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

[Page: H4959]  GPO's PDF

   Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

   Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. SESSIONS) for yielding me the time.

   Mr. Speaker, this is an open rule and it will allow for consideration of H.R. 4690.

   As my colleague from Texas has explained, this rule will provide for general debate to be equally divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on Appropriations.

   This allows germane amendments under the 5-minute rule, which is the normal amending process in the House. All Members on both sides of the aisle will have the opportunity to offer amendments that do not violate the rules for appropriation bills.

   Mr. Speaker, we live in a time of unparalleled economic growth. Never before has any nation experienced the prosperity this country now enjoys. We can afford investing in our future.

   However, once again, we are faced with an appropriations bill which does not adequately fund critical Government programs for law enforcement, international diplomacy, civil rights, and scientific research.

   This bill cuts the President's request for international peacekeeping by $241 million. This is shortsighted because money for peacekeeping is an investment in avoiding a more tragic and expensive war.

   Provisions in the bill will prevent the United States from paying its full dues in the United Nations. This undercuts our position as a world leader.

   The bill reduces the President's request for the Federal Trade Commission by $30 million. This is at a time when the FTC is launching an investigation, and we are asking them to do this, into the high prices of gasoline in the Midwest at the request of many of us.

   The FTC is also in the middle of an investigation of the high prices of prescription drugs. Now is not the time to jeopardize these critical issues.

   The bill underfunds Community Oriented Policing Services , gun enforcement initiatives, antitrust enforcement and consumer protection, counterterrorism, antidrug campaigns, and civil rights enforcement.

   The bill underfunds Violence Against Women programs. I am especially familiar with the effects of cuts in these programs. In my district, the Artemis Center for Alternatives to Domestic Violence has successfully used these grants to assist victims and reduce domestic violence in the Dayton, Ohio, area. However, cuts in the last few years have threatened the effectiveness of this group.

   The list goes on and on.

   The Committee on Rules considered a number of Democratic amendments that would increase funding for programs covered under this bill. The Republican-controlled Committee on Rules rejected every one.

   Now is the time that we must use the national wealth to invest in the future.

   Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

   Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. STUPAK).

   Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time.

   Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition of the rule and the underlying funding of the Commerce, Justice, State appropriations bill. This bill simply does not provide enough funding for one of the most important crime prevention programs we have today, the COPS program, and it weakens several other important programs, as well.

   I remember standing here just last October to speak against last year's CJS appropriations bill because it underfunded the COPS program. It is amazing to me that we must once again have this fight about funding what is a proven, effective, and necessary program to fight crime in our communities. With pork barrel projects funded year after year, I cannot understand why we cannot agree on full funding for the COPS program.

   A number of amendments to increase funding for the COPS program will be offered today, and I hope everyone will support them. Because the main principle behind the COPS program is to put officers in this Nation's communities and on the streets, fighting crime in our cities, our suburbs, and our towns.

   Currently, over 80 percent of law enforcement agencies employ the community policing philosophy making it the predominant crime fighting strategy in America. I am sure my colleagues have all heard of the excited response from their local police departments when we tell them that they have just received one of the COPS grants.

   This program works. On May 12, 1999, the United States Department of Justice and COPS funded the 100,000th officer ahead of schedule and under budget. That is 100,000 officers working on the front lines to protect our communities and our citizens, making a visible difference, and contributing to the drop in crime that has lasted 8 consecutive years.

   I support the President's plan to continue the COPS program for an additional 5 years to add up to 50,000 more police officers on the beat.

[Time: 13:30]

   I support the COPS programs that fund additional prosecutors, cops in schools and training and technology equipment for law enforcement. I cannot support this appropriations bill because it falls far short of the President's request of $1.3 billion to fully fund the COPS program.

   I am a former police officer, a cochair of the Law Enforcement Caucus and of the Democratic Crime and Drugs Task Force. I have spent years working on law enforcement and crime-related issues, and I am here on the floor today to tell my colleagues that this bill does not do enough. It does not do enough for the COPS office; it does not do enough to fund crime prosecutions, for violence against women grants, or crime fighting technologies. It weakens the Federal Government's important role in protecting civil rights by cutting funding for the EEOC, the Legal Services Corporation , and the civil rights division. I will vote against this bill because I know we can and we should do better to ensure our communities are safer, our police departments are better equipped, and our individual rights are better protected.

   Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. JACKSON-LEE).

   (Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

   Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member very much on the Committee on Rules for yielding me this time. I know the hard work that is done by all the Members in this body. It is unfortunate that in this process there could not be more collaboration on the appropriations that could lend themselves to bipartisan support.

   This appropriations bill, Commerce, Justice, State and the Judiciary, does not do justice and it is supposed to have oversight over those agencies that are to render justice. It does not do justice. It does not recognize that we are in the most prosperous times of our life, more prosperous than we were ever in the 20th century and now at the beginning of the 21st century we have much to offer the American citizens.

   I said just a few days ago that we spend a lot of time talking about tax cuts, but we do not realize that the moneys that we appropriate are really an investment in America's future. They are an investment in America's security. Why for the life of me would we cut this particular appropriations $2.5 billion less than the President's request? Why would we take a very popular program, one that has worked, one that does not discriminate whether you are in a large inner city or whether you are in a rural hamlet or a village. The Cops On the Beat program overall has proven to be very successful. Over time in the Committee on the Judiciary we have heard testimony after testimony of officers who have come forward from different communities and said, We could not have the kind of patrol and security and outreach to the community if we did not have the Cops on the Beat program. Yet that program is underfunded almost to the extent of extinction.

   Then the bill cuts the Legal Services Corporation . Mr. Speaker, I was on the board of the Gulf Coast Legal Foundation in my own community. What those Legal Services Corporation lawyers do around the Nation is they affirm and confirm that all of us are created equal, working families who are

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   This rule, of course, is an open rule, so I guess one would say you should support it. I do not, because frankly we have a situation that promotes a bill that does not answer the concerns of the American people and point of orders against Democratic amendments have not been waived. The digital divide is not taken care of. I for one believe that this was an excellent opportunity that we could provide those resources.

   Mr. Speaker, we are going to have a long and vigorous debate on this legislation. I intend to offer amendments dealing with late amnesty. I think we need more dollars to deal with the border patrol. I do appreciate the work of the ranking member and as well the chairman. These issues that we have dealt with and have not been resolved, I hope the Republican majority will waive the points of order and deal with this important crisis that we are facing dealing with thousands of individuals who have been in this country working, but they are still considered illegal immigrants because the INS has not seen fit to remove these problems that have prevented them from applying for legal citizenship. We will have that debate, and I hope that we will have a vigorous debate. I would like my colleagues to support me in those amendments.

   Finally, let me say the great disappointment that I have additionally found with this bill along with the other issues that I have cited that although America promotes peace in this Nation and we know that there is strife on the continent of Africa. In fact, I met with the ambassador to the United States from Uganda. I was in the Security Council just a few days ago at the United Nations. Yet this body is cutting $240 million from the peacekeeping efforts in Sierra Leone. This is wrongheaded and misdirected. We are going in the wrong direction, Mr. Speaker. I hope we can correct this as we move this appropriations process forward.

   Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. OBEY), the former chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, now the ranking minority member.

   Mr. OBEY. I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time.

   Mr. Speaker, there are a number of reasons why I am going to vote against this rule and against this bill. First of all, we just voted on an amendment that was a nongermane amendment that the Committee on Rules put in order which was offered by a member of the majority side. But now on this bill every single Democratic amendment that was requested to be made in order by the Committee on Rules was denied. That is the procedural reason why I am voting against it.

   Secondly, it just boggles my mind. If you take a look at this bill, this Congress just voted to give the 400 richest families in America a $200 billion tax cut. Now it has to squeeze out all other programs in order to try to keep that commitment to the wealthiest 2 percent of people in this country.

   For instance, it says that it is going to slash the Legal Services Corporation , which is the corporation that helps poor people have legal defense when they have a lawsuit. It is insufficient in the area of civil rights. It is certainly destructive in the area of peacekeeping with its budget cuts. We have all Members of this House crying all over the floor about what is happening with gas prices. Yet this bill cuts $50 million below the request for Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission programs to pursue antitrust actions and other noncompetitive actions in the marketplace.

   I would especially like to focus for one moment on that latter issue. On the agriculture subcommittee bill when it was before the Committee on Appropriations, I offered an amendment to try to do something about the monopolistic practices that occur in the food industry, where you have just literally a handful of companies, four or five, who control the majority of processing for poultry, for beef, for pork and for other food products in this country. That works to make farmers serfs rather than farmers; and it does not do anything very helpful for consumers as well. In this bill, we see the same problem.

   The primary obligation we have in the capitalist system is to see to it that for consumers and for every business in this country, we have truly competitive marketplaces. You do not have those marketplaces if you do not have the ability of government to check out what practices are endangering those free marketplaces, whether they occur in the computer industry, in poultry processing, you name it.

   Yet this bill has whacked the Justice antitrust division; it has whacked the Federal Trade Commission and in the process has made it very difficult for those agencies to pursue their job of keeping the American marketplace a truly competitive marketplace. We have to understand that with this changing economy, we have these huge new corporate entities that are being created overnight, and not just on the Internet. You have got one company that has become so big in the last year, its increase in market capitalization, its increase, I am talking about Oracle, is larger than the combined market capitalization for Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors combined. We need to have the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission with sufficient resources to attack those problems.

   And when we see the oil industry gouging people as they are gouging them today in the Midwest on gasoline prices and we see Members of Congress stumbling over each other to get to the nearest microphone to rise in protest against that, what do we see this body doing? We see them cutting the President's request for the Federal Trade Commission, the agency charged with the responsibility to review not only those anticompetitive market practices but dozens of others by dozens of other companies in the economy.

   This bill is totally inadequate to defend the rights of consumers, it is totally inadequate to assure every corporation in America that they are competing on a level playing field, and it is antibusiness when it does that. There is nothing more pro-business than seeing to it that an American entrepreneur or an American corporation has the ability to compete in a real marketplace. This bill denies that. We ought to vote down both the rule and the bill.

   Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. SERRANO).

   Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak on the rule to correct a misconception that may be going around the House. I had requested a waiver from the Committee on Rules for an amendment to increase the Legal Services Corporation . I did that because I am troubled every year by the fact that we come to this floor with a very low amount for Legal Services , fully understanding that in the House the amount will go up and in conference the amount will even go higher. So I wanted to avoid us that pain by asking for a waiver from the Committee on Rules. That did not take place. So I will still be presenting an amendment.

   However, the amendment, and this is what I want to clarify, will be offsetted. It will have offsets and it will bring us up to $275 million. So there is a misconception going around the House that we will be presenting an amendment that Members cannot vote for in a bipartisan fashion. That is not correct. The amendment that I will be presenting will allow us to bring for the time being the Legal Services Corporation up to $275 million, and there will be offsets that I will be presenting.

   Also, Members should know that that particular amendment will be part of the early process of the discussion rather than later on.

   Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

   Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

   There are a few things that obviously I need to respond to that have been discussed here in the discussion of the rule. First of all, I do recognize that

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   But to hear my colleagues say that COPS was underfunded to the point of extinction is an exaggeration that cannot go without an explanation. In fact, the COPS, which is the Community Oriented Policing Services , is funded to the tune of $595 million. I do not consider that to the point of extinction. I consider that to the point of there was a realistic discussion that we have to live within a balance of how much money we are going to be spending.

   We had a vote earlier in the year to determine what the budget would look like. As I recall, not one member of the minority party would even offer the President's budget for consideration or vote on the floor of the House of Representatives.

[Time: 13:45]

   Yet what they want to talk about over and over is the President's budget, what the President's budget does; and yet not one Democrat would even sponsor the President's bill on this floor.

   We do have a Republican bill that passed, and that is the budget that we are working within; and proudly we are going to say that we would not spend a penny of Social Security, and we would make sure that we balance the budget.

   Secondly, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. OBEY) had an opportunity to state that the Federal Trade Commission must have sufficient resources to attack problems like the growing market capitalization of Oracle.

   Mr. Speaker, we have just been through another vigorous debate in this country about how another large company like Oracle was treated; they are Microsoft.

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