Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, let me say what my friend, Archie the Cockroach would observe: It is important to have a sense of proportion. What sense is there for a flea to fall in love with an elephant?

Mr. OBEY. All right. It is a flea.

Mr. OBEY. You bet. It is an outrageous breaking of the bank. But you are going after a gnat instead of an elephant.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would continue to yield, am I going to vote for it? I have been speaking for 2 days in opposition to it. Where have you been?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, no, that is not correct. I said that I supported the core bill yesterday which had the additional money for reimbursement for Pentagon costs to fix the health care problems at the Pentagon and those other items, but I did not support the $4 billion add-on because it was not an emergency and that portion was simply making room for additional congressional pork.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the other gentleman from Florida (Mr. Stearns) what planet he was on yesterday. The amendment yesterday was to add that $4 billion in waste. And who led the opposition to it? I did. Were you here or some place else yesterday? Secondly, when I was chairman, the only year I was chairman, we finished every single appropriation bill on time; and we spent less money than the President. This bill going through here, which I am going to vote against, spends $17 billion more than the President asked for; and you are probably going to vote for it.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman for yielding time to me. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is really amazing, if not amusing. We have a huge circus elephant rampaging through this room, and the gentleman has an amendment that is going to go after a fly. If we take a look at this amendment, this bill spends almost $13 billion, and what does he go after? He goes after a $140 million tiny piece of the package. He endangers three nuclear weapons productions plants at Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Kansas City, Missouri; and Amarillo, Texas. They are critical to the improvement of our nuclear stockpile, and he endangers safety operations at those operations. He is going to say to a thousand families, after every politician in this House has been posing for political holy pictures about how they are opposed to the higher energy prices, while I know that in his district in Florida they do not need a lot of help to pay for home heating oil, but it gets pretty doggone cold in the Northeast and the Upper Midwest, this is going to deny thousands of low-income American families help on that score. It will take away the ability to get FHA loans from 20,000 low- and moderate-income couples in this country. I do not think that is a gift to taxpayers, although Members who make what we make do not have to worry about those little folks, I suppose. Is that the way the gentleman feels? Then we just made a big production out of adding a lot of money for fire protection. What does the gentleman do? He knocks out money for fire safety right in the Capitol Hill complex, after we have been chastised for the neglect of the buildings up here. And then lastly, after we have heard so much on that side of the aisle about the need to have family planning programs that emphasize abstinence, what does the gentleman do? He cuts that program by 10 percent. The gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Istook) has moved heaven and earth to get that program funding up, and now he is knocking that baby down. And what does he leave untouched? Yesterday, this House added $4 billion, not million, billion dollars in Defense Department programs to this year's appropriation bill. None of those items were emergencies. The sole, crass purpose of that amendment was to move $4 billion in defense expenditures into this year's budget, so you freed up room for $4 billion in congressional pork in the next year's Defense budget. Now we see this House with this ``let's pretend'' amendment supposedly protecting the taxpayers' interest. Do not make me laugh.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, let me simply take 30 seconds to say I think that the observations of the gentleman from New York (Chairman Walsh) should be recognized, and that language has to be fixed in conference if a lot of people who would like to support this are going to be able to support it. We cannot divert these funds away from the poorest and the neediest low-income people who are supposed to be the primary beneficiaries of it.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. OBEY. Has all time on that side expired?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, it is my understanding that I have the right to close?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment, and I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, what is going on is that some of the folks in this institution, including some who wanted to abolish the Department of Education just a few years ago, are now trying to selectively ask for additional audits of agencies and they have zeroed in on the Department of Education. Yet under this rule I am denied the opportunity to offer a substitute amendment which would ask for the same audit of the Department of Defense which is being asked of the Department of Education. I would point out that yesterday the Inspector General of the Department of Education testified that the Department of Education's financial management has improved this year compared to last year and stands in stark contrast to the Department of Defense. If we take a look at the Department of Defense, the GAO said the following: Despite recent steps to improve financial management, DOD continues to face serious weaknesses. These weaknesses undermine DOD's ability to manage an estimated $280 billion and $1 trillion in assets. No major part of DOD is able to pass the test of an independent financial statement audit. If my colleagues do not believe what the GAO says, the DOD Deputy Inspector General said that, ``The DOD financial statements for fiscal 1998 were less timely than ever, and a record $1.7 trillion,'' trillion dollars, ``of unsupported adjustments were identified by auditors.'' We waste more money at the Defense Department each year than the entire budget for the Department of Education, and yet we are not being allowed to ask for an additional audit of the largest agency in the government. I think that that indicates that there is clearly an imbalance in people's concern about the waste of taxpayers' money. I am perfectly willing to support audits across the board at agencies that require it. I am not interested in participating in an ideological attack on one agency, which some people in this House have targeted for extinction since the day they got here. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object, I simply did not hear it. I understand the request is 5 and 5. Who will be controlling the time?

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, may I ask the gentleman from Colorado, through the Chair, if the gentleman would be willing to modify his amendment to include also an audit for the Department of Defense?

Mr. OBEY. I thank the Chair, and I would at the proper time ask to control the time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, may I ask the Chair when would that modification be in order; at any time during the consideration of the amendment or would that modification have to occur at this moment?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I think there is some confusion about what is before us. This next amendment has nothing whatsoever to do with the fire issue that we have just disposed of. My understanding is that the Schaffer amendment goes to the question of conducting an audit of the Department of Education. Would it be in order to modify that amendment to also include an audit for the Department of Defense?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I simply want to take a very brief time to note that I forgot to mention one thing on the Gilman amendment. I have a letter from the Taxpayers for Common Sense which reads, ``Taxpayers for Common Sense urges you to oppose passage of H.R. 3908, the 2000 Emergency Supplemental Appropriation bill, and to vote against the amendment to add $4 billion in undefined military spending to go the bill. What began as a modest appropriations bill to cover expenses for ongoing military deployments has turned into an enormous Christmas tree decorated with billions of extra dollars of pork placed there by special interests. The real emergency is the utter breakdown of the congressional budget and appropriations process.'' I do not necessarily agree with all of those words, but I agree with most of them. Amendment Offered by Mr. Farr of California

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I promise not to use all of the time. Mr. Chairman, I am for the dollars in this amendment and in the bill. Let us talk about them both together. I am for the dollars that we need to fix the TRICARE problem, the health care problem. I am for the dollars to help with the recruiting and housing. I am for reimbursing the Pentagon for the funds they have already expended in their Kosovo operations. I am for helping them meet their additional fuel costs. That is not my problem with this amendment. I am for all of those things, but I am not for them in a way which will enable this House to bust the budget by $4 billion for next year, just 5 days after the leadership twisted arms to get enough votes to pass that budget. I do not think that we should drop our promises as an institution quite that fast. This is precedent setting. If you are going to do it on this, then do not be surprised when it happens again and again with far more justification. I am for all of the things that I mentioned for the Pentagon because they are meeting legitimate national needs. But I am not for another result of this amendment. As I have said before, what this chart shows is that, before this bill came to the floor, so far this year, for this year's fiscal budget, the President had asked for $568 billion in appropriated spending, and the Congress had provided him with $578 billion. So the Congress was $10 billion over the President in spending. The bill that came to the floor today added to that difference, because it added several billion dollars the President had not asked for. So the President, because of his increase request, the President had asked for $573 billion for this year, and the Congress with the bill as it came to the floor would be spending $587 billion, $13 billion over the President's request. Now, with this amendment, this year, the President will have still asked for $573 billion for this fiscal year, but the Congress will demand that we spend $591 billion. To me, plain mathematics indicates that is a $17 billion increase over the President's budget. I really cannot believe that, only 5 days after we passed the budget for the next fiscal year that this House is going to bust the budget for this fiscal year and find a way to add $4 billion for projects in the next fiscal year under the DOD portion of the budget. But evidently, that is what the House is going to do. I have no illusions whatsoever about what the outcome of this amendment is going to be, but I for one will not vote for it.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. I do not care how Members vote on this amendment. This amendment is a big nothing. It does not do anything for anybody, does not do anything to anybody. It simply takes money which is in the Treasury and puts it in the Treasury. That is all it does. So Members should vote however they want. I would simply observe that last year $124 billion was devoted to debt reduction without benefit of this amendment, and this year we will see a lot more than that devoted to deficit reduction, with or without the benefit of this amendment. I think the problem is that debate has been so trivialized in this House on budget issues, and the budget process itself has become so trivialized that we see immense amounts of time spent by many people in this chamber simply trying to invent procedural gimmicks so that they have a rollcall to take home to taxpayers who are too busy to make a living to understand the intricacies of the budget process. I think that does not serve this institution well. It certainly does not serve our own taxpayers well. I would simply say this. If colleagues want to take a real action as opposed to an ethereal action, if colleagues want to take a real action that will save money today, they should vote against this entire bill and have it come back in a stripped-down version, the way it ought to come back. I would also urge Members to vote against the amendment that will be coming up shortly, which, as I said five times earlier, will simply move $4 billion in defense spending out of next year's budget into this year's budget so that we free up $4 billion more spending room for next year. If we want to save the same $4 billion that the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Toomey) alleges to save in his amendment, we will take that action and we will save it for real. I would also urge Members to again consider voting against this bill because the net result of this bill, as it stands here before us today, with the amendment that is going to be added on the DOD side, will mean that this bill has raised the amount of spending above what the President has asked for by about $8 billion, and it will mean that for the entire fiscal year this Congress will be spending $17 billion more, as represented by this red bar, than the President asked for, as represented by the blue bar. Now, if Members want to save real money as opposed to monopoly money, they will vote against the bill and vote against that amendment. It does not mean bean bag how we vote on this amendment. It just does not do anything to anybody. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time, and will undoubtedly be amused by the results.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.