Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

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

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

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Frost).

Mr. OBEY. I did not know that you had overtime in baseball games.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Mr. Speaker, I would like to simply say to the gentleman from Georgia, it is very simple. The answer to his question is you do exactly what we have done under Medicare, where you have one of the two parts of Medicare, one for hospitals, the other for doctors; one of them is universal and not voluntary, and the other is universal and voluntary. It has only worked since 1965, so I recognize it is a bit radical for those on the other side of the aisle, but it has worked. Let me simply say, Mr. Speaker, that this continuing resolution is an interim funding bill which concedes that we are experiencing what the leadership on the other side of the aisle has said for 10 months they wanted to avoid above everything else, and that is the fifth legislative train wreck in 6 years. It is only three days before the end of the fiscal year. We have passed only two of the 13 appropriation bills and funded only one of the government's departments. That is not really new. That has happened before. The issue is not so much whether or not we have finished our work on time today. The issue is whether or not this snarl that we find ourselves in could have been avoided, and the fact is it could have. I think we need to ask why we are in this situation today, where we have to extend the budget once again. I think we have to recognize that some people in this body and even those who report on this body, are beginning to believe that legislative train derailments have become as much a part of autumn as football, and I think we have to ask why. Now, we hear some Members of the majority party saying, ``Oh, the President of the United States has involved himself. He has usurped our power. That is the problem.'' That is not the problem at all. The President has a perfect right to assert his priorities, just as the majority and minority parties in this institution have a right to assert theirs. The President has simply moved into a vacuum created by the fact that this Congress has not done its job. I think we ought to ask why. We are in the situation we are in today because of the basic decision made 10 months ago by the Republican leadership of this House to try to impose on the Congress a budget resolution which they knew would not work, which we knew would not work, which the public knew would not work, and which the press knew would not work. They insisted on pretending that by cutting huge amounts over the next 5 years out of domestic appropriations, they could somehow pretend that there was enough room in the budget to finance giant tax cuts, which got progressively larger each year as the cuts in social programs got progressively deeper. I think they were warned all around the horn that that would simply not work. Now, I understand why they would not take those warnings from people like me, because I am a member of the loyal opposition; but they were warned by people like former Congressman Bob Livingston, who used to Chair this committee. He tried to warn the majority party that, sooner or later, if you are the governing party in any legislative institution, you have to choose between getting your work done and having absolute, total party unity; and sometimes you have to sacrifice the latter in order to accomplish the former. The problem is simply that the leadership on the other side has never recognized that if there are those in their conference who are too extreme to be part of a broader consensus in this House on controversial matters, then they need to let them go and work out a broad bipartisan consensus between the two parties. Instead, on bill after bill, they chose to proceed along the confrontational road. They chose to try to pass bills with only Republican votes that satisfied their ideology and their political goals, but, in the end, produced no real legislative results. So in the end, they wind up with 11 out of the 13 bills never having proceeded beyond second base, and none of them getting home except the defense appropriations bill. Now, I think the issue is simple: we are here today facing a day of reckoning because at this point we have a strategy a week coming out of the majority leadership. First of all, we are supposed to live by the budget resolution, which spells out how much is supposed to be cut out of each appropriation bill. The majority party discovers they cannot get the votes to pass any of those bills through both Houses, except the defense bills, and so what happens? They then revert to a different strategy. Just today I left a conference where they are putting $2 billion additional into the Energy and Water bill above the level as it left the House. I do not know, frankly, whether I should vote for that bill or not, because I have no idea what they intend to do with the other seven remaining appropriation bills that require funding. Under some circumstances, I would certainly be willing to support that $2 billion add-on, but not if it comes at the expense of our being able to meet our responsibilities in the area of education, in the area of health care, in the area of environmental cleanup, and we have none of the answers to those questions yet because we have no idea how they intend to produce passable bills for Interior, for Labor, Health, Education, Social Services, for HUD, and I submit they do not either. So it seems to me that sooner or later the majority party is going to have to agree to a bipartisan approach to achieve a broad consensus between the two parties, or else we will be stuck on second base until the cows come home.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I certainly would like to say it is no skin off my nose if other Members are kept here, because I am going to have to be here anyway. But I really do believe that Members need to understand that the percentage chance we have of actually having an agreed bill that is not going to be vetoed, ready for the House to vote on by tomorrow is about 3 percent. I would note, for instance, that the National Journal indicated that last week when the House took up the NASA authorization act, it actually voted on and passed the wrong bill. It had the wrong text when we voted on it last week, and that is why we have to go through these readouts and we will be here. We will have to go through those readouts, but I do not think it helps individual Members for them to have to be stuck in their offices when they could be doing something more useful while we are running through those readouts to make certain that that does not happen again, when, in fact, the bill could easy be ready for Monday consideration if we reach agreement on it and we would not have messed up any other Members' schedules.

Mr. OBEY. If the gentleman would continue to yield.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, let me simply ask of the distinguished majority leader. Obviously all of us want to get rid of as many appropriation bills as we can. We are going to have enough real arguments on the bills where we have real differences that we ought not have arguments on bills where we may not have any real differences. But I would just like to caution, or raise one point of caution. We are going to go into conference again on the Interior bill about 2:30. We were in conference on it this morning until it was interrupted for a rollcall vote on the House floor and a leadership meeting, as I understand it. If we go back in, if everything goes well and everything is kissy-face and nobody has any problems with it, we might be able to finish by 5 o'clock or so, very optimistically speaking. But at that point it is my understanding that there is an expectation that there would then be a follow-up meeting with the White House to try to discuss the known objections that the White House has to the conference as it is being formed right now. Right now there are at least eight items which are still considered vetoable. One is the land legacy item where we have not only a $500 million difference but substantial differences not between the parties but between the Congress as an institution and the Presidency as an institution on how that package is to be handled. We have considerable shortfalls in the Native American health area, which the White House is insisting be restored. We have a problem with energy conservation funds. We still have a large argument on the arts. We have had three additional riders that were added in the conference last night, the White River Forest in Colorado, the White Mountain rider in New Hampshire, and now the conferees are possibly going to also include a hard rock mining amendment. If that is the case, then we will have matters of major controversy between the Congress and the White House that still have to be resolved. Assuming that could be done today, which is a huge assumption, and my evaluation is that there is not much chance that is going to occur in that short a period, but assuming that could happen sometime today, it will take at least 7 or 8 hours after drafting those changes to get that bill in a position where the committee will then have to do its read-out where we walk through every paragraph to make certain that the bill does what the conferees agree. That means they will have to work all night. The earliest that they could possibly file would be about 5 or 6 in the morning. The earliest the Committee on Rules could meet would be tomorrow morning. Normal order would require a 1-day layover. And, in my view, it is highly unlikely that we are going to get there that fast. I do think if we can work out the differences, the bill could be ready for a vote on Monday. But I have very strong doubts that there is a prayer it will be ready tomorrow. And while we will be here on the Committee on Appropriations and I know the leadership will be here, I would simply ask the gentleman what is the utility of inconveniencing other Members who could go home or do whatever else they need to do rather than holding out a smidgen of a hope that this bill could be moved up one day? In my view given the large number of controversial items hanging out there, that is not likely to happen. I assure the gentleman I am raising this simply to try to help meet the convenience of Members who have a right to have a realistic assessment of what is likely to happen on this bill.

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

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of the time. Mr. Speaker, no one is against districts having flexibility, but I would point out that under Title VI, which they want to expend without any strings whatsoever, audits discovered that one State used those funds to purchase an automobile for the State department of education; another State used it to pay their entire State education printing bill at the expense of the Federal Government; a third State used these funds for a banquet related to an entirely different program; another State used them for graduate classes taken by an employee of the State education agency. That points out for the need for accountability. Mr. Speaker, 93 percent of the money spent at the local level is under control of local, State, or local and State school agencies; that will remain under local control. We are talking about whether we ought to have some ability to target the remaining 7 percent which comes from the Federal Government. We think we should. The gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Porter) says this is not about money. That is absolutely not true. We want at least $3 billion more in that bill for education, for school modernization, for class size reduction, for afterschool programs, for Pell Grant increases, for special education increases and a number of others that we outlined. This asks two things: It asks, first of all, that we fund education at the highest possible level. It means we should take some of that $28 billion in new money on the table and use it for education. The majority party has told us in conference we cannot use a dime of that additional money for education; that puts education last rather than first as a national priority. That is backwards. The second thing we say is whatever amount of money you provide for local flexibility, do not use it as an excuse to gut our efforts to strengthen efforts to provide modern school buildings and smaller class size. This country is wise enough and wealthy enough to do both.

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 have only 1 remaining speaker, and I understand I have the right to close.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 45 seconds to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind). (Mr. KIND asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 45 seconds to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Green).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt), the distinguished minority leader. (Mr. GEPHARDT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Wu).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer).

Mr. OBEY. I would just note that we had thought that the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) was going to be offering his motion which had been noticed, and we had expected that there would be two hours of debate on it.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I had not expected this many people to want to participate in debate. I am now getting a lot of additional requests that we had not expected. Could I persuade the majority party to agree to a unanimous consent request to add 10 minutes to each side?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Speaker, the fact is that in fiscal year 1996, the Republican majority tried to cut $5 billion, 19 percent, out of the President's education request. The following year they tried to cut $2.8 billion out of the President's request, 11 percent. The following year they got religion and they only tried to cut $191 million, or 1 percent, out of the President's education budget. The following year they tried to cut $662 million out of the President's budget. Last year they tried to cut $1.4 billion out of the President's education budget. And this year they have been trying to cut $2.9 billion out of the President's budget on the bill that left the House. Now, the only reason that the final numbers wind up looking as good as the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle) has indicated is because the majority party got beat for 5 straight years in negotiations and we were able to get that money restored. Since they want to brag about how ineffective they have been, go ahead, but that does not impress anybody very much.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), a member of the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education.