John Linder

Mr. LINDER

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I will have to confess, when he started talking about all that Chinese money, I thought he was showing us President Clinton's 1996 disclosure. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Slaughter), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only. Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 511 is a closed rule providing for consideration of H.R. 3916, the Telephone Excise Tax Repeal Act. This bill is designed to amend the Internal Revenue Code to repeal the excise tax on telephone and other communications services. H. Res. 511 provides for 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on Ways and Means. The rule waives all points of order against consideration of the bill. The rule provides that the amendment recommended by the Committee on Ways and Means now printed in the bill shall be considered as adopted upon adoption of the resolution. Finally, the rule provides one motion to recommit, with or without instructions, as is the right of the minority. Mr. Speaker, when it comes to unintended consequences in crafting tax policy, the Federal Government has shown a tendency to lead the way. If you remember, in 1991 the U.S. Congress passed a luxury tax on yachts to punish the rich, a tax that subsequently bankrupted American companies, forced sales in that sector to drop 75 percent, and resulted in the loss of about 30,000 jobs. That Congress thought that the luxury tax was a tax on the rich, and the unintended consequences of their actions resulted in a tax on American workers and the loss of their jobs. Today we are going to discuss the telecommunications tax, a tax that is currently having the unintended consequence of limiting the opportunities of lower- and middle-income Americans to have affordable access to the information superhighway. In effect, it is a tax on talking and on access to the Internet. This particular telecommunications tax was enacted by Congress in 1898 to help pay for the Spanish-American War. While the war has been over for 102 years, like most temporary taxes, it is now a permanent tax. In 1990, the same tax-happy Congress that brought you the disastrous luxury boat tax, decided in its wisdom to make the telecommunications tax permanent. The tax originally consisted of a penny tax on long distance calls costing more than 15 cents. It is important to note that in 1898 there were approximately 1,376 telephones in this entire country, and that, of course, this luxury tax would affect only the very, very rich. However, in the 21st century, 102 years after this temporary tax was initially enacted, this tax hits not just the rich, but all Americans. In fact, this regressive tax hammers lower-income Americans the hardest. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, families earning between $10,000 and $30,000 a year spend between 3 and 4 percent of their incomes on telecommunications. Those Americans making $70,000 or more each year spend about 1 percent of their income on telecommunications. Nonetheless, the truth is that all Americans must now pay a 3 percent tax on their phone bill, an estimated 252 million business and residential phone lines. The tax can be applied to telecommunications services such as general household phone lines, cellular phones, fax lines, computer modem lines, subscriber line charges, add-on features such as call waiting and caller ID, toll call services and directory assistance. As you may have guessed, all Americans, rich and poor, now have to pay the tax. Mr. Speaker, this is just one more tax that makes the costs prohibitive for lower-income Americans to go online and participate in the new high-tech economy. As one who supports reducing the overall tax burden on American families, I wholeheartedly support this bill. H.R. 3916, which will reduce the tax to 2 percent beginning 30 days after enactment, reduces the tax to 1 percent on October 1, 2001, and repeals the tax entirely on October 1, 2002. The high-tech revolution has changed the way that every American works and lives and has provided Americans with more freedom, prosperity, and job opportunities for the future. The foolish and shortsighted tax policies of the 101st Congress should not be permitted to act as an unreasonable toll against low- and middle-income Americans attempting to get on the information superhighway. This Congress will repeal the telecom tax and ensure that excessive government taxation does not threaten the ability of all Americans to participate in opportunities that will be presented in the high-tech future. This rule was unanimously approved by the Committee on Rules on Tuesday, and I urge my colleagues to support it so we may proceed with general debate and consideration of this bipartisan bill. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Blunt.)

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 511 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee). (Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Staten Island, New York (Mr. Fossella). (Mr. FOSSELLA asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I would like to point out to the gentleman that in 1993 and 1994 with overwhelming majorities in both bodies and a Democrat President, he could have done anything he wanted with that 3 percent and solved all of those problems. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he might consume to the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier), the chairman of the Committee on Rules. (Mr. DREIER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Cincinnati, Ohio (Mr. Portman), the sponsor of the underlying bill.

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LINDER

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I offer a privileged concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 336) and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. LINDER

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier) for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I am the first one to stipulate that China has problems with its people and its government on human rights on labor and the environment. But after approving normal trade relations for 20 years, have we changed that? Is this about that? This is not a gift to the Chinese Government. It may be a gift to America's workers. We already have the lowest tariffs in the world, and all this will do will take down the tariffs in China and open a market of 1.3 billion people to our workers to sell goods and services. It may be a gift to the Chinese people because they will have a much broader range of consumer products at a much lower price for them to buy, to enhance their standard of living. Why permanent? The American businessman and woman needs some degree of predictability to make commitments over the long haul, and going back to the well once a year to ever-increasing votes, but once a year to hammer China on human rights to wonder if they are going to have open markets again does not give them the ability to make long-range plans. Let me just close by saying something that Chris Patten wrote. He was the last governor of Hong Kong, the British Empire. He wrote in the Economist, and he said if a spaceship had come to the planet from Mars in the 16th century and landed in the teepee settlements of North America to the typhoid-ridden flats of London, to the warring clans in Europe, and settled in the 16th century Mandarin Dynasty, he would have concluded without a second's thought that China would rule the world for centuries. They had invented gun powder, the printing press, the compass. They had an armada at sea. They had an efficient government, an improved cultural base, the envy of the world. Then they withdrew behind the wall and history told a different tale. We are breaking down the great wall of China with our travel and our access to it. The last wall is tariffs to our products, the products that our workers make. We must help them bring that wall down. This bill will do it today, and I urge a yes vote.

Mr. LINDER

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Chairman will the gentleman yield?

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Chairman, this also is an amendment that deals with the Federal bureaucracy micromanaging, in this case how counties run their business. Mr. Chairman, in 1998 we passed the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st century, otherwise known as TEA-21. Under this bill almost every region in the Nation was able to benefit from the additional transportation dollars made available through the Highway Trust Fund, every region, that is, except my own. The Atlanta metro area has not been able to spend a dime of its Federal highway allotment for more than a year and a half. This is because Atlanta has not met Federal clean air standards since 1996 and the Clean Air Act prohibits further road and transit construction until a plan is presented that will bring the city back into conformity. For over a year, the Atlanta Regional Commission, which is tasked with drawing up the plan worked with local leaders and Federal officials to craft a plan that complied with the law and met the needs of Atlanta's residents. However, in a suspicious move on the day before the ARC was slated to approve the plan, two Federal agencies, the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Transit Administration stepped in the way. In a letter to then ARC Director Harry West, these agencies cited five serious concerns with the plan that ARC officials had resolved months before. Unless these requirements were met, the Federal Government said, Atlanta would not get its money. Aside from the obvious concerns that this raises about the tactics used by this administration to work with local governments, all of the three remaining requirements that must be addressed have never been demanded of another metro area in America. They are demanding that the counties comply with their new zoning ideas, their ideas on mass transit funds and environmental justice. We looked in the statutes for the definition of environmental justice. It appears in Executive Order 1289. It has to do with disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of its programs, policies and activities on minority populations or low-income areas. It further goes on to say that we must not only not do that but we must prove we do not, prove a negative. No other metro area has been asked to do this yet. This is unacceptable, and I present this amendment and others today in an effort to demand equity and fairness for all Americans who are facing down out-of-control bureaucrats wielding environmental regulations. If we are to believe the Federal Government's demands before Atlanta will be able to get the gas tax money that TEA-21 grants it, county commissioners and State regulators will have to sign sworn documents saying that they will change the way they zone the land in their jurisdictions. In other words, they are accountable to Federal officials, not the voters when they zone the land my constituents live on. Last week's supporters of CARA said it was outrageous for opponents to claim that the Federal Government wants to get in the land use business. It already is. The FHWA and FTA in Atlanta have already said they will require counties and cities to build more apartments, put houses closer together and build rail lines into downtown districts. If they do not, they will take away our highway funds again. In fact, they may even rely on another State agency appointed by the Governor, the Georgia Regional Transit Authority, to enforce their standards for them. For the record, there is no title, no section of the Clean Air Act that requires regions to sign over the zoning authority to Federal agencies. This is a standard made up completely by the Clinton Administration, a standard that no other city in America has had to meet. However, we have heard on multiple occasions from Federal officials and environmentalists that Atlanta ``will be a model for the Nation.'' If you like what you see in Atlanta, do not worry, it will be coming to a city near you. No local official should ever be bound by Federal officials to conduct the basic job they have been asked to perform. It is an affront to a constitutional republic itself when an elected official takes his marching orders from anyone other than the voters who elected him. That standard applies for government bureaucrats as much as it does interest groups. My amendment would prohibit the FHWA and FTA from requiring any local or State official to be legally bound to alter their zoning or land use plans to satisfy the Federal bureaucrats. I ask Members to support this amendment, protect local governments from this outrageous assumption that Washington knows your neighborhoods best.

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

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Chairman, our lateness will cause me to withdraw the amendment. Part of the problem came because it was just this past week in a meeting when the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority was talking about the need for smart growth and was asked during the meeting what is the definition of ``smart growth,'' and nobody on the commission knew what it was, so they appointed, in their way, a committee to determine what it is. These are late developing things in Atlanta. I will be dealing with you further. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the amendment.

Mr. LINDER

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the Comprehensive Budget Process Reform Act and I want to congratulate my colleagues on the Committee on Rules, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier) for their commitment to these reforms and specifically their efforts to craft the amendment to establish a 2-year budgeting timetable. The Comprehensive Budget Process Reform Act is an important institutional reform that will strengthen the enforcement of budgetary controls, enhance accountability for Federal spending, set aside funds in the budget for emergencies and alleviate the tendency toward higher spending. Specifically, I want to comment on the biennial budgeting amendment that will create a 2-year budget cycle. Before acting on these historic budget reforms, the Committee on Rules held two days of hearings on budget process reform and an additional 3 days of comprehensive hearings focused solely on biennial budgeting. Over and over again, we heard testimony that not only would biennial budgeting not diminish the role of Congress in the budget process, but that it would actually improve legislative branch management of Federal spending. For example, Dan Crippen, Director of the Congressional Budget Office, stated that ``It seems unlikely that agencies would be less responsive to the Congress simply because they would be requesting regular appropriations every other year. Also, a biennial budget cycle by setting aside time for Congressional action on oversight and authorizing legislation might relieve the appropriations process of time consuming debates on substantive policy issues which can actually improve Congressional control of spending.'' Congress will continue to decide, down to the account level, the exact amount of spending in every appropriation bill just as is done under current law. In fact, biennial budgeting may enhance Congress' control over the budget since the process gives legislators an increased opportunity to review existing policies and expenditures. On the topic of increased opportunities to review programs, we have taken testimony in the Committee on Rules and in my subcommittee on the need to dramatically increase what is clearly a priority responsibility of ours: The issue of programmatic oversight. In addition to saving time and resources, I strongly believe that this bipartisan, biennial reform proposal will improve oversight and management of Federal spending. Specifically, the Dreier-Luther-Regula-Hall amendment will permit committees to concentrate on budget and appropriations in the first session, and authorization and oversight in the second session. The 1993 Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, led by our former colleague Lee Hamilton and the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier), chairman of the Committee on Rules, recognize that the current budget system is not working effectively and recommended biennial budgeting as a key reform. In hearings of the Committee on Rules in March, OMB Director Jack Lew stated that ``The primary potential benefit from biennial budgeting is that by concentrating budget decisions in the first year of each 2-year period, time would be freed up in the second year that could be redirected to management, long-range planning and oversight.'' The bipartisan biennial budget amendment will also put the requirements of the Government Performance and Results Act on a logical timetable in conjunction with the development of budgets every 2 years. Under the new timetable, the GPRA reporting requirements would come at the most optimal time of the budget process to provide committees with the opportunity to utilize the performance information. As a result, we will deliver more efficient services to the American people in the most effective way. Under the biennial timetable, the President's budget will be submitted to Congress with biennial governmentwide performance plans and reports and agencies will submit separate biennial performance plans. The process will effectively give authorizing committees the opportunity to include their views of the GPRA plans and reports as parts of the views they submit to the Committee on the Budget. Utilizing GPRA in this manner will improve performance by letting us examine the program structures that Congress has put into place to achieve better results for the American people. It appears clear that the Federal Government is too often preoccupied with budget matters and has limited time to manage and oversee Federal programs or concentrate on long-term planning. In an effort to streamline the budget process and enhance Congressional oversight of Federal programs, I urge strong support for the biennial budgeting amendment and final passage of this historic institutional reform.

Mr. LINDER

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 496 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I will just comment on the gentleman's comments who previously spoke about a 60 percent or 59.5 percent sales tax just to point out his own Democrat staff on the Committee on Ways and Means estimates that the next year tax, revenue neutral, to be about 24 percent. He will pick the worst scenario. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution. The previous question was ordered.

Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to my friend, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall) pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, during consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only. Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 496 is an open rule providing for consideration of H.R. 3709, the Internet Nondiscrimination Act. H. Res. 496 provides one hour of general debate equally divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on the Judiciary. The rule waives points of order against consideration of the bill for failure to comply with clause 4(a) of rule 13, which requires a 3-day layover of the committee report. H. Res. 496 makes in order the Committee on the Judiciary amendment in the nature of a substitute now printed in the bill as an original bill for the purpose of amendment, which shall be open for amendment at any point and provides that the amendment process shall not exceed 2 hours. The rule allows the chairman of the Committee of the Whole to accord priority in recognition to those Members who have preprinted their amendments in the Congressional Record prior to their consideration. The rule also allows the chairman of the Committee of the Whole to postpone recorded votes and reduce to 5 minutes the voting time on any postponed question providing that voting time on the first in any series of questions is not less than 15 minutes. Finally, the rule provides one motion to recommit, with or without instructions, as is the right of the minority. Mr. Speaker, as one who supports reducing the overall tax burden on American families, I wholeheartedly support this bill and the rule that brings it before us. The high-tech revolution has changed the way that every American works and lives and has provided Americans with more freedom and prosperity. The high-tech sector accounted for 35 percent of the Nation's real economic growth from 1994 to 1998. In Atlanta alone, according to the Metro-Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, we have more than 9,000 technology-related companies employing more than 165,000 technology workers. The high-tech sector is the engine of our current economic prosperity and has created thousands of new jobs and opportunities for our constituents, and we must ensure that excessive government intervention through discriminatory taxes and regulation does not threaten the future of the high-tech industry. H.R. 3709 honors our pledge to ensure that barriers to future innovation, competition and growth in the high-tech sector do not discriminate against electronic commerce. The bill before us fulfills the promises made in 1998, when the 105th Congress unanimously passed the Internet Tax Freedom Act. As my colleagues may recall, this important law prohibited for 3 years any taxes on the Internet access charges levied by service providers or any multiple or discriminatory taxes on Internet commerce. The Internet Tax Freedom Act also created a commission to study if and how e-commerce should be taxed. The commission reported back to Congress after months of considering the complexities of tax law as it relates to the emerging e-commerce sector. While the commission was not able to agree on a new format for dealing with this difficult challenge, a majority of the members did agree on one thing, the need to extend the moratorium. Under current law, the 3-year moratorium on Internet taxation is set to expire on October 21, 2001, and can only be extended by Congress. I supported the moratorium when it was proposed, and I continue to support it now. There has been some confusion about the effect of the language of the moratorium, and I want to take a brief moment to mention that this moratorium does not affect the larger issue of States and localities collecting taxes on sales that occur on the Internet. The bill deals only with the discriminatory taxes against the Internet, taxes that would not generally be imposed or legally collectible by a State or local government on transactions involving similar services. Despite the fact that this bill does not affect the issues of sales taxes, I do believe that the Advisory Commission was on target in stating that the current sales and use tax system is complex and burdensome. Clearly, some nationwide consistency and fairness between Internet and Main Street retailers is necessary. While the ultimate impact of e-commerce on traditional retailers and State revenues is far from clear, an equitable and fair tax system should not disproportionately burden any type of seller. What H.R. 3709 does do is extend the moratorium on taxes on Internet access and multiple and discriminatory taxes on electronic commerce for 5 additional years. The Internet Tax Freedom Act was aimed simply at preventing tax discrimination on-line, not at giving a tax preference, and the Internet Nondiscrimination Act continues this sound policy. This extension would give businesses, policymakers, and the public more time to ensure that the ultimate solution to this dilemma will be comprehensive, equitable, and conducive to the growth of all sectors of the American economy. Too often, we have rushed into making tax policy with only our good intentions, and the final product is a tax code that has dozens of loopholes, hundreds of giveaways, and thousands of pages that even our best policy analysts do not understand. We cannot afford to do the same with the Internet. We can do better with America's money. I congratulate the Committee on the Judiciary for their hard work on this legislation. This is a fair rule that allows all germane alternatives to be considered. I urge my colleagues to support it so that we may proceed with general debate and consideration of this bipartisan bill. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.