Doc Hastings

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, in response to the chairwoman, we have about four or five speakers left.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Weldon), a member of the Appropriations Committee.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I am sorry that the gentleman wouldn't yield. I just wanted to ask one brief question. But I am pleased to yield 1\3/4\ minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston), a member of the Appropriations Committee.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Keller).

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Shadegg).

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to my former colleague on the Rules Committee, Mr. Gingrey from Georgia.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to my colleague on the Rules Committee, Mr. Sessions of Texas.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Walsh), a member of the Appropriations Committee.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker), a member of the Appropriations Committee.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 4\1/4\ minutes to the gentleman from Oregon.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the distinguished ranking member of the Rules Committee, Mr. Dreier from California. (Mr. DREIER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. I appreciate the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, the amendment that was offered by our colleague from Oregon, while, yes, it refers to as a mandatory program was simply a 1- year program so that this problem could be fixed.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. I appreciate the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the conversation we had earlier that this is not in your jurisdiction, but we were given waivers in this bill for legislation that is also not under your jurisdiction, and the rewrite, if I am not mistaken, of the formula that I mentioned on formula 8.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman and the chairwoman of the Rules Committee for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself as much time as may I consume. Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Rules Committee held a 3-hour hearing and took testimony from the appropriations chairman Mr. Obey and Members that brought forth amendments to the committee in hopes of having them debated and considered on the floor here today. Many good ideas were presented to the committee. These ideas ranged from considering a true, clean continuing resolution to restoring the lapse Federal Government safety net for 4,400 schools and 780 counties in rural America, from helping farmers with natural disaster relief, to increasing funding for local housing authorities, to taking unspent money from a rain forest education project in Iowa and, instead, spending those moneys to help millions, to help our veterans. But unfortunately, after listening to the thoughtful testimony from Members on their ideas for improving the bill, the Rules Committee rejected every single one of them and approved this closed rule by an 8-4 vote. So this House will spend just 1 hour, Mr. Speaker, considering this bill with no amendments even allowed to be debated and no substitute bill allowed to be offered by the minority. So why the rush and the closed process? We are not asking for much. Give us a few minutes to sort out confusing parts of this resolution that have not passed the House previously, but have magically appeared in this resolution, like a rewriting of the formula for the distribution of section 8 housing funds. This new formula will affect hundreds of communities all across the Nation. In my district in Washington State, multiple communities are slated to have their grants cut dramatically. In one city, city of Kennewick, the housing authority alone there will have their grant cut by $1 million. That is roughly one-third of their total budget. This rewritten formula was not approved by the House in previous spending bills for this year and clearly needs more input and discussion before becoming law. Unfortunately, we are denied the opportunity to discuss that. One major issue that is neglected on this bill is a continuing safety net for our schools and counties in rural areas that have large amounts of Federal land and, therefore, have a very limited tax base. Recognizing the importance of this safety net, Mr. Walden of Oregon came to the Rules Committee and offered a bipartisan amendment with Mr. DeFazio of Oregon that would have provided a 1-year extension of funding so that these schools could keep their libraries open, keep the teachers at least through the end of the school year, and help counties with necessary road repairs. Let me be clear. Last year, over 4,400 schools received $400 million, and with this bill, they will receive exactly zero. After convincing testimony by Mr. Walden, three Democrat members of the Rules Committee agreed to join me and Chairwoman Slaughter as cosponsors of H.R. 17 which would fix the problem for an additional 7 years. Less than an hour later, however, the Rules Committee voted against even considering a bipartisan amendment that would provide 1 hour of relief for this problem, saying that it is not the right vehicle. Mr. Speaker, please try to explain to school children when their libraries close because of insufficient funding that the Congress wanted to act but chose not to because they did not feel this was the right vehicle. Meanwhile, Mr. Speaker, hundreds of unauthorized programs continue to be funded in this underlying resolution. We do not have a complete list of the unauthorized programs because the underlying measure is not a general appropriations bill and did not go through regular order. Therefore, there is no report which is required to list all unauthorized programs that are funded. Mr. Speaker, I heard my colleagues on the other side of the aisle speak at length about the open process they would have when they were in charge. I want to believe them, I truly do. I have had discussions with my colleagues up in the Rules Committee every time we have met this year, but unfortunately, the actions simply do not match the promises that were made. At the beginning of the 110th Congress, I heard my colleagues on the majority side say that after we wrap up our first 100 hours agenda, we will have an open process. It has now been nearly 4 weeks. The 100 hours are long past, and yet the House is yet to consider a bill under an open rule. Most have been closed out without any amendments. I have to ask when, when will this House have the opportunity to debate and consider the bills? When will the minority be permitted to truly participate in this process? Because I can think of no better time than right now when we are considering the funding for our Nation's priorities and funding for almost the entire Federal Government. Let us have a real debate on the $463 billion in this omnibus. I urge my colleagues to vote against this rule. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner), the distinguished minority leader.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Puerto Rico (Mr. Fortuno).

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis).

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2\1/ 2\ minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Garrett).

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. I thank the gentleman for yielding. And I will say right up front I intend to support title I and the rules package, and I take literally what the gentleman, my friend from Florida, talked about what we can expect from the Rules Committee when we restructure, hopefully next week, as to the timing and so forth of the business that we take up. But I want to talk about one issue that is not addressed in the proposed changes for the 110th that is in the 109th package, and that is, the requirement to have recorded votes in the Rules Committee. What the provision in the bill and the proposed changes say is that the Rules members now will comply as the Ethics Committee does. I was the chairman of the Ethics Committee in the last Congress and the ranking member in this Congress, and we have recorded votes in those committees, but we have the option of making them public or not. Under the proposed rules packages, for the life of me, I cannot understand why that needs to be extended to the Rules Committee. It is obvious for the Committee on Official Standards, it is obvious there. But why it is in the Rules Committee is beyond what I can understand. Now, I do understand one of the reasons is that if there are errors, then you would certainly want to be able to correct those errors. My first term was the 104th Congress, and that is when we made some major changes in voting. Since that time, there have been 1,304 recorded votes in the Rules Committee; the number of errors in the rules report in those 12 years is zero. And I think one of the reasons why is because this is a committee of only 13. There are nine Democrats and there are four Republicans in this Congress. It was the reverse in the last Congress. As a matter of fact, I would suggest that you could probably, on most of those votes, predict what the outcome is going to be. So why, for the life of me, we would want to take the transparency of the Rules Committee away from public knowledge is absolutely beyond me. It just simply doesn't make any sense. So I enthusiastically support adopting the rules of the 109th Congress. It would be my wish that that would be the rules for the 110th Congress, but we are going to debate that later and we will see what happens. But, again, why we want to take transparency out of votes in the Rules Committee, and I understand there will be new members on your side, why they won't want to stand the transparency for their constituency is beyond me.

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington

Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I am disappointed to have to speak against this trade proposal today. I am from one of the most trade dependent states in the country and I have always supported the expansion of trade opportunities and fair trade agreements. I am well aware of how complex and interrelated the global economy is today and how important it is that we remain engaged with our trading partners to bring down trade barriers. I support Permanent Normal Trade Relations for Vietnam and many other provisions in this package. However, I have a duty to speak out against this bill, because it proposes to continue unfair trade concessions to select Andean nations in exchange for absolutely nothing. I am speaking of the extension of the Andean Trade Preferences Act, which has been rolled into this package. ATPA is not a trade agreement--it is a one-sided proposition that writes off the interests of American farmers under the false premise that South American drug lords are going to give up lucrative cocaine production if they simply had the opportunity to export legitimate products duty free into the United States. It is fundamentally unfair for American farmers and has had dramatic repercussions in my district in Central Washington state. One of the Peruvian products that have benefited most from the ATPA windfall is asparagus, which grows in the sandy coastal areas of Peru-- not the mountain highlands where coca is produced. Since the implementation of the Andean Trade Preferences Act in 1991, imports of fresh Peruvian asparagus have soared from 2,800 metric tons to well over 55,631 metric tons. Similarly, imports of frozen asparagus from Peru have increased more than twenty times. This flood of duty-free imports has been devastating for American asparagus growers in the major production areas of Washington, Michigan, and California. It has also decimated much of the domestic asparagus processing capacity. In fact, facing a flood of inexpensive Peruvian imports, many asparagus processors simply closed their U.S. operations and reopened down in Peru. Perhaps if you are not from an asparagus production area in this country, you may think this trade-off is worth it if it results in less narcotics production. The unfortunate reality is that this policy has failed. According to the White House Office of National Drug Policy, coca cultivation in Peru has increased to 94,000 acres--the highest level in eight years. The International Trade Commission noted that any impact to narcotics trade from ATPA is ``small'' and ``indirect.'' Yet the impact to the American asparagus producer is the exact opposite. Nevertheless, here we are, asking American farmers to sacrifice their livelihoods for another six to twelve months under this bill to pursue a wholly unrelated anti-narcotics strategy. Mr. Speaker, I regret that we are once again putting the interests of a handful of large industrial asparagus exporters in Peru ahead of our own fanners in Washington, Michigan, and California. It is an unfair policy that sends the wrong message at a time when we need to revive momentum for expanding global trade opportunities. I must therefore oppose this flawed legislation.