Jim Moran

Mr. MORAN

Mr. MORAN. Only because H.R. 1 set such a low bar could this CR be looked at as a significant improvement. While far from perfect, we need to bring the fiscal year 2011 to a conclusion and provide agencies with some certainty and stability so they can go about conducting the people's business. Members will have to decide for themselves whether elements that disappoint them outweigh the good in this bill, but this may not be the time to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, Madam Speaker.

Mr. MORAN. Madam Speaker, I also share the chairman's congratulatory sentiments to all those who made this happen, particularly the staff, who did work 24/7 around the clock. Madam Speaker, politics is the art of compromise, and this continuing resolution is the epitome of compromise. Members on the other side of the aisle dislike many aspects of this deal, as many Members on this side of the aisle dislike other aspects of this deal. The compromise reached by the negotiators produced a bill that was imperfect at best. However, it was the responsibile thing to do with a government shutdown looming. It does fund the Department of Defense for the remainder of the fiscal year, which is absolutely necessary for our troops currently in combat around the world. In the Interior and Environment portion, where I serve as ranking member, the details of the deal do show constructive compromise at work. I am pleased that all of EPA's environmental riders were dropped. But the agency was cut by $1.6 billion, mostly on the backs of States, with cuts to the safe drinking water and wastewater infrastructure programs. I guess when many Republican Governors have claimed that the stimulus money was wasteful spending, then they will not object too much to a reduction in these important infrastructure programs, even though it's coming out of the pockets of their States. In a compromise agreement, we have accepted delisting of the gray wolves from the endangered species list, but we have also secured increased funding for Indian Health, which is certainly the right thing to do. As Mo Udall once said, if you can find something everyone agrees on, you can count on it being wrong. Well, everyone in this body, as I said, can find something, in fact many things even, that they disagree with in this resolution. But in my judgment, it does contain more good than bad. It may represent the only kind of legislation that can be enacted in this time of heightened partisanship and fundamental differences in political philosophy. The deal reached is a vast improvement from what this House voted on on H.R. 1 just a few weeks ago. For example, Women, Infants and Children's, the WIC nutrition programs, are funded at $6.7 billion, nearly $250 million above H.R. 1; Legal Services Corporation at $405 million, that's $55 million over H.R. 1; Head Start is $7.6 billion, $34 million above the enacted level and $1.4 billion above H.R. 1; title X Family Planning is funded at $300 million, $17 million below the enacted level. But this is in stark contrast to H.R. 1, which zeroed out title X.

Mr. MORAN

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

Mr. MORAN

Mr. MORAN. Toxic waste cleanup was stopped at 609 sites; 2,400 Superfund workers were sent home; 368 National Park Service sites were closed down; 7 million visitors weren't able to visit the parks; there were more than 2 million visitors who couldn't go to national museums and monuments; the Smithsonian will be shut down; Federal contractors were furloughed. Throughout this country, not just in the Federal Government, this economy took a deep hit. Jobs were lost. Money was lost. People couldn't pay their mortgages and their car payments. Don't let it happen again, Madam Speaker. Let's pass a clean CR.

Mr. MORAN. I thank the very distinguished former chair of the Appropriations Committee and now ranking member of the committee as well as of Defense. Madam Speaker, none of us want any of our soldiers to go unpaid for 1 day or for one moment--obviously, they should not--but there are also representatives of virtually every agency in the government who are working for our goals and objectives throughout the world in combat situations, many of them--in hardship situations. Much of the essential work of the government, our people in the military would be the first to say, is performed by people who don't happen to be in uniform. None of them should go without pay. This government represents the most important nation in the world, and we are responsible for funding it. We represent the people, and they work for the people. The problem with this bill is that the decision to bring it up now is tantamount to shutting down that government. What we should be doing is exactly what Mr. Hoyer and Mr. Dicks have suggested, which is to bring up a clean continuing resolution, to let us get through the weekend, to come up with a long-term resolution for the rest of the fiscal year, and then to fight out these ideological battles in the fiscal year 2012 appropriations bills. This is no way to run a government, Madam Speaker, but we do have some precedent. The last time the Republican Party took over the Congress back in 1995, some of my colleagues will recall, we also shut down the government on two occasions for a total of 27 days during the Christmas period. We know what happened then: 800,000 Federal Government workers were furloughed, and it cost the taxpayers more than $1.4 billion. Let me just mention some of the things that happened then and that will happen again. The Minerals Management Service had to shut down many of the rigs that produce oil, which power this economy. It is estimated that the companies which owned those rigs had to pay at least $525,000. They couldn't get any oil. They were shut in. We had 200,000 U.S. applications for passports which went unprocessed. Thirty thousand applications by foreigners for visas, much of it for business that had to be done in this country, were closed down. U.S. tourist industries and airlines sustained millions of dollars in losses. That's what will happen again.

Mr. MORAN

Mr. MORAN. So I ask, Madam Speaker, just to consider the scene where Members of Congress would be arguing before the courts their right to be paid while millions forgo their pay. Madam Speaker, this body is wasting its time with the legislation we are considering today. Let's demonstrate to the public that we are willing to make the same sacrifice we are asking of others. If we are going to put 800,000 Federal employees and our staff out on the street, then we ought to be out there with them. Take up the Moran-Tester bill instead of this expression of ideological extremism that is dead on arrival in the Senate. That's what we should be doing.

Mr. MORAN. I thank my very good friend from Colorado. Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition to this rule. The Federal Government is now 6 months into fiscal year 2011 without a budget. We've created no new jobs and, in fact, have put tens of thousands of people out of work. All we've done is to stumble along from continuing resolution to continuing resolution. That's no way to run a government, let alone the most powerful Nation in the world. Sadly, with the clock running, ticking toward the midnight hour of a government shutdown on Friday, agreement on a full-year budget is nowhere to be found. We have no consensus. We can't get together. We can't do our job. And instead, the Republicans in this House continue to serve up far right ideological proposals such as this which pretends that global warming isn't really happening. It will block EPA's modest attempts to limit the growth of greenhouse gas emissions that are endangering the public's health and our children's future. Instead of such sham political posturing, this body would be far wiser to bring up a bill that has already been passed in the Senate and sits ready for consideration in the House today. That is the Moran- Tester Government Shutdown Fairness Act. On the eve of a government shutdown, with hundreds of thousands of government employees facing furloughs, and millions of Americans having to forgo the essential services that the Federal Government provides on a daily basis, it is unconscionable that Members of Congress will continue to receive their pay. Having abdicated our responsibility to do our job, to pass a budget, we should not continue to receive a paycheck. It is simply a matter of fairness, Madam Speaker. If all Americans are going to feel the pain of a government shutdown, then we should make sacrifices, too. The Moran- Tester bill would suspend Members' pay in the event of a shutdown. The Senate passed it unanimously, and so should we. It's the one thing we could agree on now and have signed by the President immediately. That's the vote we should be taking today. Now, some have argued for self-centered reasons that the Moran-Tester bill is unconstitutional, but that's simply a smokescreen, Madam Speaker. They know perfectly well that the courts decide matters of constitutionality. Further, we know that the only individuals with standing before the court would be the very Members of Congress who would be voting to shut down the government. So just consider the scene where Members of Congress would be arguing----

Mr. MORAN

Mr. MORAN. Madam Speaker, what we've elected to do is to balance priorities, and the most important are the priorities within the budget process. The Republican budget proposal introduced today is a collection of misplaced priorities because it cuts hundreds of thousands of jobs, it weakens our economy, and it punishes poor people. That's not what we are about. Today, the wealthiest Americans in this country have 40 percent of our Nation's wealth and are making more than a quarter of our national income. But this budget will cut their top tax rate by 15 percent. In other words, if you're making a million dollars, you're going to get a tax break of up to $150,000. If you're making a billion dollars a year, which more than two dozen of the hedge fund managers in this country do make, you will get a $150 million tax break per year. That's not what we should be about. Let's look at the misplaced priorities in the continuing resolution in front of us. The amount saved by cutting education, health care, environmental regulation, child care, cancer, and Alzheimer's research and all of the other cuts in domestic, nondefense, discretionary spending, is equal to the cost of continuing the Bush tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans. Those are not the priorities of America; that shouldn't be the priority of this Congress. We can do better. We must do better.

Mr. MORAN

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chair, emboldened by their electoral victories last fall, my Republican colleagues have embarked on a campaign to weaken or repeal many of the landmark laws that have protected the public's health and the environment. The first opening shots at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) were fired through amendments to legislation (H.R. 1) to complete the fiscal 2011 budget. More than 22 anti-environmental and anti-conservation riders, that suspend agencies from taking action to implement provisions in Federal law, were added to bill on the House floor during the week of February 13th. Fortunately, the Senate rejected the House bill, bringing us down a path to where we are today in a high stakes showdown whose outcome looks even more likely to result in a government-wide shutdown. But, instead of sitting down to try to work out a budget, we are here on the House floor debating a bill to overturn a scientific finding. EPA determined through its December 2009 endangerment finding that greenhouse gases endanger the public's health. Today's House floor action is reminiscent of the Catholic Church's response to Galileo Galilei's publication of his famous work, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, which stated that the sun was the center of the universe. It was not until October 31, 1992 when Pope John Paul II expressed his regret for how the Galileo affair was handled by the Catholic Church. Unfortunately, climate change does not afford us the luxury of time to amend our policies decades from now. Climate change is upon us and the longer we delay, question the science and fail to take even modest action to curb future growth, the costlier the consequences will be. Today's legislation is a cynical attempt to pretend climate change is not occurring and restrict the one agency authorized by law to do something about it. History will neither reflect kindly on those who reject science in the pursuit of short-term economic and political gain. I urge my colleagues to oppose this bill.

Mr. MORAN

Mr. MORAN. I thank the gentleman for yielding. So the point is the law as it stands today is, we shut the government down, a million Federal employees don't get paid, our staff doesn't get paid, but we get paid. All the gentleman wants to say is treat ourselves like we would treat others. If our staff is going to be out on the street, we ought to be out there with them. The other point the gentleman makes is, if we vote for this recommittal, the Senate has already approved it, and it goes right to the President. It gets signed into law. We've done something constructive. The alternative is to send something over to the Senate and the Senate's going to laugh at it. You know this H.R. 1255 isn't going to get passed. This would be passed. This becomes law. It's the right thing to do.

Mr. MORAN. Madam Speaker, this morning several dozen students from Key Elementary School came to visit the office, and they wanted to know what we were doing. They were all excited to be up on Capitol Hill. So I explained: Well, this afternoon we are debating a bill. It has been introduced by what we call the freshmen, the new Members of the House. The bill says that if the Senate doesn't agree with a big bill that the House has passed, if the Senate doesn't agree next week, then this bill would deem it passed, in fact, deem it enacted. Well, they were all kind of shocked because that is not what they learned in civics class. They learned that a bill has to be passed by the House and then passed by the Senate, and then it goes into conference. And then, if the President agrees to sign it, then it can become law. But not this bill. So I was at a loss, of course, to explain how it was constitutional. They were kind of surprised that this is what the House was doing. They wanted to know, Well, what is the bill that they want to be enacted? And I said, Well, it's a bill that I don't really agree with and a lot of the Members don't agree with. In fact, the Senate doesn't agree with it. Because while we have a lot of people unemployed, this would make apparently about 700,000 more people unemployed according to even Republican economists. So they were even further amazed by that. It also would eliminate a lot of regulations that have been passed by the House through a lot of deliberation, but it just says those regulations wouldn't take effect. So it is a very controversial bill. Now, I was also able to tell them that I did suggest to the Rules Committee yesterday, although the majority rejected it, that there is something we could do today; and that is to say that if we put our staff out on the street without pay, hard-working employees who get a fraction of what we get paid, and we put another million Federal employees out on the street unpaid, then the Congress shouldn't get paid, either. The Senate did in fact pass that unanimously, including the Republican Leader Senator McConnell obviously.

Mr. MORAN. So at least today we could put ourselves on record that we are not going to put people out on the street while we continue to get paid, because we get paid from a different authorization, as does the President. Now, this is legislation we could get passed. Since the Senate has agreed, it could go to the President right away. I know the President would sign it. That is what we should be doing today, not something that even a 10-year-old understands is unconstitutional.

Mr. MORAN

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Speaker, private sector employment went up by 200,000 people this month. But unemployment remains stubbornly high. A principle reason for this is the job cuts in the public sector. This past month, public sector jobs were lost at an annual rate of a quarter million people. These people also have mortgages to pay, college kids to educate, car payments to make, and the like. They matter to our economy. Over the last 2 years, more than 200,000 teachers have been laid off, while student enrollment has increased by 750,000. We're told that H.R. 1 would eliminate another 9,000 teacher jobs. In Detroit, classroom size has gone up to 60 students per classroom in middle school, the toughest years to maintain discipline and enhanced knowledge. Now we're told we may have a compromise on H.R. 1 that will cut only 300,000--not 700,000--public sector jobs. It's inconsistent at best, hypocritical at worst, for the Republican majority in this House to suggest they care about jobs while at the same time they're eliminating hundreds of thousands of them.

Mr. MORAN

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 471. This bill provides $300 million in unfunded appropriations at a time when the same leadership that is advancing this bill has told us that cuts to education programs, like Head Start and Pell grants, that affect students around the country, are a fiscal necessity. The Majority is pushing an ideological agenda designed to satisfy their base framed as an effort to improve the lives of children in the District. While Congress retains an oversight role over the District of Columbia, D.C. should not be treated as a petri dish for conservative ideas that are opposed by the voters in the District. There have been two major studies of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program. The first found ``no conclusive evidence'' that the vouchers program affected student achievement. The second found that while math scores did not improve, there was a modest improvement in reading. Unfortunately, those gains occurred strictly for those students who came from the least troubled D.C. schools and scored the highest on the baseline test. Unfortunately, this program has failed to help those who need it the most. Critically, the gains in student achievement witnessed in the vouchers program do not match those achieved by the District's charter schools. If this body is truly interested in supporting effective school choice and education reform in D.C., we should focus on funding to reduce long waiting lists for the best charter schools. Congresswoman Norton, the only Member of this House democratically accountable to the parents and students of the District, has offered a substitute amendment which would divide the funding equally between DCPS and the city's charter schools. I will support the substitute.

Mr. MORAN

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Speaker, National Public Radio has the strongest intellectual, artistic, and informational in-depth content of any radio network in this country because its content is not compromised by corporate ownership. I love it. But I won't lose it. It's the rural stations that depend on NPR for half their budget. They can't afford to lose this national asset, nor can the 36 million people who rely on emergency alerts from NPR in times of crisis. The commercial market won't do that because there's no profit in it. Nor can the visually and hearing-impaired afford to lose the technology NPR developed. This has nothing to do with the deficit. It's an infinitesimal fraction of our national debt. It jeopardizes 9,000 jobs, and it distracts us from solving the real problems that this Nation faces while trying to destroy one of the primary sources of an enlightened electorate.

Mr. MORAN

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Speaker, the Republicans' budget would endanger American lives while it destroys American jobs. It will increase every American's likelihood of getting sick from unsafe meat and poultry, contaminated drinking water, and foreign food additives. Fewer police will make our streets less safe. The chances of curing cancer, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's disease are all seriously diminished. Most of the cuts target poor people, but the hundreds of program cuts will also endanger all of our lives. We've thrown hundreds of programs into a dump truck Republicans call H.R. 1 bound for the trash compactor. Let's reach in, though, and look at just one of those: meat inspection. The law requires a Federal inspector to be present at all 6,000 slaughterhouses and packing plants across the country, but this Republican budget's 19 percent cut will require 8,600 such inspectors to be furloughed for 22 days, which means that packing plants like Hormel's may have to lay off thousands of people for that period of time. Why do this when Federal inspectors stopped 9.5 million pounds of poisoned meat just last year alone in 71 recalls. Let's derail this dump truck called H.R. 1.

Mr. MORAN

Mr. MORAN. The point that I started by suggesting, and I'm sure it's not in contention, is that this is no way to run a government. We have a responsibility on the Appropriations Committee to fund these agencies, to determine our priorities, to reflect the interests and the will of the American people. This process does not do that. The bill, H.R. 1, does not do that. The American people deserve better. They deserve careful deliberation. We need to cut, but we need to cut responsibly, using a scalpel, not a sledgehammer. This bill will pass, but this should be the last CR. Let's get a full-year appropriations bill passed as soon as possible.

Mr. MORAN. I thank the very distinguished Member from Washington and thank him for his leadership. But he knows, as well as I trust all of the Members do, that this is no way to run a government, lurching back and forth like a drunken sailor, the agencies not knowing when or whether they are going to get their money. Actually, I should take that back because the Navy would never conduct operations like this. And the distinguished chairman from Kentucky well knows that this is not the way we want to be doing business; yet here we are with another CR for 3 short weeks this time. We just had a hearing this week with the Forest Service. As the Members know, they hire hundreds, sometimes thousands, of temporary seasonal workers to fight fires in our Nation's forests. They can't do that. They don't know how much money they are going to have. And the folks that they would hire seasonally as a result can't take those jobs, don't know what they are going to do. This unconscionable delay in funding disrupts people's lives, hundreds of thousands of people's lives, directly; millions of people's lives indirectly. As I say, this is no way to run a government. But why are we doing it? Because we can't agree on H.R. 1, and we shouldn't agree to H.R. 1, as passed by the House. So many riders that should have gone through legislative committees were put in the bill with 10 minutes of debate in the wee hours of the morning, stripping language from the authorizing legislation that had been subject to months, if not years, of careful deliberation. That's no way to run a government. And beyond those riders, there are thousands of programs that are being cut willy nilly. One such program, for example, is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They provided the early warning to people on the west coast and Hawaii when they detected the recent tsunami. And yet, we are told by NOAA, that the 30 percent cut in this bill, excuse me, 28 percent, cut in this bill for NOAA would dismantle our early warning system to save a few million dollars. That's just wrong. There was just an article in the Washington Post that people are beginning to realize other essential things that are cut in this program to save a few dollars. Now, $285 million is not a few dollars, but consider what happens when you cut $285 million out of the program integrity section of the Internal Revenue Service. They collect $10 for every dollar we spend. And so you cut out $285 million, and it costs you about $3 billion in revenue that should be collected.

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

Mr. MORAN

Mr. MORAN. Madam Speaker, so many of our brand-new colleagues seem to have run on the thesis that government can't be the solution to any of your problems, rather that ``it'' is the problem, that it can't be counted upon to help people, that it can't even be counted upon to invest in America's long-term interests. It seems as though, now that they've been elected, they're doing everything they can to prove themselves to be right. This is no way to run a government. A 2-week CR? Now, we don't have any great problem with the components of this CR except for the fact that it's 2 weeks. It should be a 7-month CR. In fact, we should really tackle the appropriations bills themselves. But if it's a 7-month CR, it shouldn't be a dump truck of legislation that includes in it virtually every controversial issue that this Congress has dealt with over the last 20, 30 years. My good friend from Kentucky, the chairman of the committee, will recall that quaint phrase that we would deploy in committee, that this amendment is not in order because it constitutes legislating on an appropriations bill. Well, we legislated everything. This bill has more poison pills in it than Rasputin's medicine cabinet. Everything is thrown in here, and it was thrown in in the middle of the night. You know, bills that we had considered carefully in committee that had come to the floor, that they were debated carefully and then resolved, and yet sometimes in a 10-minute debate those bills were dispensed with. That's not the way an appropriations bill should be brought to the floor. It ought to be a clean, continuing resolution if we're going to do a CR.

Mr. MORAN. The fact is we know we can do this. We can get a good appropriation bill. We can make surgical cuts and we can agree on those surgical cuts. But let's not try to put together a dump truck that includes in it every possible controversial issue that we know we can't resolve. That's not in the long-term best interest of the American people, and, in fact, it ought to be an embarrassment to our appropriations process. So I would hope that we would vote against this continuing resolution simply because it's only a 2-week CR. We can do better.

Mr. MORAN

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Maura Patricia Kelly on her retirement as a congressional aide after an astounding 53 and 1/2 years of decorated service. Patricia Kelly was born on June 5, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York. She is the daughter of Edward Kelly, a New York City Court Justice, and Edna F. Kelly, a former Member of the United States House of Representatives. ``Pat'' as she is affectionately known, describes her childhood as an exciting and loving time. As she made her way from the Marymount High School in New York City to Marymount College in Tarrytown, New York, Pat learned the importance of receiving a quality education. She graduated with honors in 1955 with a bachelor's degree in Political Science and History. Pat's family has a long history of public service that started with her grandfather, William E. Kelly, who was appointed by President Woodrow Wilson to be Postmaster of Brooklyn, New York. After college, Pat quickly joined the family business, getting her feet wet in politics by helping her mother, Edna, get elected to the congressional district that represented Brooklyn, New York. Pat began her congressional career as a research analyst for the House Committee on Un-American Activities and shortly thereafter, began her service as a legislative assistant to Members of Congress Edna F. Kelly, Martha W. Griffiths, and Matthew F. McHugh. Pat then assumed the role of legislative assistant to the House Rules Committee. In 1979, Pat took the position of Editor of the House Daily Digest, in the Office of the Clerk, where she was required to interact regularly with it's 21 standing committees and two select committees. Pat held this position until her retirement on March 1, 2011--becoming one of the longest serving employees ever to work for the U.S. House of Representatives. Pat cites her mother Edna as the catalyst behind her decision to devote her life to public service. When asked about her mother, Pat often uses words like: hard working, passionate, honest, dedicated, principled and always congenial. Pat says that many members and staff in the House often referred to her mother as ``Madam Protocol.'' Everyone who knows Pat knows that ``the apple did not fall far from the tree.'' Pat and her mother not only loved the House but they loved helping people in and outside it. In 1976, Pat was named Roll Call's ``Congressional Staffer of the Year.'' That same year she was chosen as the President of the Congressional Staff Club. More recently, she was honored for her years of outstanding service to the House. Over her career, Pat was fortunate to work on many pieces of landmark legislation including the Equal Pay Act and the Equal Rights Amendment. We wish Pat well in retirement and will always remember her efforts to make this institution run more efficiently in the service of the American people.

Mr. MORAN

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. MORAN

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, could I inquire how much time remains?

Mr. MORAN. I would yield those 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey).