Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, I would just like to clarify what that means is that after the disposition of the Clayton amendment, we will have the three votes, that will be it for the evening. And then when we return after the July 4 recess, this bill will be the first order of business. We will take it up on Wednesday, and we will debate it to its conclusion?

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

Mr. OBEY. We mean Wednesday by that; do we not?

Mr. OBEY. That will be the first bill up, and it will be debated to its conclusion?

Mr. OBEY. If I could also clarify the language of the unanimous consent request, the last paragraph reads, ``Each additional amendment may be offered only by the Member designated in this request.'' By that word ``additional,'' you mean the amendments previously cited, does not the gentleman?

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

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I would simply like to repeat what the gentleman just said. For the benefit of all Members on the floor or all Members whose staff may be watching in their offices, every Member is coming up and telling us they want to get out of here early tonight. It is my understanding that the leadership intends to try to make that happen. But we need to know which Members intend to offer their amendment and which Members do not intend to offer their amendments. So I would ask every single Member on our side of the aisle, if they are contemplating an amendment or a colloquy, because yesterday we took almost 2 hours on colloquies, if they are contemplating any of that, they need to let us know immediately, because we need to do two things. We need, first of all, to try to establish which amendments are going to be offered today and how much time is going to be taken on them. We have had the cooperation of five or six Members who have told us that they will be happy to settle for 10 minutes a side, for instance. We need to fill out the rest of that. We need to know how far we are going to get in the bill today. Then if we can reach agreement on that, then that enables us to have some idea, perhaps, of what we can package so that we know what we are facing when we get back. But what I would urge Members not to do to us is to neglect to contact us now, then see their point in the bill passed, so their amendment is not in order, and then try to redraft their amendment as a look-back at the end of the bill. We will not save any time that way. If Members have amendments, we need them to be prepared now to bring them up today in the regular order on the bill so that we can get out of here at a reasonable time. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I would like to make a few observations about the conversation that we have just heard with respect to this proposal. I think the key words that Members ought to keep in mind were the words of the subcommittee chairman. When he was asked whether or not he did expect the Department to, in fact, continue this program, he correctly pointed out that it is always difficult to predict what any agency, including USDA, will do. That is precisely why, in my view, the committee should have adopted the amendment that we tried to have attached in full committee and why this House should have voted on it today. Here is the situation that we face on this issue. We have had, for the past year, a pilot program going on which in essence takes the value of surplus food in this country and uses it to provide nutrition for young children abroad. We have been asked by former Senator George McGovern and former Senator Bob Dole, who each on occasion was honored with the nomination of his party to the Presidency of the United States, we have been asked by both of them to continue the program and to make it a long-term commitment. That is something we ought to do. I would submit that no one in the history of the Congress knows more about child nutrition than George McGovern and Bob Dole. They devoted a good deal of their life to seeing to it that children in this country were adequately nourished, and they are trying to also do something to recognize that we have responsibilities to people around the world who are not as fortunate as we are. The problem we have is that when the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) and others sought to offer the amendment, we were told if we offer the amendment and if we do that in this bill, then this bill will be scored and that will hurt us vis-a-vis the Budget Act. I would simply say I think this is a sad example of how we have been tied up by some of the ludicrous accounting rules that get in the way of our achieving needed policy goals. We are stuck in a battle of accountants and the lawyerly interpretation of what accountants tell us and, as a result, we are prevented from doing something which we obviously ought to do. We have one problem. The agency has not decided to proceed. This Congress had a choice. It could tell the agency to get off the dime and proceed or it could pass the buck. For bookkeeping reasons, this Congress has decided to pass the buck. I think that is unfortunate. It seems to me that if the Congress had indicated today, through an amendment on this legislation, that we were directing them to proceed, the agency would have proceeded. We would then have not had the accounting problem and we could have, in fact, delivered on this program. We have a simple choice. We have surplus commodities in this country. The question is, will the taxpayers be asked to pay money in order to store them or will they be asked to pay money in order to ship them so they can be used to provide nutrition for young children abroad who need them? That is a win-win proposition, both for those kids and our farmers. It ought to also help our consciences as well, and I think it is indeed unfortunate that we have been prevented from offering the amendment today.

Mr. OBEY. Question: How many times have we all heard; ``The government is too blasted big. Get the government out of our lives.'' I bet my colleagues have heard it a lot. Yet the first time that we have an outbreak of disease someplace, the first time that people die from contaminated food, all of a sudden people say, ``Where is the government? What are they doing? Why don't they get off their duffs? Why aren't they protecting the public interest?'' Well, there is very good reason for that. It is because we are not providing the resources necessary to provide an absolutely safe source of food in this country. The purpose of this amendment is to, over a 3-year period of time, bring us to where the FDA says we should be in protecting the public health of this country. When we had subcommittee hearings earlier in the year, here is what FDA said in response to questions: ``The inspection coverage of food manufacturers, particularly high-risk manufacturers, has been inadequate over the past several years.'' FDA estimated we would need at least $220 million for an optimum inspection schedule of domestic food facilities under our jurisdiction. This would provide inspection of high-risk firms twice each year, warehouses every 3 years, and all other food firms every 2 years. Now, people can argue all day long about government priorities, but the fact is that we are here today unable to offer this amendment because the budget limitations under which we are operating prevents us from even getting a vote on the amendment offered by the gentlewoman. Why are we in this position? Because the majority party and the White House insisted early on to take virtually every dime of the surpluses that we were hoping to have over the next 10 years and pour all of those monies into tax cuts. They put the lion's share of those tax cuts into the pockets of the very wealthiest people in this country. So this Congress decided it was more important to give the wealthiest 1 percent of people in this country, who, over the last 20 years, have seen an after-tax rise in their income of $414,000 per family, that it was more important to give those people an additional tax cut of $53,000 a year than it is to meet our primary obligations to strengthen Social Security, to strengthen education, to strengthen Medicare, and to do all of these other little things that we need to do if we are going to protect the food supply of this country and the environment in which we all live. So I simply take the well today, knowing full well that this amendment will not receive a vote because of the rule under which the bill is being considered, to suggest that this again is another example of how we are neglecting our responsibilities of stewardship in order to do the easy political thing and throw all of the money that we were expecting to accumulate in those surpluses to tax cuts for the most prosperous people in this society. Mr. Chairman, I cannot believe this Congress could not achieve a better balance in priorities. I cannot believe that intelligent people on both sides of the aisle cannot figure out a way to guarantee that we do provide at least the minimum coverage that the Agency itself says we ought to provide in order to protect the health of the American people. Mr. Chairman, 5,000 Americans are going to die this year because of contaminated food, and millions are going to become sick. I do not believe that we cannot do better.

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I really do not have a dog in this hunt, coming from Wisconsin; but I simply want to observe that there has been a false parallelism in this debate between the idea that if you are going to prevent drilling off the coast of Florida, then somehow it makes sense to prevent the construction of this pipeline. There is a big difference. The drilling has not occurred; the pipeline is already largely constructed. Secondly, there is no question that Florida is going to need the natural gas. So it seems to me that there is a false parallelism which should be dismissed by any neutral Members of the body. Secondly, let's not kid anybody: this amendment is not being offered because of the merits of the amendment. This amendment is here because it is payback time. There are some people in this place who are unhappy with the fact that last week this House said, ``No, we are going to protect the beaches of Florida. The oil companies are not going to be able to drill any damn place they want. They are going to have to take other higher values into consideration.'' So, now people who are resentful of that are thinking it would be nice if you could tweak the Florida Representatives for standing up for their own environmental interests and make them pay a price for protecting their beaches from the money lust of the oil companies. That is basically what you are talking about. So I think that any Member who does not have a dog in this hunt ought to recognize this amendment for what it is. It is a clever attempt at retaliation. I think the House is above that kind of thing, and I would urge that the amendment being offered by the gentleman today to remove this provision in the bill be adopted. Any area has the right to protect its environmental resources. That is what Florida did last week, and the House ought to respect it.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Madam Speaker, I think that overall there are many things to commend this bill, but I think there are a number of serious omissions which the House ought to deal with before we pass the bill on to the Senate. To express those concerns, I intend personally to vote against the rule although I will probably, unless something unforeseen happens, support the bill on final passage. First of all, I believe that we have something approaching a national crisis with respect to public confidence in the safety of the food that we import and that we consume. All of us have seen story after story about the outbreak of serious disease associated with consuming food. We have had over 5,000 Americans die last year from food borne illness. I saw a horror story a few days ago about the fact that a number of people in South Dakota and Minnesota had gotten deathly ill because they had consumed ground beef that contained ground-up animal thyroids. Those thyroids in the past had not been included in the food supply. But because we now have synthetic thyroid drugs, those animal thyroids are no longer used to the extent they were before to make thyroid medicine and so one meatpacking plant had simply ground the thyroid up with the rest of the animal. The result was that a good many people got deathly sick. We have seen a lot of other examples. If we take a look at what the FDA has to say about the adequacy of our inspection system for foodstuffs that come into the United States, for instance, we see that they inspect less than 1 percent of everything that is imported into this country. We believe that that constitutes a true crisis. I think that if we do not act on this crisis, it will hurt not only consumers but the very farmers that many of us represent, because farmers depend on a high level of consumer confidence in order to be able to sell their products. And while there is no question that our food supply is among the safest in the world, we still have a lot of problems that could be taken care of if we put the needs of food safety, for instance, ahead of the needs of the wealthiest 1 percent of the people in this country to get a $53,000 tax cut next year. We have some choices to make, and we are being prevented from making them by the choices that were already made by this House on the tax bill. We also have the question about whether or not WIC is being funded adequately. It certainly appears to me that the funding level in this bill is not adequate. Yet we are not, under the rule, going to be allowed to do anything about that. And then, thirdly, we have the effort that we tried to make in the full committee to take surplus food which we have in this country and make it available to children around the world. We have a program at USDA that did that last year; and we have been urged by Senator George McGovern and Senator Bob Dole, two people, who in the history of this Congress on a bipartisan basis have forgotten more about nutrition programs than most of us have ever learned, they both urge us to continue this program. USDA will not get off the dime and make up their mind one way or another. We tried to get that done as well in this bill and were blocked procedurally from doing so. So for these reasons, it seems to me that we ought to vote down this rule and bring back a rule that will allow us to recognize a legitimate crisis with respect to public confidence in the safety of our food supply, and also allow us to address the other two issues that I have mentioned here today. So I would urge a no vote on the rule so that we can get a better rule under which to debate this otherwise fairly constructive bill.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I simply want to take the time to thank the two gentlemen for offering this amendment. The greatest body of fresh water in the world is Lake Superior. Lake Michigan is certainly not far between. The only proper level of risk to such a pristine resource is zero risk. I congratulate the gentlemen for offering the amendments.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, I would simply have one question. I notice that the concurrent resolution indicates that the House would adjourn on either Thursday or Friday. In light of the fact that Members were told that there would be no votes on Friday, my question is why is this language there? It is my understanding that the language is there simply to permit filing of a document, but that there would, in fact, be no session on Friday and no votes. Is that a correct understanding?

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, further reserving the right to object, I think Members need to know what the reality is in terms of their catching planes. They were told the day before yesterday that we would not be into a long march into the night on Thursday. Could the gentleman give us some idea of how long the majority is intending to proceed so that Members on both sides have some idea of what to do with their plane reservations?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection. The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Shimkus) Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Florida?

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will again yield. Let me simply say that the gentleman is forgetting one thing. What the Sabo amendment attempted to do is to say that there would be no Mexican trucks on these roads until the safety requirements were met as outlined in the amendment. I think it is blatantly ridiculous for anyone to assert that the intention of a proposal is something other than that which is quite clearly stated in the proposal. It was the majority that blocked us from being able to vote on this proposal.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield so we can answer that?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, it is very simple.

Mr. OBEY. The record for Canadian carriers shows that their highway safety record is virtually every bit as good as ours. The record with respect to the Mexican drivers in question demonstrates quite the opposite.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, the only option we have is to adopt this amendment, because this is the only procedural alternative left to us by a rule that prevented us from offering the amendment that should have been offered on this subject. So do not blame us for the shortcomings which the majority itself has caused. I would simply make one other point. We have a choice. We can either insist on having an inspection regimen and a review regimen in place before these trucks are put on the highways, or we can do what the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers) says and wait until they are on the highways and then see what happens. Only one difference between the approaches. There are people who will die under the second approach who will not under the first. It is just that simple. So you have got a very clear choice. If you want to do anything at all to protect the safety of American motorists on the highways on this issue, you will vote for the Sabo amendment; and you will give the committee the opportunity to do what it has done thousands of times before, which is to tweak the language in conference so that it can satisfy the procedural niceties of people in this House who eight times out of 10 run a railroad truck over legitimate procedure. You hide behind procedure when it suits your purpose, and you trample fair procedure the rest of the time. We are not fooled by that. American drivers are not going to be fooled by that. The only people you might be fooling are yourselves.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, we are being told that this amendment violates NAFTA. That is like the old song that we hear so many times about the person killing both of his parents and then throwing himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan. What the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Sabo) tried to do is to bring to this House an amendment that will prevent Americans from dying by seeing to it that we have an inspection process and a review process before, not after, dangerous trucks hit the highway. I want to remind my colleagues NAFTA is a trade agreement. It is not a suicide pact. Let me repeat that: NAFTA is a trade agreement; it is not a suicide pact. We are not required to allow unsafe trucks on American highways in order to satisfy some pencil-happy bureaucrat dealing with NAFTA. This amendment has no choice but to, for the moment, cut off all Mexican trucks on American highways because the majority party insisted that that was the only option that could be put before this body. So they blocked the effort that the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Sabo) tried to bring to this House, and which would have been fully consistent with NAFTA. That effort would have said you cannot have those trucks running over American highways until we have the proper review process in place to make certain ahead of time that safety standards are being met. If this amendment technically would become a violation of NAFTA, it is because the majority has forced the House into a position where it can consider no amendment except that kind of an amendment. Everybody on this floor knows, if you want to cut through the bull gravy at the end of the day, this amendment can be fully tweaked in conference so that it is fully consistent with NAFTA and protects the American trucker. The rationale against this amendment keeps changing. We were told earlier in the day, oh, you have to block the Sabo amendment under House rules because the Sabo amendment was not passed by the full Committee on Appropriations. Many a time, many a time the Committee on Appropriations has chosen not to follow that logic. We are also told, oh, we do not have to do this. We do not have to protect American motorists this way because we have got all this money in the bill for these new inspectors. Well, let me remind my colleagues that money is now gone. It was knocked out on a point of order. So the $56 million for infrastructure improvements at the border, the $14 million for added inspections at the border, the $18 million for the State supplements for States around the border, all that money is gone. So your excuse is gone. You have no added protection for American drivers at this point. You know what the problems are. There is no effective oversight. There is no effective oversight on Mexican motor carriers today. There are no motor carrier hours-of-service regulations in effect in Mexico. There is no way to check the driving history of Mexican motor carrier drivers. In testimony last year, the Department of Transportation Inspector General said this: ``I do not think there is any reasonable person who can say that the border is safe when you have an out-of-service rate for safety reasons in the neighborhood of 40 to 50 percent.'' Now, the majority blocked the Sabo amendment that would have allowed us to deal with this issue the way it needed to be dealt with. Now because they blocked us from offering the right amendment, they are blaming us because the language of this amendment is not pluperfect. Well, the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers) is a very smart man. He can easily fix it in conference. We have heard this excuse time and time again. Can fix it in conference. Can fix it in conference. Well, this is one time we are going to say that. We have full confidence in the ability of the gentleman from Kentucky to fix this in conference. But today, we have only one option if we want to protect American motorists.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, I thank the gentleman. I think that the Members will appreciate the information.