Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Rodriguez).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, I would like to read the following words from a very distinguished American statesman written 5 years ago: ``Trying to eliminate Saddam would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. There was no viable exit strategy we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we had hoped to achieve. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.'' The man who said that was George Herbert Walker Bush 5 years ago. Now, his advice was not taken, and we now are facing the question of what to do next. Frankly, how we voted on going to war in the first place is, in my view, in considering this legislation, irrelevant. The question, to me, is not whether we are going to vote for or against this package tonight. I think in many ways how we cast our individual votes on this package is secondary. The issue is whether the policy which is now being followed in the war's aftermath is the right policy, whether it is wired together well enough in the details in order to achieve the success that every single Member of this body wants to see the President achieve. After all, he is our President, regardless of party. And after all, these are our sons and daughters and brothers and sisters and cousins and uncles and aunts wearing our uniform and representing our country in that very difficult circumstance tonight. But the policy is the issue. If the policy is the right policy, then it probably will not matter whether we appropriate $20 billion more or less than we are appropriating tonight. We will have a good chance of succeeding. And if the policy is not wired together right, then all the money that we can provide will not produce a happy ending. I want to explain why under these circumstances I will be voting ``no'' tonight. As the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi) said earlier, we have previously appropriated well over $60 billion, and we provided maximum flexibility to the Defense Department in spending that money. Yet with that flexibility we saw the shortages of inserts in the Kevlar vests, we saw the shortage of jammers, we saw the shortage of adequate protection for the unarmored Humvees, all of which have put our troops at risk. We have seen inadequate supplies of drinking water for our troops. And the very general in charge of the operation has told us in our hearings that he still does not know how it happened. And now we are being asked to provide $87 billion more. The question is not whether the administration will get this money. They will get this money, and they will get a whole lot more because this is just the downpayment. The question is whether or not in the providing of this money we will use our leverage and use our power of the purse to force the agencies and the administration to think through more clearly how it is that they are going to accomplish the goals which they have stated. That, to me, is the detailed question. Now, we do not have any idea, and the administration has given us no idea, of what their range of expectation is in terms of cost over the next 5 years. We should have some idea so that we can prepare our own constituents to support this over the long haul. We do not have that information. But we do know, at least I am convinced of the unpleasant truth, and I very much agree with Senator McCain on this, I am convinced that if we are to accomplish this job, we do not have enough troops on the ground in Iraq right now. We either need more troops from our allies, or we need more help from the Iraqi remnants that can be reasonably relied upon; or we are going to need more U.S. troops, or our troops will unnecessarily suffer higher casualties than they would otherwise suffer. Now, it is not pleasant to tell the American people that we may need more troops rather than less before this is over; but talking to the experts whom I trust, that is what I believe. We also do know that the agencies involved in running this policy so far have managed to find the single most expensive way to deliver this aid, because they are following a high- tech strategy that involves deep involvement by these huge multinational corporations, like Bechtel and Halliburton and a dozen others, instead of relying on a more indigenous low-tech approach that can put more Iraqis to work so they have something more productive to do than shoot Americans. I also think that we do know that at this point the administration has given us not a clue about how or how soon they expect to repair the Army. We have equipment from over five divisions that at this point needs reconstitution; it needs refurbishing. We have been told by the Army that that alone is going to cost above $17 billion, and the administration has asked for less than $2 billion. The American public needs to know the facts, and they need to know the costs; and they do not need to have it revealed to them on the installment plan. It should be provided up front so that we can take the case to our public. We also have the other problem, that this package does not pay for itself. We borrow it all. And so that means that just the interest payments alone will amount to about $4 billion more than we would be paying if we paid for this cash on the barrel head. And that is $4 billion on interest payments that will shove out money that would otherwise be available for education, for health care, and for other needed domestic efforts, including infrastructure. I will be offering a motion to recommit. It will not allow us, because of the restraint of the rules, to get at the basic problems in the policy; but it will allow us to at least try to improve it around the edges. First, we will try to restore the funding for veterans health care that was taken out of the bill. Because while we have been told that that will be taken care of in the VA HUD bill, we have been given no idea of how. So that has yet to become a reality. Second, the recommittal motion would ask that we accept the Senate provision which would convert $10 billion of this reconstruction program to loans, with the proviso that if our allies in fact forgive prior loans to Iraq, then we will forgive this loan as well. Now, there are those who say Iraq cannot afford that. Let me point out Iraq is a country of 23 million people. They are getting $20 billion in reconstruction. That is $872 per capita, 10 times as much as the annual per capita aid under the Marshall Plan to all of Europe. Mr. Speaker, let me simply ask for an ``aye'' vote on the recommittal motion.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman needs it, I will be happy to yield him 1\1/2\ minutes. Mr. YOUNG OF Florida. That would be very appreciated. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lofgren).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to recommit.

Mr. OBEY. Yes, I am, in its present form.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, 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. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the distinguished minority leader.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 8 minutes. Mr. Speaker, the previous speaker, my friend, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula), has talked about all of the vaunted increases in the Labor, HHS appropriation bill. But the fact is that if we take into account inflation, and if we take into account increases in student population, what we are talking about for most programs in real terms is a freeze, and in per capita student terms what we are talking about in many of these programs is, in fact, a per-child cut. And that comes at the same time that States are experiencing excruciating budget problems, which ought to require the Federal Government to provide more help, not less, and yet that is not what we are getting. Now, the gentleman can talk all he wants about the increases we have had over the past few years in education funding. The fact is that over the last 9 years, $20 billion in additional funding was put into education above and beyond the amount that would have been provided by Republican bills in this House because of the negotiating insistence of Members on this side of the aisle, and in some of those years the Clinton administration. Now we have a different picture. This fall, some 22,000 students in 44 States and the District of Columbia have been notified that they failed to meet their academic targets set by States under the No Child Left Behind Act, that is, they have failed to make adequate yearly progress under the terms of that act. That is nearly one in four public schools across the country that will need additional teachers, tutors, books and curricula, and up-to-date technology to improve their academic performance and to meet the No Child Left Behind mandates. They include 576 schools in Illinois, 1,000 in Texas, 1,033 in Missouri, 2,770 schools in Florida, and 829 schools in Ohio, according to their State education departments. And some of these States are in the midst of a huge financial crisis. This motion to instruct is, at best, a modest effort to prevent some of these 22,000 schools from being left behind. It is a modest instruction because the procedural constraints facing us limit us in what we can ask. We instruct the House conferees to go to the highest possible funding levels for No Child Left Behind programs that would roughly double the modest increase in the House bill if each program were funded at the higher of the House or Senate level. We should be doing much more. Mr. Speaker, when the President came to office, he said that education would be a top priority, but that there would be no new money until we reformed the programs. So we took a flyer. We took the President at his word. We gave him the benefit of the doubt, and a lot of us voted for No Child Left Behind. That act imposed all kinds of accountability measures and mandates. Now, 2 years after the enactment of that legislation, we have the smallest new Federal investment in education in almost a decade under both the House and the Senate bills. The Labor, HHS bill adopted by the majority barely provides an inflation increase for No Child Left Behind, a freeze in real terms. It falls a whopping $8 billion short of the funding schedule that was promised in No Child Left Behind. Because the majority has chosen to put so much of its money in super- sized tax cuts, there is very little money left to fulfill the majority's own promises made in their own budget resolution. Let us inventory those promises: It was the Republican budget resolution that promised to provide $3 billion more for education compared to last year; yet the Republican Labor, HHS bill falls $700 million short of their own promise. It was the Republican budget resolution that promised to provide a $1 billion increase for title I grants to low-income schools; yet the Republican bill falls $334 million short of their own promises. And it is the majority Labor, HHS bill that falls short in other areas as well. The No Child Left Behind Act mandates that every school in America have a highly qualified teacher in the subjects of english, reading, math, science, foreign language, civics, government, economics, art, history, and geography. Yet the Republican Labor, HHS freezes funding for teacher training at $2.9 billion, $244 million short of the $3.2 billion promised 2 years ago. There is no more money for teacher quality at a time when the Department of Education says that 46 percent of the Nation's secondary schoolteachers do not meet the No Child Left Behind highly qualified criteria. More than one million disadvantaged children could be helped if the after-school program was fully funded at the No Child Left Behind level of $1.75 billion; yet the Republican Labor, HHS bill freezes funding for after-school centers when communities across the country are struggling to provide safe places where kids can learn and play between the hours of 3 and 6 p.m. One million at-risk children will be left behind. Recently, I received a letter from a dedicated school principal at the Colwyn Elementary School in Pennsylvania who wrote this: ``I am left wondering how is it that schools can be labeled as failures when so many of our children enter schools already left behind. And if schools are to fix all the societal ills that haunt our students, why is the funding not there for our schools, especially the urban schools, where our most needy students are?'' Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, we are at a place where we will not be able to answer that dedicated school principal's call for more funding because of the policies of the majority party. These policies say that we can afford super-sized tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, but cannot afford $3 billion more to educate America's children. Faced with the choice between tax breaks for millionaires and making sure that all children have an opportunity for a quality education, the majority has made it clear where it stands. As a result, millions of children will be left behind. Now, I know the gentleman from Ohio does not like the fact that we do not buy into his bill. We have never criticized the gentleman or the committee for the priority choices they have made. What we have said is that the limitations imposed on the gentleman are unacceptable to us, and we have a right, and indeed an obligation, to follow our consciences to try to get more money in this bill, just as we did every year for the last 9 years. If we had rolled over the last 9 years to the argument that, oh, this is all the budget allocation will allow us, we would not have that $19 billion that the gentleman so anxiously voted for after we leveraged it into the bills over the objection of the gentleman's own party leadership in this House. So I think the gentleman needs to recognize that, and the House needs not only to pass this motion, which does not begin to cover the need; the House needs to provide substantially more resources for this bill if we are to meet the needs and to meet the promise that so many of us signed on to when we voted for No Child Left Behind just a few months ago. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews). (Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to instruct.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey), a member of the Committee on Appropriations.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Kennedy), a member of the subcommittee.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), ranking member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. (Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, I will include at the end of my remarks two chronologies. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Ohio has just said that we did the best job that we could in funding these education programs within the context of the budget resolution. I do not deny that. The important part of that sentence, however, is ``within the confines of the budget resolution.'' Our target has never been this bill; our target has been the constraints on our committee imposed by the budget that mean that we will be providing an ever-smaller increase in funding for education at a time when we need to be providing more. I must say, I am a little bit confused by some of the rhetoric I have heard today. We heard three Republican speakers in a row try to suggest that it was the Republican Party that in fact had done a better job than Democrats in terms of funding education. Then we heard the gentlewoman from Kentucky get up and take the opposite end of the same argument and bemoan and decry the fact that we had the temerity on one occasion to ask for a $10 billion increase in investments in our children. That is absolutely right. We did, and I make no apology for it. I think we should have done more. The gentlewoman from Kentucky mentioned people's concern about red tape. The mother-of-all-red-tape programs in the education area is No Child Left Behind. We gave the President the benefit of the doubt, because he said he wanted the programs reformed before we put more money in. They have been reformed. Now the question is, where is the money? The fact is that what is happening is that, whether it is denied or not, this Congress, under the policies dictated by the Republican budget resolution, this Congress is walking away from the policies of No Child Left Behind. For 1 year after that program passed, this Congress had a bipartisan position in support of meeting the goals of that act. But now we see that it was evidently a 1-year promise. We are $8 billion short of where we promised the country we would be if we passed those reforms. In education, we are $3 billion short of where the budget resolution, the Republican budget resolution, promised we would be. We are, for title I, $131 million short of where the Republican budget resolution promised we would be. We are $1.2 billion short of where the Republican budget resolution promised us we would be for special education. Those numbers are undeniable. I would like to close by reading a greater portion of the letter that I received from a Michelle Cinciripino, a principal in Philadelphia. In part, here is what her letter reads: ``On September 2 we opened a new school year in a brand-new school building and we were off and running, despite the lack of books and other needed supplies. And then Friday came. A second grader ran screaming from her classroom and had to be restrained until she finally broke down in tears and told us she was worried about her mom, a known drug dealer in trouble again with the law. I assured her we loved her and that she was safe at school, and off she went for the weekend. Monday came and this time she came screaming from the building. Several hours and a sound breakfast later, we finally got her back to class. Tuesday and Wednesday followed the same pattern, until Thursday when she came in having been beaten with a belt. I spent Thursday with the police and Child Protective Services. She is now safe with her dad. But I am left wondering, how is it that schools can be labeled as failures when so many of our children enter school already left behind? And if schools are to fix all of the societal ills that haunt our students, why is the funding not there for our schools, especially our urban schools where our most needy students are?'' Then she goes on to say, ``The second grader I mentioned is but one of many hurting, angry children who enter my school on a daily basis. They lack what we take for granted: a safe, loving, nurturing home where their basic needs are met. For these students, my staff and I provide the only consistent safe place these kids know. We want desperately to teach them; but before we can do that, we must feed them and love them. We must gain their trust and we must teach them the social skills that no one has ever shared with them or modeled for them. I hope you will share my story with your colleagues who say that educators `just don't want to be accountable.' I would be happy to share my story with them in person and can be reached at the above address and phone number.'' I think we ought to take the concerns of that principal to heart. This motion in and of itself is not the issue. The amount of money that we can provide through this motion in added funding for education is small indeed. The real issue is whether or not the House, having had an opportunity to once again hear concerns expressed about the problem, whether the House, in fact, will find a way to do more for education than we have done in this bill. One of the previous speakers said that he resented it because we said that Republicans do not love education. I do not believe that. I think Republicans like education. I just do not think, based on their records, that they happen to like it as much as they like preserving $88,000 tax cuts for millionaires. That is our only objection. And when we have a change in those priorities, we will, once again, have a bill we can both agree on.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, pursuant to clause 7(c) of House rule XXII, I hereby notify the House of my intention tomorrow to offer the following motion to instruct House conferees on the bill (H.R. 2660) making appropriations for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2004, and for other purposes. The form of the motion is as follows: I move that the managers on the part of the House at the conference on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses on the bill H.R. 2660 be instructed to insist on the highest funding levels possible for programs authorized by the No Child Left Behind Act.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, once again we are being asked to pass a resolution that keeps the government open because Congress has not finished its work on appropriation bills. That is not unprecedented. Many times in the past we have faced this situation. But I do think that it is harder to understand when we have one party in control of all of the tools of government. When one party is in control of the Presidency and both the House and the Senate, it ought to be somewhat easier to get the work done on time. Over the past 34 years, one party has been in control of all three of those power centers, the Presidency, the Senate and the House, 6 years. The average number of appropriation bills that had been passed by the time the fiscal year ended in those 6 years was twice as high as it is today. Today we have only three appropriation bills passed. That, in my view, is no reflection whatsoever on the majority leadership of the Appropriations Committee. I think if things were left to the committee, we would be much further along the road. The reason that we have not completed our work is largely because the majority party leadership in this House has determined that they only want to pass appropriation bills on the majority party's side of the aisle. The majority party has a right to define itself and lay out what its first preferences are. The minority party has a similar right and obligation. But then both parties, in the end, are supposed to seek a way to resolve those differences. I recognize, being a member of the minority, that the majority party is likely to, and under our system is entitled to, win most of those fights. That is the way the system works. But for the good of the system and for the good of both parties, there are some occasions where the issues are so tight that you can use a little help across the aisle. And it is the obligation of the minority party to try to do that if and when some legitimate compromises are made, not so that the minority party wins the argument on those bills but so that the minority party can at least feel that some of its concerns have been modestly attended to. That has not been the case in this Congress on appropriation bills and outside of the appropriation realm. I, for the life of me, do not understand why we do not have bills on energy and water before us, why we do not have the military construction bill before us. On bills like that, those are relatively simple bills. They are normally fairly noncontroversial, and on bills like that what we have today is the majority in a fight with itself, and so far it has not been able to triumph. So we are stuck with those bills in limbo. On the labor, health, education bill, which I had hoped would be passed on a bipartisan basis eventually, we are stuck because the majority party is insisting on a fairly extreme approach to that bill. The administration asked the Congress to vote for No Child Left Behind. We did. But now the funding for No Child Left Behind is being left behind. The bill that we have on labor-H is some $7 billion short of where it ought to be in order to meet those promises. And then we have similar problems with respect to the Commerce- Justice-State bill where efforts are being made to pretend that more money is being provided to local law enforcement than in fact is being provided because to understand what is being provided, we have to compare both homeland security and regular crime funding. So, Mr. Speaker, I would simply say that we could be a lot further along if there was any indication whatsoever that there would be a conciliatory approach coming on any of these bills from the majority side of the aisle. Even outside of the appropriations process, we see efforts made to really radically change Medicare in the prescription drug bill, whereas if people were to back off of that, we could easily pass a decent prescription drug bill. So I would say, I used to think we had a good shot at getting out of here by November 1. It is obvious we are going to be very lucky, Mr. Speaker, to get out of here by Thanksgiving. I regret that because I think the longer the Congress is in session, the more damage is being done to the Republic. But because of these disagreements we will be here next week with another continuing resolution. The Members can bet on it. I just hope that sooner or later the majority party recognizes that in the minority they have a willing partner in passing some of these if they are willing to compromise in the slightest on some of these issues before us.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Speaker, I think Members need to understand where this CR fits in the scheme of things. As the chairman of the committee, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), has indicated, this continuing resolution when it moves to the Senate will become the vehicle by which the committee deals with the omnibus appropriations bills or the bills that will be included in the omnibus bill. That will mean that the real CR will have to be brought up next week. And at that time we will see a continuing resolution that keeps the government open to a date somewhere between November 15 and Thanksgiving, I presume. I sincerely hope that by Thanksgiving there will be no need for additional CRs, but I am very skeptical that that will be the case. I am afraid that it is beginning to look a lot like Christmas. I hope that that is not true, but I suspect it may be. So having already said everything that needs to be said on the CR, I am prepared to yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Speaker, I simply want to observe, as I think the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) indicated this morning, that last year when we had so many appropriation bills not passed until the next session of Congress, the cry we frequently heard on the majority side of the aisle was that ``The Senate made me do it.'' And they were all too eager to blame the Senate for the fact that most appropriation bills had gone nowhere. As the saying goes, this year they do not have Senator Daschle to kick around anymore with the Democrats being in the minority. And so I think it will be interesting to see whether or not the majority sooner or later can either end its debate with itself or else on several of these bills reach across the aisle and try to work out a more bipartisan solution. I know the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) has certainly tried, and I believe I have tried; but sometimes things are settled at a level above our pay grade. That is the way life is, and that is the way this institution is.

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to instruct conferees.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 9\1/2\ minutes. Mr. Speaker, we are about to go to conference on a bill which spends $87 billion. It is the second installment of what will be many installment payments to deal with the consequences of the war in Iraq. This motion to instruct attempts to put the House on record in favor of three provisions which the Senate passed earlier last week. First, with respect to the issue of loans versus grants, this motion would provide that after $5.1 billion is set aside for military and security operations, and after $5.1 billion is set aside for Ambassador Bremer to deal with other costs associated with the effort in Iraq, that the remaining $10 billion of the reconstruction portion of the package be provided in the form of a loan, unless the President certifies that 90 percent of the bilateral debt owed by Iraq to other countries is forgiven. The purpose of this first provision is to recognize that, over the next 5 years, the per capita foreign debt of the United States will be larger than is the per capita debt of Iraq, and since foreign debts can only be paid off by a country running trade surpluses, that means that, in effect, over the next 5 years Iraq will be in a better position to repay their foreign debts than we will be. Secondly, we ask the House to go on record in support of two provisions that relate to quality-of-life measures for our troops. The first is to provide medical screening and dental screening for Guard and Reserve personnel prior to their being mobilized; and, second, to extend the transitional health care coverage to servicemembers who have been on active duty in Iraq and are now returning home, to extend that transitional health care coverage from the existing 60 days to 180 days. Certainly, that is the least we can do for these returning servicemen and women. Thirdly, we ask the House to go on record in support of $1.3 billion in additional funds for veterans health care so that Priority 7 and Priority 8 veterans can make better use of veterans health care facilities without having to pay a $250 deductible and without seeing the cost of their prescriptions virtually doubled. This is, in essence, the content of the Bond-Mikulski amendment adopted in the other body. That is what this does, and I would ask Members to support it. I would also ask that if they do support it, they recognize that they have an obligation to then insist that these provisions be contained in the conference report, because they are already in the Senate bill. As Members know, conference committees are supposed to deal only with those matters which are in dispute between the two bodies. So I would urge any veteran or any other interested American citizen watching this debate to keep close track of how Members vote today, and compare that vote with how they vote when this conference report comes back. I think in that way it will in effect mean that they will be acting as a ``hypocrisy detector,'' which is always good for this body, when someone is looking over our shoulders. I want to say one other thing. I know that the President of the United States is a powerful man. I know that in this town he is probably the biggest man on campus that you can find. But the fact is that I have never yet met a White House who did not think that Article I of the Constitution was a drafting error by the Founding Fathers. And I think that we need to remind all Presidents that we represent the same citizens that they do. We owe every President our respect, we owe every President a respectful hearing, but he also owes us the same thing, and that means that we need to work with each other. Checks and balances: Mr. Speaker, in my view checks and balances is not simply an ornamental concept of democracy; it is a core element. It is the heart of our democratic system, and we have a right to expect the same respectful hearing from the President if we have an opinion that differs from his, as we have an obligation to give his views a respectful hearing. But I note in today's article by E.J. Dionne in the Washington Post that the President, in a meeting last week, appears to have provided something other than that respectful hearing to Members of Congress. Now, I know that the President is a business school graduate of a distinguished university, and I know that he regards himself in many ways as being an MBA President. He wants to bring business practices to the White House. Fine. But I would say that if that is the case, then even under the model that he sees, that means we are the Board of Directors. We owe it to the country, it seems to me, to approach issues like this with great deliberation and great care. When we rubber-stamp the desires of any President, we, in essence, do not behave like the greatest deliberative body in the world; we behave instead like a poor imitation of the Board of Directors at Enron. I do not think we ought to do that. Yet I notice in Mr. Dionne's column of today, he is describing a discussion that took place at the White House between the President and a number of Senators, and he is quoted by one Senator as saying, ``I'm here to tell you that this is what we have to do and this is how we have to do it,'' one Senator quoted the President as saying. Then that Senator went on to say that after she had asked a question of the President, ``He looked at me and said, `it is not negotiable, and I don't want to debate it.' '' Now, I would suggest that that might be a proper attitude if a parent is dealing with a minor child. It is not a proper approach when we are dealing with co-equal branches of government. So I ask every Member today to use their own judgment and think through what they think is in the best interests not just of this country, but of the Guard and Reserve forces who we are asking to fight our battles over in Iraq and our veterans who have done their duty and who are looking for some help with health care problems that they incur along the way. Mr. Speaker, I would urge support for the motion to instruct.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Evans), the ranking Democrat of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Rodriguez).