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The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx) is recognized for 5 minutes.

   Ms. FOXX. Madam Speaker, I am here tonight to talk about what has not been accomplished in this Congress, and what it looks like we may be facing in an omnibus bill.

   Last week we were told that we would be here on Friday of this coming week, after we had been told about a month ago that we would be able to be in our districts on Friday. I know that I made many plans to be in the district, speak to school groups that had been asking me to speak, meet with chamber of commerce people to talk about concerns that they had, and to do lots of things in the district.

   We have been denied many opportunities this year to be in our district to hear from the folks in the district the things that are on their minds and what's really important in the country, because the majority has insisted that we stay in session 5 days a week. But if you look at the bills that have been passed in those days that we've been here, you'd see that they were not things that primarily the Congress needs to be concerning itself with.

   We do need to be concerning ourselves with the appropriations bills, funding the war on terror, taking care of tax relief for middle-income Americans, many, many things that we should be doing. But, instead, we are literally wasting our time on insignificant issues and not dealing with those things we should be dealing with.

   It was announced last week that we would be dealing with an omnibus appropriations bill. Why an omnibus appropriations bill? Because the majority has been unable to pass 10 of the vital appropriations bills that our government relies for its funding on.

   We have passed the Defense bill and the President has signed it. We've passed the Labor-HHS bill. The President vetoed it and the veto was upheld. So we are coming to the end of a continuing resolution that was passed that expires on Friday, and we're facing the prospect of lumping 11 appropriations bills together and passing them in one fell swoop. Well, we know that is just a recipe for disaster.

   Last week we were given the Energy bill, 15 hours before we voted on it, a 1,000-plus page bill, and it had all kinds of problems with it. Buying Lexus hybrids for the Beverly Hills police, many, many things in there that the American people would not approve of. And I fear that in the omnibus bill we're going to see a lot of those kinds of things.

   Now, we don't know yet what's going to be in the omnibus bill, but in addition to a tremendous number of earmarks, we are probably going to see sanctions against Cuba weakened.  We are probably going to see the Mexico City policy overturned. The House and Senate versions of the State Department appropriations bill permits grants and subsidies for organizations that perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning, overturning the Bush administration's Mexico City policy. We don't need to be doing that. The American people do not want us to take their hard-earned money to fund abortions.

   It is probably going to provide federally funded benefits for domestic partners.  Before being stripped from the House-passed Financial Services general government appropriations bill, a provision would have allowed unmarried cohabiting couples in the District of Columbia to qualify for Federal benefits on the same basis as legally married couples. That provision could be brought back to life in the majority's omnibus legislation.

   Ending an IRS private debt collection program, the majority spending bill could limit funding to implement the Internal Revenue Service's use of private collection firms to collect unpaid taxes. The private debt collection initiative is expected to collect $1.3 billion in taxes owed to the government that would otherwise go uncollected.

   Undermining regulatory reform, a provision in the House-passed Financial Services general government appropriations bill, again, H.R. 2829, would kill efforts to increase the quality, accountability, and transparency of the Federal Government's regulatory review process. It would result in a fox guarding the hen house approach to approving Federal rules and regulations.

   We don't need an omnibus bill. We need to vote on these bills one at a time, Madam Speaker.