his life to make certain that there was adequate competition in every field. What we have seen in the last several years are really disturbing trends. Let me just share with the people who may be watching this what has happened relative to some of the large mergers. We have talked about this relative to pharmaceutical industry. It was not that long ago we had, well, let us see, there was Glaxo and there was Wellcome and Bristol-Myers. There was Squibb. There were four separate companies. If they have their way, by the end of this year, there will be one company. Now, all of those companies were big companies, and they had tremendous market power, but imagine what it is like now that there is one. We have talked about the oil industry, the same thing. People sometimes scratch their heads, and they wonder why is it we seem to be at the mercy of the large oil companies. Well, at one time we had Exxon and Mobile, and one was a $55 billion company, and the other was a $43 billion company, and now they are one company. It was Teddy Roosevelt who was behind breaking up Standard Oil. Now we see all those big oil companies coming back together. Let us talk about concentration.

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, that is correct. But the interesting thing is, under the Packers and Stockyards Act, as I understand it, actually the USDA has access to that information. Now, I am not saying they ought to share the information from one neighbor to the other, but there ought to be a way that they can share more information about what actually is going on in the marketplace. Because as I have said, many times our independent producers, our farmers, it is like they go into the casino every day, and they make bets. They are betting against the big grain companies, they are betting with the big fertilizer companies, they are betting with the packers and the people who buy their products. The problem is the people that they are dealing with have enormous amounts of information. They know what is going on in China. They know what deals they may have going on in other parts of the world. They have much better information. So, in effect, they are going in and they are betting against the house, and the house always wins. We are not saying that the packers or the stockyards are necessarily evil. But there is something wrong with the system where they have a lot more information, they know what the prices are actually being paid, and the producers do not. What we are saying is it is time for the USDA to, at least, do what the General Accounting Office is telling us and what they have told us in the past needs to be done to more aggressively enforce the act. Let me go back to this issue of concentration, because I want to share these numbers with the gentleman from Iowa and some of the people who may be watching. Since 1993, which coincidentally was when Mr. Gore and Mr. Clinton came into office, since 1993, there have been in the United States 46,571 mergers in the United States that were approved by the Department of Justice. Those deals totaled more than $5 trillion. Now, that is just a big number to most of us, but let us compare that to the previous 8 years. During the previous 8 years, there were only 19,518 mergers, and they totaled a little more than $1 trillion in value. What we have seen in the last several years is just an enormous amount of concentration, and we are seeing it particularly in agriculture, whether it is on the seed and fertilizer side of the farmer's ledger or whether it is on the side of the ledger where he is selling what he is producing, whether it is grain, or whether it is livestock. As an auctioneer, I know this. If you have an auction and you only have two bidders, you are not going to get as good a price as if you have five or six bidders. Now, we cannot always force the situation relative to how many people are going to be in the meat packing business. Again, I am not saying they are particularly evil, but I think there is a system beginning to develop that looks incredibly sinister to those independent producers, and it looks an awful lot like that there is potential for manipulation of some of these prices. So all we are really saying is we do not need to rewrite the Packers and Stockyards Act. That is what this report says. What we have to do is a better job of enforcing those laws. This is true throughout so much of what we do. A lot of our more liberal friends says we need more laws, whether it is campaign finance laws or other laws. Some of us say, yes, maybe we do need some changes in the law, but first and foremost, let us enforce the laws that are on the books today. That is what this audit says. That is what this bill says. In effect, this says to the USDA, this time we really mean it.

Mr. GUTKNECHT

Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, I offer a resolution (H. Res. 608) and ask unanimous consent for its immediate consideration.