Henry Waxman

Mr. WAXMAN

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

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Chairman, at the outset, I want to comment on the process under which we are considering this and the Morella amendment. The Republican leadership has rigged the process regarding the Shays and the Morella amendments by denying the gentlewoman from Maryland (Mrs. Morella) a clean vote on her amendment. The Shays and Morella amendments are identical to each other, except that the Shays amendment includes a final paragraph that undoes the rest of the amendment. As a result, if both pass, the Morella amendment will be meaningless. It will do nothing. The gentlewoman asked for a chance to modify her amendment so that it could strike the offending provision in the Shays amendment, but she was denied the opportunity to do that by her own leadership. The result is a rigged process. So even if the Morella amendment prevails, she loses if the Shays amendment is also adopted. Mr. Chairman, I would urge my colleagues who want to support the Morella amendment to vote for the Morella amendment and vote against the Shays amendment. This issue deals with labor management relations. The amendment takes the Morella amendment, which passed out of the Committee on Government Reform on a bipartisan basis, and renders it useless. Let me explain the situation. Under existing law, the President can strip an agency's employees of collective bargaining rights if he determines that the agency or subdivision's primary function is counterintelligence, investigative or national security work. The amendment offered by the gentlewoman from Maryland provides a very limited exception to this authority. It says that the collective bargaining rights of employees who are currently in unions cannot be eliminated unless their functions change after they are transferred to the new Department. The Shays amendment states that the Morella amendment would apply, except if the President does not want it to apply. Well, that means the Morella amendment has no meaning to it. Basically, it allows the President to do exactly what the gentlewoman's amendment was seeking to prohibit. Mr. Chairman, the Morella amendment is carefully crafted. It gives the President broad flexibility to restrict collective bargaining rights when the duties of employees change. Moreover, it does not apply to over two-thirds of the employees in the Department because these employees are not currently in collective bargaining units. And it will not apply to the new units with sensitive responsibilities such as the new intelligence analysis office. The Morella amendment would not be needed if the President and the administration had a track record of respecting employees' legitimate rights to organize and bargain collectively. Unfortunately, the administration has not respected these rights. Earlier this year, the President striped union rights away from clerical workers in the offices of U.S. Attorneys. Many of these employees had been in unions and they were union members for over 20 years. So if we do not pass the Morella amendment, the same thing that happened at the offices of the U.S. Attorneys will happen in the new Department. That is why she offered the amendment in committee and why it was adopted. So I would urge my colleagues to vote against the Shays amendment and then, when the Morella amendment is offered, to support it. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Reyes), who has personal experience on this subject that I think Members ought to know about.

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, may I inquire how much time there is on each side?

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, I inquire through the Chair of the gentleman from Connecticut whether he has another speaker other than himself.

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen).

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, if Mr. Shays and some Republicans do not like the Morella amendment, they should just vote against it. They should not engage in this kind of trick to put in what appears to be the Morella amendment, but then to negate it. If they were being honest about the matter, they would simply oppose the Morella amendment as the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays) did in the Committee on Government Reform. Mr. Chairman, a majority in that committee supported the Morella amendment. I would urge the House to adopt the Morella amendment and to defeat the Shays amendment, because what it does is negate the Morella amendment.

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

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent as the ranking Democrat on the Committee on Government Reform to manage the time on this Morella amendment.

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me time. At the close of the last amendment by Mr. Shays, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman) said that the gentlewoman from Maryland (Mrs. Morella) was being treated fairly because she could offer her amendment. Now, that is absolutely wrong. She is a senior Member of Congress. She is the author of an amendment that passed in the committee on a bipartisan basis, and she is being demeaned by that previous amendment that makes the vote on this amendment completely meaningless. I support the Morella amendment. You can vote for it, you can vote against it, but it does not make any difference, because even if it passed, the previous amendment negates it. I just think that is an incredible way to treat somebody in your own party. After all, she gave the Republicans the votes to organize the House. What do they do? They turn around and deny her a fair opportunity to offer her amendment and to try to convince Members to support it and to make it the House position. Now, if we adopt the Morella amendment it will be the House position, but we have already adopted another amendment that says the Morella amendment is not going to be the House position. I think that this is a wrong way on the process to treat this matter, and I think it is an unfair way to treat the gentlewoman from Maryland (Mrs. Morella). I am going to support the Morella amendment. I asked for the time so we could control it, but we were not even given that courtesy. This is partisanship in the sneakiest, meanest, narrowest way; and not to me, but to one of their own Members. I commend the gentlewoman from Maryland (Mrs. Morella). She offered the amendment in committee, she argued for it, her arguments prevailed and she won on a bipartisan basis. I am going to vote for her amendment. I urge other Members to vote for it. But we all know it is meaningless.

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings).

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi).

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, we might have some difference about how this office ought to function in the White House. The proposal that I am offering is not something that I alone am supporting. It is, by the way, the proposal that has reached bipartisan support in the Senate. Senator Lieberman's committee has supported this concept. The Brookings Institution, this is the core idea of their recommendation. The General Accounting Office said that we need a stronger director in the White House with the tools to be able to do the job of coordinating these activities. Evidently, none of the three of them talked to my colleague, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Harman), but they came to a different conclusion, as have I, than her recommendation. I must say that I do not think that what we are proposing is inconsistent with what the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman) offered to create this Homeland Security Council to advise the President of homeland security matters and work in consultation with OMB on a homeland security budget. The difference we have is the Council would have much weaker powers than the Director of Homeland Security under the current amendment. For example, the Council would not be permitted to decertify an agency's budget submission. It would not prohibit the Office of Management and Budget Director from submitting the decertified budgets to the Congress without the President's review and approval, and it would not be required to report deficiencies to the Congress. In other words, the Director of Homeland Security would have far fewer tools to coordinate the dozens and dozens of agencies that remain outside the new department. Passing this amendment in addition to the Portman language would not be inconsistent. Both could be included in the final bill. Mr. Chairman, we are all trying to make this whole business work of trying to protect our country, and we are talking on a bipartisan basis about a department and strengthening the coordination at the White House. I would submit that my amendment, which is the amendment that has been recommended by think tanks that have been involved in these organizational questions for many years, is a sound way for us to proceed. It gives the President the flexibility and the tools to have someone in the White House be able to do the job. I fear that with all the rearranging of the bureaucracy, if that is all we do, we will not have done enough. We may have differences on this matter, and I respect the fact that people can have differences, but let us recognize that all of us are trying to do what we can in the national interest. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Maryland (Mrs. Morella).

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the very distinguished whip.

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich), a very important member of our committee.

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis). (Mr. DAVIS of Illinois asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

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

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes and 30 seconds. I rise in support of the Waxman-Frost amendment on Civil Service. This amendment strikes the flawed section 761 which was reported out of the Select Committee regarding civil service and replaces it with the civil service language reported by the Committee on Government Reform with unanimous bipartisan support. Our Nation has the most honest, most professional civil service in the world, and the reason is our civil service laws. These civil service laws prevent abuses such as patronage, they guarantee important rights such as appeals to the Merit Systems Protection Board, and they provide for collective bargaining rights. The President's proposal eliminated these essential protections, but the Committee on Government Reform and the gentleman from Indiana (Chairman Burton) crafted an amendment that restored the protections of title V to employees of this new Department. His amendment received unanimous bipartisan support from the Members of the committee, and we had other civil service amendments offered by the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton) on preserving pay, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Tierney) for ensuring that TSA procedures do not apply agency-wide, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich) offered an amendment to protect whistleblowers, and these were all adopted by unanimous bipartisan support. The amendment I am offering right now is simply the amendment of the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) as amplified by the other amendments, adopted without dissent in our committee. As currently drafted in the bill before us, section 761 does not guarantee Federal employees basic civil service protections. The section preserves some rights. It is an improvement over the President's proposal, but it specifically allows the secretary to waive any of the provisions of chapters 43, 51, 53, 71, 75 and 77 of title V. This is wrong. Civil servants whose responsibilities will be the same today if they are transferred into this new department as they were before the transfer should not lose their civil service protections just because that organizational chart may change. In essence, the bill before us makes the employees of the new department second-class employees. Degrading the rights of Federal workers in the new Department makes no sense. We want the new department to succeed, but this will not happen if the employees of the new department are stripped of their basic rights. The Waxman-Frost amendment corrects these problems. It ensures that the basic title V protections apply to the new department, and it does so in exactly the same way that the Committee on Government Reform recommended unanimously. The Committee on Government Reform is the committee of jurisdiction on civil service and public employees' issues. Mr. Chairman, I am asking, and it is quite rare that I would do this, for the Members of this House to support the amendment of the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) that we all supported in committee. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. WAXMAN

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me time. Mr. Chairman, it is remarkable, the position of the Republican Party today. It really shows the bankruptcy of that party. The Republican party used to stand for the idea that there should be some distrust of government. The theory was it can get too big, too bureaucratic; the federal government could interfere in the lives of individuals and start dictating policies from Washington. So what does this bill do? It grows the bureaucracy. It wastes money. With these Freedom of Information and FACA changes, it allows the government to keep things secret. You know who wrote the Freedom of Information Act? Barry Goldwater wrote it. Barry Goldwater wrote FOIA, because he said a government that has so much power can intrude in the lives of individuals, and he wanted the public to know what was going on. This bill and the way it is drafted without the Schakowsky amendment would allow this administration to meet in secret with business executives and lobbyists, just like it did in the Energy Task Force Vice President Cheney chaired. The administration could keep it all quiet. It could, in the name of national security, reward all these big industry groups that it is now so beholden to, by meeting with executives from the airline industry when they come in for special favors. But the public will never know, because the Freedom of Information Act, which protected all of us, will now be wiped out. Remember the days when the Republicans said Washington is not the place where all the wisdom is located? Well, what do they do? They preempt the States from having Freedom of Information laws that are more open to the public than what we are going to get in the bill passed today. It is a very sad day to see this in the Republican Party. I did not used to agree with them, but I used to respect them, when they worried about a big intrusive government that wasted money, that grew bureaucracy and became inefficient. Now it is responsive just to special interest big money.

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman very much for yielding me time. The Freedom of Information Act provisions in this bill are a continuation of the current administration's onslaught on the public's right to know and they should be struck from the bill. Now we have the Davis amendment which dramatically expand them. We know what this administration has done so far. It would not disclose what lobbyists and energy companies met with the Chaney energy task force. It issued an executive order limiting the release of presidential records. It repeatedly refused to release information requested by Congress, including even basic census information. Now it wants a huge statutory loophole inserted in the Freedom of Information Act. The majority says this is to protect information that may be necessary to protect homeland security. Let me submit to the Members that what they really want to do is to protect lobbying groups, special interest groups, from having the fact that they have gone in and asked for special favors to be disclosed. Under this amendment, a chemical company can go to the EPA and ask to relax the requirement that it report chemicals stored at its facility; it would make this request on the grounds that this information could be useful to terrorists. It could also be useful for the public to know. Under this amendment, they would say that has to be exempt from disclosure. A drug company could lobby the Department of Health and Human Services to relax human testing requirements for drugs that might have homeland security uses. And under this amendment, this information would be exempt from disclosure. A manufacturer can lobby the Department of Labor to relax worker safety regulations on the grounds that the regulations add unnecessary costs that limit its ability to implement securities measures, and under this amendment, this information would be exempt from disclosure. Now in our committee I raised this point and the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Davis) said absolutely not true. He said, this is not to protect lobbying and to assure the Members who were raising this point, he agreed, and everybody supported, an amendment I offered to the bill that said nothing in this subtitle shall apply to any information submitted in the course of lobbying any covered Federal agency. So what happened? The bill went to the Select Committee on Homeland Security and it struck it out. What does that tell you? Why would the members of the Select Committee strike that out? Because they want to protect the lobbyists that come ask for special favors. This is just like they want to protect the groups that might be negligent in giving services or devices that they are going to sell to the government. It is a giveaway. It is a giveaway to special interest groups that I am sure are major contributors to the Republican campaign committee. I believe it and I see evidence of it over and over again. There is no attempt to make this a bipartisan bill. They want it to be partisan and they want it for their special contributors.