Jim Walsh

Mr. WALSH

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, there is no question that this subcommittee considers National Science Foundation a high priority. Everyone has recognized the difficulties within this bill. One of the difficult decisions we made was to reduce NSF by just 1 percent below the 1999 level. Now that is a cut; there is no question. But no other account in this bill except for VA medical care was treated as well as NSF. In fact, research at NSF was actually increased by $8.5 million relative to 1999. Now I know that does not comfort the gentleman because he is one of the leaders in the Congress in terms of scientific research. He has been a spokesman and a stalwart for research. This subcommittee understands the plight that we placed NSF in, and I assure the gentleman that this is a priority, that if there is any way as we go through the process that we can provide some additional funds for NSF we will, and we will call upon him to help us to make that happen and to provide us some direction as to where those fund should go. I cannot make any ironclad assurances other than that he will have our cooperation in the event that that occurs.

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, I rise in reluctant opposition to the gentleman's amendment, and I know he has given this a great deal of his attention, it is a high priority for him and his constituency, and, in fact, as I understand it, it is a high priority for the Nation. This is a well thought of project, and this account that he has referred to, grants for construction State extended-care facilities, is a very important account. These are funds that are dear, that everyone across the country is covetous of, and what we have provided is $80 million. That is twice the President's request. President requested 40 million; we put in 80 million. The gentleman is absolutely correct; it is 10 million below last year, but it is a substantial increase over what the President requested. As I understand it, it is conceivable, given the allocation, that the project that he has supported could conceivably be funded in this allocation. There is no guarantees obviously, but what I would say, cannot support taking these funds out because we would be reducing the EPA Inspector General's office by 17 percent. It is important that we keep an eye on that bureaucracy, and that is the Inspector General's job. But what I would be happy to do as we go through the process and into the conferences is try to find a way to help the gentleman meet his goal without increasing his funding and thereby cutting funding in the other area of the bill. So, I again reluctantly oppose the gentleman's amendment.

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

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for his comments. I appreciate the continued interest in this important project in his district in Placer County. I assure the gentleman that we will work very closely with the gentleman to address this funding matter in our conference negotiations.

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I would ask my distinguished colleague, the ranking member from West Virginia (Mr. Mollohan), to join me in a colloquy. Mr. Chairman, it has come to my attention that HUD recently issued a notice of funding availability, NOFA, for the Resident Opportunities and Self-sufficiency program. This program contains a component for service coordinator grants. For those of you not familiar with service coordinators, they help elderly and disabled residents in public housing get the unique services they require. The program is cost effective and the residents of public housing love the program, as do the housing authorities. Because of its success, Congress has agreed in the last funding cycle to provide sufficient funds to renew all existing service coordinator programs. Unfortunately, the recent NOFA contains several troubling provisions that seem to defy congressional intent and jeopardize the ability of many public housing authorities to obtain renewal of their service coordinator funding. Specifically, one provision provides public housing authorities to have to spend 75 percent of their award by August, even though the PHAs only received notice of the grant in April. As a practical matter, it is impossible for any PHA to expend 75 percent of their funds by the first of August, but under the NOFA they must have done so in order to qualify for renewal spending for next year. Another provision of the NOFA states that the funds will be provided on a first-come-first-served-basis. This provision implies that there are insufficient funds to pay for renewals. Congress has been assured repeatedly by HUD that funds are sufficient to pay for renewal. Therefore, the provision is unnecessary. After being apprised of congressional concerns, HUD has agreed to make changes to the NOFA. In fact, HUD has assured me that an amended NOFA will be published in the Federal Register in the near future. I appreciate the alacrity with which HUD has acted on this matter and want to assure public housing residents that this program will be fully funded this year and next. I know the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mollohan) shares my opinion that service coordinators are vitally important and would turn to him for a comment on this issue.

Mr. WALSH

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word and rise in opposition to the Jackson-Lee amendment. I will be brief, Mr. Chairman. There is another dilemma presented by another amendment, and the dilemma is that what the gentlewoman from Texas has asked us to do is take funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the agency that is responsible for responding to emergencies all over the country, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, droughts, and so forth, and put that money into human space flight. It is a difficult choice because we have, as has been noted, reduced NASA fairly dramatically. But I would urge my colleagues not to support the amendment. This is the number one priority of Director Witt of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. His number one priority is to provide pre- disaster mitigation so that we can begin to reduce the cost of disasters as they occur around the country. This is money up front to try to bring down the cost of disaster relief in the long-run and it is a priority of this subcommittee also, and I would urge my colleagues to reject this amendment.

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, we have had this debate, the gentleman from California (Mr. Filner) and I, for the better part of the afternoon. The issue here is the offset that he provides under the rule, and he is asking for an emergency declaration. We considered that process and ultimately rejected it. What we did was we found real dollars within the budget to allocate for veterans health, and what we did was provide a $1.7 billion increase over the President's request. As the gentleman has stipulated to and agreed to, and I think it is a unanimous agreement now, the President's request for veterans medical health was not only inadequate, it was embarrassing. They later came back and they suggested that, yes, they thought that the $1.7 billion level was the right level and supported it. We received a letter from the Vice President on that. We also received letters from the American Legion and from the Veterans of Foreign Wars who agreed that $1.7 billion was the right amount to fund veterans health care. I looked back at the budgets of the last 5 years, including this budget. We have gone from $15.7 billion in the 1996 enacted level to $19 billion this year. That is a $3.5 billion increase in funding for veterans. So we have striven mightily, in spite of the lack of support there seems to be in the executive branch for the veterans medical care budget. The Congress, both parties, have supported plussing up this budget, and we made hard choices, as we have heard in the debate today. NASA was cut a billion dollars. There are programs in HUD operating subsidies, modernization funds in public housing where we had to go to help to fund the veterans health care. People want more money for Section 8 vouchers, but the choices were difficult. We cannot appropriate these funds because they are not available to us, Mr. Chairman. For that reason, I would restate and insist on the point of order against the amendment because it proposes to change existing law, constitutes legislation in an appropriations bill; therefore, violates clause 2, rule XXI and because it violates section 306 of the Budget Act that deals with matters in the jurisdiction of the Committee on the Budget.

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, I insist on a point of order against the amendment, if I could explain further.

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

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the amendment of the gentleman and the sentiments in the amendment. These are issues that are of concern to all of us who represent urban areas, Brownfield sites, homeless grants. What this amendment does is it restores funding to the 1999 level of funding for these programs. These are very difficult programs to reduce funding in. What we tried to do when we made these decisions was to reduce across the board as much as we could different programs. We did not want to gut these programs because we felt they were good programs, so we made slight reductions in order to get to the budget number that we were allocated. By taking money out of NASA and putting it into these programs, we further got an agency that has suffered huge cuts. And what that translates to is the Gutierrez amendment would restore $25, $30 million to these programs, but what he would do is take them from the three areas of NASA where they have already suffered $900 million in cuts. So, basically, it adds insult to injury to the NASA budget. I would urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment because NASA cannot take any more reductions and these programs, while important, are funded at a much higher percentage of what they were funded compared to the NASA program. So I would urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment.

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Gutierrez) be permitted to offer an amendment which is at the desk.

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I absolutely pledge to work with the gentlewoman. We have had this discussion a number of times with a number of Members who are deeply concerned about NASA. We know there is not enough money in there right now with NASA. We are not complete with this process. As we go forward, my colleague, the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mollohan), and I have talked about this. We would like to see what we can do to resolve some of these issues, and I would be happy to work with my colleague on that.

Mr. WALSH. I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas.

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

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I fully understand the concerns of my colleagues from California and Virginia. We have had, as the chairman has heard himself, a number of discussions about the reduction of $1 billion in NASA funding. This is a major reduction, there is no question about it. However, at the committee level we had a $1.4 billion reduction in NASA and were able to restore $400 million, taking it from the AmeriCorps program and putting it into NASA. Those decisions are very difficult to make. We are being asked to make another difficult decision today, take these funds away from EPA and give them to NASA. I have stated in the discussion that as we go down the road in this process, I will work with all Members to try to find a way, including with the administration and the Senate, to try to find a way to provide those needed funds for NASA to provide the research and development and the technology products they have worked on for so many years and that have provided so many benefits to humanity. However, to take these funds out of an EPA budget, especially from this area, which ultimately are categorical grants, these funds would normally go to the States for clean water projects, for sewer projects, for environmental clean up projects in all 50 States. Now, as all colleagues know, many of our communities, our hometown communities, are under court order or under Federal mandate by EPA to clean up their water, to clean up their air, and to take care of the Superfund sites that are around the Nation. These funds would come out of that pool of available funds. I think it is a bad decision to take EPA funds, provide them to NASA when there may be some opportunity down the road to support the needs of the NASA program. So I would strongly urge my colleagues to resist the temptation to take the money from NASA and take the money from EPA and provide it to NASA because these funds are sorely needed for our environmental projects right here on Earth.

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Connecticut, my good friend, for yielding to me. I will be very brief. No one is more aware of the fact that in order for this bill to gain the President's signature, the President's favorite program within this bill will have to be funded at some level. I would be happy to communicate with the gentleman from Connecticut as we go down the road on this program that we both see some value to.

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

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, I rise in reluctant opposition to the amendment. Obviously this is a well-intended amendment to provide resources to a population that is sorely in need of those resources. It is a very popular program in the Congress. I think most Members support it. The difficulty once again is striking a balance, and what we did when we drew up this appropriation bill was we provided the same level of funding that we provided in 1999, basically level funding. We did not want to cut it, and we did not cut it. What happened was in the omnibus bill that concluded after the appropriations bill passed the House, the conference put in an additional $10 million, which brought it from $215 million up to $225 million. We appropriated the same level as last year, $215 million and the Crowley-Nadler amendment would put that $10 million back in, which would make it back even with the omnibus level. The difficulty is where do they find the money? And they went all the way to Antarctica to find it. It seems like a good place to go to find money for Americans who are in need, but it does do harm to our scientific work in Antarctica. We have reduced funding for the National Science Foundation by over $200 million. That is the last thing that I wanted to do in this bill but, again, the balance that we had to strike was very, very fragile, very, very difficult. We literally are borrowing from Peter to pay Paul here. What does this do to Antarctica? The National Science Foundation's Antarctic program is this Nation's way of exercising a peaceful, scientifically productive and critically important year-round influential presence on this continent. As in every other part of the world, there are political considerations. There are territorial claims to this land that if the United States does not play its important role as honest broker, we could conceivably have some political difficulty there in that remotest of all parts of the world. We have also made commitments to our foreign partners in continuing this research, and the work that is being done there is very important to our overall earth science effort. Lord knows we have affected our Earth science in the NASA budget also. So I would again reluctantly oppose this amendment. I understand the goodwill of all involved, but it really does do damage to our scientific effort. And by level funding HOPWA from the 1999 level and providing level funding in disabled housing, I think we have done the best that we can.

Mr. WALSH. I also would like to take this opportunity to thank the gentleman and his colleague, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. McCollum), for their leadership with the East-Central Florida veterans inpatient pilot program. When I visited Brevard County earlier this year, I was briefed on the successes of the pilot program and the possibility it holds for improving veterans health care in other parts of the country. The committee looks forward to the continued success of the program and a report from the Veterans Administration about the aspects and benefits of the East-Central Florida patient pilot program.

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me for the purpose of this colloquy. I appreciate very much the many discussions that we have had regarding NASA over the past several months. I understand the serious concerns of the gentleman about the level of funding. Having visited the constituency of the gentleman in Florida and visited the Kennedy Space Center and met with the leadership there, I was deeply impressed by the scope and breadth of knowledge that he has in the NASA area. So I very much respect his point of view on this. I certainly understand the concerns, and I can assure the gentleman that I will work with him and other leaders in our Nation's space program to see that the NASA budget is further accommodated in conference. NASA is very important to this Nation, and I appreciate the leadership that the gentleman has shown in addressing our Nation's space issues. I appreciate the gentleman's commitment to continuing to work with me between now and the beginning of the fiscal year on October 1 to improve the budget picture of NASA.

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

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order against the amendment offered by the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Weldon).

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, I thank my friend and colleague from Florida for yielding to me. The point I wanted to have the opportunity to make is if we look at the budget request of the President, there was enough funding in the bill on paper to increase these programs. But if we look at the bill closely, we can see there is a $4.2 billion advance appropriation in there that some would refer to as a gimmick because it looks like the President has increased HUD's budget when in reality the $4.2 billion is not available to be spent until the year 2001. So if those funds are not available in the year 2000, then without that gimmick the President would have had to show reductions in those same programs. We did it honestly. We presented what we felt was a real budget with real money for real people and real programs. If we are to compare apples with apples and throw out the $4.2 billion budget gimmick, we have put more money into housing than the President did.

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

Mr. WALSH

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.