Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding to me. I simply want to announce to the House that I am going to insert for the Record a letter from the American Federation of Labor, the AFL-CIO, in a letter dated June 8 to me. The letter says as follows: The Traficant amendment is being offered against the wishes of the AFL-CIO. It is being done in a way that does not provide an appropriate opportunity to work on behalf of its passage. Further, it appears to be an effort on the part of some to provide cover and encourage Members to support legislation that is blatant anti working family. We do not view this amendment as helpful to the effort to achieve final promulgation of an effective ergonomic standard. With or without this amendment, this legislation seriously harms the interests of American workers and we will continue to strongly oppose the passage of H.R. 4577. I simply note that so that Members understand that even if they vote for this amendment that is not going to fool anyone who represents American workers into thinking that that has made this bill acceptable to the interests of working families because it clearly is not and will not be so. Mr. Chairman, the letter I referred to above follows: American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, Washington, DC, June 8, 2000. Hon. David Obey, House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Dear Congressman Obey: The Traficant amendment is being offered against the wishes of the AFL-CIO. It is being done in a way that does not provide an appropriate opportunity to work in behalf of its passage. Further, it appears to be an effort on the part of some to provide cover and encourage members to support legislation that is blatantly anti working family. We do not view this amendment as helpful to the effort to achieve final promulgation of an effective ergonomic standard. With or without this amendment, this legislation seriously harms the interests of American workers and we will continue to strongly oppose the passage of H.R. 4577. Sincerely, Peggy Taylor, Director, Department of Legislation.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I do not question the sincerity of any Member of this House, but it is well known that all day the majority party leadership has been looking for a sponsor for this amendment. I doubt that it is because they have experienced a recent Damascus conversion which now suddenly makes them passionate defenders of worker health and safety issues. I think it might be legitimate to ask the question whether or not there are a number of Republican moderates in the House who are worried about having to cast a vote for this bill in the end because it cuts education from the President's request by $3 billion, it cuts the President's request on health care by well over $1 billion, and it cuts support for worker protection and worker training programs by almost $2 billion. So I think it is fair to ask whether some of those moderates would not feel more comfortable if they had a little political cover by being able to vote for an amendment like this. Perhaps it might make it easier for some folks to vote against the interests of workers by voting for this bill on final passage with the deep cuts that it provides in programs that help workers. I also find it interesting that this vote occurs just 2 weeks after the China trade vote. I would ask myself the question whether or not we do not also have some Members who might be interested in trying to climb back into the good graces of labor by having an opportunity to vote on this amendment after they voted for the China trade bill a few weeks ago. I do not know, but I think a reasonable observer might come into the House and ask that question. Having said that, let me say, of course this amendment should pass. OSHA has been trying to develop a rule to protect workers from repetitive motion injury for over 10 years. For 5 of those years they have been blocked by the Congress of the United States. In my view, that has been a sometimes scurrilous action taken by this body. I would note that at my insistence the committee 2 years ago contained the following language in its report: ``The committee will refrain from any further restriction with regard to the development, promulgation, or issuance of an ergonomics standard following fiscal year 1998.'' Despite the committee's declaration in writing, this committee chose to insert the language of the Northup amendment, which abrogated the agreement that the committee had announced to the country and the House. So of course this amendment should pass. But I do not believe American workers are going to be fooled. I do not believe that a vote for this amendment, followed by a vote for this bill, will be seen by American workers as doing them any favors. I think it will be seen for exactly what it is.

Mr. OBEY. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I find it ironic to consider how this bill has been handled today. We started out to deal with this bill this morning to try to provide Federal funding for education and health and job training programs. And then this bill was knocked off the floor for 2 hours while the majority party brought to the floor the rule that will allow them to consider their tax bill tomorrow. Their tax bill tomorrow will effectively eliminate the estate tax. In some cases that may be justified. But the way they brought it to the floor means that there will be some people who strike it rich, make huge amounts of money and are never taxed once on any of that money, while working people are taxed on every dollar they earn in the workplace every day. The eventual revenue lost to the treasury will be about $50 billion a year that will go into the pockets of Mr. Money Bags in this society. That is enough to provide health coverage for every single American who does not have it. But when you raise that possibility, they say, ``Oh, no, socialized medicine.'' And so forget it, we will not try that. ``At least,'' we say, ``what about the poorest wretches on this planet?'' Will you give them something other than a few conscience pennies, the way John D. Rockefeller used to give kids dimes? Will you do something real that improves their lives and protects the working standards and the living standards of American wage earners at the same time? The choice is whether you believe in putting the money here or whether you believe in putting it in places it will help those kids.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, just 2 weeks ago, the Congress passed the China trade legislation. There were a lot of reasons why a lot of Members voted against that bill. One of the reasons is that a lot of us are concerned about the prospect of putting American workers in a position where they are going to be directly undercut by practices such as slave labor and child labor. The administration, the White House, tried to make at least a nominal effort to try to prevent those problems from becoming any worse than they are by raising funding for efforts to combat the incidence of child labor and weak labor standards. This committee chose not to agree with that funding. This amendment simply would restore for the international labor standards portion of the bill the amount of money requested by the administration that was not included in the bill. Let me explain in a little more detail what it does. It would add $730 million to reduce the incidence of child labor. It would add $17 million to enforce core labor standards. And it would add $10 million for responding to the HIV/AIDS crisis in sub-Sahara Africa by supporting workplace education and prevention programs. I would simply point out, Mr. Chairman, that, according to the International Labor Organization, there are 250 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 who are working in developed nations with approximately half of them working full-time but not going to school. The President wants to expand the successful efforts of the ILO and the Department of Labor and USAID to develop education infrastructure and build data and monitoring systems to take kids out of factories and put them in schools. Mr. Chairman, these programs are working. In Bangladesh they have helped 9,000 kids get out of garment sweatshops and into classrooms. In Pakistan they have got 7,000 kids into school learning to read and write instead of sitting in a factory stitching soccer balls. In Guatemala they are getting kids out of quarries where they crush rocks by hand all day instead of sitting in a classroom where they could have a book in their hand instead of a rock. 175 countries have signed the ILO Convention that calls for eliminating the worst forms of child labor. This budget is supposed to fund the technical assistance to help them make that pledge a reality. Now, we will be told we do not need this money because this program had a large increase last year. I would suggest that for years all countries, including ours, have ignored the tools that we could use to improve this situation. And so finally last year, for the first time, we began to provide a pittance for some of these programs. These programs are in the interest of every child in the third world. They are in the interest of every working American who has a right to a level playing field. I think this amendment ought to be adopted. Now, we will be told, ``Oh, you have not provided a corresponding cut in the bill.'' That is because under the rule under which this bill is being considered, the only other programs we could cut are other education or other health or other job training programs. We cannot get into other portions of the Federal budget, as the gentleman knows. And so, again, all we are suggesting is that all of these major 11 amendments that we would like to offer could be financed by scaling back the size of the intended tax cut by 20 percent. I think that would do a whole lot more for children. It would certainly do a whole lot more for our consciences. I believe that the amendment ought to be adopted.

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

Mr. OBEY. So we have evidence right here in this amendment, Mr. Chairman, to verify our fears. We do not even yet have the block grant put into law and already this amendment is trying to cut it by $450 million. Then it cuts Indian education. It even cuts $3 million out of Gallaudet, the school for the blind. And there are some other cuts. So, Mr. Chairman, I would point out that even the people who are the beneficiaries of this amendment are asking that it not be passed. The Council for Exceptional Children, that is the group that lobbies for funding for special education is saying, ``Do we want the money? Yes. But do we want it at the expense of cutting these other educational programs? No, we do not.'' PTA is saying the same thing. Our local school administrators are saying the same thing. I do not blame the gentleman for offering this amendment, because he has a legitimate heartfelt concern. But what this amendment demonstrates is what we have been trying to say all year on this side of the aisle. It demonstrates there is simply not enough funding in this bill for education of all kinds and for health care and for job training. Sooner or later the majority will recognize that. Sooner or later it is going to have to change this equation so that we get a better deal for middle-class taxpayers; and, at the same time, sooner or later we will put back not only the money for special education but the additional money we need for Pell Grants, for Title I, and the list goes on and on. It, unfortunately, is going to take longer than it ought. But, meanwhile, we should not complicate it by passing this amendment. So I regretfully urge its rejection.

Mr. OBEY. Yes, I do, Mr. Chairman. I would simply say that given the fact that the rule under which this bill is being considered guarantees that at all costs that tax breaks for the wealthiest 1 percent of people in this society will come before the needs of everybody else, I reluctantly agree that because of that rule, the gentleman is technically correct, and the amendment, while correct and just, is not in order under the Rules of the House.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words, and I rise in opposition to the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I very much respect the gentleman from New Hampshire, and I respect his concern for special education. I have a special interest in special education which I have to confess. I have a nephew who is a Down syndrome child, and I know many other good friends who have children in need of the same kind of services. But there is a way to do something and a way not to do something. This chart shows, as the gentleman indicated, that just 36 days ago this House promised that it was going to spend $7 billion on special education. This bill contains $5.5 billion for special education. We were trying to offer an amendment to add $1.5 billion to special education, not by cutting all of the programs that the gentleman from Illinois has just listed but by changing this equation. We wanted the majority party to take 20 percent of the tax cuts which they are voting through this place this year, eliminate 20 percent of those tax cuts so that we could fully fund not only education for the handicapped but so that we could fully fund other education and health and worker training programs. We could have funded all of those amendments by simply scaling back the size of the tax cut by 20 percent. And before anybody has a heart attack, 73 percent of the benefits from those tax cuts are scheduled to go to the richest 1 percent of people in the country. The other 99 out of 100 are only scheduled to get 27 percent. Now, that is a better way to finance this amendment than the way that the gentleman is proposing. A couple of hours ago, when the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Tiahrt) was on the floor, he presented the House with a chart and he was bragging about how much the majority party has increased funding for the Job Corps. And I stood up and I said, hooray, Allah be praised, hallelujah, everything else I could think of, welcome to the club, because I remember fighting on this floor in 1981 when Ronald Reagan was trying to zero out the Job Corps. So I welcomed the gentleman and I welcomed the conversion of the majority party to support for Job Corps. This amendment, 3 hours later, would cut Job Corps by $42 million. Job Corps has only a 50 percent success rate, but we are starting out in Job Corps with kids who have been losers 100 percent of the time. So a 50 percent rate of saving kids who otherwise are on a short route to nowhere is a whole lot better batting average than Babe Ruth ever had. But this would cut Job Corps. It would cut nurses training. It would cut community health funding. That is where poor people go to get their health care because they often cannot go to a normal middle-class hospital and get that health care without begging. It would cut that back. It would cut back the abstinence aid that the gentleman from Oklahoma is so interested in. It would cut back public health funding in the Center for Disease Control. It would cut back funding to fight drug abuse. It would cut back Impact Aid. It would make a $450 million cut in the class size block grant. The majority has asked us on this side of the aisle why we do not block grant this money instead of requiring that money be spent to reduce class sizes? And we have said because we have seen what happens when we block grant money. First, we block grant it, and then after it is put in one block, then it is cut; and you can escape the political attention that comes from having to cut the programs individually because they are all in one lump.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I would like to say, look what this Congress did just a few weeks ago in taking the lid off of Social Security income because employers all over the country were telling us there are not enough skilled workers. Look at what we are doing with additional visas to bring these foreign workers into this country because employers are telling us they cannot find enough skilled workers. All you have to do to understand why this amendment is necessary is open your eyes, open your ears, and read your mail.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, would the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words, and I rise in support of the amendment of the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Jackson). It is absolutely true that we have the lowest unemployment rate in generations. It is absolutely true that we have more jobs than ever in this economy, but you have heard the joke where a fellow is watching the politician on the television screen talking about all of the new jobs created, and he turns to his wife and says a lot of jobs are created, and I have got three of them. There are lots of people who are working at low-paid jobs. Just a couple of months ago I ran into a single mother in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. Her husband had walked out on her, working like crazy at three different jobs trying to keep her head above water and support a child. With all of the golden glow that we have on our economy, there is not yet enough to reach that woman, and hundreds of thousands just like her all over the country. Chairman Greenspan of the Federal Reserve said this ``the rapidity of innovation and the unpredictability of the directions it may take imply a need for a considerable investment in human capital. Workers in many occupations are being asked to strengthen their cognitive skills, basic credentials by themselves are simply not enough to ensure success in the workplace. Workers must be equipped not simply with technical know- how but also with the ability to create, analyze and transform information and to interact effectively with others. Moreover, that learning will increasingly be a lifelong activity. And it is not enough to create a job market that has enabled those with few skills to finally be able to grasp the first rung of the ladder of achievement. ``More generally, we must ensure that our whole population receives an education that will allow full and continuing participation in this dynamic period of the American economy.'' That was said by one of those well-known fiscally irresponsible left- wing radical's, Alan Greenspan. If you take a look at what this amendment is trying to do, I defy you to tell me it is not needed. This bill eliminates all funding for one stop career centers, America's labor market information system that the administration is trying to promote. It cuts assistance to $215,000 dislocated workers. It eliminates assistance from 220,000 unemployment insurance claimants. It cuts adult job training for 37,000 adults. It eliminates the President's proposal to assist 80,000 noncustodial parents and low-income parents. It cuts employment assistance to 3,100 homeless veterans, on and on and on and on. You can use any justification you want to explain the fact that this Congress apparently thinks more of providing tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent of people in this country than it does in providing a help up the job ladder for the poorest folks in our society or the least lucky in our society. But those are not our set of values on this side of the aisle, and I think the amendment offered by the gentleman demonstrates clearly what a preferable set of values would be. It just seems to me that if we can afford tomorrow to say to someone who is unfortunate enough to inherit $5 million, if we can afford to bleed all over the floor for that person, say, oh, you have such a burden, we are going to eliminate your taxes, then it seems to me we ought to be able to provide a few more nickels for people who need to upgrade their job skills. This bill is clearly not adequate on that score, and I recognize that we are in a Wizard of Oz situation here, an Alice in Wonderland situation, because we may be able to offer an occasional amendment but we will not be able to get a vote on it because the rules preclude us from getting a vote. This is the only way we have to try to identify what we think are the inadequacies of this bill. And it is the simple question, do you think the economy is going to be helped more by adequately equipping every single American worker or by giving those who already have so much some more? I think the answer to that ought to be obvious.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I just want to use this time to respond to a couple of claims made by our friends on the other side. One of the speakers said they have had a big increase in the National Institutes of Health budget. What they are trying to do is have it both ways. This bill pretends that it is appropriating $2.7 billion in additional money for the National Institutes of Health, but it has language tucked into the bill which says that only $1 billion of that can be spent. I do not regard that as real money. The gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Istook) indicated that this bill is $12 billion above last year. That is because they are pretending that last year's bill cost $85 billion, when in fact it cost $96 billion. They hid billions of dollars in spending last year. In fact, when we take a look at all appropriation bills last year, they hid more than $45 billion, so they are pretending that we are above a let's-pretend level of last year, which is $45 billion higher than they are continuing to admit. On Pell grants, they brag about what they are doing for Pell grants. What a double game their party has played on that issue. Last year they passed an authorizing bill telling the country they were going to raise Pell grants by $400 for the maximum grant. They then proceeded to cut that back to $175 in the appropriation bill they passed just 2 months later. Their presidential candidate came to my State. I want to read from this quote. The headline says, ``Bush averse to more college grant funding.'' Here is what it says from the Eau Claire Leader Telegram: Texas Governor George W. Bush gave strong indications Thursday he is not inclined to increase Federal spending to give more grants for students to go to college. Bush, who attended both Yale and Harvard, conceded that some people have complained that those loans carry a repayment burden. ``Too bad,'' he said. ``That is what a loan is.'' Then he went on to say, ``There is a lot of money available to students and families who are willing to go out and look for it. Some of you are just going to have to pay it back. That is just the way it is.'' That attitude just does not reveal what he thinks about student aid. It shows that we have Richie Rich not understanding how the other half lives and not bothering to find out. I would suggest that we can do a little better than this bill is doing on Pell grants. Then we are told what a wonderful deal this bill is on special education for disabled children. I want to point out, this bar graph shows that just 36 days ago this House passed legislation, the IDEA Full Funding Act, which said we were going to put $7 billion into that program. What are they putting in? $5.5 billion. I do not regard that as full funding, and I do not regard that as fulfilling their promise. I guess the only points we are making is that when we get down to the bottom line, there are three basic differences between them and us. They think we ought to spend $3 billion less on education than we do, they think we ought to spend $1.7 billion less on worker protection and $1 billion less on health care. We respectfully disagree. That is why we are going to vote no.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer). (Mr. ROEMER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, over the last 2 weeks, we have seen a systematic attack by this House on public investments that make this economy the flourishing growing economy that it is today. Just yesterday in the committee, we put together a bill which cut deeply into the President's request for National Science Foundation funding. That is the basic scientific research that underlies all the advances we eventually make in health care through the National Institutes of Health, in developing new technologies, such as the Internet, which was developed through an investment by the Defense Department and the National Science Foundation. This bill itself says that it wants to have a 15 percent increase in the National Institutes of Health, but then it has a language provision in the bill which prevents that money from actually being spent. This bill ignores the fact that we have growing school populations and growing senior populations who need added services, not less. This bill denies us the opportunity to support the President's program to strengthen teacher training. The gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) for years has said do not just put money into class size, put money into quality teachers. The gentleman is right, and that is why we have tried to do both in the amendments that we wanted to offer but are being denied the opportunity to get a vote on in the rule today. So I would suggest there are all kinds of reasons why, if you care about the future economic strength of this country, if you care about equal educational opportunity, if you think people ought to get health care without begging for it, there are all kinds of reasons to vote against this bill. This bill makes all of these reductions in order to finance your huge tax cuts for the wealthiest people in this country; 73 percent of the benefits go to the wealthiest 1 percent. That is a high price to pay to give those folks a bonus.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, we have heard a lot of talk here today from people who understand the cost of everything and the value of nothing. When someone says that we do not have cuts in this bill for education and health care and job training, what they ignore is what happens to real people. This budget is not the last budget for the Clinton administration. This budget is the first budget for the next decade. We do not have a society or a country frozen in time. We have a growing population. They have growing needs. We are going to have over a million additional students in college needing Pell grants, needing Work Study. We are going to have about a million and a half additional students in high school, needing title I and all the rest. We are going to have more people needing medical services, because our population is growing larger and it is aging. We are going to have about 25 million more people in the coming decade. It would be kind of nice if the people's bill, which this bill is, responds to those growing needs. But it does not. That is why it cuts the President's educational request by $3 billion. It cuts worker training and other worker protection programs by $1.7 billion. It cuts health care by $1 billion from the President's request. Why does it do that? Because we are moving into a new era. We have been in an era of huge deficits. We are now moving into an era of large surpluses. We have some choices. The choices are whether you use those surpluses to cut taxes or to buy down debt or to invest in national security, education, health care, science and the like or whether you do a reasonable combination of all of them. What we are doing in this bill today is making these cuts because the Republican majority in this House has decided that rather than provide a prescription drug benefit under Medicare, rather than invest larger amounts in teacher quality, rather than investing larger amounts in smaller class size, rather than strengthening job training, they want to provide $90 billion in tax relief to people who make over $300,000 a year. That is why these cuts are being made. I think that is wrong. I have no objection to legitimate tax cuts aimed at farmers who are on the edge or aimed at trying to help small businessmen provide health care for their employees. But when those tax cuts are so large that they prevent us from eliminating the debt and prevent us from making needed additional investments in child care, in health care, in after- school centers and in enforcement of international child labor standards, then this bill is misguided and misbegotten. This rule denies us the opportunity to offer 11 amendments to add funding to restore teacher quality, school facility repair, early childhood education, child care, after-school initiatives, better nursing home care and all the items that I just mentioned. It tries to hide it, but when you adopt this rule, you are also voting to cut by over $800 million the child care block grant. You can deny it, but that is the fact. All of the amendments we want to be made in order could be financed by simply having the Republican majority in this House cut back their planned tax cuts by 20 percent and you would have enough to do all of the things we think that are necessary to move this society into the 21st century and to respond to the growing population and the growing need that accompanies that growing population. This vote more than any other vote defines the differences between the two parties. It tells us what your values are. It tells us whose side you are really on. In our view, the majority party ought to scale back its tax promises so that we can meet the education and health care and job training responsibilities of this society. We did not get to have the greatest economy in the world by nickel- nursing on these needed training programs. Mr. Speaker, we are going to have 35 million more people knocking on the doors of national parks over the next 10 years, we are going to have 40 percent more commercial airline flights, we are going to have millions of more kids in school. We need to respond to that. If we do not provide these increases, then on a per-person basis and on a per- family basis, we are cutting back the amount of help we are giving to working families trying to share in the American dream. This is the bill more than any other in the Congress that attempts to do that. It is a sad commentary on the priorities of this place that we are denied the opportunity to even offer the amendments, to even offer the amendments. They provided protection in the rule for all kinds of unauthorized programs that are in the bill itself, but they will not provide that same protection under the rule for the amendments we seek to offer. It is an unbalanced rule; it is an unfair bill. It should be defeated.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. If the gentleman will yield, that will be tomorrow.

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