Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Tierney).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. All I would say, Mr. Chairman, is that the Senate has brought out its authorization bill and it has not included the Teacher Empowerment Act. So that may be false hope. Secondly, with respect to block granting, what the majority has done with the social service block grant, which was at $2.4 billion 2 years ago, they cut it to $1.7 billion under the TEA-21 legislation. Then the Senate cut it in the labor-health bill this year to another $600 million. It has become the incredible shrinking block grant, and we are afraid we are going to do the same thing to education by first blocking them and then shrinking them. Thirdly, I would point out that it is incorrect to say that the President is zeroing out the Eisenhower Teacher Training program. He is doubling that program essentially from $335 million to $690 million, and then adding some features that strengthen it as well. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Hawaii (Mrs. Mink). (Mrs. MINK of Hawaii asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I do, for the reasons that I cited in my previous remarks. I recognize that the rules of the House do not allow us to get a vote on this amendment. That does not mean the amendment is not correct. Obviously, under the rules we are operating under it is not in order, so I concede the point of order.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro)

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I got my answer, so I appreciate it. And we concede the point of order.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, as I understand it, if that proviso is stricken, then the CBO is estimating that this bill will be $479 billion above the budget cap in budget authority and $1.7 billion in outlays. I want to make sure I understand what these numbers are. I understand that the committee itself is estimating that if the supplemental passes that, then this bill would be in excess of the budget cap by $500 million in budget authority and $217 million in outlays. Since the argument is being made that Democratic amendments are breaching the ceilings, I think it is interesting to note that if this point of order lies, that the committee bill itself will be in excess of the amount in the budget resolution. I would ask either the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Porter) or the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn), do these numbers correspond with your understanding of the situation?

Mr. OBEY

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

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. OBEY. Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask at which point it is appropriate for me to withdraw the amendment now pending.

Mr. OBEY. Your leadership staff told us today.

Mr. OBEY. The gentleman full well knows what conversations took place both publicly and privately. If we cannot count on the majority to keep their word, then we might as well know it now.

Mr. OBEY. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I simply want to repeat, and I am reading from page H4106 of the Congressional Record of June 8, when the unanimous consent request was propounded at that time under which we agreed to a time limit on the 11 amendments that we are now operating on, I said the following: I said, ``Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, I would note that I have no objection to this arrangement with the understanding that when the House returns to this bill it will not be at a time when Members are still flying back to Washington on their airplanes and that it will not be debated in the dead of night.'' We were then assured today that we would be out of here on this bill at least by 9:00 tonight. Now I am told something else and if that is the case, then as the gentleman knows, this unanimous consent request was offered because we had 160 amendments to the bill. If we are not going to stick to the agreement we had, we are going to offer all 160 amendments.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman for yielding to me. Mr. Chairman, let me simply say this: On this side of the aisle, because this bill has not been on the floor for 3 years, we want to see this bill voted on. Speaking very frankly, politically, we would be delighted to finally see this House vote on this bill, and substantively we would also be delighted to see us vote on the bill and would like to see it done tomorrow. We are operating under a unanimous consent agreement under which some 11 Democratic amendments have been laid out in the unanimous consent request with time limits attached to them. We would be very happy to attach time limits to all remaining amendments. We believe that 80 percent of the amendments on the Democratic side will not be offered. Of those that will be offered, our understanding from talking to most of the Members is that they will be offered and withdrawn after an explanation of what the Member was trying to do for 5 minutes. I know of only two or three amendments on our side that do not fit that category and on which we need to do further work, but we are willing to work out time limits on all of those. The problem as we see it is that there is a significant number of amendments that on our list are tentatively listed to be offered by Members on your side of the aisle. We do not have the capacity to work with your Members to work out time agreements. We are happy to agree to time limits on those as well, but we cannot do the work on the majority side with your Members. Your leadership staff and you need to do that. All we want is what I said when I agreed to the unanimous consent request on Friday, that when this bill is debated, it not be debated in the dead of night, because it has been 3 years since this bill has been on the floor. So I want to assure what I honestly believe would be best is if we could rise on this bill tonight, I do not know what the gentleman has scheduled for the remainder of the week in terms of the order but it seems to me that overnight your leadership staff, your committee staff ought to be able to get together with your members and reach an understanding so before we come back on this bill tomorrow we can enter into a unanimous consent request which we can both agree to, which would enable us to finish the bill tomorrow. That would be our goal as well, but if we waste 4 hours' time we are not going to get past this point in the bill tonight, I assure you. That does not do anybody any good, and I think the time would be better spent simply consulting with Members to see how much time they think they need on their amendment and whether they, in fact, need to offer it at all, that is legislation.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I am in the process of offering an amendment to the child care section of this bill. It is my understanding that the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) wanted to have a colloquy. Did the gentleman want to have that before I offered the amendment?

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. OBEY. You asked for a unanimous consent agreement. I told you under which conditions I would give it, and I told you both privately and we did it in the Record, as you well know.

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