Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, I would simply say to the House, I do not even know what the content of most of these amendments is, but what is going on here is that the staff has been attempting to work out understandings under which a huge number of amendments can be disposed of in the most efficient way possible. As I understand it, there are approximately 39 pending amendments which are probably in order and about 69 that are not, and those numbers may be off a little bit but they are not bad for government work at 8:30 in the middle of a Red Sox game. But having said that, what this represents is that the sponsors of these amendments have agreed--all but two of these amendments as I understand it are in order, and those amendments, the sponsors have agreed to a severe time limit in order to have them considered. And in the case of the two amendments offered by persons who did not have germane amendments, my understanding is that those Members have agreed to drop all of their other amendments in return for a 5-minute consideration for their amendment before the point of order is lodged. I think that is roughly what it is that we are agreeing to, if this is, in fact, agreed to by the body. So it is simply an attempt to try to take a huge universe of amendments and to create some smaller, manageable universes so that we can move the process along. Let me say that, without even knowing the content of these amendments, I have strong feelings about the fact that Members are being reduced to having important issues on something like this considered in such a reduced time frame, but that is the choice we have under the rule that we have been given, and so we can either try to extend Members opportunities as much as possible or not, and that is what we have been trying to do.

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I just must respond to the comments made about the necessity to leave maximum flexibility with the Pentagon. I would simply observe that we did that with the last $60 billion that we gave them, and that is, I guess, how we came up with 40,000 troops that still did not have the Kevlar linings for their body armor; that flexibility is how we came up with an inadequate number of jammers so that our soldiers are still dying and being maimed by remotely detonated bombs; I guess that is why some of the Humvees over there still are not protected with Kevlar blankets; and I guess that is how we came up with the recommendation from the Pentagon that still leaves 80 percent of our troops in Iraq without drinkable water. So I think we ought to keep that in mind when we hear these general discussions about the need for ``flexibility.'' Flexibility for people whose judgment has earned that flexibility is one thing; flexibility for people who have demonstrated an interest in keeping as much information away from the Congress as possible and who have a track record of making as many miscalculations as possible is not something that thrills me very much. Amendment Offered by Mr. Holt

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. OBEY. I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha), the ranking member of the Defense Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 11 minutes. This is not a debate about 9/11. After 9/11, Chairman Young and I pushed through the House a $40 billion appropriation to respond to the events that led to that sneak attack. Chairman Young and I then led an effort to add billions of dollars to Homeland Security to protect our ports, secure air transportation and equip our local first responders, our firemen, our policemen to deal with a whole range of terrorist threats. We worked to add more than $2 billion in Homeland Security funds, even though the President threatened to veto those additional expenditures. Even the President of the United States has admitted publicly that there is no evidence that Iraq had anything to do with that sneak attack. So let us make that clear. Secondly, let us also make clear that this should not be a debate about whether we should have attacked Iraq. Before the vote on that question, I asked a whole range of questions to try to determine whether the administration had real expectations and a real plan for dealing with the aftermath of the war. I wanted Saddam removed, but I wanted al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden removed even more. In the end, I voted to require the President to come back to Congress for another vote before attacking Iraq if he could not get the agreement of the United Nations so that we could take one last look at the evidence, one last look at the administration's planning for the aftermath before we pulled the trigger. But Congress gave the green light to attack unilaterally. The result, Saddam is gone, that is good, but now it appears that the administration sold the Congress on supporting a go- it-alone strategy, except for a British puppy, through the selective manipulation of intelligence. This Congress was asked to do a rush job in providing $60 billion plus for the cost of going to war. We were asked to provide maximum flexibility in the use of that money, and Congress did. And now we find, with that maximum flexibility, that 40,000 troops were not supplied by the Pentagon with the correct body armor, American soldiers were killed and maimed by remotely detonated bombs because an insufficient number of electric jammers was supplied by the Pentagon, and there were days during the war when the troops only got one meal a day because of insufficient MREs. We are now isolated from our allies, and we have been left holding the bag financially, militarily, and politically for occupying and reconstructing the country. We are told we do not have enough soldiers on the ground to even protect ammunition dumps from looting and theft. We are told that the military is stretched to the breaking point, creating opportunities for more mischief from countries like Iran and North Korea. But that is all yesterday's argument. The time to think all of those things through was before we attacked, because once you are involved in a war, you are stuck with it for a while, and certainly you are stuck with the aftermath, as we are now. So at this point, I recognize the need and the obligation to support a reconstruction package. I agree that both reconstruction and additional military funding are needed to fix the situation. And I recognize that we cannot simply withdraw from something that we started, even though I was not in on the takeoff. But that does not mean that Congress must support any slap-dash request from the administration that is thrown on the table. The Founding Fathers gave us one overreaching power to affect major issues, the power of the purse. If we do not use that power constructively to make sure that actions of the executive branch are well-focused and well- thought-out, we are AWOL from our duty. The fact is we still do not have a detailed accounting of how the dollars we previously appropriated for this action have been used. We still have no meaningful idea of what cost the administration expects to incur over the next 5 years, even though they surely have expectations about that and prepare 5-year plans for everything else under God's creation. We have yet to receive a realistic description of how our allies can be brought on board to help provide troops and funds to spread around the burden of reconstruction. We have no real idea about how the administration expects to deal with the overextension of our military and the disruption of troop rotation requirements because of that overextension. And we certainly do not know how we are going to pay for it, except to get out our kids' credit card and say, ``Charge it.'' There is no question in the aftermath of this administration and this Congress' decision to invade Iraq that we have now incurred certain obligations to the Iraqi people, but we have also obligations to our own people. That is why the important question here today is not whether this committee funding proposition, or an alternative, is better. The amendment that I will offer does not solve most of the dilemmas that I described or answer most of the questions that I have raised because only the administration has the power to do that. All the amendment that I will offer at some point says is: if you are going to spend $87 billion, then there is a better way to do it, a way which will be more effective on the ground and less damaging to our taxpayers. The issue is not whether the administration's package should be cut or not because, frankly, I think the administration is still hiding from Congress its long-term expectations on the full cost of this war. But this Congress has an obligation to know what the whole picture is and what the whole bill will be before we write the check. And we have an obligation to know how it is going to be paid for. That is what the amendment that we will offer will try to do. That is all we can expect it to do at this point. Let me take just a moment or two to describe what we will try to do with that amendment. We will try to reduce the committee package for reconstruction so that the total number for reconstruction is $14 billion rather than the $20 billion asked for by the administration. We will use that money in a number of ways. First of all, we would do it to provide a quality-of-life initiative for our troops. The first thing we would do under that heading is to recognize the fact that almost 80 percent of our troops today are in situations where they are forced to drink putrid water because the administration asked for sufficient funding only to deal with the water problems at one of the nine bases where American troops are stationed. So we provide the money to try to correct that problem for the rest of the troops. Secondly, we would provide some of that money to provide predeployment health and dental screening for the Guard and Reserve forces who have to go into regular service so that they do not have to bear that cost themselves. Thirdly, we extend postdeployment health coverage, (that is health coverage) for people who served and are now returning to their communities. We would extend that from the present 60 days to 6 months. And we would expand prepaid phone card services so it is easier for those troops to call home. And cover more R&R transportation costs. We would also try to recognize what General Shinseki warned us about when he warned us not to follow a 12-division strategy if we only had a 10-division Army. And so what we will do is face up to, squarely and promptly, the need to increase the size of the Army by at least 20,000 people if we are going to be in a position to defend this country against other security problems that may develop anywhere from North Korea to Iran. And, secondly, we will try, by doing that, to relieve the pressure on the Guard and Reserve forces who have been forced to take up greater burdens than they expected when they first joined up. Then we will provide additional funding to refurbish the equipment that has been used up in the Iraqi war. We know what the services indicated they needed in this fiscal year. The problem is the Pentagon civilian leadership did not ask for that full amount. We provide the full amount that the services asked for so that we do not have huge amounts of military equipment, tanks and Bradleys and other expensive equipment simply sitting in unusable condition because we have not sufficiently refurbished it. Let me now turn to what we do with the $14 billion remaining in the redevelopment account. What we attempt to do with that is to provide $7 billion of that, half of it roughly, a little less than $7 billion, in cash money, as the administration requested, so that they have enough money to deal with their immediate cash flow problems. Then we take the other six plus billion dollars and we put it in a special account in the World Bank to be matched on a two-to-one basis by foreign contributors. That is a way, in our view, that you can do two things. You can help to internationalize the question of who is going to pay for the long-term redevelopment costs of Iraq and at the same time we can protect the American taxpayer from the cronyism in the awarding of contracts that is bound to be there if those contracts are let by an agency that is responsive to the political appointees in the White House. And then lastly and most importantly, in my view, we pay for it. What we simply say is that we should provide for a return to preexisting law of the levels of taxation for the very top bracket in this society, that top 1 percent that makes over $330,000 a year. What that would mean is that someone making $1 million, instead of getting a $130,000 tax cut, would get a tax cut of about $52,000. That would still be more than 10 times as much as taxpayers who are in the $200,000 to $500,000 bracket, and it would be considerably more than that if you compare what they get to the small tax cut of about $1,000 to people in the 50 to $75,000 bracket. So I would suggest that anyone who thinks that we are penalizing the top 1 percent, I would simply say that is certainly not the case. We are simply limiting the size of their tax cut to the size that will be provided to the next wealthiest Americans in the country. I daresay I think most of the people in that top 1 percent would say that if that is what is necessary to pay our bills rather than sending them on to our grandkids, they would be more than willing to participate. Mr. Chairman, that is what we intend to try to accomplish as this debate moves forward. Let me take one other moment to simply congratulate the chairman of the committee, because there is no question about it, he has made significant improvements in the administration proposal. Both parties wanted to eliminate some of the ``quaint'' items, to put it politely, that were inserted which would be red flags to any hardworking taxpayer in this country. And I appreciate the fact that we were able to work together to eliminate those provisions. But I think we have a long way to go to get the answers that we need from the administration in order to justify providing another $90 billion in taxpayers' money. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Scott).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Baird).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Georgia (Ms. Majette).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1\1/2\ minutes. Mr. Chairman, I cannot help but respond to some of the previous speaker's comments. The previous speaker quoted accurately President Kennedy who said that we would ``pay any price and bear any burden in the defense of freedom.'' That is a wonderful phrase. But my question is, what do you mean by ``we,'' ``we'' will bear any burden? I want to know who is bearing any burden in this society for this effort right now, except for the troops and their families. How much of a burden are the politicians in this Chamber bearing? They are not facing up to the tough choices that are necessary to finance this war. How much of a burden are we asking the most well-off and privileged people in this society to pay, when the majority party and the White House insist on guaranteeing that, despite the need to pay for the war, they will still, that top 1 percent of earners will still get on average a $130,000 tax cut, rather than the $52,000 that they would get under the Obey amendment, those who make $1 million a year I am talking about? If we are going to quote John Kennedy, let us live up to the spirit of Kennedy's remarks and support shared sacrifice for everyone, not just those who are serving in the military.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to myself to explain the procedure of the situation. Mr. Speaker, we are proceeding under a very unusual circumstance to say the least. We will be having considerable discussion of a bill which is not yet before us but which will be before us tomorrow, assuming that the Committee on Rules brings out a rule that provides for its consideration tomorrow. Meanwhile, we will be having discussions about what the House anticipates will be on the floor tomorrow. We have just had a half an hour description of a trip taken by one of the congressional delegations to Iraq, and we are now yielding for the next half an hour to other Members of the House who want to express their thoughts on the subject in general, and when we are finished with that half an hour, we will then be proceeding to additional debate, which is provided for on the House floor today through a unanimous consent agreement reached yesterday. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Visclosky).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Kilpatrick).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller). (Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 7 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey), the ranking member on the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Export Financing and Related Programs of the Committee on Appropriations.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 10 seconds. Two-run homer by Boston. They are ahead by three in the ninth. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran), a member of the Subcommittee on Defense of the Committee on Appropriations.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Olver).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Berry), a member of the committee.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur).

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, Millie and Tip O'Neill were members of the Studs Terkel generation. They were Democrats because they saw the Democratic Party as a vehicle to help the common people of this country. They were Democrats who accepted human nature. They did not try to change people. They simply tried to appeal to their better natures. They just did not appeal to their common sense. They appealed to their sense of common justice. Millie loved her man. She knew her man. She knew he was a strong man, but she also knew that he could be even stronger buttressed by love, and she gave of it fully. Millie would make every congressional spouse feel like she or he were welcome as family. They were two strong and good people who made their community and their country better for everybody. In my view, Tip O'Neill's finest hour as a defender of this institution outside of the Watergate era came on a day after the regular order of business was done, just like today. Only in those days, during this period known as Special Order, the camera did not pan the Chamber. The camera simply focused closely on the person speaking in the well; and on one famous occasion, a young Newt Gingrich, later to become Speaker, took the well of the House and began a speech attacking Members on this side of the aisle, and with the camera close upon him, he challenged Members who were not there, but the camera gave the appearance that the Chamber was full. Mr. Gingrich challenged Members in an empty Chamber to answer him if his allegations were wrong. Tip felt that that was a fundamental misleading of the American people. So he rushed to the House floor and told Mr. Gingrich what he thought of that kind of conduct. In my view, what he said may have been a technical violation of the rules; but in my view and in Millie's view, it should not have been, because in Tip's view and in her view and in the views of many of us, we thought that what Tip was saying was the truth. Unfortunately, as was pointed out, sometimes truth is not a defense on this floor under the House rules, and so Millie was proud of the fact that Tip stood up for what he felt was right, as were we all that day. I find it ironic that Millie died last night, just as the Boston Red Sox were winning the right to move on to the post-season series by seeing the last pitch of the game go the Red Sox way. As a huge, huge Red Sox fan, I know Tip would have been thrilled to see that; but with Millie's dying at that same time, she could at least rush and tell Tip the good news. So I think all of us are hoping that for the next 2 weeks Millie and Tip will have a good box seat in heaven, watching the Red Sox hopefully playing the Cubs in the World Series. They brought grace to their State. They brought grace to this institution, and they brought good feelings and warmth and cheer and respect to all of us who knew them both; and I know that, as will the family, we will all miss both of them greatly.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 4 minutes. Mr. Speaker, the House bill does not contain and the Senate Labor HHS bill does contain an important provision which affects millions of American workers. That provision would preclude the Department of Labor from issuing any regulation that takes away overtime protection from workers who currently qualify for that protection. It would protect rights that workers in this country have had since the enactment of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Under the Senate provision, the Department of Labor could proceed with its ongoing rulemaking process and modify the overtime regulations. Example: The department could proceed with making a long- overdue inflation adjustment that guarantees overtime protection for certain low-income workers earning $22,100 a year. The Department of Labor says that this will result in an additional 1.3 million workers receiving overtime. I do not know if that estimate is right, but we agree with this provision. We, in fact, think that it would add far fewer number of workers than does the Department of Labor. The only shortcoming we see with it is that it does not go far enough and does not even keep pace with inflation, full adjustment to match inflation would require the department to increase the salary threshold in the rule to at least $27,560. The Senate provision also would not stop the department from clarifying the overtime regulations to update them for the 21st century. For example, by eliminating an achronistic terms such as ``straw boss'' or ``gang leader'' or eliminating job classifications which no longer exist such as ``teamster''. Do not tell that to the Teamsters Union, however. The Senate provision would provide the same protections to newly hired workers as to current workers. It does not grandfather in current workers but ensures the same overtime protections to all workers in a job classification. Mr. Speaker, there is general agreement that workers are going to lose overtime protection under the administration's revised regulation. The question is how many will lose that protection? By some estimates as many as 8 million workers who are currently protected will lose that protection. Even if the Department of Labor concedes that a minimum of 644,000 workers currently covered would lose that protection and could be forced to work overtime without being compensated. Whether the number is 644,000 or 8 million, Mr. Speaker, the Bush administration should not put American workers in the position of being forced to work more than 40 hours a week without being paid overtime. So to reiterate, the Senate provision would simply stop the Department of Labor from issuing a regulation taking away overtime protections from workers who currently have them. The Senate provision is absolutely essential to protect workers' overtime rights. It is not enough that more than 3 million workers have lost their jobs since this administration has taken office. Now the administration apparently wants to cut the pay of a number of workers who still have jobs by cutting their overtime protections. That is clearly not right. It is not fair. I do not think that the public would support it, and I would urge a yes vote on the motion to instruct. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. I want to make clear this instruction motion does not prevent the Labor Department substituting the change in regulations that allow additional workers to claim overtime, so that is included in our motion. The only thing we stop is, we stop the President from unilaterally taking away overtime from workers who get it now. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, is the transcript that is being taken of today's proceedings in English or is it in some other language?