Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. I would simply then observe, Mr. Chairman, that the unanimous consent agreement was agreed to with the understanding that is stipulated in the Record. There is no question about being willing to work, but it is not the fault of the minority that the majority party went home Friday without even getting a rule out of the Committee on Rules for the Interior bill, for instance, which could have easily been on the floor tonight. I think what is going on here, not certainly on the part of the gentleman because I think in his heart of hearts he agrees with me, but I think what is going on here is a determination by the majority party to debate this bill at a time of day when it will be the least noticed of any major appropriation bill before the House. If we cannot rely on each other's word around here, and I am certainly not speaking about the gentleman from Illinois, but if we cannot rely on each other's word around here, then we do not have any civility at all left in this place. Preferential Motion: Offered By Mr. Obey

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I would like to inquire of the gentleman from Illinois as to what his intention is with respect to proceeding with this bill at this point. As he knows, in the discussion which occurred that was attendant to the approval of the unanimous consent request last week, when he propounded that unanimous consent request, I would read from page H4106 in the Congressional Record. When the gentleman asked unanimous consent that the agreement be approved under which we are now operating, I said as follows: Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, I simply would note under my reservation, Mr. Speaker, 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. I did that because this is the major priorities debate for the session. We feel very strongly on this side of the aisle that if we cannot get votes on amendments, at least we ought to be able to debate them at a time when Members are here and someone is at least paying attention to the debate. And we offered to have other appropriation bills on the floor tonight rather than this one so that that could be accommodated and we could still finish the scheduled work this week. We had been told this morning that it was understood on the majority side of the aisle under those conditions this bill would come up this evening but that we would not proceed past 9 o'clock. So I am asking the gentleman at this point what his intention is with respect to proceeding with the bill beyond this point since it is now 9:12.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will continue to yield, we did try to do it. We have tried on numerous occasions to cut back the amount of money that you are providing for your tax cuts, including the budget resolution we brought to the floor. All you would have to do to be able to fund this and every other amendment is to cut back your tax cuts by 20 percent. Now, the rules of this House prevented us from getting a vote on that proposition, but that does not mean that we do not have an obligation and conscience to bring it up to demonstrate what we believe to be the skewed priorities of the majority.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, let me simply say we tried to provide this funding on the same footing that the funding was provided for the drug war in South America. We were told by the majority party at that time, come back and deal with it on the regular bill. The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) said that, the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Callahan) said that, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Porter) said that, and several others.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me time. Mr. Chairman, I think it is important to refresh our memories as to what is going on here. What is happening is that we are offering a series of amendments, but under the rule under which this bill is being debated we will not be able to get votes on those amendments. The reason we will not is because the majority party, in order to squeeze out enough room in the budget for their huge tax packages, they have scaled back substantially on virtually every domestic appropriation bill that we will bring to this floor. That is why this bill is $3 billion below the President on education, almost $2 billion below on worker protection and job training, and over $1 billion below on health care. Mr. Chairman, what we are trying to do with this and other amendments is to illustrate that we think there ought to be a different set of priorities than those which are guiding the majority party. Last week the majority party passed a tax bill which, over the next 10 years, will give over $200 billion in tax relief to the richest 400 Americans in this society. I have nothing against those folks, but it seems to me that it is a much higher priority for this country to meet its education obligations, its health care obligations and its job training obligations. What the Pelosi amendment is trying to illustrate is that this Congress and the administration are apparently both supporting an expensive new proposition to fight a drug war in South America, but that this Congress is refusing to add funding to the budget to deal with drug treatment here at home. When we have only 37 percent of the Americans who are presently in need of drug treatment able to get treatment because of insufficient drug treatment slots, it seems to me that we have a terrible imbalance in our Congressional priorities. So I recognize this amendment is not going anywhere, because we cannot even get a vote on it under the rule, but I think this is just another example of the price we pay in terms of increased crime, in terms of increased drug addiction, because this Congress is hell-bent on providing some huge tax cuts for the wealthiest people in this society, while it is ignoring our needs to deal with the concrete problems that affect and afflict virtually every community in the country.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, the gentlewoman most certainly is.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, this is the first of 160 amendments that we intend to offer to this bill. This amendment adds $1,000 to the Child Care and Development Block Grant. I am offering this amendment because it is the only way under the rule under which this bill is being considered that we can have a discussion about the effect of the majority party's tax cuts on each and every individual program that delivers services to the people that we represent. The majority party has decided in the last 2 months to do the following: They have passed a minimum wage bill that provided $11 billion worth of benefits to minimum wage workers but they required, as the price for passage, that we also add $90 billion worth of tax benefits to people who make over $300,000 a year. They took a tax bill which they called the marriage penalty and under the guise of providing relief for the so-called marriage penalty they produced a tax bill which gave 73 percent of those benefits to people who made over $100,000 a year. Then last week, the majority passed through this House an inheritance tax package that gave over $200 billion in potential tax relief to the wealthiest 400 people in this country. Yet we are prevented, because of the budget resolution and the limits imposed by that resolution, we are prevented in the appropriations process from trying to make our case by demonstrating on a program by program basis what they have had to squeeze in order to do that. What they have done on child care is to cut the President's request by 400-and-some million dollars. Now they say, well, that is not really a very deep cut in the President's budget, and it is no cut at all because of what we provided last year. They forget the fact that we are only providing child care to about 1 out of every 10 children who are presently eligible for assistance under Federal law. I can only offer an amendment to add a thousand dollars to this. The $417 million cut in the President's program means that 80,000 fewer children will be served. Under the rules, I can only offer an amendment raising this amount by a nominal amount, and I do so simply because at this point that is the only way that we can make our point about the misplaced priorities in the majority party's budget resolution. I would have preferred that we go through this in a systematic fashion, have a short 30-minute debate on each of the major items in the bill at a time of day when we are not being buried, after this bill has been hidden from public view for more than 3 years, but that is not to be. So I guess instead of having the orderly subject by subject discussion that I had hoped we would have, we are going to have to offer a series of amendments to every line of this bill. In that way we will indicate our strong objection to what the majority party has done and our profound belief that their priorities are fundamentally misguided and misbegotten. It seems to me that child care, it seems to me that education, it seems to me that health care, it seems to me that job training are more important to the country than to provide giant tax cuts to the wealthiest people in this country. I am all for targeted tax cuts, targeted at those who need it the worst, those who need it the most but certainly the 400 richest Americans are not among them and that is one of the points we are trying to debate and illustrate in comparative priorities this evening.

Mr. OBEY. All I can tell the gentleman is that I want to finish tomorrow night, but I have no way of guaranteeing we are going to finish tomorrow night until I know what the plans are on the gentleman's side of the aisle with respect to amendments.

Mr. OBEY. I told you, I am perfectly willing to put limits on every amendment, but I cannot control which amendments are going to be offered on your side of the aisle. We have done our work on this side of the aisle and identified Members who were going to offer amendments and they have largely agreed not to offer them.

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. Before we move into the Committee of the Whole, I thought that an understanding was being reached about the sequence of an amendment. Is that not correct?

Mr. OBEY. Yes, absolutely.

Mr. OBEY. Yes.

Mr. OBEY. The problem is that one of the Members who would offer those amendments is called away to another meeting and so we wanted to ask unanimous consent before the House went into the Committee that that amendment be taken out of order simply so that she could leave.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that it be in order to consider amendment No. 10 notwithstanding that portion of the bill may have been passed in the reading of the bill for amendment, but otherwise subject to the order of the House of June 8, 2000.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, as the gentleman from Texas knows, last night we worked out a unanimous consent request on the major amendments that still divide the two parties. It was our expectation that having done that, we could finish that bill within a reasonable length of time, because outside of those amendments, I think most of the remaining amendments that are to be offered are on your side of the aisle with probably one or two exceptions on this side at most. When we made that agreement, I had indicated that it was with the understanding that that bill would not be considered either while Members were in the air trying to get back or in the dead of night. Our reason for feeling that way is that this is the major domestic appropriations bill which divides us. Under the rule that the bill is being considered under, we cannot get votes on the major issues, but at least we wanted to be able to have a structured, coherent debate on the issue. I would urge the gentleman to simply look at moving some other appropriation bill or any other vehicle in for Monday evening. I have no preference as to which one it is. But we would not be able to finish the Labor-HHS bill Monday in any case starting that late. For example, if we were to proceed to it on Tuesday after the markup of the bill in full committee, I am confident we could finish consideration of the bill that day. But with 160 possible amendments pending if we do not have an agreement, I would hate to see us unravel an agreement which I thought we had with the accompanying understanding last night.

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

Mr. OBEY. All I would say is that if we cannot work it out, we are not going to make very much progress on that bill on Monday.

Mr. OBEY. All I would say is that we are trying to accommodate the leadership without any extraneous delays of any kind. All we are asking in return is that we have an opportunity to make our case in one solid block of time. That obviously will not be possible Monday night. It would be possible on any other day of the week. I am confident that if we can reach an understanding, it would speed up rather than significantly delay the consideration of that and other appropriation bills.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I object.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I also reserve a point of order on the amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, the only repetitive motion injury that some Members of Congress are likely ever to endure will come from the routine genuflecting to special interests that so often goes on around here. We ought to have an exception to that general rule by passing this amendment tonight. But if you vote for it, do not think you can then go home and pretend to your workers that you are a friend of the working man and a friend of working families all over this country if you vote to pass this bill, because it will still be cutting education from the President's request by over $3 billion, it will be cutting health care by more than $1 billion, it will be cutting worker protection and job training programs by almost $2 billion. That is not going to fool anybody.