Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Florida (Mr. Boyd). (Mr. BOYD asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. Mr. Speaker, let me again correct the gentleman. When I described the 80 percent, I said if you assume worst case scenario, which is the Republican actions on the budget so far, that you would have that 80 percent--20 percent split. So if you want to know why that is so bad, do not ascribe it to me. You are the folks who have already passed bills that have produced that reality, once you start telling the public what the actual facts are, rather than hiding almost $18 billion in spending. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Olver).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt). (Mr. SPRATT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), ranking Democrat on the Committee on the Budget. (Mr. SPRATT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Speaker, let me again repeat the facts to counter the fiction that we have just heard. Despite the fact that our majority party friends have taken $12 billion of education money and slipped it one day over into the next fiscal year so they could hide it in this year, despite the fact that they have taken almost $4 billion at the National Institutes of Health and squeezed that spending just over the line into the next fiscal year, it will still be spent, still come out of Social Security, just next year's Social Security money, despite the fact that they have simply ordered the accountants to not count $13 billion in spending that they do at the Department of Defense, despite all of that, we have a letter from the Congressional Budget Office this morning that indicates that you are still spending $17 billion worth of Social Security this year. Now, get off the baloney, get back to the facts and let us resolve our differences in an honest way. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay), ranking member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, first of all, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), the distinguished chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, is correct; the President will sign this third continuing resolution. He should not have to. I would have hoped that we would have been done by now. But we all, I think, understand why. My problem is that, right after this continuing resolution, we are going to be dealing with about a 3-hour charade. I need to discuss that in the context of this continuing resolution. After this continuing resolution is disposed of, we will be bringing to the House floor a so-called conference report on the Labor, Health, Education appropriation bill. The problem is that that conference took place on a bill that never even saw the light of day on the floor of this House. And under the rules of the Congress, we are not supposed to have a conference until both Houses have been able to vote on the bill. Now, the bill that comes out is an important bill. The problem with that bill is not really, in the end, the funding level. We could resolve our remaining dollar differences in that bill in about 3 hours if we are given the opportunity to do so. But the problem is that the debate on this bill and the bill to follow today will, in my view, symbolize how political debate in this House has been trivialized and used to obscure rather than reveal the truth. Next year we enter a new century; we enter a new millennium. We were sent here to make certain that we make the big decisions that will preserve the security of our country and strengthen the prosperity of our country for the next decade and for the next generation. Instead, we will be treated to a 3-hour, cheap, phony, manipulated debate about Social Security. Now, how did this all happen? In January, the President stood right here behind me, and he asked the Congress to pass legislation that would extend the solvency of Social Security for today's generation and tomorrow's. He asked us to strengthen Medicare and provide coverage for prescription drugs under Medicare. He asked us to pass a budget that would help communities to rebuild falling-down schools, reduce class size by providing 100,000 new teachers, equip every school with modern technology. He asked us to protect the environment. He asked us to help him provide more police on our streets. This bill, the last appropriations bill for the year that will shortly follow, does none of those things. Instead of listening to what the President asked for, instead of trying to resolve those problems, our majority friends, our Republican friends on the other side of the aisle spent the last 8 months trying to pass a tax cut package which gave 70 percent of the benefits to the wealthiest 5 percent of people in this country making above $100,000 a year. That tax package ate up virtually every dollar in sight that could have been used to strengthen Social Security and to strengthen Medicare. In fact, our Republican friends at one point were willing to cut virtually every program in the Labor, Health, and Education bill by almost 30 percent in order to make that tax package happen. Now, after it did not sell, and after our friends on the Republican side have seen their numbers drop in the polls, we now have a very troubling situation. They have passed through this House a series of appropriation bills, four appropriation bills, which spend almost $30 billion more than the President asked us to spend. The chairman of the committee himself said that the defense bill alone was $16 billion above what the President had asked for. But now after that has been done, we now have our Republican friends saying, Oh, guess what, folks? We cannot fund the President's education and health and crime fighting and environmental priorities without spending the Social Security surplus. There are three problems with that, to be blunt about it. The first is that it is a phony issue. Not one dollar in the President's request or in any bill that we support on this side of the aisle will reduce the balance in the Social Security Trust Fund by one dollar. Second, it is a joke for our Republican friends to cry crocodile tears about protecting Social Security. This is the party that tried to kill Social Security when it was born. They have tried to turn it over to the insurance companies for 30 years and privatize it. They have been willing to put an unaffordable tax cut ahead of fixing up Social Security and Medicare. And this is a party which is led by their leader, who said that Social Security should be phased out and that in a free society there should be no room for a program like Medicare. For us to believe that a party with that track record suddenly stands as the only hope for Social Security recipients is to make Jay Leno look bad. The third problem with the argument is that our Republican friends, despite their assertions to the contrary, have already spent billions of dollars out of the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for other things this year. At one point they had spent up to $27 billion out of that Social Security Trust Fund. To hide that fact, what did they do? First they simply adopted a budget technique which hid $18 billion so it could not be counted. That still left them with a $9 billion hole. And so, what have they done? In the bill that they are bringing to the floor today, they did not take out all the pork that was put in appropriation bills. They did not take out the famous billion dollar ship that was nailed into the defense bill by the majority leader in the other body. No, they did not do that. They did not take out any of the hundreds of projects that were put in those bills. Instead, they pretend that they are imposing a harmless 1 percent across-the-board cut in programs. Well, what does that harmless 1 percent do? Well, for one thing, it cripples the Social Security Administration because it forces them to cut back on the number of people that we use to ferret out fraudulent claims in Social Security and Medicare and people who also try to get legitimate checks cut to the people who legitimately deserve those programs. They are cutting millions of dollars out of veterans' health care under their proposal. And they are in the process also creating a colossal disruption of medical research. They are virtually shutting down all new grants to scientists in this country who go to the National Institutes of Health to get funding to do research on cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's, Lou Gehrig's disease, you name it. What they do is they pretend that they are going to give them a couple of billion dollars more money, but then they say that they cannot spend it for an entire year. And they do it all for budgetary reasons. Well, I want to say, make no mistake about it, this is not just a budgetary gimmick. There will be people who will die because of that delayed medical research. Anybody who understands how the research programs in this country work understands that. And all of this is to pretend that they have not spent any of the Social Security surplus. That whole issue is a false issue to begin with. For a generation, this Congress has taken surpluses in the Social Security account, it has put Federal notes in that Social Security account, and it has used that money for other purposes. And now next year what do we face? Instead of having 100 percent of that money being used for other purposes, as it was for 30 years, what we have instead, under a worst-case scenario, is that 80 percent of that money instead is going to be used to pay down the national debt. Only the folks running this House could turn that kind of major progress into a political crisis. They ought to be ashamed of themselves for doing that. The fact is, if they really want to strengthen Social Security, they will quit playing games with it; and what they will do is recognize that the best thing they can do, along with paying down debt, the best thing that they can do is make the kind of investments we need in Generation X for their education and for their job training so we can raise the income that they will earn so they will have decent salaries and can pay more into Social Security in order to extend the strength and the life of that Social Security fund. That is what we would say if this issue was being dealt with honestly on the floor. But it is let's-pretend time, and so we cannot get to the truth, I guess. So, Mr. Speaker, what I guess I would say to my majority friends on the Republican side of the aisle is simply this: if they have the votes, pass this turkey, get it on to the President, let him veto it, let us clear the air, and then let us really sit down and do business. If we could get the political bull gravy out of this debate, we could solve all of the remaining dollar problems in about 3 days. We are not that far apart. The gap in dollars that separate us is not nearly as large as the credibility gap that they have developed in the way that the majority has handled this issue. There are only four ways to get a budget. The first is, if they really want to protect Social Security, we can go back and we can cut out a lot of the excess spending that they have included in some of the previously passed appropriation bills. If they want to do that, I will work with them on that. If they do not want to do that, I am not going to argue. Second thing they could do then is simply say, Okay, we are going to take a look at some of the President's revenue sources, such as his proposal to try to discourage the use of tobacco by young people, which would bring some additional revenue into the Treasury. I do not much like that, but I would rather support that than to lie. And that is what is happening now. The third thing they can do if they want to pass a budget is simply get real and to simply adjust the spending caps which we are operating under to reflect what we are actually spending rather than what we pretend we are spending. I know the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) has urged the same solution. I agree with him on that. They can get my support on any of those three options. The one option I do not want to support is the one that the House continues to pursue at this moment, which is to stay in Let's-pretend land and to hide everything that we are doing through all of these fancy budgetary devices. This chart shows what they are doing to the National Institutes of Health. The blue graph shows what amount of money was provided by the National Institutes of Health to medical researchers in each month last year as those contracts were signed in an orderly fashion. Under this bill that they are bringing to the floor today, they are telling the National Institutes of Health that, even though they are going to give them more money, they are not going to let them spend it for an entire year and then; in the last 2 days, they are supposed to put out a huge percentage of their own budget. That is irresponsible. It is a financial gimmick. It does not serve any purpose but to cover somebody's political tail, and it will hurt our efforts to find cures for every major disease that plagues mankind. So I would say simply, there are a lot of good people on both sides of the aisle, and sooner or later they have to be unleashed so that we can sit down, work out a rational compromise on these bills, and get this Congress out of town before it does any more damage to its reputation. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, that is correct. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha), the distinguished ranking member on the Subcommittee on Defense of the Committee on Appropriations.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Olver).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior), the distinguished minority whip.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) so he might explain the motion to recommit that will be coming shortly.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of the time. Mr. Speaker, I am sure that before this debate is done the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) will point out that in all the years, going back to the Mesozoic Era, that the Congress borrowed Social Security money. I will stipulate that is true. I will also stipulate that, in every year but one, Congress did less of that than we were asked to do by Republican Presidents. The problem with this bill today is that it is a giant fudge ball of gimmicks to enable the Republican party to pretend that they are helping Social Security. What are the gimmicks? First of all, the bill provides $12 billion in aid to schools. That money is supposed to go out this July to the school districts. Instead, it delays it until October 1 so it slips just over the line and is not counted in this fiscal year. That does not help Social Security. In fact, it does spend next year's Social Security money. The bill also contains $18 billion for NIH for medical research. Sixty percent of the dollars for those research grants are delayed for a year. New research grants will be cut by 90 percent for a full year under those recommendations. Again, that helps the Republicans pretend that they are not spending Social Security money. But it again spends that same Social Security money next year. That does not do Social Security any good. Just a political gimmick. The 13-month gimmick that they provide, it is not only a gimmick, it is a public fib. Taxpayers pay $50 million a year in order to staff the Congressional Budget Office that is supposed to tell us how much everything we do is going to cost. And they have told us today, despite denials to the contrary, that the Republican budget right now, even with all these gimmicks, still spends $17 billion out of Social Security money. So what does the Republican leadership do to try to avoid it? They simply set up a device that says, ``Ignore it.'' They order the scorekeeping agency to simply ignore $13 billion worth of spending in the defense bill. In this bill today, they tell them to ignore $1.6 billion, just ignore it. They then have another gimmick. They declare $25 billion of so-called emergencies, because if we call it emergencies, that also does not count. Example: the fuel assistance program. That provide help to low-income elderly so they can pay their heating bills in the wintertime. Last year, the Republican leadership tried to eliminate that program. This year they call it an emergency. I have a little trouble following that one. That is a double reverse even the Green Bay Packers could not duplicate. Another problem: when we provide all of these phony emergency designations, it really removes all restraints on spending. When we take the Department of Defense bill, which the chairman has already indicated is $16 billion above the President--and he said that, I did not--when we add up all other increases, we have bills that add $30 billion to the President's budget. So then how do they deal with it? They totally disrupt the NIH funding stream for research grants and they say, ``Oh, we are going to give them this harmless little 1 percent across-the-board cut.'' The problem is they rig it so that we cannot really attack the waste and fraud that they are talking about. I have a list here from Senator McCain of all of the congressional pork put into the Department of Defense bill. It is 11 feet long. They have got it rigged so that none of these projects can be eliminated, even though the Defense Department did not ask for them. One of them alone is $1.5 billion. Do my colleagues call that responsible to say, no, we are not going to cut this but, oh, yes, we are going to cut cancer research, we are going to cut education? We do not think that is the right way to do it. And then as was also mentioned, one powerful chairman has gotten all of his programs effectively exempted. They get cut this year but, oh, the money gets put back this year. I love highways, but I do not love them more than I love cancer research, or providing health care to people who do not have it. If you are an American family and you have to cut back in your budget and you had a trip to Bermuda and you bought a new car and you bought milk and you bought groceries and you paid the rent, if you go to cut back in your budget, you do not cut all of that back evenly 1 percent. You say, ``Well, probably the trip to Bermuda isn't necessary.'' You will cut that out. You pick and choose. You make intelligent choices, not the kind of choices in this bill. This is not a bill at all. This is a magic show, designed to put on a phony debate on Social Security. If you really care about Social Security, if you really care about Medicare, recognize this turkey of a bill does nothing to strengthen Social Security or Medicare. What you ought to do is extend the solvency of Social Security, put a prescription drug benefit into Medicare. I held 16 hearings around my district to listen to seniors who needed help to pay for their drugs. I ran into one woman who paid $600 a day, yes, a day, for prescription drugs. This bill does nothing for her. I ran into another couple, they spent $28,000 a year on prescription drugs. Your leadership, the same leadership that has said on other occasions that Medicare should not even be here and that Social Security ought to be phased out, you now give this cock and bull story that somehow you become the last-minute defenders of Social Security. Give me a break. Let us play it real. Drop the debates, sit down in a room, figure out what is practical, end this debate. I know the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) would like to do that. He knows I want to do it. And I know the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Porter) wants to do that, too. We are not able to do it because of a dispute above our pay grade, but this Congress is not going to get out of session until that dispute stops, we play this real for a change and give the American people what they deserve, an honest budget.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Sabo), former chairman of the Committee on the Budget. (Mr. SABO asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, to return us from the land of fiction to the land of reality, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm).

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee). (Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 10 seconds. Mr. Speaker, I think what the gentleman is talking about is apples and oranges. I think the gentleman from North Carolina is correct. He is talking about aid that farmers need that they are not getting. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt). (Mr. SPRATT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from North Carolina (Mrs. Clayton). (Mrs. CLAYTON asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. McIntyre). (Mr. McINTYRE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Etheridge). (Mr. ETHERIDGE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Watt). (Mr. WATT of North Carolina asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, what I would like to do now is to yield several minutes successively so that Members of the North Carolina delegation can discuss their flood problems. Mr. Speaker, I yield first 1 minute to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Jackson). Announcement By The Speaker Pro Tempore