Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I had originally intended to take about 15 minutes to recite my objections to our leaving with all of the unfinished business, but I have been persuaded by those with greater wisdom to simply remind the House of something the gentleman from Massachusetts said yesterday. He showed us the statement of Oliver Cromwell upon dismissing Parliament in 1653, which reads as follows: ``Ye who are grown intolerably odious to the whole Nation; you who are deputed here by the people to get grievances redress'd, are yourselves become the greatest grievance. Your country, therefore, calls upon me to cleanse this Augean stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this House; and which, by God's help and the strength he has given me, I am now come to do; I command ye therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place; go, get out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock the doors. In the name of God, go!''

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. And your leadership voted to blow it up.

Mr. OBEY. The President was opposing your rider.

Mr. OBEY. No, no, it was a Republican item. That was a Republican rider which the gentleman voted for.

Mr. OBEY. We were not apart on any number. Every number in the bill had been agreed to by the negotiators. There was no disagreements left on the numbers.

Mr. OBEY. The number is $608.2, the House number.

Mr. OBEY. You do not want to hear the answer, do you?

Mr. OBEY. That is the problem.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, my colleagues on the other side are not trying to solve anything tonight.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman totally misses the point. The issue is not how much was going to be spent, it was where it was going to be spent and what the priorities were going to be. There was no disagreement on the total amount of funding.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, the President does not sign the budget resolutions. The President has no authority under the law to sign budget resolutions.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, but the problem is, my Republican colleagues passed a budget resolution which pretended that they were going to spend $40 billion less than they knew they were going to spend.

Mr. OBEY. No, no.

Mr. OBEY. The issue was whether or not the Congress should be allowed to block the President's effort to institute protection for workers against repetitive motion injuries.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I would be happy to answer that, if the gentleman will yield. The gentleman asked me two different questions. I answered the first and the gentleman would not let me answer the second. Would the gentleman let me answer the second? If the gentleman wanted to know what we were asking for on education, what we were asking is that we add $4.2 billion above the conference bill for education. That is what we were asking for. We were asking for additional funding for after-school centers, additional funding for smaller class size, additional funding to correct the fact that one out of every 10 teachers is not certified to teach the subject that they are teaching, and additional funding to provide the largest increase in the Pell grants in the history of the program. And we had agreed, Republican and Democrat alike, on ever single one of those dollars. The Republican leadership blew it up, over a totally different issue not involving money at all.

Mr. OBEY. Of what? The number of what?

Mr. OBEY. I will be happy to answer.

Mr. OBEY. You asked what the differences were on the table, and I told you there were no dollar differences.

Mr. OBEY. We had an agreement.

Mr. OBEY. Would the gentleman yield so I can respond?

Mr. OBEY. The gentleman is debating himself.

Mr. OBEY. I repeat, there was not a single difference remaining on numbers.

Mr. OBEY. I see.

Mr. OBEY. I would be happy to, if the gentleman would let me respond, and I thank the gentleman for the time. As the gentleman knows, there are two pieces to the school construction and school modernization proposals. In the bipartisan agreement, which your leadership blew up, in that bipartisan agreement, the construction modernization program was included in the bipartisan agreement. The school construction item was not. The school construction item under that agreement was moved to the tax bill, and the argument was left to the tax bill and to whatever fate the tax bill would experience. So in the package that your negotiators and I, representing the Democrats, agreed to, we have the school modernization program that was funded at a level of, I believe, $1.3 billion, and then 25 percent of the overall amount that originally had been aimed at school modernization was, at the insistence of the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) and Republicans, provided for other programs. It could have been used for either technology or it could have been used for special education. That was a bipartisan agreement which we agreed upon, and your leadership then blew up.

Mr. OBEY. I see. If the gentleman would yield, when you want to raise IDEA it is okay; but when we want to add money to special education, then it is not okay. Is that it?