Ernest Istook

Mr. ISTOOK

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I was hopeful that we could get through this debate without having an amendment such as this offered because I think it is based upon very misleading arguments and claims. I would certainly hope that nobody in this body would want to take a cheap shot at the Vice President of the United States. The Vice President by law resides at the Naval Observatory here in Washington, D.C. The grounds are under the jurisdiction of the United States Navy. Two years ago, they installed a separate meter for the residence. Now, it is not just the residence that comes through it because there is all the security lighting and there is the Secret Service needs. There is a lot more than would normally come under any residence. Besides that, it is a 33-room building that has the official functions as well as the residential functions as part of it. After they installed the meter, Mr. Chairman, 2 years ago, they found out that the former Vice President, Mr. Gore, overspent on utilities 220 percent of his office budget. What they did then was have the Navy make up the difference for former Vice President Gore's utility bill, which I believe the difference was somewhere in the neighborhood of $125,000. In December of 1999, under the former administration, the former administration proposed consolidating the utility bills of the Vice President's residence with the Navy's overall utility bills at the Naval Observatory to be under the jurisdiction of the Navy. That proposal was carried forward and carried out in the current budget, and the budget for the Vice President was reduced by the same amount as we had allocated for former Vice President Gore's utility bills. Former Vice President Gore went into the Navy to pay the utility bill once they had a separate meter and found out how much it was. Now we are told that Mr. Cheney is being irresponsible because the Navy is going to pay the bill, which means the taxpayers pay the bill, which was the same people that pay it anyway. But, yet, Mr. Chairman, what they are not mentioning is that Mr. Cheney is using about one-fourth less energy than Mr. Gore did at the residence. Now, there is your story. The current Vice President is only using 75 percent as much energy as the last Vice President. Yet they try to twist and manipulate things to make it appear that somehow Mr. Cheney is being irresponsible and trying to evade his electric bill. There is no truth to such an assertion. This is merely carrying out the plan that was put in place by the former administration, the Clinton administration, to have the Navy pick up the difference between what Mr. Gore had in his budget to pay his utility bill and what the actual bill was, because it was far beyond what Mr. Gore had in his budget. But, instead, they try to twist it where somehow Mr. Cheney, who has reduced the bill, supposedly Mr. Cheney is the one being irresponsible? No matter how it is manipulated, Mr. Chairman, that does not wash. I would hope that any person who tries to use this to embarrass the Vice President of the United States would rethink it and perhaps get a little bit embarrassed, if not ashamed, at what they are trying to do. This is an outrageous argument that we have been hearing on this. It is not based upon accountability of who pays the bills, because we have the meter, we know regardless. We know that the bill is something that is going to be at the taxpayers' expense, whether it is routed through the Naval Observatory account or whether it is routed through the Office of the Vice President; but the funding was not put in Mr. Gore's budget, and the funding was not put in Mr. Cheney's budget to pay the entirety of the expense. Either way, the Navy was picking up the difference. Mr. Cheney is the one who is being responsible, who is getting by with 75 percent as much energy as Mr. Gore was using. That is the bottom line, and that is what we ought to be focusing on. I do not yield on something as outrageous as this. I yield back the balance of any time.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, it would make no sense for this committee to rise at this time to let people try to distract us from the important work of this House. I realize that there is no rule that says you cannot offer a mean-spirited amendment. Now, there is no rule that says you cannot take a cheap shot. There is no rule, as the gentleman from Massachusetts suggested, that says you cannot try to embarrass somebody, whether it is justified or not. No, there is no rule that requires us to use common sense in this body. There is no rule that requires Members of this House to have an electricity meter outside the door of their office so that their constituents can see how much energy are they consuming. There is no rule that says they cannot ask all their constituents to mail to them the people who either did the wrong things or did nothing to let utility rates and fuel prices go up. There is no rule that says you cannot send them your utility bill or your electric bill. It saddens me, Mr. Chairman, it saddens me to hear people being caught with such an obvious ploy trying to take a cheap shot at the Vice President and then stand up in front of the Nation, in front of this body, Mr. Chairman, stand up and try to say, oh, we are not trying to embarrass the Vice President. Malarkey. Do not insult people's intelligence that way. If you were sincere, and you said, well, we just want to make sure that the Vice President is accountable for the utility bills, then you would have said he will pay the bills instead of having the Navy pay them, as Mr. Gore did; he will pay the bills and we are putting money back in the budget to enable him to do so. Because the money that was allocated to Mr. Gore to pay his utility bills, which was $43,000 a year, has been backed out of the Vice President's budget. In addition to that, over the last couple of years, the Navy paid over $200,000 to pay the utility bills of Mr. Gore's residence. Did they offer an amendment that says the Vice President is going to be accountable for his own bills and we will have the money in his budget so that he can do so? No. The effect of this is they want to strip money out of the Vice President's budget so he has to choose between paying the electric bills or doing the job that he was elected to do, because they will take away facilities, they will take away staff, they will take away whatever it is. The money is not in the Vice President's budget to pay his utility bills. That was what was proposed by the Clinton administration, to say have the Navy do it. That is what is in this. And what they are really trying to do is say we want to prevent the Vice President from doing his job. Oh, but we are nice and clean and pure. We are not mean-spirited people at all. They are caught. They are caught embarrassed in front of the country trying to take a cheap shot and come back and try to justify it. You can dress up a pig in as many dresses and designer costumes as you want, Mr. Chairman, but it is still a pig. I am not about to kiss this pig. Vote no on any motion to rise and vote no on the amendment itself. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston).

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, this amendment does not add any dollars of spending to the bill, nor does it reduce any dollars of spending to the bill. The effect of the amendment, however, is just to consolidate several accounts dealing with the Executive Office of the President, the White House office. By way of explanation, Mr. Chairman, this amendment is offered on behalf of myself and the ranking member, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer). We have had some continuing discussions throughout the process of considering this legislation trying to accommodate the legitimate needs both of the executive branch and the legitimate needs of the legislative branch. The executive branch sees that in having the White House accounts split up into some 18 different accounts, a needless complexity that adds expense, that adds burdens, that adds administrative hurdles that they must go through to accomplish anything. For example, when we have funding that is appropriated separately to the executive residents, to White House repairs, to special assistants to the President, to the Office of Policy Development, to the White House office and so forth, any time they may have something as simple as say a service contract for copier services, or equipment repairs, they have to enter into multiple contracts, do multiple sets of bookkeeping. Mr. Chairman, there is a burden that they see that they want to have removed to make it easier for the White House to do business. On the other hand, we in the Congress have legitimate needs and desires to have oversight over spending of public funds. The gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) and I have been working diligently to try to strike the right balance. We did want to offer an amendment, Mr. Chairman, and I think the point of order was raised against what the gentleman from California thought was going to be the amendment which had some substantive language to try to put in some safeguards for the benefit of the Congress to make sure that consolidating these accounts would not remove our oversight ability, and would make sure that the persons involved in the White House and expending public funds are still accessible and available to the Congress when we might need testimony and information and to perform our constitutional duties. Because the gentleman from California intended to offer an objection to the unanimous consent that was necessary to do that, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) and I offer the second amendment which does consolidate accounts. It does not have the additional language that we would like to have; but I would represent to the body that the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) and I and everybody else involved with this intend to make sure that the final product of this committee, whatever it might or might not do with consolidated different accounts, does so with all of the necessary safeguards to protect the proper constitutional prerogatives of the Congress. So this amendment, Mr. Chairman, I believe will clearly be in order. It does not consolidate all 18 of the accounts that are generally under the Executive Office of the President. It does a consolidation of the funding of some 10 of those, but it is done with the express intent and purpose of being the placeholder that we need as we continue to work with the Senate and in conference, and of course with the White House in fashioning the final bill that ultimately will come before this body. Mr. Chairman, I repeat that this amendment does not increase nor decrease the funding for the White House and the Executive Office of the President. It merely takes 10 separate line items in the bill, consolidates them into one so we might indeed make sure that we can bring up this issue when we get into a conference with the Senate. It is our placeholder for that purpose.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to note for anyone that may be confused because we had a pause, we were anticipating there would be another amendment that was to have been presented a moment ago. Obviously, it has not. So the effect of what we have asked unanimous consent to do is to open up the bill to amendments and move on to title VI, which is the general provisions where we know there are several Members that have amendments to offer in that section.

Mr. ISTOOK. I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment on behalf of myself and the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Mr. ISTOOK. I certainly look forward to meeting the dogs and the ponies.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Ehlers).

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. ISTOOK. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I am very well aware of the important work being done at Glynco and of FLETC's critical role in providing the very highest quality in consolidated law enforcement training to Federal law enforcement organizations, as well as others that participate. I applaud the strong personal support of the gentleman from Georgia for FLETC's work to achieve this mission. We have indeed addressed some important construction requirements at FLETC to keep it on its necessary construction schedule. I certainly want to assure my colleague that I look forward to working with him further to ensure that additional FLETC funding is going to be given every consideration as the bill does move through the process.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for her interest, which is bona fide, on an important issue. Yes, it is the intent of the Committee that the report provide information on customer demographics and transaction changes such as the gentlewoman described, as well as the detailed cost data, with sufficient detail to allow us to differentiate among all of the major forms in which the public debt is financed.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston) to engage in a colloquy.

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

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order against the amendment.

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

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Iowa, because I know he has been working diligently to secure the needed courthouse in Cedar Rapids. I want to tell the gentleman that that is indeed the item that is next on the priority list that we have. We are fortunate we were able to go one beyond what the administration had proposed as far as funding courthouses. And again, as the gentleman mentioned, on a professional priority basis, a nonpolitical basis, Cedar Rapids has now moved to the top of the list, and we are looking at the potential of being able to find a way to potentially fund that during this year. Obviously, we have not been able yet to reach that conclusion. We are still not through the entire budget process, but we do want to work together with the gentleman to look at the potential of making sure that moves along rapidly. I do want to assure the gentleman that whether it ended up being this year or next year, it is at the very top of our priority list now.

Mr. ISTOOK. I thank the gentleman from Iowa. I very much appreciate his terrific effort on this matter.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Leach) for the purposes of a colloquy.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to present to the House H.R. 2590. This is the fiscal year 2002 Treasury, Postal Service, and General Government appropriations bill. As reported, this bill, of course, is within the agreed-upon balanced budget that has been agreed to by the House with the Senate and the President. The bill, compared to the current fiscal year operations, is $1.1 billion above the current operations. It is also some $340 million above the original request from the White House, although that number, Mr. Chairman, was amended somewhat. The supplemental request included funds for the 2002 Winter Olympics, which has been funded through the supplemental and has been reallocated accordingly within this bill. As reported, Mr. Chairman, the spending allocation enables us to do a number of significant things regarding Federal law enforcement in particular. Mr. Chairman, realizing that we have been favored with a positive allocation from the full committee chairman, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), it is a fair question how we have applied the extra $1 billion that has been made available. The short answer is we have sought to address some very significant needs, in particular in Federal law enforcement. Some 30 percent of Federal law enforcement is funded through this appropriation measure. We have also sought to address some very compelling needs regarding information technology. Let me give an example, Mr. Chairman. We are all aware that the IRS has had significant problems dealing with the complexity of the Tax Code and in having a modern information system that will enable taxpayers to have correct information in the hands of the IRS and not be receiving incorrect notices. This allocates significant funding to accelerate the information technology advancement in the IRS. In particular, within the Customs Service, we have what might be fairly called, Mr. Chairman, a rickety computer system that is utilized for handling some $8 billion worth of trade each day that goes through ports of entry with the U.S. Customs Service. That system is, frankly, on the verge of collapse; and we do not need to be losing $8 billion daily in trade because of an antiquated information system in Customs. Even beyond the pace set by the administration's budget, we have put the funding in for what is called the Automated Commercial Environment, which is the new Customs information technology system that ties together some 50 agencies that are involved in the imports and exports handled by the Customs Service to make sure that this trade that is so vital to the economy of the United States of America can flow unimpeded. So those areas, law enforcement, trade, drug interdiction as a key component of law enforcement, and the information technology, are the main areas in which we have provided investments through the Subcommittee on Treasury, Postal Service, and General Government bill. The bill places, as I mentioned, a priority on counter-drug efforts in law enforcement. Let me mention some the elements by which that is done. We have the Customs Air and Marine Interdiction Program, which has not had the aircraft or the boats to be able to keep up with the degree of smuggling of illegal drugs into the United States, such as in southern Florida, where I visited recently. They are in sore need of modern equipment to be able to stem the flow of illegal narcotics into America. We put significant new investments into the effort, the manpower, expanding the manpower where they are overburdened and overworked, and also expanding the equipment available to them to do that. We have funding for the Integrated Violence Reduction Strategy by Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which is trying to stem the use of illegal weapons, or legal weapons used illegally, by people in the commission of violent crimes. Both the Youth Crime Interdiction Initiative and the Integrated Violence Reduction Strategy receive significant new funding in this measure. Also significantly increased is what is known as HIDTA, the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program. Some $231 million in Federal resources is made available in this bill for coordinating the efforts between the State, the local and the Federal law enforcement agencies, which all must work together, especially in the areas where there are significant problems of drug trafficking. We also have, Mr. Chairman, an effort to try to address the accumulated backlog that is clogging up the court system. Federal courthouses are funded in this bill to the tune of $326 million in construction, following the priorities laid out by the administration and the General Services Administration and the Administrative Offices of the Courts, to make sure that we are putting the funding where the courts are most overcrowded. So this includes the funding for site acquisition, design and/or construction of some 15 court houses across the Nation, which is one beyond the number that was originally proposed by the President, but does follow the same priority list as everyone has agreed upon, including the administration. In regard to legislative items, I would like to point out, Mr. Chairman, that we continue the prohibition that is part of current law to make sure that Federal funds are not used to help pay for abortions through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan. This also continues the requirement that FEHBP includes coverage for prescription contraceptive services with certain circumstances for concerns of conscience and with key exceptions, but overall a clear policy on the coverage of contraceptives. As we move through consideration of this measure on the floor, Mr. Chairman, I know we will hear different amendments. I will not try to cover them all at this time, rather than give an overview of the bill; but I know we will hear many different policies proposed that, frankly, Mr. Chairman, I do not think will be in order under the bill, or, even though they might technically be in order, will not be proper for inclusion in this bill and should be addressed through other legislation. We hope to keep this appropriation bill clear of any extraneous riders that are not really part of the central purpose of the measure. I wanted to thank my colleagues on the subcommittee for all of their hard work and effort in putting this bill together. The gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Treasury, Postal Service, and General Government, has been especially helpful in working together to resolve differences; and, frankly, Mr. Chairman, we have been able to come to agreement on some things that sometimes there are significant policy differences on, but a lot of hard work with the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) and everyone else has gotten us through that. I want to thank his staff members, including Scott Nance; the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) and his staff; Rob Nabors; and of course, I would be remiss if I did not thank the excellent staff that we are able to enjoy on the Subcommittee on Treasury, Postal Service, and General Government: the chief clerk, Michelle Mrdeza; Jeff Ashford; Kurt Dodd; Tammy Hughes; and, on a delegated status from the Secret Service, Chris Stanley. It has taken a lot of hard work to go through the details in this bill, having as many different Federal agencies that are at the heart of the executive branch, including the White House, the Office of Management and Budget, the General Services Administration, Office of Personnel Management, the Treasury Department itself, and many of the core Federal agencies, including in particular law enforcement. I believe this is a good bill, Mr. Chairman, which merits people's support. It advances our objectives to combat the flow of illegal drugs, yet to improve the flow of legal commerce. It tries to address significant problems of overcrowding in the Federal courts by making sure that facilities are available to them. Mr. Chairman, I would ask every Member of this body to support this bill, and look forward to working with the Members in considering amendments that they may offer. Mr. Chairman, I include the following for the Record. [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH25JY01.001 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH25JY01.002 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH25JY01.003 Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, I understand the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich) has made his presentation and is prepared to have the Chair rule on his point of order.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Ernest Istook

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