Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I want to correct one misunderstanding on the endangered species proposal. All this language does is to give the Secretary, the new Secretary, 60 days to re-examine the rule that was a midnight change in the rule.

Mr. OBEY. I'd like to finish my statement on this first, if I could. All this does is give the Secretary 60 days to reconsider the rule and decide whether to go forward or not. This was a rule that was promulgated by the administration as they were going out the door after the election. And I have no idea what I think is the right public policy. I do not have any objection, however, to the new Secretary taking a look at it before he commits the country to a change in direction. Now I'd be happy to yield.

Mr. OBEY. I understand. I only have 1 minute.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, let me simply point out that our friends in the right-to-life community have made their concerns clear. They have asked this committee to retain virtually all of the limitations on abortions that have been in previous appropriations. The committee has done so in 19 of 20 items. That's a pretty good batting average I would suggest. The only change that has been made with respect to abortion is the change with respect to the United Nations Population Fund. And here we retained all current law restrictions on family planning funds in China, which means UNFPA programs in China will not be funded. The bill does make some adjustments that allow certain expenditures for maternal health programs, including ensuring safe childbirth and emergency obstetrics care. The new provision does not in any way change current law restrictions on funding of UNFPA contra programs in China. I personally detest the Chinese programs and I agree with the gentleman's observations about the Chinese programs, but the adjustments simply allow this agency to proceed in 100 other countries.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I think we've already debated this issue extensively. This bill is needed to fill in the gaps left in the existing budget for this year. It is the last of yesterday's business so that we can move ahead to deal with the President's expected new budget. I would urge support for the package. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and to insert tabular and extraneous material on H.R. 1105.

Mr. OBEY. I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Speaker, for the last year and a half, this committee has been taking every reasonable action to ensure transparency in the earmarking process. As an article in today's Roll Call says, ``The disclosure system implemented in the 110th Congress now allows for all of these Members' earmarks to be located with a simple search of the online version of the bill, allowing for more transparency than ever.'' One aspect of the transparency process is to list the names of every Member requesting an earmark. It has come to our attention that a small number of earmarks with multiple sponsors inadvertently omitted some Members' names--a simple staff error. To ensure full and complete transparency, I am entering into the Record the additional names that should be attached to those requests. These are not new projects. We are simply adding additional Members' names who should be listed as sponsors or as cosponsors. [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH25FE09.001 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH25FE09.002

Mr. OBEY. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. Serrano).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I reserve my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Visclosky).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Olver).

Mr. OBEY. I yield an additional minute.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from Connecticut.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from Florida.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Indiana.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from West Virginia.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, I really hate to take the time, but I do think in light of all that's been said that one last time I need to put in context what it is we're doing with this bill. As I indicated earlier, last year we finished our international bills, but we reached an impasse with then President Bush because the President insisted that he would only sign appropriation bills that fit within his budget recommendations. Those budget recommendations were some $20 billion short of what the Congress determined when it passed the budget resolution that we needed to provide for those programs. If we had simply acquiesced in President Bush's programs, we would have cut the Job Corps, we would have eliminated Employment Service grants, we would have cut senior jobs by $172 million, we would have eliminated vocational education programs, we would have eliminated three student aid programs including the Perkins loan program, we would have funded the highway infrastructure at $800 million below the level guaranteed in the authorization, we would have cut airport modernization grants by 22 percent, we would have eliminated Community Service Block Grants, and we would have cut Low Income Home Energy Assistance by $570 million, and we would have cut health care access programs by $1 billion. As I said many times on this floor, I have never had anybody come up to me at home and say, ``Obey, why don't you guys in Congress get your act together and cut cancer research?'' And yet that's what the previous President and the previous Republican-controlled Congress did over a 2-year period. They cut over 900 medical research grants out of the National Institutes for Health. We objected to that and said, no, we didn't think that ought to happen. So we then offered the President a compromise. I called the White House budget office, and I said, look, why don't we at least just split the difference between these bills so we can get something done on the domestic side of the ledger? They said no. At that point we had a choice. We could acquiesce in these reductions or we could say, no, we're going to bet on the outcome of the election. We did. Mr. Obama won. We now have a White House which is firm in its beliefs but also one that recognizes that people have to compromise to get things done. This is now a compromise package brought to the House. This has been worked out at the staff level between Republicans and Democrats alike in both the Senate and the House. And the Senate minority leader, Senator McConnell, while I suspect he will vote against this package, urged us to take it up 3 weeks ago because he indicated it had been fully vetted by both sides, by both parties, and he said in his estimate he thought it would pass with an overwhelming vote. We shall see. But I want to explain two other things about this bill, what this bill really does. And it's been suggested that this bill is not at all coordinated with the stimulus package we passed last week. Absolutely false. This omnibus bill does two things: It provides base funding for the programs funded in the Recovery Act without which those additional recovery funds would not be useful. Example: the Social Security Administration. While the Recovery Act provides $1 billion to the Social Security Administration to replace its computer center and to process increased disability retirement requests, this bill provides $10.5 billion for Social Security operating budgets. It doesn't do any good to have a computer center if you don't have an operating budget. This bill provides the other half of the funding that's needed to make our promises on Pell grants to students around the country a reality. The recovery bill in the area of highways provided $27.5 billion for additional highway construction. This bill provides $40.7 billion to improve and repair our Nation's aging highway infrastructure. The recovery bill was built with this package in mind. The second thing this bill does is to provide basic funding for all kinds of programs that were not increased by the recovery package. Three-quarters of the accounts in the Federal Government did not receive an additional dime in that recovery package. This bill takes care of the base funding for those programs. Now, we hear some concerns expressed from the other side of the aisle about the number of earmarks in the bill. Give me a break. The last time that our party controlled the House of Representatives, we had, for instance, in the Labor-Health-Education appropriation bill, depending upon how you define them, either zero earmarks or nine. When the Republicans lost control of the Congress, they were providing over three thousand earmarks in that subcommittee bill. That's the story, I mean as a practical matter. The other side didn't just let the cat out of the bag when it came to earmarks; they let out the whole blessed zoo. So now we have tried to reform that process, at the same time being respectful for Congress's right to determine how funding is directed in the budget. So we have a good many earmarks in this bill. Those earmarks represent congressional decisions about where dollars ought to be spent. I would point out virtually every agency Secretary has far more in discretionary funds than the Congress has to distribute in earmarks. In fact, virtually every dollar in Secretary discretionary funds is nothing but funds that are reserved for administration earmarks or the functional equivalent thereof.

Mr. OBEY. I would be happy to yield to the gentleman.

Mr. OBEY. I thank the gentleman. Mr. Speaker, I want to make one other point. We have heard a lot of concern expressed today on the other side of the aisle about the deficits that are being mounted by this bill in conjunction with the stimulus bill. Let me point out I have heard seven different times Members on that side of the aisle refer to the fact that this is a $400 billion bill. It is not. It is a $410 billion bill. But $390 billion of that represents requests on the part of the Bush administration. So let's keep that in perspective. Secondly, I really don't want to have to take lectures from those who supported the idea that we should borrow $1.2 trillion in order to provide tax cuts over the past years, the lion's share of tax cuts going to the very wealthiest people in this society. I don't want to hear lectures from people who essentially provided what will eventually be $2 trillion in costs for the Iraqi war. A number of us tried to assure that at least half of the money that we provided to Iraq in economic aid would be in the form of loans, because Iraq has a lot of oil and sooner or later is going to be a rich country and we wanted to see the American taxpayers reimbursed for some of the costs of building schools, building roads and all the rest in Iraq. No, we couldn't get the votes to do that. But now we face a serious problem in our own country, not in Iraq, but in our own country. And so, yes, in combination of this bill with the stimulus package, or the recovery package, as it's known, there is an awful lot of money being spent. I make no apology for that, because we are trying to fill what is going to be a $3 trillion hole in the economy because of the rising unemployment numbers. I want to use this chart for what I hope will be the last time. This chart demonstrates what is likely to happen in the economy if we do nothing. The red bars indicate what estimates are in the economic community, what estimates are of what will happen to unemployment rates if we do nothing. These red bars indicate that by the end of next year, the economics profession largely expects us to have unemployment around 11 percent, perhaps even higher. The blue bars represent what we hope will happen if the government passes a $750 billion economic recovery package. As you can see, unemployment, even under that scenario, is expected to rise through the remainder of this year before it begins to turn down next year. What we have tried to do is simply shave off the worst, most extreme effects of this recession. That's what we have tried to do with the stimulus package. So what we have really had here today is a regurgitation of the debate that occurred 2 weeks ago on that stimulus package. But the fact is that if you take that stimulus package and add it to this package today, you are still only talking about a package of $1.2 trillion to counter what is supposed to be a $3 trillion hole. I would submit that it is very easy to imagine that we will, in fact, be back here asking for even more by way of countercyclical funding to counter the deep slide that we see in our recession. Poll after poll demonstrates that you have close to 70 percent of the American people who agree with what President Obama is trying to do in passing the package to produce this moderating effect on what will otherwise be the most serious recession since the thirties. So I make no apology for the fact that instead of providing billions of dollars for economic recovery in Iraq, we are not trying to provide a good amount of money to provide economic recovery here at home. I thought that's what our job was, to primarily concentrate on the needs on the home front. I would point out one other thing in closing. For all of us who have talked and told our constituents that at a time of extreme economic distress at home, Members of Congress should not be getting a pay raise next year, if you want to assure that that, in fact, happens and that we deny that pay raise for the coming year, then you must vote ``yes'' on this bill, because without this bill you do not have the limiting language that was inserted in this bill by the rule that was passed earlier today. With that, I would urge an ``aye'' vote.

Mr. OBEY. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. If the gentleman is asking, would the gentleman yield for a response?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the remainder of the time. Mr. Speaker, this country faces the greatest crisis that we've seen in terms of our economy since the 1930s. Unemployment is expected by many people to hit 12 percent. We're told if we do nothing, we're likely to see unemployment at least around 12 percent; and we hope that with the passage of this proposal, we can mitigate that disaster to a significant degree. Why are we in this trouble? Because we have had a virtual collapse and a freeze-up of the financial system and the credit markets; we've had a collapse of the housing sector of the economy and the auto sector of the economy. In normal circumstances in a normal recession, we are usually led out of that recession by housing and by automobiles. This time, those two sectors are in shambles. They're not going to lead us out of anything for the moment. The other tool normally available to us is monetary policy in the form of low interest rates through action of the Federal Reserve. We've already fired that bullet. The only bullet left is fiscal policy. And so what we are trying to do with this bill is to save and create several million jobs, we're trying to help the victims of the recession who are losing their jobs, losing their health, losing their pensions, losing their ability to send their kids to college; and at the same time, we're trying to invest in new portions of the economy through science, technology, new energy initiatives to try to modernize the economy and make it stronger as we come out of this recession, as we most certainly eventually will. And we are also, despite the objections of some on the minority, trying to put a quite significant amount of money into the health care system. What on earth is wrong with trying to save money in the health care system and at the same time making it more efficient by transferring our medical records to computerized records to reduce errors, and to save money at the same time? Guess what? This bill isn't perfect. Guess what? I've never seen a perfect bill produced by this or any other legislative body. You know, the worst thing that people can do in this town is to believe their own baloney. And I think what the likelihood is on this bill, frankly, is that supporters of the bill are inclined to overstate its possibilities and opponents, as we've seen here today, are certainly inclined to trash it. I was criticized in the Rules Committee last night and again on the floor today because I frankly said, ``I do not know how many jobs this bill is likely to produce.'' What I do know is that the consensus of reputable economists around the country is that this bill will save or create several million jobs. Exactly how many will be determined by history. Now, the critics say a number of things. They say the bill is too big, and then they announce they're going to produce a recommit motion which adds $9 billion to the cost. That's what I call falling off both sides of the same horse at the same time. I would suggest that this bill is big, all right, but I'll make you a deal: You show me a smaller problem that we have to confront, and I will be happy to produce a smaller bill. The fact is, we face, over the next 2\1/2\ years, a hole in the economy of approaching $2.5 to $3 trillion. This is an $800 billion package over 2\1/2\ years. That means the annual fiscal thrust without the economic multipliers is about $300 billion. I personally think that it is smaller than it needs to be, but it has been downsized since it left the House to some degree in order to try to pick up Republican support in the Senate, and I understand that. The critics have another technique: They trash by trivializing. They follow the guidelines laid out by one of the Members of their leadership a few months ago when he said in The Post that the way they ought to deal with the Democratic majority is to behave like a thousand mosquitos inflicting mosquito bites and tormenting the majority. And so what do they say? They tell us, for instance, that there's an earmark in here for rail under ``high-speed rail.'' The fact is, there is not. All of the funding in that account is discretionary. It will be awarded competitively, and the decisions will be made entirely by the Department of Transportation. And the last time I looked, the new Cabinet Secretary was a Republican. Secondly, they tell us that we're spending more money on the arts than we are on small business. We're putting $750 million in this bill for small business. There's $50 million in here for the arts. And you know what, there are 5 million people who work in the arts industry, and right now, they've got 12\1/2\ percent unemployment. Or are you suggesting that somehow if you work in that field, it isn't real when you lose your job, it isn't real when you lose your mortgage, it isn't real when you lose your health insurance? We're trying to treat people who work in the arts the same way as anybody else. And then they tell us there are mice, except when they say they're rats. Well, I would simply urge you to read The Mercury News because The Mercury News points out that that is a fallacious attack. They say that we're spending $30 million on mice. Where did the $30 million figure come from? According to The Mercury News, and I will read this, ``It turns out that $30 million is the total amount that the California Coastal Conservancy, a State agency, recommended more than a month ago to numerous Federal agencies looking for lists of `shovel ready' projects as part of the stimulus bill planning.'' And the staff director for the minority leader himself told the press yesterday that he had to admit there was no specific reference to any mice or rats in this bill. There is one place in this budget, however, where you do have mice. It's at NIH. One of the Members of this House told me today, ``I'd be happy to talk about mice because research projects at NIH saved my life''. Cancer research, the research is done on mice. Would you rather have the experimentation done on human beings? I don't think so. If you look at what this bill does, it provides an $800 tax break for middle American couples. It provides $120 billion in infrastructure to create hundreds of thousands of jobs. It shows some mercy to people who are unemployed by extending and expanding unemployment benefits. It tries to modernize the economy to create new jobs through science and technology. It provides $170 billion to help States avoid catastrophic tax increases that would be counterproductive during this kind of a recession. And it also helps them to avoid drastic cutbacks in education, in law enforcement, so that they don't have to fire cops, they don't have to fire teachers, they don't have to fire prison guards and all of the other people who are paid for out of State budgets. Those are some of the ``terrible'' things the bill does. Now, this bill does have one problem. It is estimated that it creates about 1 million fewer jobs than it did when it left the House earlier. It does that in an effort to be bipartisan because the President reached out to try to get Republican support in the Senate, and he makes no apology for that and neither do I. But the fact remains, we still have 86 percent of the House bill that we had when the bill left the House. That is a pretty doggone good ratio. I think we need to appreciate that this bill is the largest change in domestic policy since the 1930s. Think of what has happened. One month ago, we had a President who insisted on holding up the entire domestic appropriation part of the budget because he wanted to impose $30 billion in cuts in education, in health care, science and the rest. In contrast today, we have a President who is willing to invest $800 billion to attack this recession and to turn this economy into a stronger and better economy for every American, not just the top 10 percent who have benefited by Republican policies. One month ago, we had a President who resisted raising the minimum wage and resisted providing expanded unemployment insurance. Today, we've got a President who's reversing that policy and says ``Go to it, help those people, they need it.'' And we've also got a President who is willing to put $90 billion into States to preserve our society's ability to see to it that poor families and kids don't get knocked off the Medicaid rolls. One month ago, we had a President who asked us to pass No Child Left Behind and then for the next 8 years reneged on the promise to provide additional funding to pay for the cost of those mandates. We had a vote today on the issue of mandates. The mother of all mandates has been No Child Left Behind, which I voted for, but I expected the President not to welch on the deal, and financially, he did. This changes that. This reverses that policy. I would ask Members to vote for this bill. It will change this country for the better.