Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for his observation. I do not think necessarily that administrative expenses are tied directly to the level of financial support the agency gets. Some deals are a whole lot more complicated than others. The world is a lot more complicated than that.

Mr. OBEY. I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.

Mr. OBEY. As I said, Mr. Chairman, I am opposed to this amendment because I recognize the importance of the Exim in extending business abroad and enabling us to provide exports. I am going after their administrative account because I do not like an administrative decision they made with respect to bonuses. But if we are going to start going after their administrative account every time we do not like a policy decision they made, we will have 100 amendments on the administrative account. I do not think that makes much sense for either them or the Congress to be doing.

Mr. OBEY. In my view, Mr. Chairman, as far as I am concerned, the administration's position in support of MFN and in opposition to this is irrelevant. I have an obligation to exercise my own judgment. The gentleman is free to characterize the position of the administration any way he wants. On this issue, I do not care what the administration thinks. I care about what I think is right, and what I think is right is not to exempt Exim from the budgetary squeeze that is befalling virtually every other agency in this bill. I also happen to think that they were right to turn down the project that the gentleman thinks they should have approved. I am not trying to get into policy questions on Exim I am simply trying to make the simple observation we should not be expanding their administrative expenses when we are cutting everybody else's. That is what my amendment does without getting into a premature argument on this.

Mr. OBEY. I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I rise to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I did not come here to be Bill Clinton's Congressman. I did not come here to be Tommy Thompson's Congressman. I did not come here to be anybody's Congressman except the people I was elected to represent, so I do not have to come here and support every action taken by the administration. Mr. Chairman, I do not happen to favor MFN for China. I think China has not behaved in a way that entitles them to that privilege. I also happen to think that the Eximbank was right in the decision they made on this project, so I do not think the gentleman from Illinois--and he has a perfect right to take the position he does--but we do not have on this side of the aisle, or at least I do not have, a responsibility to support every decision made by the Clinton adminstration. I happen to think that the Eximbank was correct in that case, in the case that the gentleman from Illinois has a profound disagreement with. Mr. Chairman, I would simply suggest that I think my amendment is a rational effort to send a signal to Exim that they should not provide inappropriate bonuses, and that it is also rational to indicate that we ought not to be exempting any agency from the squeeze when we have a very tight fiscal situation. But if the point of the gentleman's amendment is to express the Congress' disagreement with Exim's decision on the case in question, then I would strongly urge opposition to that, because I think that would send an even more confusing signal to the Chinese Government, and I think if we are dealing with the question of what ought to happen with respect to MFN, we ought to deal with it when the time comes.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for his comments. Let me simply observe that for those who indicate that they are concerned that Exim will not be able to provide sufficient services to small business if this cut goes into effect, I would suggest that I have been involved for a long time in trying to get greater focus on small business at Exim. And perhaps, taking a note of the reduction which has occurred, they will make a greater effort to respond to the needs of small business in order to build a broader constituency. That might be a very positive result of adopting this amendment.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I stand here as a longtime supporter of the Eximbank. I remember in the early years that I served on this committee and in fact in the early years when I was chairman, my ranking Republican member was then the distinguished gentleman from New York, Mr. Kemp. At that time he and the Reagan administration favored the elimination of all support for the Eximbank. We resisted that. We stopped the elimination. I, for years, supported appropriations for that institution above the amount asked by the administration because the Eximbank, we felt, was important in the effort to expand American exports around the globe. I take a back seat to no one in my desire to do that. I think people need to understand that in this country one out of every seven jobs are related to our ability to export or to compete effectively against companies who are importing. I do think that we have an anomalous situation, and that is what this amendment attempts to address itself to. We have many, many accounts in this bill which are very deeply reduced. We have a huge cut in the IDA account. We have large reductions in development accounts. We have huge cuts for administration in AID. The 1997 bill, as reported by the committee, cuts or level funds for all administrative accounts in the bill with the exception of the Eximbank and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. I support the work of those agencies. As I said, I have tried to ensure over the years that they received generous levels of funding. But at a time when virtually every other administrative account in the bill has either been cut or straight lined, I have a great deal of difficulty justifying or advocating increases to this agency. I would also point out that the Eximbank has been cited this year as having provided an excessive number of achievement bonuses for over 200 of its employees. I frankly feel that sometimes bonuses are perfectly appropriate. But it strikes me that when we had that many in the midst of forcing reductions in many domestic agencies and at a time when we are forcing reductions in many other agencies in this bill, I just do not feel comfortable supporting that. AID has announced a reduction in force of about 10 percent of its work force. Its operating fund has been cut by $30 million by the committee. There will be attempts made on this floor today to reduce it even further. It seems to me that with those kinds of significant reductions, it is not appropriate to be providing an increase in administrative costs for Exim. Even so, my amendment does not eliminate all of the increase in administrative expenses. It simply eliminates half of the increase provided by the committee. It seems to me that, therefore, it is perfectly prudent and reasonable to suggest a $1 million reduction in this account for administrative expenses, and that is all that the amendment does.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Twenty-four. How time flies. I served with Charlie for all of the time that he has served here. I want to say as one Member to another that I will miss him greatly. He has brought wit, he has brought compassion, he has brought tough-mindedness, he has brought fair-mindedness, and he has brought a passion for excellence to this Congress which we are never in an oversupply of. I simply want to say that I think whether the issue has been the Middle East or whether the issue has been taking care of the needs of children, or meeting our complicated responsibilities on the economic front, Charlie Wilson has always had the courage to defend what he regarded as American interest. I appreciate that fact and also appreciate the way he has gone about doing his job for as long as he has been a part of this body. I also want to say very clearly that, if it had not been for Charlie Wilson, America would not have experienced a foreign policy success in Afghanistan. I cannot recall another occasion which has been so dramatic. Virtually single-mindedly, Charlie Wilson persisted and persevered and demanded after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan that we help the forces in that country who were trying to continue the resistance. I remember children who were blown apart by that war being brought to this country by Charlie. I remember seeing several of them in my office. He expended virtually every ounce of energy that it was possible for a human being to expend for a cause which he thought was just and in the end almost single-handedly helped to shape American policy on that. I just want to take my hat off to him and say that he has been, in so many ways, a strong addition to this institution and we will miss him greatly.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, let me simply observe that this bill is probably the least popular bill to emerge from the Committee on Appropriations every year, and I think it is without question the most misunderstood bill. If we take a poll of America, we will see that most Americans think that we spend about 15 to 17 percent of our budget on foreign aid. The fact is that this bill, which is the foreign aid appropriation bill before us today, spends roughly 1 percent of our budget. That is all it spends. I would like to explain why I think that is by and large justifiable. We have seen the overall spending for foreign aid go down by over 30 percent in the last decade under the subcommittee chairmanship of myself and now the gentleman from Alabama. It is going to be very difficult to point to any other part of the budget which has declined as fast. I would simply say that there is a price for participation in the world. There is a price for defending your own national interest in the world, and this bill is part of that price. There are many ways which a great nation such as the United States defends its interests around the world. We do that through our defense budget. We do it by trying to build up a set of political relationships with other societies who also populate this globe and with other economic and military powers. We do it through economic relationships and through trade relationships, and we also do it through this bill. This bill is meant to help attack some of the problems around the world, some economic, some political and some military, which, if allowed to get out of hand, could grow like cancer and create severe problems for our national interest down the line. Just a couple examples: We had a long divisive fight in this country over the military support that we were giving the Contras. The Contras were a military operation to overthrow the new Marxist government in Nicaragua a number of years ago. That whole problem came about because for years conditions slowly developed in the country of Nicaragua which led to an explosion, a revolution, and the taking of power by a group of people who certainly did not have the best interest of the United States in mind. We wound up spending a lot of resources and having a huge fight that divided this society and this Congress because the conditions that occurred in Nicaragua were not improved while we had time to do it without winding up in a military confrontation. The Soviet Union: We have spent literally trillions of dollars since the end of World War II trying to see to it that the Soviet Union changed in nature internally or at least externally did not any longer provide a threat to their neighbors or to us. Now with the Wall down, we are trying to work with that country in economic and political ways to try to eliminate the physical presence of missiles that in the past had been aimed at us, to try to build institutions in the former Soviet Union that will help democratic forces change that society against a thousand years of history that run in the other direction. I think it is worth it for us to have that kind of engagement. The Middle East: Certainly if the Middle East is not stabilized, it will eventually cause great problems for this country economically, and it could also cause great problems militarily. It already has from time to time. All we have to do is to witness what happened with the Iraqi war. The Balkans: That has been a tumultuous part of the world for decades, and it is in the United States' interest to try to see to it that the controversies in that part of the globe do not spill over in ways which damage the national interest of the United States. We are trying to deal with all of those problems within this very tiny bill. We also have moral obligations to some of the fellow creatures who populate this planet. In fact, American taxpayers can be intensely proud of the fact that their money has been used for low-cost immunization programs which have literally hugely expanded the level of immunization against devastating childhood diseases for many of the children around the world. We have literally saved millions of lives through those programs, programs such as UNICEF, and this bill also funds that. So I think, while we will have many disagreements on the floor today about the edges of this bill, this bill is essential in order to meet our responsibilities both to the world and, most of all, to our own values and to our own interest. Having said that, let me simply congratulate the subcommittee chairman for the manner in which he has conducted himself in bringing this bill to the floor. I know that from time to time it is frustrating to get caught up in arguments that he was not a part of. But as Archie the Cockroach, my favorite philosopher, said once, ``Now and then somebody is born who is so unlucky he runs into accidents that started out to happen to somebody else.'' I am sure that is the way the gentleman feels today. I would also like to say a special word, if I could get the attention of the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Wilson]. I would like to say a few words about Charlie Wilson. I have served with Charlie for more than 15 years now. How long have you been here, Charlie?

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield, I would simply like to make one additional point. The issue is not what the President knows, because the legislation that is being brought before us asks for a congressional waiver, not a Presidential waiver. So the issue is not what somebody on the other end of the avenue knows. The issue is what the gentleman knows. The issue is what the gentleman knows. The issue is what I know. The fact is right now, nobody in this room knows diddly about the details of what is being asked to be waived. The other point I would simply make is that the public has a right by law to comment. What we are asking the Congress to do is to make a summary judgment before the public has a right to comment about any of those waivers being proposed.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I am confused about that response from the majority leader, because when our staff met with the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Neumann] today, he indicated that neither he nor anyone involved in putting that bill together had read the waiver request submitted yesterday and he said he was simply operating on trust. Since my understanding is that the governor himself exercised some 70 item vetoes on the legislation that was passed by the legislature covering some 27 different subjects, whether or not the Congress is going to be allowed to at least fully understand what is in that package, and how those item vetoes have changed the package as it was originally passed by the Wisconsin legislature. Are we going to have adequate understanding of that before we asked to vote? I mean, if this is going to be debated on a day when Members are not even here, and then voted on a subsequent day, I would venture to say that there will not be three Members of the Congress who know what is in the bill which they are passing on to the Senate.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I would simply like to observe that this seems to me to be nothing but a blatantly political act. The question is not what the President has said he will or will not do. I hope he will provide ample opportunity for Wisconsin to get what it is asking for, after he has met his responsibilities and we have met ours, to understand what it is we are helping to support. But as I understand it, the legislation to be brought before the Congress has nothing to do with the President. It simply provides a congressional waiver without, at this point to my knowledge, a single Member of the House having read what it is that is supposed to be waived.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, 7 months late and two Government shutdowns later, this Congress finally got together and passed a bipartisan continuing resolution or a bipartisan series of appropriation bills just a few weeks ago. Now the Committee on Appropriations last Thursday agreed to an allocation of resources which is going to walk away from that agreement and take us right back to some of the same old arguments we had all of last year. We should not do that. This vote tonight is a test. Some of our friends on the Republican side of the aisle have made it quite clear through the last year and a half they want to eliminate the Department of Education, they want to make deep cuts in education, they want to make deep cuts in our ability to protect the environment, they want to savage job training, but then we had another set of our Republican friends who said, oh, no, we are not like that. We are moderates. We want to protect education, we want to protect job training, we want to protect health and protect our seniors. Tonight is the night they can do it, Mr. Speaker. What we are asking the Members to choose is whether or not they are going to vote for a budget put together by the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich], which will still require major departures from that bipartisan consensus we reached just a few weeks ago, or whether or not Members are going to buy a different Republican version, that one being proposed by Senator Domenici and his allies in the other body. It seems to me the choice is clear. If Members really are moderates, if they really do care about solving these problems in a bipartisan way, rather than putting us in the same old fights all over again, they will vote for this resolution tonight. This is not a radical left-wing resolution. We are asking Members to accept the judgment of their fiscal leader in the other body, from their own party. I do not think that is asking too much, if Members are really moderate and really do want to see bills signed, and do not want to see the Government shut down again.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I would simply make the point that unless we give the people that 30-day waiver, this will be a supreme act of arrogance in which only politicians are allowed to voice their opinions.

Mr. OBEY. I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, in my view, welfare reform is one of the most serious problems facing this country. I do not honestly believe that the American people will have any confidence in the ability of their Government at any level until they are convinced that we can reform welfare, get rid of the existing dead-end system and create a real opportunity to move people from welfare to work. I think for that to occur, and I have been here quite awhile and I have seen previous welfare reform attempts fail because they become politicized, I think that if you want welfare reform, to succeed you have to have serious people trying to do serious things to work out serious disagreements and come to a serious compromise on how we approach the problem. That is what we ought to be doing. Instead, in my view, by scheduled this blatantly political proposal before the Congress next Tuesday, when no one is scheduled to be here, we are simply seeing a situation in which the majority party evidently is more interested in going after the President than they are in dealing seriously with welfare reform; at least that is my view. If we were serious and if we really did want Wisconsin to receive the waivers that are being requested, then we would ask the President to, to the maximum extent possible, cooperate with Wisconsin in bringing about the acceptance of those waivers. That, in fact, is exactly what the President said when he was in Wisconsin, that he would work with Wisconsin to try to provide the waivers that were necessary. I would suggest, Mr. Speaker, that given the fact that the chief executive of the State of Wisconsin, Governor Thompson, exercised some 90, I thought it was 79, I am now told it is 90 separate item vetoes on 27 different subjects, it appears to me that the Governor used his brain and thought about some of the problems that he has thought were in the package that was passed by the legislature. It comes with considerable ill grace for anyone in this body to suggest that the President ought not be able to also use his brain and evaluate honestly whether or not this package measures up to the claims made for it by the Governor of the State of Wisconsin. If it does, the waivers should be granted. If it does not, the Federal Government ought to work with the State until those matters are worked out. That is what we would do if we were serious people.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to use the time of the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Vento]. I would like to make a few comments on what just transpired here a few minutes ago.