F. Sensenbrenner

Mr. SENSENBRENNER

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

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, the other gentleman from Wisconsin has claimed that nobody has had a chance to review the bill after the Governor has made his line-item veto. The President of the United States has had a chance to review it, because the statements that he made in support of Wisconsin's W-2 plan were after the Governor vetoed parts of the W-2 plan and signed it into law. And he said, all in all, Wisconsin has the makings of the solid, bold, welfare reform plan. We should get it done. Now, what we are hearing from the other side of the aisle is that we should cloud the issue more. We should confuse the issue more. And we should end up giving the bureaucrats in the Federal Department of Health and Human Services the opportunity to modify the waiver request, as they usually do when waivers are requested, and thus end up by bureaucratic fiat changing the welfare reform plan that the elected legislators of Wisconsin and the Governor of this State have decided is in the State's interest. That philosophy is wrong. The reason this bill is before us today is so that Congress can allow Wisconsin to get on with the job of reforming its welfare system. Now, let me say that what we are doing here is really not unprecedented. There have been three instances in the last 10 years where Congress has legislatively approved welfare reform waivers requested by the Governors of various States. In the Omnibus budget Reconciliation Act of 1987, two of them were approved, one from the State of Washington on a demonstration project permitting the operation of a family independence program as an alternative to AFDC, and the other from the State of New York as another demonstration project as an alternative to AFDC. In the Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1989, Minnesota was permitted to conduct a demonstration project of its family investment plan. Now, to my knowledge, there were no hearings conducted by the folks on the other side when those three requests for waivers came before Congress for approval. We should not do it here.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, that is correct, and there is a veto session of the Wisconsin Legislature scheduled for July 9, 10, and 11. The State legislature can decide to override any one of the vetoes that the Governor has chosen to make.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I would just like to point out that in the hometown of the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Obey], hometown of Wausau, there was a 7-hour public hearing on October 17, 1995, where 82 individuals either appeared or registered before the committee at the hearing. What the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Obey] apparently wants to do is to ignore the input that those 82 individuals gave in his hometown to elected legislators, and have bureaucrats in the Department of Health and Human Services end up deciding what waivers to approve, what waivers to modify, and what waivers to reject, and thus write the final welfare reform plan. I have much greater faith in the folks who appeared at the hearing in Wausaw than the folks across the street in the HHS building.

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

Mr. SENSENBRENNER

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. For the gentleman's edification, a listing of the waivers that were requested by Governor Thompson appeared in the Congressional Record of June 4, 1996, at page E992. So every Member of the House of Representatives, and for that matter the public at large, by 9 a.m. yesterday morning had the list of the waivers that were requested. I am sorry that many of the Members, including the gentlewoman from California, decided not to look at them before making her speech.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Glens Falls, NY, for yielding me this time, and I rise in support of the rule and also the legislation. The previous speaker, the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Kleczka], I think has put a lot of red herrings into this debate. There are some very fundamental and core issues here. First is where should the real decisions be made on what type of welfare reform we have in the State of Wisconsin. Should they be made by Washington bureaucrats in dealing with these waivers or should they be made by the people of the State of Wisconsin and their elected legislators dealing with this issue in Wisconsin? This issue has probably gotten more public debate in the State of Wisconsin than any other issue in the history of the State. From the time the legislation was first formulated, the State legislature had 30 public hearings or town hall meetings in Wisconsin on the issue of W-2. There were 120 hours of public debate in sites all throughout the State on the legislation and over 2,000 residents of Wisconsin participated in these hearings. Now, what the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Klecza] says is let us forget all about that, that does not count at all. Let us end up having some public hearings out here in Washington and then let us have the Secretary of Health and Human Services or the bureaucrats under her control rewrite these waivers and pick and choose which waivers we want to grant and in what form. And the fact is that very few of the waivers that have been submitted by Wisconsin or other States have been approved in the form in which the Governors have submitted them. It is an extensive process of negotiation between the State and the Department of Health and Human Services, and we do not want that to happen here. I do not see why we ought to ask the 2,000 people who participated in the public debate on W-2 to have to figure out a way to make their voice heard in Washington, DC, 900 miles away, when they were able to give their input in places like Madison and Milwaukee, Oshkosh, Appleton, Beloit, Wausau, and LaCrosse. The second red herring that the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Klecza] decided to throw into this debate is about the cost of the program. We all know that the Federal Government spends about 60 percent of AFDC costs. Granting these waivers is not going to cost the Federal taxpayers one additional dime, because there is a provision in this bill, for anybody that decides to read it, that says very plainly that the total grant of the State of Wisconsin shall not exceed the amount of the grant that Wisconsin would have gotten had these waivers not been approved at all. Now, the President has come on board in saying that he is in favor of W-2. In his radio address, which was after Governor Thompson issued his line vetoes and signed the bill, he said in conclusion, ``In all, Wisconsin has the makings of a solid, bold welfare reform bill. We should get it done.'' Today, we are getting it done here, and I would hope that this issue would not be obfuscated and not be clouded. Wisconsin is leading the way in welfare reform, Washington should not stand in the way, and that is why this bill should be enacted.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, this is the key vote on the space station this year. I would hope that the committee will stay the course. I ask the membership to vote no on the Roemer amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I noticed that when the President's budget came up on the floor of the House, it was overwhelmingly rejected, and only 10 of the 23 Democrats on the Committee on Science voted for the President's budget. The gentleman was one of them, I give him credit for consistency, but evidently the gentleman was less persuasive then than he is today.

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

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the substitute amendment. Mr. Chairman, I think the difference between the substitute amendment offered by the gentlewoman from Texas [Ms. Jackson-Lee] and the Sensenbrenner-Weldon amendment shows the difference between the two parties in the House of Representatives. Mr. Chairman, the Jackson-Lee substitute is an add-on. There are no offsets. It adds on $81.5 million to make the personnel account whole. They do not look at reordering priorities. They do not look at keeping the total appropriation or total authorization for NASA the same. They just want to spend some more money and not offset any of the accounts, even those that they think have been set at too high a level by the majority on the committee. The Weldon amendment, as amended by my amendment, provides the same amount of money for the NASA personnel account as the Jackson-Lee amendment, $81.5 million to stop all of those terrible things that the gentlewoman from Texas and the gentleman from California say will happen. But what the Weldon and Sensenbrenner amendments do is to offset other parts of NASA, so that our amendment is budget neutral. It does not increase the total amount of money that will be spent on NASA. It is budget neutral. So, Mr. Chairman, if Members are for just plussing up the NASA account without making offsets, vote for the Jackson-Lee amendment. If Members are not for that, vote to reject it and vote for the Sensenbrenner amendment and then the Weldon amendment, as amended by the Sensenbrenner amendment.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, this is the amendment that makes the personnel account whole. It adds a total of $81.5 million to the personnel account, $73 million comes as a result of reductions in other accounts, and there is a transfer of $8.5 million from travel into personnel. The biggest reduction in the other accounts is space science, which is reduced by $60 million, mission communications by $5 million, academic by $3 million, and space communications by $5 million. This, I think, is the proper way to go about making sure that the personnel account is enough to avoid furloughs. It is done in a fiscally responsible manner in providing offsets to other accounts. I would urge the adoption of the amendment to the amendment, which would bring the amendment of the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Weldon] back in the shape that he wanted it in prior to the objection to his request to modify it. amendment offered by ms. jackson-lee of texas as a substitute for the amendment offered by mr. weldon of florida

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment to the amendment.

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

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. Mr. Chairman, in fiscal year 1994, this program was funded at $106 million. The bill before us has a funding level for this program at $152.8 million for fiscal year 1997. Now, that is an increase of about 45 percent over a 3-fiscal-year period. I believe that that increase is generous enough in light of the extreme fiscal situation that we are facing and the bipartisan drive to try to balance the budget. Also, the amendment that has been offered by the gentleman from Virginia, while well-intentioned, is an add-on without corresponding offsets. We went through that entire issue in the last amendment, and the House voted very strongly in favor of, where we do have add-on, to have a corresponding offset so that the bill will maintain its fiscal neutrality. This amendment does not maintain fiscal neutrality. It ends up increasing the authorization by $34 million-plus, and that means $34 million-plus of deficit spending should the Committee on Appropriations match the authorization level. In summation, I do not think that we need this additional money. I think that it is important that there be on offset, not an add-on. I believe that this program has been given generous increases over the last 3 fiscal years under both Democratic and Republican-controlled Congresses and the amount that is in the bill unamended is enough.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that debate on this amendment and all amendments thereto be limited to 1 hour, with the time equally divided between the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Roemer] and myself.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Chairman, we are going through one of the annual rites of spring in Washington. The tulips bloom, the dogwoods become very beautiful, and the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Roemer] introduces his amendment to kill the space station. Let me say that I will match my record on spending issues against that of the gentleman from Indiana and anybody else in this House, and I support the space station. The Citizens Against Government Waste has given me their Taxpayer Hero Award consistently. The National Taxpayers Union has named me the tightwad of the decade in terms of my votes on taxes and spending, and I am proud of that, and I support the space station. I am not going to belabor this point very much, but I do wish to make two points for the committee's consideration. The first is that the United States taxpayers have already put $12 billion into designing the space station and building 50,000 pounds of hardware. If the amendment of the gentleman from Indiana is adopted, that $12 billion investment will just evaporate. We just chalk that up to experience, and this vote is really a vote on whether or not to stiff the taxpayers the $12 billion that they have invested in this. The space station is on time, it is on budget. We have settled on a design. We are not redesigning it. We are building the hardware now and we are looking forward to the launches of the first elements sometime next year. The second point is that America's credibility is on the line, because we are the leaders of an international consortium that includes Russia, the member nations of the Russian space agency, Canada, and Japan. Should the amendment of the gentleman from Indiana be adopted, the United States will unilaterally cancel the space station, and the investments that have been made by the taxpayers of all those other countries will similarly be waived. That is about 4 billion U.S. dollars. So if we end up stiffing our international partners and our allies, we are going to make sure that they are not going to want to get together with the United States, either on scientific endeavors or on any other endeavor, for fear that the Congress will change its mind and pull the rug out from underneath them. Let us stay the course. Let us vote against the Roemer amendment. Let us build the space station, and then let us operate the space station and benefit from the scientific research that goes on. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Hall].

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds just to rebut the gentlewoman from New York [Ms. Velazquez]. There is a cut in the NASA budget. It is a pretty significant cut. We went through all of that in terms of the debate on the personnel. But just to set the record straight, from fiscal year 1996 to fiscal year 1997 this bill cuts the total NASA budget by $325 million. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Weldon].

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Alabama [Mr. Cramer].

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 5 minutes in opposition to the amendment. Mr. Chairman, this is a very deceptive amendment because it says that, if we just take a little bit of money out of a $2.1 billion program, we will be able to save some money and nothing is going to happen to it. That conclusion is absolutely false. One of the reasons why NASA brought itself into disrepute in the last decade is that both NASA and Congress decided to reduce costs in many of the accounts. The reduced costs saved money in the next fiscal year, but it ended up resulting in projects not being completed and projects were completed late and cost overruns. All of the engineers stayed on the payroll to complete the project when the meter is ticking. NASA Administrator Dan Goldin, who I believe has done a marvelous job in making NASA faster, better and cheaper, has written me a letter. I want to quote it in part. It says, simply put, an arbitrary reduction of $49 to $100 million means a slowdown of work. A slowdown of work means a schedule slip, and schedule slip means increased cost. Analytically, the impact to the station schedule is up to 3 months, referring to the amendment of the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Roemer], and the increased cost as much as $200 million, or at least twice the amount saved by the proposed amendment. This is an unacceptable risk to our careful balance of hardware elements and payroll deployment. What the gentleman from Indiana is doing here today in the name of saving money is to set this House and NASA up for a complaint that the station experiences cost overruns because of the stretch-out and the schedule slip that is caused by the gentleman from Indiana's amendment. Then he will be back next year when the dogwood bloom and the tulips sprout saying NASA has not been able to hold to its schedule; there has been a cost overrun; let us kill the Space Station. Well, the way to prevent the gentleman from making that argument is by rejection of his amendment today because the $75 million he proposes to save now will cost the taxpayers $200 million according to the NASA Administrator, who says he works for the President of the United States. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Stearns]. (Mr. STEARNS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, with the agreement of the gentleman from Indiana, I ask unanimous consent that debate on this amendment and all amendments thereto be limited to 10 minutes equally divided between the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Roemer] and myself.

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas [Mr. Stockman].

Mr. SENSENBRENNER

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote, and pending that I make a point of order that a quorum is not present.