Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

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

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, is this the resolution that puts over all of our work until after the election?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, could I ask that the Clerk read the resolution? It is four lines long.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Speaker, this resolution would extend the budget until November 22, past the election. What it means is that this House is giving up on its responsibilities to do the public's business. It means this House is willing to go home and say, no agriculture bill, no education budget, no housing budget, no science budget, no environmental budget, no drought relief, no extension of unemployment compensation, no way to fix the problems under Medicare for providers. They want to neglect all of that and then go home and say to their constituents, ``Oh, what a good boy am I. Reelect me again.'' As far as I am concerned, Mr. Speaker, this is a spectacular conversation of impotence and incompetence. And I think that the public will take note of the fact that since Labor Day we have focused only on issues such as Iraq. But for the past 84 days this House has refused to do its basic business of passing the budget so that our localities would know what they are going to get by way of urban development grants; so that the NIH would know whether they are going to get the 15 percent increase that both parties had promised them; and so that our school districts would know how to plan. All of that is going to go out the window because it is convenient for the majority party caucus to get out of town so that they can hide from the public the choices they would make on education, on agriculture, on environment. What a wonderful record. What a wonderful approach when you are asking the country to renew your lease for another 2 years on this Chamber. This is indeed a pitiful performance. We will shortly have a choice before us. I will have a motion to recommit which, instead of delaying all of these decisions until November 22, will simply say that we will extend the budget until next Monday. That will keep us in town doing the public's business. You will have a chance to vote on that recommittal versus the base resolution. If you vote for the base resolution, you will be getting out of town without doing your work. If you vote for my recommittal motion, you will be voting to do your work before getting out of town. The choice is up to every Member of this body. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, as my friends on this floor know, I usually quote my old friend Archie the Cockroach in trying to comment on actions being taken by an institution which is often as wacky as the Congress of the United States, and so last night I went all through my book from Archie and I could not find anything that was appropriate, because this situation is so ludicrous. So I finally, looking for inspiration, thought of Ronald Reagan. In the movie King's Row, he woke up and was told that he had lost his legs in a train accident. He looked up from his hospital bed and said, ``Where's the rest of me?'' Mr. Speaker, if I were the Federal budget, I would be saying to the Republican leadership of this House, ``Where's the rest of me?'' Because even though we have been in session since January, the only two appropriation bills that are going to become law if this resolution passes, the only two appropriation bills that will become law before the election, will be the defense appropriation bill and the military construction appropriation bill. So those Members in Congress who think that the only thing government ought to do is defend the shores and deliver the mail will get at least half their wish. At least they will be defending our shores, but we will not even have passed the bill that deals with the post office. And we also will not have passed the bills that deal with the Nation's education budget, the Nation's health care budget, the Nation's environmental protection budget, the Nation's science budget, nor will we have passed the agriculture appropriations bill. We will just put the government on automatic pilot. Also, this Congress will run out of town, not doing one blessed thing to deal with the problem of unemployment compensation, not doing one blessed thing to deal with the shortfall that many States have in the Medicare program, not doing anything at all to help the providers with respect to any givebacks on the Medicare program, and not doing anything to stimulate the economy by providing additional jobs for highway construction. This Congress has lost all claim to respectability. It has lost all claim to go to the public and ask for another 2-year contract, because this Congress, at the direction of the Republican leadership of this House, is walking away from its responsibilities to deal with virtually every domestic problem we have. The American public thinks that we ought to be good enough to walk and chew gum at the same time, and they think that now that we have spent every day but Labor Day dealing with Iraq that we ought to be able to deal with our own domestic problems. But, instead, the Republican majority wants to walk out of town and say, ``Oh, sorry, folks, we ran out of time.'' I do not think people will be very impressed by that. Now, I know this is not the wish of the majority on the Committee on Appropriations. They are as willing as we are on the minority side to do our job, but they are not being allowed to do it by their own caucus, by their own leadership. So people will go home and what will they talk to their voters about instead? Oh, they will have one rollcall in this pocket talking about the fact that we have memorialized ourselves about National Motherhood Week, and they will have another rollcall in another pocket talking about some other useless resolution that has passed putting us on the side of God, motherhood, and apple pie. But when it comes to actually attacking the domestic problems, oh, no, no, too busy. The fact is that we know what the reason is. There is an internal war in the Republican Caucus. They have lost their ability to govern. They have lost their ability to do things. And so the only thing they can apparently agree on is not to do things. That is some recommendation to take to the American people. So, Mr. Speaker, I am going to vote against this rule, and I am going to vote against the resolution that follows because, in my view, any resolution which says we are going to stop doing what we are supposed to do until November 22, way after the election, is a spectacular abdication of responsibility not worthy of this body.

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. I am going to give the gentleman from Georgia my Alibi Ike of the Cosmos Award tonight for that speech. Let us put the record straight. The Senate has not passed three appropriation bills which the House has sent to it, the Legislative bill, Interior, Treasury and Post Office. That constitutes about 10 percent of the entire domestic budget. The House has not yet considered 90 percent of the domestic budget, the eight appropriation bills that it is still to deliver. The gentleman says, ``Oh, you cannot sit down and negotiate an appropriations bill with the other body if they have not passed a budget resolution.'' We just did. We just passed a DOD bill today, and we just passed a Military Construction bill today, and both of those passed despite the fact that, guess what, the Senate had not passed an irrelevant budget resolution on those either. All it proves is that when the majority party in this House wants to pass an appropriation bill, they can find a way to do it, and to duck it, when they want to duck it, I tell you they are World Series class in ducking them, and that is what they have done this year. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Chairman, I really do not feel like saying anything else. We have chewed this cud so many times now, as they say in my part of the country. The fact is that there are many Republicans and many Democrats who want to do right by the children of this country, and the fact is if the Committee on Appropriations had been allowed to proceed with its original plans, we would have produced a budget which did, in fact, keep the promises of the No Child Left Behind Act. Instead, however, because of an internal war in the Republican Caucus, the committee has been reduced to going through these motions time and time again. We are being slow walked and slow danced to the end of the session. The leadership desperately wants to get out of town without ever having voted on some of these issues until after the election. We cannot do much about that in the minority except point it out and hope that the people who want action to improve the quality of their schools will understand and hold this Congress accountable, even though this Congress is turning itself into a pretzel trying to avoid accountability on issues as crucial as education. I regret that. I know that a lot of Members of the majority party as well regret it, but they have a leadership which is being held captive by their most extreme Members and they are as helpless as we are on this right now. With that, Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida for trying to do the right thing, even though he has been blocked many times in trying to meet his responsibility, and I thank the Chair for his courtesy. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Frankly, I do not know what the original language was that the gentleman was shown. All I know is the language that we are voting on right now, and it contains a $4 billion cut from the existing continuing resolution.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey).

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, virtually all of us want to go home. I think probably the only Member of this body who wants to stay here late into the evening, every evening, because he enjoys it so much, is the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha). But outside of him, we would all like to go home and campaign. Saturday I am scheduled to be in a little town called Thorp, Wisconsin. It is my favorite political event of the year. It is the annual Clark County Democratic dinner. We meet in the basement of the local VFW hall, and we have the best doggone kielbasa in the United States of America; and I always look forward to that dinner. But I think, in light of what we are neglecting to do in this House, that we should all be here. So I think I ought to be willing to forego that kielbasa and sauerkraut and chicken dinner, and I think all of the other Members of this House ought to be willing to forego what they have planned so that we can get some of our real work done. And that is what this recommit motion tries to accomplish. The resolution before us is yet another continuing resolution to take us through next Friday. That means that this House will do nothing on appropriation bills between now and next Friday because we have not yet caused inconvenience for Members. I think the time has come to inconvenience Members in order to try to up the pressure on this place to actually get our work done. So this recommittal motion simply changes the date of the continuing resolution before us from October 18 to October 12. That means, in essence, it is a 1-day CR. It means that I am willing personally to vote to extend the government every day by 1 day in order to keep people here on the job working. But I am not willing to vote for long-term CRs in the absence of an assurance by the leadership on the majority side of the aisle that they will schedule the education appropriation bill, the housing appropriation bill, the agriculture appropriation bill, and the other appropriation bills that we ought to pass to do our duty before we go home. We have just finished dealing with what we consider our obligations to be with respect to our differences with Iraq. We need now to turn homeward and deal with our obligations to deal with the problems here at home, and the purpose of this continuing resolution is to accomplish that. I would urge a ``yes'' vote for the motion to recommit because that is the only way that we can force this House to actually bring to the floor the appropriation bills that could allow this Congress to conclude our work with a note of pride. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I am not sure I got the full import of the gentleman's question. All I can say is, if we read the language of the provision in the CR before us, it says that ``total obligations for this program while operating under joint resolutions making continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2003, shall not exceed $27,700,000,000 unless otherwise specified in a subsequent appropriations act.'' Now, there may be a deal in the works to raise that number in the future. But the number we are voting on right now, in fact, contains a $4 billion reduction in what can be made available to States in comparison to the CR that we are operating under right now.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1\1/2\ minutes. Mr. Speaker, the fact is over the last 5 years we had average annual increases for education of almost 13 percent. That progress is being brought to a screeching halt. The dollar amount in aggregate is being frozen at last year's level, which means because there are more students, especially in these needy categories, that on a per-student basis we have a real reduction in education at a time when State governments and local governments are also pulling the plug on education. The result: contrary to No Child Left Behind, there are going to be hundreds of thousands of kids who are left behind and they are going to be the most vulnerable kids in America.

Mr. OBEY. I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Isakson).

Mr. OBEY. No, I do not grant that at all and I do not verify that. The fact is the increases are not being continued by the continuing resolution. The increases are being brought to a screeching halt. You are now freezing the progress we have been making on a bipartisan basis for the last 5 years. That is what you are doing. Your own subcommittee on appropriations, own Republican members know that is not enough. They want to provide more but they are not being allowed to do so by the most right wing elements of your caucus. That has been in the newspapers. You have all told me that. You know what the facts are.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. Mr. Speaker, the fact is this continuing resolution is a cut of $372 million below the President's budget and a 2.4 percent cut in real terms after adjusting for inflation and enrollment growth. That translates on a per-child basis into a cut. We can pretend it is not in Washington, but at the local level, that is a cut that is felt. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. Crowley).

Mr. OBEY. No, it is not.

Mr. OBEY. This chart showed the appropriation increases that we had the last 5 years.

Mr. OBEY. The last 5 years. Then it shows the fact that the President's budget essentially freezes that appropriated number.