Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, after 9-11, it became obvious to all of us, I think on both sides of the aisle, that we needed to equip the people at the local level who will respond to terrorist attacks with the best equipment that we could possibly find to make certain their equipment was compatible and safe enough to do the job. For reasons that I find difficult to fathom, the White House has resisted efforts to do that on four separate occasions. The first example is what happened on the supplemental a year ago. After 9-11, the committee, on both sides of the aisle, agreed that we ought to add more money for first responders, and we tried to do that. The White House strenuously resisted. In fact, at one point the President personally told us that he would veto one dime more than the White House had appropriated for homeland security items. Despite that fact, on a bipartisan basis, the House and the Senate approved $400 million in funding for first responders in that supplemental. Then, last year, in their second supplemental which the administration sent up, they still provided no request for first responders. Again, the House and the Senate, acting on a bipartisan basis in both Houses provided, after much White House resistance, $551 million for first responders for firemen, for policemen, and the other folks at the local level who are our first line of defense against terrorist attacks in our communities. The President vetoed $350 million of that $500 million. Finally, the administration did request $3.5 billion for first responders in the regular 2003 appropriations bill, but it then proceeded to back the political strategy in the House that prevented the veterans under the VA-HUD bill from coming to the floor; and it prevented the State, Justice, Commerce appropriations bill from coming to the floor. As a result, neither of those bills which were supposed to contain funding for first responders, neither of those bills passed. And then, when the continuing resolution finally passed, which was supposed to contain $650 million for first responders, the White House saw to it that the agency would not apportion that money among the States and localities. So after we have that track record, the White House resistance to bipartisan congressional support for adding money for first responders, the White House chief of staff went on national television last Sunday, Mr. Card did, and told Mr. Russert, the moderator, and the entire country that the only reason first responders were not getting their money is because the Congress had not done its job. Baloney. In capital letters, BALONEY. The fact is that both political parties, on a bipartisan basis in both the House and the Senate, on four separate occasions tried to meet our responsibilities in providing the funding that was needed for first responders and, the White House, in each of those instances, either flatly rejected the money or saw to it that they would use their power in order to squeeze down the amount of money that we wanted to provide for those initiatives. So now, what I am going to urge Members to do when we get to the resolution today is to vote for a motion which we will offer which restores that needed money for first responders. It is time for two things to happen: it is time for the White House to stop peddling fiction about why the first responders at the local level do not have badly needed money to deal with terrorism problems at the local level; and, secondly, it is time for us to actually get the money out to them so that we do not have to sit, the next time we have a terrorist attack saying, gee whiz, I wish we had done something.

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. I certainly am, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, this motion to recommit would do three things: It would modify the language in the Department of Homeland Security legislation to prevent existing corporations who moved offshore to avoid paying their fair share of taxes from getting government contracts from that agency. It would bring the bill back in line with the language this House voted to include by a vote of 318 to 110 on the motion to recommit offered by the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro) last July. The Joint Committee on Taxation has estimated that over the next 10 years corporate expatriates would cost us more than $4 billion in funds that could help pay for our Nation's security. The second point of this motion to recommit would be to suspend the operation of one of the most egregious provisions inserted into the Department of Homeland Security legislation at the last minute last year. That is a provision apparently designed to shield the giant drugmaker Eli Lilly & Company from lawsuits that have been brought by parents of autistic children claiming that their children's disease was caused by a vaccine preservative. There may be good reason to ultimately require claims of this type to be brought under the Federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, but if that is done, it should be done openly in the sunshine after proper hearings and deliberation, not in a back room deal at the last moment. Thirdly, this motion would restore the authority of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure to review the leasing of space for the new Department of Homeland Security, replacing the provision in the CR that simply approves the administration proposal without any congressional oversight or scrutiny whatsoever. We do not stop them from going forward, we simply say that they must follow the procedure of having some review by the committee of jurisdiction before they proceed to spend a great deal of taxpayers' money on leasing property which at this point has been reviewed and overseen by no one whatsoever in the Congress.

Mr. OBEY. I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut.

Mr. OBEY. I think the Speaker can safely assume that, yes.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, what the gentleman from Minnesota is asserting is that the minority should not be allowed to offer a legitimate amendment because the majority did not fulfill its responsibilities to abide by certain provisions of the Budget Act and by the timetable of that act. I find that highly objectionable especially since the Committee on Rules has already waived the requirement as far as the majority party is concerned. It seems to me that the House rules certainly ought to allow the minority the same privilege that the majority has arranged by rule.

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

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. Speaker, I offer an alternative motion to recommit at the desk.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, let me make clear to the gentleman, if our amendment is passed, we are still substantially below the Republican budget resolution numbers. We do not exceed the amount dictated by the White House. We simply make sure that the money is used for homeland security, for the SEC, and for the other items that you have already voted for in the supplemental.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. I take this time, Mr. Speaker, to explain to the House the amendment that I will shortly offer. That amendment will do essentially two things: it would provide an additional $308 million for the Securities and Exchange Commission to increase funding to the level agreed to in the Sarbanes-Oxley bill. Secondly, it would make available $5.1 billion in critical funding already agreed to by the House last year as contingent emergencies in the fiscal year 2002 supplemental. That money will pay for items such as helping to find, arrest and deport high-risk individuals who have disregarded the departure date on their visas. It would provide for increased security of U.S. nuclear weapons and nuclear materials at DOE weapons labs, money which the DOE has asked for. It would provide money for the Customs Container Security initiative suggested by the agency. It would provide $275 million for veterans health care, which this House has already approved on a contingent appropriation basis. It would provide $415 million for grants to State and local first responders, and a variety of other items which the House has already approved, but which the President has declined to release. As I told the House earlier today, right after the election I was watching McNeil-Lehrer. In their panel discussion, Tom Oliphant, the columnist, was asked what the role of the Democratic Party was going to be now that the Republican Party had all of the marbles in every institution. He said, ``Well, their obligation as the minority is to offer alternatives to what the majority proposes.'' That is exactly what we are trying to do. The problem with the rule that was adopted earlier is that it attempts to preclude us from meeting those responsibilities as a minority to offer constructive alternatives. In the process, it also denies the ability to hold either the majority or the minority accountable for the decisions they make. That is why we are attempting to move forward with this amendment. I would hope when the time comes that no point of order is lodged against the amendment so that we can, in fact, meet the obligations that we have in this House to be a real legislative body, not a Soviet- style Congress where a few unknown individuals make decisions and then subvert the process in order to predetermine the outcome. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 additional minute to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield for a point of clarification?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the distinguished minority whip.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Speaker, what is happening here is that this is the first of two continuing resolutions which the House is going to endeavor to pass tonight. The first is simply a vehicle by which we keep the government open for the next 30 days or so, while the Congress at long last gets about the business of finishing what it should have done last year; namely, virtually all of the domestic appropriation bills. The second continuing resolution that will be voted on after this one will be an empty vehicle which is sent to the Senate, and the Senate will then use that as the carrying vehicle for the work that they do to put together all of the remaining appropriation bills. As I was saying, the Senate will then proceed to work its will on the remaining domestic appropriation bills. They will then put them together in one package in the second CR, which we will send over, and they will come back to the House for an up or down vote as a conference report. That effectively means that the House will have been shielded from any responsibility to take visible positions on virtually all of the issues involved in education, in health care, in the Labor Department programs, in housing programs, in science programs, foreign aid, you name it. That, I believe, is the purpose of this process. I do not happen to think that is a very healthy process but that is what the plan is. What that means is that tonight represented the only opportunity for Members of this body to speak to any of the issues that would be funded by this continuing resolution. Now, the rules of the House provide that if the Committee on Appropriations has not passed a new 302(b) allocation, allocating the total resources of the committee that are available to us to the various subcommittees, then the House is precluded from considering an appropriation bill. So last night the Committee on Rules waived that provision for the majority so that the majority is able to proceed with this process today, but they refused to waive it for the minority, which means that we cannot offer any significant or meaningful amendments to the continuing resolution. If we had not been denied that right, we wanted to offer a $5 billion package that essentially asked the House to, once again, approve matters which it approved in the supplemental last summer. Half of that would be the $2.5 billion that we provided for additional homeland security items, additional port protection, additional border protection, additional support to the FBI to modernize its computer system, additional translators and the like. All of that money has already been voted for by 90 percent of the Members of both parties in this House, but it has been effectively impounded by the President who declined to spend that $2.5 billion, thus leaving this country needlessly exposed on the homeland security front. The other $2 billion or so that we wanted to add represented other items that the House had already voted for: The $274 million which was badly needed for veterans medical care to clean up the backlog at veterans facilities; the $401 million which was necessary to provide aid to first responders, our police and our firemen at the local level; and $200 million to assist with anti-terrorist actions on the part of the State of Israel, for instance, all of that has been denied us because the House Committee on Rules essentially said that there should be one set of rules for the majority and another set of rules for the minority. Now, as I said earlier today on the floor, the purpose of rules in any venue is to see to it that all people are treated the same, and that is true whether you are talking about a San Francisco 49er and New York Giant football game or whether you are talking about actions on the floor of the House. We are supposed to have rules that apply equally to everybody, but thanks to the misguided and misbegotten action of the Committee on Rules that is not what we are going to have. So what that means is that this House, which is supposed to be the greatest deliberative body in the world, has been turned into something that much more clearly represents a Soviet Congress than it represents the embodiment of democratic representation. What this means is that a small group of insider Members in the Republican leadership have essentially decided ahead of time what the outcome should be on all of these appropriation bills, and now they have fixed the process so that there is no practical possibility whatsoever of changing in any way that desired outcome. That may be an effective use of power, but it is a fundamental corruption of the legislative process that goes to the heart of democratic government, and people who engage in that kind of conduct, in my view, should be ashamed of themselves. So what we are faced with is the necessity to try to use extraordinary means in order to try to gain some ability to define what actions we on this side of the aisle believe are in the best interests of the country. Mr. Speaker, I detest the idea of having to go after House traditions and normal House procedures. I do not like, for instance, to have to try to appeal the ruling of the Chair on matters, but when we are denied the legitimate exercise of our rights to define differences, which is supposed to be the subject of legislative debate, then we are left with no choice but to engage in extraordinary measures as a matter of protest. Now, we have not created this situation. The House Republican leadership and the House Committee on Rules has. I would urge them to reconsider. Yesterday, we heard all kinds of nice words about bipartisanship. The Speaker said that we should respect each other. We do not feel that much respect has been shown this institution when the normal processes of this institution are cut short for the partisan convenience of the party that happens to control this House. So I wanted to explain why it is that we on this side of the aisle are unhappy and why we will be doing what we are doing tonight. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Speaker, we are not objecting to this process tonight because we are unhappy we are in the minority. We are in the minority, and we expect to lose 99 percent of the votes around here. But we do not expect to have denied to us the opportunity to at least engage in the debate. My question is, what is the majority party afraid of? Our colleagues in the majority have the votes, and if they think we are wrong, outvote us. But the Committee on Rules has taken us beyond that. What the Committee on Rules has done is that they have said, ``Sorry, we are not going to even allow an opportunity to raise any of these questions.'' Now, this issue came up in March of 1999 when the Republicans were also in control. The exact same situation arose. At that time the majority party did the right thing. The Republican Party waived the rule for the majority so that we could proceed, but they also waived the rule so that we could participate equally in the process. That is what the majority party should have done this time around. They should have followed their own earlier example. I would also say that, in effect, what is happening is that the minority party is being prevented from doing its job because the majority party neglected to pass a 302 allocation. We did not make the determination on this side that that would not happen; the majority party did. So the minority party is being penalized for the inaction of the majority party. That is quaint in any legislative body.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings), a member of the Committee on Rules.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Let me simply say that in Wisconsin only cows chew cuds twice, and so we have the same concerns about the consideration of this resolution, but we have already made those concerns quite clear. I see no point in dragging it out. Let me simply say that with respect to the one difference between this resolution and the previous resolution, on this side of the aisle we agree with the provision that the gentleman is providing. I think it is a constructive provision. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

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

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, what is happening here today is that the democratic processes in the institution that is supposed to represent the finest of democratic traditions in the world are being mutilated, and I want to explain what I mean by that. The majority party for the last year has been able to prevent this House from making any significant decisions whatsoever on 90 percent of the domestic budget. They have succeeded in preventing the education, health and labor bill from coming to the floor for a vote. They succeeded in preventing the science budget, the housing budget, the veterans budget and others from coming to the floor. And now that we are past the election, they are now doing two things. By this resolution before us today, they are making it possible for the House to consider two resolutions, both of which will be sent to the Senate. The first resolution will continue the authority to keep the government open for 1 month, and the second resolution will be used as a vehicle to which the Senate will then attach all of the remaining appropriation bills as they have been worked out in the Senate. It will be attached to that vehicle and then sent back here for an up-or-down vote, and no Member will have any opportunity to affect that package in any way whatsoever. That will mean that we will have gone an entire year without any degree of accountability for the actions of either the majority party or the minority party. Our last opportunity to affect the content of that budget comes today on these resolutions. We are being denied again an opportunity to provide any meaningful alternative to the proposition that is being put together by the majority party. The House rules say that if the Committee on Appropriations has not passed what is called a 302(b) allocation under which it takes its spending authority and allocates that authority to the 13 different subcommittees, if the committee has not done that, then the rules of the House say that the House cannot consider an appropriation bill. The Committee on Rules agreed to waive that provision for the majority, so they are allowing the majority to bring a bill to the floor allowing for a huge amount of spending, but they did not afford the same privilege to the minority. That means that we cannot offer any meaningful amendment to the funding level being provided by the majority. There are reasons for rules. Whether you are talking about a New York Giants-San Francisco 49ers game or whether you are talking about the House floor, the purpose of rules is to see to it that everybody is treated the same. What this rule in essence says is that there is only one team that can even touch the ball; that is, the Republican majority team. And it says the Democratic team can have no opportunity whatsoever to have any impact on the outcome. That destroys the ability of this place to be a legitimate representative body. After the election, I was watching McNeil-Lehrer, and I noticed in the panel that they had, the moderator asked the panel, what were the roles going to be for the Republican and Democratic Party after the election. When they discussed the Democratic Party, Tom Oliphant, the distinguished columnist, said, ``Well, they are now the minority party and so it is their responsibility to offer alternatives to the majority party's propositions.'' That is correct. But we are being denied by this rule by the majority party the opportunity to offer meaningful alternatives. That is bad for us, but it is also bad for the majority party because it means that there is no way to hold the majority party accountable for its decisions and there is no way to judge whether their decisions or ours are better, or more in tune with the country's needs. That is a disastrous result in what is supposed to be the most representative body on the face of the Earth. If we had not been boxed out by the illegitimate action of the Committee on Rules, what we wanted to do is to offer a simple amendment which would put the House on record supporting expenditures which the majority party has already voted for on the supplemental. We wanted to make certain that the $2.5 billion in homeland security items, for port security, for border security, for FBI computers, et cetera, we wanted to make certain that those contingent appropriations which were frozen by the President, we wanted to give the House an opportunity to say that those items should be provided in this continuing resolution. The President has stonewalled on those $2.5 billion worth of items. And we also wanted the House to reaffirm its support for $275 million of additional veterans medical care, for $200 million additional funding to fight terrorism in the Middle East, which we would have provided to Israel. The election reform money which both parties posed for political holy pictures about early on, we wanted to provide that. And we are being denied the opportunity to provide all of it. None of that adds to the spending level of the Republican-approved budget resolution. It does add to the level in this bill, but this bill is substantially below that resolution. Yet we are being denied the opportunity to strengthen the homeland security of this country because of the partisan needs of the majority party. I think that is illegitimate. The other thing we wanted to do is to see to it that the Securities and Exchange Commission is funded at the level promised in the Sarbanes-Oxley bill so that we could in fact put our money where our mouth is and afford investors decent protection from corporate fraud in their balance statements and in their accounting. We are being denied by the Republican majority the opportunity to do that as well. That is why we are going to be asking this body to vote against the previous question on the rule so that we can in fact offer this legitimate amendment, to offer these items which all of you, at least 90 percent of you on the majority party side of the aisle have already voted for. The items I am asking people to allow have already been supported by 90 percent of the Republicans and Democrats in the Senate and the House. I do not think that would be too much to ask if this House were a legitimate democratic body, which apparently the House is not. Democracy in this House is being shredded. The Republican Party is simply afraid to vote on these issues because they know that they would either lose the vote or else have a substantial segment of the American people saying to them, ``What in God's name were you thinking when you turned those items down?'' This is an illegitimate action, an illegitimate, arrogant and antidemocratic, small ``d,'' operation, and the majority party ought to be ashamed of themselves.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, let me just point out, the name of our party is not the Democrat Party. It is the Democratic Party. We would appreciate it if we would at least be called by our proper name, okay?