Jim Walsh

Mr. WALSH

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

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

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, let me thank the gentlewoman for offering this colloquy and for her service on the subcommittee. She does a great job. I am sorry I missed my cue there, but I think I am back in form. According to HUD, the bill provides sufficient funds for 3,321 new units, which, according to HUD's estimates, is a reduction of 200,133 units.

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. WALSH. I do, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. WALSH

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, yes, I do. Mr. Chairman, I make a point of order against the amendment because it clearly proposes legislating on an appropriations bill which violates clause 2 of rule XXI.

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Knollenberg), a member of the subcommittee.

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Frelinghuysen), a member of the subcommittee.

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, it is my pleasure to bring before the full House of Representatives the bill, H.R. 4635, making fiscal year 2001 appropriations for the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Housing and Urban Development and independent agencies. So that we can move quickly, I will keep my comments brief. First, let me just thank the distinguished gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mollohan) for his advice and counsel throughout this discussion. Even though we have different political persuasions, I think we share almost all of the same priorities in this bill, which makes it, as one might imagine, much less difficult to bring a bill to the floor. We do not agree on everything obviously, but I think in most cases we do. So we have enjoyed the benefit of his advice and the staffs have worked very closely together. The subcommittee and the full committee worked very hard to bring this bill out. Like most of the appropriations subcommittees, we were given a very tight 302(b) allocation. Nevertheless, we were able to make what I think are good policy and funding choices to produce a good, fair bill that deserves support. Here are some of the highlights: this bill fully funds veterans medical care with a $1.355 billion increase over last year's record level. Last year, we increased it $1.7 billion, $1.355 billion this year for a total of over $3 billion increase in 2 years. I think that shows how important this subcommittee, this full committee, and the House take our commitments to our veterans. It provides full funding for medical research, major construction, and cemetery administration operations. Just as important, we have begun an effort to conduct better oversight of how much medical care funding goes for medical care, per se, and how much goes to maintaining buildings and facilities. All veterans, no matter where they are located, deserve the best facilities that we can offer. We have also included language to make sure that veterans medical receipts stay within the VA system and do not go to the Treasury as was suggested by the Administration. Expiring section 8 contracts at HUD are fully funded, and we have included language to push the Department to do a better, faster job of getting funds out of Washington to the people who need them most. HUD's record in this regard is not one to be proud of. We had 247,000 section 8 vouchers go begging last year because HUD did not get the job done. So we have accounted for that and still have fully funded the section 8 requirements. We have essentially level funded the Community Development Block Grant entitlement programs, trimming them by less than 1 percent. We have level funded or only slightly reduced most other HUD programs, making sure that HUD was not using the bank to pay for other programs as it did last year. AmeriCorps has been zeroed out. I am sure that will be a topic for discussion in conference and in consultation with the White House. In this bill, there is no funding. EPA's operating programs have been level funded while various State grant programs, which assist the States in implementing Federal laws, have been more than fully funded. The Clean Water State Revolving Fund program, gutted in the President's budget request, has been restored to $1.2 billion. That is real commitment on the part of Congress to support cleaner water and to improve the environment of this country, an area where I think the Administration is sorely lacking, while State and local air grants from section 319 non-point source pollution grants have been increased significantly. Perhaps most important, we have proposed $245 million, more than double last year's level and $85 million more than the Administration's request, for section 106 pollution control grants. These grants offer the States the maximum flexibility to deal with the difficult TMDL issues facing the States. To help the States deal with the MTBE problems caused by leaking underground storage tank facilities, that is a gasoline additive that has recently been banned by the EPA, we have upped the account at EPA by $9 million over last year and $7 million over the budget request. CDFI, one of the President's new programs, has been proposed for an increase over last year's funding level. They are doing a good job. They deserve our support; we provided it. Likewise, the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation, perhaps the most productive and most efficient Federal organization dealing with housing, has been provided their full funding level of $90 million. Again, they have earned and deserve our support. We should reward positive performance. The National Science Foundation has received an increase of $167 million over last year's level, putting them over $4 billion, their largest funding level ever. Similarly, NASA received an increase over last year of $113 million, their first increase in several years. Mr. Chairman, there is one point regarding this bill that really needs to be made. I stated at the outset that we faced a tight allocation. Nevertheless, there is some talk circulating that this bill received an allocation that is nearly $5 billion above last year. I would like to try to set the record straight. The reality is that our new allocation is $78 billion in new budget authority. The reality is that CBO's freeze level for this budget was $76.9 billion. We have, therefore, a net increase of just $1.1 billion over last year. I hasten to add that that increase has been totally absorbed by VA medical care, $1.355 billion over last year, a Section 8 housing increase of nearly $2 billion, and increases provided for National Science Foundation and NASA over last year's level. Nearly every other program in this bill was either level funded or reduced slightly so that we could meet these necessary increases and still stay within our allocation. I have to say that it would be very difficult to get this bill this far without the support and assistance of my ranking member, the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mollohan), and the rest of this hard- working subcommittee and our staffs, and we have wonderful staffs. While we do not always agree on every issue, every effort has been made on both sides to continue the subcommittee's strong history of bipartisan cooperation in the crafting of this bill. I truly appreciate the gentleman's help and close working relationship. Mr. Chairman, in a nutshell, this is the fiscal year 2001 VA-HUD and Independent Agencies bill. It is a good fair bill, with solid policy direction, while staying completely within our budget authority and outlay allocations. I strongly encourage the support of this body in moving this measure forward. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the gentleman's amendment. Mr. Chairman, my colleague alleges that this bill stops the tobacco lawsuit, that what we have done in this bill stops the tobacco lawsuit. That is not true. I can assure the House that the VA-HUD bill does not have jurisdiction over the Department of Justice nor its priorities. Nothing in this bill prohibits the Administration or the Department of Justice from moving forward with the lawsuit. One of the problems with these politically motivated debates is that individual's motivations are questioned. Mr. Chairman, I do not smoke; I did. I realized it was habit forming; I realized it was bad for my health, so I quit about 25 years ago. I hope every American comes to that realization themselves. Those who would support the subcommittee's position here would be accused of being sold out to the tobacco industry. Well, again, questioning people's motivations does very little to dignify the debate. But I would state for the record that I have never accepted tobacco contributions. We are trying to craft a bill here that provides resources for our veterans. We have heard Member after Member, one after another, come up and say we are not putting enough money in here for veterans' medical care, one after another. We are doing our level best to fund veterans' medical care. We put in $1.7 billion last year, $1.35 billion this year; and people still say it is not enough. If this lawsuit started to draw down veterans' medical care funds, and that is what this does, regardless of what the gentleman says, it comes out of the veterans' medical care budget, which is $4 million to $6 million a year every year for however long the suit goes on. We have heard the gentleman from New Jersey talk about veterans with hepatitis C. We tried to put additional funds in to deal with that deadly disease, but we did not meet expectations. There is more need out there. This takes $4 million to $6 million out of the veterans budget for hepatosis C, for HIV/AIDS, for spinal injuries, for mental health care, for drug prescriptions. Mr. Chairman, these funds are precious; and they are dear. Let the Justice Department take it out of their own budget. That is their job. They are the lawyers. They have thousands and thousands of lawyers at the Department of Justice. The VA has hundreds and hundreds of doctors, and thousands and thousands of veterans; and we need to use those resources to take care of that commitment for medical care. If the Department of Veterans' Affairs and the Administration want to use VA dollars to pay for this lawsuit, they can take the money from the Secretary's office or the general counsel's office. This bill says we cannot take money from veterans' medical care account. This language is limited to one account out of 18 that funds the Department of Veterans Affairs. I am also concerned about how money derived from this litigation will be spent. No one on the Subcommittee on VA, HUD and Independent Agencies has seen a formal, binding agreement from the Administration or the Department of Justice on how these dollars will be spent between VA, Defense and Health and Human Services. The Administration tried in the past to bolster the budget with new spending from a fictional tobacco settlement. Yet VA's health funding remained level. I am all for seeing more dollars for VA in health care and I think every member is, but I have not seen the contract yet. The Administration has never said that any settlement would go to the veterans. In fact, in their third-party collection funding scheme, those funds would go to the general Treasury and not to the veterans agency or to veterans' medical care. So regardless of what we are going to hear, let the Justice Department handle the lawsuits, let the Veterans Administration handle veterans' medical care.

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order against the gentleman's amendment.

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, I have no further comments to make. I think we can conclude our general debate and move into amendments. Mr. Chairman, I submit the following tables for the Record. [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH19JN00.001 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH19JN00.002 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH19JN00.003 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH19JN00.004 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH19JN00.005

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Frelinghuysen).

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume just to discuss some of the issues that were just raised. I will be brief. I am not going to fight every battle and counter every argument, but I do think it needs to be said that we are not falling behind. We are not falling behind in our commitments to our veterans. In fact, the strides that this Congress has made in the last 2 years, $1.7 billion last year, almost $1.4 billion this year, that is over a $3 billion commitment in a $20 billion health care allocation. That is a profound commitment to our veterans. I do not believe any Congress in the recent or distant past has made that sort of commitment. I strongly disagree with the gentleman's statement that we are falling behind. If anything, we are quickly catching up if not pulling ahead. But to say we are falling behind, I think, gives grist for the mill for those uninformed people out there who are saying we are not keeping our commitments to the veteran. I strongly disagree. On the issue of the G.I. Bill, those benefits are mandatory. The gentleman sits on the committee of authorization. That is where that issue belongs, not here in the committee on appropriations. Those are mandatory benefits, not within our purview to determine allocation of funds. It is mandatory. Lastly, the GAO study says that the Veterans Administration is wasting $1 million a day through poor administration. That is over $300 million a year wasted. We cannot afford to have that waste continue. Clearly, the Congress can do better; but the administration can, too. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WALSH

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

Mr. WALSH. I object.

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will continue to yield, as we tried to explain, and if the gentleman had presented his amendment to us at the beginning of this, before we began to debate, we would have been able to maybe work through this a little easier. Let me read the language in the bill. It says, ``None of the foregoing funds,'' meaning the funds within the medical care portion of the bill. And I would restate that, ``None of the foregoing funds,'' meaning the medical care portion of the bill, ``may be transferred to the Department of Justice for the purposes of supporting tobacco litigation.'' So the only funds that the gentleman cannot get at in this bill are in the medical care portion of the bill, that the Justice Department cannot get at, are in the medical care portion of the bill. So I do not believe there is any need for any additional language.

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, responding to the gentleman from California, first of all, we have had about 3\1/2\ hours of debate now on this amendment, and if the gentleman would like to change the amendment, we would be glad to take a look at the language; and if the language is in order, then we would take it at the proper point in the bill. But I would remind the gentleman that we only preclude the use of funds in the medical care portion.

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

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield further, the funds are in the medical care portion of the bill. If the gentleman had offered general operating funds or construction funds or any other funds, we would not have had this argument today. I would just remind the gentleman that every one of those veterans' organizations that supported the suit, and they support the suit, I am not making that an issue, but what they are saying is, do not use our medical care money. Support the suit, but do not take it out of medical care.

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I just wanted to make sure everybody was clear. The language that we are talking about, is it not in the medical care title of the bill, and all funds foregoing to that amendment are medical care funds?

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

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to try to sum up some of the arguments that have been made tonight, comment on some of them, and hopefully refute some of them. First of all, Mr. Chairman, the tobacco companies never came to me to ask us to do this. I am not sensitive to their arguments, quite frankly. I do not like their product. It smells bad. It is addictive. It makes people sick. But that is not the point. The point here is that the Justice Department should be responsible for paying for this lawsuit. They did not come to the Congress when they sued Microsoft. Microsoft is the world's largest and richest corporation. The Justice Department took them on on their own. They have thousands and thousands of lawyers. They have plenty of money and plenty of lawyers to conduct any and all suits against tobacco companies. So what is going on here? I am not sure exactly, but I think it is a lot about politics, because it is very, very popular to beat up the tobacco companies. Everybody should do it. But this bill does not prevent the lawsuit. This bill does not enhance tobacco companies' ability to make kids smoke. I have heard that over and over and over tonight. This bill does not have anything to do with kids, it has everything to do with veterans and their health care. We have heard Member after Member get up and say, we do not have enough money in this bill for veterans' medical care. If Members support this amendment, they are going to take millions more out of veterans' medical care to give it to the Justice Department to run the lawsuit. Quite frankly, if the Justice Department runs the lawsuit, Mr. Chairman, it is okay with me. If they win, I hope the administration will use those resources for the veterans department, but they have not promised to do that yet. It is still very, very vague. The point here is if Members vote for this amendment, they are taking money out of veterans' medical care and giving it to the Justice Department. It is that simple. So forget about all this other argument, these other arguments, because they are not salient. They do not apply to this issue. The issue here is, does the money go to veterans' medical care or does it go to Justice Department lawyers. They have their own lawyers and their own budget. They are spending enough money, so they do not need to take this.

Mr. WALSH. It does not require additional legislation. Request For Modification To Amendment Offered By Mr. Waxman

Mr. WALSH. If the Veterans Administration decides that they want to use funds to provide to the Justice Department's lawyers, they would have to come back to the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mollohan) and I for reprogramming.