“MORE ON THE EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL” published by Congressional Record on June 12, 1997

“MORE ON THE EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL” published by Congressional Record on June 12, 1997

ORGANIZATIONS IN THIS STORY

Volume 143, No. 82 covering the 1st Session of the 105th Congress (1997 - 1998) was published by the Congressional Record.

The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.

“MORE ON THE EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Commerce was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H3793 on June 12, 1997.

The publication is reproduced in full below:

MORE ON THE EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Mississippi [Mr. Wicker] is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. WICKER. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted that we have gone ahead and passed the supplemental bill today. I supported it, and there can be no question now as to our commitment to supporting the flood victims and the other needs that were contained in the bill.

My party and my political philosophy were forced to make a tactical retreat today. We abandoned two very key portions of this supplemental bill, and I want to address those in the time that I have today, Mr. Speaker.

First of all, we were trying in this bill to fashion a way to prevent another Government shutdown. The shutdowns of late 1995 and early 1996 were regrettable. The American people told us that they did not want that again. And in the legislation that passed earlier, we had a provision saying that if Congress and the President at the end of the fiscal year are unable to come to a resolution, then automatically the appropriation bills would be funded at 100 percent of the previous year until something could be worked out on a permanent basis.

I feel that that was reasonable. I am sorry we had to abandon that because of the President's veto. But I state to my colleagues and to the American people, Mr. Speaker, that it was a worthwhile goal. It was important and it had everything to do with the bill that we were discussing this week.

The second major issue was the issue of the census. The American people might ask us, Mr. Speaker, what does the census have to do with an emergency spending bill? It has everything to do with the future of our country. It has everything to do with abiding by the Constitution.

There are people in the administration, people in the Commerce Department, in the Bureau of the Census, who want to count about 90 percent of the people in the year 2000, and then guess at the other 10 percent. We are told by congressional studies that those guesses could be off by as much as 35 percent. In other words, a group of 100 people might be counted at 65. They might be counted at 135.

The Constitution of the United States, Mr. Speaker, says that there shall be an actual enumeration, an actual enumeration. That is what the Constitution says. That is what the Founding Fathers said when they fashioned the Constitution. I do not apologize for standing up for the Constitution, for standing up for an issue which is central to the franchise of voters.

Then one more point I want to make to the response to some of the accusations that were made by my friends on the other side of the aisle.

{time} 1745

They say we do not need to put riders on appropriation bills. We do not need to appropriate money and then hold a gun to the President's head with these extraneous legislative riders.

For 40 years my friends on the Democratic side of the aisle utilized this tactic. It is a legitimate exercise of the constitutional power of the purse. It is within the prerogative of the House of Representatives to initiate spending bills and to put requirements on those spending bills to make sure the money is spent according to the will of the American people and according to the will of this House. It is part of our responsibility.

As long as that power of the purse is here in this body, whether Democrats are in the majority, as they were for 40 years, or whether Republicans are in the majority, there will continue to be legislative riders. I want to point that out. We were fighting for important things, important principles that affect the future of this country.

I will be happy to yield to my friend from Florida.

Mr. SCARBOROUGH. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Mississippi, and I thank him for all his hard work on this.

I hear what the gentleman is saying, and I know a lot of Americans hear what the gentleman is saying. It is deeply troubling to me to hear year in and year out from the other side talking in self-righteous tones that we are doing these awful things that have never been done before; talking about how we are gutting Medicare, and then a year later they vote 36 to 3 to support the same provisions that we were doing a year ago.

Now, supposedly, we are victimizing flood victims, who were fully funded through the State, anyway. And now we hear how we should have sent the President a clean CR. And I guess that is what is most troubling, when I hear the President get on the TV talking about this great need for a clean CR. What was clean about this CR?

____________________

SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 143, No. 82

ORGANIZATIONS IN THIS STORY

More News