Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, let me simply take a minute to respond to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Porter); and if he is inclined, I will then yield back my time, and we can have a vote. Mr. Speaker, I think it is important that this motion to instruct include the language to which the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Porter) objects. I want to be very clear about this. This motion, in addition to requiring the higher numbers for special education, Pell Grants, Head Start, child care, and the National Institutes of Health, it would also instruct the conferees to insist on disagreeing to the Senate provisions concerning class size reduction and school construction. The Senate bill purports to provide funding for the President's initiatives for class size and school modernization; and, yet, in reality, it denies the President's highest education priorities by merging the funding requested for class size and school construction initiatives into the title VI education block grant. As I tried to indicate earlier on the floor, fundamentally, in my view, block grants are little more than revenue sharing programs with little accountability for addressing Federal needs. The gentleman from Illinois refers to the need of local school districts and school officials to have flexibility. I certainly agree they need a significant amount of flexibility, but I think that when it comes to spending taxpayers money, we also need accountability. I did not come here to simply be the tax collector for some other level of government. I came here to try to help identify legitimate national priorities and direct hard-earned taxpayers funds to those priorities. That is why the motion to instruct is structured as it is. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to amend the motion to instruct to correctly reflect that the increase provided in the Senate amendment for NIH is $1.7 billion, rather than $2.7 billion over the Senate request. There is a typo in the amendment before us.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, this motion to instruct is very simple. It says that the conferees should bring back a Labor-HHS-Education conference report that provides the increased funding in the Senate bill for the Department of Education in total and for several key programs such as special education, Pell grants, Head Start, child care, the National Institutes of Health. The Senate provides a total of $42.6 billion for the Department of Education. That is $3.1 billion over the bill passed by the House. This motion instructs the conferees to provide at least every single one of the dollars that the Senate has added. Included within the overall total is $7.3 billion for special education authorized under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. Mr. Speaker, let me simply say that this motion to instruct with respect to special education would result in an increase of $803 million in additional spending over the House bill for that item. I would point out when the House adopted on May 3 of this year H.R. 4055, the IDEA Full Funding Act of 2000, it promised to provide an increase of $2 billion over last year for IDEA. Just about a month later, the Labor- HHS-Education bill adopted by the majority failed to keep that promise, and provided an increase of only $513 million over last year. We think that we ought to provide the full amount. The Senate bill also does not fully meet the promise that we made, but it would provide $1.3 billion over last year for IDEA to help reach the goal of a $2 billion increase in the Federal contribution toward the additional cost of educating children with disabilities. Every Member who voted for the IDEA Full Funding Act to increase funding for special education ought to support this motion to instruct. The Senate bill also provides, Mr. Speaker, $8.3 billion to fund the maximum Pell grant of at least $3,650, an increase of $384 million over the House bill. This motion also instructs the conferees to agree with that increase. The Senate bill provides $6.26 billion for Head Start, which is the President's request, and $600 million over the House bill. With these additional resources, more than 53,000 disadvantaged children would benefit from early learning opportunities to get a good start in life. The Senate bill also provides the President's request for $817 million in additional funding for the child care block grant in fiscal year 2001, while the House bill cuts the request only $400 million. This motion would go to the full Senate amount and would provide extra resources for an additional 80,000 low-income children. The motion would also instruct the conferees to adopt the Senate funding levels for NIH, which provide an additional $1.7 billion in real dollars for NIH research, unlike the House bill, which pretended to provide this increase in the front of the bill, but then took it away in the back of the bill. Mr. Speaker, my motion also instructs the conferees to insist on disagreeing to the Senate's provision concerning class size reduction and school construction. The Senate bill denies two of the President's highest education priorities by merging the funding requested for the class size and school construction initiatives into the title VI education block grant. Fundamentally, block grants are little more than revenue-sharing programs with little accountability for addressing Federal needs. Mr. Speaker, if we are going to provide funding for class size initiative, we really need to actually provide it for that initiative, rather than to have a ``let's pretend'' initiative which in fact allows money to be spent for something else. A large majority, 61 percent, feel that the Federal government spends too little on education. They support targeted Federal investments to hire new teachers, to reduce class size, and to repair and modernize our schools. So what we are asking in this motion is that we reject the Senate language, which prevents or which denies the President's request for dedicating those resources to reduce class size in the early grades and for local school construction, and instead, broadly expands the title VI education block grant with limited accountability in the use of those funds. This motion to instruct would ask the conferees to in fact reject that portion of the Senate action. I might point out that in the past, if we take a look at some of the uses that this money was put to by States or local districts, we will see that in the past some of this money was used for unnecessary State bureaucracy. It was used by one State or by one district to hire a mariachi band when we had the old Chapter II program in effect. Personal computers were bought for boards of education. Printing bills for a district were paid, the entire printing bill for one district was paid. Entertainment costs were paid. We think that there ought to be very specific targeting for these funds. Modification to Motion to Instruct Offered by Mr. Obey

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I simply want to explain, it simply corrects the typo to make clear that the increase of the Senate over the President's budget request for the National Institutes of Health was $1.7 rather than $2.7 billion. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to instruct conferees.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Let me say that I recognize all the hard work that went into putting this bill together, and I regret that I cannot vote for it, and let me explain why. Number one, this bill does not respond to what the Congress always claims the problem is. Every year, when the President sends his budget down, we are then told by the majority that somehow the President is not responding sufficiently to the issue of readiness, and then, when we take a look at what Congress finally does, Congress responds, but it responds in a way which puts other items at a higher priority than a number of the readiness-related accounts. For example, if we take a look at this budget or at this bill being presented today, the public will be told that for operation and maintenance, which is a key factor in readiness, that it is about $600 million above the President. But if we take a look at the adjustments that are then made by the committee in overseas contingency operations, in foreign currency reestimates, in working capital funds, in headquarters administration accounts, we will see that, in fact, the committee cuts those readiness-related items by about $3 billion. So this Congress, having attacked the President for not having enough in the budget to deal with readiness-related accounts, in fact, will have produced a bill which is about $2.4 billion below the President's request for those accounts. That money has been moved largely into procurement and into research and development. It is just by accident, I suppose, that a good many of the congressionally earmarked projects are found in those areas. I do not suggest that all of those projects are bad. They are not. Some of them are very deserving. All I do suggest is that this Congress should not pretend that it has strengthened the President's budget for readiness, because in fact it has made a number of reductions in this bill which produce readiness-related account funding levels lower than that recommended by the President. Secondly, I would simply say that the President's budget as he submitted it to us had a very large increase, but that was presented in the context of also providing increases for education, for health care, for agriculture, for land acquisition, items like that. This bill is presented to us in a far different context. This bill increases the military spending of the country by $20.9 billion, when we discount all the gimmicks. Just the increase in this bill is larger than the entire foreign aid bill. It is larger than the entire Interior appropriation bill. If we take a look at where it goes, a lot of it goes, in my judgment, not on the basis of where it is needed militarily but where it is produced economically. I think the country needs to understand that, as well. Secondly, I would say that we need to put in context what threat it is responding to. This chart demonstrates what our defense budget is versus the rest of the world, or certainly at least our adversaries and our allies. The United States spends about $266 billion, as represented by this bar. That is far more than the combined total of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Libya, our major opponents. That does not count the allies, our NATO allies, which last time I looked were on our side. They spent $227 billion. So again, we dwarf the amount of money which is spent on military accounts worldwide. If we are going to do that, it seems to me that we have an obligation both to take care of our other national priorities and to make certain that our budget has an accounting which is at least as forthright as that provided by the administration. I do not believe it is. Mr. Speaker, for those reasons, and for others, I will be constrained to vote against the bill when the time comes.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I want to make clear that I do not intend to ask for a rollcall vote again in order to save time, but I do want Members to understand what we are doing. Mr. Speaker, shortly I will be asking Members to vote against final passage of this bill because, with all of the amendments that were adopted today, this bill still falls $224 million short of what is needed on the debt relief front. It falls some $270 million short of funding the administration's request on the International Development Association, or IDA. It funds only one-half the Asian Development Fund and only one-half the African Development Bank. The Peace Corps is $17 million short of the administration's request. The Global Environmental Facility, which has a request for $176 million, is funded only at $36 million. The InterAmerican Fund, which was requested at a $20 million level, is funded in fact at only $10 million. There are a variety of other problems, as well. And so, I urge Members to vote no until we can fix these problems in conference. What this motion to recommit will do is to try to add to the points made in the debate last night on Africa. The fact is there will be over 40 million children who will be made orphans over the next few years in Africa because of AIDS. Taking that into account, this recommittal motion would simply cut $5 million from the Asian Development Fund and increase the African Development Fund by $5 million correspondingly. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. I certainly am, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to recommit.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, often on this floor, good people can have strong disagreements about substance, and we certainly do in this bill today. Let me stipulate that I think the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Callahan), the subcommittee chair, is a very good person, as is the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the ranking minority member. We have very strongly differing views of how adequately this bill meets our responsibilities. I think the distinguished gentleman from Alabama has done a terrific job as subcommittee chairman the last 6 years given the fact his hands have been tied most of the time by budget resolutions. I do hope that he gets the best possible ranking minority slot on whatever subcommittee he wishes in the next Congress. But having said that, let me explain my concerns about this bill. Despite the increase in funding for debt relief, this bill still falls over $200 million, almost $250 million short of the administration request for debt relief. When one includes the supplemental, the International Development Organization is almost $300 million short of the administration request. We still have substantial shortages in the African Development Fund, the Asian Development Fund, the African Development Bank, which is only about half funded at half the level the administration is requesting. There are a number of other shortfalls as well. I think we need to understand that, despite everything that this bill does so far, it still does not lay a glove on the major problem which confronts the international community in terms of public health. In 1999 alone, 480,000 children under 15 died from AIDS. Approximately 430,000 of those deaths occurred in sub-Saharan Africa. Around the world, as was noted on this floor several times last night, 1,700 children under 15 years old are, in effect, newly infected with HIV every single day. There will be some 44 million children in the 34 most affected countries who will be orphaned by that disease within the next 10 to 15 years. I think the world has no idea the human carnage that is in store. When I look at this bill, even with the adoption of the two amendments that were adopted on the floor, this still falls far short of what is required for a Presidential signature. The administration is still opposed to the bill, and I certainly do not intend to vote for the bill, and I would urge Members to oppose it as well. I would also ask that, when we vote on this bill, that we remember that we have obligations to our constituents, to our taxpayers, and to the fellow human beings with whom we share this planet. In my view, this bill does not meet our obligation on all three fronts. America does not understand how much it is vulnerable to a health epidemic because of the shortfall of funds that we are providing in crucial international and domestic health funds. I hope that we do not find out over the next 20 years just how vulnerable we are. But I believe that the Labor-Health appropriations bill, which we passed earlier, and this bill both fall very far short of defending our taxpayers and our citizens from that problem. I think this bill generally, especially with respect to the International Development Association, is needlessly unresponsive to the needs of the poorest countries in the world. For that reason, I would urge a no vote on this bill and, at the proper time, will have a motion to recommit with instructions.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, let me simply say to the gentleman from Ohio, after the peace talks are over we will have plenty of time to assess the conduct of both the Palestinian Authority and the conduct of the company in question, and if at that time it is clear that the U.S. Government is satisfied with the business practices of that company, and if the U.S. Government concludes that it is in the interests of the U.S. taxpayer to proceed, then I will be happy to entertain such a proposal. But until that point, I believe that it would be irresponsible of us to proceed with this amendment at this time. So I would urge a no vote on the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior), the distinguished minority whip.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, this is my time.

Mr. OBEY. I cannot see ahead of time.

Mr. OBEY. Since I said that, the distinguished minority whip has asked to speak, and so has the gentleman from Connecticut.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Gejdenson). Parliamentary Inquiry

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I ask the Chair to let me know when I have consumed two minutes. Mr. Chairman, if we can eliminate the bloviating, let me simply say that I oppose this amendment for two reasons: Number one, it is my understanding, we do not have the facts in this case. We do not have the facts in this case, and we should not take an action which could interfere drastically in the peace talks now going on at Camp David on the basis of a 5-minute explanation from one Member of Congress who has an ax to grind on the subject. The gentleman may be right; he may be wrong. All I know is that my understanding is that at this very moment the company to which the gentleman refers may be under investigation by the U.S. Government itself for the way it does business. Secondly, for us to eliminate all funding for the Palestinian Authority would be incredibly against the interests of the United States Government. The last time I talked to Prime Minister Rabin before he was assassinated, he said to me, ``For God's sake, do not let anyone interfere with the ability of the United States Government to deal with the Palestinian Authority, because if you cannot deal with them, then the only party left on the Arab side you can deal with in the Middle East is Hamas, and they are terrorists, and then there will be no hope at all for an agreement for peace in the Middle East.'' Mr. Rabin gave his life looking for that peace, so did Mr. Sadat, and I do not think that that should be disregarded because one Member of Congress has come to believe that one company, which may be under investigation by our own Government, that their interests ought to take precedence over the United States' national interests. Mr. Chairman, how much time have I consumed?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Connecticut, because I have another Member who also has informed me he wishes to comment on the amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I have only one speaker and I understand it is my right to close.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I would claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, would the gentleman explain to me how we help taxpayers when we refuse to write off debts that are uncollectible that will never be repaid and which simply get in the way of creating markets for products that are made by Americans so that they can have better jobs and earn more money?

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me time. I would like to talk about what the history of debt relief has been. When I was chairman of the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations and the Iron Curtain fell, all of a sudden we had a tremendous opportunity. All kinds of countries in Eastern Europe, where people looked like us, they had the same colored skin, they had lots of people in this country lobbying for their cause because they were the same nationality my wife happens to be Polish, for instance, and we recognized that the previous Communist government had stayed in power only by incurring huge amounts of debts that were totally irresponsible. When they left power we had a choice of whether or not we were going to create the economic conditions that would allow a democratic government to flourish or not. So we forgave debt. As a result, you were able to get new investments, new economic growth in countries like Poland, and today they are reasonably healthy democracies, given what their history has been the last 50 years. We also had debt relief provided for Egypt. That was done unilaterally with no consultation whatsoever with the United States Congress by one of the previous Republican administrations. And that was done because we needed the support of Egypt in the Middle East power game, and so not many questions were asked. But now we get to the hard cases. Now we get to the regions of the world that do not look like so many of us. We get to Africa, we get to Latin America, and the political pressures for us to do what is right and just are not quite as heavy as the political pressures were when we were dealing with countries that looked just like most of us. So now we are told that because some idiot from one of those countries made a dumb purchase, that somehow, that example ought to be used as an excuse to avoid our responsibilities in dealing with this problem in Latin America and Africa. Now, the problem is very simple. A lot of these countries ran up debt when they were working for us and for the CIA and for our intelligence operations; they were conduits through which we were able to learn a lot about our political enemies around the world. So the Congress was asked to close its eyes while those governments did lots of dumb things. They abused human rights; they ran up huge debts. Now, we have new governments, and we are being asked to provide the same opportunity for new investment and new economic growth in those countries that we provided in countries that look just like most of us. It has been harder here. We are told that, well, this is just international debt that we are forgiving here and so we ought to put more stringent conditions on it. Mr. Chairman, I would suggest that there are some countries that ought not to be lent an additional dime, and there are other countries who will be in a state of social and economic collapse if they do not receive new lending. We have some countries that are spending so much paying off the debts incurred by their former governments, that they do not have any money left to spend on education and health for their own children. So we are here, not out of any bleeding heart knee-jerk reaction. We are here because we have two responsibilities. One is to our own national security, because we cannot exist forever, no matter how strong we are, in a world where there are large segments that are essentially poverty-ridden and open to all kinds of potential political mischief; and secondly, we are asked to respond to our moral responsibilities to help people who never had a say in incurring these debts in the first place. The ironic thing about it is that they are not collectible. They are lousy debts and all we are doing is clear the books so that we will give these new governments the same opportunity to start afresh that we gave other governments who look like most of us. Mr. Chairman, I would suggest that we ought to get on with the job, we will sooner or later; and if this bill did what it ought to do, we would be able to vote for it.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I see things quite differently than the gentleman who just spoke. What I find amazing about this bill is that just the increase in the budget for the Department of Defense over the last 18 months, just the increase, is larger than the entire foreign aid assistance bill which we are debating today. Foreign aid as a percentage of our national budget is less than 1 percent. This bill fully meets our responsibilities to our national interests in the Middle East. We understand that. The problem is that we are not a third-rate power who only has to worry about one part of the world. We have obligations to our interests in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America, as well as the Middle East. While this bill is a full policy for the Middle East, it shreds our ability to defend our interests in Latin America, in Africa, and to a lesser extent, in Asia. For that reason, it would be a horrendous mistake for us to vote for this bill until we have met our responsibilities to ourselves in each of the regions of the world. It would also be a mistake to vote for this bill until we provide a recognition of reality through debt relief. Debt relief is no great gift that we are going to be giving to the Third World, these are debts that are totally uncollectible. They were incurred by governments that were national disgraces and international jokes. We gave debt relief to the tune of billions of dollars to the new regime in Poland because we understood that was the only way for that economy to revive, for that society to revive after the communists had run that country into the ditch. The same is true many times over for many of these African and Latin American countries. We will never have markets for our own products in Africa, in Latin America, until we create the same economic conditions that we created in Eastern Europe through debt relief that was provided there. This country has also provided very large debt forgiveness for Israel, it has provided very large debt relief for Egypt. Now we are being asked to treat the poorest countries in the world, the same countries who have no capacity to pay back that debt, the same way. If we do not act, we will assure even greater numbers of deaths through the pandemic problem of AIDS that we now face on the continent of Africa. We need to get real. Eventually we will, and when we do, this bill will be worth supporting. Until then, because of the limitations imposed on the committee, it does not contain the resources necessary for us to defend either our interests or our moral obligations around this planet.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, we have spent a long time discussing this issue and I hope that we will soon be able to move on. But before we do, I would simply like to make one observation about the comments of the last speaker, the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher), we had some talk in the House tonight about the position of the Pope and the Catholic Church and various other churches. To me, what we ought to be asking ourselves is what we really believe our individual duties are both to our own citizens and to citizens of the world who do not reside next door. Mr. Chairman, let me say that this debt relief that we are talking about tonight is not meant to aid a single illegitimate government. It is meant primarily to help the victims of previous illegitimate governments who have brought economic havoc on to countries and who in the process have ruined those countries' abilities to provide a decent future. If they cannot provide a decent future for their citizens, they become very dangerous neighbors to us, not just politically and economically, but from the simple standpoint of public health. All one has to do is to look at the AIDS epidemic to understand that. Before we get too arrogant about the other parts of the world, I think we ought to remember one simple thing. We are not in this Chamber tonight because we have any special value. We were not born Americans because we were of special worth. We were lucky enough to be born in this country simply because God was good enough to put our soul in a body that was born in this part of the planet rather than some other. Given the fact that we have won the luck of the draw, we owe it to our fellow creatures around the world to provide an element of justice for a people who had probably not had one whit of it from all of their own lives from their own governments. So we can sit here and chuckle and make snide remarks and use an example of one foolish leader or even a handful of them as an excuse to avoid our moral responsibilities; but in the end, all we are being asked to do is to write off the books debt that will never be repaid anyway. We have the concept of individual bankruptcy in every civilized country in the world. We have also had the concept of collective national bankruptcy for a number of countries throughout history. We have provided debt relief to many East European countries and Middle Eastern countries. This time we are being asked, at very little, at minuscule costs to our Treasury in comparison to some of the things we have had on this floor, we are being asked to take the one action that might enable some of these countries to edge their way just a bit out of misery. That is what these amendments are meant to development. We are not permitted under the rules of the House to have a real debate on this or to prepare a real amendment. But before this bill is finished, that is exactly what we ought to do.