Frank Wolf

Mr. WOLF

Mr. WOLF. We will do that and Members can get home earlier. (Mr. WOLF asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. WOLF. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, the gentle from Texas [Mr. Coleman] had made an excellent suggestion where, by using the whole hour, we limit it to half an hours, 15 minutes on each side.

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

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman from Oregon would yield, I would say to the gentleman, no, it does not. What will happen is after this amendment is adopted, the committee will rise and the agriculture people will come back and nobody is foreclosed. When we begin on Monday or Tuesday or whenever we begin, we will start from here. No amendment will be foreclosed.

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment, and we will accept the amendment. I think it is a good amendment and will save money.

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I concede the point of order.

Mr. WOLF. On another subject, I just want to congratulate the gentleman for the great work he has done with regard to traveling around the world and getting a number of people out. I just want to personally put that in the Record. I thank the gentleman very much. Perhaps if Mr. Christopher leaves, the gentleman should be the Secretary of State. I have no question on the amendment.

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

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time, 1\1/2\ minutes, to the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Coleman].

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Texas [Mr. DeLay], a member of the committee.

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Frelinghuysen].

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Petri], a member of the authorizing committee.

Mr. WOLF. Yes; if the State is able to match and obligate the 1995 Federal funding and the Senate appropriates the funds for fiscal year 1996, the committee will certainly reconsider further funds for initiative.

Mr. WOLF. If the gentleman will continue to yield, yes. As the committee report states: ``The committee is willing to reconsider funding for this project in fiscal year 1997 if the available funds are obligated.''

Mr. WOLF. Yes, as the committee reported in its report: ``Language in the 1995 Transportation Appropriations Act requires that the project have matching State funds.'' As of June 1, 1995, the State has not been able to match the Federal appropriated money.

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

Mr. WOLF. That is correct. I will be glad to have a meeting in my office with the gentlewoman and the FAA so we can work the problem out.

Mr. WOLF. Yes, I believe it is a sound proposal, Mr. Chairman. In fact, I believe it is a very very, very sound proposal. It should not only be given strong consideration by the FAA, but frankly, I just hope they do it.

Mr. WOLF

Mr. WOLF. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on the bill (H.R. 2002) making appropriations for the Department of Transportation and related agencies for fiscal year ending September 30, 1996, and for other purposes, and that I may be permitted to include tables, charts, and extraneous matter.

Mr. WOLF

Mr. WOLF. We have done others. I have told transit people, go see Senator Hatfield. I will be glad to work; if you get more in the Senate, I will be very, very sympathetic. Third, you have a chance to go to your committee. This is what APTA said about the reform bill; APTA said on July 29, after the Department of Labor issued the first proposed rule in more than a decade. The DOL guidelines have now been reviewed by APTA's working group with lawyers who regularly deal with 13(c) issues on behalf of transits. They have concluded the Department of Labor's proposal would bring no substantive changes to the existing 13(c) process. Proposed procedural changes have significant loopholes as to render them meaningless. I would hope, after we do this, the authorizers would take it and go reform it or repeal it. This is their chance. This is their chance, honestly, I believe, to have a vote on this. There will be a vote for lower transit costs for working people and anyone else who uses transit.

Mr. WOLF. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.

Mr. WOLF. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of the rule. I am not an expert on drafting rules. Frankly, if I were on the Committee on Rules, I would have limited every amendment to 10 minutes on each side. I think the schedule of this place is totally and completely out of control. All of us are going to be successful in the House, and we are going to fail in our own homes. So I have problems with the Committee on Rules. I think you all are too lenient and you ought to get control of the process so men and women who serve in this body can go home. Let me talk about the two issues, though, that have come up. The last gentleman spoke. He talked about, and I see him sitting back here, about there is antilabor. It really is not antilabor. I come from a labor background. My dad helped start the Fraternal Order of Police in Philadelphia. I come from blue-collar background. It is not that way. Let me tell what we are trying to do--13(c) has basically driven up the cost of transit riding. We are trying to get control. Let me give you an example for Washington, DC. I hope everyone will listen to this. In Washington, DC, the bus drivers make $46,000 a year after 3 years. They make more money than the teachers in the inner city. My daughter, Virginia, taught in the District of Columbia and made about $26,000 a year teaching and as you drive up those costs, what you fundamentally do is you make riding to work more expensive. Let me give you another example here in the Washington metro area. A single parent living in Vienna drives his or her car to Vienna, pays $2-something to park, had to drop their children at a day care center, then spends $3.25 to come into this inner city, $3.25 to go out. That is $8 or $9 a day. A single parent just cannot do that. And so this is a protransit rider thing, and I have told the bus drivers in my area, many of whom I represent, that I want to save their jobs because what has actually happened in 7 years, if something like this is not done, there will not be any Metro bus drivers in the Washington, DC, area because in Virginia and Maryland, where the gentlewoman chairing this and I come from, they are doing away with Metro drivers. They are going to DART and Ride On. You have buses crossing in the morning, one making $27,000, $28,000, $29,000, $30,000, the other making $46,000. We also have bus drivers that are making in the range of $50,000 and $60,000. So I want moms and dads and people to be able to use mass transit. Second, I say to gentleman, I am pro mass transit. I want to keep the operating subsidies up. I do not necessarily agree with everybody in my party. I hope over the years we can keep operating subsidies up. Third, what we did, and nobody has talked about it, I was in the committee and we were voting, is we allow for the first time under this for transits to be using their operating subsidy, their capital subsidies, to have bus overhauls. Who is for this 13(c) repeal? Everybody can get up and offer an amendment. What was going to happen, it was going to be basically cheap grace. It could have been knocked out on a point of order. Now we can have a battle. We may lose or we may win, but who are the people that are for the repeal? The Birmingham Metro Express, the Little Rock, AR, Central Transit, Los Angeles County Metro Transportation Authority, Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, the Oceanside North County transit district, the Orange County Transportation Authority, there are more, Greater Bridgeport Transit District, Greater New Haven Transit District, Metro in Washington, DC, in Clearwater, Sun Coast Transit Authority, in Illinois the Chicago Regional Transit Authority, in Indianapolis, the city of Indianapolis, South Bend Public Transit Authority, in Nevada, the Regional Transportation Commission, in New Jersey, the Department of Transportation, in Newark, New Jersey Transit, in New York City, the Department of Transportation, in New York City, the Metropolitan Transit Protection Authority, in Buffalo, Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority, in Ohio, the Department of Transportation, in Pennsylvania, Lehigh and Northampton Transportation Authority, Pennsylvania Association of Municipal Transportation, and SEPTA, where I come from, SEPTA in Philadelphia, I used to ride the 36 trolley car in the old PTC to work every day. This is honest to goodness, and I know there are differences, but this is honestly a protransit vote, and I am not out to hurt the other issue. When the two things were not protected, the one for the two transits, I would have like to have seen them treated the same way as the other transits. I would have felt, quite frankly, guilty on the floor except for the fact one is the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Durbin], and the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Gephardt], and the other is the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Mascara]. Since they are both Democratic Members, I do not feel so bad. We try to do something for a Republican Member: Had it been a Republican Member, quite frankly, I would have felt guilty about the rule.

Mr. WOLF

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I want to personally thank the gentleman from New York [Mr. Solomon] for his faithfulness over the years; also the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Pelosi] for her faithfulness on this. She was like Margaret Thatcher on this, and I also want to thank the gentleman from Nebraska [Mr. Bereuter] for his willingness to kind of work this out, and I want to thank the Speaker personally because his involvement made a difference. So much I want to say. I tell the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Manzullo] that, if we had traded with Hitler, I do not think it would have made any difference, and I went to the Holocaust Museum and saw the documents where they said it would just have more business with Hitler, he will change, and he did not change. There is a lot bad going on in China. This is a good resolution, it is a good bill, and I support it, but keep in mind, I will tell the gentleman when he talks about business, there are Catholic priests in jail that we now have in jail in China. How much business is it worth for our Catholic priest to be in jail? There are Protestants who have been arrested in church. How much money in trade and factories is it worth for that American? Harry Wu, an American prisoner, is in jail. They have more gulags and slave labor camps. The gentleman met with a Chinese counselor. How about going into slave labor camps? That is the problem. When our people go to China and meet, they have dinner with Li Peng. They do not go into the house churches and into the slave labor camps. Do not forget they are trading nuclear weapons with Iran and Iraq. Do not forget the missile violations, the chemical war violations. Do not forget they are plundering Tibet. Do not forget they have arrested the men and women connected with the Dalai Lama. There are a lot of bad things that China has done, and we should recognize this. Although this resolution is good, because it finally gets the Congress in a bipartisan way to come together, my last comment is this: People talk about MFN. We would not have granted MFN to the Soviet Union. When Shcharansky was in Prime Camp 35, we would not have granted MFN to the Soviet Union, and both sides know it. When Sakharov was under house arrest in Gorky, we all stood together, Republicans, Democrats, Liberals, and Conservatives, because there was pressure to do it, and God bless Ronald Reagan, and where is he when we need him now? He stood firm and called them the Evil Empire. We would not have granted MFN to Czechoslovakia when Havel was under arrest. No way we would have done it. A Member would have been embarrassed to come down to the floor and say, ``Havel is in jail, let's give him MFN.'' And I thank the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Lewis], who is not here. We would not have lifted sanctions and done anything for South Africa when Nelson Mandela was in. So this is a good resolution. It puts the Congress on record. But let us not drip with sour grapes and say China is going to build all these airports, and they are going to do all these wonderful things. How about what the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Traficant] and the gentlewoman from Ohio [Ms. Kaptur] will tell us? We have lost millions of jobs, millions of jobs. This is a trade issue. Their imbalance is almost $40 billion, a trade imbalance. We have lost a million jobs. It is a slave labor issue. It is a persecution of religious faith, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist. It is all these other issues. They sold weapons to Iraq that were used against American men and women to kill people in the gulf. Having said that though, I just did not want the reports to go off that everything was wonderful. Having said that, the Bereuter resolution is a good resolution, and it is my prayer that we could come together and solve this problem. Every night I pray that China, in my prayers that China, will be free, and hopefully with the work that the gentleman from Nebraska [Mr. Bereuter] has done and coming together, we put pressure on, there will be freedom, and 10 years from now there will be freedom in Tiananmen Square, freedom in China, and democracy, and I want to again thank the gentleman from Nebraska [Mr. Bereuter]. I will be eternally grateful to the Speaker for his help, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Solomon] for his faithfulness, and the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Pelosi] for her doggedness in staying with this issue.

Mr. WOLF

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 193, I offer a motion.