Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

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, it is my understanding that I have the right to close?

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

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

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. Yes, I do, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. OBEY. So what?

Mr. OBEY. I have not supported the Leahy amendment in the first place.

Mr. OBEY. That is the problem. Does the gentleman know how many times I have seen presidents waive milquetoast language? The problem is not just with the waiver, the problem is that this language is so weak in the first place, it would not even require a waiver by an intelligent person. I have heard of watering down soup before. I have never heard of watering down water before. Go to the Senate, come back with some stronger language, and we will be happy to look at it. But this, with all due respect, is no protection at all for human rights. It is simply protection for politicians.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Chairman, one of the previous speakers said that this is such great human rights language because it says none of the funds may be appropriated until the government of Colombia agrees that it has a strategy to eliminate coca production. It does not say that they have to be following that strategy; all it says is that they have to have a strategy. That can be a piece of paper. He said that it is great language because the head of the Colombian Air Force has to have the authority that is necessary to dismiss armed forces personnel from gross violations of human rights. It does not say he has to actually dismiss them; it simply says he has to have the authority. This language is not based on performance; it is based on promise, and that is the problem with it. This is beef soup without the beef. It is an empty ice cream cone. When we have meaningful language that will actually protect human rights, come back and see me. Until then, sorry, fellows. No sale. Mr. Chairman, I yield the remainder of my time to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi).

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of the time. Mr. Chairman, I would simply assert that this is not a request for an audit tonight. This, in my view, is simply another ideological attack against an agency that a number of people in this House have never liked and would abolish if they had the votes to do so. We have been told that we cannot ask for a similar audit for a department which wastes far more money than any agency of government. And we are told that somehow we are supporting the taxpayers' interest to ask for this audit by the GAO. The fact is we currently spend $34 million each year of taxpayers' money to pay for 285 people who work for the Inspector General's Office of the Department of Education, and their full-time job is to investigate and audit the financial and management practices of the Department of Education. We are already spending $34 million to do that. Now, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Schaffer) wants us to duplicate that effort. I do not think it is for financial reasons. I think it is because this is just another way to harass an agency that they do not like. I would point out, maybe the Department of Education would have done a bit better in managing its operation if this Congress had not eliminated $65 million of the Department's request for program management funds since fiscal year 1996. And if the majority party had had its way, those fiscal management cuts would have exceeded $112 million. I think we understand what the target is. It is not waste; it is the agency itself. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Chairman, I have been here long enough to see a few of these fights before, and whenever the question of military aid comes up, the question of human rights also arises. So we have to face the question: How much murder, how much torture, how much corruption are we going to tolerate on the part of parties to whom we are providing aid? Invariably, what happens is that a set of so-called standards are drawn up which sound very good. They give Members of Congress a fig leaf that they can stand behind to give the impression that they are really doing something for human rights, but then they contain a perennial presidential waiver. On occasion, presidential waivers are justified. But when Congress routinely sets human rights standards which can then be routinely waived by the President, it cheapens the process and trivializes our concern about human rights. It lets Congress claim credit for the aid that is being provided; it lets Congress claim credit for protecting human rights when, in reality, it does not in any meaningful way. Then it leaves the President standing there as a punching bag no matter what he does, whether he waives or whether he does not waive, those standards. I think that that, in the process, trivializes everything that we deal with on issues like this. I think that is the reason why groups such as Amnesty International and other human rights organizations are opposed to this amendment. They understand that this amendment does not do what it purports to do, which is assure that the Colombian government and the parties with whom we will be dealing with, in fact, live up to the standards we expect them to live up to on human rights. In my view, until we do have language that does assure that, we most certainly should not support either this bill or this amendment, which makes it easier to continue the charade in this case that we have seen so often in Salvador, in Nicaragua, in Guatemala, in Indonesia, and in a number of other places around the world. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I have only one remaining speaker, and I believe I have the right to close.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Sanford).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds. Mr. Chairman, if I could have the attention of the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence), I would just like to say that while I disagree with his words, I wanted to express the appreciation of every single person in this House for the service that he has given this House through the years. We know that he says what he believes, and we honor him for it.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 4 minutes. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment. I do not have a problem with where much of this money would go. I support added funds for the defense health program. We have a recruiting and retention problem in the military, due in large part to a very strong economy. We ought to bolster those efforts. But it is clear what is really happening here. The majority is embarrassed because their record on military spending has not matched their rhetoric. They like to talk about how the Clinton administration is not funding the military, but their own budget resolution, passed just last Thursday, places a priority on tax cuts, not military spending. Their budget resolution essentially endorses the Clinton defense budget. I understand that did not sit too well with certain members of the majority party on the Committee on Armed Services and in other places who were asked by their leadership to vote to that budget resolution, so this amendment is a convenient way of giving them a repayment for their behaving well on their budget resolution. It gives them a $4 billion fig leaf to say that they are for more military spending. If it becomes law, it simply makes room, by transferring $4 billion in spending for regular items into this year's budget, it simply makes room in next year's budget for $4 billion worth of other items, including a lot of congressional projects and pork. But we have a complication. The Senate leadership opposes it because it eats into the budget surplus. The Senate leadership has already said this additional spending is dead on arrival. The administration opposes it as well because it is not offset by other spending cuts. So what is the ultimate impact of this amendment? Its most likely impact is that it will slow down further the critical aid for disaster assistance across the country. It will delay approving the money that is in this bill at this time that is needed to reimburse the Army for expenses already incurred in Kosovo and elsewhere, and to deal with the Tricare problem. It will either cause a huge muddle or it will further discredit the budget process. In either case, it should not be supported by the House today. As a practical matter, we have $2 billion in this bill which the Pentagon badly needs, and if it does not get it, in the words of the Secretary of Defense, they will ``need to make irreversible decisions to curtail training and maintenance activities essential to readiness,'' if they do not get that money by the end of April. There is another $2.5 million for Tricare and fuel costs which they do not absolutely have to have, but it would be nice if we could get it to the Pentagon. That money is also going to be put in danger in order to take a long shot chance that the public will buy and the Senate will buy a scheme which is nothing short of an effort to blow the budget by $4 billion next year when that budget is only 5 days old. That is the name of the game. I do not happen to think much of it, but I admire the skill with which the game plan has been put together, nonetheless. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Reserving the right to object, Mr. Speaker, I think Members need to understand that the reason they were kept here until midnight tonight is because there was an expectation and a hope that we would be able, by holding Members here this late this evening, to get Members out roughly around noon tomorrow so that all Members of the House, not just a few, could catch planes back to their districts. That would have necessitated, in my judgment, a number of the amendments just described being at least debated tonight. A number of those amendments would not even have been in order if the committee had not worked with Members in order to help them get them in order, and so I think it would have been fair to ask those Members to debate those amendments tonight, because if we had not helped them, they would not have been able to debate them at all. Secondly, there is at least one committee chairman in the House who has an amendment which is going to take longer than the others. It would have been very helpful if we could have had that amendment debated tonight and the vote coming tomorrow. That is what happened with a lot of people. An awful lot of people had their amendments debated late tonight, but evidently he does not want to take it up tonight. So I think Members need to know that it is my judgment that under this agreement, they had probably better not plan on being out of here much before 2 o'clock. I regret that. I wish some of these amendments would be considered tonight. I am sorry that the authors would not be willing to do that, but I want Members to understand the problem.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman from Ohio. Let me simply say that I had intended to vote for his amendment, and I still do. But the fact is that I have been asking people all night long to enable us to finish the gentleman's amendment and a number of others. No one ever talked to me about the assumption that the gentleman's amendment was not going to be considered tonight. We have had a lot of people have their amendments offered tonight. We did not intend in any way to truncate the debate. But since a lot of other Members had been asked to consider their amendment in other than ideal conditions, I did not think it was too much to ask the gentleman to do the same thing.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, again reclaiming my time, all I will say is that Members should, for purposes of planning, understand that this delay means they are probably not going to get out of here until around 2 o'clock instead of noon. Mr. Chairman, with that I withdraw my reservation of objection.