John Spratt

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. As I said earlier, one sure way of fulfilling the dire prophecies set out in the preamble of this bill in title I is to do what is called for in title II of the bill and sink huge sums of money into a so-called national missile defense system, especially if this missile defense system employs space-based interceptors at the earliest practical date. That is why I am offering this amendment to title II of the bill. Mr. Chairman, I support a strong defense, I believe in and support ballistic missile defense, but I think we need to get our priorities in order. I first want to make sure that our forces--and they are going to be downsized and smaller--are ready to fight. I want to make sure the equipment they take to battle is the best we can possibly give them and I want to assure them off the battlefield, they and their families, a quality of life. Title II can be read to mean many things. If it means a missile defense system that envelops the whole Nation and employs space-based interceptors, the cost will put at risk all of our other priorities. During markup of this bill, I tried to clarify title II with an amendment which I filed in the Record, an amendment stating exactly what sort of system it calls for, and specifying a system with a ground-based interceptor. What happened? The amendment that I offered was rejected by every Republican member of the committee. I filed that same amendment in the Record for consideration on the floor, but rather than offering it, I have taken it and boiled it down. I am offering instead the boiled-down version that really tries to set straight the priorities set forth in title II. I offer this amendment because I think if title II becomes law without it, it could be taken to mean deployment of a national defense system made up of space-based interceptors. Such a system could easily cost $25 billion to deploy, and that $25 billion can only be funded at the expense of other priorities, like readiness and theater missile defense, with which we are all concerned. My amendment is to make sure that a national missile defense system is not put ahead of other, higher priorities. It requires, very simply, this: One, that readiness and modernization should be funded first and should take priority over national missile defense. Second, that theater missile defense should take priority over national missile defense because it deals with a threat that is here and now, one our forces will face if deployed to almost any theater in the world today. The third priority my amendment states is that any national missile defense system developed should start with a ground-based, and not space-based, interceptor. I am not opposed to space-based interceptors, but if they are to be used for ballistic missile defense, they should come later rather than sooner. The right place to start with missile defense technically and in terms of cost is on the ground. So I offer this amendment to correct several concerns I have about title II of the bill. First, Mr. Chairman, I am concerned about national defense and about national defense spending. I would like to see more money be spent on national defense, but I also think that $250 billion a year is real money and that it will fund our requirements, provided we spend it wisely. In the 1980's we spent $25 billion on the strategic defense initiative without fielding a single system. In the 1970's we spent $115 billion, in today's money, fielding the Spartan and Sprint, only to stand them down once they had been deployed. We cannot afford such excesses in the 1990's. That is why we have to be sensible, prudent and cost-effective and amend title II and set our priorities straight. Readiness first and foremost, that is the first priority; theater missile defense over national missile and national missile defense must start with ground-based interceptors rather than space-based interceptors. Mr. Chairman, I am concerned about ballistic missile defense. I believe in it, and I think we should perfect a ground-based missile defense system. The amendment I offered in committee would call for just such a system. But the system I called for would be complied with the ABM Treaty. I think the time is coming when we will want to change the ABM Treaty, amend it by agreement with the Russians. But now since START-II sits in the Russian Duma waiting to be ratified, now is not the time to talk of abandoning or scrapping the ABM Treaty. We believe that we can develop the capability of intercepting incoming missiles, but we cannot be certain. We can be certain of this: If START-II is ratified, 4,000 to 5,000 warheads aimed at us will be intercepted, taken down, their delivery systems destroyed, their silos filled up. Why risk ratification of START-II by even obliquely proposing, as title II does, that we scrap the ABM Treaty? My amendment does not preclude national missile defense; far from it, it simply puts funding for missile defense in the right order, and I urge support of the amendment.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for expressing some clarification of what it is they seek. I have no particular problem with it. I propose simply that we accept it and move on.

Mr. SPRATT. What the gentleman is seeking is just a hearing with the relevant parties and interests before the committee so we could better understand what is going on and express our opinion?

Mr. SPRATT. The provision that is printed in the Record ends by saying ``These negotiations should be suspended until the 104th Congress has had the opportunity to review these matters.'' I would ask the gentleman, Mr. Chairman, does he have in mind simply a hearing? What is the opportunity of review?

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, let me say that what we have offered here supplements, does not substitute for or replace, it supplements H.R. 2, and it does not do it in any sort of redundant or cosmetic way. We give the President some important additional rescission authority. He can use this authority pending any court challenge to the constitutionality of H.R. 2 and he may have well need that authority this budget year because there is likely to be a constitutional challenge to this bill if it becomes law. Second, we give him authority that he can use throughout the budget year, not just in that narrow period of time 10 days after the adoption of an appropriations bill. The Congressional Research Service says, as we were just pointing out, that 99 percent of all rescissions typically sent up here by presidents since 1976, 99 percent of them have been sent well beyond that 10-day period of time. Our bill covers that additional period of time, when by tradition 99 percent of the rescission bills have been sent up. Finally, we allow the President to say, we want to take these savings, put them in a deficit reduction account and not have the money spent elsewhere during the course of the fiscal year. Three strong features that add to, do not detract from or conflict in any way, strengthen this bill and should be adopted to perfect it.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, we had the Congressional Research Service do some research which I think is extremely helpful in understanding the importance of this power that we give the President to use this additional rescission authority throughout the fiscal year. According to CRS, the Congressional Research Service, 99 percent of all rescissions sent up here by the President were sent beyond the 10- day period after the adoption of appropriation bills. That points up that frequently the rescission authority is not used to knock out pork barrel stuff, but to try to adjust the budget in midyear when we have got underfunded accounts for the Veterans Administration, underfunded accounts for operations and maintenance and defense, and we have to pay for the supplementary budget authority by rescinding other budget authority on the books. Then the President has the authority to formulate his request, send it up here and be guaranteed under our bill a quick 20-day turnaround.

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

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I rise to support the Stenholm-Spratt amendment, and I want to stress from the start what this amendment does not do: It does not replace H.R. 2, the bill before us. It does not even weaken H.R. 2. It adds to that bill extra rescission powers, and broadens the timeframe for the use of those powers, and gives the President a plus, an option, that H.R. 2 does not give him, the option of entering any spending saved from any rescission into a so-called locked box or deficit reduction account. So, Mr. Chairman, this expedited rescission lock-box amendment is a supplement and not a substitute to H.R. 2. It would not conflict with, or weaken, or change one whit the powers that are delegated to the President under H.R. 2. The gentleman from Texas [Mr. Stenholm] and I offer this amendment for several reasons: First, I am genuinely concerned that the courts may hold the line- item veto power which we confer upon the President here under a novel interpretation of law unconstitutional, unconstitutional because it is a broad, broad, sweeping delegation of authority with very scant standards to govern the use of that authority. No court has ever decided the exact question that we are putting to the courts and will be putting to the courts here, and virtually everyone in this Chamber acknowledged that this is a novel question, acknowledged his uncertainty about how the court would rule when several days ago the Deal amendment came up, and with very little debate and very little dispute the Deal amendment--providing for expedited judicial review-- was approved virtually unanimously. But even in the case of expedited review, it will take months, surely the rest of this budget year, before we have a definite opinion from the Supreme Court as to the constitutionality of H.R. 2. During that period of time, Mr. Chairman, we are providing the President this as a standby, fall-back authority. In case the courts invalidate H.R. 2, then the President has this authority on the books. He can use it, put it to good use, because the scope of this, as I point out, is even broader in many respects than H.R. 2. And what if the courts find H.R. 2 constitutional? In that case, this amendment gives the President one more weapon to use to wipe out unwarranted, unnecessary, or wasteful spending or spending that he finds we cannot afford given the status of the economy or the state of the budget in the middle of a fiscal year. The rescission authority we provide here is not redundant for that reason by any means. Actually, it is more useful in some respects, in many respects, than H.R. 2 as it now stands. I do not need to explain H.R. 2 in detail because this is virtually the same as the Stenholm-Penny-Kasich expedited rescission bill which this House passed on July 14, 1994, by an overwhelming vote. By my count, every single Republican then in the House, 169 in all, voted for its passage. Three hundred forty-two Members of this House thought enough of the efficacy and utility of this bill to vote for it then. Only 69 Members opposed it. This amendment, as I said, is broader in scope than H.R. 2 because it allows the President to rescind appropriations at any time during the fiscal year. The veto power under H.R. 2, on the other hand, has to be used within a very narrow window of time, 10 days after a passage of appropriation bills. Under our amendment in H.R. 2 the President can only repeal targeted tax benefits within 10 days, but under our bill he can send spending rescissions up at any time and under our bill he will be guaranteed an up or down vote on his package in the House within 10 days and a vote in the Senate within 10 more days. And for any Member who wants a separate vote on any particular item in the package, it is important to his or her district, then if he can muster 50 Members on the House floor to support his request, he can have it broken out. This bill, as I said, also allows the President the authority, the extra power which the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Clinger] acknowledged in debate the other day, was a commendable provision, to put any savings that were realized under a rescission into a lock box. The lock box was part of a popular bill that many Members subscribed to in the last session called A to Z. The lock box allows the President to direct that the discretionary spending account will be lowered to the extent that we adopt any rescission that he sends up here, lowered by that else. Once the President has sent his bill up, the rescission message will be converted to a bill. The bill has to be introduced within 3 days, the Committee on Appropriations has to act upon it and report it to the floor, and we have to vote within 7 days. When it leaves here it goes to the Senate on the same fast track. So let me sum up, Mr. Chairman, by saying this amendment in no way weakens, detracts from, or is inconsistent with H.R. 2. It is a plus to H.R. 2. It is a fall-back alternative if H.R. 2 is found to be unconstitutional, and at the very least it is a temporary alternative for the President to use if H.R. 2 is restrained or enjoined pending the outcome of a challenge in court. Furthermore, our amendment is broader in scope than H.R. 2 because it applies throughout the fiscal year, not just for 10 days following the enactment of an appropriation bill, and, of course, it has the lock box feature I spoke of earlier. This amendment is a plus for H.R. 2, and I urge support for its adoption.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. I yield to the gentleman from West Virginia [Mr. Wise].

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I rise to support the amendment known as the Moran-Spratt amendment. Mr. Chairman, the advocates of H.R. 2 claim that they have found a way to give the President by statute powers that he does not enjoy under the Constitution, the power, specifically, of an item veto. They claim that this power will allow the President to cut out wasteful, unwarranted, spending in appropriations bills that we adopt every year. Our amendment simply takes the President's newfound veto power to the realm of quasi-spending sometimes known as tax expenditures or tax incentives. The committee bill already takes a tentative step in this direction. It delegates to the President the power to rescind targeted tax benefits, special interest tax provisions that benefit 100 or fewer taxpayers. But here it stops. It stops, in my opinion, far short of the right goal. As to spending, this bill boldly covers virtually every item in 13 different appropriations bills, all with discretionary spending, $540 to $550 billion a year, but with tax expenditures it turns timid. It stops at a limited-interest tax provisions which are really just the tip of the iceberg. Why is this bill so tough on spending and so easy on special interest tax incentives? Let me read my colleagues what Newsweek said to explain last week, reading from Newsweek. The fine print of the item veto bill reveals that though the Republicans are tough on spending, they are lax on special-interest tax giveaways. The vast majority of tax breaks, worth hundreds of billions of dollars, would remain immune from the President's veto. Any lobbyist looking for goodies from the Federal Government in the future could work through the tax code instead of working through spending bills. For some years we all know that has been a favorite recourse. That has been a practice common here for 20 to 25 years. If we want to give people an incentive to install solar heat in their homes, we are not so obvious as to hand them out a subsidy. We allow them a tax credit for part of the cost. If we want to promote oil and gas exploration, we do not fork over subsidies to the drillers. That would never be approved in the House, appropriating money for the major oil companies. We give them oil depletion allowances, or we let them expense costs that other businesses would be required to capitalize. Nobody notices because it is buried in the Tax Code, and who is to know when we are allowing one cost to be expensed rather than capitalized that we actually are giving a subsidy to this particular taxpayer. Our amendment would give the President the power to police these tax expenditures, to comb through the Tax Code the way he will be able to comb through spending appropriation bills and cull out questionable policies and provisions. Under our amendment, the President would have the right to rescind so-called tax incentives or tax expenditures. What are tax incentives or tax expenditures? Let me read the definition we use in our amendment for tax incentives. The term ``tax incentive'' means any deduction, credit, preference, or exemption from gross income or any deferral of tax liability causing tax revenues to be forgone as inducement for taxpayers to pursue or forbear from pursuit of certain activities or actions. this bill certainly will be, let us also be tough on tax giveaways. They amount to the same thing. They have the same bottom line impact on the deficit. And for that reason, Mr. Chairman, I urge adoption of the Moran- Spratt amendment.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment, amendment No. 20.

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

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, this substitute moves cautiously, more cautiously, constitutionally, than does H.R. 2, I will admit that, because it leans toward the fundamental concept of our Government, majority rule over minority rule, but it takes us a long stride forward without stepping off a cliff and not knowing where we are going to land. If we pass this substitute, we can give the President of the United States significant new powers to cull spending, to cut our targeted tax benefits, without tilting the balance of powers between the Congress and the President. Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support it for those reasons. (Mrs. ROUKEMA asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, this is a creditable substitute. Three hundred and forty-two Members of this House said so resoundingly by voting for it. One hundred and sixty-nine of those who cast their votes ``aye'' were Republicans. How did this provision, this substitute, attract 342 votes, three- fourths of the House? First of all, it works, and second, it is constitutional. Let me take the second point first. Mr. Chairman, this bill, everyone will admit, is clearly constitutional. That ought to be an important consideration for any bill brought to this floor. We certainly cannot say as much for H.R. 2 as it is presently written. Last night, Mr. Chairman, the last action we took was to vote on an amendment offered by the gentleman from Georgia, Nathan Deal, which will provide expedited review by courts of the constitutionality of this particular legislation. We would not put, and we rarely put such provisions in legislation, except when we have grave and urgent doubts about its constitutionality. Therefore, it is tantamount to admitting that we have abiding doubts about the validity of H.R. 2, its constitutionality. We know we are pushing the envelope. We are taking the delegation of powers doctrine to its outer limits in passing this bill. Mr. Chairman, we know it, because we do not even know the answers to these basic questions. We will not until the Supreme Court has spoken. Therefore, what we have done, all the huffing and puffing, all the touting we have put into this particular piece of legislation may come to naught, Mr. Chairman, in the immediate future, because there could be a constitutional court challenge to it. It could be enjoined. It will not even by used by this President. Then it could ultimately be rendered unconstitutional by the court. We do not know if the President can repeal or undo or disenact a spending law or a targeted tax benefit. It was strongly suggested by the Supreme Court that it took an act of Congress signed by the President to repeal or undo or disenact a law that we have passed, but we are here saying he can do it without our intercession. We know that Congress can delegate broad powers to the Congress, to the President, to carry out laws that we pass, to enact and execute policies and purposes that we have laid down legislatively. We know we can give him broad discretion to carry out the law, but can we give him, as we purport to do here, the power to cancel out our own purposes as stated in law? We know we can tell him that he can execute our purposes and policies, but can he eradicate them, erase the, simply thwart them? We do not know the answers to these questions, but we do know this. The substitute before us is constitutional. Furthermore, and this is vitally important, it works. It gives the President all of the powers to comb through spending legislation and taxing legislation and to cull and clean out things that he disagrees with, that he thinks are unnecessary, unwise, unwarranted. H.R. 2 does this, but so does this bill, just as much. Second, Mr. Chairman, this gives some additional scope to the President that H.R. 2 does not give him. This substitute goes even further. For example, it allows the President to take rescissions that he sends up and assign them to a deficit reduction account, a lockbox. In the last election, in the last few months of the last session of Congress, one of the hot and topical issues here was a bill called A to Z. It had a feature in it called a lockbox. You could make spending cuts and have those spending cuts assigned to a permanent reduction in the discretionary spending limit. For those who supported A to Z, for those who support the concept of a deficit reduction account, a lockbox account, here is you change to vote for it. It is in this bill. As Chairman Clinger admitted, it is a plus for this bill that is not included in H.R. 2. There is another huge advantage to this amendment, this substitute. It actually has a scope that is far broader than H.R. 2. That is because, Mr. Chairman, in H.R. 2 there is a very narrow time window for the President to act, 10 days. This bill literally goes backward and forward. It allows the President to wield the additional item veto authority we are giving him, or rescission authority we are conferring upon him, at any time during the fiscal year, backward or forward at any time, and it will be guaranteed a vote within 10 days in this House and 10 days in the Senate when he sends it up here. Therefore, this particular substitute should not be diminished. It is a powerful tool for subjecting or resubjecting all discretionary spending, all targeted tax benefits, to public scrutiny.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this amendment. I might add I knew nothing of the purpose or the need for such an amendment until I attended the hearing which our committee held on this particular bill. I think it bears emphasizing that this amendment was not originated in our committee. It was requested by the judiciary conference and a representative of the judiciary came and asked for it specifically. Basically I think it is worth stressing that if we adopt this amendment, we lose very little in terms of strengthening, bolstering, building up the budget process, which is the purpose of this bill, but we gain a great deal in terms of protecting our political processes. What are the purposes of this bill after all, H.R. 2? No. 1, it is to cut spending, cut spending and reduce the deficit. Frankly, I think it is vastly oversold. I doubt that it will really have more than a footnote's impact on the deficit reduction when the history of the rest of this decade is written, if it is indeed passed. I think the more important purpose of it is to restore public confidence in the appropriations process in this Government, particularly in this Congress. The people want to know that the budget has been scrubbed. They want to know that we have culled out and the President has the power himself independently to cull out and clean up the budget and get rid of anything that is unwarranted or wasteful. It gives the public some additional authority, a little more confidence in this institution, which is sorely wanting. But we can adopt this amendment and should adopt it and not detract one wit from either one of those purposes because the amount of money we are talking about here is miniscule. This will leave, even if we adopt the amendment, the entire discretionary budget, $545 billion on the President's veto pad. He can still wield his veto pen as to all of the expenditures in defense and everywhere else in the budget. Indeed, if the proponents of this bill, H.R. 2, are concerned about this amendment because it is a tiny exception, it is a small loophole, they really should focus on two amendments that we are going to offer later in this process. One is to expand the coverage of the President's veto so it extends the contract authority implemented in public works bills. That is worth considering. It has vastly more significance than this particular amendment here. Or they should look at the Tax Code and the amendment we will offer that deals with tax expenditures which is spending by another name implemented through the Tax Code. Those two amendments would vastly expand the reach of the President's veto power and undergird the purpose of this bill a lot more than this minor amendment which we are talking about here, minor in terms of detracting from the budget process. So we have an alternative, if we want to make this bill more effective. We can pass this bill, as the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia said, and lose nothing, really. But we gain a great deal in terms of our independence. We do not detract in the least from the line-item veto power, but we do defend a concept that has lasted for 200 years, a concept that we cherish in this country, that is judicial independence, the independence of our judicial branch. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Moran].

Mr. SPRATT. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me the time. Mr. Chairman, the bill before us passes up a practical solution, expedited rescission, which this House has voted for on 3 separate occasions, a solution that is clearly constitutional, and takes up instead a novel solution that is constitutionally in question. I know that the Congressional Research Service has sifted through all the case law on delegation of powers and come to the conclusion that this bill is probably constitutional. But as Judge Bork put it in an article he wrote some time ago about the line-item veto, ``A solution that nobody has thought of for 200 years has the burden of persuasion, especially in constitutional matters.'' Those who claim that we can give the President line item veto authority bear the burden of explaining to us how we can amend the Constitution by statute. They have to explain to us in all fairness, I think, why it is that no President has ever noticed that he had this authority implicit in the Constitution for over 200 years. Let us start with George Washington. He presided over the Constitutional Convention. When he was asked what were his powers under the presentment clause, he answered succinctly. ``From the nature of the Constitution,'' said Washington, ``I must approve all parts of a bill or reject it in toto.'' William Howard Taft was both President and Chief Justice. He once wrote, ``The President has no power to veto parts of the bill under the Constitution and allow the rest to become law. He must accept it or reject it in its entirety.'' Where Judge Bork and William Howard Taft have refused to tread, the authors of this bill rush in. In effect, they say, ``Even if the Constitution doesn't give the President this power, Congress can confer on the President by statute powers that the President doesn't have under the Constitution.'' The bill does not use the words, but the device it employs to confer the item veto power upon the President is delegation. In essence, this bill delegates to the President the power to cancel out items in a bill in lieu of vetoing the bill in its entirety. So this bill takes giant strides. It shifts enormous power to the President by delegation and it is so broad, so unique, so unprecedented that I think it fairly begs the question, ``Is it constitutional?'' Fifty years ago, the Supreme Court said, ``Sweeping delegations of legislative power are unconstitutional.'' I know that a lot of water has flowed over the dam since the Schecter decision came down, and that Schecter has mostly been honored in the breach, as that have become broader and broader with time. But 7 years ago in Bowsher versus Synar, a case dealing with the budget authority of the Congress, dealing specifically with sequestration, which was much like a veto, the Court issued a caveat for us to beware of. It said, The ultimate judgment regarding the constitutionality of a delegation must not be made on the basis of the scope alone but on the basis of its scope plus the specificity of the standards that govern its exercise. When the scope increases to immense proportions, the standards must be correspondingly more precise. This is the caveat sent to us by Bowsher versus Synar, the caveat we should heed here. The broader the scope, the stricter the standards. There is no question about the scope of this bill. It is immense, it is broad, it is as big as the powers of 13 different appropriation bills that we pass every year, all discretionary spending. In effect what we are saying here is the President can choose to do whatever he pleases with 13 different appropriation bills adopted into law each year by the Congress. What standards, what guidelines control what the President can do? What tells him where the purpose of Congress lies? First of all, this bill says that when the President cuts out spending, or rescinds, the rescission must reduce the deficit or the national debt and limit discretionary spending. But, ladies and gentlemen, that is tautological. By definition, anything that cuts spending will reduce the deficit. So this is not a standard. Next the bill says the rescission must not impair essential governmental functions or harm the national interest. What does that mean? The standard is so subjective that the President can fill it any way he wishes. It is so vague that it is meaningless. I know that in decisions from J.W. Hampton to Mistretta dealing with the sentencing guidelines, courts have allowed Congress to hand over enormous power to the executive branch, the broadest sorts of power, the broadest kinds of discretion, but it is to carry out policies that we spell out and enunciate. The difference between all those cases and this bill is that this bill delegates to the President the power not to carry out but to cancel out legislative policies, not just to execute the will of Congress but to, when the President wishes to, eradicate the will of Congress. If we want to add a line item veto to the President's powers, then I think the right way to do it is to amend the Constitution. Until we have amended the Constitution, the best way to give the President the equivalent of a line item veto is by enhancing and expediting his authority to rescind. We will offer in the course of this debate amendments to do just that.

Mr. SPRATT

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

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I offer this as a perfecting amendment so that H.R. 5 will not apply to the regulation, to any regulation, with respect to the generation, transportation, storage or disposal of toxic, hazardous or radioactive substances. Mr. Chairman, 2 weeks ago some 1,800 containers of hazardous waste, waiting to be incinerated in my district, caught fire and burned out of control, burned so intensely that they virtually melted the metal building in which they were contained. This waste came to Rock Hill, South Carolina, from Fishkill, New York. Eighty to ninety percent of all the wastes that comes to this particular incinerator comes down the eastern seaboard or up the eastern seaboard from out of state to this location, and there is precious little South Carolina can do about regulating the inflow of that waste because virtually any regulation we try to impose pretty quickly runs into the interstate commerce clause or into Supreme Court decisions like New Jersey versus Philadelphia in a case called ``Don't Dump on Washington.'' There is very little we can do, and so in South Carolina we have hazardous waste landfill, one of the largest in the Southeast, two substantial commercial incinerators, a medical waste incinerator and landfill, a low-level, or two low-level, nuclear waste disposal facilities--at one time we would take in half or more of this Nation's low-level nuclear wastes--and several solid waste disposal facilities where garbage from out of state comes to our State. Much of this waste comes from private business, but a good part of it comes from city, and county, and State owned hospitals, burnt oils from city transit authorities. PCBs from municipal electrical distribution operations, low-level wastes from State universities and hospitals, and there is very little, as I said, a State like mine, a waste importing State against its will, can do about all this waste except look to the Federal Government. Mr. Chairman, as I was saying, there is very little that a State like South Carolina can do about all this waste which comes from out of State except look to the Federal Government which has preemptive authority under the Constitution and the laws we have adopted, look to the Federal Government and hope that the Federal Government will be rigorous, and vigilant, and fair and firm, and now we have a bill which purports to help States, all States, but really breaks faith with States like mine because it sets up a double standard, and this amendment goes to that standard and goes to a fundamental flaw in this bill which has been raised by other amendments that we have already considered. It goes to two basic problems in this bill: First of all, many State and local governments, as I said, generate, transport and dispose of toxic waste, hazardous waste and radioactive substances. This amendment ensures that when Congress passes new laws that control the generation and disposal of hazardous, toxic and radioactive wastes, in the handling of these substances these laws will apply to the public and private sector alike equally, in the same bill in the future that steps up the regulation of these dangerous substances, many of which end up in States like mine, will be subject to a point of order unless, one, we exempted State and local government; or, two, we paid out of the Federal Treasury for the cost of complying with these new and additional regulatory mandates. To my way of thinking, either option has problems. It would be a mistake to pass laws governing radioactive waste, in my opinion, but to exempt State and local governments. We would be saying it is all right to expose the public to dangers from radioactive wastes so long as the waste is publicly generated, and I think it would be a mistake, too, to give publicly owned facilities that generate the disposal of this type of waste a clear advantage over the private sector, which would be given if we allowed them to operate without these restrictions. So, this simply tries to level the playing field. It says there are some matters, some dangers such as the disposal and handling of toxic and nuclear wastes, where State and local governments should be held to the same strict standards as anybody else who undertakes to operate in this area. I urge my colleagues to recognize that this is not a weakened amendment. This is a perfecting amendment. It goes to a fundamental problem in this bill. Join me in supporting this amendment to protect the public against the risk of hazardous, toxic and radioactive wastes regardless of whether they are generated and disposed of by public or private facilities.

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

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding the time. Mr. Chairman, this is important legislation. It is time we passed it. Local governments that have limited tax bases have a right to resent it when they are imposed upon with mandates that are handed down to them from above, whether by State legislatures or from Congress. I know, I was a county attorney for 12 years before I came here. The Members who originated this bill, and the reason it is here in the well as the second piece of legislation we consider in this Congress, are the gentleman from California [Mr. Condit] and the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Moran] who came from local government backgrounds and they know what it is all about. A core concept of this bill, the Moran bill, is the idea of fiscal impact statements as a heads-up to all of us, including local and State government, when we are about to pass a bill and pass the buck, to make us think twice about what it is going to cost State and local governments before we pass it, and to [[Page H358]] give them all a chance to object, demur, and raise questions about it. Unfortunately, this bill is a different bill from the Moran bill which passed last year and our committee reported and would have brought to the floor soon in this session. It is a different bill, and we have not had time to peruse it, to read it closely. We did not have time because we did not have hearings in our committee. If Members just peruse the bill they will find there are a lot of questions. Indeed the bill comes here because of railroading it to the floor, studded with question marks and caution flags. For example, there will be a lot of Members out here as we move into the amendments raising questions not about the core concept, not resisting the bill, who will probably vote for passage like me, raising questions like public-private parity. My State, the State of South Carolina, generates electricity. It is a big power generator. Does this mean that in the future when we pass a renewal of the Clean Air Act that we cannot impose additional emission standards on the States, the generators of electricity, without paying for the scrubbers? And if it does mean that, it will not be long before private utilities will come to South Carolina and say hey, let us transfer to you this operation, you take title to it, we can then avoid these additional requirements. These are the questions we will be raising to perfect the bill, make it workable legislation, not to defeat it.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. What I seek, Mr. Speaker, is that we dispense with the reading of the motion.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, there is a unanimous-consent request to dispense with the reading of the 20-page motion.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. The previous Member just described this as a day of promise, a day for raising standards of this institution, and this is a historic occasion. We will miss a historic, major opportunity to change the way this institution of the Congress is perceived if we do not add to this rules package before us the ban on gifts from lobbyists which this House passed just months ago by an overwhelming vote of 315 to 111. There are many things in this package, this rules proposal, that I can and will gladly support. Let us be frank about it: Committee proxy voting, super majorities, baseline budgeting, this is Capitol Hill jargon. Some people out in the country get it; most do not, and most could care less. But everybody understands what gifts from lobbyists is all about. That is why we got 315 votes for it the last time it was before the House. If we want to open up this institution, if we want to freshen its image, redeem its reputation among the American people, then we need to sever the ties, real and perceived, between those who work inside this institution and represent the people as a whole, and those who work Congress from the outside, the lobbyists, Gucci Gulf, the lobbyists who represent special interests and limited numbers of people. Just a few months ago this ban on gifts from lobbyists was good enough for 315 Members. The provisions that some found problematic then that dealt with grassroots lobbying were purged from the Democratic proposal today. We did add one provision that is contentious. It would limit, not ban, limit the amount of royalties that a Member could earn while sitting as a Member of this House on publications written while he is sitting. But the limit is a third of your salary while serving here, which is a generous dispensation for full-time Members who are paid full-time salaries. With such enormous support, 315 yeas, why not vote on this package today and make it the rule of the House from day one?