Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, years ago Senator Proxmire from my State used to have the Golden Fleece Awards. He was a good friend of mine. One year he made a whole lot of fun of a study on Polish pigs. They had a field day with it. Funny name, strange-sounding grant. Well, guess what? That study led to the development of a new blood pressure medicine which millions of people use today. The know-nothings in the Congress at that time would have eliminated that study. I do not think that would have been a good outcome. I have served on the subcommittee that deals with NIH for a long time, and the one thing I came to understand very quickly is that the day that we politicize NIH research, the day we decide which grants are going to be approved on the basis of a 10-minute horseback debate in the House of Representatives with 434 of the 435 Members in this place who do not even know what the grant is, that is the day we will ruin science research in this country. We have no business making political judgments about those kinds of issues. I would ask the following questions of the gentlemen who are offering this amendment: Can they tell me what score each of the grants received in the peer review process? Can they tell me who is on the peer review committee that takes a look at each of these in the study circles? Do you have objection to any of the persons who are on those study sections? I think the gentlemen have an obligation to answer those questions if they are going to bring something like this to the floor with no notice and no understanding of what these grants do. Now, I would say that I do not have any idea what these grants do. I can imagine, though, that perhaps this study on so-called sexual arousal, that perhaps it is one way of trying to determine how you prevent child molestation or rape. I can also imagine with respect to the longitudinal study on sexual behavior of old men, NIH says this: ``Without a better understanding of age-related changes in men's sexual functions, physicians may assume that declines in function are normal when they actually reflect early symptoms of disease such as diabetes and heart disease.'' With respect to the study that relates to intervention for drug-using women sex workers, let us say you do not have any sympathy at all for the sex workers or their partners. I am concerned about the innocent partners of those partners. What about the wives of persons who go to these sex workers and then wind up getting disease? I think we ought to know as much as possible how to prevent transmission of disease, and what role drug use has in that process. So without knowing anything about these, I return to my basic principle: We have NIH for a reason; we have peer review for a reason. I would rather trust the judgment of 10 doctors sitting around a table than I would 10 politicians sitting around a table when we decide how to allocate taxpayer money for those grants. The reason NIH is there is so none of us bring our political biases to the table, and that is the way it ought to remain.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I simply urge the Chairman not to insist on the point of order. If he does, I would concede the point of order and move on to the next motion I have already described.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I offer a preferential motion.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote, and pending that, I make the point of order a quorum is not present.

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

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word, and I yield to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Jackson).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, how much time do we have remaining under the reduced time for each side?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield the remaining time to the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller).

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

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Crowley).

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that during debate on H.R. 2660, I may be allowed to revise and extend my remarks, and insert extraneous and tabular material in one instance immediately after my initial statement on the bill.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield another 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Kennedy), who has the quaint idea that we should not be gutting our efforts to control child labor.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Chairman, I received unanimous consent earlier to insert a table after my remarks, which I will do, which will lay out clearly what the record has been over the last 10-year period. All I would say in further rebuttal to my good friend: Regardless of what each of us argues the past shows, the issue today is whether we are for $6 billion more for education and health care for kids and sick people, or whether you are for using that $6 billion to make sure that our struggling millionaires get a double-sized tax cut. I think the public will see by the votes who is for what.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 12 minutes. Mr. Chairman, the last 2 years the Republican majority has pushed $2 trillion in tax cuts through this House. A huge percentage of those cuts have been focused on the top 1 percent of earners in this country who make over 100,000 bucks a year. For those 2 years, the Republican Party has pretended that there are no costs associated with those tax cuts. Well, there are, and on this bill is where those costs become evident. This is where the chickens come home to roost. Cost number one is $26 billion a year in additional interest payments that our taxpayers will have to pay next year because every single dollar of the tax cut that was passed was paid for with borrowed money. The second cost that is incurred is that because all of the dollars have been put into tax cuts, ``ain't no more money left'' for Medicare fix-ups, ``ain't no more money left'' to do a real as opposed to a ``let's pretend'' prescription drug program, and there isn't nearly enough money left to make the necessary investments that American families depend upon in the education and health care and worker protection area, and this is where those consequences show up on this bill. Now, what are the deficiencies? First of all, the Republican budget, which was the enabling legislation which enabled the tax cuts to come to this floor, the Republican budget resolution promised Republican moderates, in return for their votes on the budget resolution, they promised that Title I, which is the main education program that we use to help kids who need some help to stay abreast, they promised that Title I would be funded at $1 billion above last year. This bill contains the broken promise because this bill funds Title I $340 million below the amount promised in the Republican's own budget resolution. Special education. Both parties compete with each other and claim how much they are in love with special education programs. Well, the Republican majority promised $2.2 billion in additional funding for special education if those moderates would just vote for that bill. Now, you bring the actual bill to the floor, and I said yesterday it is apparent the check is not in the mail because this bill is $1.2 billion short of the Republican promise in the budget resolution on that score. That is broken promise number two. There is another way to measure it. The President, when he came into office, said, ``Oh, he was not going to spend any more money on education until we reformed the programs.'' So we reformed the programs in the No Child Left Behind Act, all kinds of promises to the States and the local school districts, all kinds of mandates. That bill was the mother of all mandates, and yet today, if you take a look at how this bill or those programs compares to the funding schedule in that bill, this bill is $8 billion short, $8 billion short. Then if you take a look at some of the details, after-school programs, now I know my good friend from Ohio is a strong supporter of those programs, but this bill is $750 million short of the No Child Left Behind promise for after-school programs. Student aid: Pell grants, the principal program by which we help families send their kids to college, in 1975 Pell grants paid for 84 percent of the cost of a public education on average. This year it is down to 38 percent because this bill freezes Pell grants. In addition to that, the administration cuts the ability of Pell grant recipients to use their full State and local tax deduction in determining their eligibility for Pell grants. So that is another chiseling away at benefits we provide families to go to college. Now move to the health care front. For 5 years we have almost doubled funding at NIH, the institute which provides for most of the medical research in this country, but this bill puts the brake on that 5-year progress. The result? Grants for new programs and competitive renewal of existing or of expiring grants will go up by only two-tenths of 1 percent for a grand total of 21 grants, the smallest increase in 15 years. I invite Members of this House, tell the 1.3 million people who are going to get cancer this year, tell the 1 million people who are going to find out they have diabetes, tell the 60,000 people who are going to get Parkinson's, tell them that it is more important to give an $88,000 tax cut to somebody who makes $1 million a year than it is to continue our efforts to attack those diseases at full throttle. We hear this nonsense about how NIH needs some breathing time in order to absorb the money that we have already given them. Baloney. Less than 35 percent of all of the grants that are approved as being quality science are ever funded. Tell me there is not a need. Or if you want to move on, the nursing, the new nursing act that passed last year, every politician in this House wrote to every nurse in their district and said, ``we love you, we are all for this program.'' Where is the money to make it reality? No new money in this bill for that program. Then if you take a look at community service block grant, money that we provide that is used to help families that are poor and near poor, cut by 150 million bucks. Low-income heating assistance program: I started that program with Ed Muskie back in the 1970s, and we had a lot of help from a lot of Republicans, including Silvio Conte. What has happened to that bill today? We have been told, on one hand, we have been told by the Republican members of our committee, correctly so, that we are going to have a big increase in natural gas prices. How does the committee respond? By cutting the low-income heating assistance program by 200 million bucks. I do not think that is a very smart thing to do. So basically, these are just a few areas in which this bill is deficient. So what we are going to try to do, despite the fact that the rule turned us down, we are going to try to offer two amendments on this side of the aisle. We are going to try to add $2.8 billion in additional education funding, to add $340 million more for Title I, $1.2 billion for special education. We are going to try to raise Pell grant, the maximum grants, by $150. In the health care area, we are going to add some money to the rural health program. We are going to add some funding to our chem/bio response capability. We are going to try to double the rate of increased funding for NIH so that we can have a 6 percent increase in new and competing grants. We are going to fund that nursing act. We are going to try to provide $450 million in increased funding for low- income heating assistance. We are going to restore the $150 million cut for the CSBG program. We are going to put $82 million back in the older Americans bill so that we do not have to cut out 3 million congregate meals for senior citizens this year, and so that we do not have to cut out 4 million meals for the Meals on Wheels program. How are we going to pay for it? We are going to pay for it by cutting the tax cut that people who earn more than a million bucks a year would get from $88,000 that they are now scheduled to get to a mere $60,000. My goodness me, they are going to be stuck on a starvation diet this year, poor folks. Then we are going to try a second amendment which will raise the matching rate for Medicaid for each State so that we can prevent every State in the Union from knocking kids off the Medicaid or the SCHIP rolls. Mr. Chairman, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves that we are making kids pay for tax cuts for millionaires by giving up their eligibility for health care. That is an outrageous set of priorities, but it is one which is enforced on this country by the majority party actions in ramming those giant-size tax cuts for high-income people through this House. We are not saying that those who make $1 million a year should not get a tax cut like everybody else. We are saying that we ought to limit, through the action of our first amendment and the second amendment, all we are saying is when you put those two together, we simply want to limit the size of their tax cut to $44,000 on average instead of $88,000. And I will bet you that if you ask 90 percent of those people, they will say that they would much prefer that we provide the money for these kids and provide the money for their education rather than give them a supersize tax cut. So, Mr. Chairman, that is what we are going to try to do today because this budget process has been handled in such a way that the majority party has tried to obscure, at every opportunity they have tried to obscure the linkage between their actions on taxes and the resulting actions on education, health care and other needed services for the citizens of this country. What our amendments will try to do is to reestablish those linkages so that people understand there are consequences to the choices that we make, and those consequences fall most heavily on the people who most need our help. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Jackson). (Mr. JACKSON of Illinois asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), the ranking member on 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. Madam Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Udall). (Mr. UDALL of Colorado asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 20 seconds. Mr. Chairman, we come together all right when we have good bills to come together on, but this bill is a turkey, and that is why on this occasion we are not for it. I will also be inserting in the Congressional Record when we get into the full House several charts which relate to what the gentleman just said that demonstrate the error of his ways. I would also point out to the gentleman, he is factually incorrect if he says that this bill was earmarked when the Democrats were in control. There were no earmarks whatsoever. In fact, Bill Natcher, the last Democratic chairman of this subcommittee, prided himself on not having any earmarks. With respect to the subcommittee that I chaired for foreign operations, there were no earmarks in the foreign operations bill when I chaired that subcommittee either. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Tierney).

Mr. OBEY. Madam Chairman, I yield 2 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. OBEY. No. That is a different question. I just want to make certain that of the committee time in opposition to those two amendments, that the minority will be yielded some of that time.