[Page: H6739]---
Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 266 and ask for its immediate consideration.
The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:
H. Res. 266
Resolved, That upon the adoption of this resolution it shall be in order to consider in the House a concurrent resolution waiving the requirements in section 132 of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 that the Congress adjourn sine die not later than July 31, 1999. The concurrent resolution shall be considered as read for amendment and shall not be subject to debate. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the concurrent resolution to final adoption without intervening motion.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. PEASE). The gentleman from California (Mr. DREIER) is recognized for 1 hour.
Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to my very good friend, the gentleman from Dallas, TX (Mr. FROST), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.
(Mr. DREIER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks and include extraneous material.)
Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, this rule simply makes in order a concurrent resolution waiving the requirement in section 132 of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 that Congress adjourn sine die no later than July 31.
As my friend from Dallas knows, this requirement that Congress adjourn by the end of July is a relic of a bygone era, although many of us wish we actually could adjourn by July 31. The last time that the Congress did it was July 31, 1956.
In fact, a decade ago, my friend from Boston, the distinguished ranking minority member of the Committee on Rules, tried desperately to repeal section 132, going so far as to get legislation passed in the House, only to have it not considered by our friends in the other body. I hope we can actually resurrect that effort in a bipartisan way and I hope that we can move ahead with this rule in a very timely manner.
I urge its adoption.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. FROST. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California for yielding me the customary half-hour, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I support this rule and the resolution allowing the House to
[Page: H6740]
We have a lot more work to do and the American people want us to get it done.
The American people want us to pass a Patients' Bill of Rights to ensure no one is denied medical services regardless of the bottom line.
The American people want us to pass campaign finance reform to take our political system back from the powerful special interests and give it to the American citizens.
The American people want us to protect Social Security and Medicare before they collapse beginning in the year 2015.
The American people want us to finish the Juvenile Justice bill in order to get the funding in place now to protect our schools before classes start up in the fall.
Although we only have another week before Congress goes into recess, I hope my Republican colleagues will consider taking up these important issues before any others.
I urge my colleagues to support this rule.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Following last November's election, many people predicted that our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, especially here in the House, would focus their energies on partisan attacks rather than legislative accomplishments.
Rather than engage in partisan battles, we on this side have focused on a straightforward plan of what we call governing conservatism. It is designed to address the critical national issues such as saving Social Security and Medicare, restoring our national defense, improving public education for our children and providing tax relief to the hardworking Americans who have created a $3 trillion surplus.
I am very proud to report that we have in the past 6 months made real progress on each of these important fronts, often with very strong support from our friends on the other side of the aisle.
The House has passed, as we all know, Social Security lockbox to make sure that every dollar in payroll taxes is set aside to save Social Security and Medicare. The President recently came on board with his announcement of support of the concept that we have been pushing for quite a while.
We passed the National Missile Defense Act, an emergency defense spending bill and legislation to address the lax security at our Nation's nuclear labs, all three of them moving forward on national security and military readiness priority agendas. I am happy to say that the President has been largely supportive of all three of those measures.
We have passed the Education Flexibility Act to allow the States to be creative and use Federal education assistance to craft effective local solutions to education needs, and I am very happy that the President signed that into law.
Now we are moving forward to provide meaningful tax relief to American families, that question that was raised by my friend from Dallas just a few minutes ago.
Just like our Social Security lockbox, ballistic missile defense and education flexibility, we are going to continue to do our doggonedest to work with the President to make sure that we can provide legislation that proceeds with our legislative goals and at the same time gains his signature.
Mr. Speaker, while this majority prefers bipartisan accomplishments, we are equally prepared to deal with partisan attack and obstructionism if that does in fact take place.
Unfortunately, the minority leader recently made it completely clear that stopping the Congress from getting things done in order to win back the five seats that people have talked about in next year's election is the number one, top priority for our friends. The thing that is troubling is that the idea of writing off the next 15 months in the name of partisanship is both disappointing and surprising. We are going to stick with the people's business, getting things done for the country.
In just the past few weeks, we are proud of the historic bipartisan Y2K litigation reform that I and a few of my colleagues had introduced back on February 23, have been working on for over a year. We e-mailed that bill down to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and the President signed it into law.
As we all know, the House, with a very bipartisan majority, passed the Africa trade bill; and just this week, something I have spent many years working on, year after year, and I hope someday we will be able to end the annual battle on maintaining something that the President wanted and we provided even more Republicans for it this year, and, that is, maintaining normal trade relations with the People's Republic of China.
[Time: 14:30]
We are also on track to meet the pledge of the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. HASTERT), very close to it at least, by getting 12 of 13 appropriation bills done before we adjourn next Friday. Most of those appropriation bills have passed that we have gotten through so far with again strong bipartisan majorities.
So, Mr. Speaker, let me just say that this majority is moving the ball forward on key priorities of the American people. We are very proud of the things that we have been able to do by gaining bipartisan support for what have been our legislative initiatives. Again, whenever we possibly can, we are going to continue to seek support from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle. But remember, if they do, in fact, subscribe to what was outlined by the minority leader in that Washington Post article last week; and they want to obstruct our efforts here, we are willing to fight hard to make sure that we get the people's work done, and with that I will, as we continue with what I hope will only be 1 week beyond the stated goal, at least until we adjourn in August, I will urge support of this rule.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.
The previous question was ordered.
The resolution was agreed to.
A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 266, I call up the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 168) waiving the requirement of section 132 of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 that the Congress adjourn sine die not later than July 31, 1999, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.
The Clerk read the title of the concurrent resolution.
The text of House Concurrent Resolution 168 is as follows:
H. Con. Res. 168
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That, notwithstanding the provisions of section 132(a) of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 (2 U.S.C. 198(a)), the House of Representatives and the Senate shall not adjourn for a period in excess of three days, or adjourn sine die, until both Houses of Congress have adopted a concurrent resolution providing either for an adjournment (in excess of three days) to a day certain or for adjournment sine die.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 266, the concurrent resolution is considered as read, is not debatable, and the previous question is ordered to final adoption without intervening motion.
The question is on the concurrent resolution.
The concurrent resolution was agreed to.
A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
END