Jack Kingston

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King).

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I think I have one more in the wing. So let me again enlighten you with some of my wisdom, if I may yield myself 1 minute. One of the amendments that we have been working on in this bill is the insistence that those who sell or contract to the Federal Government use Social Security verification. There's a program called the Basic Pilot Program, and we have that amendment in the bill. I think it's important people realize that the idea is that if you're doing business with the Federal Government you should be in compliance with the law of the land, which is to have legal employees; and what this does is requires those vendors and sales corporations and contractors and subcontractors to show that they are in compliance by having Social Security verification. I'm excited about this amendment. I think it's very important. President Clinton actually did the same thing February 13, 1996, by executive order; and I am hoping that if there's some problems with this amendment that as this bill moves through the process we may need to tinker with it a little bit but that we can keep the gist of it. Mr. Chairman, we have no more speakers around, and I yield back my time.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman I yield myself 45 seconds. Mr. Chairman, we are at a time right now when people are paying $3.10 for gas, $3.30 a gas. Gas is on the rise, and our options are limited. We are importing 60 percent of our oil. It is ironic that on an Ag policy where 2 percent of the population is feeding all 100 percent, if we were importing 50 percent of our food, it would be a national security crisis, and yet oil, which is just as important, we are importing 60 percent of it. During this time when we are in desperate need for alternative energy options, we should not increase the price of making cellulosic ethanol. And yet in the Ag bill, there was a clause that says if you are building an ethanol plant, you have to have prevailing wages, which drives up the cost of the plant and, therefore, drives up the cost of ethanol. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KINGSTON. I yield the remainder of my time to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King).

Mr. KINGSTON. I thank the gentleman from Ohio for yielding. I want to say that I support this for two reasons. Number one, this bill will be vetoed by the President should it make it through the United States Senate, which is doubtful to begin with, but that's nothing we can control over here. But we know the President has sent out a veto message that the spending level is too high. We have debated this in committee before. I offered a similar amendment that failed. But I think we need to be realistic. The bill that we're spending tonight is not realistic. Number two, I want to point out something. This is actually not a 5.5 percent cut because it's not an $18 billion bill. It's really a $90 billion bill. However, because of what I would call negligence on the part of the House, practiced by Republicans and Democrats over the years, we have decided to put about three-quarters of this bill on automatic spending. We call it mandatory. Now, nothing is mandatory when you make the laws. Nothing is mandatory. So it's kind of lazy. It's just sort of ``spend as is.'' And my friend from Connecticut has said that the gentleman from Ohio's amendment would actually take the nutrition and food programs away from children, yet most of them fall into this red category, which isn't even touched by his amendment. His amendment is actually very conservative. It only affects about the $18 billion portion of this bill. And again, that's not where most of these food programs are, these critical programs. Now, I'm a believer that we should be debating both the red and the yellow portions of this bill and look at it realistically because this is a $90 billion bill, and the 5.5 percent only affects $18 billion. And with that, I want to say that's why I think that it is important for us to always look into the authorizing side of a spending bill and the discretionary side. I do support the amendment. And we have had this amendment, a similar amendment, in committee already. My friends on the committee have known my position on this.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. And I want to say, we will certainly work with the gentleman from Kansas. I know you are an advocate on this.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. The debate is over then; correct?

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. KINGSTON. If the Chair seeks to accept the amendment, then that ends the debate; correct?

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I want to, first of all, start off by complimenting the Chair of the committee. We have had a number of hearings this year. We've had a lot of great oversight opportunities. I look forward to more. We've thoroughly reviewed this bill, and there's many things that we found agreement on. There are some things that we're going to have debate on today and things that we'll continue to debate as the bill goes through the process, but I want to commend Ms. DeLauro for a bill well put together. Also, I want to thank her staff, Martha Foley, Leslie Barrack, Diem-Lihn Jones, Adrienne Simmonson, Kelly Wade and Brian Ronholm, and thank them for everything that they've done. And on our side, Martin Delgado, Dave Gibbons. You'll note, on the Democrat side, I pronounced the Republican side with equal ineptitude as I do the Democrats. Jamie Swafford, Meg Gilley, Merritt Myers, Emily Watson, Heather McNatt, Elizabeth Davis and Jason Lawrence and Scott Stevens. We have a lot of folks who've helped. One of my friends on the floor said, Well, how many people does this take? And I said, Well, you know this is almost a $100 billion bill, so we all have to get involved in it. I also wanted to say something about Ray LaHood. Mr. LaHood is a great committee member. He's going to be leaving Congress at the end of this term and made that announcement this week, and I thought I'd be remiss if we didn't say something about Mr. LaHood. He is a great appropriator. He's a guy who had early on worked with the Hershey Retreat to bring more bipartisan civility to the floor. He was instrumental when I was Chair of the Leg branch subcommittee of getting the staff gym started. Indeed, I don't know if we would have it without him and all of his hard work. And also, when we were in majority, he stood and sat where you are, Mr. Chairman, many times guiding this House through hot debates and emotional issues, and we're all going to miss Mr. LaHood. I want to start off on the bill a little bit because so many people think of agriculture as just farming. And yet, if we look at the breakdown of this bill and we see this large blue part, the actual money in this bill, the majority of it goes to domestic food assistance programs. And it's appropriate that it is in the ag bill because so much of what we're talking about is national security, as seen through our food policy, but direct farming programs are in this more purplish area, and it's about 35 percent of the bill. We also have money for conservation, rural development for the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, and foreign food assistance. But I think it's important for people to realize that this is not just a bill that affects the rural areas. I also want to point out that much of this bill our committee doesn't have the control over that we would like to. In fact, if you look at this bill, we have an expression here in Washington called ``mandatory and discretionary spending.'' Discretionary spending is spending that Congress itself can effect on an appropriate bill. Mandatory spending is what authorizing committees do. This would have been done through the farm bill, for example. Now, I don't like the term ``mandatory.'' I think it should be called automatic spending, maybe even lazy spending, maybe even unchallenged spending, since we debate it once every 5 years and then lock it up in a farm bill. I think that the mandatory portion of this budget, since it is almost 80 percent of the budget, should be opened up and debated. I think there's a lot of things in there that need more scrutiny. Indeed, of the $18 billion in the discretionary spending area, we have been scrutinized and we've had a good look at it. I want to make a couple of points. Number one, the bill at its current level will be vetoed. We do not have a veto-proof majority. This bill will pass today, but not by a veto-proof. The President has made it clear that at a 5.9 percent increase over last year, he will veto it. I think it's important for us to realize this since this is a bipartisan body. This is not a veiled threat. The President has the votes to sustain the veto, and so that's what's going to happen. I think we would be better served getting together and bringing down the numbers on this bill. The second thing that I wanted to point out is there are a lot of issues that we're faced with in this House this week. One of them is the government health care program that's being pushed on the States and taking away a lot of their discretion. Another one is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. These bills are being pushed aside for this bill, and while I have a lot of passion for this bill, being an aggie myself, the reality is, this bill will leave the Chamber and it will sit over with the Senate. The Senate Appropriations Committee, for all intents and purposes, is defunct. We've been working hard. We've been working long in the House to pass our appropriation bills on time, and I commend Mr. Obey and the Democrat leadership to make sure that we get the bills over there. And yet, the reality is the Senate is going to sit on this bill, cram it into another bill, stuff it into a shoe box called an omnibus bill, and I think that's the wrong way to approach things. And at the same time, we're going to have other things that slide. Another thing I wanted to do is set the record straight on some of the nutrition programs, because we've had and heard from a number of people on the Rules Committee earlier today that this restores funding for important and critical child nutrition programs. And you would think that under Republican control, that the bill did not give any money for food and nutrition programs. And yet, if you look at this chart, Mr. Chairman, going back from 2001 on up to 2008, you can see there's simply a linear progression in nutrition funding that has taken place under Republicans mostly, and now under Democrats. But there's no huge dip. There's no great spike now that the Democrats are in charge. And it's important to set the record straight on that. In fact, I'm one, call me old fashioned, who doesn't think it's great to have lots and lots of people dependent on government programs. I think we should work to get people more independent, and I don't think that increasing these programs blindly makes sense. For example, the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, I don't follow the math on that. Last year the casework estimate was 490,000 people. The actual number to participate was 463,000. And yet this year, even though the projection's 464,000, the budget increase is $42 million for it, and I don't follow that logic at all. If the number of participants is going down, why is the spending going up? And the President actually had zeroed that out. Why did he do that? Does the President not care about hungry people? No, it's because they are eligible for food stamps. There's another program for them. Why have two bureaucracies doing basically the same thing, especially since you have electronic benefit transfer cards which are very simple to do, and those were some that this committee led in. The other thing that I wanted to point out on the subject of nutrition and hunger is it's interesting that we debated obesity a lot more than we have debated hunger. I think that's probably a good thing, but I think, on the other hand, it shows that there hasn't been this horrible hunger crisis under Republican rule. Another point I want to say about this bill, the farm service agencies, right now farm service agencies, there are 58 of them that have no staff. The Chair and I have agreed that these should be closed down. I think that's a step in the right direction; 139 of them have one employee and 338 have two employees and 515 have three employees. Now, I've heard it said about the VA that you can close down any veterans clinic you want in America as long as it's not located in a congressional district. Well, I guess the same is true with military bases, and it's true with FSA offices and other offices. We talk about wanting to balance the budget, but when it comes home to our own district, we all backpedal and say, no, we don't want anything closed. These decisions aren't easy, but we have to be leaders on this and not shirk our responsibility. I think this committee kind of worked through it, and I'm hoping that we're going to continue to work through it as the bill moves through the process. Renewable energy. There's so much right now in the rural areas from the subject of ethanol, biodiesel, cellulosic ethanol and other economies that we can go out and capitalize in and help bring alternative fuel to America. In my home State of Georgia, there are about five or six ethanol plants. There are 121 of them nationally, but Georgia has on the drawing table right now to build another 80 ethanol plants just in our one State. That would put Georgia on the national leaders level. I am excited about that. Because if Georgia can do that, then certainly other States should be doing that; and I am glad that this bill puts a lot of investment into renewable energy. On broadband and distance learning, I think we all have a commitment to that. Two things that the Chair and I have agreed on that are very important is, one, we don't want the government programs to be competing with the private sector. If the private sector is already there, why put a government program out there? And, number two, for the retired stockbroker who has bought his mountain house on the top of the beautiful mountains in Colorado, why should we care if his laptop is hooked up or not? I don't think we have to waste taxpayer money so that he can check his stock quotes while he is in retirement. I also want to talk a little bit about a horse amendment that we have, some language in the bill that prohibits people who own horses from taking these horses across international lines. If you own a horse in America and this bill passes with the language that is in it, you will not be allowed to take that horse to Mexico or Canada for any purpose. Now, I understand that there are those who don't want horses to be slaughtered. Most of them are people who have never owned horses, who don't understand horse owners or who are intimidated by special interest groups in Washington. But the reality is sometimes you have to put a horse down, and since we have a problem with that in America, as outlawed by this Congress or the previous Congress, then this bill does give some flexibility to those people. But, in trying to close that loophole, what the committee did is they said now you can't take your horse out of the country and you can't bring one in. It is a ridiculous part of the language, and I am going to move to strike it. Another issue that I have some concerns about is drug reimportation. I think drug reimportation is a major policy shift, and I believe that we should have a vote on that. I commend the Chair in reducing the number of earmarks. The earmarks last year in the bill were about 4\1/2\ percent. We are starting out at about a 2 percent level. I think that is a great reduction not just in the dollar amount but in the number of earmarks. And one other area that I was disappointed in that I want to point out is risk-based inspection. This is where USDA inspectors go to food- processing plants and, rather than dwell on all of them equally over time, they focus on the ones who are the bad actors, the ones who have the older equipment and the shoddy practices. They put more time there. It is a common business decision, and yet we are interfering with the USDA's right to do that. It is called ``risk-based inspection.'' I think it is very important to a good, clean, healthy food supply, and we have stopped RBI. I think that is a mistake. But, overall, there is a lot that's good in the bill. I look forward to the debate. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, let me just say that I think we kind of know where we are heading on various amendments. I look forward to that amendment. And, again, I have enjoyed working with you and the staff. You have a semi-good bill. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank the chairman pro tempore of the Rules Committee for an open rule on this. I think it is important, and we appreciate that. I certainly thank the chairman of the committee, Ms. DeLauro, for her hard work on it, and I have had a lot of input on it. We've had a lot of good debate on this bill. So it is my intention to support it, but I do have some concerns about the rules which I will address later, but I wanted to go over the bill a little bit. First of all, I wanted to get Members a little bit focused on the Ag overall picture. Number one, the whole bill is about $100 billion. We're actually debating $18 billion. There's another $79 billion in what we call around here mandatory spending, which is not mandatory, by the way. It is just that we don't want to go back to the bottom line and start all over again. That's what the farm bill's going to do or whatever, but I just wanted to point out, it's real important that the ag programs are actually about one-third of the entire bill, that there's a lot of nonagriculture, nondirect farm programs. That's important because the rural community comes under such criticism that, well, why is the farm bill so big when less than 2 percent of our population are farmers? Well, the reason is, of course they feed 100 percent of us and we all eat their product, which is food. I wanted to point that out and then show you this mandatory versus discretionary portion of the bill. The red portion we don't really debate; we don't control in the Appropriations Committee. That's what they do in the Ag Committee, and I don't think they did a very good job this particular year in all the parts of it because they didn't delve into some of this stuff. The discretionary portion, again, is $18 billion. It's above last year's, and it's about a 3.6 percent increase over last year, or 5.9 percent. Because of that, it's going to be a veto target by the President. The Republican Party says the spending level is too high, and I think that we have to know that we can't pass this by a veto- proof majority, and so perhaps if we went back to the drawing board here it would be good. The second point I want to make ties directly into this debate that's going on on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Now, this agriculture bill, should we pass it tonight or tomorrow, will go to the Senate, and it will sit, and unlike wine, it doesn't get better over time. It just sits, and what's going to happen, more and more people will delve in and more and more special interests will, and it will pile up with the rest of the appropriation bills. It's a little bit silly. In fact, we're maybe like the little lab rats going round and round in a circle in hopes of getting somewhere when we know doggone good and well all that's going to happen in the Senate is this thing is going to sit. And yet, because of that, because of our urgency to pass Agriculture, we're going to ignore the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. And it doesn't make sense not to just stop a minute or an hour and get that done and then come back to Agriculture because it is not going to move. There's some concerns also that I wanted to bring out when it comes to the Food and Nutrition Service. Now, my friend Mr. McGovern has worked very hard on hunger, and he has a sincere passion for that, which is important. But the charge that we have underfunded hunger in the past years under Republican control is really not accurate at all. Here is the spending chart on food and nutrition programs since 2001, and as you can see, it goes up in a linear manner, and now under the Democrat rule it goes up about the same. There's not some huge deficit in hunger. In fact, I would say to you quite clearly, we spent more time talking about obesity than we did hunger, and I'm not saying hunger's not something that we all have a lot of concern about, but let's make no mistake. The spending on nutrition and food has gone up steadily under Republican control, as it has under Democrat control. I want to say also, I don't think increasing food stamps participation is an achievement that the U.S. Congress should be patting itself on the back. We should move to getting people independent, not more dependent on government largess. We need to work with people to get them independent. And so often our poverty brokers in this world have a perverse incentive to make sure people don't become independent, and I think we need to be mindful of that on any government program. The Chair has pointed out what we're doing on renewable energy, and that is something that we think the Ag can and should lead on with ethanol and biodiesel and cellulosic ethanol. We've taken great strides in this bill, and I am confident that we are going to have some great progress and great bragging rights on that. One other issue that we're going to get into later is this overgrab on the horse regulation that, if this bill passes in its current form, you will not be able to export your horse or import a horse. That's not the business of the Federal Government, at least not in a constitutional sense. I believe that a horse is private property and that you should have the right to sell your horse to folks in Canada and Mexico, if you so choose, or take it to a horse show over there. We will debate that later, and I thank the gentleman and I thank the Chair.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. I want to commend the members of the Ag Committee on a bill that is well put together in some parts. As the chairman knows, he has been very generous with his time, talking to me about the cotton section, the peanut section, and fruits and vegetables. I think there was a lot of good bipartisan support. I commend the committee for that. Unfortunately, so much of this bill is not direct agriculture. So much of this bill, 60 to 70 percent, and this is true with all farm bills, it is the entitlement section, the school nutrition programs, there are a number of problems I have with that. Number one, this tax increase is to support an increase in the entitlement section. It doesn't go directly to farmers or help the dirt farmer. It is not intended for that. I have problems with the tax increase, and I do think it should have been gone through the Ways and Means Committee where it could have been thoroughly vetted and people could have decided what does this mean, because the truth of the matter is there are question marks on both sides. The second thing, in agriculture appropriations we have had lots of hearings on the Indiana privatization of food stamps. I think it is a great program. I think reducing the government bureaucracy so that you can get more money to the people who need the food stamps, I think that is a good fundamental idea. I think it is one that President Clinton would have appreciated. It is searching for the third way. Not always a Democrat or Republican solution is adequate; you have to come up with something else. This is a hybrid program. This is a privatization program, and I know that is a bad thing for many on the fringe left, but I think most of us in the ag community will agree that it is a good thing. And yet this bill stops that. The third thing is the special-interest payoff to the unions. Can you imagine, here we are at an energy crisis time. It is $3.05 if you shop all over town to find the bargain, and we are going to increase the cost of producing ethanol. We are going to say if you build an ethanol plant, you have to use the highly inflated union prevailing wages. It is a special payoff to the unions. We should not increase the price of producing energy during a fuel crunch. It is that simple. This bill does that. Finally, one of the things that we all do, Republicans and Democrats, we want to balance the budget. We want to cut out the waste, as long as it is done in a different district than ours. Now, the farm service agencies, there are too many of them. There are 58 that don't even have staff. This bill prevents them from being closed. We need to close some of the farm service agencies. Because of technological changes, we can do that without hurting the farmers, and yet this bill will prevent that from happening. One thing we are all hypocrites on is, hey, let's balance the budget; but, oh, not here where we have an opportunity to balance the budget. I think that is something that is ill conceived. I know there is bipartisan resistance on that, and it is very difficult for all of us. I have four farm service agencies in my district that are being closed; and I tell you, it is tough. I hate to see any of them closed, but I realize in the big picture if you want to save money for the farmers for other programs, sometimes you have to make these decisions.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Madam Speaker, Members of the House, and my friend John Lewis, you are correct. His father was my State senator and John Barrow's State senator for 38 years. He was a very well-respected Democrat. We all liked him a lot. But he sure raised his son the right way. We are glad to have him. We all miss and loved Charlie Norwood. You know, in this House, there are creatures of habit. Of course, any time you want to see Mr. Murtha and the Pennsylvania delegation, you go to that corner. Any time you want to see Mr. Young and anybody who wants something out of him from Appropriations, all the Florida Members, you go over to that corner. I think, in Charlie's memory, we will all begin to think that the Georgia delegation will be sitting there. Paul, we are going to be very happy to have you sitting amongst us. Paul, John Barrow and I went to the same junior high school. We are very proud to boast about that. He is an avid fly-fisherman. He is a sportsman. He did volunteer work for Safari-International and worked with many of you, got to know Ron Marlene very well and Jo Ann Emerson, among others, and he is ready to go on any codel to Montana or Wyoming that he gets invited to. Paul is going to be a great Member of the House. He is a hard worker. I think you will like him on both sides of the aisle because he will work for what is best for the United States of America. Mr. Lewis has already gone over his resume, so I won't repeat it. But I will just say, Paul, welcome to the greatest body the world has ever seen, the United States House of Representatives. Mr. Broun of Georgia. Madam Speaker and colleagues, I am glad to call you colleagues. I am eager to work with you. I am eager to represent the people of the 10th Congressional District of Georgia. It is exciting to me. Just 1 week ago, I was campaigning. Things have been going very quickly ever since then. I am just overwhelmed. I look forward to working with you and working with this great, august body. I appreciate the opportunity. I appreciate the well wishes and all of the host of welcomes that I have gotten from each and every one of you. So I appreciate the welcome that you all have given me. I look forward to working with you. Thank you so much. God bless you.

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Madam Speaker, during the July 4th holidays with my family, I heard the following inspirational sermon in Denver, Colorado. I would like to share it with my fellow colleagues: Landmarks (By Bill Huth) I am deeply grateful to be a citizen of the USA and I know that it is a privilege to be an American. I love this week and the 4th of July: Watermelons are juicy Flags are waving from businesses and homes Fireworks light up the night sky Families are cooking hot dogs and dousing them with mustard and relish Churches gather to sing patriotic hymns Apple pies bake in the ovens There is a sharp crack to the sound of baseball bats We see old John Wayne movies There are Parades and we sing ``The Star Spangled Banner'' We pray for the nation and for peace Everywhere we discover Red, White, and Blue People and families intentionally come to the YMCA of the Rockies These are Landmarks to mark the birthday celebration of the

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Madam Speaker, the Appling County Bulldawg BB Gun Team won 1st Place in the International BB Gun Championship Match in Bowling Green, KY this past weekend. Jordan Vaughn won First Place in the Jaycee international BB Gun Championship. Trevor Causey won second and the NRA World Record in the sitting position shooting a perfect 100 with 8 center shots. The team won National Champion with the most points averaged together. The team won the special BB Gun trophy that is being held at the 4H office, and will be passed to each Donor Business for recognition. There were a total of 33 teams representing 22 different states. They won by a huge margin of 53 points with an overall total of 2382. (As I understand it, you have to sit, stand, kneel, or lay down to shoot for points.) The team members were Jordan Vaughn, Trevor Causey, Dustin Stipe, Brittany Hardwick, Jordan Roberson with two alternates: Wade Edwards and Hallie Hardwick. The team coaches were Tim Toler, Bob McDonald and Daniel Edwards. The senior members have worked very hard to accomplish this goal. This is the first time a Georgia team has ever won the International Match and we are very proud of these kids!

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I wanted to say, I believe that the chairman of this committee has worked hard on this bill and done a good job, but I also know as a member of Appropriations that often things are thrust upon you as a committee member which may not have originated in the Appropriations Committee. I don't know if that's the case, but I would say here's four areas where we could go to come up easily with over 1 percent of this money. Four specific areas. Number one is in the regulatory agencies. There have been increases above the request for the FTC, the FEC, the SEC and the CPSC, all agencies in which there is more money than requested. That's number one. Number two, there's $300 million in election assistance for States, unauthorized. There's already $1 billion in unobligated funds from past appropriations bills. I did not like it when the Republican Appropriations Committee put this money out there for local election assistance because I don't think the Federal Government needs to stick its nose in that tent, because once the Federal Government gets involved in local State elections, it's a one-way street and we will have the federalization of elections. The third spot. There's $80 million in unrequested SBA subsidy. Now, the particular program has been run unsubsidized. The folks borrow the money. They pay it back. We are now creating a new subsidy for the SBA, $80 million. But the one that really bothers me the most is actually a presidential request. Now, my friend from New York has said no one has accused the President of being a big spender, but I will say to you, I agree with you. I believe the President has spent more money than the American people want him to and I believe we as Republicans spent more money than the American people wanted us to. And because I'm such a good friend of yours, I want to prevent you from making the same mistake. The President has requested $300 million in the new campus at St. Elizabeth's for the Department of Homeland Security. I want my friends in the RSC to know this is a $3 billion, 10-year request to build a huge campus for the Department of Homeland Security. We did not fund this last year. We should all join together and say ``no'' to the Department of Homeland Security on this $3 billion campus which is sure to become worse than the CVC in cost overruns over time.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. KINGSTON. What this amendment does, Mr. Serrano and my fellow Members, it seeks to say that if you are doing business with the Federal Government, if you are a contractor building something or selling something to the Federal Government, then you should have a Social Security verification for your employees. This was inspired by two things: Number one, the fact that the American people have spoken. They do not want comprehensive immigration reform. They spoke so loudly and so well that even the United States Senate eventually heard their voices. Now, we've heard their voices in the House and we have passed lots of immigration reform measures, such as fences, such as the REAL ID Act, some other things that we have put on all the bills on a bipartisan basis. What this says, though, is that if you're the contractor building the fence on the border, as we have had a real case, then you have to make sure that you have legal immigrants, legal people, working for you. That's all it is. There are a lot of people who sell to the Federal Government in the school lunch program. There are a lot of people who work for the defense, a lot of people who work for these agencies, a lot of just different contractors who may have illegal aliens working for them on a Federal Government job, and the only thing that this does is says that those contractors have to be involved in the basic pilot program, which is a program in which technology enables these employers to check Social Security numbers for authenticity within about 90 seconds. It's very simple, it's very clear. I hope that the gentleman will accept it. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time. Point of Order

Mr. KINGSTON

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman of the committee and the ranking member for the opportunity to offer this for consideration. And I do realized that the chairman has reserved a point of order. I hope he doesn't insist upon it, but if he does, I certainly understand, as we share, I think, the same goal of cracking down on illegal aliens. What this amendment does, Mr. Chairman, is say that if you sell or contract or do business with the Federal Government, then you need to be part of the Social Security verification project known as the Basic Pilot. And the Basic Pilot program is a tool for employers to verify the Social Security numbers of employees. We all know that the Federal Government is one of the worst offenders of hiring contractors and subcontractors who in turn hire illegal aliens and do a lot of government work. We also know that since the inception of ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, Julie Myers, the head of it, has stated that there have been hundreds and hundreds of arrests at military installations, power plants, chemical plants, sensitive facilities, and truly this would include a lot of the agencies and a lot of the contractors in work that is done in the Department of Interior for work on our national parks and other land areas. There was one very high-profile case where a defense contractor had hired illegal aliens to work in a shipyard in Mississippi, another one at an Air Force base in North Carolina, and another one at a Marine base in Virginia. Those are more defense oriented, but this would certainly apply to all Federal agencies. The success of this program, though, is that 92 percent of the prospective employees have their Social Security number verified within seconds of the work authorization. So this isn't requiring that employers have some cumbersome, unworkable paperwork requirement. In fact, 50 percent of the employers who use this program surveyed have said that it is an excellent, good, to very good program. And 98 percent say that they are likely to continue to use this program. It is a very good tool, I think to crack down on Social Security verification. And as we know, right now the U.S. Senate is debating an enormously unpopular bill which seeks comprehensive immigration reform. This is a step. The American people have sent a clear signal that they want immigration reform but they would like it in the form of steps rather than comprehensive. So with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time. Point of Order

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I just want to say as a member of the Appropriations Committee now going on 14 years, I remember several years ago when Congressman David Skaggs of Boulder, Colorado, offered an amendment in the committee which reinstituted the War Powers Act, because at that time we were concerned that President Clinton was getting us involved in a war in Bosnia; so we put it on that bill. And I believe last session we put on the continuation of government on an appropriation bill, and I am a firm believer that we do routinely authorize on appropriation bills. We just need to agree with the authorization. So I want to say to my friend I have seen things accepted and things rejected.

Mr. KINGSTON. This is a speech and it is a very good speech.

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.