Steven LaTourette

Mr. LaTOURETTE

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk made in order under the rule.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I'm going to be brief in this opening. Let me just make this observation. This is the 17th extension, I believe, of the FAA bill. We haven't had an FAA bill since 2003, and this is going to take it to two more years because the President said he won't sign this bill unless this amendment is adopted. The Senate has declared this a nonstarter; and so if we want to give fancy speeches, and for those just tuning in around the country, welcome to whack the union night because this will be a fourth, fifth anti-union vote that has nothing to do with the aviation system. Even on the last amendment, I've got to tell you, you can't say it costs jobs and increases costs at the same time. If you hire the same amount of workers before Davis-Bacon and hire two times as many workers, well, the project is going to cost the same. So it's that kind of circular argument that's leading this circular firing squad. It's a good amendment. I urge its adoption. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds just to say this is a good example of what's going on here. The last amendment was going to repeal Davis-Bacon that's been around for 80 years, but 80 years is okay, 75 years isn't. That doesn't even make sense in this debate or anywhere else in America. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. When people read this record, they really need to know what this amendment is about and what we are talking about. What we are talking about is that the rule that the Mica bill repeals is that if you have 100 people who work for a company and you have an election and 70 of them show up and 65 of them vote to certify a union, the union loses because you don't get 50 plus the universe. Now in our example, Members of Congress, where voter turnout was about 45 percent in the last election, I have got 200,000 registered voters in my district, and 100,000 show up, I get 70,000. I'm having champagne. You know, This is great, Honey. We won another one. We fooled them again. Well, I would lose 130,000-70,000 because the rule that has been in place since 1935--and again, I am saddened that folks--maybe you have to have an even number to be bad law. But good law is, you know, something that is only 75 years. That's just nuts. I mean, that is crazy. And I will steal from my friend from Illinois (Mr. Costello) who is the cosponsor of this amendment. You know, when the Constitution was framed, who could vote in this country? White guys who owned land. And if you asked them 75 years later, they may have said, Man, I can't believe they changed that. It's unbelievable. Or how about women? Another 100 years, women couldn't vote in this country. If you asked some guys today, they may say, The country really got screwed up when you gave women the right to vote. That is a non sequitur. It's a false argument, and the best proof is right here in this House of Representatives. When the old majority was on their way out--and we all know they didn't do anything--we needed to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government open until March 4. Well, you know what, 75 of our Members went home for Christmas. So that CR, to keep the government open, passed 193-165. If the Mica rule is kept in place, the government would have shut down, and we would have lost that vote 193-240. Please pass the amendment.

Mr. LaTOURETTE

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the chairman for yielding. I listened with great interest to the distinguished minority leader and her remarks, and I always like listening to her. I never cast my ballot for her to become the Speaker of the House in the last two Congresses, but as an American we all celebrated the historic accomplishment when she became the first woman to preside over this Chamber since the founding of the Republic. And a lot of wonderful things will be said and written about her tenure as Speaker of the House. One thing that will not be said or written is that she presided over two Congresses that will be known for fiscal responsibility--that Congress passed a bank bailout bill costing $700 billion which may bankrupt the Nation; passed an $800 billion stimulus bill that created no jobs that may bankrupt the Nation; passed a cap-and-tax piece of legislation that would gut jobs in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and would have bankrupted the Nation; and, finally, a health care bill that took over one-sixth of the Nation's economy, did not bend the cost curve and, if not checked, will, in fact, bankrupt the Nation. The distinguished minority leader's speech reminds me of that old adage that everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die. We hear continuously we have to cut, we have to cut, we have to cut, but not these cuts, not those cuts, not this program, not my program. The time is now. The time is serious. We have laid an offer upon the table, and we wait with great expectation. Now, I know what all those people in St. Peters Square must feel like when they are waiting for the white smoke to come out of the top of the dome for the election of a Pope. We would like very much for the other side of this Capitol to give us a proposal to negotiate with. We would like very much for the Vice President of the United States to return to this Nation to talk to us. It's not happening. We need to pass the bill.

Mr. LaTOURETTE

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the gentlelady for yielding. I tell this story every time we talk about Davis-Bacon. Davis and Bacon were Republicans, and what was occurring was that you had out-of-town workers coming into New York City to build a hospital, undercutting the local labor market at a time when a lot of people were out of work. That's what Davis-Bacon is. Quite frankly, the last test we had on Davis-Bacon was during the hurricanes down in the gulf coast when President Bush suspended it for a period of time. We made the case to him that you weren't saving any money. Not only weren't you saving any money, but you were having workers come in because there weren't the anti-kickback provisions, so the payrolls didn't have to be submitted; and you had a lot of illegal workers coming down who still live in Louisiana, undercutting the local labor market. So I get that we don't like unions on this side of the aisle. But I've got to tell you, if you look at the labor rates for operating backhoes and everything else in the gentleman's, the author of the amendment, a carpenter makes $14.45 under Davis-Bacon, and a backhoe operator makes $14.53. Quite frankly, Mr. Chairman, I don't want somebody who's operating a backhoe near my house making less than that.

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

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the Chair very much. We have agreed informally that we are going to reduce the time on this to 20 minutes, 10 minutes per side, and I will move expeditiously through it. There was a little issue with the drafting that will be addressed later in the debate, and I may have a motion at the end of my discussion. I am honored to be joined in this amendment by Mr. Gibson and Mr. Dent. I hate across-the-board cuts. I really don't support across-the-board cuts; but I've got to tell you that this CR, as it currently stands, is the byproduct of the fact that we didn't get any appropriations bills done last year and that we have a deadline of March 4. I don't think the chairman of the full committee likes very much the CR that we are considering. If he did, he wouldn't have been required to write it three times in order to get the bill to the floor. As for the salient points, the substitute that we are presenting tonight is a deeper cut than the base bill. The base bill is advertised as saving, I believe, $106 billion. This amendment cuts $120 billion. It adopts numbers on Defense, MILCON, Homeland, Israel, Gitmo; the earmarks are gone; the stimulus money is back. To my Republican friends, I would say that, if this debate is really about the number, this is a bigger number, $120 billion, as opposed to $100 billion. If it's about social engineering, then you'll vote ``no'' on this particular amendment. To my Democratic friends, I say we just can't give speeches about, well, we would like to cut stuff, but we just want to cut this stuff, and we don't want to cut that stuff. The President's vision of a freeze was a bold strategy in 1995 when I got here. It's a failed strategy in 2011. This particular substitute restores NEA, CPB, Food for Peace, CDBG, but with shared, across-the- board sacrifice. I would ask our Members to consider it. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the distinguished ranking member for the kind words. I think your speech has gotten me votes from progressives and conservatives in the same speech, so I appreciate that very much. I now yield 2 minutes to one of my partners in crime here, a new Member of the House, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gibson).

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Which is really 3 minutes remaining. So, if it's all right, I would like to yield 1 minute, and then I will notify the distinguished ranking member that I will take the last 2 minutes and close. I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. Bass), the oldest returning freshman--a freshman in 1995 and again in 2011.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the distinguished chairman for his remarks, and I congratulate him on his hard work this week. However, I would note that this amendment was in order during the reading of the table of contents, and as a courtesy to the committee, we didn't offer it then. We all could have been home on Tuesday at about 2 o'clock in the afternoon. It is now my pleasure to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Dent).

Mr. LaTOURETTE. It is now my pleasure to yield 1 minute to a new Member of the House, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Dold).

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Well, I've got 2 minutes, so I'm going to yield myself the balance of my time. I certainly don't wish to waste anybody's time, but I've sat through a lot of interesting debate over the last 3 or 4 days, and my time has been wasted plenty with silly things like not wanting to pay for the repairs at the White House, but we went through that exercise today. This was a serious attempt to talk about shared sacrifice and the belief that, in some parts of the country, some programs are more popular than others. So our belief was, if we're going to have shared sacrifice, everybody should be in the game. We shouldn't pick programs the Republicans like and keep them and pick programs that Democrats like and be done with them. Now, I do want to take one second to talk about this defense number-- because I drafted this thing. I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I've got to tell you that it was never our intent to not carry over the emergency supplemental. The information that we had is that the language included in the substitute did, in fact, by indicating that we were not dealing with emergency spending and referencing section 423 of the supplemental, accomplish that purpose. I'm told by much brighter people than I that we didn't do that, so I apologize for that drafting error. Having said that, let me tell you, I'm not going to apologize for taking 20 minutes out of 80 hours--or whatever we had here--to talk about the vision of some people on our side who don't think this bill represents shared sacrifice. In Cleveland, Ohio, people listen to the radio, and some of them like to listen to NPR. We don't think that that should be zeroed out. In Cleveland, Ohio, some people value the arts, and we don't think that there should be a tremendous cut to the National Endowment for the Arts. In Cleveland, Ohio, we build our communities with the Community Development Block Grant, and we don't think it should get a 66 percent cut. As Americans, we happen to value the Food for Peace program, which not only feeds hungry people all across the world, but is really the last bastion, if we're going to talk about jobs around here, the merchant mariner, it's one of that merchant mariner's lifelines for employment. So I don't make any apologies for taking 20 minutes out of your busy lives to talk about this vision and why some of us wish that both sides would get together, not have the sacred cows that keep us from reaching a conclusion on this thing, and work this thing out. I guess I'm apologizing for being the last person; but in light of the defense number, I don't want to put my young lambs at risk of some stupid political ad that says they sponsored something that cut $33 billion from the Defense Department of this great country. Therefore, Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to withdraw the amendment.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. Chairman, it is now my pleasure to yield 1 minute to another fine Member, the gentlewoman from Illinois (Mrs. Biggert).

Mr. LaTOURETTE. May I inquire as to how much time I have left, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I would notify the distinguished ranking member that I'm the last speaker, and I'm going to consume our last 2 minutes--so have at it. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. Chairman, I have 2 minutes remaining; is that right?

Mr. LaTOURETTE

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. Chair, I want to congratulate the gentleman from Kansas, one of our new Members, Mr. Pompeo, for not only a thoughtful amendment but an amendment when he is jumping right into the fray some 45 days after he has assumed office here. I think I was here for about 2 years before I even gave my first floor speech. So congratulations to him. Sadly, however, we have to oppose your amendment. This was an account that the committee and the staff looked at hard as the CR was being prepared. It has been reduced by $5 million in the continuing resolution. It was at $16 million. It's down to $11 million in the CR. The feeling continues to be that cutting it further would be irresponsible because cutting the funding does nothing to change the mandate that's in the law of March 31 of this year that the industry has to report their emissions by that date. Since this is the first time through this reporting requirement, there are obviously a lot of questions that businesses and industries all across the country have, and they are calling the EPA for technical assistance on how to be in compliance. If the program is reduced, as the gentleman's amendment would suggest, it will leave companies high and dry with a reporting requirement with no one on the other end to answer the telephone to help them out to meet their obligations. Considering that, we have felt that we could achieve the $5 million in savings now. And I can tell the gentleman that it's at least a majority of the committee's feeling that we will review and address this issue in a more comprehensive manner as we proceed with the 2012 budget. As such, I recommend that our colleagues vote ``no'' on this amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. Chair, again, as with Mr. Pompeo's amendment, the gentleman from Kansas, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Reed) is also a new Member of the body, and I commend him for coming to the floor and offering this thoughtful amendment. For those of us who have been here a little while, the seat which Mr. Reed holds used to belong to our dear friend Amo Houghton, who was a friend and a champion for many issues for many years in this body. And although we welcome Mr. Reed to our company, we oppose his amendment. In the CR we have reduced the U.S.-Mexico border program by $7 million from $17 million in 2010 to $10 million in the continuing resolution. It's a 41 percent decrease. This action taken on behalf of the committee reduces the CR level to a level below the increase that was added in 2010 by the previous majority party, over and above President Obama's request. This is a program that we plan to have active discussions on with the EPA during the 2012 budget hearings, and we'll either build the case for further reductions, or we will have a better understanding of why we should look elsewhere for additional cuts based upon programmatic needs. Therefore, while I congratulate my friend and new colleague from New York, I recommend that our colleagues vote ``no'' on this amendment, given that we have achieved what we intended to achieve via the CR, and that is to take the necessary first step at past programmatic increases and allow for a deliberative process in 2012 to examine the true needs of this program. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. LaTOURETTE

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. Speaker, I wasn't going to come over and talk on this bill this morning, but there's some things that are upsetting me as we wind down this lame duck session, and I think there's one merciful thing that could happen around here--this lame duck ought to be killed because nothing good's occurring at the moment. But this particular bill, I am a proud cosponsor of this bill with Ms. Kaptur and I commend her for moving this legislation; and as a matter of fact, we were engaged in some conversations last night to clear it for unanimous consent. That didn't quite work out because there are, as you know from the debate today, some objections. But I have to say that having listened to the discussion, the objections fall short, in my estimation. This bill doesn't extend TARP. By the way, for the record, I voted against TARP despite the fact that President Bush wanted us to vote for it, Secretary Paulson and a number of our leadership. I thought it was a bad idea, continue to think it's a bad idea even though some people say it saved America. Bad idea because it had no rules. We're going to do this--no, we're going to do that--we're going to buy banks, whatever. But, anyway, so the money is already out there, however, and all this bill does is say that States may have an option, if they choose, to take some of the money in the hard hit fund and allow people who are being foreclosed upon unjustly to use those funds for legal representation. No class action, no ACORN, no peanuts, no nothing. I mean, this is a clean bill when it comes to that, and I think that we are letting form subsume substance. Yesterday, I was on the floor and I was a cosponsor on a piece of legislation with the gentlelady from Minnesota (Ms. McCollum) that would have just moved money, no new money, would have moved money so that societies that are coercing young girls into marriage, we could build them latrines so they could go to school or we could make sure that they could stay in school so they're not forced into marriage at the age of 12 and 13. All of a sudden, there is a fiscal argument. When that didn't work, people had to add an abortion element to it. Look, this is a partisan place. I'm a Republican. I'm glad that we beat their butt in the election and we're going to be in the majority next year. But there comes a time when enough is enough, and McCollum's bill was a good bill last night. Kaptur's bill is a good bill today. We should stop the nonsense, approve the bill and move on.

Mr. LaTOURETTE

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Just so I am clear on the Chair's ruling, and that is that when the Rules Committee passes a rule waiving the rules of the House and protecting language that is clearly in violation of House rule XXI (2)(a), if the Rules Committee further compounds that by announcing a rule that only a certain subset of amendments are going to be made in order, that no Member, not just majority Members, or the chairman, no Member of this House has the opportunity to do anything about that offending language. Am I correct in that?

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Further parliamentary inquiry. That was a long sentence. I think the answer to my question was yes.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. On this particular amendment, Mr. Arcuri, I congratulate you as a thoughtful member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee for coming up with a beautiful amendment that's apparently going to be adopted by both sides. Now that I've talked about the amendment, I want to talk about the parliamentary inquiry that I asked a few minutes ago, and discuss what's at stake here, and ask the distinguished chairman of the subcommittee to reconsider what I consider to be a sad decision. We spend a lot of time talking about jobs in this place. Some people say they're creating jobs; others say they're not. A lot of people are wandering around saying, where are the jobs. But at the end of the day, what is immutable, or what is irrefutable, and I believe it's included in the Committee's report on this bill, is that all across the country, in 84 percent of the transit authorities in this Nation, because of the way that the current formula is structured, transit companies around the country have plenty of money to buy buses. They don't have any money to hire or retain people to drive them. And the last total that I saw since this situation began is that 10,000 people, 10,000 Americans who work for transit companies and drive buses in this country, and rail cars and everything else, are currently out of work. Now, the transit authorities of this country have come to our attention, and I assume they've visited all Members on the Hill that have transit authorities and they have said, you know what? Just for this year, if we could take some of that capital improvement money that we have sitting around, it's stupid for us to buy a new bus because we don't have enough people to drive the buses that we currently have. And so, if we could just take the cost of fuel and move it from the operations side over to the capital side, we could bring back the people that we have laid off. So it boggles the mind. And when I offered this in the subcommittee, the chairman shot it down. When I offered it in the full committee, the chairman had a substitute amendment that causes the offending language to rule XXI(2)(a) that's contained on pages 56 and 57. And let me just tell you why anybody that cares about a transit worker in this country should be upset by this substitute language. First of all, it's $250 million. It doesn't help every transit authority in the country. It makes it a grant program. So Secretary Ray LaHood can choose, pick and choose, which transit authorities across the country he would choose to participate in this grant program. But worse than that is the restrictive language that indicates that it only goes into effect if the highway bill comes into play on or before September 30 of 2011. Now, Mr. Chairman, I spent 12 years on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and I know how the highway bill works. I participated in writing two of those highway bills. The President of the United States, through his Secretary, has indicated they don't even want to talk about the reauthorization until March of 2011. Now, even if Jim Oberstar, who is a skilled chairman and has the able assistance of people like Mr. Arcuri, is able to work a miracle and put on this floor the reauthorization, and the Senate ever gets their act together enough to pass such a thing and have it signed by the President of the United States, you are looking now at October, November, December, January, February, and March. Why don't we care enough to put down the partisan nonsense and simply say we care about the 10,000 transit workers in this country who are out of work. It doesn't spend any more money. It has all the incentives of the green fuel initiatives that, actually, the champion of this thing is Mr. Carnahan of Missouri, has a bill with a lot of cosponsors on it. Why we wouldn't do that and, instead, hide behind rule XXI (2)(a), hide behind the rule that's been produced by the Rules Committee. Why don't you let these people come back to the work? The majority and the President of the United States, with the signing of this bill, could claim credit for creating or saving 10,000 jobs with the stroke of a pen. I don't know why we do it.