Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

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

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes to simply say it is simply not true that the White House has not indicated what they want to see with this bill. They have indicated they want to see more funds for the IRS, they have indicated they want to see more funds for counterterrorism, they have indicated they want additional funds in order to deal with the Puerto Rican election. They have indicated that they also do not want to have a non-germane separate tax provision which has no business in this bill being considered in this kind of a three-headed package. They have suggested that if indeed that tax package is going to be considered, then it ought to be considered along with other tax items, including some of the tax items that the administration is interested in several other appropriation bills. So they made it very clear what they regard to be the deficiencies in this bill, and I do not think it ought to be asserted otherwise. Secondly, I would simply say I think the gentleman from Arizona has negotiated in absolute good faith, but I think he has had the rug pulled out from under him, just as we have on this side of the aisle, by the decision of his leadership to proceed in partisan fashion to pass this bill with votes on that side of the aisle alone. I regret that, but that, nonetheless, is apparently what has happened today, and until the substance of the bill is fixed, we do not intend to participate.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, the article points out that tax fraud is a ticking time bomb in this country, probably approaching up to $300 billion in lost revenue. It tells the story of one family worth billions of dollars, one family that holds, in art collections alone, over $6 billion in assets. They have a town house, a swimming pool. They have property in Kenya and France. They spend tens of millions of dollars each year. They spend $65,000 just in dog bills. They have not even filed a tax return for the last 20 years, and the IRS did not even know about it. That is the kind of tax avoidance which the IRS ought to be able to track, and so as long as they do not have adequate resources, will not be able to track. If you are some taxpayer paying $30,000 a year and they caught you, you would get womped with a bill in a hurry. But here is an example of a family that has lived like kings, international multinational kings, for years, in full view; and they have paid not one dime in taxes and never even bothered to file. This is no laughing matter, when the administration is asking for more money to fund the IRS. So I would suggest that for those two reasons alone, this bill still falls far short of where it ought to be. I also do not see why we should continue to play a flip-flop game with SSI. Last year we decided, the Congress decided, it was going to move the date for the payment of SSI checks into one fiscal year. The Congress moved it back to a different fiscal year in the supplemental this year. Now it is trying to flip it back again, moving it to a different fiscal year again, not for substance purposes, but for political purposes. All that does is create confusion and bring into question whether or not those SSI checks are going to be able to be cut. We ought not do that. That is another reason why this bill ought not to be considered in this fashion.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 12 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Speaker, as of this point, we have 2 of the 13 appropriation bills which must pass by October 1 actually through the system. Both of those bills fund the same department. Other than that, we have a lot of bills that are still caught midstream at various points between the two Houses. This bill is, unfortunately, part of an unfortunate process under which decisions have evidently been made to send yet more bills down to the President which will be veto bait rather than bills that will be likely to become law. That does nothing to put us any closer to getting our work done by the end of the fiscal year. And I regret that. The legislative appropriations bill started out as a bill which every single Member of the minority side was willing to sign and send on to the other body and the President. Unfortunately, it was been packaged with a number of other unrelated items, other appropriations bills, as well as tax provisions which have no business in the bill. In essence, at this point, this dog has three tails and no legs. It is not going anywhere. And the sooner we dispose of it, the sooner we can get back to reality. I do not expect, unfortunately, that we are going to see many Members on this side voting for this bill because it, unfortunately, is another exercise in futility at this point. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Chairman, let me simply say again the record is clear the administration wants additional money for the IRS. This bill provides and wants additional money to deal with the Puerto Rican elections, and it wants additional money to deal with antiterrorism. This bill makes a substantial reduction in our antiterrorism appropriations. We had a lot of talk last year around New Year's about whether or not we expected terrorists activities. Those, in fact, did not occur. It is no accident that they did not occur. We cannot talk in public about some of the things that the administration is trying to deal with in this category, but it would seem to me that before anyone considers reducing this account, they ought to have the briefing that the administration is asking to provide, because I think it will bring into substantial question the decision made in this bill to cut that account. Mr. Speaker, I would also simply say, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) has already referred to this, I want to insert in the Record at this time an article entitled ``Taxfree Millionaires by Donald Bartlett and James B. Steel.'' [From the Washington Monthly, Sept. 2000] Tax Free Millionaires--How the Super Rich Get Away Without Paying Any Taxes (By Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele) Tax fraud is exploding in the United States. In ways large and small, Americans are cheating like never before. One of every three people, perhaps as many as one of every two, is doing it. It's one of Washington's dirty little secrets, a ticking time bomb with the potential to destroy the country's tax system and to undermine essential government programs like Social Security. Disguised by a robust economy and record tax collections, fraud is growing at an exponential pace among all groups, with more and more income concealed from the IRS each year. How bad is it? No one can put a precise number on lost tax revenue. But it's bad, and getting worse. Even the IRS, which doesn't like to acknowledge this problem for fear it will only encourage more taxpayers to cheat, admitted in 1999 that the ``tax gap,'' its euphemism for fraud and error, is now up to $195 billion a year. But that is based on data from the 1980s. A more reasonable count of the revenue lost every year is $300 billion. If Tax Dodging Inc. were a business, it would be the nation's largest corporation, eclipsing General Motors, which sits atop the Fortune 500 with revenue of $189 billion. How do people escape paying the taxes they owe? They inflate their itemized deductions for everything from medical bills to charitable contributions. They manufacture deductions to cover expenses never incurred. They understate their income. Or they do both. They ship their money to foreign tax havens. They claim illegal refunds. They speculate in the stock market and don't report their gains. They charge off their personal living costs as business expenses. And many don't even bother to file tax returns at all. How many nonfilers are there today? The IRS doesn't have a clue. In part, that's because Congress has slashed the agency's budget, halting the kind of audit that would make even crude projections possible. Informally, government tax authorities say there are 10 million nonfilers. In truth, there are many more, and here's why: The IRS identifies a nonfiler as a person who fails to submit a tax return even though a third party has filed an earnings statement (W-2) or information return reporting interest or dividends (Form 1099) that shows the person received income during the year. This narrow definition ignores all those who leave no paper trail. These are the people for whom there are no W-2s, or 1099s, no record of wages, annuities, gambling winnings, pensions, interest, dividends, or money flowing in from foreign trusts and bank accounts. In addition to these people who deal only in cash, there is another larger group whose numbers have soared. They are wealthy Americans and foreign citizens who live and work in the United States and in other countries--multinational wheeler-dealers, independent businesspeople, entertainers, fashion moguls and models. They have multiple passports or global residences and therefore insist they are exempt from the U.S. income tax. People like the Wildensteins of New York City. That would be Alec and his former wife Jocelyne, who became a staple of the New York tabloids during an unseemly divorce that raged from the fall of 1997 until the spring of 1999. Alec, born in 1940, is an heir to his family's century-old, intensely-private, multibillion-dollar international art business. Jocelyne, four years his junior, is best known for having undergone countless plastic surgery procedures that make her look more feline, permanently, than any member of the cast of Cats. Her bizarre appearance inspired the tabloids to dub her ``The Bride of Wildenstein.'' For the Wildensteins, the once impenetrable curtain that had protected the family from prying eyes for generations was unexpectedly pierced on the night of September 3, 1997, when Jocelyne returned to the couple's opulent Manhattan home after a visit to the family's 66,000-acre ranch in Kenya. Walking into the six-story townhouse on East 64th Street, next door to the Wildenstein gallery, a few minutes after midnight, she found her husband in bed with a nineteen-year- old, long-legged blonde. Alec hastily wrapped himself in a towel, grabbed a 9mm handgun and pointed it at his wife and her two bodyguards. ``I wasn't expecting anyone,'' he screamed with a touch of understatement. ``You're trespassing. You don't belong here.'' The bodyguards summoned the police, who arrested Alec and charged him with three counts of second-degree menacing. So it was that the French-born, aristocratic Alex Nathan Wildenstein, having traded his towel for an Armani suit and a monogrammed shirt, spent the night in the Tombs prison with some of New York's low life. If nothing else, the incarceration gave him time to plot his revenge. When he got out the next day, he moved quickly. He canceled his wife's credit cards. He cut off her telephone lines, locked all the rooms in the townhouse except for her bedroom and sitting room, shut off her access to bank accounts, directed the chauffeur to stop driving her around, fired her accountant, and, in one final act of retribution, ordered the household chefs to stop cooking for her, which proved a major inconvenience because she had never learned how to operate the stove. Jocelyne responded by turning up the temperature a few hundred degrees on what had been one of the quietest divorce proceedings ever among the rich and discreet. As a result, life among the Wildensteins--a family that for more than a century had guarded its privacy with a pathological obsession--went on public display. Jocelyne demanded a $200,000 monthly living allowance, payment of her personal staff's salary and expenses, and a $50 million security deposit pending distribution of the marital property. Alec pleaded poverty. He insisted he had no money of his own and that the millions they spent came form his father. The Wildenstein Family Circus that followed established conclusively, one or more time, that the rich are very different from the rest of us, beyond the fact that they often pay comparatively little or no taxes. But first, some background on this intriguing family. Alec is the son of Daniel Wildenstein, the patriarch of the enormously rich French clan. Daniel, born in 1918, controls the Wildenstein billions through a web of secret trusts and intertwined corporations. The Manhattan townhouses, for example, are owned in the name of the Nineteen East Sixty- Fourth Street Corporation, which in turn is controlled by ``intermediate entities held in trust.'' He continues to operate the private, secretive art business started by his grandfather in the nineteenth century, with galleries in New York, Beverly Hills, Tokyo, and Buenos Aires, catering to private collectors, museums, and galleries. And while he spends a lot of his time in Paris, a good chunk of his money resides in secret Swiss bank accounts. Tucked away in family storerooms, notably in New York, is reportedly the world's largest private collection of the works of the masters--valued at $6 billion to $10 billion. The inventory includes thousands of paintings and drawings by Renoir, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Gauguin, Rembrandt, Rubens, El Greco, Caravaggio, da Vinci, Picasso, Manet, Bonnard, Fragonard, Monet, and others. Many have never been displayed publicly. In 1990, Daniel's sons Alec and Guy took over management of the New York gallery. Their families maintained separate living quarters in the East 64th Street townhouse. They shared the swimming pool in the basement, the informal and formal dining rooms, the foyer, elevator, and the entrance to the townhouse. Alec and Jocelyne lived on the third floor, their two children had bedrooms on the fifth floor, and Jocelyne used the sixth floor as an office. In addition to the Manhattan townhouse, they maintained a castle, the chateau Marienthal, outside Paris, an apartment in Switzerland, and the Kenya ranch. Wherever they happened to be, the Wildensteins pursued a lifestyle that was lavish even by the standards of the rich and famous. The details, as they poured from Jocelyne's lips in the divorce proceeding, told the story of a family of seemingly unlimited wealth and no hesitation about spending it. According to her, she and Alec ``routinely wrote checks and made withdrawals'' from their Chase Manhattan Bank checking account ``for $200,000 to $250,000 a month.'' Jocelyne said that over the last 20 years they did ``millions of dollars worth of renovations on the Paris castle and Kenya ranch,'' and she directed the management, hiring, and staffs of those properties. The routine operating costs of the ranch alone ran $150,000 a month. In New York, Jocelyne's staff payroll at the 64th street townhouse included $48,000 a year for a chambermaid; $48,000 for a maid who tended the dogs; $60,000 each for a butler and chauffeur; $84,000 for a chef; $102,000 for an assistant with an MBA; and $102,000 for a secretary. In Kenya, their vast Ol Jogi ranch, with its two hundred buildings spread over an area five times the size of Manhattan, required nearly four hundred employees to look after the grounds and the animals. In France, the resident staff at the chateau, ``the largest private home of its type within a fifteen-minute drive of Paris,'' included five gardeners, three concierges, and three maids. Talk did not come cheap for the Wildensteins. The annual telephone bill in Manhattan alone sometimes ran as high as $60,000. And then there were all the other necessities, like $547,000 for food and wine; $36,000 for laundry and dry cleaning; $60,000 for flowers; $42,000 for massages; pedicures, manicures, and electrolysis; $82,000 to insure here jewelry and furs, and $60,000 to cover the veterinarian bills, medication, pet food, beds, leashes, and coats for their dogs, As for miscellaneous professional services, $24,000 went for a dermatologist, $12,000 for the dentist, and $36,000 for pharmaceuticals. Her American Express and Visa card bills for one year totaled $494,000. Some of these bills were paid out of the couple's Chase Manhattan account. Some were paid out of ``other bank accounts in New York, Paris, and Switzerland.'' And some bills, Alec confirmed, were paid from ``the Wildenstein & Co.'' account, ``the Wildenstein & Co. Special Account, and family businesses.'' Sort of like having your employer pick up the cost of your clothing, pets, and vacations. And then there were Jocelyne's personal expenditures. Over the years, she accumulated jewelry valued at $10 million, including a thirty-carat diamond ring and custom pieces from Cartier. She attended fashion shows in Paris. Her annual spending on clothing and accessories ran to more than $800,000. She once spent $350,000 for a Chanel outfit that she helped to design. Al told, according to papers filed in the divorce case, the couple's personal and household expenditures added up to well over $25 million in 1995 and 1996 alone. With all those tens of millions of dollars flowing out over the years to maintain a lifestyle beyond comprehension to most people--$60,000 in dog bills exceeds the annual income of three-fourths of all working Americans who pay taxes--you might think that Alec and Jocelyne also forked over millions of dollars to the Internal Revenue Service. But you would be wrong. They didn't pay a penny in U.S. income tax. In fact, they never filed a federal tax return. These admissions by a family accountant are spelled out in records of the acrimonious divorce and also entered into court opinions. They lived the tax-free life even though, by Jocelyne's account, they resided in the Manhattan townhouse for nineteen years, from shortly after their Las Vegas marriage in 1978 until the rancorous divorce proceedings began in 1997. Their children were born in New York and went to school in New York. Alec conducted the family art business through Wildenstein & Co., Inc., a New York corporation, from the gallery next door. He had a U.S. pilot's license. He sued and was sued in the courts of New York and other states. He signed documents moving millions of dollars between Wildenstein companies, some located in the tax havens of the world. He transacted business in New York and other states. He was vice-president of Nineteen East Sixty-Fourth Street Corporation, which owns the townhouse, gallery, and other properties. His New York pistol license identified him as an officer of Wildenstein & Co. And following his arrest for pointing the weapon at Jocelyne and her bodyguards, he insisted that he should be released on his own recognizance because of his substantial ties to the community. Nonetheless, he filed no federal tax returns. And no one in Washington or New York noticed. Or cared. Under ordinary circumstances, even the complex tax returns of the very wealthy that are filed go unchecked. That's due to a deliberate decision by Congress to starve the IRS, both in operating funds and in manpower and expertise to conduct such audits. So forget about ferreting out serious nonfilers among the rich and prominent. That task doesn't even register on the tax fraud radar screen. Not surprisingly, representatives of Alec Wildenstein declined to discuss his tax affairs. Jocelyne's lawyer said she doesn't know anything about taxes, since Alec controlled the money. And the IRS can't comment on the tax matters of private citizens. Or in this case, the non-tax matters. In the divorce case, Alec argued that he was not a resident of the United States, that he had a Swiss passport and visited this country on a tourist visa, and that he did not have a green card permitting him to work. Furthermore, he contended that he had ``less than $75,000 in bank accounts'' and that ``my only earnings are approximately $175,000 per year.'' On a net-worth statement, Alec listed his occupation as ``unpaid personal assistant to father Daniel Wildenstein.'' That stirred the ire of State Supreme Court Judge Marilyn G. Diamond, who presided over the hostilities. ``He fails to explain why he is unpaid,'' said Diamond, adding that ``this contention insults the intelligence of the court and is an affront to common sense.'' Judge Diamond was also angered that Alec never bothered to attend the divorce hearings. Shortly after Jocelyne began unveiling intimate details of the couple's private life, he fled the country. He ignored repeated court dates, failing to appear to answer either the gun charges or his wife's allegations. At one hearing, an irritated Diamond excoriated Wildenstein in absentia for his refusal to obey court orders and to attend depositions. His attorney, Raoul L. Felder, the New York celebrity divorce lawyer, offered an explanation for his client's behavior: ``It may not be his disinclination to appear before the court. You are aware there are substantial tax problems we believe created by the plaintiff.'' Judge Diamond agreed. ``There are going to be more substantial tax problems,'' she said. ``There are more substantial potential tax problems by people continuing to take certain positions. Make no mistake about it.'' If this conjures up visions of battalions of vigilant IRS agents engaged in a relentless search to identify tax scofflaws and, when they do so, dun them for the taxes they owe, assess interest and penalties, seize their bank accounts and cars, freeze their assets, and auction off their possessions, well, that's what they are, visions--at least when it comes to the very rich. For the double standard is to tax-law enforcement what rock is to roll. Suppose you earn $40,000 a year and don't file a return. When the IRS catches up with you it prepares a substitute return, estimates your income, calculates the tax you owe, tacks on interest and penalties, and sends you the bill. If you don't like their numbers, you must prove that the IRS is incorrect. What's more, the agency may seize your bank accounts, your car, and whatever else you have of value. Not so with the truly prosperous. First, the agency mails out a computer-generated letter asking the nonfiler to submit a return. When the reluctant recipient fails to respond, a second letter goes out. And then another. And another. If the silence persists, IRS resorts to another tactic: The telephone. It tries to find the number of the missing nonfiler and place a series of calls. When all that proves futile--it generally does nothing. Nothing? That was a finding of a 1991 study by the General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, that examined IRS' handling of affluent nonfilers: ``The IRS does not fully investigate high-income nonfilers, which creates an ironic imbalance. Unlike lower income nonfilers in the Substitute for Returns program, high-income nonfilers who do not respond to IRS' notices are not investigated or assessed taxes. Even if high-income nonfilers eventually file tax returns, their returns receive less scrutiny than those who file returns on time.'' What's the IRS's explanation for the double standard? Incredibly, it told GAO that it does not prepare a substitute return for rich nonfilers, as it does for middle-income people, because it fears that it might ``understate taxes owed.'' In other words, no loaf is better than half-a-loaf. So do nothing. Second, GAO said, ``to pursue more high-income cases, IRS would need additional staff.'' Which, of course, is precisely what Congress refuses to provide. But things have changed since the critical 1991 audit that tried to prod the IRS to act, right? Indeed they have. With each passing year, the number of affluent nonfilers has gone up while Congress has slashed the service's auditing capabilities. There is no better evidence of the agency's breakdown than the fact the Wildensteins went two decades without filing a tax return, and the IRS knew nothing about it.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman indicated that they offered to put back additional money. They may have offered, but the fact is they have not put it back. So we are not voting on some ethereal offer; we are voting on the legislation before us at this time. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I thought that at least on this bill we would reach a compromise between the two parties. The gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran) has described the compromise which he offered the majority party. Once again, it is my understanding that that compromise was turned down by the majority whip, or those in his office, who evidently prefer to try to pass a bill totally in the Republican image. I find that unfortunate. Two and one-half weeks before the end of the fiscal year, we ought to be looking for ways that we can agree. Instead, apparently, people are finding new ways to rehash old arguments. Surely this fits the pattern which has been going on all year, where the Committee on Appropriations explores a compromise, but then the majority leadership says no, and gives orders to pass the bill on the Republican side alone. That results in presidential vetoes; it gets no one anywhere near a closure. With less than 3 weeks to go, this is not the way we ought to be going. I am sorry that the majority prefers to go this way, in light of the compromise offer of the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran). We could have taken either the package of the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran) or the Senate bill and had a perfectly reasonable compromise, but evidently we are not going to do that. So I very regrettably am going to urge a no vote on the bill.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I would once again want to try to correct some of the misstatements made by the distinguished majority whip. He indicated that those of us on the Democratic sides of the aisle had insisted that all 13 appropriation bills have a higher spending level than those produced by the majority. I would point out I wrote dissenting views to the Department of Defense bill that the majority brought to this House. That bill is $19 billion over last year and it is $5.1 billion above the President's request. Not with my vote, but with his. The Labor HHS bill, at this point, the document being worked on in conference, is $2.5 billion over the President's request. The point we are trying to make is very simple. The majority party indicated earlier in this year that it was going to insist on its budget resolution. We made the point at that time that it was not realistic; that the Congress would wind up spending much more money than that, and that they ought to fess up earlier rather than later. Now what has happened is that on bill after bill the majority party is throwing away the budget limitations, but we have no idea what limitations are replacing them. In other words, we are now acting in Congress the way the Congress acted before 1974 with the passage of the Budget Act. For all practical purposes, whatever the Committee on the Budget has proposed is considered as being irrelevant. There are no rules except the rules designed on an ad hoc basis, anonymously, by the gentleman from Texas and his other fellow leaders, and that is no way to run a railroad much less run a legislative representative body.

Mr. OBEY. So the question is rhetorical and not meant to have an answer.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I find it interesting that a party which professes to be so concerned with budget stringency will ask us to bring a bill to the floor before we even know by how much it exceeds the budget under which we are supposed to operate. My understanding is that the Legislative Subcommittee portion of this conference report exceeds the budget by $47 million, and that the Treasury-Post Office bill exceeds the allocation by $1.2 billion; and then there is also an additional $6 billion question mark because of the shifting of pay dates for SSI and for veterans' checks, which I think makes a real hash of any claim that there is any kind of budget discipline at all left around here. Secondly, I would simply like to observe, as my friend, Archie the Cockroach, has often observed, that this bill looks like an accident that started out to happen to somebody else. The legislative appropriations bill was moving along, following the normal process. The normal process is that the House passes an appropriation bill and then the Senate passes it, and then we have a conference committee which meets and resolves the differences, and then we pass the conference report and send it on to the President for his signature. That is what has happened, commendably, for one portion of this conference report. However, then the conference report ran into a train wreck, because being attached to it is a conference report on another appropriation bill, the Treasury-Post Office bill, and the quaint thing about that is that the Senate has never even considered that bill. So now we are being asked to consider a bill which represents a compromise between the House and the Senate on Treasury-Post Office, and yet the Senate has never had an opportunity to formulate a position on the bill. The reason the minority did not participate in the sham meeting that took place in the dead of night last night is because on both sides of the Capitol, we feel this process is so profoundly illegitimate that we wanted nothing to do with it. The fact is that what my Republican colleagues have done does have practical results. What they have done, for instance, is to add a totally nongermane tax provision which, if we had tried to bring it to the floor, would have been laughed out of the place. Secondly, you have had some anonymous source in the majority party leadership unilaterally and arrogantly reverse a decision made on the floor of this House by the full membership of this House when it comes to the embargo issue. Now, that does not surprise me, because a year ago I was promised personally by two members of the Republican leadership, and they know who they are, I was promised personally that they would take no action to block the reform of dairy milk marketing orders on an appropriation bill. The leadership then went back on that promise in the last week of the session, which led to a filibuster in both Houses on that issue; and now, farmers again are going to wake up to discover that a victory which they thought they had won on the House floor is being snatched away from them in the dead of night by anonymous Republican leaders who have decided that they do not care what the majority decided on this House floor with respect to the embargo issue. They are going to throw it in the ash can because it does not either meet their political objectives or their ideological objectives or their substantive objectives. That process too is illegitimate, and that is why they did not find the minority party participating in that. Mr. Speaker, I would also point out that we have a strange shell game going on, because in the budget last year this Congress voted to move the pay dates for SSI and for veterans back one day, to move it into the next fiscal year. Then, in the supplemental which the majority passed a while back this year, they reversed that decision; and now they are reversing their reversal, and that is why I asked the question; Does not that mean that, in fact, this bill is almost $7 billion over the allocations assigned to it under the Budget Act? I think the answer is yes; but so far, we have not gotten a clear answer on it. Then we have one more quaint provision which says that the GSA is ordered to build a road in New Mexico. GSA, to my knowledge, has never built a road in the history of their operation. I find it very interesting that that kind of ``urgent emergency'' appropriation is being provided in this bill. So this is the way Daffy Duck would do business on a bad day. It is a joke, and it ought to be defeated.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Before I begin my remarks, I would like to ask one question in case anybody can answer this. I would like to ask the majority if they can tell me by how many dollars do the two bills in this conference report exceed the budget resolution and exceed the allocation provided to each of the subcommittees under the Budget Act? Is there no one who can answer that question?

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. There are rumors around here that the bill will be debated, but that it will not be allowed to come to final passage. Can the gentleman tell us that it will be allowed to come to final passage?

Mr. OBEY. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, could I ask the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) a procedural question? The gentleman has indicated we are going to bring up the D.C. bill, will we be allowed to bring that bill to final passage, or are we just going to debate it further without voting on final passage?

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

Mr. OBEY. I would simply say to the gentleman, I am not criticizing his statement, I am criticizing his actions.

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

Mr. OBEY. The point I would like to make, Mr. Speaker, is simply this, we are being told that we are going to be voting on a legislative appropriations bill today, and now we are being told that when we do that that bill will by reference also pass another appropriation bill, the Treasury Postal bill, that conference report is quaint, because the Senate has not yet even completed action on the bill which is being conferenced, and in that bill, we have a variety of interesting provisions. So far as we know, there is, for instance, apparently a road in that bill that GSA is being asked to construct in New Mexico, despite the fact GSA has never constructed a road in the history of the operation. The funds in the bill we are told are inadequate to allow the IRS to meet its modernization requirements, all of the matters relating to Cuba and the Cuban embargo, if you come from a farm district and are interested in that, I do not see the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Nethercutt) anywhere, but my understanding is that that has been stripped out of the bill. So I would suggest that this is a most strange way to proceed. I do not understand why it is necessary to proceed to a conference report on a bill which has not yet even been considered by the other body, that is an incredibly irregular procedure, and I think it adds further to the image of this House as not knowing from one day to the next what it is doing.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I just would like to make a few observations about the announcement just made by the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young). I do not know how to describe the process we are going through, except that it looks to me like it was designed by Johnny Fumblefingers. We have no idea, Members have no idea of what is in this conference report. We are being--could I have some order or has all respect gone from that side of the aisle? Too many sore losers from the baseball game last night, I guess.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) has already indicated some of the reasons for concern on this bill. This bill falls far short of the administration's request in meeting basic community needs for courthouses and the rest. I also am concerned, as the committee knows, with the nongermane provision which was added to this bill in committee with respect to retirement. That is water over the dam, and I am not going to milk that one any longer. But I would like to raise the same issue I raised in full committee. We have seen a tremendous drive to privatize virtually everything in this society in the last 20 years, and in some places that is appropriate. But I would like to describe what I see happening in a number of middle-sized towns all over this country where we have a lot of Federal offices that have become fragmented. In my hometown, for instance, we have a wide variety of Federal offices. We have military recruitment offices. We have Labor Department offices, wage-and-hour division. We have Social Security. We have the Justice Department. You name it. The problem is that they used to all be located in the same place; and so if you were a constituent not exactly fully attuned to the niceties of the Government's organizational tables, you could still walk into the Federal building and know that somebody could point you to the right floor, the right office and you could get the job done without having to go all over town. Today, in my hometown and in many others across the country, all of those services are fragmented; and so what happens is, and this does not just happen in Wausau, Wisconsin, it happens all over the country. You can send a senior citizen who may see the VA in one place, they may see the Social Security people in another place, they may see the Labor Department in another place. They have got to criss-cross town half a dozen times before they have figured out who is the lead agency and how you deal with the problem. We have had a great deal of talk when we deal with the Labor-Health bill about one-stop service for people who are in need of job training, for instance. I think we ought to try to create a situation where you have one-stop service for everybody who is trying to walk into a government office to try to get some help on a problem they have. I do not believe we are going to have that unless this Congress forces a reevaluation of the way we provide service to people in this country. It just seems to me that the Congress ought to ask the administration and GSA to review what options are available so that we can begin to pull Government services, at least Federal services, together again in any one place so that people feel a little bit better about their Government tomorrow than they do today because they have a little bit better idea of where they can go to get some help when they need it. This is nothing that is very sexy politically; and so it is one of those things that just does not get focused on. But, in my view, if we want to improve the reputation of government at the local level, one of the most important things would be to give people the opportunity to stop in at one place and get their questions answered and get their problems addressed. So I would simply ask the committee, by the time this bill is produced next year, to work with me and others who are interested in it so that we can begin to get some alternatives for dealing with this fragmentation problem, which leaves people with a more and more sour taste in their mouths each day.

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.