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Mr. Speaker, I want to say to the gentleman from California (Mr. GEORGE MILLER), who just left the well, that we are doing 1-day CRs because

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   We understand the power of the Presidency, and so we are prepared to accommodate that.

   Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. CUNNINGHAM), a member of the Committee on Appropriations.

   Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, I do not think our side was even going to talk on this. The partisan bickering, the rancoring that goes on here, I think that the American public can see what we are facing from our colleagues on the other side. They want to stay, all right. They want to stay not over policy, but for politics.

   Do you know what I am most resentful about? That the other side and the last few speakers that talked about said that Democrats are the only ones that really care about education. The Democrats say they are the only ones that really care about school construction or Medicare or Medicaid or prescription drugs.

   I worked most of my life here on this House floor. I fight, every ounce of my survival, to make sure that those issues are taken care of, not only for our children, but for our seniors as well.

   The gentleman from Illinois (Mr. HASTERT), the Speaker of the House, is a teacher and a coach. In his heart and in his mind and in his soul, he cares deeply about education.

   I was a teacher and a coach both in high school and in college. It is one of the main focuses that I have. And for the other side to say that, we are so mean and rotten because of our policies. Well, let me tell you what the politics of this are. We will stay and fight for education. We will stay and fight for prescription drugs and for our seniors and health care.

   I will not allow the other side to mislead, for example, on school construction. We could have school construction today. Our schools are crumbling. For 30 years, they had control of the education process. What is the outcome? We have some very good teachers and very good schools, which I am very fortunate in my district to have, in North San Diego County.

   I have been to teacher awards, but across this Nation, we are last in math and science. That is a crime.

   Mr. Speaker, we have to hire outside people with Ph.D.s to come in to our country to take over high-level and high-tech jobs because we do not have enough Ph.D.s; that is a crime.

   But my colleagues on the other side would rather cater to the unions than to come out with education dollars.

   Let me give you an idea. Why do you think they want school construction out of Federal dollars? Their campaigns are loaded with union boss money. I was in 18 districts over the last 3 months, the minimum amount that the unions had put against any one of those candidates was a million dollars. They do not want to give up that lifeblood.

   School construction out of Federal dollars falls under Davis-Bacon, the union or the prevailing wage , that costs about between 15 percent to 35 percent more for those States that have it. Let us waive Davis-Bacon just for school construction. Let us let the schools keep that money and build more schools or teacher training or teacher pay or class-size reduction.

   But do you think my colleagues would do that? Absolutely not. We had it on the D.C. bill. Do you care about children? Do you care about schools, or do you care about your union bosses?

   Well, I think it is very evident, because they will not. They know that many Republicans have union districts. When we bring it to a vote, we lose it because of the unions.

   ``The power,'' they talk about campaign finance reform; what a joke. What a joke.

   I ran out of time the other day on education. But just like Goals 2000, they wanted the power for education to reside here in Washington, D.C. Goals 2000 is a good example.

   There are 14 wills in the previous bill. A will for a lawyer means you will do this. One of those wills, you have to establish boards to see if you fall in the guidelines of Goals 2000. They say it is only voluntary, but only if you want the money.

   Well, you establish a board to see if you are within the guidelines, then they send it to the regular Board of Education. The board sends it to the principal. The principal sends it to the superintendent. Then you have to send all of that paperwork, hours of labor, to Sacramento, CA.

   Now, think about all the schools in California. Sending all of that paperwork to Sacramento. Think of the bureaucracy you have to have in Sacramento just to go through the paperwork. Then where do they send it? They send it back here to the Department of Education.

   Now, think about all the schools in the United States sending all of that paperwork back here to the Department of Education. Think of the bureaucracy that they have to have back here. Then there is paperwork flow back and forth.

   And so what happens? We get less money for education because of the bureaucrats in Washington, DC, because of the rules and the regulations. Federal education only covers about 7 percent of the funding, but it controls much of the funding from the State and local districts, and that is what my colleagues want.

   They want government control of education, government control of private property. You want government control of health care. You want government to control everything. Not mean-spirited, that is what you believe. We believe in people, and we are willing to stay here and fight for people of this country and have the rights of choice decisions for theirselves.

   Yes, we will stay back and fight, Mr. Speaker. We will fight for the people, not the union bosses.

   ANNOUNCEMENT BY THE SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE

   The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. PEASE). Members are reminded that remarks in debate should be addressed to the Chair and not to others in the second person or by name.

   Members are further reminded that they are to refrain from the use of profanity in debate.

   Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 1/4 minutes.

   Mr. Speaker, there is nothing partisan about citing the record. The public needs to know if there are any real differences between us, and I think I cited those differences without rancor and with accuracy and without questioning motives.

   Mr. Speaker, let me simply say that I do find three things strange.

   Our friends on the majority side brag about the fact that they raised education 50 percent during the time they have controlled the Congress, that is only because we defeated them in their efforts to cut education by huge amounts. We eventually forced them to add $15 billion back to education spending.

   On prescription drugs, they say they are for prescription drugs. But the record demonstrates they have been trying for a year to block a comprehensive benefit under Medicare and would target their package only to those at the near poverty level.

   As far as the patients' bill of rights is concerned, their Presidential candidate claimed that he had been in support of the patients' bill of rights when, in fact, as Governor of Texas, he vetoed it, and then the second time around, when his tail feathers were being singed by public opinion, he let it become law without his signature.

   Mr. Speaker, I think the record is clear on the divisions that are keeping us here.

   Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. GEPHARDT), the distinguished Minority Leader.

   (Mr. GEPHARDT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

[Time: 09:45]

   Mr. GEPHARDT. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this continuing resolution, our seventh in 5 weeks. But I deeply regret that we have reached this point. We should never have found ourselves in the mess that we are in, and we must stay here and work each day until we complete the business required by the law and for the American people.

   Let us do the rare thing and come together in a bipartisan fashion to accomplish some meaningful things for the American people. Let us stop closed-door partisan meetings. No more sending up bills at 7 a.m. with only a few hours for review.

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   No more tax breaks for special interests and lopsided bills that we know the President will not sign.

   There is a list of missed opportunities in this Congress. Republicans killed the bipartisan hate crimes law supported by large majorities of both houses. They support the pharmaceutical companies by refusing to let us even vote on a bill that puts prescription drug benefits in the reliable world of Medicare. Partisan tax packages are put together without consultation or negotiation with the President or Democrats in Congress.

   Just yesterday, Republicans brought up a tax package that gave a lot to the HMOs and not enough to patients, people, hospitals, nursing homes, and home health care agencies.

   Minimum wage increases are put in bills that give maximum benefit to special interest. And this week, Republicans tried to give more tax help to wealthy bondholders through school construction bonds that do not give public schools the incentives or the help they need to modernize their schools.

   So we have amassed a record of partisanship with virtually no accomplishments. We still have time in the few remaining days of this session to work until the last hour of the last day. We can pass the Latino and Immigrant Fairness Act. We can pass the bipartisan hate crimes bill. We can pass a school construction credit that will really help local districts relieve the burden on local property taxpayers who may be willing to vote for bonds under those circumstances so that we can get smaller classroom sizes.

   We can pass an enforceable, effective Patients' Bill of Rights. We can pass a prescription medicine program under Medicare that will allow everyone in a voluntary and universal way to be able to access that very important benefit.

   We could pass campaign reform that gets rid of the flood of soft, non-Federal money in the campaigns. We could get meaningful gun safety legislation that would take the danger out of our classrooms and our other public institutions.

   We still have an opportunity in these last days to get all of those things done, or at least some of them done. And so I plead with my friends on the other side of the aisle, and my side of the aisle, let us work together in the remaining hours of this session. Let us produce legislation that will be signed by the President and that will help all the people of this country.

   Time is not yet up. We can do this. But to do it, it takes a spirit of bipartisanship and communication and working together to get these things done.

   Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

   Mr. Speaker, I want to compliment the minority leader again today, as I did the last time that he made this same speech calling for bipartisanship and all working together. I am all for that. I think we ought to do that. But it is interesting. Almost immediately after he made the speech last week, all we heard from his side of the aisle was more partisan attacks, not even related to the issues that we were dealing with.

   Of all of the things that we have heard talked about today, I do not think more than one or two of them had to do with appropriations. We are here today to deal with an appropriations matter, not all of these other issues, these authorizing issues, these legislating issues. I find it difficult to keep track of what bill is before the House when we hear all of the rhetoric that in my opinion is purely campaign rhetoric.

   I think that those campaign speeches that we just heard this morning, I think that is about the 69th time that I have heard those same speeches in the last 60 days, and I think we should give them all a number. We could save the time of the House so that we could get about our business if we just took each one of their arguments and gave it a number. When they stand up, say ``Argument Number 2, Argument Number 10,'' we could save a lot of time, because we have memorized their speeches. Those speeches that should have been reserved for the campaign trail, because that is where they belong, not in this House where the people's business has to come first.

   We are also criticized for working at night. We work a lot of nights. We work all day long. And we work at night too. And not only the Republican side; the Democrats do too. Despite some of the accusations about secret meetings, in all of the negotiations the Republican Majority and the Democratic minority have been involved together and most of them have included representatives of the President from the White House.

   We have tried to be as totally fair as we possibly could be. We did not learn that was the right thing to do from the time that we were the minority, because we were never given those kind of opportunities. We were never allowed to participate in the decision-making, and so we vowed that the minority party would have the opportunity that we did not have as a minority when we gained the majority. And I think we have been pretty true to that. I do not think that there is any room for any criticism that we have excluded the minority from any of these conversations.

   Now, it is suggested that we ought to do everything that the President wants. Well, we are trying to accommodate the President, because he is the President and he has as much power at this stage of the appropriations process as two-thirds of this House and two-thirds of the Senate. Because if he decides to veto a bill, it takes two-thirds of the House and two-thirds of the Senate to override that veto. So he becomes very powerful in this process and that is why we have worked very diligently with the President's representatives to try to accommodate him to the best of our ability.

   Mr. Speaker, I will give an example on education. We have proposed in our legislation to provide considerably over a billion dollars more money for education than the President requested in his budget. The big holdup has been, we believe, that the local school officials, the elected school boards, in our counties and our districts should have the opportunity to decide if they need new school buildings? Do they need more teachers? Do they need more special education? Do they need books? Do they need supplies? They should make those decisions, not somebody sitting here in Washington.

   The minority side would like people to believe that Republicans really do not support education. That is just as phony as it can be. We are strong supporters of education. Let me give an example. Most of my colleagues in the House are very much aware that for all of the years that I have been here, I have spent most of my time dealing with national defense issues, national security and intelligence. And that is a fact. I have spent a lot of time on that because that is important to our Nation. If we do not have a secure Nation, we do not have much else.

   But after making all the speeches about national defense, let me suggest this. If we are going to sustain our position in the world due to high technology and state-of-the-art weapons and systems, and if we are going to sustain the ability of our young men and women to function with these systems and to operate them, we have got to have the best educational system possible. And I know that our strong national defense, our strong intelligence capabilities, our strong state-of-the-art technology, and the creation of new technology, do not happen if we do not have a strong and effective educational system.

   Republicans believe that. That is why we are so committed to having a very strong educational system.

   One of the issues that the minority leader mentioned just a few minutes ago was about the tax bill. That is not what is before us this morning. But he mentioned some of the groups that might have been affected by that tax bill. But one of our colleagues on our side, the gentleman from California (Mr. THOMAS) just the other day read off a list of the people and the groups who supported the tax bill, and the groups that he mentioned were all supporters of the tax bill. They did not oppose it. They supported it.

   It is interesting when the government has a huge surplus of money, there are those who believe that surplus belongs to the government. Wrong. Wrong. That surplus belongs to the taxpayers of this great Nation. And just because it is there does not mean that the government should spend it. So the tax bill I think is supported dramatically by the American people.

   Now, if we have a large surplus, how did it come about? We came into this

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   We turned the tables on those who were downsizing our national defense, and we began to rebuild. We began to replace spare parts that were needed. We began to create a much better quality of life for people in our military. We gave them the largest pay raise last year, another pay raise this year that the Congress initiated, but the administration is taking credit for it. We balanced the budget. We have a surplus.

   Mr. Speaker, since I became chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, we have not spent one dime out of the Social Security Trust Fund, and yet there are those candidates running around the country today saying, ``Oh, be careful of those Republicans. They are going to destroy your Social Security.'' Not true, Mr. Speaker. That is a phony argument and a phony accusation. We are the ones who stopped the raid on the Social Security fund.

   We have a record to be proud of in our appropriations bills. We are proud of that record too because this House of Representatives under our leadership passed all of our appropriations bills a long time ago. The holdup and the delay has not come from the House. The additional spending, the additional projects have not come from the House.

   But, Mr. Speaker, one of the biggest problems is all of the extraneous material, the 69 campaign speeches we have heard in the last 2 months. Those campaign speeches have talked about policy issues that some people would like to decide on in an appropriation bill. Well, there is a regular order in this House of Representatives on how we deal with those issues. We have numerous authorizing committees that have the jurisdiction and the responsibility to deal with those big issues. It has long been a practice that appropriation bills are appropriation bills and we do not legislate on appropriation bills, unless there is an exceptionally valid reason to do so.

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