Alan Mollohan

Mr. MOLLOHAN

Mr. MOLLOHAN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the gentleman's amendment. The Department of Veterans Affairs' medical budget is not the appropriate place from which to fund Department of Justice lawsuits. It funds the Veterans Administration Department's own legal expenses, and funding Department of Justice lawsuits to the tune of $4 million or even higher, because there is no limitation here, would significantly reduce funds available for veterans' medical care. Mr. Chairman, it has been stated or alluded to that the effect of the restriction placed in the bill, and let me read it, Mr. Chairman, it says, ``None of the foregoing funds may be transferred to the Department of Justice for purposes of supporting tobacco litigation.'' The restriction in here only says that none of the funds out of the Veterans Affairs medical budget can be transferred to the Department of Justice for its litigation purposes. It has been alleged that that has the effect of blocking the Department of Justice's lawsuit against the tobacco industry. I respectfully disagree with that. It does no such thing. It does not preclude the Department of Justice from moving forward with lawsuits. What it does do, the bill language simply prohibits the Veterans Administration from transferring veterans' medical care dollars to the Department of Justice. That is the only intention and the only motivation, to preserve those scarce medical care dollars. That money would come out of the medical care collections fund. Indeed, it does fund legal expenses for the Veterans Administration in this area: ``Legal expenses of the Department for collecting and recovering amounts owed the Department.'' There are people very busily working over at the Veterans Administration spending dollars out of that account to collect third party pay, to collect dollars that are owed from other areas. They significantly multiply their salaries. That is, they are responsible for generating a lot of dollars. Take that $4 million out of this account and, arguably, we would reduce by a factor of many times $4 million the amount of money available for veterans' medical care. The budget for veterans' medical care has been severely stressed during the last several years. After 2 years of flat budgets, Congress enacted a substantial increase in medical care last year. The bill before us today builds on that increase by fully funding the President's budget request for medical care, more than $1.3 billion over current funding. I cannot support an effort to divert funding from this priority in order to fund the operations of another agency. God bless the other agency, let them move forward with their lawsuit with their own funds; in this case, the Department of Justice. That department, the Department of Justice, has received significant increases during the past decade, as opposed to the Veterans Administration. In 1990, the Department of Justice received $8.8 billion. By 1996, that had risen to over $16 billion, and current year funding is over $20 billion. The Department of Justice is not an agency that has faced the same restrictive budgets as the VA. It can afford to prosecute this lawsuit without taking money out of the veterans account. Each appropriations subcommittee must establish its own priorities for the agencies under its jurisdiction. Mr. Chairman, let me point out that the veterans organizations are split on this issue, but that the American Legion, while it supports the Department of Justice going forward with its lawsuit, does not support taking health care dollars from the VA to pay for the litigation and thinks it is counterproductive, especially with the growing demand for services by the aging veteran population. This amendment does not stop any litigation, or this restriction, excuse me. It simply provides that that money will not come out of veterans' health care, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MOLLOHAN

Mr. MOLLOHAN. I yield to the gentleman from Vermont.

Mr. MOLLOHAN. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I would ask the gentleman if he can make the argument substantively that cutting the Clean Coal Technology Program is good for the environment rather than just citing a number of organizations? Can he make it with me, please, right here and now?

Mr. MOLLOHAN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words, and I rise in opposition to the gentleman's amendment. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the gentleman's amendment. Nearly 70 percent of the electricity generated in the United States today is fueled by a combination of coal, oil and natural gas. These traditional fuels are abundant, particularly coal, which accounts for 90 percent of our Nation's energy reserves. At current rates of consumption, the United States has enough coal to last throughout the next 2 centuries, and that is just here in the United States. Coal generates nearly 40 percent of all electricity worldwide, a number that is growing as we stand here and debate this issue. Here are the facts, Mr. Chairman. We have an abundant supply of coal. It is responsible for over half of the energy generated in this country, and its use is going to increase here in this country and worldwide. The only question that remains is are we or are we not going to make it cleaner? Now, let me just emphasize that. We are going to use more coal in this country and worldwide. The only question that remains is are we going to make it cleaner and cleaner, which I support and every Member that represents a coal region in this Nation supports. That is why we support the Clean Coal Technology Program, because we want it to become cleaner and cleaner. I have to say that I am surprised at how cuts to the fossil energy research budget have been framed in this debate, as if cutting these funds is some sort of a good environmental vote. Mr. Chairman, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, as a result of Federal funding, since 1970 overall U.S. emissions of pollutants from coal- based electricity generation have been cut by a third, even as coal use has tripled. What a success story. For those of my colleagues who have stood up and argued for the environment and argued for efficiency, I am pleased to tell them that technologies now being researched, coming out of the Clean Coal Technology Program, will produce a near zero emissions power plant with double the efficiency of today's utilities. This technology will also be exportable to developing countries as they build new power plants to meet their ever-growing needs and as we become increasingly concerned about global warming and global greenhouse issues. Mr. Chairman, that is good for the environment and it is also very good for our economy. Do not be fooled, my colleagues. Cutting fossil energy research and development is an antienvironmental vote. I urge defeat of the gentleman's amendment.

Mr. MOLLOHAN. Well, reclaiming my time, the Clean Coal Technology Program, one of its real strengths is the conservation of the use of energy to generate electricity. As a matter of fact, the Clean Coal Technology Program has increased efficiency, as I said in my comments, while it reduces emissions. It is good for the environment, it is good for the economy, it is an environmentally good program while it affects efficiencies.

Mr. MOLLOHAN

Mr. MOLLOHAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 1753, the Gas Hydrate Research and Development Act of 1999. I want to commend the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Doyle) for his introduction of this legislation and for his leadership in the area of this Nation's research into the use of energy and the more efficient use of energy, creating an energy independence for this country. The Department of Energy estimates that up to 200,000 trillion cubic feet of methane may exist in crystalline or hydrate form and in U.S. permafrost regions and surrounding waters. This potentially enormous resource is 100 times greater than the entire conventional natural gas supply in the United States. However, we are still unsure how much methane we really have in hydrate form as well as how exactly to convert methane hydrates into a commercially feasible product. In 1997, the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology, P-CAST, identified the need for a comprehensive methane hydrates research and development program, recommending an initial investment of $44 million over 5 years. H.R. 1753 will go a long way toward implementing the P-CAST recommendations and will continue the work already started by the Federal Energy Technology Center, FETC, which has sites in Morgantown, West Virginia, and in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. FETC has a long history in the methane hydrates field. In 1981, when the first hydrate ice core was retrieved, FETC was one of the six organizations chosen to analyze it. Continuing its leadership in this area, FETC has developed a strong methane hydrate strategy designed to implement the P-CAST recommendations. H.R. 1753 would allow DOE to move forward with the FETC hydrates program. Other nations, most notably Japan, already have begun intensive hydrate research efforts. The longer we wait to move ahead, the harder it will be to catch up. I call on my colleagues to join me in voting for this important legislation, and I call on DOE to implement the FETC plan.

Mr. MOLLOHAN

Mr. MOLLOHAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Meek), a very effective, hardworking member of the subcommittee.

Mr. MOLLOHAN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to conclude with similar expressions of appreciation for his many courtesies during this process, and for his allowing the minority all along the process to participate in a very meaningful way in bringing this bill to the floor. Again, I repeat that it is a testament to his skill and legislative leadership that we are bringing this kind of a bill to the floor in a very bipartisan way in a year in which it is terribly difficult to do that. If the chairman would allow me to express appreciation to members on the minority side of the subcommittee, to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Meek), the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price), and the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Cramer), they were all very hard-working members on the subcommittee throughout the year to bring this bill where we are today. I very much appreciate their efforts in working with them, as well as the chairman and the majority members.

Mr. MOLLOHAN. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. MOLLOHAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Regrettably, I feel compelled to respond to the gentleman from Michigan. If he is trying to establish a legislative history with regard to the Kyoto language, I repeat that I think this is a poor place to do it. The facts are that there is language in the House report on that subject. The language in the Senate report differs, and there could not be any consensus drawn of the congressional intent with regard to that topic by looking at the 2000 report, the report accompanying this bill. The language in the 1999 report accompanying the VA appropriations was agreed to by both the House and the Senate. I leave it to the lawyers, if it gets to that, to debate what actually reflects the legislative intent of the Congress on that topic. However, I would note that the Senate worked long and hard for 2 years now on this language. That language was agreed to by both bodies in last year's report. This year, there was not agreement on the Kyoto language between the House and the Senate. So that I do not think one can draw a conclusion that the Congress has spoken on that issue in unison this year. On the other hand, one could draw a conclusion that the last time the Congress spoke on the issue in agreement was in the 1999 report. Not that this clarifies anything, except to suggest that I would not agree with the gentleman that the language coming out of the report accompanying this year's bill would determine legislative intent in any way on this topic. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. MOLLOHAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky).

Mr. MOLLOHAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler).

Mr. MOLLOHAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. With regard to the previous speaker's comments, I would just like to make clear that there have been efforts as the process has moved forward, both this year and last year, to effect authorizations in the clean air area on our appropriation bill. It is a particularly complicated subject, difficult for the authorizers to deal with, as is evidenced by the way it is dealt with by them, and the appropriations bill is a particularly inappropriate place to try to deal with them. The appropriations process is an inappropriate place to deal with clean air authorizing issues; trying to impact interpretations in that area and comments as we debate a conference report is equally or more inappropriate place to deal with it. There is a difference on the Kyoto issue between the House and the Senate report. The administration has its interpretation of that. Going back to the compromise language on Kyoto that was contained in last year's appropriation report, they would maintain that that is the interpretation that applies this year. The gentleman can add his interpretation on that and they can debate it, but I would submit that comments offered in the course of this debate on this conference report do not impact the legislative intent in any way with regard to the Kyoto issue.

Mr. MOLLOHAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel).

Mr. MOLLOHAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

Mr. MOLLOHAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank), the distinguished authorizer.

Mr. MOLLOHAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Cramer), another hard-working member of our subcommittee and a very effective one.

Mr. MOLLOHAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin my remarks by expressing my most sincere appreciation to my chairman the gentleman from New York (Mr. Walsh). He has been totally fair and totally forthcoming throughout this process and has moved this bill with great skill. This has been a very difficult year to move appropriations bills, and it is a testament to his legislative ability that we are here this morning with a passable bill. It has been a real pleasure working with him. He is particularly capable. He is a class act. Mr. Speaker, before I continue, I would like to take a moment to thank the staff who have all put in countless hours since we started our hearing process in February. First, I would like to thank the committee staff, including both the majority staff, Frank Cushing, Valerie Baldwin, Tim Peterson, Dena Baron, and their detailee Angela Snell; and on the minority side, two skilled and dedicated staffers, Del Davis and David Reich. I would also like to thank the personal staff of the chairman, Ron Anderson and John Simmons and, of course, my own personal staff, Lee Alman and Gavin Clingham, who have done a fine job working on this bill. Mr. Speaker, this is my first year as ranking minority member of this subcommittee and it has been quite an interesting year. I began this appropriations cycle thinking that this bill could never pass the House. And now, several months later, we are through conference with a signable bill. And not only is it a signable bill, it is a good bill. Indeed, if one considers the circumstances under which this subcommittee was operating, this is a great bill. This success was made possible by the serious constructive manner in which all sides approached the conference process, by the skill of the chairman, and by the cooperation of the administration, particularly the administration's willingness to find the necessary budget offsets for some spending increases which the administration was urging. Without repeating the statement of the chairman, I would like to quickly run through just a few of the highlights of this conference report. First, for veterans' medical care. It provides a $1.7 billion increase over last year's level. This increase is vital in order to help the Department of Veterans' Affairs keep up with the medical needs of our Nation's veterans. In the housing area, the conference report provides for 60,000 additional incremental section 8 housing assistance vouchers. That is, it appropriates sufficient funds, both to renew all existing section 8 housing assistance contracts and to increase the number of families assisted by 60,000. This modest expansion of housing assistance is extremely important in light of the serious and growing unmet needs for affordable housing that exists in our country. The conference report also takes important steps to assist public housing, which remains a very important part of our overall national strategy for meeting the housing needs of low-income people. It increases public housing operating assistance by $320 million over the fiscal year 1999 level to help local housing authorities pay their utility bills and keep up with maintenance needs. It also provides $2.9 billion for public housing capital assistance, a bit less than the $3 billion provided last year but still well above the levels during the preceding several years. The measure also includes a $50 million increase in the section 202 program that helps provide housing for low-income elderly people and a $45 million increase in grants for assistance to the homeless. I would like to express my appreciation to Secretary Cuomo here, who has tirelessly advocated for many of these increases. Before I leave the housing area, I should also mention that some very important authorizing has been incorporated into our legislation, namely part of H.R. 202. After this bill passed the House by an overwhelming vote last month, the bipartisan leadership of the banking committee and its housing subcommittee approached our subcommittee and asked if the legislation could be added to the appropriations bill to expedite its enactment. While I and others of the House conferees would have preferred to adopt H.R. 202 in its entirety just as it passed the House, we were not able to secure the agreement from the Senate conferees to do so. Nevertheless, the portions of H.R. 202 that we were able to add to the conference agreement takes some important steps to help keep project-based section 8 housing viable and to improve housing programs for the elderly and the disabled. The second part of the conference agreement of which I am especially proud is the funding for NASA. While the House-passed bill cut NASA substantially, the conference agreement provides $1 billion more and $75 million more than the budget request for NASA. The increases above the request are targeted to the science and aeronautics mission areas, which I think are particularly high priorities. Some items of note within the NASA section of the conference report include an increase of $25 million for safety-related upgrades to space shuttle; an overall increase of $1.25 million above the budget request for space science, which represents $240 million over the House-passed level; increases of at least $130 million for various aeronautics programs involving development of new technologies for both aircraft and spacecraft; and $19.6 million for the space grant program. Also in the space science area, the conference agreement provides an increase for the National Science Foundation totaling about $240 million above last year. This increase includes $50 million for the foundation's biocomplexity research initiative. Also included is $36 million for the construction of a five-teraflop computing facility, capable of trillions of calculations per second. This capability is essential if we are to continue our world leadership in information technology. And in that same vein I am pleased to report that this conference agreement has provided $75 million for the administration's IT-squared initiative. In addition, Mr. Speaker, the agreement appropriates about $2.5 billion in emergency funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, as requested by the administration. This appropriation will allow FEMA to continue to meet urgent needs in North Carolina and other States recently struck by national disasters as well as replenish FEMA's funds so that it will be able to respond quickly whenever the next disaster strikes. In summary, Mr. Speaker, I think we present to the body today a good conference report that is certainly worthy of support. It is by no means an extravagant piece of legislation but it does provide some additional resources to maintain our leadership in science, help meet housing needs, respond to disasters, care for our veterans and accomplish other useful and important things. I urge a ``yes'' vote on the conference report. I again express my appreciation to the gentleman from New York for his leadership. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MOLLOHAN. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), the distinguished ranking minority member on the full committee.

Mr. MOLLOHAN

Mr. MOLLOHAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, my motion instructs the House conferees to agree to the Senate's funding levels in three areas: The overall budget for HUD; NASA's Science, Aeronautics, and Technology and Mission Support Accounts; and the overall budget for the National Science Foundation. In each case, the Senate funding levels are higher than those for the House in this VA-HUD appropriations bill. I am moving to instruct conferees to adopt the higher numbers for these programs because these are all areas in which the House bill made excessive cuts. For HUD and NASA, the House-passed bill reduced appropriations substantially below the current year's level, as well as substantially below the request. For NSF, the House bill cut funding a bit below the fiscal year 1999 level and well below the President's request. In each case, the House- passed levels would do serious damage to important programs and are completely unwarranted at a time when the economy and the budget are in the best shape they have been for decades. When we considered the VA-HUD bill on the floor this year, many Members, Republicans as well as Democrats, raised serious concerns about the cuts being made, especially in HUD, NASA, and the National Science Foundation. The managers of the bill, myself included, promised to do all we could to bring about more adequate funding for these accounts in conference. This motion represents a step toward that result. Its adoption by the House would strengthen our position in trying to assure at least minimally adequate funding for high priority items. With respect to HUD, disregarding the various one-time offsets and rescissions that have no programmatic effect, the House-passed bill cuts appropriations $935 million below the fiscal year 1999 level and about $2 billion below the President's request. It cuts public housing programs $515 million below the current year level and cuts total CDBG funding $250 million below the current year. It provides no funding whatsoever to expand the number of families assisted through Section 8 housing vouchers in contrast to the $283 million provided for that purpose in the current year, and it makes cuts in a number of other important programs as well. The Senate's total for HUD is about $1.1 billion above the House total, although it remains about $1 billion below the President's request. The Senate provided $50 million more than the House for homeless assistance, $300 million more for Community Development Block Grants, and a bit more for public housing operating subsidies. On Section 8, the Senate level is about $500 million above the House, although our first priority in Section 8 has to be taking care of existing contracts and vouchers, I hope that, within the Senate total, we would be able to find funds to provide at least some incremental vouchers. There are still millions of low-income families unable to afford decent housing. Indeed, the current economic boom may be making the problem worse by driving up rents. We can afford the very modest increases in total HUD funding proposed by the Senate. As for NASA, Mr. Speaker, the House bill makes deep cuts there as well. Total NASA funding in the House- passed bill is $925 million, almost $1 billion below the budget request and $1 billion below fiscal year 1999. Some of the deepest cuts come in space science programs, such as the work on developing new technologies in the next generation of space-based observatories and planetary probes. Other deep cuts come in earth sciences programs, which use space-based observations and technologies to help better understand our own earth and make better use of the earth's resources. The Senate-passed levels for NASA are at the budget request, thereby providing $925 million more than the House bill. During the House floor debate, Member after Member, Democrats and Republicans alike, rose to express dismay about various cuts in NASA and to urge higher funding than provided in the House bill. Adopting this motion and instructing conferees to adopt the higher Senate number would take an important step toward restoring the funding for NASA that so many Members have advocated. The final part of my motion to instruct deals with the funding level for the National Science Foundation. The House recommendation did not even bring total funding for the foundation up to the 1999 level, much less anything approaching the budget request. The House bill level is $34 million below last year and $285 million below that request. The Senate bill provided a total funding level for the foundation of $3.9 billion, identical to the budget estimate. Let us face it, science and research is not cheap. It costs a lot of money to achieve and maintain world leadership in math, biology, information technology, and computer sciences, among other disciplines. But it may cost even more not to strive for this leadership. The information technology sector of our economy amounts to more than $700 billion today. We cannot afford to let our dominant position in these fields slip due to short-sighted and misguided budget policies. The administration's budget request for the National Science Foundation included $146 million as a part of a six-agency, multi-year initiative called Information Technology for the 21st Century, or I.T.- Squared. The House-passed funding level included only $35 million for the NSF, the lead agency in that effort. If we recede to the higher Senate level, we should be able to provide more for this critical program intended to keep this Nation on the cutting edge of developments in information processing. Higher funding is necessary if we are to respond to the recommendations of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee, which recently concluded that our long-term research on information technology has been dangerously inadequate. In the words of the director of the NSF, we are able and ready to do 21st century science and engineering, but we cannot do it on a 20th century budget. Mr. Speaker, I urge approval of this motion to instruct. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MOLLOHAN. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to instruct.

Mr. MOLLOHAN. Mr. Speaker, we have no more requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. MOLLOHAN. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. MOLLOHAN

Mr. MOLLOHAN. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that in the interest of time, to ensure that every speaker has the opportunity for a full 5 minutes of debate on their part and at the same time being concerned about the amount of time this amendment is taking, if we could not agree on a time certain to end debate. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent, just looking around, I would think the Members I see on the floor who I think are interested in this debate that we would end all debate by 10 minutes until 4:00, or some such time that we might agree on.