George Miller

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise in strong support of H. Con. Res. 434. This fire season, nearly 7 million acres of land burned throughout the West in over 85,000 wildfires. Nearly 1,000 homes were destroyed. Yet, through the valiant efforts of over 30,000 wildland firefighters, both professional and volunteer, property damage and loss of life were minimized. These brave and dedicated men and women work far from home for long periods of time, under grueling conditions, and with few rewards to protect our land, our homes and our lives. I join my colleagues in commending those extraordinary workers who literally put their lives on the line every day. Sadly, during the course of this fire season, 16 firefighters died in the line of duty. I join my colleagues in recognizing their sacrifice and mourning their loss. I want to thank the sponsors of this resolution, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden), the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Udall), and the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Udall), who particularly felt the impact of these fires in their States and join them in expressing gratitude to the firefighters. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. (Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, S. 2020 is a noncontroversial bill which the National Park Service supports. It provides for the acquisition of 230 acres of the Natchez Trace National Parkway, and we support this legislation. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. S. 2485 is a noncontroversial bill that authorizes the Secretary of the Interior to assist in the construction of a Regional Heritage Center on St. Croix Island. St. Croix Island is located in the middle of the St. Croix River, which forms the boundary between the United States and Canada. The proposed heritage center will be built as part of the upcoming 400th anniversary of the settlement of St. Croix Island. The National Park Service administers the St. Croix Island international historic site on the island. The proposed heritage center is consistent with Park Service plans for interpretation of the historic site and the island. The Secretary is authorized to contribute $2 million toward the construction of the heritage center, provided that each Federal dollar is matched by funds from non-Federal sources. A House companion measure was introduced by the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Baldacci).

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I just want to commend the gentleman from Guam (Mr. Underwood) who has spent a considerable amount of time working out all of the difficulties with this legislation in bringing the parties together. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands (Mrs. Christensen), and I thank her for her help on this legislation.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Guam (Mr. Underwood), who has worked very long and hard on this legislation and has worked with all of us on the committee to resolve concerns that have been raised.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, recently the Contra Costa Times newspaper wrote an article about a person who has become a fixture in central Contra Costa County. Dolores Larkin has had an amazing career serving hot dogs at Caspers Famous Hot Dogs in Pleasant Hill, California. For more than 45 years Dolores has done more than serve hot dogs. For all these years she has had to listen to people in our community who have had problems or are down on their luck. It is not unusual to go into Caspers and see Dolores counseling someone about their kids or talking to her own kids. Whenever you walk into Caspers, she always has a smile for you. That is why so many people go out of their way to get a dog at Caspers. Mr. Speaker, I should know; I have eaten as many Caspers hot dogs as any person in the county. I started eating hot dogs at Caspers in Richmond. There was a rumor when we were young that the record number of dogs eaten in one sitting was 19. On a challenge I tried to break it and got to 14. Even today the debate goes on as to where the best hot dog was served. Was it Chris's in Oakland, Doggie Diner in Oakland and Richmond or Kaspers with a ``K''? Mr. Speaker, time turned out to be the test; most of the others are gone now--they just could not compete with the great people at Caspers, especially Dolores who has been a great friend to so many in the community. It is wonderful to see her get this recognition. I submit the following article from the Contra Costa Times: Hot Dog Lady's a Fixture at Pleasant Hill eatery (By Katie Oyan) Pleasant Hill--Dolores Larkin rarely goes unnoticed. People point and stare at her in the grocery store, at the doctor's office--even once when she was vacationing in Hawaii. ``Kids will say, `Look mom, it's the hot dog lady!' '' she said, ``It used to embarrass me, but it doesn't anymore. I like it.'' In November, the 68-year-old great-grandmother will celebrate her 45th anniversary as an employee at Casper's Famous Hot Dogs, a popular hang-out and fast-food joint on the corner of Vivian Drive and Contra Costa Boulevard. The Concord resident doesn't sling dogs for the money. In fact, the only bad thing one of her managers, Ron Dorian, could say about Larkin is that she sometimes forgets to cash her paychecks. Instead, the ``hot dog lady'' said she has stuck around for the company. ``I like my customers--that's why I'm here,'' said Larkin, wearing her long, dark hair in a pony-tail and bubble-gum pink earrings to match her Casper's apron. Over the years, Larkin has made Casper's her second home. Of her five children, 10 grandchildren and six great- grandchildren, seven of them have worked with her at the restaurant, and some still do. To family, she's known as ``Grandma hot dog.'' Before coming to Pleasant Hill, Larkin spent five years at the Casper's on First Avenue in Oakland. In 1960, her boss sent her to the Pleasant Hill Casper's to train employees before the restaurant's grand opening. She has been there ever since. And so have many of her customers. Bob Wescott, a retired military pilot and researcher, has been a regular for so long, Larkin gave him his own key. Five days a week, he opens the store and starts the coffee, getting a cup ready for Larkin when she comes in. ``Another gentleman and his wife did it for years, but they got too old and said they couldn't do it anymore. I guess I just happened to be there,'' Wescott said. A couple of retired Pleasant Hill police officers also lend Larkin a little volunteer labor. They come in each morning and restock the restaurant's paper cups and lids. If there are any light bulbs that need replacing, they do that, too. ``Everyone thinks the world of Dolores,'' Wescott said. ``That's why we do it. She's just an awful nice person, that's all.'' One of the first fast food chains in the Bay Area, Casper's migrated to the East Bay from Chicago in 1934. In addition to the one in Pleasant Hill, there are 10 Casper's restaurants-- in Albany, Richmond, San Pablo, Walnut Creek, Dublin, Concord, two in Oakland and two in Hayward. Among the other stores in the chain, the Pleasant Hill Casper's is known as ``the country club'' for its friendly, comfortable environment, Larkin said. Devoid of a playland or flashy banners, a couple of counters and a handful of wooden tables give the restaurant its old fashioned appeal. ``Floy,'' the philodendron in the front window, is named after a coworker who died about five years ago. ``We raised our kids together,'' Larkin said. The Pleasant Hill Casper's is also the most successful in the chain, selling about 200,000 dogs a year. People go out of their way to stop there for a $2 or $3 meal. Larkin said the most popular item is the Casper's dog, a natural-casing frankfurter that comes on a steamed bun with mustard, relish, tomatoes and onions. Employees also serve 10-inch spicy polish, smoked Cajun and turkey frankfurters. Red Skelton is the most famous person Larkin can remember serving. He came in two or three times, she said. Congressman George Miller stops in once in a while, too. In her spare time, Larkin makes cakes for her friends' birthdays and weddings. Her other hobby is ``kids.'' ``My last girl was born on my day off, she said. ``I worked all nine months.'' About 10 years ago, a mathematician who dropped in for a hot dog figured out that if someone were to line up end-to- end all the hot dogs that Larkin has served, they'd stretch from here to San Diego. By now, they'd probably stretch halfway back again.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Guam (Mr. Underwood). (Mr. UNDERWOOD asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee). (Mr. INSLEE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey).

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, this matter this morning is a serious matter because potentially for three citizens of the United States criminal liability may attach. But as serious as this matter is for those three individuals, this matter is not about what the chairman of my committee just said it is about. This is about three or four individuals that blew the whistle on a plan by 15 oil companies to deny the American taxpayers of the revenues that they were entitled to through the royalty program for oil taken off of the public lands that are owned by the people of the United States. Since that whistle has been blown and that program was discovered and the intentions were made known, this committee served not a single subpoena on those oil companies, this committee sent not a single letter to those oil companies asking them how they could defraud the Government of the United States. Instead, this committee rounded up four individuals and started badgering them in a hearing that had no definition, no parameters, and changed direction numerous times. But the core finding is clear and convincing. Fifteen oil companies settled for almost half a billion dollars, settled. How much more of American taxpayer has been denied we will not know because of that settlement. This is about what happens to an American citizen when the full force and effect of the Federal Government and the Congress of the United States comes down on their head because this was not a situation where these citizens have been charged with anything, indicted of anything, tried for anything, or convicted of anything. There is a notion in the majority's head that these people somehow are involved in criminal activity. So far, the only showing of any of that will be if the suggestion is that some criminal liability attaches for failing to answer the question. But, mind you, the Supreme Court of the United States is very, very cognizant of the force and the effect of the United States Government when it comes down on a private citizen; and it says that, when it asks a citizen a question in a hearing like this, it must do something that is very important, it must show that citizen, because that citizen must make a snap decision because liability attaches as to whether or not they are going to ask that question over and over, the Supreme Court has told this Congress of the United States that it must show them that that question is pertinent to the investigation. Now, the questions that they asked these individuals were questions where they were wandering around in side-bar litigation that had nothing to do with the writing of the regulations. And these witnesses, while they provided thousands and thousands of documents, while they have answered hundreds and hundreds of hours of questions in depositions and elsewhere, where the committee, in fact, had the evidence that they were seeking in the depositions in the other case, they have now decided that they are going to make victims of these four people. The victims here are the taxpayers of the United States who were defrauded of half a billion dollars or more by 15 oil companies. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney). (Mrs. MALONEY of New York asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio).

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Deutsch).

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, we have immense power in this body. We have the power to do things that other people only dream about. We can do some wonderful things. We can fight for a cure of cancer. We can feed hungry children. We can defend this country by making the resources available to do all of those things. But every now and then in the history of this Congress, we also have the ability to run off the tracks and to bring down the power of this institution on an individual or an organization or a couple of individuals and put them in such jeopardy and deny them such rights that it is a nightmare to the average citizen of what they would do in that situation. That is why there are rules. There are rules to protect the American citizen against its government. In court, in grand jury proceedings, in the Congress of the United States, when you ask a question to a witness, the witness, according to the Supreme Court and to our Constitution, they have a right to know why you are asking that question and is that question pertinent to this investigation. Let me tell my colleagues, in the circus we were running in this committee at that time, the members did not know what was going on in that investigation. The members did not know why the questions were being asked. The members did not know why information was being subpoenaed, but the fact of the matter was these three witnesses came before our committee. They answered numerous questions. They submitted to depositions. They provided thousands of pages of testimony, and today none of them have been charged with anything, other than in the allegations of speeches by Members of Congress besmirching their reputations. Mr. Speaker, I happen to think, as I said at the outset of these hearings, I think there some real bad judgment has been made and maybe some wrongdoings that have been had, but that is not what these Members are in liability for. These Members are in liability now because we shifted from that hearing in the middle to questioning about whether or not something was wrong in a lawsuit in Texas, and we were going to adjudicate whether it was. We do not adjudicate. We do not adjudicate. So they refused to testify, because the committee already had the information, but it was once suggested that maybe they could be caught for perjury. So they did not testify. They said you have the information from another source, some of which was sealed or not sealed. This committee never laid out for them the pertinency of those questions to that investigation at that time. As the Supreme Court has recognized, when you put a person in that kind of jeopardy, the average American, the average American who is sitting there in front of a big committee of Congress, they have rights. They need protection, because the government is not always right; that is why we changed the law with respect to the Internal Revenue Service, because they made decisions about people's guilt, about people's liabilities, hounded them and badgered them and intimidated them with the power of the Government. They threatened people with jail. Mr. Speaker, that is where these three people sit today. After being badgered and hounded, being called common thieves by members of the committee, in spite of no evidence that that was the case, whether or not they were involved in the regulations, the best evidence we have today is the sworn testimony of the people from the Department of Interior that had no impact, little involvement in those regulations. The best evidence we have today of their involvement in the court case in Texas was the evidence that the oil companies took from this hearing and ran over to that court case. The judge said get out of here. Today, they are put before this Congress with the full force and effect. But who is not here? As many of my colleagues pointed out, the oil companies are not here. After admitting and settling to underpaying plight terms, it is like we do not admit any liability, admit or deny, you know, how you do when you settle a lawsuit. We cannot tell you whether we are guilty or not. We are just going to put this $450 million out there out on the table because we want this to go away. What these oil companies did to the taxpayers of the United States, they lied to them. They cheated to them. They wrongfully withheld payments that were entitled to each and every taxpayer of this country. Now they settled for half a billion dollars, $438 million. It is estimated, as the gentleman from California (Mr. Horn) said in his Subcommittee on Government Management, Information and Technology, that it could be as high as $2 billion to the Federal taxpayer. Many of these same oil companies settled with the State of California. When they took the money from the State of California, they took it from the schoolchildren, because the money was destined for the schoolchildren of California. They settled there for, I think, almost $2 billion in underpayments, maybe more. I do not have the exact figure, but it runs to the billions. So those companies who cheated and lied did not receive a single question from this committee. Did not receive a letter. Did not receive a subpoena. Did not receive a letter of inquiry. Were not asked to testify about cheating the Federal Government. But the organization, the people who blew the whistle and said the government is not doing its job, and they came under a Civil War statute was to protect the government from being ripped off by the merchants during the Civil War by supplying us phony goods or overcharging us. They came under that Civil War statute and they said, ``Hey, you guys are not doing your job, they are cheating you.'' Yes, they were. And they were entitled to recovery. They may have shared that recovery in a wrongful fashion, but to date nobody has been charged with doing that, and the Justice Department has had this for a year and a half, almost 2 years. Why the imbalance? Why are we going after these people and attributing criminal liability? This is not about our subpoena power. These people answered the subpoenas. They came to the committee. They turned over the documents. But when they were asked these questions, knowing their rights under the Supreme Court decisions that have thrown out contempt citations from this, said time and again this citizen has not been protected from the powers of this Congress; they said that question is not pertinent. I do not believe it is pertinent. And as the Supreme Court says, the citizen has to sit in the chair and is compelled to make a choice immediately. So on advice of their counsel, they quickly said, ``I do not believe that question is pertinent,'' and we have a right to go forward with this process if we believe it was. I have to say to my colleagues, nobody laid the foundation for these citizens so they could determine what we were talking about in this hearing, because this hearing was from hell to breakfast on subject matter. It was all over the room. We changed the direction of this hearing numerous times. And I do not think that we ought to attach criminal liability to these citizens that did such an incredible service for the taxpayers and the citizens of this country. We certainly should not do it in the name of oversight, because if we do it in the name of this oversight, we are doing it in the name of one- sided oversight. Mr. Speaker, if we are going to call POGO, if we are going to call these three citizens, we should have called the oil companies. I am sure we will call the trial attorneys and the tire companies in the Firestone investigation. I am sure we will call the victims and the tobacco companies. But here we only called one. Do not do this to the citizens of the United States. They may end up being tried or charged by the Justice Department under the active investigation, but do not use and misuse the powers of this institution against these three citizens who did the right thing and were badgered and hounded and called names, not allowed to testify, not allowed to give opening statements, and then placed in that kind of jeopardy. It simply is not fair. Contempt of Congress Resolution and Report Dissenting Views We strongly oppose the Resolution and Report to cite four individuals and the Projects on Government Oversight (POGO) for Contempt of Congress, a federal statutory crime punishable by up to one year in jail. From the outset, the Republican Majority's unilateral conduct of the investigation into this matter has been biased, procedurally flawed and abusive of the rights of witnesses and Members. It is a weak case to present to the House, which last sought to invoke statutory contempt powers in 1983. And even if adopted by the House over our objections, any attempt at prosecution based on this Resolution will not survive balanced judicial review. The Majority's wrath is primarily directed at POGO a nonprofit government ``watchdog'' group that--among many efforts to curb waste, fraud and abuse--has been active since 1993 in pursuing oil and gas companies that have underpaid by hundreds of millions of dollars royalties owed to the U.S. Treasury for operating on public lands. In November 1998, after receiving $1.2 million of a $45 million settlement by Mobil Oil in False Claims Act litigation for royalty underpayments, POGO shared two-thirds ($383,600 each) with two individuals: a Department of the Interior employee, Robert Berman, and a former Department of Energy employee, Robert Speir. POGO and the Department of Justice dispute whether an Assistant U.S. Attorney involved in the Mobil litigation approved POGO's payments to Berman and Speir. In December 1998, the Civil Division of the Department of Justice referred the POGO matter to the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division for a review, in cooperation with the Inspector General for the Department of the Interior, which is ongoing. These are the proper authorities and the appropriate forum for fairly investigating whether any misconduct or illegalities occurred in making or receiving the payments and we supported the motion adopted by the Committee on Resources to release to them relevant committee records. By contrast, all but one of the Democrats present voted against the Majority's Contempt of Congress Resolution, which was adopted by a 27 to 16 vote on July 19, 2000. We oppose this Resolution because in the course of this lengthy investigation, the Majority has stepped beyond the bounds of legitimate inquiry. In an abusive manner, the Majority has used the powers of subpoena and the sanction of contempt to pursue subjects tangential to the Committee on Resources' jurisdiction. The Majority has conducted this investigation in a manner that serves the interests of lawyers for oil and gas companies involved in pending royalty underpayment litigation as well as those who are currently challenging in federal court royalty valuation regulations recently issued by the Department of the Interior to curb royalty payment abuses. It is noteworthy that the Majority has spent well over a year investigating those who helped expose royalty cheating and whose efforts contributed to the recovery to date by the Untied States of $300 million from litigation settlements. But they have done nothing to investigate whether companies extracting oil and gas from federal lands are systematically underpaying royalties, a subject clearly within the jurisdiction of the Committee on Resources and with significant fiscal implications to taxpayers. The Majority unilaterally drafted the lengthy Resolution and Report and first made it available to Democratic Members of the Committee less than 24 hours prior to the Committee on Resources' markup on July 19th. This rush to judgment on Contempt of Congress, a federal crime, is typical of the strictly partisan investigation, which has been prejudiced from the beginning with assumptions of guilt and illegalities. Indicating all with a broad brush, the Resolution deems each individual cited as equally guilty no matter how trivial the alleged transgression. Moreover, by citing the ``Project on Government Oversight,'' with contempt, the Resolution cavalierly casts a cloud of criminal jeopardy on the officers and the entire board of directors, even though one such individual testified that he had been recused from any involvement in the royalty underpayment matters and another did not join the board until 1999. At the July 19th Committee markup of this Resolution, the Majority failed to provide Members with the language of the contempt statutes. They cited no judicial standards or precedents of the House for applying those criminal statutes in a contempt proceeding. They did not adequately explain or refute the legal rationale that the subpoenaed parties, based on advice from counsel, had asserted when they declined to answer specific questions or provide specific documents precisely as sought by the Majority. And they neglected to explain to Medicare that witnesses had appeared at hearings and produced thousands of pages of documents in compliance with multiple subpoenas (Attachment (A).

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Horn).

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time, and I thank him for the points that he raised, both about the legislation yesterday and the Commerce-State-Justice bill, which I join him in urging the President to veto. As one who represents a coastal state whose district is on the edge of San Francisco bay, it is a tragedy that that legislation did not provide the funding necessary so that we can implement our Coastal Zone Management Plan to deal with non-point source pollution, the runoff that comes from our cities, our farmlands, from the logging areas upstream, that are devastating water quality in our rivers, in our bays, and along our coast. Last year, California had beach closures over 3,000 times, some as long 6 to 12 weeks, and a few that were in fact permanent. The impact of that on our economy and tourism is the same kind of impact where they have had that kind of situation along the East Coast, where beaches have had to be closed because of water quality. The single biggest polluter at this point is non-pointed source pollution, the runoff, whether it is the Chesapeake Bay or Santa Monica Bay or the Gulf of Mexico, where that runoff is collected in the Mississippi River, sent down to the Gulf of Mexico and has created a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico that is thousands of square miles, where simply life cannot live in those sections of the Gulf of Mexico. I would hope that the President would veto that. The gentleman also mentioned immigrants. I find it rather interesting on the front page of the Business section of the Washington Post, it says ``Sweet Harvest for Virginia's Vintners'', for the wine industry in Virginia, a Sweet Harvest. When we open up the paper on the inside and we see who is harvesting those grapes, it is Gerardo Chavez. Gerardo Chavez is harvesting those grapes. Yet the other side decided that they were not going to provide for the fair treatment of immigrants; they were going to distinguish between those people who came here from Cuba and Nicaragua and El Salvador. The gentleman quite correctly points out, we now see that they were fleeing governments in El Salvador that not only were involved with fingering, and we were involved with fingering El Salvadorans citizens who then disappeared, were tortured and killed, but now, of course, we see the direct relationship between their involvement and the killing of the religious women from America. Those families have had to live with that tragedy now for over a decade as we have tried to get to the bottom of that case. And it turns out now, of course, high Salvadoran officials and the security police and armed forces knew about that and covered it up all of those years. That is the government that these people were fleeing. Many of those people who fled those governments now are working very hard in the American economy and, yet, we are going to deny them the rights to try to provide for legal and permanent residency and give them the right to prove their situation, rather than send them off back to the country and let them try to prove that from overseas. That treatment of immigrants is inexcusable. We could not run the economy of this country for a day if the immigrants decided to sit down. We could not run the economy of California for 5 minutes if the immigrants did not show up for work, whether it is our tourism economy, whether it is our agricultural economy, whether it is our manufacturing economy, that is the simple fact of the matter. We ought to start dealing with these people in a fair and equitable fashion. The gentleman also mentioned the continued attack. Many times people ask, what are we arguing over? What is it? We are just bickering. We are just arguing back and forth. This is about whether or not people who go to the workplace will be protected from damages to their nerves and to their muscles and to the skeletal system from the repetitive motion in the workplace. We are all familiar with this. Members of Congress are familiar with this. Flight attendants now wear braces on their wrists and on their arms and on their hands because of repetitive motion. The checkers in the supermarket wear braces on their hands and their elbows because of repetitive motion. If we go to Home Depot, we will see people wearing back braces to try to prevent repetitive motion. We will see people wearing braces on their hands, machine operators, lathe operators, people who go to work everyday and work very hard, and, yet, the Republicans are absolutely committed to not letting those regulations go in place, that not only will save those companies millions and millions of dollars in worker's compensation claims, but it will extend these individuals work lives so they can provide for their families so they will not have to take a job that pays them less, or they will not have to leave the workforce and live on disability. Yet, in spite of what the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) pointed out, in spite of the written promises, they are reneging on that, and they are fighting the President on that matter. We are staying here for very real reasons that impact American's families, whether it is the kind of schools that their children go to and the failure to provide some help for those districts that want to construct schools but may not have the resources to do it, to provide them some interest breaks on those bonds so they can construct those schools. Because the evidence is very clear, you can take a child from almost any economic or socioeconomic setting, from any background, and you put them with the first-class qualified teacher, with a first-class curriculum and in a first class school, and they learn like just about anyone else. We ought to, in fact, make sure that we can carry that out. These fights are real, but they are about the future of the American family. It is about whether or not Medicare is going to be there for them, or whether or not we are simply going to reimburse the HMOs and the insurance companies that overpromised and failed to deliver to the senior citizens or those that just simply closed up shop and left hundreds of thousands of senior citizens in different regions of the country without a health care plan. Let us remember what the original plan was. The original plan by the Republicans was if we joined an HMO, a Medicare HMO, we could not come back to the regular system. We almost shut the government down over that debate, but we prevailed and President Clinton prevailed to make sure that senior citizens that went to an HMO if it did not serve their needs could come back to the Medicare system. If that law that they wanted then, that we fought and extended to Congress over, was in place, those people would be with no health care, no Medicare, because they would have chosen to go into a system that turned out to be a fly-by-night operation. I just have one question to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey). Continuing resolutions, this one for 24 hours or for 48 hours, we had one a few days ago for 4 days, the last continuing resolution was for 4 days and everybody went home. I thought continuing resolutions were supposed to be the President gave us some additional time to get the work done. People are saying now that we are going to pass these continuing resolutions and people are going to go home again. I just do not understand how we go forward with these kinds of continuing resolutions that basically enable everyone to go home. I would hope that we would take that into consideration as Members vote on this CR.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, the House of Representatives, and particularly the Nation's environmental community, joined the family and constituents of Bruce Vento in mourning the loss of this dedicated and talented legislator earlier this month. In his 24 years in Congress, Bruce served with great distinction and achievement on the House Committee on Resources. No other Member of this House could match his achievement on behalf of our parks and public lands and no one spoke with greater eloquence or worked with greater accomplishment to preserve these resources for future generations of Americans. Because of his great contributions and the painfulness of his untimely death, it is especially discouraging to me to read the scorecard of the League of Conservation Voters for the 106th Congress. Although numerous Members have joined me in complaining about the League of Conservation Voters' practice of counting legitimately missed votes as ``no'' votes, LCV continues this unfair method of scoring. As a result, LCV rated Bruce Vento at just 53 percent for this Congress and just 7 percent for this year. Although LCV notes Bruce's death, they failed to note that his absences were due to his terminal illness and treatments. LCV's obstinate refusal to modify its rating system is very disappointing to friends in the environmental community. The ratings system is absurdly rigid and self-centered when dedicated environmentalists are marked down for illnesses or personal tragedies. LCV says it is looking for another way for the scoring system, but it will come too late to honor the memory and the achievements of Bruce Vento.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Pennsylvania has explained the legislation quite accurately. As he has pointed out, most of these pieces of legislation have passed out of the House or the Senate. We have worked out a compromise with the majority as well as with the Senate, and I urge my colleagues to support this package. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.