Hal Rogers

Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky

Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Mr. Speaker, on Monday, September 13, I was in Kentucky tending to official business and was not present for rollcall votes Nos. 441, 442 and 443. The votes were on House Concurrent Resolutions 363, and House Resolutions 667 and 760. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on all measures.

Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky

Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to this amendment. Mr. Chairman, the irony here is enormous. Today we are hearing from anti-tobacco advocates who: want to keep the federal government in the tobacco business; want farm families to stay hog-tied to the tobacco industry; are pushing for the continuation of the tobacco program, not the ending of the tobacco program. This Amendment seeks to prevent USDA from eliminating the federal tobacco program. Every day, the Gentleman from Arizona comes down here to the well of the Floor to complain about the size of the federal government; the number of federal programs; and the fact that government bureaucracy is handicapping U.S. enterprise. On these principles, I agree with him. However, I find it ironic that my colleague is now offering an amendment that will do the very thing he claims to vehemently oppose. The bipartisan House-passed tobacco provisions will: Permanently eliminate a depression-era federal program; Get the Government out of the tobacco growing business; Allow U.S. growers to compete on the free and open market; Stop market share loses to Zimbabwe, Brazil, and China. The tobacco provision will not: Bankrupt the federal government, as it is entirely offset through the extension of customs fees; Dramatically increase teen smoking. There's absolutely no correlation between smoking and the buyout. I urge my colleagues to reject this amendment and support family farms and ending the federal tobacco system.

Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky

Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman is absolutely correct. In my rural district in Kentucky, it is an epidemic of the abuse of Oxycontin, particularly, but methamphetamines as well. And we have had dozens of young people die from the overabuse of these very addictive drugs, and it truly is an epidemic, and it strikes rich and poor, urban and rural. It does not matter. Wonderful families are broken up by this. People dying, families ruined, no place to go for treatment, no hope involved. And I want to compliment the gentleman for further drawing attention to this real epidemic that is sweeping the whole country, not just the cities, but I think probably especially now the rural areas. And I compliment him for bringing this up again, but also the chairman and him for including funds to help us fight it.

Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman for yielding me this time. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of this bill. It makes great strides in protecting our Nation. First off, it fully funds the FBI, $5.2 billion, which is a significant increase over current year, some $687 million more than this year. And especially important to me is the language in the bill that encourages the FBI to work closely with the Department of Homeland Security to complete an interoperable system as soon as possible, to help us check people coming across our borders against the FBI's criminal watch list. That is terribly important because we have had some unfortunate experiences on the border of murderers making it across the border after having been stopped; but the inability to check against the criminal records of the FBI needs to be remedied forthwith, and this bill has language encouraging that. And then, as the gentleman from Tennessee just said, this bill fully funds the President's Prescription Drug Abuse Program. And for those of us in the parts of the country where prescription drug abuse, like the overuse and abuse of Oxycontin, it is terribly important that we tackle this problem head on, and that is what this bill does. In my district, we have started an organization called UNITE, which stands for Unlawful Narcotics Investigations, Treatment and Education. There are literally thousands of people now involved with the support of this subcommittee in a three-pronged attack against methamphetamine and prescription drug abuse: investigations and the law enforcement part of getting rid of the pushers; treatment for those who are addicted and need treatment; and, of course, education to try to encourage young people, especially, to stay away from the abuse of these drugs. And this bill supports that program, and I thank the chairman for that especially. The bill fully funds the DEA, $70 million above the current level. It has $10 million for the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, which allows States to receive grants to establish a program to prevent people from double-filling prescription drugs and using the excess for sale as pushers. It includes $50 million for drug courts, which I believe in very strongly. We are seeing that work in my district, among others, where the power of the law is used for the good of people who are arrested and have no other crime except the use of drugs. And the drug courts work, and they rehabilitate people back into society in a good way. And then there is $60 million in the bill for methamphetamine hot spots, a problem that is particularly important in the rural parts of America. And then the bill reinforces the presence of the U.S. abroad. There is $1.5 billion for Embassy Security, Construction and Maintenance, which is $148 million over current levels. And, most importantly, I think, it continues the efforts to right-size the staffing at the embassies, saving us money and improving efficiency at all the places where Americans serve abroad in our embassies and consulates. Those are some of the more important features of the bill as far as I am concerned. I want to compliment the gentleman from Virginia (Chairman Wolf) and the gentleman from New York (Mr. Serrano), ranking member. I had the pleasure of working as chairman of this subcommittee for 6 years, working with the gentleman from New York (Mr. Serrano), who was ranking at the time; and I found him to be especially helpful in constructing a good bill. And certainly the gentleman from Virginia (Chairman Wolf) has just done a great job, in my judgment, a very challenging bill this year because of lack of funds. So I compliment the chairman and the ranking member for bringing to us a very worthy bill, and I urge 100 percent support of it.

Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky

Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman for yielding me this time. I think we all share the zeal to reform the budget process. It is broken. But in that zeal, I want us to be sure we do not step on the Constitution. One of the hallmarks of that great Constitution that has sustained us so far is the separation of powers between the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. It is the Congress, by the Constitution, that has the prerogative and, in fact, the duty to allocate the spending for the executive branch. Nowhere in the Constitution does it allow the executive to tell the Congress how the money should be spent, how much money should be spent. The Congress enacts appropriation bills, spending bills, and the executive executes those bills. The budget resolution that is before us calls for statutory spending limits. Now, I understand the motivation behind that is to try to get something that will cap spending. We all want that. But the President would have to sign such a budget resolution. That brings the executive branch, OMB, into the process of negotiating a figure, a cap, for those years. To me, that violates the separation of powers. We would not be able to enact a budget resolution, a statutory cap, independent of the White House because the President must sign the bill; and, therefore, he will exact his impressions on that. So I would hope that the chairman of my committee will follow through on his promise just now to work on a process of bringing spending under control. In the meantime, let us do not step on the U.S. Constitution by requiring a statutory Presidentially signed spending cap.

Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky

Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman. Sequential Votes Postponed in Committee of the Whole

Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I do that because I think we have reached the end of the amendment process here and are about ready to call for the votes on the amendments that have been rolled over. But before we finish, I wanted to take a moment to say some things. It is a pleasure working with my colleague, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Sabo). He works hard. He is smart. He has a good level head. He is a reasonable person, and he is a joy to be around and a great help in constructing this bill. It truly has been a partnership as we built the bill. I want to give him a lot of credit for the work that has been done. Of course, the members of our subcommittee. We have a super bunch of people. All of them contribute. All of them participate in the public hearings and, of course, the closed briefings that are classified. They keep those secrets secret. So we have got a wonderful subcommittee to work with. And I could not be more pleased to be a part of this team, as I will call it. Then a big part of that team too is this staff. They are just wonderful. Michelle and all of the crew and the minority staff work closely together; and they work long, long hours on extremely complicated matters building a brand-new Department, breaking ground on entirely new concepts that we are dealing with in this whole country. This is the second bill for the whole Department of Homeland Security, a new concept in Americans dealing with themselves and their country and the world. So we are plowing new ground. And this staff has just been wonderful in helping us all understand what it is we are dealing with and trying to come out with a proper result. I appreciate so very much this staff on both sides of the aisle who have made this day possible. Mr. Chairman, thank you for presiding over these proceedings as you have. We appreciate it very, very much.

Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. I yield to the gentlewoman from New York.

Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, if the gentlewoman would give me time to work with her on this, I will be happy to do it, but this is the first I have known about it. I do not know the ramifications of the amendment the gentlewoman filed nationally. It could very well be very expensive nationally; it could cost the government a lot of money. It could set a bad precedent to predetermine the most efficient way of contracting. How does it help? How does it hurt? I do not know. So I have to oppose it until we know more about it. So I would hope the Members would reject the amendment.

Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Well, Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, then I have no choice but to oppose the amendment. I want to help the gentlewoman, but if this is the attitude, then we will just have a debate here and let the vote take place, and it will be one way or the other and over with. So I would hope that the gentlewoman would reconsider that. But nevertheless, Mr. Chairman, I do not know the ramifications of this amendment. It could be devastating around the Nation for all I know, so I have to at the moment oppose it and oppose it vigorously.

Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota.

Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, I will yield myself the balance of our time. Mr. Chairman, our gentleman friend from Connecticut (Mr. Shays) I thought needs an answer to the question he raised. What are we doing about cargo on passenger planes? What are we doing about it, and where are we? Well, at the moment we physically inspect a certain percent of all cargo on passenger planes. That percentage is a law enforcement-sensitive number, and we cannot talk about it publicly, but it is a percentage that we actually physically inspect. The rest cannot be put on a plane unless it has been certified by the government to come from somebody we know, a FedEx or UPS or some other known shipper, a Toyota, GM, where we have gone to that shipper and put them through a rigorous examination so that we know whether or not they are reliable and their chain of supply, their security of supply has been checked. We are developing machinery, however, to be able to take the place of all of that. The machinery is just simply not there yet. It is being developed, and in the bill we appropriate $118.5 million for air cargo security. It is an enormous figure. That is $33.5 million more than we spent this year or that the President requested. We topped everybody in that respect. And $75 million of that is going to develop new technologies. One of these days we will have machines that will do for cargo on passenger planes what we do for baggage on passenger planes. We simply do not have it yet. We are working on it and working on it very quickly. But in this bill in the meantime we say, okay, we want to double the number or the percentage of air cargo that is physically checked, double it this year. We provide additional cargo inspectors for that purpose. We provide canine teams to help with the inspection of air cargo, and we provide $20 million more to make further enhancements to the known-shipper program and implement a new cargo rule. Now, if this amendment passes, I am sad to say I do not think the airlines will make it. If we prohibit all passenger cargo, as the gentleman from Florida (Chairman Mica) has said, we are taking away $3.5 billion in income to the airlines that are barely hanging on now. 27,000 jobs are involved here. We do away with the capability of the Nation's economy to have just-in-time delivery, upon which the country, in fact the world, runs. So I urge Members to be careful if we want to vote for this amendment. That is the safe thing to do, of course; but the responsible thing is to vote ``no.'' We are doing all we physically can do at the moment, and it will not help any if we shut down the airlines. Mr. Chairman, I urge a ``no'' vote on the Markey amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, I reluctantly rise in opposition. This is the first time we have seen this amendment. It is brand-new to me. We have not had a chance to discuss the matter with the gentlewoman.

Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Let me inquire of the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey), is the gentleman the last speaker?

Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. I yield to the gentlewoman from New York.

Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Well, I understand the gentlewoman, and I appreciate the predicament that she is in on this. It also puts us in a predicament because I do not know the ramifications of the amendment. It could have some very significant national unintended consequences that I have not had time to think about. So I wish we could work with the gentlewoman. Rather than bring this to a vote, perhaps if the gentlewoman would reconsider.

Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Granger), a very important member of our subcommittee.

Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, I really hate to disappoint the ranking member, but I do raise a point of order against the amendment under clause 2 of rule XXI. The provision designates an amount as emergency spending for purposes of the concurrent resolution on the budget. As stated in the House Rules and Manual, such a designation is ``fundamentally legislative in character.'' Mr. Chairman, I ask for a ruling from the Chair.

Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, I raise a point of order against the amendment under clause 2 of rule XXI. The provision designates an amount as emergency spending for purposes of the concurrent resolution on the budget. As stated in the House rules and manual, such a designation is fundamentally legislative in character. Mr. Chairman, I would reserve raising the point of order and yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner) to explain.

Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. Mr. Chairman, with respect to my colleague, I have to oppose the amendment. The bill provides $2,270,000 for the Office of Privacy in 2005, which is $1.5 million above the level enacted for the current year. And the Department of Homeland Security continues to be slow in hiring. The current vacancy rate in the Office of the Secretary, which includes the Office of Privacy, the vacancy rate is over 30 percent. A lot of that is due to the slow process of clearing people for these jobs. And we do address that in the bill in another section. So we hope to allow them to hire people and get them on the job quicker. However, the money in the bill already allows the Office of Privacy to hire eight new staff, and I do not think they can get that many hired anyway. This amendment would increase funding even more, and it is just not needed. So I would hope that the Members would reject this amendment. It is not needed. We have got more money there than we can use.

Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. I do, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order.

Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of the time to the sponsor of the amendment, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo).

Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. Mr. Chairman, the amendment seeks to cap the number of high-threat, high-density urban area grants and rail and transit security grants to the 80 presently awarded in 2004. Mr. Chairman, the whole concept of giving monies on top of the regular distribution of funds across the country, to give extra money to certain cities in the country, the whole concept was we need to protect those cities that we know are targets from the threat information we receive from time to time, because they have extra needs. And so that was the very concept of the urban area grant program which was added on top of all of the other grant programs. But threats change. Anyone who is privy to intelligence knows that yesterday it is Columbus, Ohio. It is New York. It is Washington. It is LA. It is Chicago. But then it is Albuquerque, and who knows where. And the Secretary needs to have wide latitude. We do not need to use this pot of money as pork. This needs to go where the needs are. We do not know where the needs are until we hear the intelligence of the moment. And that is why we leave great discretion in this bill with this pot of money as with most of the others with the Secretary and the intelligence community to make these grants based on real intelligence. Not what I think or what some Member of this body thinks, but what are the real facts, what information do we have that we need to respond to. And that is why it needs to be a flexible fund. Next year there may be 20 cities that are in that list, or it may be 10, or it may be 60. I do not know. But the funds are there for that purpose, to protect the large urban centers of high-density, high- threat urban areas. To restrict this amount, to restrict the number of cities, to say that these are these and no more, we will protect these cities and the rest of you can fend on your own, that is not right, is it? Are we to say to a certain segment of America, you do not matter. You do not count. I do not think so. I think this Congress should say these monies are to protect Americans wherever the threat is and wherever the risk is. And we should not be monkeying around with this type of thing. Please do not try to earmark in this bill, and this is an earmark in reverse. I oppose the amendment.