Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, continuing under my reservation, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) who wanted to make one additional point.

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, continuing under my reservation, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards), the second ranking Democratic member on the Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development.

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time under my reservation, I thank the gentleman very much for his comments, and I totally agree with them. Madam Speaker, continuing under my reservation of objection, I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, continuing under my reservation, I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Meek) who is very concerned about the security gaps at our ports.

Mr. OBEY. I am happy to yield to the gentleman under my reservation for that purpose, Madam Speaker.

Mr. OBEY. Reserving the right to object, Madam Speaker, I do not intend to object since I support this continuing resolution; but I rise in order to do a couple of things: first of all, to try to ascertain exactly what the schedule is expected to be around here for the remainder of the week; and, second, to try to focus the attention of the House on the linkage that exists between our need to pass this continuing resolution and our inability to finish bills such as the Department of defense appropriations bill, which the committee has tried mightily to produce as a bipartisan product. I am wondering if the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), under my reservation, I am wondering if he can tell me if he has any idea what the schedule is going to be for the remainder of the week.

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

Mr. OBEY. I thank the gentleman for his comments. I think they are most important and ought to be heard by everyone. Madam Speaker, further reserving the right to object, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey).

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, continuing my reservation of objection, I thank the gentleman very much for his comments. Madam Speaker, before I withdraw my reservation, I would like to bring to the attention of the House two additional matters with respect to this matter. I note and I am now reading from a story in the New York Times today which reads as follows: ``Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network held detailed plans for nuclear devices and other terrorist bombs in one of its Kabul headquarters. The Times discovered the partly burned documents in a hastily abandoned safe house in the Karte Parwan quarter of the city, written in Arabic, German, Urdu and English. The notes give detailed designs for missiles, bombs and nuclear weapons. There are descriptions of how the detonation of TNT compressed plutonium into a critical mass, sparking a chain reaction and ultimately a thermonuclear reaction. ``Both President Bush and the British Prime Minister are convinced that bin Laden has access to nuclear material, and Mr. Bush said earlier this morning that al Qaeda was seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. ``The discovery of the detailed bomb-making instructions, along with studies into chemical and nuclear devices, confirms the West's worse fears and raises the specter of plans for an attack that would far exceed the September 11 atrocities in scale and gravity. Nuclear experts say the design suggested bin Laden may be working on an fission device similar to Fat Man, the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. However, they emphasize it was extremely difficult to build a viable warhead.'' The story goes on. That is just one explanation of why the amendment that we seek to bring to the floor after this continuing resolution is approved, why that amendment contains $1 billion aimed at keeping weapons of mass destruction away from terrorists, including the items discussed most eloquently by the gentleman from Texas. I would simply say, Madam Speaker, there has been considerable misunderstanding about what the genesis of this amendment is. Let me simply say, Madam Speaker, that immediately after the need became apparent, the gentleman from Florida and I both instructed our staffs to review all of the agency requests for additional funds that might legitimately be considered by this body in order to strengthen homeland security; and we produced for discussion purposes a document which listed items Tier One, Tier Two, Tier Three, in the order of what people considered to be their importance. Some of them are funded, some of them are not, under the base bill. We feel that if there had not been intervention at a higher level in this institution, I feel strongly that we would have had a bipartisan amendment presented to the committee yesterday and to this House, whenever the bill is considered, which would have had us stand as one, just as we did a few weeks earlier when we passed with no dissenting votes the first down payment of $40 billion that the Speaker played a very constructive role in helping to negotiate. Let me simply say that I understand why our friend on the majority side of the aisle and the committee yesterday could not vote with us on the amendments that we were proposing. I also understand that, in their hearts, many of them would have liked to. I have an observation to make about that which has been, in my view, willfully misunderstood by one person in OMB who attended a meeting in the White House last week and willfully misdescribed to the press since. When I was at the White House, I simply made this observation about Congress as an institution. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the operation of the White House or any other branch of government. What I simply observed was this: When each of us is elected, we come to this body as politicians. All we prove when we win our first election is that we know how to win an election. We then come to this body and seek to become legislators as well as politicians, and that process is furthered by each of us being given a committee assignment. After we are given that committee assignment, we learn the business over which that committee has jurisdiction. Some Members of this House learn it awfully well on both sides of the aisle. The point I was trying to make is that for any legislative body to be a self-respecting legislative institution, there has to be a fair balance between the political requirements that sometimes drive the party leadership of both parties and the substantive legislative requirements that should drive the committees of this institution. In my view, when the leadership of the other party seeks to intervene and shut off the judgment of the committee that has responsibility for the subject matter at hand, there is nothing wrong with that happening occasionally. That is the job of the leadership in both parties. But when it happens routinely, especially on matters this sensitive, then what happens is that this body becomes more and more strictly a political rather than a legislative institution. That is not good for us, that is not good for the country, and that is the point I am trying to make. It seems to me that if the committee had been left to its own devices, we would have had a significantly uncontroversial proposal to make to the House, which would have increased funding for military expenditures associated with the war. It would have added these additional items which I believe are not at all controversial and are badly needed to plug some of the security holes, and we would have also assured that the original commitment made to New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia would have been maintained. That is the purpose of what we were trying to do yesterday. I urge the White House and I urge every Member of this House to, please, before they make up their mind about how they are going to vote on whatever rule is attached to the Defense Appropriations bill, I urge every Member to simply review line-by-line what it is that is being proposed. If they do, I think that you will find that the vast majority of members of both parties would recognize the substantive value of what it is we are trying to do. It just seems to me that that is our job. I also want to point out again, lest anyone think we are trying to ``bust the budget,'' each and every add-on to the homeland security package, each and every item in that bill contains as part of that item the following language: ``Provided further that such amounts shall be available only to the extent that an official budget request that includes designation of the entire amount of the request as an emergency requirement, as defined in the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, is transmitted by the President to the Congress.'' What that language means, Madam Speaker, is that if this money were to be provided, not a dime could be spent unless the President later agreed that each and every one of those items represented an emergency that needed to be funded. If, in the judgment of the President after reviewing our arguments, he decided that spending could wait for another day, that is the way it would be. He would maintain total control over the expenditures. But we believe it is crucial to provide this, because we have talked to the FBI, the CIA, the National Security Agency, to many other agencies of government, and we are convinced that this is necessary for the good of the country. We have stimulus packages floating around here being promoted by both parties. I will not comment on what I think of them. But the fact is that if we want to stimulate the economy, the number one requirement is to restore public confidence in our ability to travel and people's ability to go into public places without fear, and that is what we attempt to do. That could do more to restore economic confidence than virtually anything else this body will do. So I urge each and every Member to review this. And I repeat, we are perfectly willing at any time to grant unanimous consent for that Defense bill to come up today or tomorrow, provided only that we have an opportunity to vote on these three amendments. Surely that is not too much to ask. Madam Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, this motion is very straightforward. It says the conferees should bring back a conference report for the Labor-HHS appropriations conference that includes House-passed levels for education. As I think we all know, the President's budget provided for a 5.6 percent increase in education funding over the previous year. That contrasted to an average of a 13 percent increase in each of the previous 5 years. The bill that the House passed contained a 17 percent increase over last year, and that passed by an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 373 to 43. The bill passed by the other body, in contrast, does not provide the funding levels we need for education. It falls $525 million short of the House level. The House bill provides $7.7 billion for special education part b State grants, which is $375 million more than the Senate. The House bill provides $10.5 billion for title I grants, $300 million more than the Senate. For teacher-quality activities, the House bill is $135 million over the Senate. The House bill for bilingual education provides $700 million, which is $100 million more than the Senate. It has a variety of other programs in the education area but the House provides more adequate support than does the Senate bill, in my view. Now, we all know that money alone does not produce quality education, but one cannot provide quality education without money. I think our bill, the bill that passed the House, is a very strong effort to do that. Also we have to keep the door open for higher education to families from all across the country. The problem we face is that we provided a major increase for Pell Grants in the bill that passed the House; but we are now told that because of the deteriorating economy, with more students enrolled in college than expected and the like, that all of the increase that the House provided will be needed just to maintain the current maximum grant level of $3,750 per student. In other words, we will have to come up with even more money for Pell Grants, or college students will get no increase at all for their grant award for this year. So this motion simply instructs the conferees on this bill to provide no less than the level of resources for education that the House has already agreed to. I would urge adoption of the motion. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews). (Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer). (Mr. Roemer asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY

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

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, I understand this is a request to file the CJ by midnight tonight?

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. Mr. Speaker, a number of years ago, right after the Soviet Union collapsed, I was at a bipartisan conference in Budapest and we met with a series of Soviet and Russian officials. Among those in attendance was the then Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrov and the Deputy Defense Minister Andre Kokoshin. Also present at that meeting were a number of Members of this House and the other body, such as Senators Nunn, Lugar, Congressman Aspin, who later went on to become Secretary of Defense, Senator Levin, myself, and a number of others. We were asked by two Russian officials if we could come into a private hotel room to discuss a very serious situation, so we gathered. They described to us their terror at the lack of security relative to the kind of nuclear material which the gentleman from Texas just discussed. As a result of those discussions, the Nunn-Lugar program was born. This country then began an effort to try to slowly but surely pull nuclear weapons from the various Soviet provinces into Russia itself so there would be better control over those weapons. And in addition, this country began, at the urging of the Russians, who were most concerned about it, we began a variety of programs to try to help not only secure nuclear material from warheads, but we also began to think about what we were going to do about the fact that we had many, many Russian and Soviet scientists who were out of work, who had very little income, and who were very easy pickings for terrorist groups all around the world who might want to find a way to get knowledge they did not have or to obtain nuclear material that they did not have. Our efforts to fund those programs have been sporadic at best since that time; and in my view, that is leading ever more inexorably to a serious, serious problem and perhaps even at some point a crisis. The gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards) has pointed out to you that, even with the meager funds we have put into these programs, on eight occasions authorities have seized nuclear materiel that was in the wrong hands and had already been secreted out of Russia itself. Four of those recoveries took place in Germany; three took place in the Czech Republic; one in Bulgaria. In addition, there were six other incidences during which materiel was recovered within Russia itself that had fallen into the wrong hands, and we do not know how many other examples there are of this materiel falling into the wrong hands. Now, under those circumstances, one would think that we would make as our number one priority securing that threat. We have not done so. We have had a lot of sporadic effort, but we have not accomplished what we needed to accomplish. The Department of Defense has responsibilities in this area; so does the Department of Energy. This bill corrects to a large extent the budget reductions made by the administration in the program that the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards) just described; but in my view, we have an obligation to go far beyond what was merely provided last year in order to really get a handle on this problem. Now, the problem that we have in addition to this is that DOE has told us that they have at least $1.2 billion of additional needs, and they have been funded only to a very small extent in this bill because of funding limitations imposed on it by the allocation. In addition to that, we have been told that there are at least half a billion dollars' worth of defense funding requirements relating to nuclear materiel that we ought to be providing for recovery programs here or for security programs within our own country, and very little of that is being responded to. Those requirements are far beyond what was included in the fiscal 2002 budget or the House or the Senate bill. It just seems to me that a Congress that can provide $25 billion in tax gifts to General Electric, to AT&T and to other truly needy people in this society like that, and I am being sarcastic, Mr. Speaker, when I say that, it seems to me that if Congress can find the money to provide that kind of gift to the non- needy, we certainly ought to have enough common sense to find enough room in our budget to deal with one of the most serious security problems that faces this country and this planet. I regard the lack of funding across DOE for a number of programs not even mentioned here today, including one that I brought to the attention of the committee in a private session, I regard the neglect of those vulnerabilities to be almost criminal negligence, not on the part of this committee but on the part of people in the Government who know the serious problems and vulnerabilities that exist out there that are not being dealt with. Now, I love to give tax cuts as much as the next man; but our first obligation in this instance is to secure the home front. We are not doing it sufficiently with this bill. We are not doing it sufficiently with other bills that will be before this Congress; and until we do, we are failing our principal obligation to protect the public safety of each and every citizen that we represent. That is why, despite many of the good things in this bill, I will be voting against this bill to try to indicate my extreme concern about the lack of attention and the lack of follow-through on these problems. I appreciate the consideration of the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Callahan) when he says we will try to deal with this in a future bill. My suggestion to the House is that I think, if this is a high priority, it ought to be dealt with immediately. It is not, and that is why I am going to be voting against this bill. This is not due to any negligence on the part of the subcommittee chairman or the ranking member, any of the subcommittee members; but in my view the priorities of this Congress, given this problem, I think these priorities are misbegotten.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I think House Members would be interested in what I consider to be an egregious anomaly in this bill. Today, administrative assistants in the other body are paid, on average, $118,000. In this institution they are paid approximately $22,000 less per person. A legislative director in the other body is paid about $85,000, on average. That is about $25,000 more than we pay for similar responsibilities in the House. For a legislative assistant, the gap is about $15,000 between the pay afforded to a House staffer versus a Senate staffer. We have another provision in this bill which is going to make it even more difficult for House Members to retain our staff, because it will be much easier for the Senate to entice staffers to come to work for them, all because of a provision in this bill. There is a provision in this bill that enables the employees of the other body and CBO to begin a student loan repayment program. Now, I have nothing against that, but the problem is that that will not happen in the House of Representatives because we have not had the proper authorizations approved by the committee of jurisdiction in this House. That means that there will be yet another recruiting tool that will enable the Senate to entice our staffers away to work in the Senate. We cannot function as effectively as the People's House ought to function if we are essentially advised by people who have very short tenure in their jobs before they either move over to the Senate to get much better pay or before they go downtown to get much better pay than they can get working in either the Senate or the House. I would urge everyone with the appropriate responsibilities in this House to recognize that this provision in this bill today will add to our difficulties in retaining quality staff and attracting quality staff in competition with the other body, and I would urge them to take the appropriate action so that we will be able to compete with the other body on an even footing. I think we owe that to the people we represent and to the people who work for us.

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 want to thank the gentleman for yielding time to me, and I would like to say that I think each and every person who serves in this body is a very fortunate human being. First of all, we have been blessed by having the express confidence of the people we represent. They have entrusted us to deal with matters that deal not only with our own districts but with the Nation as a whole. And I know each and every one of us feel a profound sense of gratitude for being able to provide that service. We have also had a lot of pressures put upon each and every person who works in this place, not just Members but staff, and those who support this institution and provide for its security. I think that no one is the recipient of more gratitude than the Capitol Police who are funded in this bill. They have been working overtime since the unfortunate events of September 11 in order to try to provide security, not just for the physical buildings that make up Capitol Hill, but also for each and every human being who works on this Capitol Hill. We have also been served, I think, tremendously well by the Attending Physician, who has taken on duties that I am sure he never imagined he would have to deal with when he first signed on as the job of the Attending Physician for the Capitol. We have seen a lot of turmoil on the Hill; and, in my judgment, the bill that this rule brings to the floor will prove insufficient in terms of meeting all the expenses attendant in dealing with the new world that we now live in. I noticed this morning, I saw in one of the Capitol Hill newspapers a story about some of the extraordinary expenses that congressional employees have personally borne to try to make up for the fact that some of our Members at this point are not able to operate out of their own offices. You have had extraordinary arrangements that a number of Members and staff have had to make in order to get back to Washington after they were, in effect, trapped outside of Washington when all of the airlines were brought down, correctly, by Secretary Mineta in order to prevent further tragedies on September 11. And so we all know that there is a tremendous amount to be done to secure this Capitol and its surrounding environs. I congratulate the members of the subcommittee who have worked on this bill. I have no basic problems with this bill. But I think it is appropriate during consideration of this bill to recognize that no matter what security measures that are being taken are probably going to have to be, in fact, enhanced. And I have very little doubt that we will be facing a supplemental appropriations for this branch of government and for many other agencies of government as well. But I would like also to caution every Member because I think it is necessary to understand that, in addition to securing buildings like the ones that we work in, we also have an overriding obligation to increase the safety and security of each and every American that we represent. There are many other public servants also at work today in this country, and some of them have been brought under attack. The postal workers of this country are the ones who first come to mind. I think it is necessary for this Congress to understand that there are so many security vulnerabilities in this very changed world after September 11 that we must think through in fundamental ways the way we approach every single security-related issue in the government. I think the private sector of our economy is going to have to think through the same things. And that means in my view we are going to have to face up to the fact that in addition to everything that we do in this bill today to deal with the problems of Capitol Hill, we are going to have to deal with a good many other problems around the country, and I would like to walk through what I think some others are that deserve equal attention. This morning we had Governor Ridge in the Democratic Caucus, and he comported himself very well. I think those who have served with him in the past in this institution understand that he is a first-rate individual who will be doing his very best to provide additional homeland security for the entire country. But when he was in our Caucus this morning, I urged him to recognize that just as we are facing in this bill the obligation to move forward with the number of projects to enhance the security of the people's House, so too must we provide him with additional authority in order to do the same thing for everyone in this Nation. Among the things I suggested to him was that, in my view, he needs to get control of the budget process because there are a whole range of security actions that need to be taken across the country that, in my view, are not being taken at the same time. And I do not think any of us want to be in the position where we are taking what we consider to be adequate security measures here on Capitol Hill, if we were not at the same time taking adequate measures to secure the life and safety of each and every American. Some of the items that need to be considered are as follows: We have laboratories all across the country that are generating dangerous biological and chemical agents. There is no central registry of such agents or the quantity that they are being produced in or the quantity in which they are held. CDC has requested $10 million simply to begin enforcing existing laws requiring the reporting of the transfer of such agents. So far that has not been funded in the administration request. We have been told by Secretary Thompson, my good friend, the former governor of Wisconsin, that he is going to be asking for 300 million doses of additional vaccines in order to strengthen our ability to respond to other challenges in the public health field. I applaud that, but it seems to me that we need to move far beyond that. We need to dramatically beef up the ability of the public health surveillance mechanisms in this country so that we can, in fact, tell if we are in an epidemic when an epidemic begins, not after we are 2 weeks into it. While the Public Health Service has requested well over half a billion dollars in additional funding, they have so far only had $65 million of that approved. We have had a $500 million request from Amtrak for security of the Rail Passenger Service. So far, on the part of OMB, only 1 percent of that funding has been approved. The Customs Service has asked for about $700 million for increasing border inspections, particularly on the Canadian border. To my knowledge, at this point, none of that has been approved by OMB. The FBI, they have asked for an additional $1.5 billion. They have huge overtime costs. They have huge additional responsibilities. They are devoting a huge percentage of their investigative forces to the problems of terrorism. Their requests so far have been cut by two- thirds. So I would simply say that these and many other items I think indicate the fact that we have much work to do in the area of securing the homeland. No matter what we do, there will be vulnerabilities. We understand that, but this bill that will be before us either today or tomorrow takes some minimal steps to add to the security of Capitol Hill. We have many much larger steps that must be taken across the country to attend to the security of the entire Nation, and I hope that this body will be receptive to such efforts in the remaining weeks of this congressional session. I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall) for the time.

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY

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.