Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment. Mr. Chairman, as I understand it, this amendment is the same amendment that we dealt with in committee which attempts to add housing for the elderly, add housing for the disabled, add housing for homeless assistance grants and add housing opportunities for people with AIDS. The gentleman from New York in this amendment is attempting to pay for this amendment by taking three actions which the House has already endorsed and which would in fact raise money for the Treasury, which could then be used to finance these amendments. Now, we have had objections raised on this floor for 2 weeks that we did not, in the amendments we were offering to these bills, provide proper offsets to those amendments. We suggested that those offsets ought to come from the majority party's over generous tax package, over generous certainly in what it provides for the very wealthiest of Americans. This House has given away already, just on the minimum wage bill alone, this House has voted to provide $90 billion in tax relief to people who make $300,000 a year or more. If this House can do that, it ought to be willing to get around a bookkeeping transaction in order to provide assistance to some of the folks who need it the most. Certainly these folks mentioned by the gentleman from New York do. Mr. Chairman, it is suggested that this offset is out of order only because it is not authorized. I would say that that is the narrowest of technicalities, Mr. Chairman, because this House has already approved the legislation that contains the same transactions, and, if my memory is correct, or I should say more accurately if my notes are correct, it was approved with 8 dissenting votes and 417 in favor. It seems to me Dick Bolling when he was here, who is probably the greatest legislator I ever served with, Dick Bolling, always attacked the idea that legislators were more focused on what he called ``legislative dung hills'' than they were policy issues. By that he meant that Members often spent more time defending committee jurisdiction than they did defending the interests of their constituents. It seems to me that allowing this minor technicality to stand in the way is doing just what Dick Bolling derided so eloquently in the years that he served in this House. There is no public purpose to be served by admitting that this authorization is not going to become law, and, if that authorization becomes law, the offsets which the gentleman is talking about would be in perfect order. I would simply ask, can we not bend even a little to help the people who are most in need of shelter in this country? If the answer is no, that is indeed regrettable. But this amendment is something that we should do.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, there are not very many young couples today who can afford to buy a house for $900. I can see it in many of the young couples who I talk to back home during the weeks that I am back home, and I can see their frustration when they continually fall just short of being able to afford a first home or when rising interest rates put just out of reach that home that so many people desire. It is very clear when we look at some of the sociological studies that one of the key ingredients to having a stable society and a society with a low crime rate and a high work ethic is housing ownership. People who own a stake in this economic are quick to try to protect that economy and the society that has made it possible. That is why I would urge the majority to review their decisions in this area.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I very much agree with the gentleman. I would close by saying just one thing. We talk a lot in this Congress and in this society about generational inequities. One of the worst things we do to the younger generation is to make it harder for them to buy that first house. I know that when I was first married, my wife and I were able to afford a house only because she cashed in her teacher retirement fund. We had the $900 that it took to get a down payment.

Mr. OBEY. I yield to the gentleman from West Virginia.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I want to congratulate the gentleman from West Virginia for a most excellent statement. I would like to talk about housing and put it in the context of our national economy and try to talk about it in human terms. We have had an absolutely wonderful economic run for the past 7 or 8 years. We have had unparalleled prosperity in almost all regions of the country. But unfortunately, there have been some people who have been left behind by that prosperity. Our economy is a dynamic capitalist economy, and we do not want to do things that get in the way of the entrepreneurial class being able to make the investments and take the risks that create progress in the economy and create jobs and create an even stronger economic tomorrow. However, there are those in this society who are either not as lucky or who are not as innovative, or as aggressive as others; there are lot of them who are not as healthy as some of the big winners in our society. So in any humane society, what we try to do is to take the rough edges off what would otherwise be a Darwin capitalism and try to make capitalism safe for human participation. The way we do that is not by stifling entrepreneurship; the way we do that is by trying to recognize that there are certain basics that humans need no matter how lucky they are. One of them is a decent education, another is protection from environmental abuse and corruption, a third is the right to decent health care when they need it, and fourth is the need for shelter. Now, we have seen one thing in this society which creates a lot of problems. We have seen the gap between the very wealthy and most others in this society grow at an astronomical rate. We see at this point that the wealthiest 1 percent of people in our society own about 90 percent of society's assets, economic assets. The number 1 asset which most families strive for is to own a home so that they can begin to build equity and get a piece of the American dream. But very often, in some of our own neighborhoods, the very prosperity that is experienced by some of our most fortunate citizens operates to reduce the ability of some segments of our society to even gain decent shelter. Example: in some neighborhoods, the ability of those who have done very well in our society, to be able to afford to pay for anything they want, means that they raise tremendously housing costs in certain neighborhoods, they drive whole groups of people out of neighborhoods, and they make the costs for those who stay much, much higher. It is the job of government to try to mitigate that. That is what this bill is inadequate in doing. The gentleman from West Virginia has laid out in specific programmatic terms what some of the problems are in this bill. I would simply say that the result of this bill failing to fully meet its responsibilities in order to provide additional very large tax cuts for those at the top of the economic heap, the result is that we do not create the kind of opportunity that we should for all Americans to have at least the basics in life. Pope John Paul said many years ago that there ought to be certain norms of decency in determining who has how much of economic goods in any society, and I think that is a good way to put it. We are not meeting those norms of decency when we fail in our obligation to assure decent housing for every American, and this bill most certainly falls short. I, for one, cannot support it until it does.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. We have heard a very interesting rewrite of history, and I would like to give the facts rather than fiction. Before Ronald Reagan came to office, we never had a deficit larger than $70 billion. Then he ran through this Congress a proposal which doubled military spending at the same time that it provided very large tax cuts. The result, we wound up with deficits approaching $300 billion, and we have been trying to dig out from those deficits for the last 18 years. Those deficits have added almost $4 trillion to the Nation's indebtedness. President Clinton proposed that we change course, and he passed his budget in 1993 with not a single Republican vote in either House, and that budget put us on the road to deficit reduction. It was predicted at the time by the majority leader of the House and by the Speaker of the House that it would lead to record unemployment and a doubling of deficits. Instead, it did just the opposite, and anyone except fiction readers and writers recognize that. When George Bush walked out of the White House, his prediction for the deficits for that year was $323 billion. A little different picture today. We now have surpluses in very large amounts, despite the fact that the Republican-controlled Congress in each of the last 2 years actually appropriated more money than President Clinton asked for, and so now we have surpluses, and the question is, what should we do with them. The Republican Party's answer has been that we should provide a minimum wage bill of $11 billion worth of benefits to minimum wage workers, tied to a tax cut of $90 billion for people that make over $300,000 a year. They have proposed eliminating the inheritance tax. They claim that they are defending farmers and small business. Only one out of every 6,000 beneficiaries in that bill is a farmer or small businessman. So in contrast to our inheritance package, which would have exempted inheritances of up to $4 million per family, they said no, take off the whole lid. So they gave Bill Gates a $6 billion break; they gave the 400 richest people in this country $200 billion in tax cuts over 10 years. Now they begrudge us our effort to provide this tiny little bit of housing for the poorest people in this country, paid for by an amendment that will raise money by providing additional housing for yet other people. Mr. Chairman, it seems to me the record is clear. It seems to me our obligation is clear. We ought to pass this amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I feel constrained to object to the request at this time.

Mr. OBEY

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

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, I would just like to inquire of the gentleman from Florida how many other times has Mr. Lextra voted in this or any other committee, even though he is not a member of the committee and, to my knowledge, is not a Member of the House?

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. I would simply say that to suggest that the veterans are getting a bad deal by asking that $4 million be spent on this suit when we can get back hundreds of millions of dollars in return is patently preposterous on its face.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, this bill is a debate or part of the debate about our national priorities and our national values and it helps decide who we are going to put first in this society. This Congress has committed itself to pass a large number of very large tax cuts, and most of those tax cuts are aimed at the most well- off people in our society. The wealthiest 2 percent will get a huge percentage of those tax cuts. And our ability to afford those tax cuts is based on the assumption by the majority that over the next few years we will cut $125 billion below current services, below existing purchasing power levels, a whole host of programs: education programs, health programs, housing programs, land acquisition programs, science programs, all the rest. That is really what this debate is all about. Because this is one of the appropriation bills that is cut by a large amount below the President's budget in order to pretend that we can squeeze out enough room for those huge tax cuts aimed at the most well-off people in this society. And I do not believe we ought to do that. I think we need to look at this budget in terms of what we need 10 years from now because this is a growing society, it is a growing population. We have growing needs, we are going to have more people who need housing, we are going to have more people in high schools, we are going to have more people in college, we are going to have more needs, and these bills are not responding to them. Some examples of that lack of response are as follows: As has been indicated, the distinguished chairman has done the best he can given the budget ceiling which was assigned to his subcommittee and this bill does contain a welcome $1.35 billion increase for veterans' medical care. It is about time that both parties get off their duff on that. But it fails to adequately provide for several other priorities for veterans. It does freeze funds for veterans' medical and prosthetic research. It cuts grants for construction of State veterans homes one-third below current year levels and does some other things that we are not happy about. It needlessly creates a political confrontation with the President by terminating the Corporation for National and Community Service, including the AmeriCorps program. Everyone on this floor knows the President is not going to sign this bill with that provision. For housing, it appropriates no funds for the 120,000 new housing assistance vouchers proposed by the administration. It cuts Community Development Block Grants $276 million below the current year level and $395 million below the President's request. It freezes funding for homeless assistance. It provides a number of other cuts on the environmental front and on the NASA front. I happen to believe the most serious cut of all in terms of our long- term economic health is what this bill does to the National Science Foundation because it falls short of the President's request by $508 billion. And I think it is essential to understand that the National Science Foundation does much of the basic scientific research, upon which all our other technological and medical progress is based. We have had economists estimate that at least half of our economic productivity in the past 50 years can be attributed to technological innovation and the science that has supported that innovation. And yet, this bill is a giant missed opportunity because it cuts the President's budget with respect to that program. It falls $508 million below the President's request. And then, in addition, it takes actions which, in concert with other actions taken by other subcommittees, slowly but surely fences in the Justice Department so that neither they nor any other agency of Government can mount an effective lawsuit against the tobacco companies for lying through their teeth to the American people for the past 40 years about whether or not their product caused cancer. And so, the Government has shelled out billions of dollars in Medicare, in veterans' health costs to deal with health consequences of that product and the lying selling of that product to the American people. And I think that needs to be corrected. So these are a number of reasons why, although I have profound respect for the gentleman from New York (Mr. Walsh) and consider him to be one of the finest people in this institution, I cannot support the work product that the budget resolution has forced him to come up with.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, this place is something else. I am no blue nose. If people want to make an informed decision to smoke, so be it. I used to smoke three packs of cigarettes a day. At the same time, I worked with asbestos. Johns Manville Corporation knew since 1939 that asbestos caused cancer, but I did not when I was working with it, because they hid it from consumers and from the Government itself. I also did not know, but Johns Manville did, and I believe the tobacco companies did too, that there was a synergistic effect between asbestos and tobacco, and when one is exposed to both, one's chances of getting cancer increased at a geometric rate. So very frankly, since those days I have been waiting for the shoe to drop. We have the same situation with the tobacco company executives that we had with the asbestos company executives. Both of them lied through their teeth for years. When the gentleman from California's (Mr. Waxman) subcommittee was holding the hearings, we all remember the famous seven tobacco company presidents standing up and swearing to tell the truth, and then proceeding to tell the committee that no, no, no, they did not believe that tobacco caused cancer. Well, they had in their files information that demonstrated that they certainly knew it did. So we have listened to their bull gravy for 50 years. Now we have a question as to whether or not we are going to do anything about it or not. The gentleman said there is nothing in this bill that prohibits the tobacco settlement, or the tobacco lawsuit from going forward. That is speaking only half the truth, because what is happening is that the appropriation bill which we will consider next, the Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, State, and Judiciary appropriation bill, forbids the Justice Department from using its own funds to pursue a tobacco settlement; and then they have in other appropriation bills, in the Defense bill, in this bill, and I believe in one other appropriation bill, they also say that you cannot use funds from any of the other agencies and allow the Justice Department to use those funds from other agencies to pursue their tobacco suit either. So slowly, the Justice Department is being surrounded by this multiplicity of attacks in appropriation bills. I think that that is wrong, and I think we ought to adopt the gentleman's amendment. Now, I know that we will hear people say ``oh, we are going to take money away from veterans' health care and use it to fund this suit, and it is just going to go into the pockets of the lawyers.'' The fact is that I offered seven amendments in one session alone, trying to get the majority party to increase funding for veterans' health care, and they turned them all down and they did that 2 years in a row. I would suggest now, to say that the veterans' department, which has the potential to gain hundreds of millions of dollars in additional revenue for veterans, for the treatment of their problems, to say that they cannot try to do that by expending $4 million out of their own funds to pursue this case on behalf of every veteran and on behalf of the taxpayers is ludicrous, at best. Mr. Chairman, I would simply point out also that if one checks the facts about litigation only enriching lawyers, the administration has indicated that the department has not engaged any lawyer on a contingency-fee basis. They did engage one firm on a limited arrangement on terms that were favorable to the Government. Under that contract, which ran for 3 months, the firm provided assistance to the Department at a reduced rate of $75 per hour, well below normal billing fees. The payment for services to that firm total less than $80,000. So we should not kid ourselves. Every time we hear somebody say, this is not about tobacco, remember, it is about tobacco, and it is about lying, and it is about whether or not we will defend the taxpayers' interests to recoup the billions of dollars that have been spent. It is about meeting our responsibilities, to see to it that the taxpayer is not stuck with the cost of providing health care to veterans and other folks in this society because the tobacco companies lied and caused billions of dollars' worth of damage in the process.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Let me simply point out that the point the gentleman from California has made is a crucial point. The issue goes to reprogramming, because what this committee has tried to do in bill after bill is to prevent the administration, first of all, from directly spending. In one subcommittee they refused to appropriate any money for the suit. And then they required them to come back for reprogramming from at least two subcommittees from which it is known they will never get approval for that reprogramming request.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will continue to yield, what this really is, when we couple the refusal to appropriate the dollars in one subcommittee with the limitation on transfers from other agencies with the requirement for reprogramming, we have a three- pronged attack that winds up enabling people to pretend that they have not blocked the tobacco suit when in fact they have. It is a way for the Congress to cover itself and pretend that it is not stopping the suit against the tobacco companies when in practical terms the way this institution operates we know that it is shutting down and closing every door available to the Justice Department to pursue that suit.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, before we vote, I simply want to rise to remind people why so many of us will vote against this bill on final passage. The bill is $1.7 billion below the President's request, and $302 million below fiscal 2000. That applause says an awful lot about those folks and their values. Mr. Chairman, it is $485 million below the request for Indian affairs. It will cause major reductions in personnel for both Indian schools, hospitals, and clinics. Are the Members not clapping now? Why do they not clap at that, too? Mr. Chairman, this bill cuts land acquisition $736 million below the level which this House voted just a month ago and sent out their press releases about. It includes anti-environmental riders on the Columbia Basin plan deleted earlier by the Dicks amendment, it fails to include increases for the arts approved earlier today in the Slaughter amendment, and even if it did, even if it did, $22 million worth of good news cannot overcome $2 billion of ignored responsibilities. For the Forest Service, it is $96 million below last year; it is $100 million below last year for maintenance for parks or refuges or forests. I have to say, I know the gentleman from Ohio. I know if he had his druthers, this bill would not look like this. But the problem is that the way this House is operating under the instructions that it is operating, good people have to bring bad legislation to this floor. We have the responsibility when that happens to vote against it until it becomes good legislation, and that is what we intend to do tonight.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Why did you vote for the cut?

Mr. OBEY. I would just ask this of the gentleman from Washington. If it is true that his heart is so concerned about the plight of our Native Americans, then why did he not offer his amendment in committee when it would not be used as an effort to cut off the effort of the gentlewoman? And why did he then vote for a bill which cut Indian health services by over $500 million?

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

Mr. OBEY. That is the same stale song we have heard from that side on every bill. What they are saying is, ``This is only the second step. We know these bills are inadequate, but somebody else will make them responsible down the line.'' That is, in my view, a very poor recommendation to go to the public with and ask to be returned to this body.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. I would like to bring a little reality back to the debate. If you would follow the logic of the gentlewoman, then the only issue that we should be concerned about in this bill is the arts. We care about the arts, we care about the humanities, we also care about the Native Americans, we care about America's national parks, we care about America's national forests, we care about America's energy resources, and we recognize, in contrast to you that we have an obligation on all of those fronts to meet national needs and human needs. To follow the course suggested by the gentlewoman would have us acquiesce in the fact that only 1 month after this House posed for political holy pictures and said that they wanted to spend $900 million on public land acquisition, they bring forth a bill that has only $164 million to do that. Do you really believe that's sincere? Ha. Look at the national parks and refuges; $100 billion below last year. Take a look at the Forest Service; $96 million below. Do you really believe we ought to go home and explain those cuts? You just had people stand here and tell us we needed more lumber for housing; you had people stand here and tell us how much you loved the land. Now you're asking us to swallow a bill with these reductions? If you want to provide a bill which meets our responsibilities, instead of making us choose between saying no to the arts and no to Native Americans, say no to your rich friends. Be willing to sweat a little about your campaign contributions and instead say, no, we're not going to give $200 billion in tax cuts to the 400 richest people in this country. And don't require, as a price for passing a minimum wage bill that gives $11 billion in benefits to the poorest workers in this society, don't require a legislative extortion which in return makes this Congress also give $90 billion in tax relief to people who make over $300,000 a year. If you want middle-class tax relief, yes! You want to use middle-class tax relief as a Trojan horse to reward your rich friends; sorry, count us out!