Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. You need $90 million to keep up with the No Child Left Behind Act, and on a per-student basis, you have to look at this on a per-student basis to see what is happening on a per-child basis.

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

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. No, it is not.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, there is no question that if the majority party on the Committee on Appropriations were left to its own devices that we would have a very respectable and decent education appropriation bill. The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula) is a strong champion of education, and so is the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young). But the fact is when that committee began to move forward to produce such a bill which provided those increases for education, they were cut off at the pass by the most reactionary elements in the majority party caucus. Those elements went to leadership and said, if you appropriate one dime for education above the President's budget, we are going to bring down the labor, health, education bill. They further said that, until you produce an education funding level freeze at the level of last year for education, that they would not support any other appropriation bills. That is why we are wrapped around the axle. Let me continue with other categories. Title I, the No Child Left Behind Act promised that we would have an increase in funding of at least $4 billion this year. Instead, they got a $1 billion increase financed by other cuts in other education programs aimed at the same children. Then if we take a look at handicapped education, we increased them annually by over $1 billion over the last 3 years. We wanted to do so again on a bipartisan basis, both sides of the aisle. Under the President's budget, we cannot do that. The President's budget falls half a billion dollars below where we would be if we kept the trajectory going that we had established the last 3 years for that program. Mr. Speaker, I would invite the gentleman to review the report which we just issued called ``All Rhetoric, No Resources.'' It will demonstrate the facts that I have tried to illustrate.

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

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Speaker, despite the comments that have been made about highway funding levels, the language is clear. It indicates that the total obligations will be $27,700,000,000, instead of the $31.799 billion that were available in the previous fiscal year. That $27 billion level cannot be changed unless a subsequent appropriation bill passes to change it. So the fact is that this bill does single out highways for a reduction below last year, when almost no other program is asked to bear that kind of a reduction. That will result in 200,000 fewer construction jobs.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Speaker, that is one of the most selective and interesting rewrites of history I have heard on this House floor in at least an hour. I would like to give a little different interpretation of what has happened to education funding. It is most certainly true that in each of the last 5 years we have provided substantial increases for education. That was, and the Record will show, that was because the Democratic Members of this House had to pull the majority party Members of this House kicking and screaming into supporting higher education levels. Last year, the gentleman talks about the very large increase in education funding we had. That is correct. That is because the Democrats on the Committee on Appropriations again pounded the White House day after day after day until we forced them to accept a $4 billion increase in the President's education budget. So that means that over the last 5 years, on average, with prodding from the minority party in this House and the then minority party in the Senate, the Democratic minority, we had an average increase per year for education funding of about 13 percent. The President followed that up with the No Child Left Behind Act, which most of us supported. That promised a continuation of that very steep trajectory for education funding. This is too small a chart to show it, but the chart nonetheless demonstrates what that trajectory was. That No Child Left Behind Act promised that we would provide very substantial increases in funding for the next 5 years to continue the progress that we had made the last 5 years. Instead, this continuing resolution is freezing the budget funding for education. That means that, on a per child basis, it is cutting education funding for the kids who need it most. The gentleman is shaking his head no. Check the numbers on per child appropriations for children who need funding for language programs, children who do not speak English as a first language. They are being cut in the President's budget by 10 percent in real terms on a per child basis.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt), the minority leader.

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

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. That is right. Instead of having a disagreement between the House and the Senate, we have a disagreement between the House and the House.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I know the gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young) is suffering some back pain today; and, unfortunately, it is affecting his ability to read. If he would read the language, it says, ``Notwithstanding any other provision of this joint resolution, the annual rate of operations for Federal aid highway programs for fiscal year 2003 shall be $31,799,104,000, provided that total obligations to this program while operating under joint resolution making continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2003 shall not exceed $27.7 billion unless otherwise specified a subsequent appropriation act.'' That means, baby, all you get to spend as far as the States are concerned is 27.7 billion bucks, unless you pass different language than the language that is in this resolution. I do not know if the gentleman is reading in Turkish, Russian, or Egyptian, but if you read it in English, that is what it says. If you vote for this rule, you are voting to cut highway funding by $4 billion. And as Lily Tomlin used to say, ``That's the truth!''

Mr. OBEY. If the gentleman will continue to yield, the gentleman is right, and what is at stake here is 200,000 jobs.

Mr. OBEY. Right.

Mr. OBEY. That is correct. This resolution cuts the amount that would be available to the States to $27.7 billion. So the gentleman's State is going to lose $54 million, my State will lose $69 million, if it is carried to term, and so on.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield, you bet. We have the Agriculture bill. We have the Labor H, could be ready very quickly if they would let us bring it to a vote. We have the HUD independent offices bill. We have a number of others as well.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield, the language in this CR----

Mr. OBEY. Right now we are operating under the level the gentleman described, yes.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, what now? We have since Labor Day focused almost exclusively on Iraq, Iraq, and then Iraq. And then Iraq. We have now finally finished that business. And the average American family is sitting home and they are saying, ``You know, I wonder when those guys and gals are going to get around to doing the stuff that deals with our family security. I wonder when they are going to get around to dealing with unemployment. I wonder when they are going to get around to dealing with the fact that people are losing their shirts in their 401(k)'s, their now 101(k)'s.'' And they are asking, ``I wonder when they are going to get around to protecting the integrity of our pension plans from corporate marauders. And I wonder when they are going to get around to dealing with the fact that a lot of Americans have lost their health insurance in the last year.'' I do not understand this institution's reaction. I know virtually every Member of this House, some a lot more than others. And I know that when I talk to each and every one of you that you are, individually, people of good will who want to solve the country's problems. But when you get together, the collective result of that individual talent and concern is disastrous. Because instead of producing a determination to attack problems, what apparently is produced is a determination to avoid them. Now, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Frost) has described the confusion on the Republican side of the aisle today. Here is what I think is at the root of that confusion. You have passed a budget resolution at the beginning of the year that told fibs. It pretended that you could hold education spending to a level that would stop and grind to a halt the progress we have made in expanding investments in education over the past 5 years. You pretended you could afford a health care budget which cuts a billion and a half dollars out of health care services to the American people. And you have pretended a lot of other things, and now those pretensions are coming home to roost. And so the leadership is trying to figure out how they can get out of town without having to face up to those irreconcilable contradictions. And so their original game plan today was to have a continuing resolution that puts us over until November 22, after the election, conveniently putting aside until after the election all issues. The administration, which has made so much of its desire to see accountability in our schools, is doing as much as it can possibly do to avoid accountability for each and every one of us in our stewardship. And so what happened in the Republican Caucus is that some of the Members got a little ditsy, and they said, ``Gee whiz,'' some Members said for instance, ``You mean we are going to go home without dealing with the drought? Gee, we want more time to deal with the drought.'' So all of the sudden the November 22 date is changed to next week because the leadership still has not figured out how to resolve that because they have a problem. Because while some of their Members want to attack the drought problem, their President, our President, has already said that he is going to veto a bill which pays for those drought expenses. So they have that problem. Then they have the huge problem of wanting to hide from their constituents the fact that they were bringing progress in education investments to a screeching halt. They have their votes from the No Child Left Behind Act which promised all kinds of progress on teacher training, on handicapped education, on education for kids who need help with language skills. They have that vote, but the problem is that bill does not deliver the money. The appropriation bill that delivers the money is being bottled up because they do not want to have to admit that they are not going to provide the money to fund the promises they made just a few months ago. So as a result this place looks silly. We have done our dead-level best as an institution to try to deal with the challenges facing us in Iraq. We ought to turn to those same challenges at home. This continuing resolution does not allow us to do that. I will, therefore, vote against it. I am against any continuing resolutions that are more than one or two days at a time. When I see that the majority has scheduled action on education and on health care, I will vote for them and not until.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, the answer is very simple. When they had the will to pass a bill, they passed it. When they do not want to pass the bills, they do not pass them. They were not trying to hide what they were doing on Defense, but they are trying to hide what they are doing on Education and Agriculture and Transportation.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I have no quarrel with the bill that will come to the floor after this resolution. But I do most certainly have a quarrel with the fact that the conferees deep-sixed the Wellstone amendment, an amendment which would have said that no American corporation which tries to move its mailing address to Bermuda or some other exotic place in order to escape their fair share of taxes may participate in obtaining government contracts. I think the practice of American corporations moving their mailing address, especially in time of war, to escape their duty to help pay for the services which they are provided with by the government, and to help pay for the common defense, is outrageous and indefensible. I think it is un-American. And I find it ironic that the bill which goes to the heart of our obligation to defend our country does not take that added step of also protecting our taxpayers. Just 8 days ago, the General Accounting Office reported that $2.7 billion in Federal contracts in fiscal 2001 went to four corporate expatriates. The GAO estimated that a substantial share of those contracts were defense related. The joint tax committee has estimated that over the next 10 years corporate expatriates will cost us more than $4 billion in funds that could help pay for our Nation's security or any other government obligation. Now, these are not foreign corporations. These are American corporations with their plants, employees and headquarters in your districts and mine all around the country. They simply incorporated in Bermuda or some other exotic place with nothing more than a post office box, and they do so for no other reason than to avoid helping pay their fair share of the Nation's costs, including the Nation's defense costs. That action is obscene. Those companies have abandoned our country at its most critical hour, but they still seek to profit directly from the challenges we face. They should be ashamed of themselves and so should any Congress that avoids their responsibilities in bringing that kind of behavior under control. This House adopted the DeLauro amendment, which was aimed at this same item; and the Senate adopted the Wellstone amendment. And, yet, the Congress, as usual, has found a way to make it easy for some of the most privileged corporations in this country to avoid their responsibilities to the Nation, to their workers, and to the taxpayers. It is a shameful sham. We should not reward them with defense contracts or any other contracts with the Federal Government. We have now finished debating Iraq. My question is, What is next, boys and girls? Are we going to do anything at all to deal with our domestic problems before we run home to our constituents pretending that we have finished our job? I want to know what we will do to protect pensions. I want to know what we will do to provide a decent education budget, a decent housing budget, a decent environmental protection budget. I want to know what we are going to do to protect family security as well as national security. But, evidently, what this institution is going to do is to pass two appropriations bills, military construction and DOD, and then cut and run and go home. I do not think this ought to be known as the 107th Congress. I think it ought to be known as the Cut and Run Crowd.

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.