Bill Thomas

Mr. THOMAS

Mr. THOMAS. Reserving the right to object, Mr. Speaker, and I will not object, I appreciate very much the gentleman from Missouri's words. This is the beginning of a new Congress with a new structure. All of us are testing limits. It seems to me what we ought to do is do the people's business, instead of what has been happening for the last half hour. I thank the gentleman. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw any reservation of objection.

Mr. THOMAS

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

Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, I offer an amendment.

Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Hoyer] for yielding, and I do want to underscore the fact that, as the gentleman knows, and he was very cooperative in moving this forward, we have actually extended this policy beyond the specific discussion of those committee and administrative personnel who were leaving to make sure that the Members' personnel offices were treated in a similar fashion. Since there is no policy on the books, this is a policy which will now be established which I do believe is useful, not only in the transition, but in the professional handling of staff which will be further seen in the bill on accountability to come up just after this, and I thank the gentleman.

Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on House Oversight be discharged from further consideration of the resolution (H. Res. 35) providing for payment of a lump sum for accrued annual leave to eligible former employees of the House of Representatives, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Hoyer] for yielding, and I would tell my colleague that the House Republican transition team has developed a plan for wholesale restructuring of the administration of the House officer. As the gentleman knows, the restructuring involves the transfers of various functions of the new House officers with clear probability of consolidation, reclassification and, to a certain extent, elimination of positions that are under the Committee on House Oversight's jurisdiction. House rules adopted on opening day, January 4, 1995, require that committee staff be reduced by one-third from corresponding levels in the 103d Congress. In addition to that, three committees have been eliminated. Because of this the Speaker has publicly announced his intention to provide a mechanism for the payment of accrued leave for up to 30 days for departing committee and administrative support rules, or in public law, for the lump sum payment of accrued leave, and on January 11, 1995, as the gentleman well knows, the Committee on House Oversight passed a motion to instruct the chairman of the committee to introduce this particular resolution that is in front of us. The resolution that we are looking at, House Resolution 35, authorizes compensation to departing committee and administrative support employees in the form of a lump sum payment for any accrued leave, up to a maximum of 30 days, as certified by their committee chairmen or the relevant employing authority. It also allows Members, not just committees, but Members, in this Congress to compensate any departing personal office staff for any annual leave accrued under each Member's office policy. Any employee who is rehired in the legislative branch within 30 days will not receive that accrued leave payment since there was a simple interruption of employment rather than termination. Accrued leave compensation for departing committee staff will be paid out of the appropriate House account. Compensation for departing Member office employees will be paid from the Member's 1995 clerk hire account. Compensation for departing administrative support employees will be paid from funds already appropriated for the relevant employing authority for fiscal year 1995 operations. Further, any committee or administrative support employee who is terminated prior to July 1, 1995, as a result of the continuing restructuring will also be entitled to compensation under this resolution for accrued leave up to 30 days. I will also tell the gentleman that there is an amendment at the desk, which I will offer at the appropriate time, which makes a date change in the resolution from January 3, 1995, which was the date in the motion that passed the committee, to December 31, 1994. It was not the intent of the committee to exclude from eligibility for accrued leave payments those employees who may have been taken off the payroll between December 31 and January 3, and so the amendment simply backs up the time from January 3 to include December 31, January 1, and January 2.

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

Mr. THOMAS

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

Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, we began this process on January 4 and we moved the legislation to the Senate. We are considering today, on January 17, Senate bill 2, the Senate version of this legislation. There will be no conference committee. This legislation will move directly to the President. The President has said that he will sign it into law. This process has taken 2 weeks. For people to fully understand the impact or maybe I should say the weight of today's decision, this is simply the text of the laws, without any annotation or explanation, that are now going to be applied to the Congress that are already applied to the private sector. I would tell my colleagues that S. 2 passed in the Senate 89 to 1. I believe the House should do the Senate one better. I would ask that the House pass S. 2.

Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I would tell the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Barrett] that we are in the process of reviewing all of the rules and regulations in the House of Representatives, and at the end of the last Congress we committed to review all of them, including these. Perhaps from a historical point of view the gentleman from Wisconsin also needs to know that rather than this being the first time in the history that the laws applied differently to the House and Senate, he needs to know that there was a period of time in which the actual compensation to Members of the Senate and the House was different under the law. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Shays], one Member who was more responsible than anyone in the House today for this being in front of us.

Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The gentleman from Maryland indicates that the bill that we have before us has not had a single hearing on the House side. Yet he commends its content to be superior than the bill that we examined on the House side. The chairman of the Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities lamented the fact that it has taken us so long to get here. I think it might be useful for a minute or two to visit the chronology of how we got here today. Way back on July 28, 1994, the Committee on House Administration voted 19 to 0 to pass essentially what we have in front of us onto the House, with the hope that in July, having moved out of committee, by the end of the second session of the 103d Congress, this would have passed the House and the Senate and moved to the President for his signature. As Members will recall, very little went through the entire legislative process in the 103d Congress, and this is one of them. It is true that on August 10, the House voted 427 to 4 to adopt what is essentially in the measure that we have today. There were four Members of the minority, then the majority, who voted against it. Having sent that position over to the Senate and the Senate's failure to consider the position, on October 7, the House decided to take it upon itself to impose the structure of what would have been legislation on the House through the rules process. At that time the vote was 348 to 3. The three votes in opposition to the measure were clearly not substantive opposition. The Members on our side of the aisle were in fact protesting the failure of the then majority to move any significant reforms in the 103d Congress. Notwithstanding that, we imposed this on ourselves through the House rules. The only substantive difference in S. 2 from H.R. 1, I believe, is the addition of the Veterans Reemployment Act to the list of bills under which Congress will now operate. In addition to that, we were able to work out the very real concerns of the Senate over a single shared structure so that the Office of Compliance would fit the needs of the House and the Senate with our different size and procedures, history and tradition. That has been resolved in this bill. So we stand on the brink of living up to what this majority said we were going to do in the contract and on January 4. I think it is interesting to note that this House voted out of committee, on July 28, 1994, in essence this measure. On August 10, 1994, it was voted out of the House and nothing happened. In this Congress, in the 104th Congress, Republicans and Democrats joining together on the opening day of the session, 429 to 0, passed this measure. And then here today, despite the rhetoric, I think Members will find the votes will once again be overwhelmingly in favor of Congress placing itself under the laws that the rest of the Nation has to live with. We will do it in a timeframe that is certainly appropriate. The timeframe should have been honored in the 103d. The then majority could not deliver. The timeframe is being honored in the 104th, and the current majority will deliver. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. HOYER, Mr. Speaker, just to review history for 1 second, this legislation passed the House in August 1993. It was because of Republican opposition to procedure in the Senate that it failed to go forward. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes and 30 seconds to my good friend, the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Barrett].

Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Goodling], chairman of the Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities, be permitted to control 10 minutes of the 20 minutes which are controlled on this side and to yield that time in such blocks as he may determine.

Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the Senate bill (S. 2) to make certain laws applicable to the legislative branch of the Federal Government.

Mr. THOMAS

Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to extend their remarks in the Record on the subject of the Senate bill, S. 2.

Mr. THOMAS of California

Mr. THOMAS of California. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. THOMAS of California. The gentleman needs to know that this side was ready and willing to take up the accrued leave, which the gentleman from California intended not just to cover committee Members but personal staff as well, since I was concerned about the separation that was occurring between the way in which committee staff were being handled and Members' offices were being handled. However, it came to our attention late yesterday that Members on the gentleman's side of the aisle, while he was still the majority, had dismissed some people on the 1st, 2d, and 3d of January. The motion that we had instructed was at the beginning of the time that we became the majority, so the delay between today and Tuesday is to accommodate your side of the aisle, to make sure no one is left out of the accrued leave. We are working out an amendment which will extend the time frame into the 103d Congress, covering those employees on the 1st, 2d, and 3d. So the delay is to make sure that everyone is accommodated. That is the reason for the delay.

Mr. THOMAS

Mr. THOMAS. Madam Speaker, the gentleman skates very nicely on thin ice.

Mr. THOMAS. The gentleman is not germane.

Mr. THOMAS. Madam Speaker, I have a point of order.

Mr. THOMAS

Mr. THOMAS. That might be part of the problem. It is difficult to hold an organizing meeting of the committee when the members of the committee have not been named.

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

Mr. THOMAS of California

Mr. THOMAS of California. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object----

Mr. THOMAS of California. Regular order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. THOMAS

Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, as was stated from the Chair earlier, the Committee on House Oversight will promulgate rules and language to deal with this. The gentleman from Massachusetts is correct. We are in a slight conundrum right now because we are utilizing words that have been used historically, the classic revise and extend. More properly I think it should be correct and extend. And although we are in this situation now where we are still using the what would be archaic language, we will provide the appropriate language and the structure for dealing with that early tomorrow morning for the gentleman.

Mr. THOMAS. Order will come out of the structure, I assure the gentleman from Massachusetts. And I will not object. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.