Jim Moran

Mr. MORAN

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

Mr. MORAN. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. MORAN

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Speaker, the first election of any consequence, maybe the only one, but there may be some that I have not heard about, but the first this week, and guess what, a Democrat won. Fairfax County is larger than any of our congressional districts. It has almost a million people. The chairman of the board of Fairfax County had been a Republican. He is now a colleague in the House of Representatives. So there was a special election to fill his place. Kate Hanely, the Democrat, rose to the position of chairman of one of the largest counties in the country through the usual way. She had no bumper-strip slogans, there were no cliches in the campaign, she had been an officer of her civic association, president of her PTA, she had invested enormous amounts of time in child care, health care, transportation, she chaired the regional body which develops policy on transportation for the Washington region. In other words, she had invested much of her adult life in serving her community. She was not an advocate of no government or in any way suggested that government is the problem. In fact, what she would say time and again is that good government is the solution to the problems that we have in developing the kind of quality we want for ourselves and our families. She was successful in that approach. Mr. Speaker, this is a county that has one of the highest educational levels in the country, and people who are very much involved in civic activities. They agreed with her message, someone who has devoted themselves to the community, who believes in the spirit of community and believes in the Democratic Party's principles of opportunity, responsibility, and yes, community. That is the kind of person they want to lead them. So Kate Hanley was elected to chair the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, where many of us live. I know all of us will benefit from the good government that Kate Hanley will bring to Fairfax County. I do not know whether this is a harbinger of things to come; I would certainly like to think so. But it certainly is a testament to the fact that if you do things right, particularly when you localize elections to the point where you are offering yourself to people who know you, who know how much you care about their community and their quality of life, you can win. Kate Hanley did win, and I applaud her for her commitment to her community and the fact that she was proud to run as a Democrat on Democratic principles. She was victorious. I think we are going to see more victories like Kate Hanley's in Fairfax County.

Mr. MORAN

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, the Spratt-Moran amendment which we are now considering greatly improves upon the Line-Item Veto Act. In the Contract on America and every piece of literature touting the Line-Item Veto Act, the Republicans are quick to claim that this would give the President the authority to cut out pork spending and targeted tax benefits. But if you look at the actual legislation, you will see that it does not give the President the authority to truly cut targeted tax benefits. The original Line-Item Veto Act only allowed the President to veto tax benefits if they benefited five or fewer taxpayers. This is a joke. There is no law, no pork project, and no tax cut, no program enacted by this Congress that only benefits five or fewer Americans. This bill was amended in committee to increase the number up to 100, but it still is worthless. No omnibus tax bill contains a tax cut for John Doe of Alexandria, VA, or the Smith family in Fairfax. There are very, very few tax benefits targeted to any class with less than 100 persons. Tax bills, however, do contain special interest giveaways. They are loaded with individual provisions designed to either induce taxpayers to do a certain activity or discourage taxpayers from doing another. Just last month, the Senate Budget Committee released a compendium of tax expenditures that identified $453 billion in individual tax provisions for fiscal year 1995 alone. We are making a big deal because this bill may open $10 billion in unauthorized spending each year to a potential line-item veto. But in the same breath we are passing on an opportunity to open $453 billion, nine times that amount, to the same authority. Many of these individual tax provisions are positive and should be continued. But in the same vein, many of the items contained in appropriations bills are justifiable and serve the public interest. But some of these are questionable. On page 41 of this compendium, CRS notes the ``Interest Allocation Rules Exception for Certain Nonfinancial Institutions''. This tax benefit classifies a finance subsidiary of the Ford Motor Co. as a financial institution and costs the Federal taxpayers $200 million. What is the rationale for this tax break? Nobody knows, it was not mentioned in the committee reports on the Tax Reform Act of 1986. There is no pork project in any appropriations act that comes close to $200 million annually. On page 29 of this compendium is the ``Exclusion of Income of Foreign Sales Corporations,'' a tax benefit which allows firms to exclude 15 percent of income of exports sold through special foreign subsidiaries set up as paper corporations. This tax benefit costs the Federal taxpayers $1.1 billion annually. Some of these individual tax provisions, such as mortgage interest deductions, are positive and benefit almost every American family. But some are giveaways that increase our deficit for the benefit of a few wealthy corporations. If we are serious about reducing the deficit and are serious about giving the Executive the ability to cut wasteful spending, we must also allow him to cut any and all unnecessary and unjustifiable tax subsidies. I hope my colleagues will support this amendment.

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, no one in the 21st century even, which is about to occur within another 5 years, no one is really going to remember our faces or our names or even the words that we utter here on the floor of the House. But they will remember what we did, because it will affect their lives. We represent the most prosperous nation on Earth, the freest nation on Earth, the Nation that has the most respect for human rights, for civil rights, a legislative body that people all over the world are coming to study. All these emerging democracies come over here to see how we operate. We are a model for the world, we are a model for the 20th century. We should be going into the 21st century building upon our strength and not eroding it, as this bill does.

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, we have had a constructive debate, and many of the points that our colleague from California emphasized have been brought up in the course of amendments. This side is disappointed that many of those, all of those amendments really were defeated. Many of them were not even fully considered by most of this body. We just killed an amendment, the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spratt] and I had to apply the line item veto to tax bills as well as appropriation bills because those Members who have been around for any period of time, particularly in the last two terms, are aware that anything that is in an appropriations bill that could be considered pork gets subjected not only to the scrutiny of the Committee on Appropriations, but invariably we have to debate it and vote on it on this floor. Not so with tax bills. Tax bills are replete with special provisions. Newsweek this week pointed out the fact that this is the biggest loophole, and yet a provision to subject tax bills to the same kind of scrutiny was killed in committee, and just this morning killed on the floor. I offered an amendment to try to protect the separation of powers, reminding our colleagues that the people that served in this body in 1939, and it was an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress and obviously a Democratic President, passed a law designed to protect the judiciary. This line item veto essentially repeals that law. When President Roosevelt could not pack the Court and the Court would not go along with his New Deal, he started cutting out bailiffs' money, he started cutting the money for Court clerks, he took away their travel funds. He punished them. He used the power of the Presidency, which, in fact, was too much at that time in the view of the legislative branch, and so it passed a law saying that the executive branch has to pass through whatever request is made for the judiciary. The legislative branch, which does not litigate before the Supreme Court and thus does not have that conflict of interest, knowing that the Justice Department brings more than half of the cases before the Supreme Court and has a clear conflict of interest, it has to pass it on to the legislative branch, and the legislative Appropriations Committee does what- ever is necessary. We are talking about a very small amount of money. We are not talking about busting the budget, we are not even talking about any courthouse construction, just small items that allow the Supreme Court to function. But now all of these items are subject to line-item veto. That was a mistake. When President Eisenhower called Chief Justice Warren and suggested to him it was not time to desegregate the schools and Chief Justice Warren said well, I am going to do what I think is right, he had that independence because he knew there was no way that the President, the executive branch could punish him if he did differently than what the executive branch offered. But now we are going to repeal that, we are going to give extraordinary power to the executive branch. I worked for President Johnson, and for President Nixon, and I was on the staff of the Senate Committee on Appropriations during the terms of President Ford and President Carter. I know that President Ford and President Carter would have observed the basic principle of separation of powers. They probably would not have abused the line-item veto. But let me tell my colleagues that President Nixon would have, in my opinion, and President Johnson, because he knew where everything was buried or he knew every project that had gotten through the Senate, every special tax provision, he would have abused it outrageously. I think we ought to recognize the threat to the fundamental principles that our forefathers put into the Constitution, the fundamental principle of separation of powers. That is why this kind of amendment is so important, this substitute amendment, because it preserves some balance. The bill that is invariably going to get enacted because this side is marching in lockstep now, does fundamental damage to the basic structure of this Government. I would just conclude by saying one last thing.

Mr. MORAN

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, the purpose of this amendment is simple. It exempts the judicial branch from the provisions of this bill. It is not meant to gut the intent of this bill in any way, and certainly is not any kind of dilatory tactic. In fact, I trust that there are as many constitutional scholars on the Republican side of the aisle as the Democratic side of the aisle, so I would assume this would be a bipartisan amendment. Imagine, Mr. Chairman, this scenario: a new President comes to office, promising an activist agenda. In his first 100 days he offers sweeping new initiatives that create new Government programs, impose new regulations on different sectors of the economy, and greatly revolutionizes the current system of Government, but this President's new ideas run up against a very resistant judiciary. The Supreme Court does not agree with what he wants to do, so one provision after another of this New Deal of legislation is overturned and declared unconstitutional. The President becomes frustrated, and tries to bend the will of the courts. The courts resist, and become even more intransigent. The President tries to pack the court with people that agree with him, but he is unsuccessful. What does he do? He punishes the courts, but in a number of very subtle ways. He cuts their funds for bailiffs, anyplace, he refuses the request for new judgeships, he cripples the court. Does this sound farfetched? Well, it happened. It happened under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Mr. Chairman, this scenario could happen again if this legislation is passed without this amendment. Mr. Chairman, one of the most important foundations of our system of Government is the separation of powers. It is advanced and guaranteed by the independence of our judicial branch, and the independence of our judiciary is secured by its independent budgeting authority. This was not always the case. Before 1939, Mr. Chairman, courts were administered through the Justice Department, within the executive branch. They had to submit their budgets through the President, and this placed the power and authority over the fiscal affairs that were necessary for the conduct of those courts in the hands of the chief litigant before those very same courts. Congress recognized the inherent conflict of interest that dependence of the judicial branch upon the executive branch could cause. And so it created the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, to ensure that the courts were removed from that undue influence. Today the President does not have the authority to modify the judiciary branch's budget requests. He has to submit them to the Congress unchanged. That is a law. Congress then has the full authority to appropriate funds for the judicial branch. But under no circumstances can the President punish the court because he disagrees with its judgment. This law would repeal that law, because it returns us to the situation before 1939 and once again gives the chief litigant before the U.S. courts the authority to reduce or to eliminate specific appropriations for those courts. As the gentleman just explained, he can reach in, inside the line item appropriation that funds the Supreme Court or any other court of appeals, and he can pick out individual activities that would not represent a blip on the budget. They are less than 0.01 percent. But those kinds of activities are dependent upon those thousands of dollars, taking them away could cripple the ability of our courts to conduct the business of this Government, because the law says he can veto all or any part of a line item of an appropriations bill. That is exactly what some President in the future, will do with this line-item veto authority, and I would remind our colleagues, we are not just passing legislation for 100 days or one term of Congress but in fact for the rest of American history. This is profoundly important. The CHAIRMAN pro tempore [Mr. Hobson]. The time of the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Moran] has expired. (By unanimous consent, Mr. Moran was allowed to proceed for 3 additional minutes.)

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, I thank my very good friend from California so much, particularly for her very kind words. There is no question that whereas the Founding Fathers, many of whom came from Virginia, will remain in our memory, I am not going to remain in anybody's memory after I am out of this House. And in fact, the people that stood in this very body and that cast the vote in 1939 to establish a law protecting the separation of powers are lost from memory. We do not remember their faces or their names or even their words. However, their action was remembered because they did the right thing. They showed a whole heck of a lot of political courage in standing up to an extremely popular and almost domineering President. Members can be sure that there was a lot of pressure on them to do the easy thing, to let it go, but they would not, because they understood that the structure of our Government was threatened, so they said, ``No, Mr. President, you cannot do that. We have got to make the judicial branch independent,'' because we have three branches of Government. When we are in conflict, we need that third branch of Government to render an independent judgment. That is what the American people ought to be able to depend upon. Every American voter ought to have the security that the structure of our Government, which has endured for 200 years, which has been a model for the whole rest of the world, will continue in its enduring form. Mr. Chairman, I do not want to get too melodramatic here on this vote. I do not want to overstate the case. However, I think it would be difficult, really, to overstate this case, because in the process of trying to respond to what the polls tell us and to what the public sentiment seems to be, to cut the budget, to give the President extraordinary powers, to eliminate pork and so on, we are going to do real damage to the fundamental underpinnings of our democracy. Mr. Chairman, I would urge my colleagues to act as that Congress in 1939 acted, to show the kind of political courage that they showed, to do the right thing as they did, to sustain our separation of powers, and to maintain the independence of the judicial branch of Government. Mr. Chairman, the issue cannot be overstated. I thank all of my friends and colleagues who have stated the argument so much better than I. Mr. Chairman, I would urge this body to support the amendment.

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, I certainly thank my friend, the gentleman from South Carolina. In fact, there is less need to stand up, after listening to my colleagues make the arguments so but I would certainly underscore the point that we are not talking about anything that is particularly relevant to balancing the budget here, we are talking about approximately one one-hundredths of 1 percent of the budget. So it is not an issue of money and there has never been an issue with regard to the judiciary branch appropriation. We cut it each year, the legislative branch does. And it amounts to a little bit of money. But even if we eliminate it entirely, all the functions of the judiciary branch, it is not going to create a blip on the Federal deficit. But I think it would do profound damage to the structure of this Government. And my friend from Connecticut, who has left, said that we might have a different opinion if there was a different party in the White House, if it was a friend versus someone we oppose politically. I would remind my friend from Connecticut and anyone else who was persuaded by that argument that in 1939, when the law was passed that we are really addressing, it was an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress. They had to show a tremendous amount of political courage to say: Wait a minute, there is something wrong here. There is something wrong. The President is abusing the fundamental principle of separation of powers.

Mr. MORAN. I thank the gentleman for continuing to yield. Mr. Chairman, I have to remind the gentleman that the legislative branch is not a litigant before the Court. That is a problem. The Justice Department, the executive branch litigates half of the cases that come before the Court. That is where the conflict of interest exists. We do not have a conflict of interest here except in very minor areas.

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Goss] further yield?

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for giving me the opportunity to clarify. There is a 1939 law that prohibits the executive branch from altering the budget request of the judiciary. Now, it is up to the legislative branch to pare back, to make sure that it is an appropriate request. We have done that every year. Last year I think we cut it--I think the gentleman mentioned $3.1 down to $2.8 million. They took their share of the cut along with everyone else. We do not have a conflict of interest with the judiciary. We do not litigate half of the cases before the Supreme Court. That is why that 1939 law was put in. So I have to correct what the gentleman suggested. The President, the executive branch does not have the right to alter the judiciary appropriation, which is a budget request at that point. This law would give the President the ability to change our appropriation level, which does not have to be what was requested. The Appropriations Committee has full latitude to appropriate whatever we want. But we have no conflict of interest with the judiciary. This law says that after we make our decisions then the President can change those decisions and, for be political reasons, can change the budget of the judiciary branch; a very small amount of money.

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. MORAN. That is five one-hundredths of 1 percent of the budget.

Mr. MORAN. I thank the gentleman for yielding. First of all, I never mentioned the actual salaries of judges and we know that that is not affected. But certainly the salaries of the clerks, the administrative personnel, any travel money, bailiff money. Now there are incidental expenses, and I think it is an important point to make that this is not really relevant to the budget issues before us. I would ask the gentleman, has he ever heard of any pork on any issue within the judiciary appropriations? I was on the appropriations subcommittee that provided the money. It is a small amount; it does not increase much each year. The courthouses which have been controversial, come under the General Services Administration. That is not under this budget, we are talking about that. We are talking about just incidental expenses to conduct the operations of the Supreme Court and the U.S. Circuit Court. Their caseload has gone way up, there is a long delay. We are trying to expedite the process of the criminal justice system in this country and here we are going to make an issue out of this relatively small amount, all in the guise of line-item veto.

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, I want to emphasize that this amendment has nothing to do with busting the budget, it represents less than .1 percent of the budget, but has everything to do with busting the principle of separation of powers. The gentlewoman from the District of Columbia [Ms. Norton], just joined us. I want to mention a point she made in committee, because it is terribly important for us to focus on this. Sometimes when we can focus on specific situations, we understand the principle involved. The gentlewoman from the District of Columbia [Ms. Norton] reminded us of how President Eisenhower contacted Chief Justice Earl Warren during consideration of Brown versus Board of Education and told the Chief Justice he did not think the country was ready to desegregate our public schools. But the Chief Justice was able to ignore the President and do what I think was right, what I think the American people know was right, because he did not have to go to the President the next January hat in hand and ask for the money to conduct the Court or for whatever additional bailiffs or clerks were necessary, because he had independence from the President of the United States, from the executive branch. The goals of this legislation are noble. We must reduce Federal spending and protect the taxpayer from unauthorized and unjustifiable pork spending. But the judiciary is not and never has been part of the problem. Not one dime in the judiciary account is spent for Members' projects or for pork. In the process of accomplishing something else, let us not destroy the independence and the autonomy of our judicial system to cure a disease that simply does not exist. I implore my colleagues, please pass this amendment. Maintain the separation of powers and show the respect of our Founding Fathers in the Constitution that has endured for the last 200 years.

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, I offer amendment No. 1.

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. This, again, is a bill that responds to the American people. The American people think that one of the answers to the problems in American is to give the President extraordinary control over the Congress. Well, it is going to pass. But I would like to remind my colleagues of some of the potential pitfalls of it and also to emphasize some areas that drastically need improvement. One of the flaws in this bill is that there is a little-known provision that says that the President can only line-item veto tax provisions that affect 100 or fewer taxpayers. I would submit to my colleagues that the real abuse of the taxpayers' money is not on the expenditure side, it is on the tax side, because on the expenditure side, we have to go through the scrutiny of appropriations committees. Invariable every questionable item gets debated on the floor of the House of Representatives, exposed to the public, that is the way it ought to be, and for the last several years has been defeated. But not so with tax provisions. Those we can sneak in. We sneak into a tax bill thousands of pages, and all it takes is a little line. Hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayers' money is lost because we do not scrutinize what is in this Tax Code in terms of special privileges and because of the very nature of the tax process. Every single tax bill is a Christmas tree, a giant Christmas tree that contains thousands of provisions that make it impossible for us, any individual Member of Congress, even the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, I would suggest, to know what is in that entire tax bill. Let me tell my colleagues, if I were to be a lobbyist, I would want to be a tax lobbyist. That is where the money is. That is where they can make the changes that really benefit their client in a big way and sneak it in, and it is there forever. This bill keeps those special privileges in the law. This bill says that if any special provision benefits 100 or fewer people, then the President cannot do anything about it. Well, those are exactly the tax provisions that he ought to be able to veto, because those are the special privileges, the tax preferences, for example, that may benefit 101 billionaires, 101 oil drillers, 101 chemical or pharmaceutical companies. And do not for a minute believe that the tax lobbyists do not know exactly what they were doing when they put that provision in this line-item veto, just as they knew what they were doing when they put it in every tax bill. So if we are going to pass it, let us do it right. Now, the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spratt] and I have an amendment to correct this. I would hope that every Member, there are a few Members in this hall, but I would trust there are more Members watching this, they may call their Member and Members that are seeing this, please, when the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spratt] speaks, listen to him carefully. He has a compelling argument for why this provision has to be included in this line-item veto, if it is going to be a bill that reflects any real integrity of this body. The second concern is even a more fundamental concern. For the last several years, any taxpayer that wanted to lash out at the Congress, many of us would grab the lash first and say, ``No, wait, let me do it. I will lash myself and all my colleagues, too, and I can do it so it hurts even more than it would hurt us if you do it, because I know where it will really hurt.'' We have been bashing ourselves. And now, in keeping with that effort, what we are going to do is to give over the power of the purse, we are going to give it to the President. Now, some years that is going to be fine, if we are in the same party as the President in the White House. Other years we are going to realize it never should have been done. But in the long run, the American people are going to realize that this Congress will have seriously tipped the balance of powers that our forefathers insisted upon, understood how important it was. They put it into our Constitution, and we are essentially going to take it out. So I would hope we would think long and hard before we give such extraordinary power to the President to punish individual Members of the Congress, to punish the Congress as a body, but most importantly, to be free of the balance of powers that has made this the greatest democracy on Earth. Now, there is a specific additional issue with regard to separation of powers, and that is one that goes back through American history to understand. There was a day when a President of the United States could take the budget from the judicial branch of government, put it together, change it and submit it to the Congress. And, of course, when something can be abused, invariably at some point it will be. Well, it was a Democratic President, and that Democratic President, when he could not pack the court and when the court did not agree with his New Deal legislation, he decided he was going to take away the court's money for bailiffs, to take away the court's travel money, to punish it, the court, in every way possible. And he did that. And so a law was passed in 1939 to say the executive branch cannot change the operating expenses of the judiciary branch. It has to be left to the legislative branch to do that because the legislative branch does not have the same conflict of interest. Now, today, when the Justice Department is the principal litigant before the Supreme Court, when there is the greatest potential for conflict of interest, we are going to go one step further. Not only are we going to repeal the intent of that 1939 law that has still been on the books for good reason, we are going to say, after the Congress has acted on the appropriation for the judiciary branch of government, the President can go in and repeal, can veto, can do anything he wants or she wants, some day, to any operational function of the judiciary branch. And not only can he do it on a line item, as the chairman of the committees mentioned earlier, he can reach right down into any aspect of any line-item appropriation and specifically pull money out, can specifically punish a particular circuit court that needs to expand or judge that needs more clerks, can do any number of ways to punish the judiciary branch of government. Talk about breaking the concept of separation of powers. Talk abut making this country's democracy vulnerable to people who would like to abuse it, that is what we are opening ourselves up to. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment that will be coming up very shortly that would not allow the President to do that. It is not that we do not trust the President, but we trust our Founding Fathers more. We trust the U.S. Constitution more than what we will do today or this year or during this first hundred days. We trust the Constitution, our Founding Fathers, to know what is right and to know that the separation of powers is intrinsic to the operation of this government. We have some very serious problems with this bill. I respect the people who constructive debate on those provisions. I thank the gentleman from California [Mr. Beilenson] for yielding me this time.

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. MORAN

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, this is the last amendment that we will offer to this bill. It is in the nature of a substitute. Mr. Chairman, the vast majority of Members of this body recognize that it is imperative that we address the issue of unfunded mandates upon State and local governments and the private sector. Speaking as a Democrat, I wish we had done this when we were in the majority. We should have, and in many ways we should be ashamed that we did not. Mr. Chairman, I respect the proponents of this legislation. I agree with their intent. I think it is time that we profoundly alter the way we do business in Washington, that we accept accountability for our actions. If we are going to pass legislation, we have to be able to prove in a compelling fashion that the cost of that legislation is less than the benefits that it will provide, and we have to respect that State and local governments have achieved a level of competence, and in fact have had that level of competence for decades now that may not have been there in the 1950's, and the 1960's, and early 1970's when we assumed so much control at the Federal level. We undermined their efforts. We undermined their ability to determine their own priorities, what was best for the demography and the geography, for the needs of their own jurisdictions. This legislation is one of many that will in fact empower those State and local officials. It is the right thing to do. But I want this legislation to be enduring, to effect this profound change. My concern is that, if we are not careful, the remedy that we write might be worse than the malady that we cure. For example, Mr. Chairman, this legislation will create new entitlement programs for virtually every domestic discretionary program that we enact on this floor. Now we could overturn them with a point of order, but the point is those that we approve, consistent with the intent of this legislation, must be fully funded. Entitlement programs are the principal reason we have the problem we have now, because they have crowded out Federal assistance to States and localities. That assistance is considered domestic discretionary the budget. It is now really only about 12 percent, if we include everything. That is the problem. States and localities do not have the money that they need to carry out their responsibilities, and we are going to create more entitlements with this legislation. It will also create unequal treatment between the public and the private sector. It will be very difficult to pass legislation that creates national standards or that in fact addresses constructively the deficit problems that we have. For example, and I mentioned this last night, we probably need to raise the part B premium on Medicare. The way this legislation is worded, the 16 million public employees throughout the country that work for States and localities and all the various commissions, they could be exempt from having to increase their premium. Those employees in the private sector, the 100 million employees who work for private businesses, could not possibly be exempt. So not only would they pay their share, but they would have to make up for the fact that 16 million public employees did not have to pay their share. I do not think that is what we wanted to do. In fact, there are reasons for national standards, and we can go back through history, all the way back to the Articles of Confederation when we gave complete latitude to States, and it did not work. We created a patchwork quilt of governance, and we had to repeal that.

Mr. MORAN. I am very much concerned that as we encourage the private sector to compete with the public sector so we can ensure that we carry out our programs in the most efficient manner, that we can let the market work its natural process so that the public sector is not costing two and three times as much as it could be done for in the private sector for many activities, whether it be waste disposal, public utilities, or any number of other things, janitorial services, secretarial services. All those activities are being privatized. States and localities ought to be able to privatize them, and private companies ought to be able to compete. They would not be able to compete under this legislation because we will have Federal standards applying completely to the private sector and States and localities would be exempt. I am offering a substitute amendment which was introduced 3 years ago. As of last year we had 248 cosponsors. We stopped getting cosponsors at that point because it was clear that the vast majority of Members agreed. In fact, we had the support of the National League of Cities, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National Governors' Association, all of the State organizations, the National Conference of State Legislators, a long list of them. They all supported this. They do not now, because the current legislation goes a step further. It creates an entitlement for every State and local grant, and it gives preferential treatment to the public sector over the private sector. Naturally, they do not support it. They want to get as much as they can. I would suggest that this legislation, this substitute amendment, is the kind of moderate but profound change that will be enduring, that will not require that we fix it in 2 or 3 years. We know it does not go too far, but it does in the right direction. It will require that a point of order be raised on any legislation for which we have not obtained a complete fiscal impact analysis, not only of the public sector activities, but of what impact it has on the private sector. It also enables any Member of this body to strike an unfunded Federal mandate from the legislation being proposed. It has a judicial review section; it applies to the executive branch. It will require that the executive branch, when it issues regulations, to solicit from those groups affected what is the most efficient way of complying with the intent of the legislation. Take the ideas that are out there in States and localities and private businesses, incorporate those into your regulations, and let us conduct business in the most efficient, effective, and responsible manner. Mr. Chairman, I would urge the support of my colleagues.

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to address the Committee for 3 additional minutes.

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman I just want to cast a few roses here, although let me start with a thorn and get this out of the way. The one thing that has that was handed to the Members on the vote last night that may have influenced some, says that, ``The Moran amendment effectively exempts 90 percent of the laws Congress passes from the informational requirements of H.R. 5.'' That is not accurate. I think my colleagues on the other side would agree that it does not exempt Congress from 90 percent of the legislation and the informational requirements. I was disappointed that that is the sheet all the Members received on their way in to vote. It is true that it would delete the no money, no mandate provision, but I would hope that that not be the piece that is handed out for this vote or the subsequent vote, because it is misleading. Now, having gotten over that, let me thank the chairman of the committee, and the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Portman], the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Davis], the Members on my side who were strongly supportive of the version that is an alternative to the substitute we are about to vote on. This has been a very constructive debate. I think that we are making history in the next two votes that we will take. I know we are going in the right direction. We have a disagreement in whether or not we are going too far in the underlying Republican version. But I do appreciate the attention that has been given this issue. I particularly appreciate the constructive manner in which the sponsors of this bill have worked with us on the minority side, and I would hope that it would set a precedent for subsequent bills that come to this floor. Now, let me just say one further word about the gentleman sitting in the chair throughout this entire debate. The gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Emerson] has conducted this debate in such a fine and fair manner that he really deserves some recognition, I would hope maybe even a little applause. He has been absolutely indefatigable and exceptionally fair, and I thank him, and I know I speak for all of the Members on this side of the aisle in doing so, and I would certainly expect on the other side of the aisle. I thank all of those who have participated in this debate for a very constructive dialog.