Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), the distinguished ranking member of 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. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Rivers).

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 9 minutes. Mr. Speaker, first of all, I too would like to thank all of the members of the staff involved. Some of the names have been mentioned, but I will mention them again. On the Democratic side, the associate staff: Dale Lewis, Scott Boule, Chris Kukla, Becky Salay, Sarah Walking, Charles Dujon, Sonia Virdi, Matthew Braunstein; as well as Harry Glenn, and all of the associates of the Republican subcommittee members. On the full committee: Jim Dyer, staff director, Dale Oak and Therese McCaullafe, Graig Higgins, the subcommittee staff director; Laurie Rowley, Carol Murphy, Susan Firth, Meg Snyder, Francine Salvador Mack, Nicole Wheeler; and on the Democratic side, David Reich, Cheryl Smith, Linda Pagelson, David Pomerantz, Norris Cochran, Lin Liu, Nick Ferraro; the Democratic staff director on the Committee on Appropriations Scott Lily, and also Christina Hamilton and Paul Carver. Each and every one of them know how hard they have worked and the Members certainly know how hard they have worked. They have gone nights without sleep; and they have, in the process, performed the kind of public service that the American public would be proud of, if they just knew about it. Secondly, I would like to thank both the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula). The gentleman from Florida has kept his commitments in terms of seeing to how this bill would be handled at the end of the year, as he has kept his commitments all year long. And the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula) has worked just not in his capacity on this subcommittee, but in his previous incarnation as the chair of the Subcommittee on the Interior. He has always performed his duties with grace and with fairness. It was indeed a pleasure to work with him and his staff. I think that we have demonstrated on this bill that when it is approached in a bipartisan way, good things happen, not just for this institution, but the country. I would like to say that I think this bill is an example of what a huge difference a few years make. Eight years ago when our Republican friends took over as the majority in this House, there was a cry to abolish the Department of Education, and we had some tumultuous battles on this bill. Over the last 5 years, in contrast to that, we have been able to negotiate, on average, a 13 percent increase in education funding over each of the last 5 years. This year, President Bush, in his budget submission, tried to cut that rate of increase to 5.8 percent. This bill, for education, will provide a 16 percent increase over last year. So it returns it to the bipartisan track that we were on in the previous 5 years, and it declines to accept the President's recommended reduction in the rate of increase in these bills. As a result, for instance, for Title I, which is the centerpiece of the Federal effort to see to it that no child is left behind, if I can borrow a phrase, I would say that we are very pleased to see that Title I is funded at a level of $10.35 billion, a level of 14 percent over the President's budget request and 18 percent over last year. It contains $7.5 billion for special education State grants. That is 3 percent more than President Bush sought in his budget. It is $1.2 billion, or 19 percent, more than fiscal year 2001. I know there are people in this town who would like to see this program made an entitlement. I am not one of them. I think this demonstrates that we can make great progress in funding programs without making them entitlements, and we have provided a huge increase of $2.5 billion for this program since fiscal year 2000. For teacher quality State grants, this bill is 31 percent over last year. For bilingual education State grants, it is 45 percent over the President's budget request. For after-school centers, which are badly needed, given the changing nature of our society and the strains that that puts on families with two earners outside of the house, we have provided an 18 percent increase over the President's request. We have provided for smaller learning communities to help make our larger schools more personalized and more intimate for students. We have a funding level of 14 percent over last year, and we have a variety of other, I think, fine achievements on the education front, including providing a $4,000 maximum grant for Pell grants, an increase of $150 over the request and 7 percent over last year. In the health area, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula) has already mentioned the $23 billion for the National Institutes of Health, a 15 percent increase. The National Institutes of Health are a national treasure and this committee has recognized them as such. For community health centers, we have provided $51 million more than the President requested. For the Community Access Program, to assist groups who are providing health care under safety net provisions in the law, the President's budget proposed to abolish this program. This bill funds it at $105 million. This bill contains an increase of 7 percent above last year for health professions training programs in comparison to the President's efforts to cut this program. For the Centers for Disease Control, the bill provides $597 million more than the administration's budget for items such as immunizing children. I think that is fully justified. On the mental health front, I am sad to say that it does not include the provision that was attached in the Senate to provide mental health insurance parity. I think it ought to. I think it is a tragedy that it does not. But nonetheless, on the funding levels, we provided $50 million above last year and $66 million above the President's request for mental health programs. For human services, the Low-Income Heating Assistance Program is funded at a level $300 million higher than the President requested. There are numerous other increases for programs such as Head Start, the Social Service block grant, and the Child Care Development block grant. In the Department of Labor, dislocated workers will receive help, which is 12 percent above the President's request. Also the International Labor Program, to protect the American workforce from unfair competition through the production of foreign products producing with child labor or under virtual slave conditions; the conferees rejected the administration's proposal to slash this program by $76 million. We provided $148 million. That is just a short summary of what is contained in this bill. I think it is a bill worthy of support of the House. I again thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula) for his balance and graciousness throughout, and the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), the chairman of the full committee, as well. I hope that before the week is out we will be able to pass this bill, the defense and foreign operations appropriations bills, and provide decent health care and unemployment assistance to workers in this country who very badly need that help; and having done all of that, I hope that somebody can find the off button so that we may, in fact, celebrate Christmas with our families. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 12 minutes. Mr. Speaker, I certainly want to rise in support of this continuing resolution. I think the gentleman is correct. We are hoping that by a week from this coming Friday or Saturday someone will have found the off button for this Congress and will be able to actually press it and shut it down for the Christmas season. Things can always get in the way, but I hope that they do not. As the gentleman has indicated, there are about three major impediments to our adjourning remaining. One is the Labor, Health, Education appropriation bill. We are very close to agreement on that. The second is the Defense appropriations bill, to which has been added the post-September 11 anti-terrorism supplemental. And then we have the potential for a stimulus package which could either wind up being a true stimulus to the economy or just another tax boondoggle. This committee has no control over what is produced on that score. Let me simply say, I want to take a couple of minutes because of remarks made by previous speaker about what we face next year. I think it is useful to note that while this House has had many a fight this year, that all but one of the appropriation bills, that this House passed, passed with broad bipartisan support, and the Chairman of the committee and I, I think, have developed a very good working relationship on those bills. I have noted with considerable frustration the fact that some people in this institution manage with spectacular frequency to aim at the wrong targets in blaming, or in trying to assess blame for the loss of the surplus or for the fact that the House has not been able to shut down. Willie Sutton, the famous bank robber, used to say that the reason he robbed banks was that that is where the money was. The problem is that we have too many people in this institution and elsewhere, including some who make their business with a pen or a computer, there are too many people who blame the appropriations process, when, in fact, in terms of budget problems, that is where the gnats are. And as a result, we keep making the same mistakes and recreating deficits all over again. Someone said once, I do not remember if it is my favorite philosophy, Archie the cockroach, or if it was Will Rogers, one of the two, who said that experience is that quality that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again, and that is what I think this Congress will go down in history as being noted for. In 1981, this Congress passed President Reagan's budgets, and those budgets essentially quadrupled our deficits over the next few years because they separated consideration of tax matters from budget matters, and they wound up blowing a huge hole in the side of the deficit by promising very large tax cuts, which had to be paid for by borrowing a huge amount of money at the same time the defense budget was being doubled. It took us 20 years to dig out from those deficits. We finally reached the point just 3 years ago where, I think, every American and certainly most people in this institution, if not all, took great pride in the fact that we had actually turned the corner and appeared as though we would be facing a string of surpluses. Some of us thought the size of those surpluses would be more modest than others, but nonetheless, we faced a string of surpluses, and now, this Congress, in one short year, has blown them all. Mr. Speaker, I am inserting in the Record at this point an analysis prepared by the House Committee on the Budget minority staff which is entitled ``What Happened to the Surpluses,'' and if you look at that, you will see that we started this year with huge expectations, huge surpluses for as far as the eye could see, but by the end of the year, they are gone for three reasons essentially. The Dissipation of the Budget Surplus, 2001 Executive Summary 1. On November 28, 2001, President Bush claimed that his Administration ``brought sorely needed fiscal discipline to Washington.'' On the same day, OMB Director Mitchell Daniels warned the country not to expect another budget surplus until 2005--after President Bush's term of office is up. The unified budget surplus of $304 billion projected for FY 2002, and the cumulative surplus of $5.629 trillion projected over ten years, which this Administration inherited, are gone. Director Daniels blamed the economy and the fight against terrorism, and absolved the President's tax cuts. In fact, last June's tax cut is most responsible for wiping out the surplus, and the Republican stimulus plan, with further permanent tax cuts, would only dig the hole deeper. 2. The Republican tax cut contributed more than half--54.7 percent--of this worsening of the surplus, based on the bipartisan, bicameral estimates of the Budget Committee staffs. 3. The worsening of the economy, which began well before September 11, has had a significant impact in the near term (2001 to 2003). But, beyond those next few years, the effect of the economy fades as recovery takes hold. The role of increased spending--to counter terrorism and to address other priorities--is not significant. 4. On net, virtually all of today's estimated cumulative ten-year surplus of $2.604 trillion comes from the Social Security Trust Fund surplus, and is concentrated in the future years, where the outlook is most uncertain. 5. These events and estimates prove even more that the tax cut was irresponsible. It made the budget more vulnerable to unforeseen crises, economic misfortune, and ultimately the burdens of the baby boomers' retirement. . . . we brought sorely needed fiscal discipline to Washington, D.C. . . . we fought for and got a budget that was realistic, that didn't grow way beyond the means of our government.--President George Bush, November 28, 2001. . . . it is regrettably my conclusion that we are unlikely to return to balance in the federal accounts before possibly fiscal '05.--OMB Director Mitchell Daniels, November 28, 2001. OMB Director Mitchell Daniels has warned the country not to expect another budget surplus until 2005--after President George Bush's term of office is up. Director Daniels blamed the economy and the fight against terrorism; he absolved the President's tax cuts. In fact, the Administration advocates further permanent tax cuts in its economic stimulus plan. The Administration's June tax cut wiped out most of the surplus and now they want to dig the hole deeper. From May to October of this year--a period of five months-- the projected 2002 unified budget surplus of $304 billion disappeared, and the ten-year projected surplus dropped from $5.629 trillion to $2.604 trillion. More bad news is sure to come with the economic and budget updates next January. Furthermore, on net, all of today's estimated cumulative ten- year surplus of $2.604 trillion comes from the Social Security and Medicare Trust Fund surpluses. What little surplus remains is concentrated in the future years, where the outlook is most uncertain. How did this happen? Economic cycles and the terrorist attacks surely contributed. But there is no doubt that the greatest part of this fiscal injury was self-inflicted-- through an excessive tax cut. After the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) significantly increased its projections of the budget surpluses over the ten-year horizon at the beginning of this year, the Administration and Congressional Republicans proceeded to commit virtually every scrap of the projected surplus that they could to the tax cut. The Congress passed, and the President signed, a $1.346 trillion tax cut over the eleven fiscal years 2001-2011. With an additional $0.386 trillion due to increased debt service, the total budgetary hit from the tax cut comes to $1.732 trillion. Over ten years, the tax cut did leave an ostensible ``reserve'' of about $500 billion; but the vast bulk of that sum, 86 percent, arose in the last five years--at which time budget projections are most uncertain. What is even more disturbing, the Congressional Republicans, supported by the White House, pursued their tax cut to the exclusion of all other priorities, including a prudent and responsible budget reserve. In his budget address to the Congress in February, the President emphasized that he would address the programmatic needs of the government, pay down the debt, ``[a]nd then, when money is still left over,'' provide a tax cut. But on the contrary, what the White House and the congressional Republicans in fact did was to pass the tax cut first--before retiring debt, before even submitting a defense budget, before passing a farm bill, before providing Medicare prescription drug coverage, and so on. Now, well after the beginning of the next fiscal year, most of these other priorities have not been addressed, much less fulfilled, and the surplus is gone. Subsequent developments have demonstrated clearly just how imprudent this tax cut was. First, the Administration, which had been talking down the economy since early December of 2000 to sell its tax cut, saw the economy deteriorate in a self-fulfilling prophecy. And since September 11, the economy has slumped even further, while the unavoidable costs of terror-fighting and war have mounted. Because of the further slowing of the economy (and associated technical factors), economists of the House and Senate Budget Committee staffs have estimated, on a bipartisan basis, that the surpluses in 2002 through 2004 will be reduced by $80 billion, $56 billion, and $8 billion (exclusive of net interest) respectively. These revisions are in addition to the reestimates CBO already had made in August. The President and the Congress have provided $40 billion in additional funding to deal with the damage and the security threats, half of which is assumed to recur in future years. Congress appropriated $5 billion in cash assistance for the airline industry, backed $15 billion in loan guarantees, and provided the airlines with relief from liability for the disaster as well. The President's $18 billion defense budget amendment to his original placeholder request has been built into the appropriations process, and further additions for defense appear inevitable. Again, on a bipartisan, bicameral basis, the staffs of the two Budget Committees have concluded that the total costs of these initiatives, plus debt service (on these programs plus the economic reestimates) will reduce the surplus by $124 billion in 2002, and by $793 billion over 2002-2011. And these estimates ignore the stimulus bill that is making its way through the Congress, and other unaddressed priorities such as the farm bill, education, expiring tax provisions, and the ballooning individual alternative minimum tax. The President's enacted tax cut remains by far the largest single contributor to the deterioration of the budget outlook over the next ten years. Not including the stimulus bill or any other pending tax initiatives, the tax cut contributed more than half--54.7 percent--to the depletion of the surplus over the ten years 2002-2011. The worsening of the economy (including technical reestimates) has had a significant impact in the near term (2001 to 2003 or so). Economic and technical factors dominate the figures (62.8 percent) in 2002. However, beyond those next few years, the effect of the economy fades as recovery is projected to take hold. for the last five years of the budget window, the share of the tax cut in the total worsening is over 60 percent--even assuming that all of the tax provisions will sunset at the end of 2010. The impact of increased spending unrelated to the terrorist attack is small, averaging only 11.1 percent over the ten- year budget window. (For purposes of this analysis, all of the ten-year consequences of the President's request for $18 billion per year of additional defense spending are included in this non-terror-related category.) Clearly, the effect of terrorism on the spending side of the budget is far from certain at this time. However, the bipartisan Budget Committee estimates suggests that the cost of recent and likely imminent action will be a small piece of the overall puzzle. Estimated anti-terror spending averages 11.0 percent of the worsening of the surplus over the ten years. (The impact of spending is projected to take a small jump in 2011, if the tax cut actually sunsets at the beginning of that year.) Although today's estimated cumulative ten-year surplus remains as large as $2.604 trillion, that figure is not comforting on closer examination. At the beginning of this year, the bipartisan goal in the Congress was to reserve the entire Social Security and Medicare Trust Fund surpluses, which were estimated in August to total $2.955 trillion ($2.551 trillion for Social Security, and $9.404 trillion for Medicare). Thus, the remaining projected unified surplus, on net over ten years, comes totally from those Trust Fund surpluses. The surplus that remains is still concentrated in future years, and even that surplus is likely to be eroded by the new economic and budget projections in January. The deterioration of the surplus because of the weakening of the economy and the costs of resisting terrorism does not absolve the tax cut. Any future economic weakness, and any added costs for fighting terrorism will reduce the percentage of the total surplus deterioration that is directly due to the tax cut; and the reduction of that percentage might lead some to conclude that the tax cut is less at fault for the worsening budget. Taken to its extreme, this argument would say that the worse the budget gets, the less bad an idea the tax cut was. But in a broader sense, such an argument misses a more important point: recent events prove even more that the tax cut was unwise. A central element in leadership and stewardship is to be prudent, to be prepared for adverse contingencies. It is not good stewardship to choose policies that make the budget more vulnerable--to tragedies, to economic misfortune, or ultimately to the burdens of the baby boomers' retirement. The budget is almost certain to revert to unified deficit in 2002, and quite possibly in 2003 and 2004 as well. The direction for subsequent years is heavily dependent upon the state of the economy. But the Republican tax cut played a central role in these developments. This fact should serve as a cautionary flag to the Administration and Congressional Republicans who are now promoting a second tax cut which will dig the hole even deeper--a fact which should inform future policy choices, lest budget outcomes prove even worse. This document demonstrates that the tax cut that passed earlier in the year contributed to more than half of the erosion of the surplus, 54.7 percent. It points out that another significant portion was caused by the events in the aftermath of the September 11 attack on this country. And it also describes the remaining factors that led to the total disappearance of those surpluses. Now not only are we facing the likelihood of no surpluses for the next few years, we are facing the likelihood of substantial deficits. This Congress after they passed the first tax cut, this House again went on another binge, promising what it could not responsibly deliver, and wound up offering the largest corporations in this country more than $25 billion cumulatively in 15-year retroactive tax cuts in the form of the repeal of the corporate minimum tax. And it has gone on to similar spending binges on the tax side of the ledger. And the tragedy, in addition to the loss of the surplus, has been that those tax cuts have been primarily directed at the people who need them least; and, therefore, they are tax cuts which are likely to have the least stimulative effect on the economy. If you provide additional unemployment compensation to people, if you help them to pay for their health insurance if they have lost their job, they will spend, they will spend that money immediately and that will stimulate the economy. But the tax cut passed earlier in the year by our majority friends in this House, when fully effective, will provide a $52,000-a-year tax cut to the wealthiest people in this country. They will not spend most of this money. They will bank it. They will pocket it. That will not stimulate the economy. And yet that is what this Congress is hell-bent on doing. They are trying to do even more in that misguided stimulus package. So while though the Congress is doing that and while the majority leadership is doing all of that, they are objecting to efforts on the part of some of us to provide additional homeland security by providing a small $5.3 billion add-on to the budget for homeland security items as the Senate did last week. It just seems to me that that demonstrates that, in terms of protecting the country against future deficits, this House leadership has a spectacular ability to eat the hole in the doughnut, but they are not doing anything to deal with the doughnut. So I do not know where that leaves us for next year, but it does not leave us in a very promising position. And the problem is that it will not only affect the country negatively next year, it will affect the country's economy negatively for a number of years to come. We have seen this Congress, in 1 short year, squander the opportunity to use those surpluses, to do something with about the problems that still remain in Medicare, in Social Security, in prescription drugs, in quality education. So I think in the end, this Congress will go down in history as a Congress of missed opportunities, misplaced priorities. I think that in the last 4 months what we have seen is an administration which has provided a very well managed war and a very poorly managed economy. I regret that dichotomy because in the end, it will come home to bite each and every working American; and that is something that simply did not have to happen. But the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) is correct. This resolution needs to be passed. I hope that it will be the last one that needs to be passed and that we can produce these two or three bills that remain on the docket when the Congress reassembles on Wednesday next, as I understand the plan is. I do want to thank the gentleman. I hope this is the last time we are going to be on the floor with one of these. I do want to thank the gentleman for doing his duty. When you are the Chair of the Committee on Appropriations or, for that matter, any member of the Committee on Appropriations, it is your job to expose the entire institution to reality. Everyone can have political philosophy. Everyone can have their ideology. Everyone can have their political preferences. But in the end, numbers do not lie. Members of Congress can lie about the numbers, but the numbers themselves do not lie. The fact is that the gentleman has tried to stick to the facts. He has been victorious sometimes and he has been overrun sometimes. And I know if his judgment were allowed to prevail, this Congress could have ended a whole lot sooner with really very minor adjustments in the overall budget, but adjustments that nonetheless would have been very important in strengthening the security of this country. And I regret on those matters that we will have to address them at a later day. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Speaker, when people here say that the staff has worked 24 hours around the clock, I think they think that is just figuratively. That is not the case. There are a number of occasions when many staffers on this committee have had to work for literally 2 to 3 days without ever having an hour of sleep. They have worked straight through. That will have to happen again if we are to finish the defense bill and the Labor-HHS bill in accordance with the schedule. I do want to issue one warning because we have been told with respect to homeland security items, strengthening the FBI, giving greater security at the border, providing greater assistance to local public health officials in the event of an outbreak of biological or chemical attacks on this country by terrorists, we have been told do not worry, we can do that in March. There is plenty of time to do that in March. Members said that again to me yesterday. If we look at the calendar for next year, this Congress is scheduled in January to have exactly 1 full day of session on January 24 and one- half day on January 23. The following week we will meet only after 5 p.m., and the next day there will be no votes after 2. So that is about 2 legislative days in the entire month of January. If we look at the calendar for February, I see there are 6 full legislative days scheduled in February, and 3 other days where there will be no real action until after 6:30 in the evening. Give or take, that is about 7 working days. In March, the same thing, about 7\1/2\ full working days. If the Congress is to seriously consider supplemental appropriations for defense and for homeland security, to expect this Congress with that few number of working days to actually get something from the President, hold hearings, produce a bill in the House, send it to the Senate, have the Senate pass it and have those differences worked out, it would be phenomenally rare if Congress were able to act that quickly. For those who say ``Do not worry about any security issues remaining, we can get this done by March,'' I suggest to those Members to read the calendar. It is not so likely. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I would appreciate it if the majority leader could respond to one question. As he knows, one of the contentious items still remaining is the final disposition of the supplemental, and the issue within that that is causing the most heartburn is whether there will be any significant increase in funding for homeland security. In light of the fact that I note today that a coalition of Mayors and Governors have appealed to the Congress and the White House to provide funds in addition to those being requested by the administration for things such as aid to local communities for homeland security costs and aid to local communities to upgrade their public health services; and in light of the fact that Governor Engler has been one of the lead spokesmen on that, I would simply ask the gentleman, again, within the leadership circles on that side of the aisle, to urge that we listen to those expressions of concern and find a way to provide at least the amount that was provided in the Senate action early last week on homeland security.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for yielding. I hope that we can respond to the Governors' and the Mayors' request this year rather than next.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman asked what this is about. It is very simple. What this is about is the fact that thousands of Americans died 3 months ago because the country was hit by terrorists in an unexpected way. What this is about is trying to see to it that that does not happen again. That is what this is about. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks). (Mr. DICKS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

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 yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to instruct conferees.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Speaker, I think what the gentleman is pointing out is there is a word game going on here, and the fact is this is too serious for games. The gentleman from Florida is right in his heart. He knows we need this money. He knows we need it now. He knows that we need new border guards now, not in 3 months. He knows we need greater security at the FBI, the NSA and a number of other national security agencies. He knows we need it now, not later. He knows that we need a far greater protection for public health than we have right now. He knows that right now we are not prepared for chemical or biological attacks in most of the municipalities in this country. He knows all of that, but he is being required by his leadership to pretend that this motion to instruct does not in fact vitiate his leadership's instructions, because his leadership knows and he knows they cannot win a vote on the merits, because there are too many responsible Republicans who recognize that this money is needed and it is needed now. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. Mr. Speaker, I simply want to note that if anyone votes for this motion today, they are accepting the obligation of the conferees to report back a bill which is $5.3 billion higher than the bill as it left the House. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha), the distinguished ranking member of the Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, the question before us is very simple: What is more important, to adhere to an artificially imposed $20 billion spending ceiling on national security-related items, or to do what we think is necessary today to deal with our vulnerabilities? We are told by the majority Members, wait until next year. In my view, that is a slogan more befitting a Chicago Cubs fan than it is a Member of Congress. If we take a look at what my good friend, the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham), has said, he said that we have urgent military needs; yet we are being told that those needs have to be sacrificed to that $20 billion ceiling that we supposedly agreed to. There is no such ceiling. That ceiling is a fiction. When we agreed to supplemental funding requests after the events of September 11, we all agreed, and the President, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), and I are all on record publicly as admitting that that was simply a downpayment. It was not a final ceiling; it was a downpayment on meeting future needs. The needs are obvious. Members on both sides of the aisle know it. We are told we are supposed to wait. We are told that this money cannot be used now. Not true. We can hire more border guards now. We have had over 600 of them already cleared by the agency. They are just waiting to get the authority and the money to hire them. We can give the FBI a modern computer system now. Right now they have computers that cannot even do pictures. If they want to send a picture of a suspected criminal from one station to another across the country, at least one-third of their computers do not have the capacity to do that. And we are asked to wait? Give me a break. We can improve the percentage of imported food that is inspected at our borders now. Only 1 percent is inspected right now. Yet we are told that somehow, rather than doing these things, we have to adhere to this $20 billion agreement. The fact is very simple: to wait is to play Russian roulette with the safety of every American. Make no mistake about it, a great effort has been made here today to imply that Members can vote for this motion and still vote to keep the $20 billion ceiling. Members cannot. This motion specifically instructs the conferees to accept the higher dollar amount contained in the House bill for defense funding in the supplemental. It instructs the conferees to accept the higher dollar amount for assistance to New York, which is only half of that which was originally committed by the President, and it requires the conferees to accept the higher Senate amount for homeland security. That means that if the conferees do that, they will be required to bring back to this floor a bill which contains more than $5.3 billion in additional security spending above the level that would be imposed by that $20 billion artificial ceiling. Mr. Speaker, they cannot vote for this motion and then claim to be consistent with it if they bring back a bill which falls short of that $5.3 billion add-on. The American public wants these expenditures, the vast majority of Members want these expenditures, and the only reason the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) has accepted it while at the same time trying to pretend that he can still stay within that $20 billion ceiling is because he knows that his leadership could not win a vote against this motion if they took it on. That is because most Members of Congress recognize this funding is necessary, and so do most members of the American body politic. Mr. Speaker, this Congress did not say, Wait until next year, before it decided to give $24 billion in 15-year retroactive tax breaks to some of the biggest companies in this country. It did not say, Wait until next year, to the people who were given multi-billion dollar tax breaks on the estate tax. But when it comes to providing more help for the FBI, more help for the Customs people, more help for our other security agencies, we are now told, Wait until next year. Let us do it now. Vote for this motion to instruct and mean it.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Speaker, the House has a decision to make today which in the real world would have a real effect on virtually every American. We have to face this question: Are we going to provide money now to tighten security on our borders, in our ports, on our airplanes, or are we going to wait? Are we going to provide the public health services and local governments with money now to defend against bioterrorism, or are we going to wait? Are we going to accelerate our efforts to protect nuclear, biological and chemical weapons from falling into the wrong hands in the former Soviet Union now, or are we going to wait? Are we going to clean up our mail, or are we going to wait? Are we going to give the Nation's Federal, State and local law enforcement officials the additional resources they need to find al Qaeda cells operating in this country, or are we going to wait? There are people downtown who would like us to wait. They want to take the time to study these problems. They want to participate in these decisions. Perhaps they want credit for being part of the solution. That is all fine. We need their thoughts. We need their input. We need them both. Now. We are glad to give them credit, but we cannot wait. We are in a race against time. All you have to do to understand, that is, to look at the headlines every day in the newspaper, look at the pictures on your television, and listen to what our enemies say. We may have an enemy that is wounded, but they are not destroyed. They are as dangerous now as they have ever been. And while we need to do all that we can do to defeat them overseas, we have to be equally aggressive at blocking their efforts here at home. This motion is very simple. It would instruct the conferees to maintain the House position on defense which is $5.3 billion higher than the Senate's figure; it would insist that the conferees support the Senate position on homeland security which is $2.7 billion above the House bill; and it would instruct the conferees to support the Senate position for funds to help recover from the attacks of September 11, an additional $2.6 billion above the amount in the House bill. There is only one way that that can happen. Everyone here needs to understand that this instruction will put the conference at least $5.3 billion above the House-passed bill. Members may try to pretend that they cannot add, but numbers are stubborn things. If you want to tell the conferees to stay within the $20 billion limit that the House Republican leadership has mandated, then you had better vote against this instruction, because this instruction breaks that limit by at least $5.3 billion, and I make absolutely no apology for that in any way whatsoever. We cannot have it both ways. You cannot spend the same money twice. In fact, Members need to understand that this bill, in fact, will be a little bit above $5.3 billion above the House bill because we take the Senate number on sky marshals which is higher than the House number is. I would urge Members to vote for this motion to instruct because it is the right thing to do, it puts the security of the country's home front first, it recognizes that we have additional costs in running the war as well, and it forthrightly admits that this is now the time to pay for them rather than putting it off to another more convenient day. I do not think our adversaries will wait for whatever actions they contemplate. We have an obligation not to wait, either.

Mr. OBEY. I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota. (Mr. SABO asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Speaker, what we just heard from my good friend from Florida is that he is going to accept this amendment, which requires the conference committee to report back with a bill which is $5.3 billion higher than the $20 billion ceiling to which he has just referred, and yet he has suggested that somehow he is going to reserve the right to come back still under that $20 billion cap. One cannot do both at the same time. Now, I sympathize with the gentleman, because I know he is personally in favor of what we are trying to do. So are many other Members on the Republican side of the aisle. They have told me that. His problem is he has been ordered by his leadership, no matter what, to stay under the $20 billion ceiling. He knows he cannot win a vote against this motion, and so he is accepting it to try to leach all meaning from the vote. Yet you cannot hide from the fact that this motion to instruct says we should ignore the $20 billion artificial limit and meet the legitimate security needs of this country, both in the defense budget and in homefront defense. That is what this motion says. If people want to try to play it both ways, I understand the gentleman's dilemma, but that does not make his position any more real. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank).

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, continuing under my reservation, I thank the gentleman for his comments. I think that they are most accurate and, to me, what it demonstrates is that, under the most optimistic assumptions, if the Senate could proceed virtually immediately to conclude its action on that bill, we are talking about at least a week after that point before we could possibly have this bill close to coming back to the House and probably a significant number of additional days. I would add to that that, obviously, the Senate is not going to be in a position, based on what has been happening over there, to conclude this bill today. So I have asked these questions, Mr. Speaker, in order to indicate my judgment that the date of December 15 for the expiration of this continuing resolution is incredibly optimistic. I do not think it, in fact, recognizes reality, and that it seems to me that if we are trying to extend this CR to the point where we think that the Congress will actually finish its work for this year that the date would have to be significantly later, I regret to say. I would also say, continuing under my reservation, that with respect to the homeland security issue which the gentleman has mentioned, as I think has been obvious around this town for years, Congress often loses the off button at the end of the session. I do not know who has it, but, obviously, it is a whole lot easier to hit the start-up button for a congressional session than it is to find the off button at the end of the year, and whoever has that off button, I wish they would come forward, or we are going to be sitting here Christmas Eve still not having our work done. I would also say that I think one of the keys to finding that off button is a willingness to compromise. I wish I thought I could see that on the part of the White House, especially on the part of OMB, with respect to the homeland security package. What is at stake in that package is, very simply, the security of every American citizen on the home front. With something that is that important, in order for Congress to finish its business on that item, for instance, we need a spirit of cooperation on both sides. I must say I do not find that kind of spirit of cooperation coming from the White House on this item when we are called down to the White House for a meeting and, before we can get a word out of our mouths to explain what it is that our concerns are about home-based security, we are told immediately, ``Fellows, no matter what you are about to say, we are going to veto anything that you are thinking before we have even heard what it is you are thinking of.'' I do not think that is a way to promote compromise, and I do not think that creates the right atmosphere for resolving differences. So I would simply say that I believe that, while I am not going to object to this, Mr. Speaker, I think December 15 is unreasonably optimistic, unless we have a major attitude adjustment on the part of OMB, and I have not detected a spectacular capacity of that agency to provide that.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, I would first yield to the gentleman from Florida for an explanation of his request, after which I have a series of questions I would like to put to him about it.