Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, what we hear today is that there are four oil- producing coastal States who this year get $100 million and who under CARA want to get $1 billion, and they are unhappy because we only gave them $400 million. That is the truth. We spread the money around more fairly among all the States, and we make no apology for it. The fact is this is a historic bill. It is the best conservation funding bill that we have seen in a generation. This raises conservation funding from $4 billion to $12 billion over a 6-year period, and that money if it is not spent on these conservation programs cannot be spent on any other item. That is as close to a guarantee as we can get. It is a phenomenal victory for the environmental movement and a phenomenal victory for those who want to protect our outdoor resources. The rule should be supported. The bill should be supported. This is something we can all go home and be proud of.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding time to me. Mr. Speaker, it is very true, this is not CARA. This is not an entitlement. In my view, we should add no new entitlements to the Federal budget until we first declare that every American has an entitlement to basic health care. That is the first new entitlement that I want to see added. After that happens, I will be happy to look at adding others, but not before. But this bill is an amazing victory for those who care about preserving our precious natural resources, who care about preserving our outdoor resources, who care about setting aside crucial pieces of land for enjoyment by future generations. This bill, for the programs included in it, takes what would otherwise be a $4 billion appropriation level over the next 6 years and expands it to $12 billion. That is a huge advance forward, and has been described so by a variety of environmental organizations, and by, for instance, the Council on Environmental Quality at the White House and others. This bill essentially says that, for this year, we will set aside $1.6 billion for these activities, and those funds will rise each year for the next 5 years until we hit $2.4 billion. That money is fenced. It is not an entitlement, but if it is not spent on these programs, it cannot be spent on any others. It is modeled precisely after the violent crime trust account which we established a number of years ago, the same duration, 6 years, and the same principle. That virtually guarantees, for anybody who wants to look at legislative reality, that these funds will go for the purposes that they are supposed to go for; namely, these conservation and environment programs. I would say to our friends from coastal States who feel that they have not been given a big enough break in this bill, we take the appropriation for their States from a little over $100 million a year to about $400 million. That is not bad. That is not hay. That is taxpayers' dollars put to a good and worthy purpose. For people to make or to claim that that is a defeat requires a new definition of that word for Webster's dictionary. I would also say to those conservation groups who are not happy that this is not CARA, there are lots of times in life when we have to settle for a little bit less than what we regard as perfect. But I am reminded of old Ben Reihle, the fellow who used to represent rural Marathon County, my home county, in the legislature. He was talking to education groups one night who were unhappy because he had not voted for exactly the amount of money that they wanted in the State budget that year for education. He had voted for an increase, but it was not a big enough increase. Old Ben looked at them and said, ``Folks, I ask you to remember one thing. I may not have voted for every dime you ever asked for, but I voted for every dime you ever got.'' If we think about it, there is a lesson in that for every single person interested in preserving wildlife, in preserving land, in preserving pristine coastal areas. This is a terrific bill for all of the purposes laid out in this legislation. Members will hear from the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks) and others what the bill contains in more detail, but I want to congratulate him. I want to congratulate everyone who had anything to do with putting this package together. I certainly want to congratulate the White House for recognizing a good deal when they saw one. I want to congratulate the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula) and the staff. No, this is not CARA, but CARA was dead as a dodo bird in the Senate, and this bill resurrected the effort to put aside important pieces of land for future generations. It creates new State programs for their protection, and this rule should be supported, and so should the bill.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I would just like to say that some of the environmental groups who think they are getting a bad deal remind me of what some of the senior citizen groups did when Social Security was passed in the 1930s. They opposed Social Security, which is a compromise with the Townsend plan. Some of those senior citizen groups opposed the creation of Social Security because they wanted the Townsend plan to pass, which was a straight $100 a month check to seniors with no contributions or anything else. So they savaged Members who voted for the compromise. This is a similar compromise. Five years from now they will be out to ring the neck of anybody who tries to cut this program.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. Mr. Speaker, as the Members of this House know, it is my view that many of the appropriation bills which passed this House were pretty pitiful. This is not one of them. This is one of those times when the House has been able to come together and to produce a bill which will really mark a significant turning point in Congress' dealing with our trust over public lands and our wildlife resources. It could not have happened if we had not had some very tough fights. We are supposed to come here and fight for what we believe in, and fight for what will enhance the country's future. Sometimes that means having some very tense moments. But out of that has come a product which has been unanimously supported by the committee. That is what we are supposed to do, we are supposed to fight like the devil for what we believe in, and then resolve our differences in a constructive way, which moves the country forward. That is exactly what has happened on this bill. As has been said, the chairman of the subcommittee is the best advertisement I know for the idiocy of term limits. He has done a fine job, and it makes no sense to have to say that, if his party stays in the majority, he would not return as chair. He has done a fine job. Certainly the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks) has performed yeoman's service in moving forward this entire question that we have wrestled with for 2 years about how to expand public support and congressional support for preserving our outdoor resources without creating a new entitlement that raises one group of people above everybody else. This will deliver the goods without putting Congress in a procedural straightjacket. One of the new things we do is to create a new State wildlife protection program. I know some of the State DNRs are unhappy that we did not just turn that into a simple revenue-sharing program. Frankly, I did not come here to be a tax collector for my DNR. I came here to try to protect the resources, and preserve our ability to oversee the protection of those resources at the same time. In addition to what we do on the outdoor resource front, which is a magnificent achievement, we expand the weatherization program to deal with the needs of low-income people, now that we are having rising energy prices. We increase research into energy efficiency. We strengthen the clear water action plan. We have the first funding increase for the National Endowment for the Arts since 1996. There are some things that I am concerned about. I would warn the Park Service that I do think that they need to recognize that there still needs to be a compromise with respect to the question of snowmobile use in our national parks. There needs to be a compromise on that. This committee did not have the jurisdiction to deal with that issue, but the Park Service needs to be flexible on that. I also want to thank the White House, because they were teriffic in seeing to it that the egregious anti-environmental riders attached to this bill were stripped out or worked into a fashion where we could grudgingly accept a couple of them. But they did wonderful work on behalf of the public that they represent. This is a great victory for them and for all of us who believe in the preservation of our outdoor resources. I want say that this is one of those times when this institution has produced something which will move the country forward, and as I said earlier, it may not be seen as all the money that some people wanted, but any time that we can say that over a 6-year period we have tripled the amount of funding for a worthy national goal from $4 billion to $12 billion, we have done a good day's work. We have a right to be proud of the work that we have done. I congratulate everyone, staff and Members, who had anything to do with it. I only wish that some of the other appropriation bills that are being produced could represent the same quality that this does. This is one of the truly finest chapters of this session of Congress.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 7 minutes. Mr. Speaker, again, there is nothing new with what we are doing here today. We have in the past had Congresses that have failed to get their appropriations work done on time and so they have required continuing resolutions; that is not the issue. The issue is why we are here on this occasion still in this same crunch, and when you answer that question, you see why this session is different from so many others in the history of the Congress. It is different, because in past years when the Congress failed to get its appropriations work done on time, it was usually because there were honest fights which were occurring over funding levels for programs all the way through, and you had honest fights between honest pieces of legislation. And it was clear what each side in those controversies were trying to do. This year has been different. This year we have seen bill after bill after bill come to the floor initially and each time those bills came to the floor, we were told by the majority leadership, well, we know the bill does not make sense at this point, but this is only the first inning, we will fix it up along the way. Basically, the reason that we are stuck here today and the problem we face today does not have so much to do with what people are now doing or not doing to bring this session to a close, what we are really faced with is the consequences of what was not done in the first 10 months of this session. What was not done was to bring bills to the floor which were a genuine reflection of the intention of the majority party and which were a genuine reflection of what we really in the end expected the Congress to produce in each of the 13 appropriation categories. Those bills essentially were political press releases put out so that the majority party could continue to pretend that there was room in the budget to fund their huge tax packages, the large majority of the breaks in those packages being directed to the most well-off among us in this society. They wanted to continue the fiction they could afford those huge tax packages, also at the same time provide a pay down of debt, a huge increase in the military budget of some $20 billion, although not nearly as much of it went to readiness as the President asked for. In order to maintain those fictions, they maintained the pretense that this Congress is going to spend about $40 billion less than, in fact, it will wind up now spending. So now we are stuck here seeing this institution having great difficulty finding the off button so that people can go home. As I said many times, that is not the fault of the majority on the Committee on Appropriations, they are practical realists. They have tried time and time again to demonstrate what kind of legislation could be passed. And when you deal with legislation straightforwardly and forthrightly and produce legislation which honestly reflects the priorities of the House, then you can pass it with a bipartisan majority on both sides; that was just demonstrated on the previous appropriations bill that we passed today. The problem we have is now after pretending to be fiscal tightwads for almost 9 months, the majority party is now in its rush to go home, now trying to jam a lot of money into a lot of bills in a very short period of time in order to get out of here. But they were still refusing to recognize that of the new money being put on the table, a good piece of that needs to be put in the bill that funds the education, health, social service and worker protection programs in the Federal budget. They are refusing to put money in that bill, but they put billions more in the energy and water bill, and they will put billions more in other appropriation bills as they move through this place. Some of those decisions will be responsible, a good many of them, in my view, will not be. So this Congress has no choice but to vote for this continuing resolution in order to keep the government open. The reason we are in this situation is simply because the product that the Committee on Appropriations was forced by the majority leadership to produce was not a genuine product in the first place. The committee knew that on the majority side of the aisle. The committee knew that on the minority side of the aisle. I think everyone knew that on both sides of the aisle on and off the committee, but for the sake of pretense, this charade has gone on for 10 months, and only now are the real choices being faced and wrestled with. Mr. Speaker, I regret the fact that my friend, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), has to bring another continuing resolution before us. He has no institutional choice, we have no institutional choice but to vote for it if we are to be responsible. But I regret very much the 9-month charade that has preceded what we are now trying to do in the last inning days of the session. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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, before I proceed to the remarks that I had intended to make tonight, as a Member of this House who represents rural America, or at least a significantly rural district, I would simply note a few facts. In 1979, the last year of the Carter administration, agriculture programs cost the taxpayer less than $4 billion in direct payments to farmers and prices paid to farmers at the marketplace were considerably higher than they are today. This year, under Freedom to Farm, better known in rural America as freedom to fail at farming, which was rammed through this House by the Republican leadership a number of years ago, the cost to taxpayers has risen to well above $20 billion a year, almost 30 if we count all costs, and the prices paid to farmers have fallen through the floor. I think most farmers, at least in my area, recognize that rural America cannot thrive unless family farmers get a decent price for their product and until the so-called Freedom to Farm Act is radically changed, rural America will continue to decay. Both parties need to face up to that fact. Major elements of my party have begun to. I wish I could say the same for major elements on the part of the other party. But who knows, time may produce miracles. I hope that they will realize that they must undo what they did if farmers are to really have a decent shot at making a decent living through the marketplace. Having said that, I would now like to turn to the subject that I wanted to talk about tonight, which is education. Because more than any other subject, education and what we do about it and what this entire country does about it lies at the center of the question of how well we will prepare for our country's future. This is going to be a fairly dull speech. It will be filled with exactly what political consultants say we should not have in our speeches. It will be filled with numbers and facts. It will not be exciting. It is not meant to be. It is meant simply to state in a clear way who has tried to do what to education over the last 5 years. We will undoubtedly hear in the Presidential debates tomorrow night; and we will have certainly seen across the Nation, Republican candidates giving speeches and running ads pretending to be friends of education. Those speeches fly in the face of the historical record of the past 6 years. That record demonstrates that education has been one of the central targets of House Republican efforts to cut Federal investments in programs essential for building America's future in order to provide large tax cuts that they have been promising their constituents for years. Six years ago, in their drive to take control of the House of Representatives, the Republican leaders, then led by Newt Gingrich, produced the so-called Contract with America, which they claimed would balance the budget while at the same time making room for huge tax cuts. They indicated that one of the ways that they would do so was by abolishing four departments. Eliminating the Department of Education was their new number one goal. They also wanted to eliminate the Departments of Energy, Commerce and HUD. Immediately upon taking over the Congress in 1995, they proposed cuts below existing appropriations, not just below the President's request, but below previous appropriations in a rescission bill H.R. 1158. That bill passed the House on March 16, 1995, reducing Federal expenditures by nearly $12 billion. Education programs accounted for only 1.6 percent of the Federal expenditures in fiscal year 1995. But they made up 14 percent of the spending reductions in the House Republican package. That package was adopted with all but six House Republicans voting in favor of cuts totaling $1.8 billion. Next, H.R. 1883 was introduced, which called for ``eliminating the Department of Education and redefining Federal role in education.'' The legislation was cosponsored by more than half of all House Republicans, including as original cosponsors the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), the current Speaker; the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Armey), the majority leader; and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), the majority whip. The desire to eliminate the Department of Education was stated explicitly in both the report that accompanied the Republican budget resolution passed by the House and in the conference report on the budget that accompanied the final product agreed to by both the House and Senate Republicans. That conference report, a sized-up copy of which I have here, for House Concurrent Resolution 76, the fiscal year 1996 budget resolution, states flatly: ``In the area of education, the House assumes the termination of the Department of Education.'' That is what they voted for. The fiscal 1996 budget resolution not only proposed the adoption of legislation to terminate the Department organizationally, but it put in place a spending plan to eliminate funding for a major portion of the Department's activities and programs in hopes of partially achieving the goal of elimination even if the President refused to sign a formal termination for the Department. The conference agreement adopted on June 29 proposed cuts in funding for Function 500, the area of the budget containing all Federal education programs, of $17.6 billion, or 30 percent below the amount needed to keep pace with inflation over the 6-year period starting in fiscal 1996. The House passed resolution had proposed even larger cuts. Every House Republican but one voted for both the House resolution and the conference report. Then the budget resolution established a framework for passage of the 13 appropriations bills. The Labor, HHS education appropriation bill, which contained the vast majority of funds that go to local school districts, was the hardest hit by that resolution. The fiscal 1996 appropriations bill for Labor, Health and Education was adopted by the House on August 4 of 1995. It slashed funding from the $25 billion level that had been originally approved for the Department in fiscal 1995 to $20.8 billion for the coming year. That $4.2 billion, or 17 percent cut below the prior year's levels, was even larger when inflation was considered and was passed in the face of information indicating that total school enrollment in the United States was increasing by about three-quarters of a million students a year. The programs affected by those cuts included: title I for disadvantaged children, reduced by $1.1 billion below the prior year; teacher training reduced by $251 million; vocational education reduced by $273 million; safe and drug-free schools cut by $241 million; and Goals 2000 to raise student performance reduced by $361 million. Republicans in this House voted in favor of that bill 213-18. The bill was opposed by virtually every national organization representing parents, teachers, school administrators, and local school boards. The Republican leadership of the House was so determined to force the President to sign the legislation and other similar appropriations that they were willing to see the government shut down twice to, in the words of one Republican leader, ``force the President to his knees.'' Speaker Gingrich said, ``On October 1 if we don't appropriate, there is no money. You can veto whatever you want to but as of October 1, there is no government. We're going to go over the liberal Democratic part of the government and say to them, we could last 60 days, 90 days, 120 days, 5 years, a century. There's a lot of stuff we don't care if it's ever funded.'' It is clear that the Labor, Health and Education bill and the education funding in particular in that bill was at the heart of the controversy that resulted in those government shutdowns. Cutting education was an issue that Republicans felt so strongly about that they literally were willing to see the government shut down in an attempt to achieve this goal. Speaker Gingrich said, ``I don't care what the price is, I don't care if we have no executive offices and no bonds for 60 days, not this time.'' House Republican whip Mr. DeLay said, ``We are going to fund only those programs we want to fund. We're in charge. We don't have to negotiate with the Senate. We don't have to negotiate with the Democrats.'' When the government shut down, the public reacted strongly against the Republican House leadership's hardheadedness and that led to the eventual signing of the conference agreement on Labor, Health and Education funding as part of an omnibus appropriations package on April 26, 1996, more than halfway through the fiscal year. That action came after nine continuing resolutions and those two government shutdowns. That agreement restored about half of the cuts below prior year's funding that had been pushed through by the Republican majority, raising the original House Republican figure of $20.8 billion for education to $22.8 billion. So on that occasion, as you can see, pressure from the Democratic side of the aisle forced restoration of about $2 billion in education spending. Later in 1996, the Republican House caucus organized another attempt to cut education funding below prior year's levels in the fiscal 1997 Labor-Health-Education bill. On July 12, 1996, the House adopted the bill with the Republicans voting 209-22 in favor of passage. Incidentally, I will not read it into the record at this point but my submitted remarks will cite all of the rollcalls, dates and pages if anyone wants to check them. The bill cut education by $54 million below the levels agreed to for fiscal 1996 and $2.8 billion below the President's request. During the debate on that bill, Republicans also voted 227-2 to kill an amendment specifically aimed at restoring $1.2 billion in education funding. As the fall and election of 1996 began to approach, the Republican commitment to cut education began to be overshadowed by their desire to adjourn Congress and go home to campaign. As a result, the President and Democrats in Congress forced them to accept an education package that was more than $3.6 billion above House-passed levels. 1997 brought a 1-year respite from Republican efforts to squeeze education. For 1 year a welcomed bipartisan approach was followed and the appropriation that passed the House and the final conference agreement were extremely close to the amounts requested by the President and the Department of Education. Conflict between the two parties over education funding erupted again in 1998 when the President requested $31.2 billion for the Department for fiscal 1999. In July, the House Appropriations Committee reported on a party line vote a Labor-Health-Education bill that cut the President's education budget by more than $600 million; but the bill remained in legislative limbo after the beginning of the next fiscal year. Then on October 2, 1998, the Republicans voted with only six dissenting votes to bring the bill to the floor. The leadership then reversed itself on its desire to call up the bill and refused to bring it to the floor. The House Republican leadership finally grudgingly agreed to negotiate higher levels for education so they could return home and campaign. The White House and the Democrats in Congress had been able to force them to accept a funding level for education that was $2.6 billion above their original House bill. Last year, in 1999, the House Republican leaders again directed their appropriators to report a Labor-Health-Education appropriation bill that cut education spending below the President's request and below the level of the prior year. The fiscal 2000 bill reported to the Committee on Appropriations on a straight party line vote funded education programs at nearly $200 million below the 1999 level. The bill was almost $1.4 billion below the President's request. Included in the cuts below requested levels were reductions in title I grants to local school districts for education of disadvantaged students, $264 million below; after-school programs were taken $300 million below the President's request; education reform and accountability efforts, $491 million below; and improvement of education technology resources, $301 million below. Because inadequate funding threatened their ability to pass the bill, House Republican leaders never brought it to the House floor. After weeks of pressure from House Democrats, they ordered a separate bill that had been agreed to with Senate Republican leaders to be brought to the House floor. That bill contained significantly more education funding than the original House bill but still cut the President's request for class size reduction by $200 million, after-school programs cut by $300 million, title I by almost $200 million, and teacher quality programs by $35 million. The bill was opposed by the Committee for Education Funding which represents 97 national organizations interested in education, including parent and teacher groups, school boards and school administrators. It was adopted by a vote of 218-211 with House Republicans voting 214-7 in favor. After further negotiations, they agreed on November 18 to add nearly $700 million more, which we were requesting, to those education programs. Now, this year. This year the President proposed a $4.5 billion increase for education programs in the fiscal 2001 budget. The bill reported by House Republicans cut the President's request by $2.9 billion. Cuts below the budget request included $400 million cut from title I, $400 million from after-school programs, $1 billion for improving teacher quality and $1.3 billion for repair of dilapidated school buildings. It was adopted by a vote of 217-214 with House Republicans voting 213-7 in favor. When the fiscal 2001 Labor, Health and Education bill was sent to conference, a motion to instruct the conferees to go to the higher Senate levels for education and other programs was offered. It also instructed conferees to permit language ensuring that funds provided for reduced class size and repairing school buildings was used for those purposes. It was defeated 207-212 with Republicans voting 208-4 in opposition. In summary, and I will supply tables for the record, the record clearly shows that over the past 6 years, House Republicans set the elimination of the Department of Education as the primary goal. Failing that, they attempted to reduce education funding to the maximum extent possible. Failing that, they attempted to reduce education funding to the maximum extent possible. In every year since they have had control of the House, they have attempted to cut the President's request for education funding. Appropriation bills passed by House Republicans would have cut a total of $14.6 billion from presidential requests for education funding. I repeat. Appropriation bills passed by House Republicans would have cut a total of $14.6 billion from presidential requests for education funding. In 3 of the 6 years that they have controlled the House, they have actually attempted to cut education funding below prior year levels despite steady increases in school enrollment, in the annual increase in cost to local school districts of providing quality classroom instruction. Now, these education budget cuts have not been directed at Washington bureaucrats as some Republicans have tried to argue but mainly at programs that send money directly to local school districts to hire teachers and improve curriculum. Programs such as title I, after- school, safe and drug-free schools, class size reduction, educational technology assistance, all send well over 95 percent of their funds directly to local school districts. While zealots in the Republican conference drove much of this agenda, it is clear that they could not have succeeded without the repeated assistance from dozens of Republican moderates who attempt now to portray themselves as friends of education. They may have been in their hearts, but they were not when the votes came. The one redeeming aspect of the Republican record on education over the last 6 years is that in most of those years, they failed to achieve the cuts that they spent most of the year fighting to impose. When a coalition between Democrats in Congress and in some cases members of the Republican Party in the Senate and Democrats in the Senate, when a coalition between them and the Democrats in this House and the President made it clear that the bills containing those cuts would be vetoed and that House Republicans by themselves could not override the vetoes, legislation that was far more favorable to education was finally adopted. For Republican Members now to attempt to take credit for that fact is in effect bragging about their own political ineptitude. The question that concerned Americans must ask is this: What will happen if the Republicans find a future opportunity to deliver on their 6-year agenda for education? They may eventually become more skillful in their efforts to cut education. They may at some point have a larger majority in one or both houses, or they may serve under a President who will be more amenable to their education agenda. All of those prospects should be very troubling to those who feel that local school districts cannot do the job that the country needs without greater assistance from the Federal Government. Now, this is not an issue of local versus Federal control. Almost 93 percent of the money spent for elementary and secondary education at the local level is spent in accordance with the wishes of State and local governments. But there are national implications to failing schools in any part of the country. The Federal Government has an obligation to try to help disseminate information about what does and does not work in educating children, and it has an obligation to respond to critical needs by defining and focusing on national priorities. That is what the other 7 percent of educational funding in this country does. Education is indeed primarily a local responsibility, but it must be a top priority at all levels, Federal, State and local; or we will not get the job done. In summary, as the tables will show in the remarks that I am making tonight, the House Republican candidates now shout loudly that they can be trusted to support education, but their record over the last 6 years speaks louder than their words. The records show that in 3 of the last 6 years, House Republicans tried to cut education $5.5 billion below previous levels and $13 billion below Presidential requests, $14.5 billion if you count their first rescission effort in 1995. It shows that more than $15.6 billion that has been restored came only after Democrats in the Congress and in the White House demanded restoration. That is the record that must be understood by those concerned about education's future, and that is the record that will be demonstrated by the three charts that I am inserting in the Record at this point. The History of House Republican Efforts to Attack Education--1994 Through 2000 Across the nation Republican Congressional Candidates are giving speeches and running ads pretending to be friends of education. Those speeches and ads fly in the face of the historical record of the past six years. That record demonstrates that education has been one of the central targets of House Republican efforts to cut federal investments in programs essential for building America's future in order to provide large tax cuts they have been promising their constituents. Six years ago in their drive to take control of the House of Representatives, the Republican Leaders led by Newt Gingrich produced a so-called ``Contract with America'' which they claimed would balance the budget while at the same time making room for huge tax cuts. They indicated that one of the ways they would do so was by abolishing four departments of the federal government. Eliminating the U.S. Department of Education was their number one goal. They also wanted they said to eliminate the Departments of Energy, Commerce and

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, what I want to say is directed to one simple question: How much self-respect does each and every individual Member of this body possess? Does every one of the 435 Members who belongs to this body believe that they have a right to participate in the process by which major decisions are made, or do they believe that year after year these major decisions, especially if they are politically difficult, will be made by a few people in a room somewhere? That is the issue. Now, the way this place is supposed to do business is that the President's budget comes down to the floor each year, it is divided into 13 appropriation bills for discretionary spending, and one by one those subcommittees containing members who specialize in these issues and actually, lo and behold, know something about them, are supposed to deal with these issues on a bill-by-bill basis. The gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Skeen) has spent years developing an expertise on agriculture. So has the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) and every other member of the Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies has spent hours and hours learning to do their craft. And yet, what is now happening? We have a lot of major issues in this bill. We have the issue of Cuba. We have the issue of what kind of embargo policy we are going to have and how that is supposed to impact on our ability to export agriculture products. We have issues involving agriculture conservation. We have issues involving emergency disaster payments and all the rest. Those issues ought to be decided by the people who are a member of the committee that knows something about them. But we have been told in the last day or so that there is a new game plan floating around, and that game plan calls for all of these issues to be solved at a staff level with an occasional consult with a member. And then the agriculture bill is supposed to be dumped into the transportation appropriations bill and the conferees who will actually bring that bill to the floor would be the members of the transportation subcommittee. Well, I do not know how many members of the transportation subcommittee know a Guernsey from a Holstein, but I bet the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Skeen) does. It seems to me, therefore, that every single Member of this House who respects the rights of rank and file Members to decide what ought to happen on these issues, and every Member of this House who has a reverence for what this institution is supposed to be and a reverence for some semblance of context, process, and order so that we know what we are doing as we do it, it seems to me every single one of them would vote for this motion to instruct regardless of party. The only reason, the only reason that the Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies might not be allowed to make these decisions is because the majority party leadership has a problem. They lost two votes on this House floor on the issue of agriculture exports and the Cuban embargo and so they want to reverse by fiat what the House did; and so they are, in the process, willing to run roughshod not just over the Committee on Appropriations, not just over the Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies, but over the right of every single Member in this House to know who they are supposed to talk to if they want to get their two cents' worth in about resolving these issues. That is what is at stake here. What is at stake here is whether this is still a body of 435 people who belong to committees who develop expertise on these issues or whether we are just going to have this whole House run by an anonymous set of staffers with a few general dictates laid out by their bosses with no ability of the House to really shape the choices that we will be asked to vote on. That is why, regardless of party, this motion ought to be supported.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, I just want to make clear that it is understood that the bill will be filed only if we have reached final agreement on all four corners.

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

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, the two gentleman bringing this bill to the floor have done a fine job. The gentleman from California (Mr. Packard) is a fine Member of this institution, and I am going to hate to see him leave his post. The gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Visclosky) is also an extremely fine Member. But I am not going to vote for this bill, and I want to explain why. This bill is the product of the total and utter collapse of the budget process. That collapse came about as a result of the adoption of a budget resolution last spring which pretended that domestic spending priorities could be squeezed to the bone, far below the level that everyone understood would actually be producible by this Congress, and under that resolution the House then proceeded to debate and pass all 13 appropriation bills. We spent the entire summer working on those bills. Many of those bills passed by the narrowest of margins because of concerns expressed on both sides of the aisle over the lack of adequate resources being provided and most of them to fund government activities. Now, suddenly, in the last inning, in the middle of September, only a few weeks before the beginning of the fiscal year, that budget resolution has been thrown out. Discipline has been thrown out. Now we are told that we should ignore all decisions that were made in early morning and late night sessions throughout the spring and summer to produce radically different bills. The new guidelines that we have been given by the Republican leadership are to spend up to 10 percent of the unified budget surplus of nearly $280 billion. That was first interpreted to mean about $28 billion. Later Republican leaders revealed that, relative to the budget passed last spring, they would permit $41 billion of the surplus to be spent. But you need to understand that really means close to $80 billion. Here is why. The surplus is only spent when the funds actually leave the Treasury. Most appropriations for discretionary programs do not result in all of the money leaving the Treasury in the fiscal year for which they are provided. They are spent later. So, on average, only half of the appropriated funds leave the Treasury in any give year, and, for some programs, less than one-tenth of the appropriated funds result in funds leaving the Treasury during that same fiscal year. As a result, that $40 billion in spending can be leveraged into an expenditure of up to $80 billion, and, if you really twist the numbers, you could squeeze even more than $80 billion in additional spending into the budget. That is why this bill now can come to the floor almost $2 billion above the level of the same bill passed by the House in the summer, and $800 million above the level requested by the President. Now, the leadership is arguing that the reason this has to be done is to reach compromise with the President because they do not want him to veto the bill. Well, if you take a look the statement of administration policy for this bill when this bill was reported in mid-June, almost $2 billion lower in spending than the bill now before us, you do not find in that eight-page statement the word ``veto.'' The President would have signed that bill as it stood in June. The problem that we have here is that the $2 billion that has been added to this bill was not for him, it was for Members of this body, and this is not the only bill where that is happening. The problem is that I might be willing to vote for this money if I knew what was going to happen in some of the other bills, but we are being told, for instance, that in the Labor, Health and Education conference, that we cannot add to the amount that has been agreed to by the majority in that conference. So there is no room in the budget for additional funding above the level that the Republican Party has laid out for the Labor, Health and Education programs, and yet they have room to put $2 billion of additional money in for this program. I am not willing to vote for that added money in this bill, if it means that it is going to be squeezed out of education or out of health or out of worker protection programs. Those are not my priorities. If we have to choose, and we should have to choose, there should be some limits, there should be some context, there should be some discipline; but the problem is that there is none, because under the new rules under which we are now proceeding in this rush to get out of town, the only people who know what the spending limits are are a few staffers in the leadership offices of the majority party. The problem is that they change the rules every 2 or 3 days. So at this point, by voting for the additional $2 billion in this bill, I do not know what consequences there are for other programs in the budget that, to me, are of higher priority. That is why I am not going to vote for this bill. I mean no criticism of either of the gentleman, and I certainly mean no criticism of the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), the full committee chairman. But this process by which decisions are made arbitrarily by a few staffers on instruction from a few other staffers in the House leadership office disenfranchises rank and file members of the Committee on Appropriations. And if we doubt that, take a look at what is happening in all the other conferences. Those rank and file members are not in those conferences. It also disenfranchises the vast majority of members of both parties in this House. That is not the fault of the Committee on Appropriations. In the end, the committee, the way this place works, will take the heat for it, but it is not the fault of the Committee on Appropriations. They are simply following the orders of their leadership. So the result is we have institutional chaos, no discipline, no real understanding of what the rules are, and no context in which to judge whether the amount of money being put in these bills is responsible or not. That is why, and I mean no criticism of these two gentlemen, but that is why I intend to vote against this bill. Because this is a lousy way to run a railroad, and it is a lousy way to run a legislative body that is supposed to be the greatest legislative body in the world.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. God help us all if that were to happen. Let me simply say, Mr. Speaker, you know, the President has not vetoed any of these bills. The last time I looked, our Republican friends were in control of both Houses; and yet they have been able to pass only two appropriations bills through both Houses and both of those have been signed. They all relate to the funding of one department, the Defense Department, but four of the bills that have yet to be passed have not even yet passed the other body, in the real world known as the Senate; and that means that the main problem has been that the majority party has not been able to reach agreement with itself. As the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) indicated earlier, every time an appropriations bill came to the floor, we were told, ``Well, we know it has problems, we know that this cannot be passed until it is fixed, but pass it on. This is only the first inning, we will fix it later.'' And now, because of that, we have all of those runners piled up on second base, and none of them are going home. That is why the government is again off the track, or the train is off the track. I repeat what I said earlier, the reason we are in this position is because early on, the majority party leadership decided that above all else, they were going to keep their party together and they were going to pass each of these bills on their side of the aisle alone, if necessary. And they fashioned them in such a way that they were acceptable to the most rigid elements within their caucus, and that meant that those bills were not acceptable, either to us or to a lot of their fellow Republicans in the other body. Mr. Speaker, now we are facing the logical consequences of the majority party pretending for the last 10 months that they could cut education, they could cut health, they could cut environmental cleanup, they could cut job protection programs all deeply below the President's budget and still find the votes to pass these appropriation bills on time and leave a lot of room for very large tax cuts. Now, that has all been demonstrated to be untrue; and we all knew it was untrue from the beginning, including many of my friends on the majority side of the aisle who would privately admit that it was not true. Mr. Speaker, if you look at the numbers, the problem is that the budget resolution, which the majority passed at the beginning of the year, was $20 billion below the amount needed to simply stay even with inflation, and $28 billion or nearly 10 percent below the amounts requested by the President, and it called for even deeper reductions in each of the next 5 years to finance the ever-escalating outyear costs of their tax package. Most of it was aimed at providing the relief for folks at the very top of the economic ladder. Mr. Speaker, so now reality has caught up with us; and we are here just a few weeks before the election still stuck on second base, still trying to wave some of those runners home. And I have to come to the conclusion that, from time to time, I look around, and I do not see anybody in the batter's box. I cannot figure out what signals are coming from the bench from whoever is coaching today, because we started with one strategy and now, all of a sudden, 2 weeks before we are supposed to be adjourned, we are told, ``Oh, we have this new approach, this 90-10 approach.'' We are going to use 90 percent for deficit reduction and use the other 10 percent for tax cuts and for other appropriations and other financial expenditures.'' But when you look at it that way, that puts $80 billion of new money on the table, a huge amount; and all of a sudden, we have subcommittees meeting in each separate room all working out their own deals. And we have no idea how they relate to each other, no idea what the spending level is going to be in the end, no idea what the rules are, no idea what the discipline is. So we wind up seeing a process which has no discipline. It has no order. It does not even have priorities; and, to me, that is an incompetent way to try to put together a Federal budget or any other piece of legislation. I do not blame the majority party members on the Committee on Appropriations, because most of them warned early in the game that this would be the case if we followed this course. And so I guess we will have to continue to try to do the best we can under these circumstances. Mr. Speaker, I, for the life of me, cannot figure out what the strategy is to either finish these bills or to get signable bills down to the White House. I think maybe we have a shot at Interior. I am hoping that we can close on Interior very, very soon; but beyond that, I am mystified about how we intend to proceed. All I can say is that I hope that sooner or later we can get everyone in the same room so that we know what is happening with respect to all of the pieces. Because until we know that, all of these pieces are going to be spinning, all of these pieces are going to be going in circles rather than going in any discernible direction; and that serves no one's interest. All it does is bring further discredit to the institution and make people think that chaos is the norm around here. Having served in this place a long time, that was not my impression until recently. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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 1 minute to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, how much time is remaining on both sides?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, might I inquire how much time is remaining.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. The issue is not what has happened in the past; the issue is what ought to happen now. I am amused by our friends on the other side of the aisle who claim that all of a sudden the Republicans are the new- found friend of education. Over the last 6 years, since they have taken control of this House, they have tried to cut, in 4 different years, they have tried to cut education funding below the previous year--not below the request, but below the previous year funding--by about $5.5 billion. Now they are discovering that that is not so popular. And so, belatedly, they are beginning to grudgingly give ground; and instead of calling for the abolition of the Department of Education and eliminating Federal influence in education, they are now grudgingly recognizing that there needs to be a Federal role. Yet it is very grudgingly given ground indeed. If my colleagues want to see our support for the Labor, Health, and Education bill, for instance, all they need to do is to get rid of the anti-worker riders; get rid of the anti-environmental riders in the Interior bill; get rid of the anti-education riders in the Labor- Health-Education bill, get rid of the anti-health riders that they have. And what they need to do is to recognize that if we are going to fund education programs fairly, we ought to fund Republican priorities as well as Democratic priorities. So we welcome the fact that our friends on the other side of the aisle have decided they want to increase funding for special education. We are asking them to also do what they said they would do in May and raise that amount by another $700 million to meet the amount they promised the American people in May. The Republican presidential candidate, Mr. Bush, claims that he is now belatedly for an increase in the Pell Grants, after he pooh-poohed that very idea in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, just a month ago. What we are asking is this: If he is for that, then why do you not vote for that additional increase in Pell Grants that we put on the table in the conference? We are asking that our colleagues recognize that there is a crying need in this country to repair dilapidated school buildings and to keep the President's dedicate funding. We are asking our colleagues to recognize the need to reduce class size. We are asking that the Republicans recognize that 93 percent of education funds in this country are spent the way local school districts want them to be spent. We are asking our colleagues on the other side of the aisle to use the other 7 percent that the Federal Government provides in order to target issues of national importance and national need in the interest of quality of education and social justice. That is what we need. We need to fund both Republican and Democratic priorities in the area of education if we are to have the kind of bipartisan support for that bill that it ought to have under any Congress, no matter who is controlling the Congress. So I would simply say, Mr. Speaker, I would urge a vote for this resolution, because we have no choice if we want to keep the government open, and we do. But I would ask the majority, instead of continuing to insist that they please the most rigid elements of their caucus on all of their appropriation conferences, I would ask that they recognize we need a bipartisan approach to all of these bills, or we will need another continuing resolution and yet another one; and we will indeed be stuck here until the cows come home.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 8 minutes. Mr. Speaker, the distinguished gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), my good friend, indicated that the year that I was chairman we were able to pass all of our bills on time because we had 80 more Democrats. That sounds like a pretty good recommendation to me. I hope that he is willing to endorse it.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1\1/2\ minutes. Mr. Speaker, I would simply point out to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Scarborough) that is a very interesting and a very amusing and not very relevant rewrite of history. But I would simply ask him, he raises this great specter of the President following a veto strategy. Which appropriations bills has the President vetoed this year? To my knowledge, he has not vetoed any appropriations bills this year. My colleagues have not been able to get four bills through their own party in the other body, and they have got the gall to claim that the President is the reason that the Congress has not done its work. Grow up.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, how much time is remaining on each side?

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

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 8 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).