Steny Hoyer

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Leader, the last question I would ask you with respect to these tax bills, is it your expectation that the minority will be given the ability to offer a substitute on the bill coming up this week, the marriage penalty, but as well on the subsequent bills? I yield to my friend.

Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for that observation. Lastly, I would say to the leader we understand this morning that the National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice briefed the Republican Conference. I want to say that we have been offered the opportunity to have the National Security Adviser brief the Democratic Caucus. I think we will take advantage of that. But, Mr. Leader, clearly the present situation in Iraq is not what any of us would want. During the course of this effort in Iraq, and immediately before it, we had briefings on this floor. Secretary Rumsfeld and from General Myers, from Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz, from Mr. Tenet, the Director of the CIA, from Mr. Mueller of the FBI, numerous others. And we came together as Republicans and Democrats and had the opportunity to be briefed. We had the opportunity together to ask questions. Some of those, as my colleague knows, were in closed session because we discussed security information. I want to say to my friend that we were disappointed that we did not do that this morning. Both of our caucuses are partisan; they represent parties. We were disappointed that this briefing was given on a partisan basis. We do not think that is in the best interest of the country; we do not think it is in the best interest of this Congress. Mr. Leader, I would urge you to, on behalf of your leadership, join with us in assuring that, A, we have a number of bipartisan briefings from the principals involved as to what is going on. Our public is concerned, my colleague's people, my people, very concerned about what is happening to our troops, very concerned about our success in Iraq. I say that, as my friend knows, as one of those who supported the effort, supported the funding of this effort. But all of us have to be concerned about the situation. So I would ask the leader if he might comment on the fact that we have historically had under Democratic leadership, Republican leadership, bipartisan briefings. I would hope that we could continue to have such. As I say, I think it is in the best interest of the country.

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

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I take this time for the purpose of inquiring of the majority leader the schedule for the following week.

Mr. HOYER. Ms. Chairman, I appreciate that information. With respect to the transportation reauthorization bill, can the leader tell me for what length of time we will extend the existing authorization?

Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman. With respect to the fiscal 2005 budget resolution, do you expect we might see a conference report on the budget next week?

Mr. HOYER. The same period as we had on this bill.

Mr. HOYER. I cannot help myself for making this remark, Mr. Leader, but I am not surprised that the chairman of the committee feels it would not be necessary to go to the committee to ask for approval to have something passed out of that committee. We Democrats particularly know that that is the case. Mr. Leader, we have information that leads us to believe that on subsequent weeks we are going to be considering the child care tax credit, the 10 percent tax bracket and possibly AMT. Is that information accurate?

Mr. HOYER. Reclaiming my time, the reason I asked the question, obviously, is members of the Committee on Ways and Means had not heard about marking up that bill. Is there some reason we are not pursuing the regular order and having that bill reported back out of the committee?

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, let us assume the substitute is germane. Will we be allowed the opportunity to offer a germane substitute?

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Certainly. I will, as John Brademas did, I will use the traditionally opposite podium. I understand Nancy had spoken to you a little earlier and welcomed you here. I have spoken at many of these, perhaps not all, in the last few years. I might say that I heard how long Senator Nunn served in the Senate. There are some of us who believe he did not serve long enough in the Senate; and, Sam, congratulations to you for this honor and appropriate recognition of the extraordinary work that you have done for our country and, happily for our country, continue to do. We appreciate that. For those of us from the University of Maryland, we recognize Bill Archer's claim to fame is that he is the father-in-law of Fred Funk, the former coach. For those of you who are golf fans, Fred Funk is one of the great golfers in America on the pro circuit and always does a great job; and I always tell Bill Archer that is why he is famous, not for being in the House. I am pleased to be here with all of you and add my word of welcome to you. I have said it in the past. Sam just mentioned it. At a time of great challenge for our country abroad, we find ourselves unfortunately divided at home, not only in the Congress but our country divided, as all of us know, and that is reflected in the very close divisions that we find when the public goes to the poll; and when they are polled, we find out how closely divided they are. It is important, I think, for those of you who had the opportunity to serve, and John Brademas, this morning, my predecessor, I hung the pictures of all the former whips in the hallway leading to my office now, an extraordinary group of people. And, John, thank you for all that you have done for our country as well. But I would urge all of us, not you and me, but all of us, together, to try to increase the dialogue and understanding, lower the confrontation and increase the cooperation that we so desperately need when challenged so heavily, I think, abroad. I noticed the Speaker, my Speaker, has his arm around a wonderful staffer as well, Billy Pitts, who left the Congress, went out and made vast sums of money in the private sector, I hope, and is now back with us trying to straighten out David Dreier. A very difficult job, but Billy is so talented, he may be able to do that. So welcome to all of you. We are glad you are here, but much more importantly, we are glad that you continue to be active, involved, and leaders in our country. Thank you very much. Good to see you. Oh, I might just say, and I was going to start with this, that, tragically, sadly, and, Larry, I came in as you were reading the list of Members who have passed away, but two of the Members who were my predecessors in the Fifth Congressional District of Maryland passed away this past year. Dick Lankford, I know some of you knew Dick, he was here for 10 years, served on the Committee on Armed Services. I was a sophomore at the University of Maryland. I think he was the first Member of Congress that I really met. Dante Fascell was the first one I knew about when I was going to high school in Florida. And then Carlton Sickles. You mentioned Carlton Sickles, who called up Danny Brewster, for whom I was working in 1962 and 1963 and 1964, when I was graduating from law school, and they asked me to run for the State senate. I turned them down twice. Tom, you may remember this. I turned them down twice because I did not think I could win the State senate seat. And Carlton Sickles, who was then the Congressman-at-large over here and was running for Governor, called up Brewster and said, no, urge him to run, he can win. I will help him. We will give him a lot of money, et cetera, et cetera. You have all been there and done that. I did run. He did give me a lot of support; no money, but a lot of support, and I was successful. But he passed away, and I had the honor of speaking at his memorial service just a few weeks ago. So we have been diminished by their losses, but we are advantaged by your continuing participation. God bless you. Thank you very much. Mr. BUECHNER (presiding). In order to provide some sort of balance with the comments by sitting Members, the Chair would like to invite the chairman of the Committee on Rules, the Congressman from California, David Dreier, to say a few remarks.

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. I ask for personal privilege.

Mr. HOYER. I thank my friend from Illinois for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, number one, I was the sponsor of the Federal Employee Pay Comparability Act back in 1990. We included it in the Treasury- Postal bill. It was signed by President George Bush. It was signed on the theory that we needed to pay Federal workers comparable wages to their private sector counterparts. In other words, if you are a scientist at NIH or if you are an FBI agent or if you are a CIA agent or you are a defense analyst, a civilian in the Defense Department, you would get paid comparably what your training and responsibilities required in the private sector. That was the whole theory. It was passed overwhelmingly in a bipartisan fashion. In fact, it is the law today. My friend from Oklahoma has always opposed this adjustment. Always. This is not a new posture for my friend from Oklahoma. He simply does not believe in the comparability act and does not believe in compensating Federal employees fairly. He talks about ECI. I wish my friend from Oklahoma would listen to these figures because I think he will find them interesting because he misrepresents what the facts are. I know he would be very interested. Using 1969 as a base year of Federal service pay, average annual wage adjustments and CPI, which are all different figures, we specifically used wages because that is what we are competing with, not CPI. We are competing with wages in the Federal sector. Listen to this and I think you will be shocked. Since 1969, if you take wages as the base, they are now at 614 percent. If you take CPI, it is at 509 percent over those 44 years. If you take civil service wages, they are 371.8. So they are still about 100 points behind the CPI adjustment, and they are 180 points behind what private sector wages have been adjusted. That is what this is about. The Federal Salary Council under the law makes findings. They are in the Department of Labor. They make findings. Let me read their findings of this past year: Based on calculations provided by the Office of Personnel Management, taking a weighted average of two sets of pay gaps, et cetera, the overall gap between base general schedule average salaries locality and non-Federal average salaries surveyed by BLS, the difference between private sector salaries and public sector salaries was 31.8 percent. In other words, for comparable responsibilities, Federal employees were making 31 percent less than their private sector counterparts. The law said back in 1990 we get to 95 percent of private sector, saying that we are not going to put Federal employees on a par per se with the private sector but the objective is to get to 95 percent of what the private sector makes. We are not there. The Federal council goes on to say that the overall average pay gap in 2003, including a current average locality rate of 12.12 percent, which of course we do not do, is 17.57 percent. This is the Federal pay council, out of OPM. Therefore, we recommend an overall average locality rate adjustment of 25.54 percent. That is in addition to the ECI. Let us say the ECI was 1.5 percent which it is not, of course. It is higher than that, substantially, almost twice as much as that. But if we did that, then we would be talking about a 27 percent adjustment in Federal pay pursuant to the law which we have voted for, which the President signed. The gentleman is shaking his head. He is inaccurate in shaking his head. I will tell the gentleman further, to show him that he is inaccurate, the President of the United States last year came down and said in his recommendation 2 percent. The Congress gave 4.1 percent. Bush claimed last August he was saving taxpayers $13 billion, not from the 4.1 percent but from the 25 percent. In other words, the President of the United States adopted the premise that the law, in fact, said that the adjustment ought to be $13 billion additional to what the President recommended. We are not standing here arguing for that proposition, but we are standing here for the proposition, as this Congress has done 17 out of the last 19 years, saying, look, we know we can't get there, but let us not send a message to those civilian employees arrayed in Afghanistan, civilian employees arrayed in Iraq, civilian employees arrayed in Colombia, at risk, NIH researchers, critically important to the health of this Nation, people working at NASA, let us not send them a message that they are second-rate citizens. Let us pay them comparably with what we want to adjust the military. And we ought to adjust the military. I am for that. So I ask my friends, follow the law. But you do not have to follow all of the law, because if you followed all of the law we would break the bank. What we have said we are going to do is get to comparability. What we want to do in this resolution is to at least get to fairness. Support the Davis-Wolf-Hoyer resolution.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is not characterizing me as having said that.

Mr. HOYER. Personal privilege.

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

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. I simply wanted to make the point, what I said was treating them disparately implied that they were second-class citizens. The implication in the gentleman's comments was that he disagreed with the implication that they were second class. There was no implication of that, clearly.

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

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

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I also want to congratulate the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran) for his extraordinary leadership in the Committee on the Budget which has led to the 3 past years of this very provision being included in the budget.

Mr. HOYER. Parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, with all due respect to the chairman of my committee, Mr. Chairman, that is inaccurate. It is inaccurate, because, as you know, you did not fund that in subcommittee. In subcommittee, the provision to which you refer had not been added. So you are inaccurate. You had the money available. And, by the way, as you know, I supported that $500 million so that we could give additional compensation above and beyond what the law requires. The law. This is not some speculation. The law requires that we give special compensation to high performers. I agree with that premise, as does the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis).

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably detained on rollcall 97, the motion to instruct conferees. I was attending a memorial service for the wife of a very dear friend and, therefore, could not attend. Had I been in attendance, I would have voted for the motion to instruct, which I understand would have made the tally 210 for and 209 against. Appointment of Conferees

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, this week we are going to see just how committed our Republican friends are to the irresponsible budget that they passed 4 days ago. Tomorrow, Democrats will offer a motion to instruct House conferees on the fiscal 2005 budget resolution to accept the Senate's bipartisan pay-as-you-go budget enforcement rules. Those rules would require us to find offsets for both new spending as well as tax cuts. As a matter of fact, one of the real authors of pay-as-you-go, the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), in the 1990s is here, which led to the most fiscally responsible administration's performance, frankly, in history, under Bill Clinton. And with a projected budget deficit of more than a half a trillion dollars this year, it is fair to ask, What could be more reasonable than that? After all, our bipartisan agreement to pay-as-you-go rules in 1990 led to the steady decrease of our deficits throughout that decade and 4 consecutive years of budget surpluses between fiscal 1998 and 2001, the first time that has happened in 80 years. But in their budget resolution, our Republican friends pretend that we can get our fiscal house back in order by applying so-called pay-as- you-go rules to spending only. Tax cuts, they believe, are a freebie, even though the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that 40 percent of our deficit is attributable to revenue reductions. Who is going to pay that bill? Our children will pay that bill. Our grandchildren will pay that bill. And even the respected chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, my friend, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), said in February, ``No one should expect significant deficit reduction as a result of austere, nondefense discretionary spending limits. The numbers simply do not add up.'' So said the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), conservative Republican. So I urge my Republican friends: join us. Join us in this effort to restore fiscal sanity to our Nation's budget. Vote for this important Democratic motion to instruct. That is not so hard. And remember, you have done it before. Last year, a mere 96 hours after you passed your fist 2004 budget resolution, you turned right around, 180 degrees, and voted for the Democratic motion to instruct conferees to reject the deep cuts called for in your budget for education, for veterans, Medicare, Medicaid, and other areas. The chairman of the Committee on the Budget, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle), even stood on this floor and railed against our motion for half an hour. For half an hour he railed against our motion, before he and most of the Republican leadership flip-flopped and helped pass it by a vote of, listen to this, Madam Speaker, 399 to 22. That was the Democratic motion passing. Why? Because Republicans wanted to pretend that they were actually for the motion to instruct's priorities when their budget clearly denied that, contradicted it, did not provide for those priorities. So I urge my Republican friends to support the adoption of pay-as- you-go rules which helped Democrats produce a budget for fiscal year 2005 that was both fair and responsible. Our Democratic substitute would balance the budget within 8 years. The Republican resolution would actually increase our deficits. Our Democratic budget would protect Social Security. Our democratic budget would match the Republican budget on defense spending to ensure our national security and provide nearly $6 billion more over 5 years for homeland security to ensure that our people here at home are safer. Our Democratic budget would provide tax relief for hard-working families; and our budget, the Democratic budget, even as it reins in deficits caused by the Republican Party's failed policies, would provide more resources than the Republican budget for education, veterans, job training, public health, and infrastructure, the last, of course, being extraordinarily effective jobs-producing. Finally, Madam Speaker, we also will consider this week, as I have said, the transportation reauthorization bill, which will pass, I predict, with wide bipartisan support, but leave both Democrats and some Republicans shaking their heads. This is not only a bill about infrastructure, critically important to our economy, critically important to the safety of this Nation, critically important to every American; it is also a jobs bill. Democrats and some Republicans, including the chairman of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, the gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young), himself supported a spending level of $375 billion, which would have created 1.7 million new jobs. Why is that important? Because for the first time in 75 years since Herbert Hoover, the first time, this is the first administration in three-quarters of a century that will end its 4-year term having lost jobs net in this economy. That is why we have over 8 million people unemployed and 2.5 million jobs lost. Yet, the President, who has the worst record of job creation since Herbert Hoover threatened a veto of that jobs-creating bill, demanding a funding level that would create 1.1 million fewer new jobs. I urge my Republican friends to stop ignoring the plight of the unemployed who have suffered under your failed policies. Since December, more than 1 million jobless workers have exhausted their regular State unemployment benefits without receiving temporary Federal assistance. Why? Because Republicans allowed the Federal program to expire. Democrats have been asking for the last 6 months to extend that program, as we did under the Reagan administration, as we did under Bush 1. They have refused to do so. Before we leave Washington this week for a 2-week recess, we should pass an immediate extension of temporary Federal jobless benefits. It is the right thing to do, it is the moral thing to do, and I would suggest to you it is the right thing to do for our economy as well. There is no excuse for failing to act. Madam Speaker, I hope that when the motion to instruct on the budget resolution is made to have a responsible, effective, historically effective pay-as-you-go process, to discipline our budget so that America's children and America's grandchildren and America's economy will not be put deeper into debt and that we will have an effective enforcement process, which will, like America's families, make tough decisions so that we will have a better future for our country.

Mr. HOYER

Mr. HOYER. I am going to go back. There will be no votes until 6:30 on Monday.