Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. 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.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Jackson). (Mr. JACKSON of Illinois asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 9 minutes. Mr. Chairman, before I begin, I would like to make a few comments on the stewardship of the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Porter). As he has indicated, he has served this House and his district and this country ably and with great distinction and great honor in all of the years that I have known him. He is truly a quality person, he is truly a quality legislator, he is infinitely fair, and I think he has more integrity than 90 percent of the Members I have ever served with. I would say that in a legislative body I understand that political conflict and intellectual conflict can be pretty intense. When we engage in that conflict, we take a good measure of both our allies and our adversaries. I am proud of the relationship that I have had with a variety of subcommittee chairs, full committee chairs, and ranking minority members in the years I have been in this place. I treasure the relationship that I had with Mickey Edwards when he ran the Republican side on the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Export Financing and Related Programs; and I chaired it. I treasure the relationship I had with Bob Livingston, both when he served as chairman of the committee and as my ranking member on foreign operations. I cherish the relationship I have with the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), the chairman of the committee, and I especially cherish the relationship that I have with the gentleman from Illinois. He is one of those persons of unquestioned integrity who always, in my view, does what he believes is the right thing for the country; and I do not think there is any higher compliment that can be paid any Member. We are all going to miss him, and I think the majority party has been well served, as has the country, by his stewardship. What I say about this bill has nothing whatsoever to do with my respect and affection for the gentleman from Illinois. What I say about this bill is required because of my love of this country and my passion for what I believe this country ought to do to expand opportunities for all people in this society, not just the fortunate. This chart shows what is at the guts of the problem with this bill today because the majority party, in its budget resolution, has determined that it is going to, in piecemeal fashion, push through this House tax bill after tax bill which, when they are all added up together, will wind up, over a 10-year period, costing us over $700 billion in lost revenue. Seventy-three percent of the tax cuts will go to that 1 percent that represents the wealthiest 1 percent of people in this society. Seventy-three percent will go to that one person. Twenty- seven percent will be to the other 99 percent. That is not my idea of a square deal. They will bring to the floor tomorrow a bill which, when fully operative, will provide tax cuts of $50 billion a year; and that will occur by relieving the estate tax on the wealthiest 2 percent of people in this society who are left to pay that tax. For that $50 billion going to the fat cats in this country, we could provide health care for every single uninsured American. So that is one option. Do you want to put the $50 billion in Mr. Moneybag's pocket, or do you want to put it in the pocket of every American unserved by health care? That is one choice. Another choice you could make is to respond to the fact that our high school enrollment is going to be going up between this year and the end of the decade. Between this year and the end of the decade, we are going to be adding about a million and a half more students in high school. We are not doing enough to respond to that challenge. Another thing we could do is to recognize that our higher education enrollment will be going up by almost 1.5 million people over the same 10 years. And we are not doing enough to deal with that. Pell Grants. Pell Grants used to make up almost two-thirds of the cost of going to college in a public 4-year institution. Today they make up about a third. We could be doing something about that. But, instead, the money is going to be committed for these very large tax cuts. Now, I have no problem with tax cuts targeted to small farmers who need them, small businessmen who need them, middle-class taxpayers. But this bill, in the end, cuts 36 education programs below the President's request. It cuts 24 programs to protect workers and train workers below the President's request. It cuts 18 health programs below the President's request. Now, they will say, oh, these are not cuts, they are increases from the base. The fact is, this bill is frozen in time because it does not respond to the growing costs, growing pressures in our society, even though we have moved from an era of large deficits to large surpluses. And so it is simply a question of where you think we ought to put our resources, and it is an honest difference of opinion. The folks on this side of the aisle put as their first priority providing over $700 billion in tax cuts. We have put as our first priority investing that money in Social Security and Medicare and education, in health care, in job training, in basic science to keep this economy going and to build opportunity. As great as this country is, it can be better. But to be better, we have to continue to make the right kind of public investments that have gotten us this glorious economic recovery. We are not going to do it under this bill. We are not going to do it under the science bill that came out of committee yesterday. We not going to do it out of the agriculture bill. At least not now. We will do it eventually. We will do it in September, because in September we will get to the get-real time part of this session, and that is when the majority will finally face up to the fact that this bill and most of the others are not going to be signed by the President of the United States unless additional resources are put in it. And if you say, ``Oh, they are not offset, you are just trying to spend money,'' every single one of the amendments that we want the committee to adopt can be paid for if the majority simply cuts back on the size of its tax package by about 20 percent. That is all it would take. It would still leave you room for significant tax cuts, and we will have one on the floor tomorrow that will demonstrate that, but it will not provide tax cuts that are so large that you get in the way of either deficit reduction or making the needed investments we need to make on our people. So that is what is at stake on this bill. I would urge Members at the end of the day to vote no because it simply does not measure up to what America is all about.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I would simply like to welcome the gentleman aboard. I know it has been a long road on the road to Damascus, but I have been here long enough to remember when the majority party was singing hosannas because Ronald Reagan was trying to zero out the Job Corps and David Stockman said that it did not work, despite the fact that three studies from his own shop showed that it did. I also recall that just 3 short years ago the majority party tried to cut $100 million out of the President's request for Job Corps. So I welcome the conversion. I wish it had come sooner, but Allah be praised; hosanna; thank God; alleluia; welcome aboard.

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I would simply say in response that yes, we can offer the amendments, we just cannot get votes on them. That does not help a whole lot. Secondly, they are offset. We suggest that we pay for them by cutting back tax plans by 20 percent. If we cut the outlays on the tax plans by $2.4 billion, we can pay for every single one of the amendments we would like to have votes on.

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. The statement was ``the gentlemen who support.''

Mr. OBEY. I am not.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I would not have done this but for the words uttered by the gentleman from California. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from California who just spoke attacked those who were supporting this amendment as being ``leftists and socialists and the like.'' I would like to ask him whether he believes that the Pentagon's director of Operational Test and Evaluation, whether he is a leftist or a socialist. I would like to ask him whether he believes the committee's own staff on surveys and investigation are a collection of leftists and socialists. I would ask him if he believes the General Accounting Office is a collection of leftists and socialists. I would simply point out the gentleman himself, in the subcommittee last year, when we marked up this bill, supported the proposal to slow down the production of this aircraft until some of these questions could be offered and said that what was happening on that day was ``a good thing,'' and I am quoting him directly. I have a great deal of respect for the service the gentleman has provided this country, in the military and in this institution; but that does not give him a right to question the views or motives of those who disagree with him by calling them leftists or socialists. Every person here on this floor is a good American and we believe we are doing our duty when we have the ``temerity'' to raise at least a question or two before we spend almost $290 billion of the taxpayers' money. The question is not whether we want this country defended or not; the question is whether we want this country defended in the most effective manner. And if we cannot have an honest discussion of that question without calling into question people's patriotism or motives, then that says a whole lot more about the gentleman who made those charges than it says about us.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I offer a preferential motion.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words, and I rise to support the amendment. Mr. Chairman, the cost of this development program has doubled since 1985 to $24 billion. Only 15 percent of the testing program has been accomplished since the engineering manufacturing development program began in 1991. The conference agreement last year on the F-22 prohibits a production decision until the so-called Block III software is flight tested in an actual F-22 aircraft. That testing is not even scheduled to occur until the fall of next year at the earliest. It should be noted that the Air Force has to conduct only a system flight test to meet the congressional requirements and to allow the program to enter initial production.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Chairman, everyone in this House knows that the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis) and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha) are pros. They understand this defense budget, they know their stuff, and they know it in detail. They are truly legislative craftsmen. However, I want to get some things off my chest, nonetheless, about this bill and the context in which it is being presented. The President presented to the Congress a defense bill which had a hefty $16 billion, 6 percent increase. It contained the President's recommendation for a military pay raise, it made sure that we hit the $60 billion target for procurement, and it was presented to the Congress in the context of other administration initiatives to also make needed investments in education, in health care, in science, and in environmental cleanup across the board. This bill comes to us in a quite different context. This bill raises the President's request for the military budget by $4 billion, and it does so at the same time that it requires that we cut over the next 5 years $125 billion out of domestic programs for education, health care, and the like. It also does so in the context of the majority party insistence that we pass, in piecemeal fashion, tax cuts largely aimed at the wealthiest people in our society, which will total over $700 billion over that same time period. We cannot do all of those things and meet the obligations we have to this society. We are not going to be able to eliminate the debt that everyone promises we are going to eliminate if the majority party insists on tax cuts of those magnitude, especially aimed where they aim them. If they do insist on those tax cuts, then something else has to give, in my opinion. I want to simply point out one thing about this bill. This chart demonstrates what we spend versus what everybody else in the world spends on defense. We are now spending $266 billion, represented by that blue bar. NATO is spending $227 billion. The last time I looked, they were on our side. If we take a look at what ``they'' spend, our potential main opponents, Russia is spending $54 billion; China, $37 billion; Iran, $6 billion; North Korea, $2 billion; Libya, $1 billion. That is not the picture of a country in trouble in terms of defense preparedness. Despite these gross differences, I would be willing to support this bill if it were presented in a balanced context, if it were not presented at the same time that the majority party is asking us to provide billions of dollars in excessive tax cuts, and in the context of what is happening on the other side of the budget, where we are forcing a huge squeeze on education, on health care, on job training and the rest. In that context, I do not believe this bill makes sufficiently tough choices in a number of areas, most especially with respect to the aircraft choices being made by the Pentagon. I have in the committee report listed my concerns, most especially my concerns about the F-22. We have been given three separate caution flags by agencies that we ought to pay attention to: the Pentagon's director of Operational Testing and Evaluations, the committee's own Surveys and Investigation staff, and the General Accounting Office, which said we should be producing no more than six of those aircraft, instead of the expanded number in the bill. I think that is just one example of the choices which this Congress is not making that it should be making if it is going to impose much deeper reductions and a much tighter squeeze on the rest of the budget. So if Members want my vote for a bill like this, they have to bring it to the floor in the context of a better balance between what we are doing to deal with our education problems, our health care problems, our national security problems, and most especially what we are doing on the tax side of the aisle. We could afford the tax cuts we are talking about if we were not trying to fund increases like this, maybe. But we certainly cannot afford them both. It is about time this Congress makes some of the tough choices in this bill that it is making in other bills, or else recognize that there is no room in the budget for the excess of tax cuts that we are bringing to the floor piece by piece.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, what does that have to do with the F-22? Nothing.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I wondered how long it would take the gentleman from California before he gets to his usual accusation that those who disagree with him are socialists or worse. I would simply say that the assertion that amendments like this have somehow killed people is absurd. This House has not adopted an amendment to cut back any major defense program in 20 years.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield to me since he mentioned my name?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I welcome the gentleman's conversion to support B-2 bombers. It is the first time I have ever known he has been for that program.

Mr. OBEY. I am sorry, the fall of this year. The gentleman from Washington is correct. Let me simply say, Mr. Chairman, that, as I said in my earlier remarks, one has to understand this amendment in the context of the way the bill is being presented, not just the broad budget context, but what we are doing with respect to other tactical aircraft. We are expected to move forward on the Joint Strike program at a cost of possibly up to $200 billion. In addition to that, we have the F-18 and we have got the F-22. As I said earlier in my remarks, there have been three cautionary flags raised that the Congress ought to pay attention to with respect to this program. First of all, the Pentagon's Director of Operational Testing Evaluation testified before Congress that, and I quote, ``basically not enough of the test program has been completed to know whether or not significant development problems remain to be corrected.'' Secondly, our committee's own surveys and investigation staff reported to the committee in March that the decision to enter into the F-22 production in December is ``premature in light of fatigue and avionics testing, which is yet to be accomplished.'' It recommended no production funds until the year 2002. The General Accounting Office recently told the defense authorization and Committee on Appropriations, ``we believe low rate initial production should begin at no more than six aircraft and that aircraft quantity should not exceed six to eight aircraft per year until developmental and operational testing and evaluation are complete.'' It recommended reducing the fiscal 2001 budget by $828 million, a reduction of four aircraft. It is pretty clear to me that three independent organizations have indicated there are major problems with this aircraft, and two of them have explicitly recommended that the F- 22 production not be funded at the level being proposed in the budget. I recognize this amendment is not going to pass and I congratulate the subcommittee for trying to take this issue on last year. I guess I do not blame them for backing off after they had gotten bloodied and had their heads knocked against the stone wall. But the fact is the decision last year to question this production was the correct decision. I wish the Congress would stick to it. I wish the House would stick to it. If we did, in the long-term, we would be doing a favor, both to the defense establishment to this country charged with the responsibility to defend the country and to the taxpayers who are, after all, going to pay for it all.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, is that the team where the best player is still the guy on the bench doing the coaching?

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, The Washington political establishment is looking down its collective elitist nose at those of us who are saying no to legislation that would provide permanent Most-Favored-Nation trading status for China. In their newspaper columns and at their cocktail parties they tut-tut that those of us raising a challenge to that legislation are simply trying to stop economic progress that comes from globalized trade and are, therefore, hopelessly old fashioned. The fact is just the opposite. Those who say that we must accept the reality of globalized trade and support permanent favored nation status for the Chinese without a major transformation of trading rules are in fact the ones stuck in the past. They are defending a set of absolutist trading arrangements and a set of useful but creaky international institutions that were established at the end of World War II. They give only token recognition to the changes that are needed in these essential but antiquated institutions. At the end of World War II, visionary world leaders saw Europe in ruins because of Hitler's mad rampage through the middle of the 20th Century. They correctly understood three things: (1) That Hitler's rise to power in the first place was driven by the fear and chaos that accompanied the collapse of first Europe's and then America's banking system--a collapse that fed the downward spiral of national economies on both sides of the Atlantic and produced catastrophic levels of unemployment and panic. (2) That Europe must once again be made safe for democracy by rebuilding its political institutions. (3) That America's long-term economic and political health depended upon rebuilding Europe's economy in order to rebuild world commerce and create markets for our own goods. To accomplish all of that, the Wise Men, as they were called, organized the Bretton Woods conference which established a new set of institutions--the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank--in order to help rebuild a new global economy and a new trading order. The mission of the Fund was to insure stability in monetary exchange. The mission of the Bank was to assist nations in the task of economic development and reconstruction. Those institutions helped to produce phenomenally successful results. The world escaped the kind of global recession in the years immediately following World War II that had historically followed other great conflicts. In the decade that immediately followed Bretton Woods, most of the war-torn European economies bounced back above their pre-war levels. In subsequent decades, the world's economy more than tripled in size and continued an expansion--with temporary interruptions to be sure--that has now lasted for more than 50 years. That happened despite the fact that nearly half of the world's population continued to struggle under the yoke of communism for most of that period. In fact, the powerful contrast between the prosperity of open market economies in the West and the desperate situation faced by those condemned to live under centrally-planned economies ultimately contributed greatly to the demise of the Soviet Empire. That success was accompanied and abetted by expanded trade which also contributed to prosperity of both America and our trading partners. The result was that at least through the mid-70's a rising tide lifted all boats. Almost all families, whether they were headed by a corporate CEO or a janitor at the company run by that CEO, shared in that expanding prosperity. But in the last two decades, changing realities have also changed results. First, the nature of trade itself has changed in three fundamental ways: (1) Fifty years ago, as my colleague Barney Frank has pointed out, when the post-war rules of the trading game were first established, products produced almost entirely in one nation were exchanged with other products largely produced in a different nation. Today, multinational companies produce polyglot products--goods and services produced in a number of countries and those goods and services are exchanged in large part for other goods and services of the same nature. (2) As trade between highly developed, high wage countries and underdeveloped low wage countries has become a larger and larger share of the mix, negative side effects have appeared in high wage countries like ours. A downward pressure on wages because of that expanded trade between very unlike economies has reinforced other economic trends and policy actions, producing an ever-widening income gap between the investing class and the working class. A rising tide no longer lifts all boats. In fact, the ability of those with large amounts of capital to pay any price necessary for what they wanted has, in the global economy and local neighborhood alike, driven some costs far above what can be afforded by those whose boats are anchored to low wages. That has happened with the price of housing. It has happened with the price of education--especially at private institutions. It has happened with the price of medical care. (3) Downward pressure on wages in economies like our own have been accompanied by greater incentives to minimize environmental costs that go into any product because we are told those products are in competition with products produced in countries with much less concern for either well-paid workers or well-protected environments. That has made it more difficult to protect gains that industrial countries have made in raising worker living standards or cleaning up the environments in which they live. And now we find in this new era that institutions which were established 50 years ago to promote world recovery and world trade-- institutions which at the time undoubtedly produced winners across the board--now often use their influence to push underdeveloped countries to follow practices that attract and retain investment at the expense of those other economic and social values. There's no question that in macro economic terms totally open trade can produce more goods at lower costs worldwide. And normally that would be a blessing. But when that becomes the only goal or at times the only result, it carriers a high price for those who do not possess large amounts of capital because their wages cease to rise. And the communities they live in come under pressure to allow corporations to do less and less to clean up pollution, all in the name of remaining globally competitive in a world where there are almost no restraints on the movement or the power of capital and ever increasing restraints on the power of everything and everyone else--governments, consumers, and labor. Capitalist economies cannot by definition produce equal income for all people. Each society needs risk takers who can amass wealth so that accumulated wealth can be invested to produce economic growth for the entire society. That is bound to produce income inequality. But as Pope John Paul once observed, there are certain ``norms of decency'' that must be respected in order to produce economic justice and the social cohesioin that is necessary for any economic system to function. The last two decades have produced just the opposite--the widest gap between the wealthiest 1% of our people and the least wealthy 20% of any time since the birth of the 20th Century. Since new globalized trading realities have helped produce that problem, they must also be part of the effort to fix it. In our society the gap in income--in education, in housing, and in medical care--has grown disgracefully worse. Those who in this economy suffer most from that fact--largely manufacturing workers in industries with declining employment or workers with less than average skills-- cannot be expected to roll over and say, in the words that Walter Cronkite used to sign off his CBS news broadcast, ``That's the way it is.'' As my colleague Barney Frank has noted, Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, has said that we must not allow our ``inability'' to help workers who are being injured to reduce our support for open trade. But, in fact, as Barney says, ``the problem we face is not inability, but unwillingness to do so.'' The issue here is not really China. China just happened to be the country that triggered this debate. The issue is whether America's policymakers who have helped magnify the income gains of the most well off in our society by squeezing the economic positions of the most at risk families will recognize their moral obligation to change course. The issue is whether those in this society--the investing class, the managing elite, the venture capitalists, the multinational corporations who have so much to gain by further globalization will be willing to see a tiny fraction of that increased wealth used to help those who will otherwise be caught in the prop wash of their incredible prosperity. When a doctor administers cancer fighting drugs, he knows that he must also deal with the side effects of those drugs or his patient will not be able to tolerate the drug and will die. Isn't that just as true of the negative side effects of globalization on the lower paid, underskilled workers caught in the wake of economic change? If we are to embrace the change that globalized 21st Century trading produces, we must reshape the institutions that will regulate and govern that commerce. We need a redefinition of the role of the IMF, the World Bank, and other international financial institutions, and never institutions such as the World Trade Organization, so that the interest of labor and the environment are represented at the table when trading decisions are made--not just the interests of capital and governing elites. We need a second Bretton Woods conference to both modernize and humanize trading relationships or we will lose in the 21st Century the gains we have made in the 20th in establishing a balance of decency between the needs of the corporate-based market economy and the needs of a family-based society! That means a new set of trading rules, a new set of power relationships, a wider representation of interests at the table. And it means a new commitment on the part of this Congress and this society to much greater educational opportunity and training opportunities for workers and children in working class families. It means a willingness to do more with the tax code to provide as much reward for the work of the lower income working class as we provide for the highest income venture capitalists. It means rebuilding a health care safety net for the families of workers whose corporate employers are being squeezed by the pressures of globalization to shrink that safety net. And it means all of those things before and not after we give away our leverage to obtain them. Demonstrators in Seattle and Washington may have aimed their protests at some of the wrong targets, but that should not obscure the injustice which produced those demonstrations. As Barney Frank has said, ``the choice is not between isolation and integration, but between a global new deal and a global extension of the trickle down theory.'' Those who want us to approve their rules without first changing the rules of the trading game that contribute to this injustice are the true troglodytes and dinosaurs. It shouldn't be too hard to find common ground, but first you really have to want to. When those who want us to get on with the game are willing to change the rules to minimize the brutality of the game for those in our society who are not economic superstars, then they will find a lot more of us willing to play it.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I would inform the gentleman that I was merely making an innocent inquiry about the fate of the Chicago Cubs, that is all.

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