Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. OBEY. I think that is safe to say, Mr. Speaker.

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

Mr. OBEY. I thank the gentleman for yielding to me, Mr. Chairman. I will not repeat everything I said about the gentleman from Illinois yesterday, in the interest of brevity, but I do simply want to say that on this side of the aisle we regret very much the fact that the gentleman is retiring. We regret very much he will not be with us next year. As I said yesterday, the gentleman has been a superb public servant. He has done honor to his district, to his State, to his party, to his Nation, to this institution, and each and every one of us who have served with him, and we wish him Godspeed.

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

Mr. OBEY. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman, and all I would say with respect to the previous colloquy is that the only assurance that any individual Member can provide that there will be more funding for a program that he is interested in is to vote for a bill which contains it. When we vote for a bill that does not contain it, what we do is give leverage to the very people who are trying to hold down funding for that bill. I think before Members vote they should understand one thing about this bill. All of yesterday we tried to offer amendments to restore funds for education, for health care, for job training, for various other items that were knocked out of the President's budget request and we were denied the opportunity to offer those amendments, in large part because we were told they exceeded the allowable budget ceiling for this bill. And yet this bill now, as it stands here, with the failure of the Young amendment, is $500 million in budget authority above the allowable amount and it is $217 million above the allowable budget ceiling for outlays; that despite the fact that it is still $3 billion short of the President's budget for education, $1.7 billion below for worker protection and training, and $1.2 billion below the President's budget for health. I find it interesting that one standard is applied to amendments that this side sought to offer and another standard to the majority side when it wants to pass a bill. This bill, as it stands, is not in compliance with the budget resolution, and yesterday the majority time and time and time again chastised us for offering amendments that were not in compliance with the budget resolution. So much for consistency. But I guess it is the best that we can expect. Lastly, I want to announce to the House, Mr. Chairman, that there will be a motion to recommit.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, this motion is very simple. It deletes a provision in the bill that was added by the rule through a self- executing amendment that has the effect of cutting the fiscal 2000 appropriation in this bill for Child Care and Development Block Grant by $506 million. The motion to recommit simply strikes that provision, thereby adding $506 million back for child care, which is the same level that was requested by the President and which was the level included in this bill as reported out of committee. This motion would provide child care for an additional 100,000 children. The provision in the bill which my motion strikes says that if the Fiscal 2002 advance appropriation across all appropriation bills exceeds $23.5 billion, then the child care program is singled out for rescissions that bring the total back down to $23 billion. Since the Labor HHS bill and VA bill already exceed that total by $506 million, that means $506 million will automatically be lopped off the $2 billion provided in this bill for child care. I am sure my friend, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Porter), will say this is next year's funding, and so you do not have to worry about it. My response is this bill is either real or it is not. It is either a let-us-pretend bill. If it is not a let-us-pretend bill, then it cuts child care by $506 million. I would hope that we would be voting for real bills, and I would hope that we would not be slashing programs like this. I would point out that only one out of every 10 children who are eligible for child care under Federal standards today are actually getting it because of a shortage of that service. If Members are comfortable with that situation, then they should vote against my motion. If they are not, then I would urge that they vote for it. If this motion passes, the committee will simply have to bring back a new bill immediately without this misguided provision. Mr. Speaker, I include the following for the Record: Sec. 518. If the total level of discretionary advance appropriations for fiscal year 2002 and subsequent fiscal years provided in general appropriation Acts for fiscal year 2001 exceeds $23,500,000,000, there shall be rescinded from the amount made available in this Act for fiscal year 2002 under the heading ``Administration for Children and Families--payments to states for the child care and development block grant'' an amount sufficient to reduce the total level of such discretionary advance appropriations to $23,500,000,000: Provided, That the rescission shall not exceed an amount that would cause the amount provided under such heading to be less than the amount provided for fiscal year 2001 in the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2000 (as enacted into law by section 1000(a)(4) of Public Law 106- 113).

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I would ask the gentleman if it is the intention of the majority to now proceed to a final vote on this bill.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I want to do two things: First of all, as every Member knows, as hard as Members work, our staffs work twice as hard. I would simply like to take a moment to thank Christina Hamilton, Norris Cochran, Mari Johnson, Scott Lilly, Cheryl Smith, Mark Mioduski and Kori Hardin for the work they have done for me and for the Democratic minority. I would like to thank Doyle Lewis, Marc Granowitter, Scott Boule, Clare Coleman, Kristin Holman and Charles Dujon for the work that they have done on behalf of the minority members of the subcommittee. I would like to thank Tony McCann, Carol Murphy, Susan Firth, Francine Salvador, Jeff Kenyon, Tom Kelly, Spencer Pearlman, and Katharine Fisher for the work they have done on behalf of the majority. They have done very good work in preparing us and in preparing our arguments, even when they know that both of us are wrong. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the fact that many of them have gone without sleep for a long time, and I think they need our thanks. Also the folks in the front office of the committee, who also get beat up, but work very hard as well. I also would simply like to note that with the defeat of the Young amendment on the last vote, this bill is now $500 million in budget authority and $217 million in outlays above its allowable spending levels in the budget resolution. That means that at this point the bill has the same defect that the majority objected to in the amendments that we offered on the minority side all day long. Very interesting.

Mr. OBEY. That would be very nice. Sequential Votes Postponed in Committee of The Whole

Mr. OBEY. I would ask, Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman can tell me, when would it be convenient for the majority party to be present so that we can vote on the product?

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, as the House knows, last night we spent a considerable amount of time in disagreement because this Congress has not voted on this bill in the last 3 years, and this labor, health and education and social services bill represents the major effort of the Congress to meet our national responsibilities in funding the needs of working American families. We wanted to make sure that the debate on this bill occurred not in the dead of night but in the light of day, and we finally reached an agreement under which that would occur. I insisted at the time that I wanted the debate to occur at the same time that we were going to have the vote on final passage so that the issues would not be disconnected from the vote on final passage. I was told by the majority party leadership staff that they would assure me of that with one caveat. They said that when the time comes, if we do not think we have the votes to pass the bill, we will have to lay it over and, therefore, would not vote on it tomorrow. Well, I have now been told that the leadership does not intend to push this bill to passage tonight. If that is the case, then assuming, and I do, good faith on the part of the leadership staff, then it must mean that they do not have the votes at this point for this bill. I would simply say if that is the case, then while the majority party has suggested all day long that they were not comfortable with our constant efforts to drive home the fact that their tax actions have had serious consequences on their ability to meet our responsibilities in the area of education, health and worker training, while they have expressed great discomfort with our efforts to drive that point home every hour, apparently that message has, at least with some members of the majority party caucus, hit home. If it has, then this day's debate has not been a waste of time. It is clear, even if sufficient Members of the House on the majority side can overcome their rightful concerns about this bill, that this bill is going nowhere because the President has made clear his intention to veto it until the Congress restores the funding they have cut from his budget request for education, for health care, for worker training and the like. So if this bill is not to be put to a final vote, I assume it is because it does not have the votes; and all I can say is, it does not deserve to. That is not the fault of the gentleman from Illinois handling the bill, but, nonetheless, we do not vote on each other, we vote on the product that we produce, and this product is not in the interest of the American people who we represent.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time, and I regret that the chairman has to regret to offer the amendment, too. I think this demonstrates what happens when we are ruled by accountants and when we come to be ruled by process rather than making decisions on the basis of good old-fashioned instinct and judgment. I think that this amendment recognizes that it is impossible to pass this bill without departing from reality once again, as the majority has been forced to do many times in supporting appropriation bills. If I were in the gentleman's position, I would be as uncomfortable as I know he is right now. But he did not make this problem, the majority party leadership did when they decided to pursue the course that they decided to pursue. We could have easily passed all these bills with bipartisan majorities if these bills had produced real trade-offs. But, instead, because the majority party leadership has insisted that they put their tax plans above everything else, that has deprived this House of the opportunity to work on a bipartisan basis on all of these appropriation bills. I regret that personally, I regret that professionally, and I most of all regret it because of what it means for the people we are supposed to represent.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Let me explain this amendment, Mr. Chairman. This bill originally contained an emergency designation for funding for the Center for Disease Control to respond to bioterrorism attacks, as only that institution has the capacity to do. The committee designated it as an emergency. But then the organization in the Republican Caucus known as the CATS objected, and so the Committee on Rules did not protect the emergency designation for that money in the rule. This amendment, while it is being offered by my friend, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), it really, I suppose, ought to be called the Coburn amendment. Because when the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn) struck the protection on the point of order, it left this bill some $500 million over its budget ceiling. I would simply suggest that it is too bad that my good friend had to be put in a position to offer this amendment, because I do not think he believes it is good public policy any more than I do. I would say that there is a group in the majority party caucus which has a highly erratic record on the issue of emergency designations. One week that group rabidly opposes emergency designation for items that are emergencies, such as hurricanes, floods, bioterrorism threats; the next week it supports designating as an emergency funding for a decennial census, which we all know comes every 10 years; and even supports emergency funding for Head Start, a program that has been around since I was a teenager. I guess I would say that I find it most ironic that even after these cuts are made this bill will still be $33 million above its allocation in outlays. This is ironic given the fact that all day long we were told by the majority that we could not get a vote on the amendments that we were offering on our side of the aisle because they exceeded the numbers in the budget resolution. So I would simply point out that this amendment cuts $54 million from title I, $40 million from special education, $52 million from Pell grants, $4 million from after-school centers, $6 million from Impact Aid, $11 million from class-size initiative, $116 million for the National Institutes of Health, $35 million from Head Start, $30 million from job training, $7 million from community health centers, $9 million from low-income heating assistance program, and $6 million from Administration on Aging. If my colleagues are comfortable with those cuts, vote for it. But I do not think there will be many people on our side of the aisle doing so, because we recognize that there ought to be higher priorities in this country than giving the wealthiest 400 Americans $200 billion in tax cuts, as the majority decided to do last week.

Mr. OBEY. Yes, I do, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, this amendment tries to do a lot of good things. One of the most important things is that it tries to add back $38 million to correct the fact that this bill cuts 95 percent of the funding for the administration's nursing home initiative, which is aimed at strengthening the protection of our senior citizens in nursing homes. The General Accounting Office has said that there are one in four nursing homes in this country that has serious deficiencies. I think we ought to do our best to correct that, and this amendment does. I do not know how many have ever worked in a nursing home. I worked an entire summer in an institution when I was a young teenager that dealt with people in need of nursing home care and also dealt with people in need of care because of mental and emotional problems. It was not a pleasant job. It is a tough job. Nursing homes that are trying to do right by their citizens need to be backed up by the Government who will keep those who are not quite so fastidious towing the line, because otherwise it makes it impossible for the nursing homes who we are trying to tow the line to do so. I think it is a disgrace that we do not fund their money. I also think it should be on notice that this amendment restores money that fights Medicare fraud. It restores money to try to shorten the delays that people have when they apply for Social Security disability. A woman came up to me 2 weeks ago who was facing the loss of her house because she could not get a hearing fast enough on her Social Security disability claim. There are real people behind this amendment and real needs that we are trying to fill with this amendment. I congratulate the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro) for trying. I would urge a vote for this amendment if we have the opportunity to get a vote.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, before we move to the final amendments on this bill, I know the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Traficant) has one and I know the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro) has one and the chairman of the committee has one, but I simply want to take this time, in spite of the heat of the debate that we sometimes had, to take a moment to do honor to the man who is chairing this subcommittee as we consider this legislation for the last time under his stewardship. Mr. Chairman, I have known the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Porter) for a long time now. I have never seen a day when I have thought that he did not act out of absolute patriotism and out of an absolute dedication to what he believes is good for this country. I deeply believe that being a politician, and I am proud of it, I deeply believe that being a politician or public servant is one of the highest callings that one could have. In a democracy, I know of no higher calling except to be a minister, a rabbi, or a priest. I think the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Porter) with all of the differences we have had on this bill, I think the gentleman from Illinois has in all ways, as long as I have known him, done honor to his constituency, done honor to his State, done honor to his party, done honor to this institution, and above all, has done honor, great honor, to the country that he has so ably served. I will regret seeing him leave. I will miss him personally. I will miss him professionally. I think that the differences that he and I have had on this bill prove that when two people agree on everything one of them is unnecessary, so we have disagreed often today. We each have our roles to play. But public service loses something very precious when it loses people like the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Porter). I simply want to say that whether the issue has been health or education or welfare, or whether the issue has been the foreign policy interests of the United States, the gentleman has always, in my view, been a credit to this institution and a credit to himself. I think honestly he has deserved a better cut of the deck than he has gotten, because if we had a realistic budget situation in which we were operating, I think he could produce legislation which is far more in line with what I know his instincts to be and what his concerns to be. I simply, if I were wearing a hat, would take it off to the gentleman, because he has been an exemplary public servant for as long as I have known him.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I am a practicing politician, just like everyone else in this institution, so I would plead fully guilty, I would like to vote for a lot of tax cuts for my constituents. But I think I have some differences from some of my friends on the Republican side of the aisle. I want tax cuts that are aimed, for instance, at small businessmen so they can help provide health insurance for their employees. I know what it is like to run a small business on a 1 percent or 2 percent profit. I do not want tax cuts that provide 73 percent of their benefits to the wealthiest 1 or 2 percent of the people in this country. I have nothing against those folks, but when we give 73 percent of the tax benefits to the very wealthiest 1 or 2 percent, we do indeed precipitate class warfare, and Members cannot object when the average working family asks their representatives to fight back. I also do not want tax cuts that are so large that they get in the way of our protecting Medicare and Social Security, and that require the kind of reductions from the President's budget that this bill has in education, that it has in health care, that it has in the National Science Foundation, that it has in a range of other programs that help build this country. Mr. Chairman, we are the strong country we are today because we have always tried to be in everything together. We have tried to sacrifice together in wars and prosper together in peace. The problem is that today, in many places in this country that is not happening. What we are saying is very simple: Yes, we want a universal health insurance plan for prescription drugs, a voluntary plan. The reason they have never been able, on that side of the aisle, the reason they have never been able to put a dent in Social Security, the reason they have never been able to wipe out Medicare, as their earlier leadership said they wanted to do, is because they provide universal benefits, regardless of income, so all levels of this society recognize they are in it together when it comes to those programs, so people at all levels of income defend those programs. I make no apology for wanting to apply the same logic to prescription drugs. There is nothing wrong with asking Members to delay the tax cuts Members are giving to the wealthiest 2 percent of people in this country until they provide a prescription drug benefit for people who need it. There is nothing wrong with pointing out time and time again that all they have to do to be able to avoid all of the cuts from the President's budget that they have in education, in health care, and child care, and everything else, is to simply cut by 20 percent the size of the tax cut that they are providing in the five tax cut bills they have put through this House so far. It is true, our procedures do not allow us to directly join this issue tonight by way of votes, so all we can do is join it rhetorically. If those are the only tools that we have, then pardon me for making the best use of them that we know how. I make no apologies for it. This amendment is the right thing to do if Members believe in a just society.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the other distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Olver).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 20 seconds. Mr. Chairman, as far as class warfare is concerned, the fact is that the working class has already lost and the wealthiest 2 percent have already won. The wealthiest 1 percent of people have made so much in additional money over the past 5 years that they now control more of the Nation's wealth than 90 percent of the American people combined. I do not call that class warfare, I call that telling the truth. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I simply want to read this amendment: ``It is the sense of the House of Representatives that tax reductions for taxpayers in the top 1 percent of income levels should not be enacted until the Congress enacts a universal voluntary prescription drug benefit for all Americans under Medicare.'' The fact is, Mr. Chairman, that for the last 18 years we have been digging out from deficits created when Ronald Reagan pushed through a supine Congress legislation which doubled military spending on borrowed money and made very large reductions in tax cuts. And over the past 18 years, we have been desperate to finally work down these deficits that were built up and this increase in the national debt that was built up. And now finally after 18 years of deficits, which gave us an excuse, a collective institutional excuse to do diddly for millions of Americans who needed help, we finally have an opportunity to provide some help. This House passed a number of tax bills in the last 2 months. First of all, we passed a minimum wage bill that gave $11 billion in benefits to minimum wage workers; but as a price for passing that, it included $90 billion in tax cuts for people who made over $300,000 a year. They just passed an inheritance bill last week which gave $50 billion per year when fully operative to the wealthiest 2 percent of people in this country. I observed at the time if we did not do that, we instead could provide a universal prescription drug benefit for every single senior citizen in this country. In fact, we could do it for a lot less than that cost. In fact, what we could do, if we did not spend that $50 billion on these folks, we could provide a universal health coverage for every single person in this country that does not have it. Very simply, I would ask one thing. I have held a number of meetings in my congressional district. I run into senior citizens. I ran into a person just last Saturday, who spent $24,000 a year on prescription drugs fighting cancer. I talked to another woman who spent over $6,800 a year. I have talked to doctors who tell me that seniors have to choose between heating and eating, and that they have known many a patient who has decided they would cut their dosage in half because they could not afford to buy their medicine. Now, this Congress is very good at saying, oh, you should offset your spending increases. What we are asking you to do today in an amendment that we can offer, but which we cannot get a vote on, what we are asking for is to recognize that there are two parts to a budget: what you recognize in revenue and what you spend in expenditures. We are asking you for a change like the outside world would, where you live in reality to put those two pieces of the budget together, and recognize that what you do on one half has an impact on what you can or cannot do on the other half. Now, we cannot under the rules of the House get at that action today; and so this is, in essence, a symbolic amendment, because we have no opportunity to offer any other kind. This is a symbolic amendment that says decide who we ought to put first. Now that we finally have some surpluses and can start meeting some of the Nation's challenges again, decide whether the wealthiest 2 percent of people in this country need that money more than someone who is living on $16,000 a year on a fixed income. If you have a conscience, the answer is clear. That is why this amendment, though it will not be adopted by this House tonight, should be. It would be a signal that at long last we are putting the needs of working people and retirees ahead of the economic establishment in this country. There are only 6 percent of the people in this country who contribute to political campaigns; that is why you get $50 billion a year put here instead of here. And that, I think, is the most disgraceful thing you can say about this session of Congress. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.