Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards), the ranking Democrat on the Military Construction Subcommittee on Appropriations.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, could I inquire how much time I have remaining.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin). (Mr. LEVIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, who has the right to close?

Mr. OBEY. Does the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) have any other speakers?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, since I have the right to close, I will let the gentleman proceed. I have only one speaker.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, this motion has nothing to do with the question of whether the troops will come home sooner or not; but it has a whole lot to do with how we will treat those troops before they go to Iraq and after they return home. That is why we provide in this motion that the House ought to accept the Senate provision providing for premobilization health care and dental screening for Guard and Reserve forces and why we extend health coverage, the military health coverage to them for 4 additional months after they return home, above and beyond that to which they now are entitled. This amendment has nothing whatsoever to do with making it harder for Iraq to repay its debts. In fact, this provision has a huge incentive for all other countries in the world to forgive their debts, just as they did with Poland when Poland became a democracy. Because this says that 50 percent of the reconstruction money to Iraq will be in the form of a loan unless the rest of the world forgives their debts. And then if the rest of the world forgives their debts, then we will too. If we are looking for a way to put Iraq in the strongest possible position and to make sure that Uncle Sam's taxpayers are not the only ones stuck with the bad deal, you need to vote for this amendment. I would also say that we have heard the argument that somehow this proposal might slow down consideration of the bill; just the opposite. All this motion does is to accept three items that the Senate has already agreed to. The Senate has already determined that half of the reconstruction funds ought to be in the form of loans. The Senate has already determined that we ought to provide the additional health care to our military personnel that I have just described. The Senate has already determined that veterans deserve the additional $1.3 billion in veterans health care that we are trying to provide. So all we are doing is narrowing the differences between the two Chambers, which ought to make it faster in terms of the time it takes to deal with there bill. I do hope, however, that particularly veterans groups, I hope veterans groups will put out a very large ``Beware'' sign on this vote, Mr. Speaker, because I am afraid that there will be a number of Members who will vote for this motion in the belief that it is merely symbolic, fully intending to support efforts by the Senate and House Republican leadership to then jettison these provisions as soon as they get to conference. That would be the ultimate act of insincerity. And I hope that veterans groups will not let Members of this House pose for political holy pictures on this vote and then bug out of their responsibilities to stick to that vote when the bill goes to conference and comes back from conference. I also would like to say one other thing. The President, as I said earlier, deserves the respect of every Member of this House, if for no other reason than by virtue of the office that he holds. But I want to say that the President is our leader; he is not a one-man band. This Congress has an obligation also to weigh in with its own best judgments. I think this President, rather than telling Members of Congress that items like this are nonnegotiable, I think, as teachers often say to parents, he needs to learn to ``work well with others''. And I think that applies to how well he needs to be able to work with the Congress, and I think it also applies to how well he needs to work with our allies. And I would hope that, I would hope that that would happen. After all, this is the same administration that did not provide the needed Kevlar linings for body armor for over 40,000 American troops. This is the same administration that did not provide enough jammers, electronic jammers, to our troops in Iraq. And as a consequence, we have had American servicemen and women killed or maimed because they could not prevent the remote detonation of bombs and mines. This is, after all, the same administration that did not see to it that we had enough armor for the Humvees so that they would not be vulnerable to explosions from the roadbed. And this is the same administration that asked for so little money for clean water for our troops that 80 percent of our troops in Iraq, right now, are still drinking putrid water. So I would say, with all due respect, no one is perfect. This administration certainly does not have a monopoly on wisdom. Neither do we on this end of Capitol Hill; but we ought to be able to work together in an effort to reach reasonable compromises. I think this recommit motion is, in fact, an effort at a reasonable compromise; and with that, I would ask for an ``aye'' vote, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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, this legislation before us provides $87 billion to pay for the consequences of our war against Iraq, and the $20 billion reconstruction section provides $872 per capita aid to every single person in Iraq; 872 bucks. That is the size of this package. That ought to merit a lot more debate than we have had. The bill before us got to the floor only because the majority went to the Committee on Rules and made a number of exceptions to the House rules so that this bill could come to the floor. And then the leadership guarantees that they are not going to lose any votes, the Republican leadership, by denying to the alternative to their proposal, those same exceptions to the rule. That is what you did yesterday. Then yesterday you said any Member who had a germane amendment was given the grand total of 5 minutes to discuss it before the hammer came down. And now today, you are saying that the rest of the Members, who have not yet been able to even offer an amendment for consideration, are going to be denied the opportunity to do so. Now, this happens in this Chamber, in Washington D.C., the capital of the greatest democracy in the world, supposedly, at the same time we are all supposed to swoon at the thought of how quickly Iraq is going to become a beacon of democracy and the second imitation of New Hampshire on the Presidential primary circuit. Well, I am sorry, I agree with the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), what a lousy example you are setting for the Iraqis. You got a rigged game in this House. And any time you see an amendment you cannot beat, you solve it the easy way. You say we cannot even vote on it. Incredible. Where is your fairness? Where is your guts? If you cannot beat us fair and square, you should not be in this Chamber at all. Now, last night eight of your Republican colleagues in the Senate voted for a proposal that provided a good portion of this aid in the form of loans. It does not matter whether you agree with that or not, we ought to be able to vote on that same proposition. But you do not think you can beat it, and so you are denying us the opportunity to even vote on it. Where is your guts? So, Mr. Speaker, the only way we have a chance of a snowball in you know where of getting a vote on an amendment to protect the interest of the taxpayers is for us to vote down this antidemocratic rule so that we have an opportunity to change it. And that is why you need to vote against the previous question on this rule so that while we are prattling on about how much democracy we are going to bring to Iraq, we occasionally provide a little in this Chamber.

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I simply would say that we certainly have no objection to this amendment on this side. We have had several other amendments, so it is about time it is accepted.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word, and I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Corrine Brown).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I was amazed to hear a Member of the other body on radio yesterday say despite all of the discussion about this problem, that he had not yet heard about the shortage of body armor. I think that when the American public understands what has not been provided, they are going to be very, very angry. Announcement by the Chairman

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman. As the gentleman knows, I have taken the position that we should not be providing all grants. I have taken the position we should not be providing all loans. We ought to have an intelligent and balanced mix. I certainly would like to see changes in the reconstruction program; but clearly to eliminate all funding for reconstruction, especially recognizing the fact that we did attack Iraq and did cause certain damage, I think is clearly unacceptable.

Mr. OBEY. Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, in light of all the vote switching that just occurred on the last amendment, has everybody who needed to gotten to the well on that vote yet?

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 6 minutes. Mr. Chairman, first of all, let me say that I have a great deal of respect for the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe). He is standing here tonight doing his duty. That is what we are supposed to do. And even though I disagree with his position, we ought to be able to debate these issues. I think the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence) should have been able to debate and get a vote on his amendment, and I am happy that we have figured out a way to accomplish the same thing. I would invite the support of those gentlemen who supported the previous amendment. I think often we have in this place what I would call compulsive statesmanship, a tendency for people to want to do the right thing so badly that they sometimes lean overboard in taking into consideration the interests of other countries and in the process miss opportunities to take into account the interests of our own. I am not so afflicted, at least not on this issue. I want to make clear I am an internationalist. I believe that it would be irresponsible for us to convert this entire package to loans. I believe that the administration is going to need some money available immediately in order to transact the business associated with trying to restart the Iraqi economy and rebuild the Iraqi society. But I think we have to get past the cliches and past the stereotypes and get into the actual details, into the specifics in assessing our obligation. What this amendment does, very simply, is to, within the rules of the House, provide that, of the $18.6 billion in the bill available for reconstruction purposes in Iraq, that half of that be provided as a loan. We wanted to also provide that that half would run through the World Bank so that we could specifically require matching by other countries and then use the bank's ability to capitalize in order to expand the amount of aid available in Iraq by a factor of four. We cannot, under the House rules, do that directly; but this amount would still allow the administration to do that. They could still negotiate an international fund. Second, they could still run it through the World Bank with that matching requirement. Now, I would simply like to say that I know that there are some people who will look at this in stereotypical fashion and assume that because the United States is a wealthy country and Iraq is not, (they are not poor, they are a middle income country) but I think that they will assume that because we are wealthy and Iraq is not, that somehow it is unfair for us to require any portion of this to come back as loans. The reason that people say that we cannot do this to Iraq is because they say Iraq has huge foreign debts. I want to point out that foreign debts cannot be paid off with domestic production. So it is misleading to assume that because the United States is a rich country and Iraq is a somewhat poorer country that we are in a better position to pay off foreign debts than they are. We are not. This country has run such large trade deficits for so long, and we are going to be running such huge trade deficits in the future, that our country has no realistic possibility anytime in the next decade to be paying off any significant portion of our own foreign debt. And the only way foreign debt can be paid off is by running trade surpluses. So what that means is that the United States' foreign debt on a per capita basis roughly equals Iraq's, and next year Iraq's will probably be somewhat smaller than ours. The fact is that because Iraq has a long-term prospect of multi- billion dollar benefits from the oil they have in the ground, it in fact means that the United States has less of an ability to pay off foreign debt in the future than Iraq does. And that is why I think it is absolutely legitimate to consider requiring 50 percent of the money that we spend in this reconstruction operation to be provided in the form of loans. The gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos) and I are offering this amendment. There are a lot of other Members who I know wanted to do it. I know the gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Kilpatrick) also has demonstrated a great deal of leadership in this. But what we are trying to do is to provide a way to deliver more assistance on the ground for Iraq at less burden to our taxpayers. For all the reasons cited by all of the gentlemen who supported the previous amendment, Mr. Chairman, I would urge an ``aye'' vote on this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 6 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos), who is a cosponsor of the amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez).

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, these amendments simply represent negotiations that we have been able to reach with the sponsors of the amendments. Negotiations are still going on with the other sponsors of the other amendments, and as those are resolved, the hope is to have other packages to bring before the House.