Steny Hoyer

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich).

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews). (Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Let us cut to the chase here as to what this amendment is about and why these regulations came about. My friend and colleague, the gentleman from California (Mr. Ose) mentioned the criteria here. ``Responsible bidder: Necessary technical and financial capability, performance record, and business integrity and ethics.'' There seems to be a fear that somebody will make a subjective judgment. Well, the fact is that is a very broad criteria that is difficult to define. So what has been proposed? The administration is proposing that we have some definition of what ethics and integrity is. They simply say that that test of responsibility is the contractor's record of complying with the law. Certainly, we want our contractors to do that, including environmental laws, consumer laws, labor and employment laws, and other Federal laws, so that it will not be simply a subjective judgment as to what ethics and integrity are, but it will have some specific criteria to direct officials in overseeing whether or not somebody is a responsible contractor. Is that not a reasonable step to take to give direction to Federal decision makers, as opposed, ironically, because the sponsors of the amendment think the opposite is true, of giving this very broad latitude currently existing to make a determination of whether somebody is ethical or has integrity? That certainly is a very broad base. Somebody may have complied with all of the laws but be deemed by somebody as not ethical in its behavior. My suggestion, my colleagues, is to reject this amendment because, in fact, I think it does the opposite of what its proponents want to do. Its proponents want to give some definition and preclude arbitrary and capricious action. In my opinion, the regulations do exactly that. We ought to sustain them and reject the amendment.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Reserving the right to object, Mr. Speaker, I want to simply say that we have tried to check with everybody on our side to make sure that those who had amendments were agreeable to this. We think that that is the case and, as a result, we will not object and hope this facilitates the handling of this bill tonight. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, we take this debate and convert it into a debate over an issue that deeply divides this Nation and is an excruciatingly difficult issue. That is unfortunate, because in my opinion, this ought not to be a difficult issue. Because it is about whether or not Federal employees are equal to all other employees in terms of spending their money. It is not the taxpayers' money; they earned it, and the taxpayer converted it to the Federal employee in return for the services they perform for the Federal Government. It is the Federal employees' money. Now, yes, part of that compensation is, we pay 72 percent of the benefits, but they choose the policy, and they have a wide variety of policies, because we have an excellent program as part of their compensation package. So, Mr. Chairman, I ask my colleagues to try to look at what the substance of this does. I tell my friend, and good friend from New Jersey, the issue that he argues passionately about I respect him for. It is not, however, the issue raised by this amendment, I would suggest to him.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro) for yielding me this time. Mr. Chairman, this has been called an amendment on choice or life. I have argued this amendment repeatedly and have lost. This amendment is, I think, about whose money is it. Now, I have propounded this argument before, and it has been rejected by the majority of this House. The gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Pitts) said, and numerous other speakers have said about our money, that it is the taxpayers' money, the Federal Government's money. Now, a Federal employee is in a unique position in that 100 percent of their compensation package, salary, health benefits and retirement, are paid by the taxpayer. If one adopts the premise of the opponents of this amendment, then the Federal employee ought to be in the position of being told how to spend 100 percent of their money. That is the logical conclusion one must draw from the arguments being made today. The Federal employee goes to work and is told we are going to pay X number of dollars, we are going to get health benefits and there is going to be a retirement system. That is their compensation package. We take the position, apparently, that with respect to part of it, we are going to tell them how to spend it. We do not tell any other employees in the Nation how they can spend their package. We do not do it. So all of this is turned into a device to the same argument that deeply divides our Nation.

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I thank my friend for yielding. My colleague, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Wynn), has worked tirelessly on this project and very effectively on this project. As the chairman of the subcommittee has indicated, there is no controversy with respect to doing this project, we just have to find the money to do it. I appreciate the gentleman's raising this issue, and I assure him that I will be working closely with the chairman to see that before this process is over that, hopefully, we get the requisite funds so that this project can be fully funded.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. HOYER. I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, the reason I do so is, I understand that the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Wynn) is on his way. He is going to offer an amendment and withdraw it. But he wants to make the point similar to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Quinn) with reference to the FDA consolidation at White Oak, which is in his district. The President included over $100 million for the FDA consolidation in his request. That is a consolidation which was supported by the Reagan administration, by the Bush administration, and now the Clinton administration to save very substantial dollars in terms of leases that exist all over the Washington metropolitan region with respect to the FDA. Some of those leaseholds are very aged and very inefficient. The fact that FDA is spread over such a wide area leads to a lack of efficiency in the operations of its responsibilities. I know the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Wynn), when he gets here, will make it very clear that this is something that we think is supported in a bipartisan fashion. This is an item that was not included in the budget, as was the Buffalo courthouse project that the gentleman from New York (Mr. Quinn) just referred to because of the fact that we had insufficient funds. However, I know that the administration will be looking very carefully at this bill as it moves through the process and is very supportive of adding the FDA money back in as it is in adding the courthouse money back in as well as I know the chairman is. So I am hopeful that we will have the requisite dollars to get there. The facility in question, which, again, is in the district of the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Wynn) is a facility which is vitally needed. It is a facility that has been in this administration's plans and certainly the Bush administration's in terms of planning. To delay this, as I said in my opening comments, will cost millions of dollars because it will prolong the payment to leaseholds and leasehold expenses as we fail to consolidate and provide space at the White Oak site. The particular project in question is a little over $100 million for lab space for FDA and additional office space as well. It will be a more efficient and effective use of space than currently exists. So that I would hope that we could see that amount added to the bill at the appropriate time.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word simply to say to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer), who focuses on the quality of life in our communities more than any other Member of this House and who raises a very important issue. We have also discussed this in our committee. Obviously, there is discussion between ourselves and the authorizing committees. But I want to assure the gentleman that I intend to give this very great attention. I look forward to working with the chairman on this issue to see if we can come up with language which will encourage, maybe will not go further than that, a better performance with respect to the post office cooperation with local communities to ensure the objectives the gentleman spoke of.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I share the chairman's concern, as I expressed in the last amendment, about the offset. However, this is much less of an offset of a relatively modest number. I was trying to glean carefully what the chairman was saying. I am not going to oppose this amendment. I think the gentleman's amendment is a worthwhile objective. Again, I am hopeful that we will get the requisite number of dollars so we can, in addition to the dollars the gentleman is seeking, which are relatively modest for this objective, we can add back into the Inspector General so we do not underfund that, because the chairman is absolutely correct, we cannot further decrease this account.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, in order to accomplish that objective, we have to have personnel to accomplish that. The IRS budget is 70 percent personnel. So that while a $25 million cut in a $8.3 billion budget seems like a small amount, relatively speaking, it is a significant amount when we understand that we have already cut $466 million from the request. A request that Mr. Rossotti who, by the way, is a Republican, so this is not a partisan issue, is a manager hired to manage, says this will undercut his ability to carry out the Reform and Restructuring Act. So I suggest to my friend from Louisiana that the solution here is, because we all agree that HIDTAs need more money, is not to take dollars out of the IRS and underfund it further and make it unable to perform the functions we expect of it, but to add additional sums so that we can reach the levels that the gentleman suggested, and indeed exceed those, so that we can take care of the needs of Louisiana, and take care of the needs of Washington State. Therefore, I would hope that we would not support the gentleman's amendment and reject it, but not reject the idea.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I have worked on HIDTA since we created the HIDTAs back in the 1980s. I am a very enthusiastic supporter of HIDTAs. For those of my colleagues who may not be specifically knowledgeable of HIDTA, HIDTA is a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. We adopted the premise of HIDTAs in the drug reform bill in which we adopted the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the director, who is affectionately referred to as the Drug Czar. We did so in an effort to ensure that we had coordination not only among Federal agencies in fighting the drug problem and securing our communities from the scourge of drugs, but we did so for the purposes of ensuring that we had coordination of our assets that are deployed by the Federal, State and local governments. In fact, in my opinion, the biggest benefit in HIDTA is not the money, although the money is important, and it funds the intelligence effort that all levels can access so in that respect, it is critically important. But its greatest contribution, in my opinion, is the coordination between Federal, State and local law enforcement that it has brought. Mr. Chairman, it needs more money. Very frankly, I could support a sum greater than the gentleman from Louisiana offers in his amendment for adding to HIDTA. The fact of the matter is, however, we deal in a world of alternatives. Once one votes for a budget that, in my opinion, underfunds our ability to respond to the needs of our country, one is constricted in terms of what one can spend. Now, the fact of the matter is, in this bill, the chairman has funded the law enforcement component of this bill almost exactly at the President's request. He has done so with the recognition that we need to support law enforcement efforts to make sure our communities are safe. Now, I have not looked at the HIDTA problems in Louisiana, and I have been to Washington State with the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks) and with Mr. Brian Baird. I have talked with his law enforcement officials, have talked to them about the success of their existing HIDTA and the need to expand HIDTAs along the Route 5 corridor, U.S. Route 5 from Canada down to San Diego, which is obviously a major population area, and a major area of meth labs and other illegal drug activity. So the gentleman from Washington State (Mr. Dicks) is absolutely correct, Mr. Baird is correct, and the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Vitter) is correct. We need more resources. Now, having said that, it is not enough to say we need more resources. We need to say, where do we get those resources? I think we have sufficient resources, but if we combine the tax cuts and therefore adopt a budget substantially under the President's request, we have to squeeze somewhere. So where did the chairman squeeze? He squeezed, because he was required to, very hard on IRS. Now, it is very easy to say, well, we will cut IRS. Who here thinks IRS is a popular agency? Well, nobody raised their hand, got up and screamed and who will, so I presume the answer is really nobody. The fact of the matter is, though, we will not fund one HIDTA without the IRS. We will not fund one member of the Armed Forces without IRS. We will not fund an FBI agent without the IRS. That is to say, it is the agency that we have charged with the responsibility of collecting sums from all of us to fund services that we authorize and appropriate for. The gentleman is correct, as the chairman has pointed out. The IRS has a large sum of money, because it is a large agency. I will tell my friend, though, from Louisiana, he has come relatively recently to the Congress, that the IRS is 17,000 people less than it was 6 years ago. At the same time, we have enacted the Reform and Restructuring Act which said that the IRS needed to do more services and be more friendly to our customers. That was the right thing for us to do. We want the telephone answered more quickly, we want taxpayers' questions answered accurately; and when they have problems, we want them served appropriately. All of us support those objectives.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for his comments and his intensive observations. I agree with the gentleman from Arizona (Chairman Kolbe), and I certainly look forward to working with the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich) who has been, I think, one of the most tenacious and thoughtful voices on issues like this, and I certainly want to make sure that we do have information that is accurate and full so that we can understand exactly what is going on. Quite obviously, as the gentleman knows, there have been issues raised and we will work with him and with the administration to see if they can be resolved. Mr. Chairman, I would include for the Record a Survey of the Impacts of IMF Structural Adjustment in Africa. A Survey of the Impacts of IMF Structural Adjustment in Africa: Growth, Social Spending, and Debt Relief--April 1999 (By Robert Naiman and Neil Watkins)

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. HOYER. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, I will assure the gentlewoman that I will work with her as well and with the gentleman from Arizona (Chairman Kolbe) on this issue and want to congratulate her for her leadership and continued careful attention so that this program is carried out as effectively as it possibly can be. I thank the gentlewoman for her contribution. Amendment No. 3 Offered by Mr. Kucinich

Mr. HOYER. I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.

Mr. HOYER. I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.

Mr. HOYER. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, I say to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Velazquez), I understand the importance of county money laundering efforts at the State and local level, and the role the grant program plays in those efforts. As the gentlewoman knows, I supported her amendment on the House floor last year that provided the initial funding for this program, and she has, and will have, my continued support. I share her concerns about this particular report language, and I will work with her to make sure it gets corrected in the conference report. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Velazquez).

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Velazquez) for the purpose of entering into a colloquy before the amendment is offered.

Mr. HOYER. I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I have no additional requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Ms. Roybal-Allard), a member of the subcommittee.