Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman well knows this has nothing whatsoever to do with taxes. What we are suggesting is if there is a suit by the Justice Department successfully concluded, which requires the tobacco companies to pay back into the Federal Treasury money which we would not have paid for illnesses caused by tobacco if they had not lied to the country for 20 years, that if there is a recovery of that kind of suit, that that money would go into Social Security and Medicare. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman should not pretend this has anything to do with taxes. He knows well it does not.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I would just ask the majority leader to respond to two problems. I think Members have a right to know what is happening in some of these conferences. At this point, two of the vehicles which had been expected to be used to bring bills back to this House are being tied up in the other body by individual Members. In addition to that, we have not yet reached any significant agreement in the Labor-HHS bill. We still have outstanding issues in both the Interior and Commerce-State-Justice which are viewed as major by both sides. It is my profound belief that if Members are asked to come back here Friday, it is highly unlikely that there will be something for them to vote on out of these conferences. I would simply urge the majority leader to take another read on what is happening on these bills, because it does not do any Member any good to come back here and sit twiddling their thumbs while they wait for the conferees to finish. I would also make one other request. We just met in the D.C. conference. The decision was made to bring all five bills into one bill. My concern is that if we are interested in passing whatever comes out of the conference, if those five bills are put into one, I am afraid that there are a variety of groups on both sides who will be so concerned and so opposed to portions of those bills that we will maximize the opposition to a bill if it is packaged as five bills. I think there is a significant opportunity that the entire thing could go down. So I think we need to have some private conversations. I am trying to help move this process forward, but I think there is insufficient appreciation of the resistance that we are still likely to meet from groups on both sides of the aisle to various items that are expected to be in these packages.

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I would simply say to the distinguished majority leader, I have been in every single one of the meetings that are taking place on the budget. I think I have a pretty good idea of how far along those meetings are. I think each individual Member has a right to know how far we have yet to go in order to reach agreement. On foreign operations, we still have at least one major outstanding issue which is tying up that bill. Even if we get that resolved, there are at least three separate Senators who have placed holds on that bill. I expect that problem to last a considerable amount of time. In addition, with Commerce-Justice, we have made some fair progress there on dollar items. In fact, most of the dollar items, I think all of them, are resolved. There is perhaps one item which has people confused on both sides. There are a number of language items which are very far apart, and as Members know, the United Nations funding issue is a very major impediment, and no agreement is in sight on that. In addition, on Interior, while we thought we were making good progress on those riders, we discovered that a new rider had been added in one of the offers that was made to the White House, so that has caused a significant dust-up. In addition, we also have the West Virginia mountaintop mining issue, which is going to tie up one of those bills for a long time unless it is resolved. Then we have the Labor-Health-Education conference, which I just left. In that, the House this morning and the White House expected to get a compromise offer. Instead, we were given a non-negotiable demand on the President's major priorities, and we are still significantly apart on dollar items. We had a major dust-up on that this morning, and we have a huge, huge problem on child care. There is not a chance of a snowball in you know where that we are going to be able to resolve those issues by the end of the day. It does no individual Member of this House any great service to tie them up when they need to be going home to deal with their Veterans Day celebrations. In fact, sessions like this impede our ability to get our work done because every time there is a roll call in the Senate or the House, we have to interrupt. Yesterday we were interrupted for two roll calls, and that wound up delaying the conference over 3\1/2\ hours because of other problems that developed after those roll calls. I would urge the gentleman to recognize that a realist would understand that there is no prayer of wrapping this up today. We all would like to get it wrapped up. I intend to be here right through Veterans Day and right through the weekend. I will negotiate until the cows come home. I hope we can get it done. But the best thing we can do to Members is to let them go home. When the bill is drafted, every Member of this House on both sides of the aisle has a right to have 24 hours to know what is in it. That just does not go for us, it goes for the gentleman, it goes for everybody. So it seems to me the best thing to do is to let the negotiators work over the weekend, recognize that even if we were to reach agreement tomorrow or Friday, it takes an immense amount of time to do the walk- through and the read-out. Last year, for instance, there was one item that we refused to put in the conference, and yet five different times it surfaced in the draft before we finally kept it out. So these are problems that are going to take a considerable amount of time. It is a waste of individual Member's time to tell them that they may be finished tonight or tomorrow. There is not a prayer of that happening, if someone is inside the room where the negotiating is going on. In fact, we were told in negotiations this morning that they may yet run another separate bill at us because they did not like the way the negotiations were going. So if any Member believes we have a chance to finish this tonight, I pray for them.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Michigan for yielding to me. Mr. Speaker, I would just like to make clear I have been told by the majority side on the Committee on Appropriations that there is a possibility that the committee will be asked to go to the Committee on Rules tonight to get a rule under which we could then consider the continuing resolution. I would like to make it clear that we see no reason to tie all Members up for the remainder of the evening. If what is being contemplated is a simple, straight continuing resolution with no funny business, we are perfectly happy to provide unanimous consent so that we can take it up without wasting Member's time, and I would think we could voice it very quickly.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Speaker, I do not think there is any purpose in dragging this out tonight. This is a simple extension until next Wednesday. I think Members need to have some understanding of what remaining differences are out there, because I think there is a vast misperception about exactly where the conferees are on these issues. As I see it, on the interior appropriations bill, we have made some progress with respect to language items. There are still a number of important language items that have not been resolved, a number of the riders, and there is also at least one major dollar issue which still is to be resolved, and it is the biggest dollar problem in the bill. With respect to State, Justice, Commerce, virtually all the dollar disagreements have been resolved. But there are still major differences with respect to language and riders. And again, that represents the items that remain represent major impediments to final agreement. With respect to the Labor, Health, Education bill, we were in conference once today this morning. We went into conference the second time, or were invited to come into conference this afternoon. We went to the Senate in order to participate in that conference. While we were sitting in the conference room waiting for the conference to start, the majority conferees on the Senate side in charge of the conference were busy holding a press conference denouncing the actions of those in the conference who represented the White House; and so, we wound up, instead of having a conference, having a press conference while we awaited the possibility of having a conference. So we made no further progress on that bill since about noon. That means I think that the individual Members of this place need to know what is going to happen with their schedules. I would urge the majority party leadership to recognize what the scheduling reality is and to recognize that we either have to have maximum flexibility in reaching an agreement or else we need to have maximum recognition of reality on a timetable so that Members who are not participating in the conference do not have to hang around here waiting for things to happen that are not likely to happen. I would hope that we could continue discussions and reach agreement on the items so that we do not have another round of recriminations before we finally get out of here. It seems to me that if we could have more time spent discussing the differences and less time spent in shenanigans, we would all be a whole lot better off. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance my time.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman yielding. Mr. Speaker, I would just like to make one additional observation. I have seen in those conferences at least two people who are crucial to the conference falling asleep in the middle of the conferences. That is because they are bone tired. I would suggest that the best thing we could do is stop the rhetoric tonight, pass this baby, go on home and get a good night's sleep, and show up tomorrow morning ready to do some business with each other for real.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. I thank the gentleman for yielding, Mr. Speaker. I remember the first time I ever met George Brown. I came in that door on the side of the Chamber. I was elected on April Fools Day of 1969. George came up to me right after Easter when we got back, he came up to me, and I had not met him before. He said, my friend, Bob Kastenmeier, tells me you are to be trusted. And I did not know what that meant, I did not know who he was. But that was his way of introducing himself to me. I asked Bob Kastenmeier the next time I saw Bob, I said, tell me about this George Brown fellow. Well, he said, he is a gutsy antiwar hero. He is a staunch defender of civil liberties, he is an absolute believer in civil rights and, he said, he is the ultimate rational man. And I think that really does describe George. He did yeoman's service here as a Member of the Committee on Agriculture and as chairman of the Committee on Science. But I think his greatest service to the House was simply his uncompromising political integrity and his uncompromising disdain for hypocrisy, which we often find a lot of in this town. I often kidded George. I told him that he reminded me of that wonderful character on British television, ``Rumpold of the Bailey,'' the British barrister who constantly defended unpopular causes, much to the chagrin of his law firm and his wife. And I told George that I thought not only did he have a slight resemblance to Leo McKern, the actor who played the part, but that also his style was the same, because he really did stand up for causes and people who had very few defenders, and that is what this institution often needs. Mr. Speaker, I think this place will miss him greatly. He was a superb public servant. He served California well. He served the country well, and I am grateful that after he ran for the Senate, he returned to this body and graced us with his many years of service, teaching us every day that public interest comes before private interest.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall) for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, let me say that the bill that we are considering today is a far more responsible vehicle than the bill that the President vetoed just a few days ago. When the President vetoed that legislation, he indicated that he felt that it represented an absolutely inadequate response to both our international responsibilities and our national interests, and he asked that a number of actions be taken that would significantly improve the bill. To a significant degree they have in this bill, with the addition of the amendment that will be offered by my good friend, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations. First and foremost, when this bill left the House and the Senate and when it was vetoed by the President, it had no funding for the Middle East Wye Accords. The President had indicated he would not sign a bill until the Wye funding was included. We felt that since Israel had met its commitments under the Wye agreement, the United States ought to meet our commitments. This bill will do that, and I think the President is delighted with it. I know I am. I think that people on both sides of the aisle who care about the United States meeting our responsibilities in that very sensitive region of the world will recognize that this is a very good investment for America, because it will help move the peace process forward in that region to a final resolution. In addition to that, there is $799 million in additional funding for various accounts in the bill that had not been present initially. There is increased funding to deal with the threat reduction problem associated with nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union. That is a very important addition, a welcome addition. We cannot just recognize our responsibilities in the Middle East. We also need to recognize the treacherous issues that still remain between us and the former Soviet Union, and this will help do that. In addition, we have obviously both interests and responsibilities in our own hemisphere. What this proposal will do is to increase our responsiveness on both of those matters by providing additional funding for the community adjustment investment program at the NAD Bank, which will help stabilize conditions on our borders between the United States and our southern neighbors. In addition, there is, as has been indicated by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall), significant funding for bilateral African debt reduction. That is a moral imperative and it is very much in the interest of the United States, and what it really does is simply recognize the uncollectability of these debts. I should point out that in two previous administrations, in the Reagan administration and the Bush administration, 35 times this amount of debt was forgiven, for Poland, for Israel, for Eastern Europe, for Egypt. What this does is to provide the same actions for the most destitute countries, and we think that is a useful addition. In addition, there is additional funding for the economic support fund, which the President insisted on getting, and he was right to do that. So I think this bill is a much more constructive response than we had with the original bill. We still have some problems, however, that have to be faced squarely. There are a number of drafting errors in the bill which are going to have to be corrected as this bill moves to the Senate. I also think there is at least one significant misunderstanding between the parties on an issue that has to be cleared up, and in addition to that the administration still is going to pursue, as we move this bill to the Senate and to conference, they are still going to pursue an effort to also include multilateral debt relief authority because if we do not do that we would be in the anomalous position of having American taxpayers finance debt relief for Africa without using our ability to leverage other countries in the world to do the same thing. That would not be a wise decision if we are interested in seeing to it that we have rational burden-sharing between the American taxpayer and the taxpayers of other countries. Dealing with our share of that debt write-down, which is about 3 percent, we do not want to lose the opportunity to leverage the other part of the world in meeting its responsibility for 97 percent of the action that needs to be taken. So in that sense, this bill is still short-sighted and needs to be corrected as we move through the process. I hope that we will be able to do that by assuring that what multilateral debt write-down does take place, takes place on the basis of standards defined by the United States Congress and not by the IMF.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I do not expect to take the full 2 minutes. I simply want to thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) for his efforts and the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Callahan) as well, and certainly the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), who has been steadfast in trying to improve this bill so that it can, in fact, merit a presidential signature. I have already said everything that needs to be said about the changes that will be affected by the Young amendment, which I intend to support. I do think it is important to recognize that, while we do have an understanding, we do not yet have a total agreement. The bill, as it leaves the House today, will still leave numerous language issues unresolved. Those are still going to have to be worked out between us and the Senate. There are at least two substantive issues which will still have to be worked out with give and take on both sides. But assuming that that will happen, I intend to support this at this stage in the process. Whether I support the final product will be determined by exactly what the fine print reads when we get that product together after Senate consideration and consideration by the conference.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, we do not occupy this planet alone. There are billions of other people that occupy it with us. Many of them are our friends, some of them are our implacable enemies. This bill represents one tool through which we exercise both our responsibilities to other human beings on this globe and, at the same time, we exercise our responsibilities to ourselves to try to keep these regions stable so that our own national security is maximized. We have huge arguments about this bill, but in fact foreign assistance amounts to far less than 1 percent of the entire Federal budget. I know the public does not know that, but that is, in fact, true. I happen to believe that persons who serve on this subcommittee and work to see that we meet our responsibilities in this area are patriots of the highest order. I think that the chairman and the ranking member of this subcommittee have a thankless job, because no one understands the responsibilities that are being met in this legislation. It is an easy bill to demagogue, but this bill is in fact central to keeping this world a more civilized place and keeping our place in it more secure than it would otherwise be. I think the gentleman's amendment is a constructive approach. We will need to work out, as I say, further details as we move along, but I intend to support it at this stage and would urge other Members to do the same.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, this bill is consumer fraud masquerading as financial reform. There is nothing wrong with modernizing financial institutions. It is nice to see that my colleagues are going to try to set up one-stop shopping services for financial services. But returning 1999 to 1929 is not reform in my book. The proponents says they are making advances by providing privacy protections. But the fact is the consumers are going to be faced with the new megamerged world. Insurance companies, banks, and investment companies are all going to be owned by the same people. Supporters brag about consumer privacy rights that they are protecting, and they are careful to say that they are providing protection in the case of all unaffiliated third parties. That is true, but big deal. What they do not tell you is that they are giving away the privacy store in terms of all affiliated parties. Because one is going to have the same people owning one's banks, owning one's insurance company, owning one's stock brokerages. That means they are going to share one's banking information with every single affiliate, and they are going to be able to contract with the telemarketers and spread that same information around. Sometimes this House makes me sick, and this is one of those nights.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Speaker, after this continuing resolution is passed and sent to the Senate, we will have two choices: We can continue this once-a-week rewind operation, or we can decide this afternoon that we are going to sit down and come to closure on the agreement that I thought we were within an hour of achieving last night on the Foreign Operations bill. If that can be achieved, then we can move to try to deal with the issues that still divide us on the issue of education, on the issue of crime, and on the issue of paying our U.N. dues. I would like to think we could conclude that in a reasonable time and get out of here. I do not think, frankly, that either party is scoring any points on these issues. I have said many times that the worst thing that can happen to people in this town is when you come to believe your own baloney, and the fact is that I think we have a lot of that going on. And I do not think, frankly, that the country is paying much attention to what we say. They are more interested in what we do, and what they see so far is that we have been doing nothing. So I would suggest we stop doing nothing, come to an agreement on these four remaining bills and get out of town. But it is going to take a determination on the part of the majority party to negotiate with the President, rather than laying down ultimatums about what is on or off the table. This happened last night. When that mindset changes, we may begin to see some progress around here. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 7 minutes. Mr. Speaker, why are we here? I have been trying to answer that question every time we bring a new continuing resolution to the floor. Yesterday it dawned on me. Yesterday my watch quit running for about the fourth time, and so I finally gave up on it and went and bought a new one, and that brought into clear focus what we are doing here. Every 7 days we are bringing a continuing resolution to the floor. We wind up the clock for another 7 days, but it is a clock that does not run. And so we keep coming back here every 7 days, winding up the good old clock, but the hands never move, time does not pass, and we repeat the same arguments over and over again the following week. Sooner or later I would think people would get a little tired of that, but I guess not tired enough yet to do something about it. We are here now, we have passed three continuing resolutions, we are about to pass a fourth, and we had a meeting last night which took us on a short route to nowhere. And, unfortunately, if that meeting is any indication, we are going to be here for a lot more 7-day periods, and Members are not going to be able to go home and enjoy a Thanksgiving. The 23 Senators who are set to take trips abroad are not going to be able to climb on their airplanes and we are going to be back here grinding the same fine powder into dust. I think the reason we are here is simply this: This is a Congress that has, for the past year, at the insistence of the majority party, spent almost its entire effort in trying to pretend that we were going to have big enough surpluses that we could afford to pass a giant tax bill that gave 70 percent of the benefits to the wealthiest people in this country. And that got in the way of this Congress' doing anything about Social Security, it got in the way of our doing anything about Medicare, it got in the way of being able to reach reasonable compromises on education. We stand here in a House that has not been able to complete action on a meaningful Patients' Bill of Rights nor has it been willing to pass a minimum wage bill. And it reminds me of that old gospel song ``Drifting Too Far From the Shore.'' We have been here so long, going through these same motions, that we forget some of the very basic things that we are supposed to be doing when we are here. Now, what we ought to be doing, if we do not meet any other responsibility, is we ought to be meeting our main responsibility, which is to finish the action necessary to complete a budget. This Congress has done virtually nothing except focus on that question and the tax question for almost a year, and yet we are still here, stuck on second base, with no prospect of being driven home. I ask why? And as I think about it, I think the reason is that the majority party in this House apparently believes that the main action that is necessary in order to complete action on a budget is to reach a consensus within their own party in the House on the question as to what kind of budget that ought to be. Now, it is important for any party to know who it is and what it is; it is important for any party to have a sense of self and to be able to communicate that to the country. But after that is done, it is also necessary for us to recognize that the House is one of only three branches of government that deals with the budget, the other two being the Senate and the President. It is not enough for one-half of this House to reach an internal consensus about what has to be done if that consensus leads to no way of reaching agreement with the other two major players in the system that our Founding Fathers designed and placed into the Constitution. And so, we are not stuck here because the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) has not done his job. We are not stuck here because the Committee on Appropriations has not tried to do its job. They have tried mightily. We are stuck here because somehow the impression has developed that the only thing we have to do to get a budget is to develop a unanimous point of view in the majority party caucus. Now, the Democrats ran this House long enough for me to realize that it is almost impossible for a party to ever achieve a unanimous view on any subject. And so, on most truly important questions, it is, therefore, important to achieve a bipartisan consensus so that even if we do not have a hundred percent of votes for something in the majority party, but if we put together what we are trying to do with a majority of the other side, we could have a pretty healthy product that will withstand criticism from all sides. That is what we ought to be doing. But instead, we are still thrashing around dealing with ego problems and dealing with ideological problems while we are continuing to come back and winding up that old, dead clock every 7 days. In the end, the only thing that is going to move is our wrists. So it seems to me that we ought to cut through that. What we need is for serious-minded people to sit down, recognize that compromises need to be made. A reasonable compromise was put on the table last night, but there was no one home to deal with it. So I guess we will continue to drift along. I regret that. I know if the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) had his way, we would not be stuck in this inertia. But we are. I simply hope that sometime between now and Thanksgiving the powers that be in this institution recognize that this is a deadend route and we need to come to conclusion on these issues and go home.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Olver).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Speaker, I am amused. We were just urged by the gentleman from Florida to avoid inflammatory remarks and then we hear the kind of ridiculous statement that was just made, suggesting that the President lusts after only one thing, and that is to send money abroad. The last time I looked, the President had a long list of requests of this Congress. He is asking us to provide 100,000 new teachers which the majority party has refused to do. He is asking us to provide 50,000 new policemen which the majority party has refused doing. He is asking that we actually make available to the National Institutes of Health for medical research all of the money that we pretend we are making available rather than delaying virtually all new grants for an entire year, putting at risk scientific research teams all over the country. The majority party has refused to do that. And now we are told, Oh, gee, we should not talk about that because that is not the subject at hand.'' The subject at hand is getting the permission of the Congress for the government to continue for another 7 days without shutting down. That is the subject at hand. What the gentleman from California was talking about is simply his assessment of why we are in this fix. I think the gentleman was on point. With respect to the two myths that were just peddled about the administration's refusal to negotiate, that is a joke and everyone in this Chamber, including the press watching, knows it is a joke. We have seen headlines for the past 6 months coming out of your leadership's office saying, ``No, we are not going to negotiate directly from the President because he stole our socks in negotiations last year.'' ``We have got a little sisters of the poor complex. Every time we think about negotiating with the President, we are afraid he is going to outnegotiate us.'' And so the leadership has already declared publicly its lack of confidence in its own negotiating ability and they say, ``No, we're not going to get into the box and negotiate with the President, we're only going to do this at a lower level.'' Last night a conversation took place between the President and your leadership, and, as you know, the President offered again to send his chief of staff, Mr. Podesta, down here to negotiate directly with your leadership. And again he was told by your leadership, ``No, we don't want to get in the same room with you, so instead, why don't you have the appropriators meet.'' Well, the appropriators did meet, for a while at least some of us, and after an hour, there were only two Republicans left in the room. Everybody else had gone home. We were there, the White House was there, and the White House made two compromise offers in a row, both of which were rejected by the other side. So it is silly to suggest that the White House has not been offering to negotiate. They have been in the room every time there has been a meeting. I just suggest, I think we should stop the hyperbole and I think we ought to get on with the business of government, but I think it is fair to observe that the President has a reason for wanting to see this bill negotiated along with the others, because the majority party has a long record of dragging its feet in meeting its international responsibilities. For a year and a half, in the middle of the Asian debt crisis which threatened to swamp our own economy and swamp our own currency, the majority party refused to provide the IMF funding that was necessary. It has dragged its feet on paying our dues at the United Nations for 2 years and, as I said, on the domestic side, the majority party has steadfastly refused to agree to the President's request for 100,000 new teachers or for 50,000 new cops on the beat, among other things. Mr. Speaker, I regret that we have gotten into this kind of a tit- for-tat argument, but I guess it is inevitable given the fact that this Congress is unable to do anything but. I hope things change. I think the best way to change is to get off the floor and get back into the negotiating room on the foreign operations bill that I thought was so close to an agreement last night. Everyone understands that that is the logjam which is holding this place up. And so if you want to go home, I would suggest you act like it and get down to doing some serious negotiating.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I would like to point out that the gentleman left the room for over an hour, and while the gentleman was out of the room, Mr. Lew did specifically refer to three different ways that offsets could be handled.

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Speaker, I was trying to decide whether I should yield 30 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), or whether I should yield back the balance of my time. I suspected the majority would prefer that I yield back the balance of my time so in the interest of comity, that is exactly what I will do.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. Despite what we have just heard from the past two speakers, the Congressional Budget Office this morning has indicated that you are spending this year $17 billion out of Social Security. What I said on the floor is that you should be ashamed for denying the truth. That is what you ought to be ashamed of. The second thing I would point out to the gentleman is that whatever money was spent out of Social Security by Democratic Congresses was less than we were asked to spend by President Bush and President Reagan in all 12 years they were in office except for 1 year. In 11 out of the 12 years, we were asked to spend more out of Social Security by President Bush and President Reagan than the Congress agreed to do. So let us keep the facts straight. If you are going to quote me, quote me right. I am not attacking your actions. I am attacking the hypocrisy that I so often see in this House.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, just two points in closing. With respect to veterans' health care, everyone has said that the original budget request was inadequate. We all agree on that. On this side of the aisle, during consideration of the Veterans Department budget we asked that $2.4 billion be made available for veterans health. The committee chose to provide $1.7 billion, instead. Now, the action that is coming today on the part of the majority party will cut an additional $200 million out of that $1.7 billion. We do not think they ought to do that. Secondly, we have heard a lot of people give some lurid examples of waste, fraud and abuse. They said, we can easily get at that if we pass this 1 percent cut. The problem is that the way the 1 percent cut is designed, we cannot get at any of that waste, fraud, and abuse. We also cannot get at any congressional Members' pork projects, any of the earmarks. One example, in the VA-HUD report on page 95, we will find a list of 444 earmarked items. The problem is that none of those items can be eliminated under this proposal before us today. All we can do is take 1 percent out of them. I will place all of those items in the Record so people can see what I mean. I am not suggesting that some of these projects are not perfectly legitimate. I am saying that it is a fraud when Members come to the floor and bring up these lurid examples, mostly from 5 and 7 years ago, and say, ``oh, we should cut this out,'' when in fact the way they have drafted this provision prevents the administrators from being able to cut out that which they object to. Mr. Speaker, I would simply say, in the time remaining, I recognize the gentleman from Florida has done everything that he can in order to keep this issue on the merits. I recognize he has done everything he can to try to see that we handled these issues in a responsible way. I think there have been considerable problems above his pay grade that have prevented us from doing that. I know if he were left to his own instincts, we would have a far different product here today. Again, I appreciate the opportunity I have had to work with the gentleman.