C. Young

Mr. YOUNG of Florida

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Archer) the distinguished chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, would the Chair advise us as to how much time each of us has remaining?

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. I thank the gentleman for yielding and raising that point. Mr. Chairman, I am here to tell the gentleman that the Committee on Appropriations will guarantee and does guarantee by this amendment that the income from that aviation tax going into the trust fund would remain there. The interest would remain there. We have not and would not attempt to use that funding for any other purpose. I want the gentleman to be assured of that.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I ask for a vote on the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I would simply ask the Members to support this amendment, and then to support the bill. Before I yield back, Mr. Chairman, I wonder if I could invite my friend, my colleague, and the ranking member, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), to meet me at the well halfway. Mr. Chairman, we are very unhappy that we had to disappoint the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) and Mrs. Obey on the planned celebration of their 37th wedding anniversary, so we on the majority side have provided this handmade card to my friend, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), to him and Joan in recognition of their 37th anniversary, signed by the gentleman's colleagues on the other side.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I plan to not consume much time, because most of the debate today has been about this amendment as opposed to the bill itself, so I think everyone pretty much understands what the amendment does. I would be happy to respond to any questions if someone has specific questions. Mr. Chairman, I wanted to say to the gentleman from North Carolina (Chairman Taylor) that he has done a really fine job on this bill. I was able to spend some time with the gentleman as he went through this process, and this is his first time as chairman of this subcommittee. He has done a really good job. The gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Pastor) has been an able partner all the way through the process. It was a real joy to watch them as they presented this bill to the Committee on Appropriations. In a very friendly and very nonpartisan-bipartisan way, the committee took their recommendations, and we have the bill before us. This amendment does create a little difference of opinion on the bill because it makes reductions. It makes reduction of a total of $54 million out of this bill. Most of the cuts hit practically all of the accounts in the bill, and the one major reduction in this amendment has to do with Members' representational allowances, the funds that are made available to Members to conduct the affairs of their Congressional office. I want to congratulate and compliment, and I hope people will listen to this, the Members of this House because, Mr. Chairman, here is a table that shows how much each Member used and actually spent of their representational allowance in the last year. Mr. Chairman, I am proud to report that of our 435 Members, 420 of our colleagues in this House did not spend all of the money allocated to them by this legislative appropriations bill. So they practiced fiscal restraint. Some were more restrained than others, but they have different responsibilities in their districts and in their Congressional offices. But the House has done a good job in keeping these expenditures down. Mr. Chairman, the reduction that this amendment makes, in my opinion, is not going to cause any great harm. As a matter of fact, it is very compatible with the amendment just adopted that says the surplus in these funds not spent would go to pay down the national debt. Well, the effect is basically the same here. The only thing is we take it up front rather than at the end of the process. By taking it up front, let me report this good news to my colleagues, and I hope they will listen to this as well, after having spent about four days on two appropriations bills on the floor and having great debate over this amendment and one amendment on the agriculture bill, I am happy to report to all of my colleagues that after all of that straining and working, we will, upon adoption of this amendment, have saved $156 million to apply toward that $17 billion number we are trying to get to. So with the adoption of this amendment, we only have $16,850,000,000 to go in order to arrive where we have to arrive in order to stay within the budget cap that all of us have said is exactly what we are going to do. So, Mr. Chairman, I hope we can expedite the consideration of this amendment and get on to passing this bill. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. YOUNG OF FLORIDA

Mr. YOUNG OF FLORIDA. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, it is the plan that we would rise at this point on further consideration of the agricultural appropriations bill and go to the lockbox issue. We would anticipate that the lockbox issue, considering the time for the rule, two hours of general debate, there will be no amendments under the rule, so I would anticipate a vote on final passage and/or possibly a vote on a motion to recommit, should that be the case. After that, the majority leader will reassess where we are, what time of day it is, and then make an announcement at that time as to what the further activity would be on this bill or any other bill that would come before the House this evening.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. I yield to the gentleman from Oklahoma.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I take the time first to compliment my friend and colleague from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn) for speaking out so strongly for those who rely on Social Security, because I have the great privilege of representing more Social Security recipients than almost every Member of this House of Representatives, and so I really appreciate the strong work and the strong message, and I am glad that Congress recognizes that it is important to keep our commitment to those on Social Security. And to do that we did adopt a budget resolution that provided the appropriators with a certain amount of money for discretionary spending. Now in that amount of money, we suballocated that money based on what we refer to as section 302(b) suballocations. Now this is the first of the 13 regular appropriation bills to come before the House. We have already done two supplemental bills, one conference report on the supplemental bills, and now this is the fourth appropriations vehicle that we have seen for the year. It is within the section 302(b) suballocation, and the section 302(b) suballocations are within the budget numbers set by the budget resolution and also within the budget caps established in 1997. As a matter of fact, during the work of the full committee there were numerous amendments that were offered to dramatically increase the amount of money in this bill, and the Committee on Appropriations, determined to stay within the suballocation, the budget ceiling number, resisted those amendments. So, Mr. Chairman, we bring to our colleagues a bill that has been looked at extremely closely by both sides of the House, both parties, and we came to a workable bill that will meet the requirements of America's farmers for this fiscal year, and as has been pointed out, that is important. It is important that America's farmers stay alive and stay well because while we do import some food, 75 percent of our nutrition comes from what the American farmer produces. So again, Mr. Chairman, to my colleagues I would say this bill is within the section 302(b) suballocations, which are within the budget resolution number, which are within the 1997 budget caps that all of the leaders of both political parties in the House, both political parties in the Senate and the President in the White House have all said we are going to live within. This bill lives within those budget caps and within its section 302(b) suballocation, and I would hope that we could resist these amendments and get on to passing this bill, and get to conference with the other body and get the funding to the agriculture community where it is really needed.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. I yield to the gentleman from Oklahoma.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I would respond to the gentleman that that is a decision that neither he nor I will make. That is a decision that will be made by the leadership of the House and the leadership of the Senate. Then the Congress will work its will and decide if they want to agree or disagree with the decision made by the leadership. But I would also respond to the gentleman that for the last 4 years I had the privilege of chairing the Subcommittee on Defense of the Committee on Appropriations. Now last year alone, from the time that I submitted the bill to the subcommittee to the time that it came to the floor and to the time it went to conference with the Senate, I had my section 302(b) suballocation, it was section 602(b) back then, but now it is section 302(b), I had my suballocation changed three times during that process. So it is certainly possible that, as we go through the consideration of the 13 appropriations bills, we will re-look at adjustments under the section 302(b)s. But the section 302(b) suballocations that we have before us today are the best job that we could do based on where we are and what the budget resolution provides for and what moneys are available and identifying those important items that need to be identified.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. I yield to the gentleman from Indiana.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, let me say, I will not object to allowing the gentlemen to correct their error in drafting their amendment. However, I will object to any extensions of time or anything that would delay the process. Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. I would respond to the gentleman that we will probably spend every nickel and every dime that is provided for in that budget resolution because, as the gentleman knows because I have told him this many, many times, if we just froze every account at last year's level we would be $17 billion over those '97 budget caps, and that tragedy that we experienced last year, the end of the year so- called omnibus appropriations bill, if we did everything that that bill committed us to do, we would be $30 billion over those budget caps that the gentleman is talking about. But let me close out this conversation on this subject because Social Security was Mr. Coburn's original discussion. No one will fail to receive their Social Security check if this bill passes. No one Social Security check will be late unless the Y2K problem does not get solved, and that is something else that we have to worry about. And I have heard these arguments in this Congress for many years in an attempt to, whatever the attempt was, and I will not suggest what the attempt was, to frighten people into thinking that if we did not do this or did not do that, their Social Security check would not be coming. That did not happen. The Social Security checks go out, they go on time, they are deposited electronically on time, and this bill's passage is not going to affect the outcome of anyone's Social Security check 1 hour, 1 minute or 1 second or $1.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object, I do so to try to get an indication of how many amendments we might be considering here tonight. I have heard that there might be as many as 130 amendments offered just to filibuster this bill. If that is the case, we are just going to rise and move on to other business. So I wonder if we can get an idea from any of the Members that are present if we are going to consider 130 amendments tonight, or whether we are going to consider 20. I would like to know where we are, because if we are going to have to go all night long, I am going to object to every opportunity that would slow down the process.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, that does not respond to my question. Is the gentleman going to offer the 135 amendments that he advertised?

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I listened with great interest to the gentleman from New York as he made his comment about dilatory tactics, and the comments that I have made earlier about an apparent filibuster. I am looking at a Dear Republican Colleague letter here, I guess it was an e-mail, that was forwarded through several people and finally was sent to the Committee on Appropriations staff. It says, ``I just submitted 115 amendments to the Agriculture Appropriations bill. It is my intent to first oppose the Rule for the Agriculture Appropriations bill and should the rule be adopted, then proceed to filibuster the bill with amendments.'' The signature line is the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn). So the fact of the matter is he has admitted this is a filibuster. We ought to get to the business of the House. We do not have filibuster rules in the House. They do in the other body. Here, we deal with important legislation that has merit and that has some substance. The gentleman himself has admitted this is a filibuster. If the Members of the House want to go along with a filibuster, then we will stay here until the wee hours of the morning, but if they really are not pleased with sitting here just spinning our wheels on a filibuster, then we will proceed to vote these down, and we will not extend anybody's time limit.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. I yield to the gentleman from South Carolina.

Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.