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DEPARTMENTS OF COMMERCE, JUSTICE, AND STATE, THE JUDICIARY, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2001 -- (House of Representatives - June 22, 2000)

For the Judiciary, from the Supreme Court down to the district courts, we recommend $3.49 billion, that is an increase of $245 million above the current year. That is just to allow the courts to maintain their current operations and to provide for a limited number of programmatic increases, and to allow the new judges that are being appointed and new courthouses being opened in order to staff those offices. These increases are in line with those provided 

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to maintain our commitment to law enforcement. We cannot increase the investigators without increasing the courts to handle them and the prosecutors to prosecute them and the prisons, finally, to house those convicted.

   For the State Department and the Broadcasting Board of Governors, we recommend $6.4 billion. That is an increase of $253 million over current levels, but $405 million below what was requested of us. The recommendation includes $3.1 billion for the domestic and overseas operations of State, and that is an amount sufficient only to maintain the current levels of staffing and our overseas presence.

   The recommendation provides just over $1 billion, $1.06 billion, the full request, to address critical embassy security requirements and to continue designing and constructing secure replacement facilities for the most vulnerable of our overseas posts where our personnel are most at risk. This is a priority of this subcommittee, and I am delighted that we were able to meet the requests for spending in total.

   We recommend $438 million for all U.S. government-sponsored international broadcasting, now functioning as an independent agency under the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

   Related Agencies. Last but not least, we include $1.9 billion, $507 million below the request, and $128 million below current levels, but this level preserves current agencies and functions, and we reduce or eliminate lower priority programs. We include $856 million for the Small Business Administration, including $276 million for the disaster loans program and $264 million for business loan programs.

   We have tried, Mr. Chairman, to bring to the committee a clean bill. It is free of the major policy controversies that have bogged us down in the past, and it meets the highest priority needs within the allocation we were given. We give no ground in the war against crime and drugs, we maintain our commitment to core programs at Commerce, including the National Weather Service and high priority items within NOAA; we maintain our commitment to providing secure facilities for our overseas personnel, and by hitting the subcommittee allocation we were given, we maintain the principle of fiscal restraint. It represents our best take on matching needs with resources, and I hope the House will stand behind it.

   I want to thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. SERRANO), the ranking member, who has been a very effective and valued partner of mine and colleague as we drafted and worked on this bill. I deeply appreciate his thoughtfulness and his tireless participation throughout the process and his frank discussions with me about our work.

   I would be remiss if I failed to thank all of the members of the subcommittee: The gentleman from Arizona (Mr. KOLBE); the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. TAYLOR); the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. REGULA); the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. LATHAM); the gentleman from Florida (Mr. MILLER); the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. WAMP); the gentleman from California (Mr. DIXON); the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. MOLLOHAN); and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. ROYBAL-ALLARD), for all of their work and assistance, and to express our thanks for all the long hard hours of our staff; it takes dedication and stamina, and they have been there. We want to thank our full committee chairman, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. YOUNG) and the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. OBEY), the full committee ranking member, for their help.

   Mr. Chairman, I urge all Members to support this bill.

   One final consideration on this bill, one note of privilege here, and that is that my staff is maintaining a list of amendments, those that are filed and those only in the drafting stages, and I would appreciate the Members letting us add their name to the list if they think they might have an amendment. Simply knowing of that will help us manage the bill and perhaps speed its consideration.

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

   Mr. ROGERS. I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

   Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I would just like to emphasize what the Chairman has just said with respect to that one point. If we are to be able to try to work on some kind of unanimous consent agreement at some point, we need to know the full universe of amendments, and what Members' full intentions are. Otherwise, it is difficult to protect those Members, and the sooner we know that, the sooner we can try to meet the demands of the House.

   Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

   Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

   Mr. Chairman, I rise to discuss H.R. 4690, the bill making appropriations for the Departments of Commerce, Justice and State, the Judiciary, and several related agencies for fiscal year 2001. I would be remiss if I did not first express my appreciation for the excellent relationship the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. ROGERS), the chairman of our subcommittee, and I have enjoyed since I came on board as ranking Democrat, nearly a year and a half ago. He has been a good and fair leader and that made my tenure on the subcommittee both pleasant and productive, as well as educational. I must point out that this is his last year as chairman under the term limits imposed by his conference. His knowledge and experience of this bill can hardly be matched in the House, and I believe this will be a tremendous loss to us.

   I also want to thank the full committee chairman, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. YOUNG) and my ranking member, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. OBEY) for their support and understanding during these very difficult times.

   It has also been a pleasure to work with the other subcommittee members. Those on our side have worked particularly well together, and I must especially thank the gentleman from California (Mr. DIXON) and the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. MOLLOHAN), both of whom have served on the subcommittee for many more years than I have who have quietly guided and graciously supported the newer members, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. ROYBAL-ALLARD) and myself.

   I want to take this opportunity to also thank both the subcommittee staff and my personal staff and our committee staffs. They are all here with us right now. They are Gail and Jennifer, Mike, Christine, John, Greg, Kevin, and, of course, our subcommittee staff, Sally, Pat, and my own staff, Lucy, Nadine, and Cecelia. I am sure I left somebody out, and I am in trouble for that.

   As I have said often enough each year, within ever-tighter budget allocations, it grows tougher to produce a defensible bill. But my chairman has done a decent job with the resources allocated to him. The biggest flaws in this bill flow from the artificially low allocation and the choices it has forced on the subcommittee.

   Despite a very sound economy and healthy, on-budget surpluses which CBO, in its mid-session review, is soon expected to increase, the Committee on Appropriations remains bound by artificially low allocations which prevent us even from keeping all of our agencies at their current services level and making funding important new initiatives virtually impossible. This is a time when we should take advantage of the economy and the surpluses to invest directly in our people and in our Nation through programs to narrow the growing income and opportunity gaps and strengthen the economy, not just hope investment will trickle down from tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, which is I think a foolish way to look.

   The chairman of our subcommittee has provided some increases for high priority law enforcement functions, but overall, the bill is not balanced. There are serious shortfalls in areas that are important to Members on both sides of the aisle. Even within the Justice Department, the emphasis is on prisons and detention, not the programs that protect Americans' civil rights or address crime or crime prevention at the local level. The same is true for the related agencies that protect civil and employment rights. The Commerce Department is virtually frozen without even the inflationary increases needed to maintain current services for its vital activities.

   Mr. Chairman, let me mention only three problems with Commerce and related programs. Trade monitoring and enforcement will need more resources, not less, to assure compliance with the 

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newly enacted Africa trade law and with China PNTR , even though supporters of both pledge muscular enforcement. The statistical activities that produce the data that underlie our economic decision-making have been declining under hard freezes for years, despite enormous changes in our economy, and we are approaching the point when basic data sets may become unreliable.

   NOAA, with its critical work on weather, the health of our air and water, coasts and oceans and so much more, is cut $113 million below fiscal year 2000 and more than half a billion dollars below the 2001 request. This certainly leaves no money for Commerce's proposed initiatives, including two of particular importance to me: creating a pool of minority candidates for scientific and technical jobs at NOAA and NIST through minority-serving institutions, and bridging the widening digital divide between the haves and have-nots of the information age.

   In the State Department, the funding for embassy security is certainly welcome and necessary. However, provisions fencing part of our U.N. dues pending a certification that cannot be made until well into the fiscal year, and holding our contributions to international peacekeeping at the current year's level will reduce our leverage for continuing reform at the U.N. and put us back in arrears to the U.N.

   The funding shortfall for the Small Business Administration will affect our small businesses and, thus, our economy. The SBA's core programs are vital to small businesses, but providing $201 million below the request means an inadequate base for them to build upon. I am particularly concerned about the severe cuts in the request for microloan technical assistance and to the women's programs, as well as the lack of any funding for the new PRIME Technical Assistance Program.

   The Legal Services Corporation, which won a final fiscal year appropriation of $305 million, has once again emerged from full committee with an appropriation of $141 million. For the last 5 years, floor amendments have increased LSC's appropriations to around $250 million. This year, I am offering an amendment to increase the Legal Services Corporation to $275 million.

    

[Time: 14:30]

   I will explain the offsets for this increase when I bring up my amendment.

   I will also be offering an amendment with the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. CONYERS) to increase funding for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. I believe that in such a good economy, it is outrageous not to address the discrimination that keeps some Americans from full participation in our society.

   Mr. Chairman, like last year, I am hopeful that by the end of the process, we will have a bill we can all support. Although I have serious problems with H.R. 4690 in its present form, and as long as nothing happens on this floor to make it worse, I will not try to derail it, but will continue to work with the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. ROGERS) for a better final product.

   I hope that this is also the concern on the other side, because at this point this bill would be unacceptable to most Members of this caucus.

   Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

   Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. YOUNG), the very distinguished and very effective chairman of the full committee.

   Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. I rise in part to compliment him and congratulate him for having brought what is a fairly difficult bill to the floor in what I think will be a fairly bipartisan approach.

   I also thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. SERRANO), the ranking minority member, who has been just a tremendous partner in this whole effort.

   I would like to say that this is Thursday, and hopefully the agreement that the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. OBEY) and I are working on, along with the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. ROGERS) and the gentleman from New York (Mr. SERRANO), will allow us to complete consideration of this bill early enough tomorrow that Members can make their weekend plans.

   I also want to compliment the Committee on Appropriations, the staff, and the Members of this House. This is the eighth appropriations bill that the House will have sent down to the Senate for this fiscal year. That is in addition to the supplemental that we did earlier.

   Eleven of our subcommittees have marked up their bills. The full committee has marked up 10 bills and has sent them to the House. The 11th bill will be marked up on Tuesday morning. That is the foreign operations bill. Next week we expect to have on the floor the agriculture bill, which is basically ready for floor consideration, and the energy and water bill, which we intend to have on the floor before next weekend.

   Also, we fully anticipate having the conference report on the military construction bill ready for House consideration next week. So all in all, by the end of June, most of these appropriations bills will be through the House and down in the other body.

   One bill, the District of Columbia, will not be, and basically that is because the District of Columbia has a different fiscal year than the Federal government. We have not yet received the budget request from the District of Columbia, so we are not able to have that bill ready by the end of next week.

   The appropriations committee has done a good job moving the bills. The House has done a very good job moving the bills. I want to compliment all of the Members of the Committee on Appropriations for their excellent work.

   Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. OBEY).

   Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me.

   Mr. Chairman, let me just simply say, in response to the remarks of my good friend, the gentleman from Florida, I certainly expect that by the end of June the House will have all or almost all of the appropriations bills through the House, but frankly, I think that means almost nothing. I do not know of a baseball game in which we score a run by having 12 or 13 men standing on first base.

   The way it works in government is passage of the House gets us to first base, passage of the Senate gets us to second base, passage of the conference report after we iron out agreements between the Senate and the House gets us to third base, and signature by the President gets us home.

   Six of these bills that we have ground through day after day and night after night are stuck on first base. A few of them may get to second base. All six of those are not going to get home. They are not going to get a presidential signature until they begin to reflect reality.

   The problem is, we have gone through a huge debate taking many, many hours, on bills that we all know are not real. We all know that, in the end, the majority party is not going to be able to provide $90 billion in tax cuts for those who make over $300,000 a year, they are not going to be able to provide $200 billion in inheritance tax cuts for the richest 400 families in this country because the President is not going to sign those bills.

   When Members finally recognize that, then there will be enough room in these bills to deal with the education needs of the country, to deal with the health care needs of the country, to deal with the foreign policy needs of the country, to deal with the criminal justice needs of the country, to deal with the law enforcement problems of the country, and to eliminate some of the ludicrous shortages that we have here today in the antitrust budget, in the trade enforcement budget, and the like.

   Mr. Chairman, I would simply say that, in a sense, I feel strange even taking the House's time, because these bills are going to be adjusted. Every time a bill comes to the floor we are told by the majority party, ``Do not worry, this is only the second step in the process. Somewhere along the line it is going to get fixed.''

   What that means is somewhere along the line, somebody else is going to exercise their responsibilities. That is not much of a way to do business, in my view. But I guess since the bills are here we have no choice but to lay down clear markers about what we consider to be the shortcomings of those bills, as long as we are forced to go through this charade.

   Eventually I would urge the gentleman to recognize, and I think the 

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gentleman from Florida knows it, I would urge the House leadership to recognize that they can pass these bills in one of two ways. We can either pass these bills, as we just passed the previous appropriation bill, with a broad bipartisan coalition and pass these bills with a margin of three to four to one with a strong bipartisan chorus of support, or we can try to pass them on their side of the aisle with a few token votes on this side.

   The majority has chosen to do the latter. That gets them to first base, it gets the bills out of the House, but it does not get them any further around the base paths. And until the leadership allows us to legislate rather than produce these ``let's pretend'' bills, we will continue to hear ``Well, we know these bills are inadequate, but we will do better in September.''

   It would be much better if we did better now!

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

   Mr. OBEY. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

   Mr. YOUNG of Florida. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

   I would just make this one point, that I think all of us who pay any attention to baseball understand that we cannot go from home plate to home plate. We have to go to first base first, and then we go to second, and then we go to third, and then we go home. We just cannot get there without passing first base. 

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