Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, again I would make the point that the purpose of this amendment does not cut overall research; rather it allows that money to go for something that we would deem to be more productive. Again, I would come back to something I said earlier. There is no question that our Agriculture Committee on Appropriations came in under the 302(b), and I have heard that thrown up several times. But the people who are bringing that point to the floor have to say if they are going to support the 302(b) for agriculture, they have to support the 302(b) for Labor, HHS and Education. We all want to fund education at a higher level, and we are not one of us are going to tolerate a $5 billion cut in Labor, HHS. So to use the claim that we met the 302(b) when it was set at a high level, none of the amendments that have been offered thus far have directly taken money away from America's farmers. Not one. Not one amendment has been offered that takes money away from American farmers. What it does is it takes away money from people who are on the gravy train and on the line, that take money out of this budget. If we care about American farmers, as the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy) said, then we have an obligation to make sure that there is nothing in this bill that could not be spent better elsewhere. Our American farmers know how to do it. And they know if we will get the resources to them, and if we will direct it down to their level, that they will continue to lead the world in terms of research. I would also make the point that if we make the claim we are within the 302(b), then we are certainly going to support a $3.8 billion cut to housing and our veterans. There is not going to be a Member in this body that will support a $3.8 billion cut to veterans and our housing. So to claim that this process is working because this committee is under the 302(b) or is within the 302(b) is not an honest representation of where we are going with this process. And it is okay, if we all will admit that this process is going to end with us spending $40 or $50 billion of Social Security money. We all voted to say we would not do that, and yet we are on a train that is going that way. So, yes, it is a process, and it is a process that is going to end up in this body not keeping its word to the American public about their Social Security dollars. That is why I am insistent on these amendments. That is why I am insistent on us persisting and looking at every aspect of this bill that does not do what it is intended to do for our farmers.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman from North Carolina further yield?

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I want to make two points because I think a lot of people have heard the word ``302(b).'' When we pass a budget, we give an allocation of a certain amount to each of 13 spending bills, and that amount of money is what can be spent.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I just want to finish the discussion so the people who are watching this debate will understand that that number is arbitrarily assigned, and when it is assigned in such a way that means that we are going to spend Social Security dollars to run the government, when we should not, then it is an inappropriate assignment. So that is an amount of money that is given to each appropriations committee on what they can spend. The final point that I would make is that 10 hours of debate on $61 billion worth of the taxpayers' money is not too little debate. As a matter of fact, it is not enough. And I find very peculiar, to use the word of the gentleman from Michigan, that we would be worried about discussing out in front of the American public where we are spending their money. And 10 hours of debate, which is what we have had thus far on this $61 billion, I think is far too little. So I find it peculiar that we do not want the light of sunshine o come on what we are doing.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. COBURN. They are probably not going to be agreeable to the gentlewoman because we are not going to be able to take care of our veterans under 302(b) allocations.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, this amendment cuts $1 million from one specific account, but does not cut it from the total account, because we did not lower the total amount in the research. Had we done that, we would have intended to cut the total amount. So it still leaves the money there. Actually what it does is, it offsets $13 million that was taken last night by the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), out of research, which we did not get, we had a voice vote on and not a recorded vote on, and actually makes $1 million of that go back into general research. So the gentlewoman from New York misstates the true facts of the amendment.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman from Missouri for yielding to me. What the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey) does not know is my sister has breast cancer. My closest cousin just died from breast cancer. If the gentlewoman will look at this amendment, we do not cut total research. We cut a million dollars out of it, as the chairman just said, because we did not cut the total dollars. We redirected the money in there. This $1 million will say that $1 million cannot go for this, but the total number was not cut in our amendment. The chairman made that point earlier. I treat women, as the gentlewoman from New York very much knows. Breast cancer is a great concern for me. I do not believe that the gentlewoman's intention was to say that I was not concerned about breast research, because I am. If my colleagues will look at the amendment and how it is actually written, it is written to cut this spending, but does not cut the total and allows the committee to spend that money elsewhere. So the question is, we did not, in fact, attempt to cut that research. We attempted to withdraw an amendment after we had a discussion on total research. I want to take this time to answer another question that the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) brought up in trying to say that I sought funding. I very carefully worded a letter to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Istook). I want to read very carefully the wording in it, because here is what I do with the research universities that come to my office. When they ask for money, I ask them, where are they going to get the money. Then I sent a letter to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Istook), and I said, ``They wish to receive funding.'' Then I said, ``What support do you plan to give for that funding?'' The gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Istook) represents this university as well. My promise to that group of university leaders was, I said, I would ask if he would do it. I did not make a request for funding. The other thing that most of the chairmen in the Committee on Appropriations will tell my colleagues is that when I make a specific request for something that I want funded, I send with it a request for something that I want cut. If my colleagues would kindly check with the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula) on the bills, things that I have asked. So I want to make very clear that I support breast cancer research, that I support NIH research, that I support the research. But I want to make clear again, a million dollar grant on UV research at one university on ultraviolet radiation has little to do with global change, one. Number two, we are spending millions and millions and millions of dollars on this same subject in other areas. It is my feeling, as a prerogative, as a Member, to say this: I think that money can be spent better and elsewhere.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, the point of order is, the discussion is not about the amendment at hand. It is not germane to the amendment at hand.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, the amendment that we are on is an amendment on UV research for $1 million. We have not attacked breast cancer research.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I have a point of order.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for those words of support. The gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy) said that the purpose of this is to make a mockery and to ridicule and to desecrate the agriculture bill. Far from it. The purpose is to ridicule money that does not go to our farmers. We had seven votes last night on money that is spent on bureaucracy. This is not going to slow down one penny of money going to our farmers because this bill is going to pass. I said when we first started this debate that this was a good bill. I said that I supported the research. The fact is we have a rule that allows us to debate these issues, and if one did not like the rule, one had an opportunity to vote against the rule. I voted against the rule because I think we spent money in the wrong ways and I wanted to change it, and I am here exercising my right as a Member of this body to try to change it. My whole goal is to free agricultural research from the shackles of personal political favors for Members, and to make sure dollars go to the farmers, not political whims to get somebody reelected. So there is nothing wrong with asking questions about how the money goes. The question of UV light, we are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on ultraviolet radiation in other areas of this government. This is a pork project, plain and simple, and it has been funded and it continues to be funded. It is $1 million that is going to do squat. And it is $1 million that could go to farmers instead of to research for something that is already being researched at a higher level in a much more thorough way in almost every medical university in this country, and to portend that this is a significant research that we cannot do without or not use somewhere else efficiently is not an accurate statement. I am not testing and going after the integrity of anyone here. It is the process that I object to and the fact that we have a lot of dollars in this agriculture bill that do not go directly to farmers. I come from a farm State. My district is rural. I have the support of my farmers. They do not want money spent in Washington that should be going to farmers. They do not want money paid out in terms of favors to get somebody reelected so that they will not have what they need when they go to farm their land. So the question is not about whether or not we should do research. The question is about whether or not we should do research in a way that gives us a result that does not pay somebody off for a political favor. So that may not be very palatable here, but there is a lot of that going on, and what I am saying is, let us free this agriculture bill from that type of thing and let us make sure that our research is directed in such a way that we get a benefit from it in this country. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. COBURN. The objection to spending, now 10 hours of debate on a $61 billion spending bill in the Committee of the Whole, the House, the whole House; that is why we do appropriations, so we can have it in the Committee of the Whole. So my colleague's objection is that we should not spend this time, or our purpose in trying to keep us under the spending totals that we all made a commitment to? Which of those two does she object to, because I am having trouble understanding. My colleague knows what my purpose is. My purpose is to not to allow $1 of Social Security money to be spent when we have all said we would not spend it.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, what we see is 1999 and 2000 estimated numbers for Social Security surplus. Last year there were $127 billion in excess Social Security payments in over what we paid out. What did we do? We started out, we had a budget that spent $1 billion of it. This is before we had made a commitment not to do that. Then we had a $15 billion supplemental. And then at the end of the year we crashed with what was called the omnibus bill at the end of the year. So what we ended up doing was spending $29 billion of Social Security payments to run this country last year because the Congress did not have the courage to force the Federal Government to be efficient. It is not a matter of making cuts. It is a matter of demanding efficiency from the Federal Government and living within the budget. In 1997, we agreed with the President, both bodies of this Congress, that we would live within the 1997 total budget caps. At the time we did that, most of the pain we knew was going to start this year. The actual spending on discretionary programs, programs other than Medicare, Medicaid and mandated programs, has to decline by $10 billion this year if we are not going to spend Social Security money. Here is where we are going. Right now the President's numbers that say that we are going to have $138 billion in Social Security excess payments, we are on track to spend $57 billion of that money. If you look at it conservatively, the best we will do if we stay on this track is that we will spend $45 billion of that money. This House has a lot of integrity. It is time for us to stand up and meet that integrity. It is time for us to live within the budget dollars that we agreed that we would live with.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, would the ranking member please yield?

Mr. COBURN. My intention is not to make the gentlewoman a victim, I promise her, and I cannot imagine, as well as I know her, that she would ever be a victim of what we are trying to do.

Mr. COBURN. The process is the victim. And I agree with the gentlewoman, I agree that the process is the victim; and our intention is, there is nothing wrong with the budget, there is plenty wrong with the process.

Mr. COBURN. The gentlewoman must know that I profess to be an Oklahoman and a conservative before I ever profess to be a Republican, but I will say to this woman the process is, and she has already readily agreed, that there probably are not a lot of these other 302(b) allocations, the amount of money that is allocated.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. I want to reiterate what was said at the start of this debate; that this is a good bill. We are trying to make it better. That is number one. And that we believe in ag research. We are not trying to cut. Matter of fact, $13 million was cut from ag research not by me but by the gentleman from Vermont last night. So we believe in those principles. We also believe in another principle, and that is keeping our word. And keeping our word means we are not going to spend the first dollar of Social Security money anywhere else in this country except on Social Security. And so as we do that, this is a painful process, and I understand that it is not very tasteful for the Members of the Committee on Appropriations, but it is not directed towards them. There is a benefit, however. There is nothing wrong with the American people finding out what is in these bills. And to say that there is something wrong with us talking about what is in the bills, discussing how we spend their money, is a little bit arrogant for us as a body. This is the people's House. We should allow them to have all the light that they would like to have on what we do here, how we do it and where we spend our money. So I want to just say I thank the gentleman for yielding me some time. This is about process and whether or not we are going to keep our word to the American people. We are going to keep our word to the American farmer. We are going to have the bill. We just passed $12 billion in super, above-budget supplementary spending this last year for the farmers, and I voted for those. We just passed in the last month a comprehensive bill, and I agree with the gentlewoman from Ohio, we did not offset anything except in ag, and that is inappropriate. And when that bill came back to us, I voted against it because of that. So we are going to do what we need to do by our farmers, but we are also going to do what we need to do for our seniors and for our children.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?