Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, I think the purpose is self-evident, but I wonder if the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) would be kind enough to take just 1 minute so that the Members understand what we are doing.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments. We certainly have no objection. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 10 minutes. Mr. Speaker, I suppose there is virtually no reason for anyone to say anything, given what the reality is around here. But I would, nonetheless, like to make a few observations about why we are going through this surreal exercise this week, this evening, tomorrow and for God knows how long. We were told at the beginning of the year by the majority party leadership that they were going to restore regular order to the House. Then this House proceeded to pass a phony budget resolution and a series of phony appropriation bills which pretended to fit within that budget resolution. It did that, not because of any fault of any of the majority members of the Committee on Appropriations; we did it because they, in fact, had no choice but to proceed under that phony budget resolution. The result is that, for 10 months, this House pretended to the public that it was going to spend about $40 billion less than virtually everyone in this House on both sides of the aisle knew we would in the end wind up spending. The purpose of passing those fraudulently shrunken appropriation bills was to open up enough room in that phony budget so that the majority leadership could pretend that there was enough room in that budget for the huge tax cuts which they then proceeded to pass, the majority of benefits which went to those in our society who make $300,000 a year or more. The leadership of the majority preached bipartisanship; but in fact, they blocked bipartisan majorities from passing the Patients' Bill of Rights. They held the minimum wage hostage to tax benefits that were nine times as large as the benefits afforded to workers under those minimum wage increases. They even refused to reform the so-called Freedom to Farm Act, which is the single biggest failure of farm policy in this country since the days of Ezra Taft Benson, and that is going some. Lastly, the leadership of the majority party blocked a bipartisan conference on the Labor, Health and Education bill that would have taken us a long way toward reducing class size, strengthening teacher training, providing larger Pell Grants for struggling middle-income families trying to send their kids to college, providing us some 5,000 additional after-school learning centers for kids so that they do not have to go home at night to an empty house because both parents are working outside the home. Since that bill was blown up, it has been apparently the goal of the majority party leadership to leave without ever bringing to a vote that bipartisan conference report. Apparently the majority caucus is split. I am told by a number of you that, if this bill goes into a lame-duck session, that there are a good number of our friends on the majority side who would like to scale back significantly the size of those education and other increases in that Labor-Health-Education bill. In my judgment as someone who has served here for over 30 years, the chaotic results of the policy pursued by the leadership left us at the end of the fiscal year with only two of the 13 appropriation bills that were supposed to be passed actually being finished by the House and the Senate. The House passed all 13 of its appropriation bills, but the Senate did not. So we were left with only two of those 13 bills. We were left with only two of those 13 bills passed. Both bills that were passed had been signed by the President. So none of the delays associated with the other 11 bills were in any way the responsibility of the White House. Now, the majority leadership wants to go home. We all want to go home. I will say to the gentleman interrupting that no one in this House has worked harder than I have. I will compare my record to yours anytime. I think I have the floor, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for obtaining order, and I thank most Members of the House for their courtesy. What I was about to say is that the majority leadership would like us to go home, and we would all like to go home, but there is apparently a significant difference between the wishes of the majority leadership in the Senate and the majority leadership here. I honestly believe that you want us in the minority to give you cover for your failure to produce on the whole range of legislative items by voting to get Congress out of town before we have all done our duty. I think that duty includes passing the Patients' Bill of Rights, passing a bill that provides prescription drugs under Medicare, passing a bill that provides the minimum wage increase for the least among us. So now we are caught in what one reporter today called this Potemkin charade. It is being pretended that there is work being done here because, apparently, what the majority leadership wants to do is to keep the lights on even though the House is empty and keep the lights on to pretend that there is activity in the kitchen, when in fact there is not. The stove is off. The oven is empty. The oven is cold. No major legislation, save perhaps one water project bill is in the works. What an unhappy, pitiful end to this session. I want to say to my friends on the majority side of the aisle, I like and respect virtually every single one of you. Some of you I do not know as well as others. But when I think of the people I have known in my life, there is no more decent person than the gentleman sitting in the front row here, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Houghton), or the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde) or the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) or the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Norwood) or a number of others of you. The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Petri) I saw sitting here; we have been friends for years. I cherish some of the friendships that I have had with people on both sides of the aisle. But what I despise is what this kind of chaotic governance in this House has done to this institution and to the legislative process. And most of all what I despise is what this House has failed to do to represent and help the people we are supposed to be representing. When I see what this institution has failed to do, that is when I am truly saddened and appalled. I do not make this statement out of any sense of personal dislike for any one of you. But sometimes parties or institutions do things collectively which they would never do individually, and I believe this year that has happened in this place. And that is why this Congress, in my sad judgment, regardless of the meaningless votes that will occur the next 2 days, because this session is over any way you slice it, we just have an inability to admit it, so this Congress will go down as one of the lesser footnotes in history and it very richly deserves it.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. Amendment Offered by Mr. Young of Florida

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. The President of the United States was specifically excluded from the meetings.

Mr. OBEY. I did not think the gentleman wanted a real answer.

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

Mr. OBEY. If the gentleman would yield time so I can answer the question.

Mr. OBEY. I will be happy to answer.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior) will continue to yield, does the gentleman expect WRDA to be up today or tomorrow after 6.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas) could answer this question: Could he tell us what legislation is expected to be on the floor yet today and what legislation is expected to be on the floor tomorrow?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, since my understanding is that the House is not going into session until 6 o'clock tomorrow, how can it be up before 6 o'clock?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, does the gentleman mean the earliest?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, no, that is what I thought the dictionary said. If I could say to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior), it is obvious to me that there is no game plan which the majority wishes to disclose to the minority at this time. Good luck and Godspeed. May they find one before the day is over.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield for the last time on that, that is a great line. The difference is that, for the workers we are trying to protect, it is no laughing matter because it is their livelihood.

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. I yield myself the remaining time. Mr. Speaker, when we are in negotiations, the only way that we can reach agreement is to reduce those agreements to writing, and that is what we did. It took 4 hours to get the language right for both sides, because the lawyers who were in and out of the room talked to each other, and this was the language that they came up with. The only thing that changed was the amount of heat that the majority party leadership took from the big business lobbyists in this country. That is the only thing that changed. It has been clear to me from the beginning that the majority leadership did not ever want us to conclude action on this bill, and what is going on now to me is very clear. This session is over. This session is over. The leadership is going through the pretense that something else is likely to happen, but behind the scenes, what they are trying to do is to get negotiated a longer-term CR so that they can get out of here, leaving undone this issue, so that they do not have to face the issue of education funding before the election, and they do not have to ever vote on scuttling the deal on protecting workers' health, which we had in this bill. So what they may do is to send up some meaningless let-us-pretend compromise language to the White House, language that has probably already been rejected. But the fact is, they want to slip out of town. If they cannot do that, then the next best thing to do is to pretend that they expect something to happen in the future. It is clear to me that the majority party leadership will not let anything further happen on this bill if it means antagonizing their big business lobbyist friends. That is the problem. The solution on this issue that we had in the conference was a balanced one. It said, the rule could be promulgated to protect workers from repetitive motion injury, but that the future President, if he wanted, would have 6 months to repeal it. That was the balance between the interests of business and the interests of workers who have no one to rely upon but us. It is clear the leadership pulled the plug on the deal because they do not want that, and they do not want this bill to go forward. That is sad. So we will wind up not only with the workers not being protected, but we will wind up without the education achievements that we could have had in this bill, without the health research achievements we could have had in this bill, without the worker protections we could have had in this bill. This could have been a bipartisan closure for the Congress. Thanks to the leadership's genuflecting to special interests, it will now not be. That is the saddest thing of all about this session. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself a minute and a half. Mr. Speaker, the previous gentlemen has given the most off point speech that I have heard on this floor since the last time he addressed this body. Let me simply say, Mr. Speaker, that the reason the President was not in the room is because since the President stole Mr. Gingrich's socks the last time they negotiated together, your leadership has refused to sit down in an omnibus meeting with him and put it together. That is why he was not there. You very well know you would not even let the President's representative come into the room until 10:00 at night. You first insisted we negotiate all other remaining items. The gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston) further ought to know, even if you do not, you ought to know there is not a single dollar difference remaining in this issue. This has nothing to do with how much we spend. The issue is who we spend it on and which side are we on. Big business, big business or the working people of America? We ought to have a decent balance between the interests of both, but you want it all one way for the top dogs in this society. No way. No way. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior), the minority whip.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Speaker, I simply want to congratulate the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas), because that is the largest stretch I have ever seen. I want to congratulate them. They have been so desperate to find any way to suggest that they have accomplished anything of significance in this session of Congress that they even have stretched to rely on their old reliable friend, President Clinton, the man to whom they have given so much substantive support when in a moment of conciliatory weakness he engaged in a little bit of rhetorical hyperbole to say something nice about the majority. If that is the best that you can find, be my guest. The people who serve in this Chamber know what you have accomplished. The people waiting for prescription drugs know what you have accomplished. The people waiting for a patients' bill of rights know what you have accomplished. The people waiting for a minimum wage bill know what you have accomplished. On the big stuff, the result unfortunately is zip. You passed a lot of stuff through here that would help the very wealthiest 2 percent on the Tax Code. Outside of that, you are still dragging behind about 8-to-0 in terms of meeting your major responsibilities. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished minority leader, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt). (Mr. GEPHARDT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I would tell the gentleman, I am sorry but that is just not true. Both Mr. Stevens and the White House left the room on at least two occasions to check the language with their legal experts. The gentleman knows that.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Stevens said he did. I take his word for it.

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