---

Mr. Campbell of California: Mr. Chairman, I have amendment No. 43 at the desk.

The Chairman: Is the gentleman aware that the amendment was printed incorrectly?

Mr. Price of North Carolina: Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order against the amendment.

The Chairman: Without prejudicing the gentleman from North Carolina's point of order, does the gentleman from California seek to correct the printing error?

Mr. Campbell of California: I am not aware of what the printing error is.

The Chairman: The Parliamentarian advises the Chair there was a printing error, so the Clerk will report the amendment at the desk in lieu of amendment No. 43.

Amendment Offered by Mr. Campbell

Mr. Campbell of California: Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

The Clerk read as follows:

Amendment offered by Mr. Campbell of California:

In title I, under the heading "Office of the Secretary and Executive Management", after the first dollar amount insert "(reduced by $9,961,000)".

The Chairman: Did the gentleman from North Carolina not hear the amendment as read?

Mr. Price of North Carolina: No, I did not.

The Chairman: The Committee will be in order. The Clerk will reread the amendment.

The Clerk read the amendment.

The Chairman: Does the gentleman from North Carolina wish to continue to reserve a point of order?

Mr. Price of North Carolina: Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my point of order.

Mr. Campbell of California: Mr. Chairman, the bill that we have before us today would increase spending. When coupled with the supplemental bill that the President just signed a few weeks back, would increase spending in the area of homeland security by nearly 17 percent. Now, perhaps people on the other side of the aisle have not noticed, but we have a deficit, a very large deficit in this country. And we still are adding to that deficit every year.

Now, I think Members on the other side of the aisle have noticed this because they have talked about their PAYGO and other principles, that we won't be increasing spending without some way to pay for this. However, with this appropriations bill we are doing exactly that. We are increasing spending by billions of dollars, by 17 percent over last year's level, without paying for it in any way, without reducing spending anywhere else, which means that we are adding to the deficit because of the spending, the additional spending that is in this bill.

Let me just give you a sense of what a 17 percent increase is. If someone outside of this building in the world is making $15 an hour, they would have to get a raise this year to $17.55 an hour in order for their income to keep pace with the spending increase in this bill.

Mr. Chairman, I would suggest that most of the people out there making $15 an hour, or any number you want, are not likely to see their bosses come in and say we want to give you a raise of 17 percent from $15 an hour to $17.55 an hour, not something that they are likely to see. But yet to keep and sustain this level of increase in spending, that's exactly what would have to happen or else we just take more and more and more money out of individuals' pockets so we can spend it here.

Now, I'm sure that people on the other side in support of this bill are going to start to talk about how important this bill is to homeland security. Okay. We will have that debate over the next couple of days about what is in this bill, but what this amendment does is deal purely with bureaucracy. We're not dealing here with any program. We're not dealing here with officers in the field. We're not dealing here with equipment that's being used or computers or anything else for homeland security.

What this amendment says is simply that the Office of the Secretary and Executive Management, the office of the Secretary, purely bureaucracy, gave the Secretary of Homeland Security and the people in that person's office, right now this bill gives them an 11 percent increase, when we're trying to get a deficit down, when we want to, at least some of us do, keep taxes low.

What this bill says is you ought to be able to get by on what you had last year. It is not even proposing that we cut the spending of this bureaucracy, not even proposing that we take the Secretary's office and just their bureaucracy in there and cut it, but simply saying get by on the same amount of money you did last year. Now, how many people in America do that every day but somehow the bureaucracy in Homeland Security can't do that?

And by doing that, Mr. Chairman, this amendment saves $10 million. Now, maybe in a $3 trillion budget it doesn't sound like much, but $10 million is still a lot of money. It's a lot of money to everybody out there. It's lot of money to me. It's a lot of money to you. And $10 million and $10 million and $10 million and we will eventually get our spending down, and that, Mr. Chairman, is how we are going to eliminate this budget deficit and that's how we're going to do it without having the largest increase in taxes in American history, which the other side has proposed to do.

And what is that tax increase for? It's for things like this, for things like taking a bureaucracy of people, sitting around doing phone calls and paper and saying we're going to give you an 11 percent raise. We should not be doing that, not in this environment and not in this bill.

So, Mr. Chairman, I would respectfully ask that Members support this amendment, not feed the bureaucracy further and save the taxpayers $10 million.

Mr. Price of North Carolina: Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, it's the easiest thing in the world to come to this floor and to rail against bureaucracy, this abstract notion of cutting bureaucracy; but I think it's prudent to ask what exactly do these officials do and what is actually in the bill and why is it there. So let me try to get beyond just the symbolism of cutting bureaucracy and try to answer those very basic questions.

First of all, let me say, I don't know where the figure 17 percent that the gentleman's using comes from. The increase in this bill over fiscal 2007 spending, counting the bill that we passed last year and the emergency spending incorporated in that bill, is 7½ percent. And if you include the emergency funding that we just added to the 2007 bill, then the increase is 4 percent without the Katrina funding, and it is actually a cut of 7½ percent with the Katrina funding. So if you're using the 2007 bill as the baseline, those are the accurate numbers.

Now, let's look at the front office of the Department of Homeland Security. The bill includes, sure enough, $923 million for Department operations, but that's less than the 2007 appropriation. It's less than the President requested by $73 million.

The gentleman has focused on one aspect of front office operations, which is the Office of Secretary and Executive Management, and he wants to cut that by almost $10 million. But there are good reasons for that being increased while the overall front office expenses are being decreased.

This appropriation, the one the gentleman has targeted, the one he has said is purely bureaucracy, included in that appropriation are the Secure Border Initiative office, which many Members on both sides of the aisle have a strong interest in; the policy office; the privacy office, which surely needs strengthening; the civil rights office, which surely needs strengthening; and the office of counter-narcotics enforcement, a critical function as well.

And the bill isn't lavish even in this respect. It provides only enough funding to support current on-board staff except for the privacy and civil rights offices, where staffing levels are increased, and the policy office, where additional funding is provided for REAL ID, a new program that requires some staffing up, and for the Committee on Foreign Investment of the United States, which, as every Member knows, we are trying to also strengthen.

If funding is reduced, these program enhancements, which will help to better ensure privacy, to better ensure civil rights protections, would not be funded. So let's get past the rhetoric about bureaucracy. Let's look at what the appropriation actually does. I think if Members do, they will reject this amendment.

Mr. Serrano: Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

I join Chairman Price in his comments. I think that we come to the floor with two kinds of amendments, one that really tries to do something, that we believe in, and another just for grandstanding and for publicity.

The gentleman speaks about a deficit and speaks about his side wanting to reduce the deficit. Let me just do a few seconds of history.

When the last President left, we didn't have a deficit. We have a deficit now. Why? Because we were involved in a war and we were sent off to war when we should not be at all, and so we spend billions and billions and billions of dollars every week on a war that was built on lies and bad information, and now we try to get out of that war. And instead of getting out of it, we keep spending more, billions and billions and billions.

And if you think this war deficit is a problem, wait till the boys and girls come home and we have to provide them the medical services that some people will want to cut. The deficit would only grow.

Secondly, to be brief, the gentleman speaks about giving somebody a 17 percent pay raise. Yet it was that side that refused to give some people a couple of pennies' increase in a minimum wage. So all of the sudden that side is very concerned about raising people's salaries to keep up with the needed expenses of surviving in this society, but they were not for giving some folks a minimum wage increase.

So let's get it clear. Yes, there is a deficit, but this bill doesn't cause a deficit. The war is causing the deficit. The war on terror is causing the deficit. That's what this is about. This bill, in a very smart way, deals with some issues that we have to deal with.

And, lastly, it is always easy to attack the bureaucrats. Everybody wants services, everybody wants something done, but nobody wants anybody in charge of providing those services. Somehow we expect a computer to run the agency and not have people actually doing the work.

Let's be fair. Let's be honest when we come to the House floor. If we have an amendment that really has a message, present it. If we're just grandstanding, then we should have a disclaimer that says, and by the way, this is the reason that I'm on the House floor today.

Mr. Hensarling: Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word, and I'd yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Campbell).

Mr. Campbell of California: Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Texas. The gentleman from New York said that there were two types of amendments, one that tried to do something that you believe in and others that make statements.

I would like to assure the gentleman from New York that I believe in this amendment, and I think a lot of people on this side of the aisle believe in this amendment because we believe that we need to start controlling costs in this government.

And is this amendment all by itself going to do that? No, of course not, but it will begin the process of doing that, and in combination with a lot of other amendments like it, yes, it will start to control the cost of government, and, yes, I firmly believe in what this amendment is about, in spite of what the gentleman from New York suggested.

The gentleman from North Carolina talked about numbers, and perhaps my numbers are incorrect, but this bill is now at $36.254 billion over and enacted last year $31.905 billion which is a 13.6 percent increase.

Mr. Price of North Carolina: Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Hensarling: I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.

Mr. Price of North Carolina: Mr. Chairman, I think it will be in the interest of the debate the rest of the day to have this straight, so I do appreciate the gentleman's yielding.

It's true, the bill is at $36.3 billion. Last year's appropriation was $34.2 billion. That is counting the emergency spending that was enacted at the same time as the regular bill. That means this year's increase is 7½ percent. And then if you add the 2007 supplemental appropriations, which were just voted by the House, depending on whether you count the Katrina money or not, you either get a 4.2 percent increase or a 7.5 percent decrease from the 2007 funding level.

I appreciate the chance to clarify those numbers.

Mr. Hensarling: Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. Campbell of California: I thank the gentleman from Texas.

To the gentleman from North Carolina, this is something I guess we'll probably need to work out as we go along because I'm not looking at increase over a baseline. We're looking at increase over actual enacted last year, and maybe we can compare notes. But my notes show that that actual last year was $31.905 billion, and then there was the supplemental which has been added on top of this bill itself.

But in any event, one other thing the gentleman from North Carolina alluded to was that this amendment proposes to cut spending in this area in the Office of the Secretary and Executive Management. I want to make that clear. This is a definitional thing which we often have problems with in this House and in this building.

What this amendment proposes to do is to leave the budget for the Office of Secretary and Executive Management equal to what it was in the prior fiscal year. That is not a cut. If you have $10 and I give you $10, I take away $10, give you back $10, that is not a cut. That is the same amount of money you had before. What this does do is it prevents the 11 percent increase that is in this bill.

So let's make it very clear in vernacular that if I make $10 an hour and I want to make $11, if somebody gives me a raise to $10.50, it is still a raise; it is not a cut. And that's what is going on here.

We are not proposing to cut this office. We are merely proposing to tell them, do continue your operations on the same amount of money that you did last year. I don't think that is a great leap to ask of what is clearly an element of the bureaucracy, in spite of the gentleman from North Carolina's admonitions that it is not.

Mr. Hensarling: Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for offering this amendment, and I certainly support his amendment.

In the big scope of the Federal budget perhaps the dollars are not large, but before we can really ever attack spending, we have to attack the culture of spending, and you have to lead by example.

And why can't we ask people in the Federal Government, as we ask families all around the Nation, as our friends on the other side of the aisle have recently passed the single largest tax increase in history, they're expecting American families to somehow do more with less. Can't we expect a few of the administrators of this agency to somehow, somehow get by on the same amount of money they had last year?

I encourage the support for this amendment.

Mr. Price of Georgia: Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

I want to commend the gentleman from California for offering this amendment. I think that at the beginning of this first appropriations bill of the 110th Congress, which I might add is 1 month after the first appropriation bill that we, when we were in the majority last year, that we moved through the House. So the time is without a doubt getting late, but I commend the majority for finally bringing this to the floor.

But I want to commend the gentleman from California because this is the type of amendment that sets the tone about what kind of responsibility we will bring to this House for all of our appropriations processes over the next number of weeks.

I want to commend the gentleman for this amendment. I appreciate the fact that he has identified an area where, yes, it's only $10 million, but $10 million in my area is a fair amount of money. So I want to commend the gentleman for bringing the amendment to the floor.

I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. Campbell of California: I thank the gentleman from Georgia.

To the gentleman from North Carolina, just to clarify again on these numbers, we agreed that it's $36.3 billion in this bill, and the number you threw out, $34.2 billion, I believe, was the President's budget proposal for this, and that the prior year enacted, 2007 enacted, was $31.9 billion.

Do you have different numbers on that?

Mr. Price of Georgia: I am pleased to yield to the gentleman from North Carolina for a response.

Mr. Price of North Carolina: I am happy to clarify the situation.

The 2007 appropriation, as enacted, was $34.2 billion. That includes the $31.9 billion that the gentleman cited, plus the emergency spending in that same bill, because as you well remember, we needed to address the border and immigration situation. So that was added to the bill.

The spending in the 2007 bill was $34.2 billion, and we are increasing that by 7.5 percent, and then we have recently supplemented the appropriation. The 2007 spending now stands at $39.2 billion, and the 2008 bill is 7.5 percent less than that in nominal terms.

If I may just say further, the gentleman referred to the way we do accounting around here. This is just straight nominal numbers. The departmental operations are cut--are cut--in our bill from 2007 levels by $1.2 million. They are cut from the President's request by $72 million. It's not a matter of adjustments one way or the other for inflation; those are straightforward cuts.

Mr. Price of Georgia: Reclaiming my time, I appreciate the gentleman pointing out the increase by 7.5 percent. Again, I would like to just draw the House's attention to the fact that this may just be $9.5 million, but as I mentioned, $9.5 million is a fair amount of money.

I appreciate also the gentleman coming to the floor earlier and talking about broadening this debate. He talked about what he called the war deficit. He brought minimum wage into this debate, brought spending into this debate. That's a wonderful thing. Because, yes, that's what we're talking about. We are talking about spending hard- earned taxpayer money. So no amount of money is too small to discuss and to bring light to.

I would implore my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to, yes, look at the expansive nature of these appropriations bills, to look at the increase in the amount of money that this majority plans on spending over past Congresses.

I also would ask my colleagues to look at the process. Because the debate has been expanded, I think it's an appropriate time to talk about the issue regarding earmarks, special projects. We have now a policy apparently in this House of Representatives, that allows the majority party or, actually, one Member of the majority party, to determine when he decides which earmark, which special project, warrants support by the entire House or warrants the opportunity to even have a vote on a special project.

But can you have a vote on a specific special project? No, no. What we will have, our special projects that are the pet special projects of one individual, brought into a conference report, and no opportunity, no opportunity for any Member of this body to point out that, in fact, that ought to have a particular vote, that we ought to have individuals stand up.

I support the amendment of the gentleman from California.

Mr. McHenry: Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

We do have some concerns on this side about the legislation put together, as we would have on any large bill that spends billions of dollars, but I want to commend my colleague from North Carolina for his fair work and his hard work on this legislation.

With that, I would like to yield to my colleague from California.

Mr. Campbell of California: I thank the gentleman from North Carolina.

If I can refer to the gentleman, I believe I heard, and maybe we can sort this out, but I think that if you include the supplementals on both sides, that we went from $34.2 billion to $39.2 billion, which would be a 15.2 percent increase, perhaps not the 17 I said earlier, but in either event, frankly, whether it's 17 percent, 15 percent or the 13.6, if you leave both of the supplementals out, it's a lot of money. It's billions and billions and billions of dollars of increase.

Some of that increase is a lot more than inflation, multiple times more than inflation, and it's a lot more than taking the growth in inflation and the growth in population and put it together. Most importantly, it's a lot more than personal income growth.

That's something we need to look at, as we are looking at all these appropriations and all of these spending bills. Because if we increase spending faster than people's incomes are increasing in America, it is unsustainable over time unless you continue to take more and more and more of their hard-earned money away from them.

Now, I know that's what many of you on the other side of the aisle want to do. But, A, we don't; and, B, even if you want to do it, eventually you'll run out of space. Eventually, you'll take it all if you increase at this kind of level.

Once again, this amendment does not ask anybody to cut anything. It simply tells this one element, this one part of the bureaucracy in Homeland Security to do, get by and exist on the same amount of money that you had last year.

I thank the gentleman from North Carolina.

Mr. McHenry: I thank my colleague for his comments.

Mr. Westmoreland: Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

I felt compelled to say something after the gentleman from North Carolina and the gentleman from New York talked about bureaucracy. It's easy to pick on bureaucracy. I ask any Member of this House that has talked to any constituencies, whether it's about a Social Security issue, a veterans' issue, Department of Homeland Security, FAA issue, to talk about it, and they will tell you that they had trouble with the bureaucracy, that they were having to call your office because they had trouble with the bureaucracy. This government has grown at a pace way beyond our population.

As we know, once somebody gets in a position in government, what they try to do is to expand that position, to get another secretary, to get an assistant secretary, an executive secretary, and so forth, because they are trying to build their power base.

So, yes, you ask any citizen that was affected by Katrina on the gulf coast if we have too much bureaucracy in our government, because a lot of those individuals down there that were hurt by that hurricane have yet to get assistance, or the full assistance they need, because of the bureaucracy in Washington D.C. So don't say that the bureaucracy is just something easy to pick on.

Let me say this. The gentleman from California is very earnest in wanting to get $10 million. Now, $10 million may not sound like a lot to a lot of people, but it's a lot of money. I will tell the gentleman from New York that commented on what was causing a deficit, yes, the war is causing the deficit, some part of the deficit. But what is causing the deficit, this is a moment of truth, is overspending, overspending.

Yes, the public did speak last November, and what they said is, you Republicans who have always stood up and said, government is too big and we have too much spending. Yet we were the ones up here increasing the size of government and spending too much money, it's time for us to reclaim the brand of being fiscal conservatives and watching after the taxpayers' dollars. That's exactly what this amendment from the gentleman from California does.

Our base, the Republican base, does not like to spend money or does not like to see government grow, because we think that the entrepreneurial spirit is that we can take care of ourselves better than the government can take care of us. The unfortunate side for our base is that the majority base thinks that the government can do a better job of looking after people than people themselves.

So that's the dilemma that we find ourselves in, that we have got one side that's trying to reclaim their brand, trying to make people realize that we really are who we say we are and doing the things that we are supposed to be doing in cutting the size of government and reducing spending. The other side is saying, here we are and here we are to take care of you.

The Chairman: The question is on the amendment offered by the gentleman from California (Mr. Campbell).

The question was taken; and the Chairman announced that the noes appeared to have it.

Mr. Campbell of California: Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

The Chairman: Pursuant to clause 6 of rule XVIII, further proceedings on the amendment offered by the gentleman from California will be postponed.

Amendment Offered by Mr. Kucinich

Mr. Kucinich: Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

The Clerk read as follows:

Amendment offered by Mr. Kucinich:

Page 2, line 9, after the dollar amount, insert "(reduced by $500,000)".

Page 38, line 17, after the dollar amount, insert "(increased by $500,000)".

Mr. Kucinich: Mr. Chairman, my amendment directs FEMA to conduct a comprehensive study of the increase in demand for FEMA's emergency response and disaster relief services as a result of weather-related disasters associated with global warming.

It will tell us what FEMA can expect 5, 10, and 20 years from now. The assessment will include an analysis of the budgetary material and manpower implications of meeting such increased demand for FEMA services. We have been warned. We have been warned that we should expect to see more extreme weather, like severe rain storms and snowstorms that can come in an El Nino season.

We have been warned that we will see stronger hurricanes and hurricanes with more total rainfall. We have been warned to expect heat waves. We have been told to expect melting glaciers, rising sea levels swallowing low-lying land in places like Bangladesh, Florida, the gulf coast and Manhattan.

We have been warned that rising temperatures will force infectious diseases to move north or upwards in elevation to expose previously unexposed and, therefore, defenseless populations. We have been warned that droughts will intensify and lengthen, straining already strained water supplies and bring crop failures. Droughts also place those areas at greater risk for wildfires.

These warnings come from the most respected, most credible, most well-studied scientists this world has to offer. This was most recently affirmed by the Fourth Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Turns out, they were right.

The 11 hottest years on record have occurred since 1994. Two of the three last hurricane seasons have broken records. The polar ice cap is melting even faster than our previous best estimates. Greenland's ice is melting. Permafrost in Alaska is thawing, causing homes to crumble. Residents of low-lying nations like Tuvalu have applied for entry into other countries as climate refugees and have been denied.

West Nile virus from Africa has taken a toehold in the U.S. The European heat wave of 2003 killed well over 15,000 people. Carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere are at levels scientists say have not occurred in 400,000 years.

These effects are directly in line with the warnings we received from the scientific community. Even though it is difficult to attribute all of these effects directly to climate change, some have been able to. A 2006 article in the journal Nature blames half of the risk associated with the European heat on human-induced warming.

The World Health Organization has estimated that 150,000 deaths every year can already be attributed to climate change.

Hurricane Katrina gave us another grim warning, telling us not only what we should expect, but showing us what happens if we're not prepared.

Katrina showed us that when disasters hit, the most vulnerable among us become even more vulnerable because they lack the resources and access to cope. That was made clear as image after image of those hit the hardest were people of modest means and people of color.

In fact, in the Chicago heat wave of 1995, African Americans were twice as likely to die as Caucasians. The elderly, many of whom could not afford air conditioning, made up most of the victims.

Katrina showed us that disasters are expensive. We have so far spent about $77 billion on disaster assistance for Hurricanes Katrina, Wilma and Rita alone. Insurance companies whose very existence rely on their predictive abilities have seen enough to make them drop certain coverage and to conduct campaigns to try to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. Reinsurance companies in particular, like Swiss Re, have taken a leadership role in promoting action on climate change.

Katrina has showed us that an unprepared FEMA costs time, money and ultimately lives. If past is prologue, we have an obligation to look at the future in order to prepare. We have to allow FEMA to take into account the realities of the challenges that await them.

At this moment we can still choose among policy options. We can deal with the effects of climate change in one of two ways. We can acknowledge the extraordinary challenges before us and prepare for them voluntarily and aggressively, but steadily, predictably and controllably, or we can continue to create policy as if there's no problem and wait for the severe weather to control our pace of adaptation. The choice is ours.

Let FEMA prepare for the task ahead. Vote "yes" on the Kucinich amendment.

Mr. Price of North Carolina: Mr. Chairman, I want to commend the gentleman for his eloquence, both about the potential threat of global warming and what that may mean for emergencies that we have to deal with in the future, and also for the need to repair and rebuild FEMA so that we have a nimble, responsive agency that can respond to all kinds of disasters all over this country.

I understand that the gentleman will perhaps be willing to withdraw this amendment. I hope that he will do that, but I want to assure him that we understand what he's focusing on, and that we will work with him as we go to conference to make sure that FEMA has the resources that it needs. We have beefed up FEMA's resources a good deal in this bill.

Now, on the question of who should be studying global warming and assessing its future impact, there are legitimate questions, I believe, as to whether FEMA is the agency that's best equipped to do this. Other agencies, such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, do have expertise in this area, but if that expertise is not being translated into practical preparation, and if there's not adequate coordination between NOAA and the research operations and the operational agencies, then that obviously is a concern that needs to be addressed. I appreciate the Member from Ohio's raising that concern, and promise that we will work with you.

Mr. Kucinich: Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Price of North Carolina: I will.

Mr. Kucinich: First of all, I want to thank the chairman for his willingness to work to address this issue of the need for an increase in demand for FEMA's emergency response services. And I think that, as the bill moves to conference, that it could be a service to people in all those areas which are likely to be assailed by adverse weather conditions to make sure that FEMA understands that there's going to be greater demand on their services.

And if the gentleman, as you have indicated, is willing to take this issue up in conference on behalf of all of us, I certainly would be willing to withdraw the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the amendment.

The Chairman: Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Ohio?

There was no objection.

The Chairman: Without objection, the amendment is withdrawn.

Mr. Carter: Mr. Chairman, I'd like to move to strike the requisite number of words on this issue.

The Chairman: The amendment has just been withdrawn.

Mr. Carter: I believe I have the right to object.

The Chairman: The time for objection has passed.

If the gentleman just wishes to strike the requisite number of words----

Mr. Carter: Okay. I'll wait for the bill.

Amendment Offered by Mr. Reichert

Mr. Reichert: Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

The Clerk read as follows:

Amendment offered by Mr. Reichert:

Page 2 line 9, after the dollar amount insert "(reduced by $1,000,000)".

Page 2 line 16, after the dollar amount insert "(reduced by $11,000,000)".

Page 4 line 24, after the dollar amount insert "(increased by $10,000,000)".

Mr. Reichert: Mr. Chairman, as the ranking member of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence, I rise today to offer an amendment that would restore a cut to the Department of Homeland Security's intelligence function.

This bill cuts the analysis and security's intelligence functions. This bill cuts $8 million from that account from last year, and this bill cuts the analysis and operations account by $8 million from last year, and is $23 million below the administration's request.

I simply do not understand why we would be cutting the intelligence funding. Let's be clear about this. Intelligence is what we use to prevent terrorist attacks. Good intelligence helped prevent the recent plots against Fort Dix and against John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. The Department of Homeland Security intelligence had a role in both of these cases, and, in fact, in the JFK plot the Department of Homeland Security was sharing classified intelligence with the private sector for more than a year before the threat was made public.

My amendment attempts to strike an appropriate balance between response, recovery and prevention. This legislation, in its current form, includes cuts to intelligence and yet significantly increases response and recovery programs.

While all are important to homeland security, I think we can all agree that it is better to prevent a terrorist attack than be forced to respond to one. According to the Department of Homeland Security, this bill would reduce the Department of Homeland Security's intelligence support for border security, terrorist travel, and human smuggling. It would severely impact the Department's ability to assess these threats, and would harm their efforts to focus on homegrown terrorism and violent extremism within the United States.

My amendment simply adds $10 million for analysis operations to that account to help restore the Department's intelligence functions. This would eliminate the cut and provide a modest $2 million increase from last year.

The terrorists only have to be right once, but to defend ourselves, we have to be right every time. Intelligence is the most sound investment we can make as a Nation to prevent terrorism.

I urge my colleagues to vote "yes" on this amendment.

Mr. Price of North Carolina: Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment offered by the gentleman from Washington, although I want to heartily endorse the emphasis he's given to the importance of the intelligence and analytical functions.

Perhaps I can best begin by making an observation about this bill as a whole. We have closely examined the status of the programs that we're funding, their history of drawing down funds, their unspent balances, their ability to spend the money that has been requested. And so when the gentleman sees a reduction in funding of the sort that he sees in this account, it would be a big mistake to read that as a de-emphasis of this function or some kind of judgment that this function is not important. We think it's highly important. But we do have some observations that are included in the committee report.

I refer the gentleman to page 23 of the report about the rationale behind the, we hope, temporary reductions that we've written into this bill. It's a short section. Let me just read it. "The Committee has reduced the funding level for intelligence and analysis below the amounts requested. The Committee notes that the Office of Intelligence and Analysis carried over significant unobligated balances at the end of fiscal year 2006, and has shown no signs of an increased pace of obligations during the current fiscal year."

That is not something we're pleased about, but the best way to create some pressure and some incentives to correct this situation, to get this function moving, is what the committee has done.

The gentleman's amendment would reduce by $10 million the amounts provided to the managerial function and the Border Patrol at DHS and reallocate those funds for the intelligence functions.

But as I said, at the end of 2006 the intelligence program had $50 million remaining unspent, largely because it was unable to hire the staff at the rate at which it was planned. There's been no indication from the intelligence managers of the Department that the pace of hiring has increased, so we fully expect the programs will end this year with significant balances unspent. It's simply imprudent to keep appropriating more money when those sizable balances remain unspent.

Now, as for the offset, briefly, the amendment proposes to reduce funding for the Office of the Secretary and Executive Management by $1 million, or 1 percent. That, as we've said earlier, would nip in the bud our efforts to better ensure privacy and to enforce civil rights. That's the reason there's a slight increase in that function. And the gentleman's amendment would remove that, as well as reduce funding for the office of the Under Secretary for Management, which is tied to the need to consolidate DHS operations in a new headquarters.

So, in the other aspect of the amendment, perhaps even more dangerously, the amendment proposes to reduce CBP salaries, Border Patrol salaries and expenses, by $6 million. That could generate significant vulnerabilities in the Border Patrol's ability to ensure the security of the northern and southern borders.

So the offsets are not good, and the overall increase would, in all likelihood, remain unspent.

So for those reasons, and certainly not for any lack of concern about intelligence and analytical operations, I do reluctantly oppose the gentleman's amendment.

Mr. Garrett of New Jersey: Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to address the Chamber and also to commend the gentleman for his excellent amendment.

As the gentleman knows, I come from, hail from the great State of New Jersey where we are all too well aware of why we are here on the floor tonight discussing the issue of homeland security. My district is in the shadows of the Twin Towers.

I commend the gentleman for his opening comments when he stated that we need a balance between response, recovery and prevention. I would suggest, if we're going to strike that balance, that we might want to tip that balance a little bit to the way of prevention.

While as glad as my constituents are, immediately in the aftermath of 9/11, of how tremendous the response was from people, not only from New York City, New Jersey, my State, the entire tristate area, but America in general to what happened on 9/11. That was the response.

And as great as it was, the recovery after 9/11, and putting people's lives back in order as well, the thing that most New Yorkers and all Americans would agree on is if we could have prevented 9/11 to occur in the first place, how much better that would have been.

Now, we just had another incident in the State of New Jersey as well, I'm sure the gentleman knows, down in the southern part of the State with regard to several terrorists, this time homegrown terrorists trying to get into a U.S. military establishment and shoot up that establishment. In that case we did not have to look at that balance with regard to response or recovery because our government did such a phenomenal job in the area of prevention.

And what does the gentleman's, his amendment do today? He addresses that point of prevention, trying to prevent another 9/11, trying to prevent another incident that could have occurred in the State of New Jersey and the loss of life there.

And what does the amendment do? It tries to restore the $10 million cut that would have occurred should this amendment not occur.

Now, the other side of the aisle, on this amendment and a previous amendment, and I presume for the rest of this evening as well, they will be coming to the floor defending the bureaucracy. They will be coming to the floor defending the bureaucrats. They will be coming to the floor defending the status quo.

I would suggest that we do not want to defend the status quo. We want to improve the situation.

The gentleman's amendment will do that by putting the resources where they should be, in intelligence, which is prevention so that we should never have such an incident in this country again.

I commend the gentleman and encourage my colleagues from both sides of the aisle to support this amendment when it later comes to the floor for a vote.

Mr. Westmoreland: Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

I would like to yield to my friend from Washington, someone that is a professional in law enforcement (Mr. Reichert).

Mr. Reichert: Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Georgia for yielding.

I want to just respond to a couple of points that were made. Part of this budget is classified, and we can say one thing, though, in open session, and that is that the Department of Homeland Security disagrees with your assessment. For instance, your report states that the Office of Operations and Coordination has significant unobligated balances. According to the Department of Homeland Security, as of June 7 of this year, OPS has obligated 63 percent of fiscal year 2007's funding and 99.9 percent of fiscal year 2006 carry-over funding.

So let's just be real about this bill. If you are serious about intelligence, why are we cutting it by $8 million over last year's budget, $23 million over the suggested administration's budget?

This is what it does: It will reduce our ability to deploy personnel to the southwest and northern borders to support border enforcement efforts. It will reduce our ability to identify and assess threats to the security of the Nation's land, air, and sea borders. It will reduce our ability to analyze the threat of homegrown terrorism and domestic terrorism. It will reduce our ability to provide an alternative perspective to terrorist threats. It will reduce our ability to collect intelligence and support those intelligence owners and operators of the Nation's critical infrastructure. And it will reduce our ability to analyze terrorist travel trends and methods.

I have 33 years of law enforcement experience in the Seattle area, was the sheriff of Seattle before I came here, now serving in my second term in Congress. I understand the balance between response and prevention. I understand the balance of civil liberties and protection of the public against criminal activity. I understand the balance there. This bill puts this balance way out of whack.

One million dollars taken from management in the Secretary's office, $11 million taken from the Under Secretary's office. They still receive a $79 million increase. The committee's recommendation in this report remains intact; therefore, civil liberty funding and privacy, counternarcotics funding levels remain intact. They are not part of our offsets. Also not a part of our offset is CBC.

Mr. Westmoreland: Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I want to thank the gentleman for offering the amendment.

You want to listen to somebody that has expertise in this. And I don't think anybody has more expertise in intelligence than a local sheriff does, somebody that has been involved in trying to find some criminals. And the gentleman from Washington has certainly done that. He has brought his professionalism here to Washington. And I think it is good advice that the Members vote for this amendment and recognize that we are listening to somebody that has got the experience and not bureaucrats that think they know how to do a job and they have never actually even been in the field.

Mr. McHenry: Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. Chairman, I want to urge my colleagues to support my good friend from Washington's amendment. It is a good amendment because, as a sheriff, he knows, firsthand, homeland security. And what he also knows is the most important thing we can be doing in this time of war is funding our intelligence capabilities domestically and internationally. And what this legislation does is reduce our capacity to gather intelligence through this homeland security appropriation.

Mr. Chairman, I think what my colleague from Washington has offered is a very sensible thing. This bill actually has $23 million less in funding for intelligence resources than the President requested. And what my colleague does is restore the funding level to the prior year's funding for the intelligence-gathering resources of the Homeland Security Department.

I think overall what we have to discuss as a Congress is whether or not we are going to fight an offensive war. Are we going to do the necessary things, the intelligence gathering that we need to do as a country and as a nation to make sure that we are safe and secure when we are dealing with these very complicated threats both internationally and domestically.

We saw what has happened over the last few years with intelligence- gathering capabilities that during the 1990s were decimated. Our intelligence-gathering capabilities were decimated. And what we have to do as a nation is make sure we have the proper funding so we don't have those threats, we don't have those scares, that we don't have that level of war here at home.

So, Mr. Chairman, I commend my colleague for offering this amendment. I urge its adoption. And I think we can do this on a very bipartisan basis to ensure that we have a strong homeland and have the proper intelligence-gathering resources funded by this United States Congress.

Mr. Chairman, I would be happy to yield to my colleague from the great State of New Jersey.

Mr. Garrett of New Jersey: Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman's yielding.

And I just want to reiterate a point that you made at the end, and that is to take a brief look at history to see where our intelligence apparatus, if you will, has been in this country.

I was going to step up to the floor a little earlier on a previous amendment when one of our colleagues from the other side of the aisle began to give a history as to the budget process and the deficits and the like, and I was going to say at that time, we really shouldn't be looking back on some of these issues. But I think you raised a point that we need to look back to, and it brings us to the point of 9/11 and why we got there in the first place. And that was, we went through a time, following the collapse of the "evil empire," as Ronald Reagan called it, the Soviet Union, the breakup of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, the end of the so-called Cold War. And there were Members from the other side of the aisle in this House and the other House, but specifically in this House who said, we do not need an intelligence apparatus in this country anymore.

I remember one of my colleagues from the other side of the aisle said that we can even get rid of the CIA because we no longer need such an apparatus in a world free of the Soviet Union and the like. That was impetus during a previous administration, back during the Clinton administration.

The dollars of investments were not made during that period of time, and what was wrought because of that? What became because of that? Well, not just 9/11, which we are all familiar with. Something that people are less familiar with or already forget was the first bombing of the World Trade Center, when at that time the towers did not come down, collapsing upon the neighbors and the people in the area; but you may recall that bombing in the cellars and the trucks.

What it led to also was bombing of U.S. interests around the world as well. In each instance it was because of a lack of dollars and investment in apparatus, invested in our intelligence community, in the CIA and other apparatus, National Security Agency and the like. Because of that those things came about.

So the gentleman is absolutely correct in this case of looking back to see where we did not make the investments in the past and where our colleagues on the other side of the aisle would say continue that wrong philosophy of not investing in intelligence but instead just looking to the recovery and the response.

We believe that we must be looking to the prevention, as the author of this amendment said at the very outset, that we must look to the prevention, and that has come about through the investment of our intelligence.

So I just want to reiterate that point that the gentleman raised. Look back to history. Look at which party led us to the problems that we have today and what we need to do about it today. Look back at history.

The Chairman: The question is on the amendment offered by the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Reichert).

The question was taken; and the Chairman announced that the noes appeared to have it.

Mr. Reichert: Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

The Chairman: Pursuant to clause 6 of rule XVIII, further proceedings on the amendment offered by the gentleman from Washington will be postponed.

Mr. Rodriguez: Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, today I rise in support of this piece of legislation. This bill has particular significance for all Americans concerned about promoting the necessary and difficult objectives of protecting our homeland.

As a member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, it has been a pleasure for me to work with Chairman Price on adding language and enhancements that will make the bill stronger and generally more effective.

As a Member who represents a district that comprises 700 miles along the Texas-Mexico border, I am distinctly aware of the challenges that confront frontline law enforcement officers charged with upholding criminal laws such as drug and human trafficking. In recognition of these inherent dangers presented to law enforcement officials, also to private landowners as well as elected officials concerned about border issues, and the statutory requirements imposed by the Department of Homeland Security to erect a fencing barrier that spans 370 miles along the southwestern border, I was pleased to work with the chairman, who was working with me on these two distinct issues.

My first and most important objective that I would like to address is regarding homeland security grants that would hopefully help the border cities and the law enforcement personnel that are on the border such as the police and the sheriff, the first responders, for stemming the tide of drug and human trafficking along our border. Chairman Price was instrumental in working with me and helping us to obtain $15 million for funding for Operation Stonegarden, a program that this administration failed to seek funding for and which had previously been funded in 2006.

Operation Stonegarden began as a successful pilot program in 2005 and helped 14 border States on these issues. The initiative gave the States the flexibility that the Department grants provided to enhance coordination among not only the States but local community and Federal law enforcement agencies that are drastically needed. This pilot program resulted in an estimated 214 State, local, and tribal agencies working 36,755 man-days on various public safety as well as border security operations on the border.

The budgetary constraints imposed on the committee precluded more funding in this area, but the bill language sends a clear message that programs such as Stonegarden are viable and will serve as a funding aid to the law enforcement communities along the border.

Stonegarden did not receive funding last year. The funding assists local authorities with operational costs and equipment purchases that contribute to border security. The funds are intended to be used for operations involving both narcotics and human trafficking.

The second objective regarding the fencing and the barriers that are necessary, I want to thank the chairman also for working with us in making sure we provide these types of barriers in an appropriate manner.

I believe that the bill reported by the full committee and under consideration by the full House represents the most viable approach that can be utilized. I want to thank the chairman for allowing us to be able to present this bill. And as you well know, Mr. Chairman, this is a bill that is critical, an area that we have been lacking in this country where the administration has failed to provide the appropriate resources on the border. So I want to thank the chairman for allowing us to do that.

Amendment Offered by Mr. King of Iowa

Mr. King of Iowa: Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

The Clerk read as follows:

Amendment offered by Mr. King of Iowa:

In title I, under the heading "Office of the Secretary and Executive Management", after the first dollar amount insert "(reduced by $79,000)".

Mr. King of Iowa: Mr. Chairman, this amendment would reduce the Chief of Staff account in the Office of the Secretary and Executive Management to the fiscal year 2007 level. It represents a $79,000 reduction, and it would go from $2.639 million to $2.56 million.

The bill's current funding level is a 3 percent increase over fiscal year 2007 as enacted. There has been at least $105.5 billion in new Federal spending authorized by the House Democrat leadership this year. The current Federal debt is $8.8 trillion, roughly $29,000 for every U.S. citizen.

And it grows by over $1 billion a day. Entitlement spending, being Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, is out of control and within a generation will force either significant cutbacks in services or benefits or massive tax increases.

The Congressional Budget Office and the Government Accountability Office have been warning Congress that the growth in direct spending, and that is spending that's on autopilot outside the annual spending process, is occurring at an unsustainable rate due to well-known demographic trends and other factors. Discretionary spending has also grown exponentially and must be brought under control.

This amendment is the first step of many necessary steps in forcing fiscal discipline and sanity upon the Federal Government and out-of- control Federal spending. We must restore fiscal discipline and find both commonsense and innovative new ways to do so, and we need to find ways to do more with less.

I have often speculated as to how this Congress would react if we brought a budget down here and presented a budget that would actually be a balanced budget without increasing taxes. We were on a trajectory to do that. And many of the things that have happened so far here in this 110th Congress have reversed that opportunity that we've had and made it far more difficult for us to be able to get to the point where we can balance this budget again.

Most of us will look back and remember that at the time of the beginning of this current administration, we were caught in a real flux, we had a dot-com bubble that was an unexpected growth in our economy. It brought in Federal revenues that surpassed the anticipated revenue stream and actually surpassed the ability of Congress to react to increasing spending with the Federal revenue increase. So, when the bubble burst, it slowed down our revenue, and at the same time, since we hadn't anticipated the increase, we ended up with some surplus in this budget, and we paid down some debt.

That was a good thing, and I would hope we could find a way to get back to that good thing, but the good thing didn't last very long because, at the same time we had the bursting of the dot-com bubble, we also had things we knew about that had to do with some corporate corruption. That was difficult on our economy and our adjustments. And nearly the same time, and from a national historical perspective it was the same time, we had the September 11 attacks, which in the end generated the very subject matter that is the appropriations of the Department that this bill appropriates. All of those things added together turned this increase or spending and slowed down our revenue increase. Now we've seen the growth in this economy. We have seen unprecedented growth in our Dow, for example. And we have a strong economy that surpassed my anticipation. It went beyond my optimism and exceeded that, Mr. Chairman.

So, what I would submit is that this Congress needs to have the discipline every step of the way, wherever we have the opportunity discretionarily, to take us back down to the level where we can one day come to this floor, Democrats and Republicans, and offer a balanced budget and then talk about how we spend that money within that balanced budget without increasing taxes. That's the key, and that's the thrust, and that's the message, Mr. Chairman, that I bring with this amendment that simply reduces the COS office by $79,000.

Mr. Price of North Carolina: Mr. Chairman, I rise to indicate that we will accept this amendment, but I want to explain my reasoning, if I might, and explain it very carefully.

For 2 hours now we have sat in this Chamber and have heard Republican Members railing against the Bush administration. Member after Member after Member has risen in this Chamber to condemn Bush administration bureaucrats in unsparing terms, and not one voice on that side of the aisle has been raised in opposition, not one.

So, we are asking ourselves, how long are we going to defend a very carefully crafted bill that deals with the administration's legitimate needs to administer its Department?

Now, I don't care how many times people get on this floor and claim that we have made lavish increases. The fact is, and I will say it one more time, this bill cuts departmental operations. It cuts them below the President's request, and it cuts them below 2007 levels. And that is not a matter of inflation adjustment. It is a real cut in nominal terms.

Now, within that overall cut there are some adjustments. Some accounts are cut more, some are increased. They are not increased for frivolous reasons. If we have made an increase, it has been because there is a good rationale for that increase. A couple of the earlier cuts targeted the account that includes the Privacy Office, the Civil Rights Office, offices that need work and need to be strengthened.

So we have scrubbed this bill very carefully. We have basically provided only for current staff on board, and, in a few instances, for staff that we knew needed to be augmented to perform very specific functions. So, we have been conscientious within the context of overall reduction.

Of course, the easiest thing in the world is to rail against the front office or the Department, to rail against the bureaucrats, to say these are abstract, invisible cuts. Let's just cut away, and then beat our chest about how tough we are fiscally. I tell you, we've been tough fiscally, but we have not been irresponsible. We have tied, in each case, our funding recommendation to specific needs of the Department, specific functions that need to be continued or need to be augmented. So we are asking, why should we be the ones to stand up for this administration?

Now, I know not every Republican is in line with the sentiments that have been expressed here. I know there are Members on both sides of the aisle who understand that you need some reasonable level of funding to run a department. And in past years, we have provided that reasonable level, and we have done it again this year. But we are not going to sit here and simply hear all this and then be alone in our defense. So we accept the amendment.

Mr. Obey: Mr. Chairman, I rise to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to follow through on the comments made by the distinguished chairman of the subcommittee. And I think for Members who aren't here, which is approximately 90 percent of the body, for Members who are watching in their offices or perhaps not watching at all, I should make clear what is happening here and what is not happening here.

We are not having a real debate on a real bill. What is happening is a debate, it is really "filibuster by amendment." It has been made quite clear by the opposition leadership that the opposition party intends to bring this institution to a halt today. And the way they intend to do that is by offering amendment after amendment after amendment. There are about 120 amendments pending. And as the gentleman from North Carolina has indicated, we are trying to responsibly deal with a budget from an administration of the other party.

The easiest thing in the world for us to do would be for us to gut and slash the administrative accounts in the bill for any department, because, after all, the administration is Republican and we are Democratic. But what we have tried to do instead is to meet our responsibilities. We tried to tie administrative budget levels to the actual needs of the agencies, and we have tried to deal with those agencies in a bipartisan manner.

But we have a series of amendments not taking any meaningful reductions out of these agency budgets. We have a series of very tiny nicks being taken out of these budgets. And these amendments, in my judgement, are designed more to take up the time of this body than they are to produce a different financial result. And as the gentleman from North Carolina indicates, we have been, for the last 2 hours, trying to defend an administrative budget for the other party's administration.

Now, we may not be the smartest folks in the world, but we haven't exactly fallen off a turnip truck. And I also think that we are not exactly cut out to be suckers. And so, I don't think that we can allow our friends on the other side of the aisle to assume that we will simply serve as punching bags, and that we will simply stand here continuing to defend administration operation accounts.

And so, as far as I am concerned, if the administration and if the minority party's leadership can't control their own Members in terms of these budgetary attacks on these agencies, then who are we to stand in the way? So, I think what happens to these administrative levels will be pretty much up to the administration's own party. It will be very interesting to watch.

Mr. Ryan of Wisconsin: Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

It is asked, you know, why are we doing what we are doing, and why are these amendments coming to the floor, and why are these Members saying what they are saying? There is a big picture involved here, Mr. Chairman, and I would like to speak to that.

Number one, this isn't just about increasing spending in one particular program or one pet project, this is about the now majority increasing spending everywhere, on virtually every program and virtually every pet project at almost every opportunity. Six months into the new majority, $6 billion on the omnibus appropriations, $17 billion in non-war-related emergency spending supplemental, $21 billion more on top of discretionary spending above the level at which we realize the veto threat is going to occur.

Each of these appropriation bills is representing an installment on a plan to increase nonemergency spending by more than $81 billion over last year. That is a spending increase of 9 percent, three times the rate of inflation.

Now, I will be the first to acknowledge that when our party was in the majority, we made similar mistakes. We made similar big spending increases. I recall my first term in 2000, coming at the end of the Clinton administration, an 11 percent increase in discretionary spending. That got built into the base, and what happened? Our budgets got thrown through the loop forever. We went into deficit. It was a big mistake at the time, that we should not have done that.

But there are four specific problems I have with this particular bill before us, Mr. Chairman, which the gentleman from Iowa's amendment does some things to help fix.

First, the President's budget called for an increase of 7.2 percent. This budget calls for an increase of 14 percent. So it raises the ante. So, instead of doubling the spending at the rate of inflation, we're going four times the rate of inflation on this bill.

Number two, this bill takes advantage of prefunding. They have already used the 2007 war supplemental to prefund over $1 billion in fiscal year 2008 Homeland Security appropriations. That lets us free up the cap for more spending. So, it's really more than a 14 percent increase from one year to the next.

Third, and this is my biggest concern, Mr. Chairman, earmark transparency. We have come a long ways on earmarks. The former majority party made mistakes on earmarks. Let me say this one more time. Republicans made mistakes on earmarks. And good thing Republicans, last session, began fixing those mistakes. Last session we brought to the floor and passed in the rules new earmark transparency rules, new earmark accountability rules, giving the public the ability to see the earmarks, see who the author is, and giving Members of Congress, there as the people's representatives, the ability to come to the floor and challenge those earmarks. To the Democratic Party credit, they extended those earmark reforms. And you know what, Mr. Chairman? They built upon them. They improved upon those earmark reforms. The Democrat majority improved upon the Republican earmark reforms when they came into power at the beginning of this year.

Where are we now? What has happened? We went three steps forward, and now we went six steps back, Mr. Chairman. Now, in instead of giving the public the ability to see these earmarks, instead of giving Members of Congress, the people's representatives, the ability to challenge them, to vote on them, to have scrutiny on them while we consider these appropriation bills, what are we doing? They are air-dropping them in the conference report.

Okay. What did that just mean for those people who don't know our lingo? This means we're not going to see the earmarks while we are considering this legislation as they go through the House and the other body, the Senate. They will be conveniently put in the bill at the end of the process so that no amendment can address the issue, so that the public will have very little time to see these earmarks, so that no Member of Congress can challenge the worthiness of a pet project. When we have come to the time where Congress is putting in thousands and thousands and thousands of these earmarks, raking up to tens of millions of dollars, one of the bills we are going to consider this week has something like $20 billion slated for earmarks in just one bill.

No vote, just $20 billion, empty money to be spoken for, later inserted in the conference report by a couple of people in the majority, namely the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, the dean of my delegation. No transparency, no public accountability, no ability for the people, Representatives, to come to the floor and challenge these earmarks.

That is not earmark reform, Mr. Chairman.

We need real earmark reform. Let's not go backwards. And what is worse about all of this is, these bills are coming in far above where they ought to be from a funding level. We are going to have a veto at the end of the year and a train wreck.

Ms. Foxx: Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I want to build on the comments by my colleague from Wisconsin, but I also want to talk a little bit about this amendment and the previous amendment. I tried to talk about it, but did not get recognized by the chairman, unfortunately.

Mr. Chairman, I am very much concerned about the need for us to restore fiscal discipline to this House. I have only been here a little over one term. I am in my second term. I came here with the notion that Republicans would be people who cared about fiscal discipline. We did not care about fiscal discipline as much as I would have liked for us to, but we made a start in the right direction, and I was pleased about that.

Now what we are trying to do is bring more fiscal discipline to this House and to spending. We do have a broken process.

I find it really interesting that the gentleman on other side of the aisle, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, is talking about our trying to shut this place down. I think that he has a very funny definition of this open process and this open rule and our being able to offer amendments. That is the way I thought a democracy operated.

Saying that we are trying to "shut the place down" by doing our jobs is a little disingenuous, I think. I think that is coming because in the last 5 months you all have become so used to ramming things through with no opportunity for amendments that you find this a very unusual process. Well, we intend to use the opportunity available to us to offer amendments every chance we get.

He also made the comment that we are taking up the time of this body to do frivolous things. Well, again, this is the job that we are elected to do. We are not taking up the time of the body. We are doing what we are supposed to be doing.

You spent 3 months dealing with what we considered a frivolous exercise in talking about not funding our troops serving overseas, trying to protect us so we can do the very things that we are doing; and you didn't want to give them the money that they needed in order to be able to do that. That is where a lot of time was wasted, as far as I'm concerned.

I want to also talk about some comments that have been made by members of the other party that show that there were some people who made promises that have not been kept.

This quote is from 1-5-2007 from the gentleman from Alabama. "Today, we made a strong commitment to returning fiscal responsibility to Congress. It is vital that Congress improves its stewardship of the taxpayers' money so we do not pass along today's spending tabs to our children and grandchildren."

That is a Democratic Member from Alabama. That is what we are talking about here today. We want to make cuts in this unnecessary spending so that we're not passing along these bills to our grandchildren and children.

From the chairman of this very subcommittee, "This bill mandates that all grants and contract funds be awarded through full and open competitive processes, except when other funding distribution mechanisms are required by statute. This approach creates a level playing field and also ensures that there are no congressional or administration earmarks in the bill."

Well, that is very different from what we know is going to be happening on this bill, where these earmarks are going to be "air dropped," as we say, later on, after the bill has already been passed, and people don't get a chance to react to those earmarks.

Another Member from Arizona: "The American people deserve nothing less than a government that is fully accountable and completely transparent. They need to know that their elected Representatives are focused on the public interest, not the special interests and not the lobbyists' interests."

In the last amendment that was offered, we wanted to do more to increase what is happening in national security. No. You all prefer to spend a lot more money on bureaucracy.

I am very pleased that you are going to take this amendment offered by my colleague from Iowa. I think that is a step in the right direction. But we need to do a lot more of that. We need to cut funding here, and we need to make sure that you fulfill the promises that you made so strongly last fall and at the beginning of this session.

Let's make this earmark process transparent. Let's know what is going to be funded in these bills. Let's put it all out there. And let's have the open debate that you promised we would have.

Mr. Flake: Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

The chairman of the Appropriations Committee mentioned that this debate is really not about the bills that we are debating this week, and in a sense, he is right. Unfortunately, that is the case. Particularly later this week, we will be debating three other appropriation bills, some of which have headroom or a placeholder for tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars that we don't know what that spending is. It is put in place for earmarks to be added later.

So we really are not debating the real bills, and that is unfortunate. We should be. How can we as a legislative body decide whether this is appropriate spending or not when we don't know what is in the bill, when that will be added later?

I am well aware of the plan to have Members request and that these earmarks later on will be somehow made public. But that is the legislative equivalent of appointing an ombudsman. Why does a body like this need something like that? We are not potted plants. We should be able to see what is in the bills. These are earmarks that should be transparent.

The Appropriations Committee has before it right now some 30,000 earmark request forms that could be made public. Other Members could see them. We could see if these earmark requests are appropriate or not. But we are not allowed to see them. We won't be allowed to see them. We will only be allowed to see those few that the leadership decides that we can see, the ones that are approved later; and then once we do see them, we will have no ability whatsoever to have an up or down vote on the individual earmarks. None.

That is not a legislative body. That is saying that we can't handle it, so we are going to appoint an ombudsman, in this case maybe a couple of members of the Appropriations Committee, and hope that they will sufficiently scrub these earmarks. That is simply not acceptable.

To the other point, that we are simply defending what the President has done or what the administration has done, let me just take one program here that we are discussing today, and that is the State Homeland Security grant program.

This program is being plussed up by, I think, about $50 million, a significant plus-up. Yet the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, I think very wisely, in the committee report indicated several areas where this grant program is being misused, where there are several frivolous programs going on. Let me just name a few of them.

A $3,000 grant was given under the State Homeland Security Grant Program to the city of Converse, Texas, for a trailer used to transport lawn mowers to lawn mower drag races. For a fire department in Wisconsin, $8,000 for clown and puppet shows. That is under the Assistance to Firefighters grant program.

Under the State Homeland Security grant program, $202,000 was spent on "downtown" security cameras for a rural fishing village in Dillingham, Alaska. Now, "downtown," there is a population of 2,400. This is 300 miles from Anchorage. There are no roads linking that city to anywhere. So $202,000 for security cameras in a remote fishing village in Alaska.

Keep in mind, we are plussing up spending for State Homeland Security grants by $50 million. Why in the world are we doing that?

Just a few others. $3,500 for small crates and kennels to hold stray animals. This is in Modoc County, California.

There are some even in my own State and in my own district; I think we are spending $100,000 or so for synchronization of traffic lights in Apache Junction, Arizona, in my district. That money shouldn't come from the Federal Government. We are making local governments dependent on the Federal Government.

Why are we plussing up funding for the State Homeland Security grant program by $50 million in this bill with this kind of wasteful spending?

As I mentioned, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee wisely pointed out some of these abuses. I will offer amendments to strike some of that funding. I hope that we have the support of the majority here.

This is not frivolous time being spent here. We are spending far too much money. We can ill afford it. If we can't do it here, when will we do it?

As I pointed out, we are not discussing a lot of the funding that is in the bills. It is off limits. We don't know what it is. It will be added later. It is secret at this point, secret from us, the Members.

So I applaud my colleagues for bringing forth amendments, and I hope that we will have more time to debate it.

Mr. Campbell of California: Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I too want to comment on some of the comments made by the Appropriations Committee chairman, the gentleman from Wisconsin.

There are two things we are doing here. One was just very eloquently presented by the gentleman from Arizona. We are trying to say and trying to insist that when these projects, when these earmarks, when these sorts of things appear in these bills, that there is sunshine, that people know what they are, that they can see them and that they are subject to an up-and-down vote, rather than these big slush funds that appear in this bill and others as they are currently constructed.

The other thing we are trying to do here is very simple, and that is saving the taxpayers $21 billion. There is $21 billion more that has been proposed to spend in the Democrats' appropriations bills than what the President proposed to spend.

Now, I might add that I am one of the 160 people who voted for a budget to spend $20 billion less than the President has proposed. It is not like what the President proposed was a flat budget. It is not like the President proposed a budget that didn't increase spending; it did. But what you have done is taken the President's proposals for spending increases, accepted all that, and added to it in most cases.

I think it is very interesting that the chairman of the Appropriations Committee seems so surprised that the amendments that some of us are offering, including the one that I offered just about an hour or so ago, that these were reducing spending that was actually proposed by the administration.

It may come as a surprise to people on the other side of the aisle, but we don't really care who proposed it, whether the President proposed it, a Democrat proposed it or a Republican proposed it. If it is spending more money than we believe should be spent, if it is increasing spending that increases the deficit, if it is further putting pressure, further trying to create a reason to enact the largest tax increase in American history that you all want to do, then we are going to want to stop it. And that is what we are doing.

Now, there was a comment also made by the chairman of the Appropriations Committee that there were 120 amendments, I believe he said, on this bill. We are talking about a lot money. I would bet there are a lot more than 120 earmarks that get put in here by the time things are done. I know there is at least $21 billion of more spending in all of these appropriations bills, and specifically on this bill itself a nearly $5 billion increase in spending over last year. So, for $5 billion and countless thousands of earmarks, 120 amendments is not a problem.

It may be many more than that. It could take many more than that.

These are big issues. These are important things. This is about whether we are going to start to arrest spending where we can, or whether we are going to let it continue to grow and grow and grow. Whether we are going to allow Americans to keep at least the amount of their own money that they keep now, or whether this government is going to continue to tax them and tax them and take more of it. If it is 120 amendments or 240 amendments or 480 amendments, we will stand here and we stand ready to do that.

I would hope that the message would get across at some point to the other side of the aisle that what they are doing is not right, and that these amendments are processes by which we are getting to what is right, which is not increasing spending on everything, not increasing all of these things and trying to keep it under control and making sure that when we do spend the taxpayers' money, we are up front about what it is, about who requested it and why. And that people have an opportunity to challenge that request.

Mr. Chairman, we have begun some amendments and we have a lot more. This is not a joke. This is not silly, this is not something that we don't believe in. This is something we believe in very deeply, and it is something that is important and that's why we are engaged in this fight and will continue to be engaged in this fight.