Providing for Consideration of H.R. 2985, Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 2006
PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 2985, LEGISLATIVE BRANCH APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2006 -- (House of Representatives - June 22, 2005)
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Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I will be voting against this rule. I will be voting against the previous question on the rule. I will be voting against the bill itself. I will wait until debate on the bill in order to explain my vote on the latter.
But let me simply say two things with respect to the rule. The leadership of this House, the Republican leadership of this House, has chosen to insist that their continuity of Congress proposal, which is a totally unrelated matter, be added to the appropriation bill to finance the operations of the Congress. Our committee gave this all of about 10 minutes of consideration. No alternatives were presented. And what that means is that the House Republican leadership is insisting that a bill which the House has already passed once be passed again, because the Senate has declined to take up the bill that the House sent over in the first place.
I think they were wise not to take that bill up. I am in a distinct minority on this proposition. But what this proposition does is to say that, within 45 days of the Speaker's determining that 100 or more vacancies exist in the House, that he will call a special election.
A couple of problems with that. Number one, that means that a national election is left to the discretion of and to the timing selected by the Speaker. I do not think that is appropriate. Secondly, it means that for that 45-day period, if there are 100 vacancies in the House because of death and destruction associated with an attack, for instance, it means that those 100 districts would be unrepresented at a time when the most crucial decisions affecting the continuation of the Republic would be made. I do not think that is a good idea either.
If we are going to be forced to vote on any of those propositions, then, even though I am a Democrat, I much prefer the alternative presented by the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher), a Republican. The alternative that he presented in the last session of Congress would have provided that each and every year when we are elected, we also have to supply a list of persons whom we feel are most qualified to take our place if something happens and we are killed by such a disastrous attack. I would submit to the Members that it is far more appropriate to have someone who is revealed ahead of time to be the person of choice in case a tragedy like that happened. I would suggest that is a far healthier situation than to have a situation in which a district was unrepresented for 45 days.
The gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier) suggested that it was important to maintain the distinction the House has that one must be elected in order to serve in this body. Well, obviously I would much prefer to have an elected person representing my district, but an appointed official is preferable to no one at all. And yet that is what we are stuck with under this misbegotten attachment that the House leadership is insisting that we add to this bill in a power play. So that is one reason I oppose this rule.
The second reason is that the Committee on Rules steadfastly refused to make in order the creation of a Truman-like committee to review waste and fraud in the war in Iraq. When Franklin Roosevelt was running this country, Harry Truman was appointed to lead a congressional review committee. Truman held 430 hearings. He issued 51 reports. A Democratic Congress investigating the activities in a Democratic administration. It was good for the Democratic Party. It was good for the Republican Party. It was good for the Republic. A lot of money was saved. A lot of chicanery was exposed and corrected.
But here we have horror story after horror story of waste, incompetence, fraud, theft in Iraq, all of the taxpayers' money. And yet what does this Congress do? Virtually zip in terms of the oversight that it is providing on these matters.
I think this Congress is derelict in its duty by not appointing such a committee. And for that reason alone, I think we ought to vote ``no'' on the previous question so we can change the rule so we can at least provide some protection for the taxpayers' money.
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