Dave Obey

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. Speaker, I yield myself 11 minutes. Mr. Speaker, as my colleagues know, we are stuck here because the major appropriation bill that is yet to be resolved had been brought to a compromised conclusion by the conferees Sunday night; and then when the majority party leadership reviewed that compromise on Monday morning, they said ``No way baby''. What blew up the agreement was the objection of the majority party leadership to the language in the conference report that would have, after a 10-year struggle, finally allowed, after yet one more 6-month delay, for the enforcement of a rule by OSHA to protect workers from debilitating, career ending workplace injuries caused by repetitive motion. I want to review for my colleagues the history of OSHA for those of my friends on the Republican side who were not here when OSHA was created. I was. I want you to know who the sponsor of the OSHA legislation was. It was a man by the name of Bill Steiger, who was my best friend in the House, a Republican from Wisconsin. We went to college together. We were in the legislature together. We served here together. And then he, unfortunately, died at age 40. It was always my belief that, if he had lived, he would have been the first Republican Speaker. He was a wonderful human being and a very balanced one, a strong conservative. But he was the sponsor of the OSHA legislation. He was the first employer in Washington for a fellow by the name of Dick Cheney. So that ought to give you some idea of Bill's political philosophy. I think the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde) served with him. Some of you will remember Bill. When OSHA was adopted, the Chamber of Commerce insisted that the standards that were used by OSHA be the consensus standards which had been developed by business advisory committees and OSHA simply took those standards and enforced them as their own. An article on the business page of ``The Washington Post'' this morning points out that ``80 percent of all current OSHA health and safety standards are the same voluntary standards U.S. businesses were using in the late 1960s reflecting a long history of business and political opposition to new OSHA standards.'' And that is the case. The history on this floor after OSHA was established has been a 2- decade long effort on the part of the majority party to resist new protections for workers. The cotton dust standard. You fought that for 4\1/2\ years and tried to have it delayed twice by legislative limitations. The methychloride standard to prevent leukemia. My brother-in-law died of leukemia and was always convinced it was workplace related. The standard to prevent that exposure in the workplace was resisted, and several times the majority tried to offer legislative language forbidding OSHA from proceeding with this standard. The lead standard. We know what lead does to brain development. We know what it does for brain damage. The majority party tried to stop that standard. And for a decade they have been trying to stop the standard on repetitive motion injuries so that human beings do not go around with this kind of problem. At first the actions taken by the majority party in the Committee on Appropriations in the form of an amendment by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Bonilla) centered around denying OSHA the opportunity to even gather information about the occurrence and incidence of repetitive motion damage in the workplace. Then after they failed to stop the gathering of information, then they switched rationales and said, ``Oh, we do not have enough information.'' And so, no matter how much information was developed by OSHA, they still said, ``Oh, we need more. We need more. Do not know enough. Do not know enough.'' And so that standard has been delayed for years and years. Now, we finally reached, after four successive delays imposed by this House and after a promise a year and a half ago that you would impose no more delays, the majority leadership is once again trying to promote delay of both the implementation and the promulgation of the standard to protect people like the woman in this picture. And so, what happened? We finally reached agreement after 4 hours of going word by word over language. Both sides left the room numerous times to consult their lawyers. Senator Stevens did. The White House people in the room did. It was scrubbed by lots of lawyers who were outside the room, but it was checked repeatedly. We finally had a deal. As I said last night, it was even sealed with toasts of Merlot. And then what happened? Well, what ``The Washington Post'' reports this morning that ``Fierce lobbying by powerful corporate groups with considerable sway among the GOP leadership helped kill a deal sealed with the Republican negotiators early Monday. Led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, the industries include groups representing trucking companies, bakeries, soft drink makers, and parcel delivery companies.'' And then it goes on to say, ``Business leaders have also bankrolled political ads over the workplace rules. In recent weeks, the National Association of Manufacturers has been running radio ads in key congressional districts.'' So on and so forth. The article ends by quoting a 32-year-old woman, Heidi Eberhardt, who said, ``I do not know if I will ever be able to type again. I will always have to be careful with my hands. If I had had any kind of ergonomic knowledge back then, I would not be injured today.'' What we are trying to do is to prevent that from happening to other Heidi Eberhardts in the future. Now, in my view, there is only one reason for what happened that night. It was my position, and in that conference, I opposed the conference deal that the White House cut with the Republican majority because I felt that after all these years there should be no further delay, none whatsoever. The compromise that was cut is that it was finally agreed to allow a standard to be promulgated but it could not be enforced in any way until after July. So that, if a new President was elected who disagreed with that standard, he would have time to go through the Administrative Procedures Act and repeal it; and he could, incidentally, suspend it the day he walked into office. We feel that within 45 days, certainly within 60, he could shut it off. I am convinced that the only reason the majority party leadership is doing this is because, if their party leader wins the White House, they want him to be able to stop that regulation without ever having to publicly stand up and oppose it. Now, as we used to hear when there was a Republican President, we used to hear there is only one President at a time. Well, there is only one President at a time; and in my view, this President, after over 10 years of analysis and study and review, he has the right to impose a standard which was called for for the first time by a Secretary of Labor by the name of Libby Dole. She is the one who started this process, and she is the one who initially said that this was needed and crucial for the safety of people in the workplace. I would urge you to remember, that is why we are stuck here on the CR. If the majority party leadership wants to get out of town, there is only one thing they have to do. All they have to do is take the D.C. bill, the Treasury-Post Office, and the Legislative appropriations bill and, by reference in the Labor, HHS bill, put it together, stick to the original deal on Labor, HHS, and so far as appropriations are concerned, we could be out of here in one day. That would leave only the Commerce, Justice State bill remaining. For the life of me, I do not see how those differences are going to be bridged in this short period of time. But all other appropriations work could be done. That is what the leadership could do. All it has to do is to honor the agreement that was reached, reference those other four bills, and we could be out of here in a day and a half going back and reintroducing ourselves to our constituents. So that is what I would hope the majority leadership would do in the interest of ending this session with some degree of comity. But I am afraid that the same principle that is operating here to prevent helping this woman in the picture is the same principle that had been operating here for months on other issues. We have been trying to get prescription drug coverage all year long. But in the end, the majority party has decided that a tax cut that primarily benefits the top 2 percent of people in this country outweighs the need for millions of Americans to have prescription drug coverage. The same principle. Who wins in the end? Money. That is what this is about. It is about money. Shame.

Mr. OBEY

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, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5\1/2\ minutes. Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to correct both the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Mrs. Johnson) and myself. Both of us indicated that this was the first time that the President had vetoed this bill because it was passed before other bills had passed. That is not correct. On October 3, 1995, I should have remembered it because it was my birthday, the President vetoed the legislative bill for precisely the same reason that he vetoed this bill tonight. Let us remember that the bill before us is the legislative appropriations bill into which was folded the Treasury Post Office bill. The President vetoed that on October 3, 1995, because he pointed out that the Congress had not yet finished its other work and that he was not going to allow the Congress to get its goodies before the rest of the country got its problems taken care of. So he has been consistent in that philosophy, and I applaud him for doing that as well on this bill tonight. Secondly, I am not going to bother to comment on the majority whip's discussion of a number of items that have nothing whatsoever to do with my committee responsibilities. I recognize he is well-known for his efforts to achieve conciliatory bipartisanship; and he is probably the most distinguished person in the House, obviously, in trying to see to it that we pass bills on a bipartisan rather than a partisan basis. His reputation is renowned for that. No one could possibly question that. Right? This is Halloween, too, right? Having said that, I would simply say with respect to these appropriation bills, the gentleman is wrong when the distinguished whip said that all but one bill had been passed out of the Congress by October 1. There were still 4 bills that the Senate had not even considered by the end of the fiscal year. So, again, the majority whip is wrong on his facts. I would simply say, without getting any further into silliness, that the basic problem is simply this: Everyone knows that the major obstacle on the appropriations end to our finishing our work was the disposition of the labor, health and education bill. That bill, as Bill Natcher used to say, is a bill that is the people's bill. It takes care of the children. It takes care of the sick, and it takes care of the workers who produce the wonderful prosperity that enable all of us to brag about the surpluses that we have created. What is at stake here is very simple. We did have an agreement and the majority leadership decided that they were going to break it up. Now they can argue that all they want, but the fact is that that is what happened. I think if we are going to discuss values, as we have so often been lectured about by the distinguished majority whip, if we are going to talk values let me say that I can think of no value more important than to say to the most humble worker in this country that their health comes before the wishes of the national lobbyists for the United States Chamber of Commerce. I can think of no value more important than to let the most humble worker in this country know that the Congress of the United States and the President of the United States are not so busy focusing on their own needs that they will allow the needs of the neglected to be forgotten. That is what the President said in his veto message. He is saying, do to the least of these. That is what he is saying or as the Book some of us have read that reminds us to do that, what you do to the least of my brethren, you do for me. That is what we are trying to do when we stand here protecting the interests of workers who have no place else to go but here, no place to go but here; to be protected so that they can keep their bodies whole, so that they can continue to work to put food on the table for their families. Do you think that I am going to apologize for one second for supporting the President's veto of a bill that takes care of us before it takes care of them? I do not know what planet you are on, but those are not my values. I am proud to support his veto. I would say that the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe) himself has done his job. The President's veto in no way is a criticism of his work. We all know he has done an honest job of negotiating. He, like many of us are simply caught in the situation that we would like to see not exist, and that situation was caused by the majority leadership of his party in this House.

Mr. OBEY. I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 8 minutes. Mr. Speaker, I would just like to respond to the Member on the other side of the aisle who said, how in good conscience can we support this veto? My response is, with ease. And I will tell my colleagues why. The gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe) is upset. And I do not blame him. He is one of the good people in this House. And there are a lot of good people in this House on both sides of the aisle. And we treasure our friendships, and we treasure our associations. We also treasure a sense of balance, and we treasure people who keep their word at the highest levels as well as the lowest levels of both parties. The gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe) is upset because his Treasury- Post Office bill has been vetoed, and, along with it, although this has not been mentioned, the Legislative Branch appropriations bill, because the Treasury-Post Office bill is folded into the Legislative appropriations bill. If I were the gentleman from Arizona, I would be unhappy, too, because he wants to see his bill finished. The problem is that there is only one man in the country who has the responsibility to look out after everyone, and that is the President of the United States. And what the President of the United States said in the words that the gentleman from New Jersey just read is that, quote, ``I cannot in good conscience sign a bill that funds the operations of the Congress and the White House before funding our classrooms, fixing our schools and protecting our workers.'' In other words, the gentleman from Arizona is upset because matters of legislative concern such as our offices, our travel allowances, our staff allowances are not settled. In fairness to him, he did not say that because he is concerned about the Treasury-Post Office bill, but I have had that said to me by a number of Members tonight. All the President has said is that I recognize that the big fellows in this society, the President and the Congress, because that is whose budgets are funded in the bill that he vetoed, remember, he vetoed his own budget as well as the Congress' budget. All the President says is that we are not going to provide the money that the big boys want in this society until we first take care of the needs of the little people. That is all he said. I agree with him. I would like to very much see all of this come to an end. I am sick of all of it. But I would simply say it was not the President who decided to package the Legislative and Treasury-Post Office bills in one package so that everything got tied up in this debate. It was some genius, some staffer in one of the leadership offices who decided to do that against the advice of the leadership of the Committee on Appropriations on both sides of the aisle. I would point out that there is one revenue item in that bill that the President vetoed which will cost five times as much as the entire cost for the tax credits for school construction contained in the bill which we are still trying to put back together after the majority leadership sandbagged the bipartisan agreement that we reached two nights ago. The bill that was vetoed cost the Treasury $60 billion over the same time period that it cost only $12 billion to fund the school construction tax credit. There is a very easy remedy for fixing the problem that the gentleman from Arizona is concerned about. That bill can easily be passed simply by referencing it in an agreement that we ought to be able to achieve on the Labor, Health and Education appropriations bill. All you have to do is to come back to the agreement that was hammered out two nights ago. If you do that, we will take care of the needs of people like this who have been so injured by doing their duty in the workplace that they can work no longer. We will take care of their needs as well as the needs of the 435 Members of this House who would kind of like to know what their office allowances are going to be, what their staff allowances are going to be, what their travel situation is going to be, and what the budgets for the service agencies, for the Library of Congress and CRS and others are supposed to be and all of the other legitimate concerns mentioned on that side of the aisle.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I take back my time. If the gentlewoman is going to use pejorative terms like that, then I would simply say yes, this is the first time to my knowledge that the President has vetoed this bill because it was passed before the Labor-H bill was passed. But this is also the first time that we have had the majority leader and the Speaker of the House blow up a bipartisan agreement that had been signed onto by both parties. Before those negotiations ever began, I asked the negotiator for the Republicans on the House side and on the Senate side, do you have the full authority from your leadership to negotiate to a conclusion every item in this bill? Their answer was yes. And the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) said, Yes, and isn't that nice for a change? Now, we know it was not a change. So now we know that once again, after a bipartisan negotiation has been put together, someone in the majority party, after checking with somebody else decides, Well, sorry, we're going to do it all over again. If we cannot take each other's word in this institution, then this institution is not the institution that I have given 32 years of my life to. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to explain that I thought that we had been asked if we would agree to no debate on the bill. We were willing to do that. But since my colleagues have had more speakers, we have a couple other Members who have indicated they want to speak. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez). (Mr. MENENDEZ asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

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. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, is it not true that both sides spent almost 4 hours negotiating the language of that one item; and that many times, both negotiators left the room to consult with the lawyers? And is it not further true that after we had the Merlot and toasted the agreement, is it not true that the only two remaining issues were two language issues, one on snowmobiles and one on Alaska seals?

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, does the gentleman believe everything the President says?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes and 15 seconds. Mr. Speaker, I do not think the issue here tonight is legislative terrorism. I think it is legislative obstructionism by the leadership of this House. The fact is that on prescription drugs, on the patients' bill of rights, on campaign finance reform, and on several other issues we have a bipartisan majority, but in each of those cases the will of that majority has been obstructed by the leadership that has prevented us from coming to closure on any of those issues. Now we have one more. We had an opportunity to close the appropriations cycle with one of the best bipartisan legislative agreements of the year, and instead the leadership decided to pull the rug out from under a bipartisan negotiated agreement. They decided to say to Wanda Jackson, whose fingers have almost turned into claws and cannot lift anything heavier than a milk carton because of hours of punching numbers in a computer, ``Sorry, you are not important.'' They said to Walt Frasier, who had to lift one chicken every two seconds, 10,000 birds over an 8-hour shift every day, who now has had three operations on his hands and cannot work anymore, they have had to say, ``Sorry, you are not as important as big business.'' They say to Ursula Stafford, a 24-year-old para professional who was told by her doctor she may never be able to support a pregnancy because of a herniated disk that she suffered from lifting patients; they have said to her, ``Sorry, you are not important enough.'' We are not going to protect you.'' They have said that to many other workers. Mr. Speaker, this is pure and simple another bipartisan agreement which had been reached after much hard slogging, which is now being arbitrarily tossed overboard because the leadership says ``no.'' That is unfortunate; and that, unfortunately, defines this session. So I feel great regret about this, but until the majority leadership decides to practice the bipartisan cooperation that it preaches, we are stuck here with a blown-up agreement that could have been, in fact, a landmark piece of legislation for this session.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire, does the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) intend to yield to any further speakers?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, is it not true that at the beginning of the negotiations 2 nights ago, our side asked both the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) and Senator Stevens if you had full authority to negotiate all remaining issues, and the answer was yes? Is that not true?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I do not know what the gentleman will define as outbursts. I would suggest since he has much more time remaining than I do, if he intends to yield to any other speakers that he do so.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, could I inquire of the gentleman from Florida, does he intend to yield time?

Mr. OBEY. I want to take 30 seconds, Mr. Speaker, to simply say that the gentleman from Florida was absolutely honorable in these negotiations. We disagreed vehemently on a number of these issues. But I know him to be a man of his word. I am uncomfortable that we have to say what we have to say in his presence, because if anyone blew up the deal, it was certainly not his fault. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller). (Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)