Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to congratulate the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis) and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha) for doing their dead-level best to bring new thinking to this bill. They tried mightily, for instance, on the issue of the F-22, because they recognized that, if we are putting all of our money in that basket, we do not have enough money to provide other high priority needs that our defense posture very badly needs. They have been partially successful, and I congratulate them for that. I recognize that they could not go as far as they needed to go because of constraints imposed upon them by the leadership of this House. I regret that. I think we should have gone further. But I want to take the time of the House today to give my colleagues a more basic reason for my concern about this bill. I am not going to vote for this bill in the end because I do not believe in supporting legislation which in the end conveys a falsehood to the American people. When we had President Reagan ram his budget through here in 1981 and beyond, I opposed those budgets in very large part because they promised something that they could not deliver. They promised that they would balance the budget in 4 years. Instead, they produced the largest deficits in the history of the country. When we had the budget agreement in 1997, which was signed by the President and pushed through the Congress by then Speaker Gingrich, I did not support it and called it a public lie, because, in my view, it promised things that would never take place. In fact, time has demonstrated that the doubts about that bill were correct. Now, we have a new situation. We have the Republican majority telling the country that they do not want to sit down in an omnibus negotiation with the President on all remaining bills because, if they did, they say we will wind up just like last year where we had some $21 billion in emergency spending rammed into last year's omnibus appropriation bill. First of all, that misreads history, because, in fact, that number was driven up substantially by then Speaker Gingrich who insisted that, whatever increases we had on the domestic side be matched on the military and intelligence side, whether we needed them or not. So they wound up spending $21 billion on emergencies. But, ironically, this year, this Republican House has already spent $24.2 billion and designated them as emergencies. They spent $8.7 billion on agriculture and declared it an emergency. They spent $7.2 billion in this bill on defense, declared it emergency. They spent $4.5 billion on the census. They declared it an emergency. Low-income heating assistance, which has only been around for 24 years, they declared that an emergency at $1.1 billion. They declared $2.5 billion in FEMA as an emergency. They declared half a billion dollars in bioterrorism as an emergency for a grand total of $24.2 billion. So they have already spent more in emergencies than we spent last year. Yet, they claim the reason they do not want to negotiate with the President is to avoid that which they have already done. That strange logic makes sense only, I guess, on this floor. I would also point out that, in this bill, this bill pretends to spend $249 billion in outlays. In fact, when we take into account all of the gimmicks, it spends $271 billion in outlays. They have $21 billion worth of gimmicks in order to pretend that the bill is spending less than it actually spends. It has an emergency designation of $7.2 billion in budget authority and $5.5 billion in outlays. It pretends we are going to make $2.6 billion through spectrum sales. We know that is not going to happen. It has an advance appropriation of $1.8 billion. Then it simply directs the Congressional Budget Office to pretend that the spend-out rate for this bill is going to be $10.5 billion less than it will actually be, and they simply tell the Congressional Budget Office to ignore reality. That hides another $10.5 billion. Then they delay payments to contractors for a few days to save $1.25 billion. So we have overall total gimmicks of $21.6 billion. That is not a good recommendation for passing this bill. One thing we ought to do, no matter what our political differences are, no matter what our philosophical differences are, we at least ought to level with people about what we are doing. Yet, we are engaged in this ridiculous fiction that we are not above the caps and that this Congress has not already spent Social Security money for the coming year, by engaging in all of these phony accounting gimmicks. That is happening, no question about it, at the direct direction of the leadership of this House. I think it brings discredit to the entire process. It brings discredit to this institution. Whatever we pass ought to be on the level. This bill is as far from being on the level in terms of being honest with budget numbers as any I have seen in a long time. This and the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education and Related Agencies appropriations bill, which has all kinds of similar gimmicks, are two reasons which demonstrate that, when it comes to telling the truth, this House gets a flunking grade.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi) for the time. Mr. Speaker, for 4 years this House has been wrapped around the axle on foreign aid, or at least for 2 of those years because of Mexico City policy. For years those who supported the Mexico City provisions on family planning felt that that was so important that they needed to block assistance to some of the poorest people on the face of the globe. It was so important that they had to stop our payments of debts that we owed to the U.N. for years. It was so important that we had to block our contributions to the IMF in the middle of the Asian financial crisis last year. But then this morning the Washington Post carries a story which indicates that the majority whip told the Republican caucus last night that they had to pass this bill as is today without Mexico City if they wanted to remain in control of the House of Representatives. So suddenly conviction apparently evaporates. It took us 2 years to learn that? I am really impressed. So much for conviction, so much for principle. I think we need to understand why this is being done. It is being done so that the majority party can continue to prevent or to pretend that they are preventing this spending of the Social Security surplus for the coming year. The fact is that my colleagues have already spent, Mr. Speaker, they have already spent almost $25 billion of next year's Social Security surplus, and they know it even if they do not want to admit it. The soundness of Social Security has nothing whatsoever to do with this bill. This year and next year we will wind up paying down over $230 worth of debt. That is far and away the best thing we will have done to strengthen Social Security over the past 20 years. Only our Republican friends on the majority side can take a success like this and turn it into a crisis through false rhetoric. What this bill does do is fail to keep our word in the Middle East, it fails to do everything that we ought to be doing to reduce the danger of nuclear weapons within the former Soviet Union. It is another of the long list of items by which the majority politicizes foreign policy to the detriment of us all, and it would be funny if it were not so sad. The majority party's budget, the plans which were announced today, declines to meet our responsibilities in housing, it declines to meet our responsibilities in education, it declines to meet our responsibilities in health care, it declines to meet our responsibilities to veterans, and a whole host of other crucial initiatives domestically and internationally. This bill declines our responsibility to meet our international obligations and to defend our international interests as aggressively as we can. As the gentlewoman has indicated, this bill, under our colleague's level or anybody else's is far less than 1 percent of our total national budget. That is a small price to pay for protecting our national interests around the world, and I think we do a discredit to this body and the political dialog that takes place here when we pretend that this bill has anything whatsoever to do with Social Security. That is a small price to pay for protecting our national interests around the world, and I think we do a discredit to this body and to the political dialogue that takes place here when we pretend that this bill has anything whatsoever to do with Social Security. The only people I know who believe that are the people who are saying it. It is a laughing stock to everyone else in the country who hears it.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, let me remind the gentleman that I led the opposition to those budgets 7 years in a row, the Reagan budgets, which saddled this country with $4 trillion worth of unnecessary debt.

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, October is Coop Month and I am delighted to join with my colleagues in recognizing the importance of cooperatives to our country. The cooperative idea is as old as civilization itself. It began with people recognizing that by banding together for their mutual benefit they could achieve much more than they could as individuals. When we think of co-ops in America we generally think of agricultural organizations who, beginning in the Midwest in the 1860s and 1870s, understood this principal and began to organize around it. Because of the foresight and determination of a number of pioneers in the Grange, founded in 1867, rural Americans began to enjoy the benefits of cooperative stores to serve their members with farm supplies and machinery, groceries and household essentials. Soon, farm commodities from cotton to milk to wheat were being marketed through co-ops. In the following decades the fortunes of co-ops fluctuated, but by the early decades of the twentieth century co-ops had become the prevailing feature of the farm economy helping farmers not only with supplies and marketing, but with financing, housing and electrification. Today, Rural Electric Co-ops alone operate more than half the electrical lines in America and provide electric power to more than 25 million people in 46 states. In the field of telecommunications, cooperatives have become vital in ensuring that rural residents are not bypassed by the information revolution. Today, co-ops are a common feature throughout both rural and urban America and throughout all sectors of the economy, while they remain a vital part of the food and agriculture industry. In recent years, cooperative members have been spreading that message abroad to the developing world and to newly-emerging democracies in Eastern Europe. And, with the help of Congress and the federal government, new co-op development is underway here at home through Co-op Development Centers and the Co-op Development Grants Program at the U.S. Department of Agriculture whereby small federal investments are helping to leverage substantial amounts of non-federal support to help start and strengthen businesses, create jobs and build communities. In 1908, Teddy Roosevelt's Country Life Commission recommended cooperatives as a means to improve economies of scale, strengthen agricultural production and supply and promote infrastructure development. 90 years later, the National Commission on Small Farms called for increased federal investments to support rural cooperative development at the grassroots. While America has changed almost out of all recognition in the intervening years, the cooperative principals upon which much of America's wealth and values is built remain as important as ever. Mr. Speaker, I am happy to help celebrate Co-op Month and to recognize the vital role that co-ops have played in the development of our nation.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, we have many times in this Congress seen committee chairs of authorizing committees complain about the fact that the Committee on Appropriations has added amendment after amendment to appropriations bills which they feel are legislative amendments rather than appropriating amendments and therefore do not belong on appropriations bills. Just last week we were treated to the concerns that one chairman of an authorizing committee had on two appropriations bills that were on the floor. Because of that, I find it ironic that in this case what we are trying to do today is to tell the other body that they should strip from the Interior and HUD appropriation bills a whole range of amendments that do not belong on the bill. Three years ago on the HUD bill, we had a fight over 13 anti- environmental riders that were added to that bill, and it took three votes before we finally were able to strip those off. Now we have well over a dozen major anti-environmental riders added by the other body, if we take the administration's count, and well over that number if we take other outside observers' count. In many instances the people who have been offering these amendments are authorizing committee chairs who cannot get those amendments added to authorizing legislation and so are now trying to use the appropriations bills as vehicles to accomplish their own ends. So we see the spectacle of amendments being added to satisfy the mining industry, amendments being added to satisfy the logging industry, amendments are offered to satisfy the grazing interests, and we see amendments being offered to satisfy the oil industry. The problem is that in each instance those amendments are against the public interests. They may be perfect, a perfect fit with private interests, but they are certainly the antithesis of what we would do if what we were doing is focusing on the public interests; and to me what the gentleman is simply suggesting is that enough is enough, we ought to instruct the conferees to eliminate these nonappropriation provisions. It seems to me, if we do that, we will be protecting the taxpayers' interests as well as the public interest; and once in a while just for the heck of it that is what we ought to be seen as doing.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall) for yielding the time. Mr. Speaker, in the end I will be voting for the bill and the rule, but before I do I would like to get some things off of my chest about what I think the real problems are. I do not think that the committee was wrong not to include dairy in this bill because there were no provisions on dairy, and they would have been not germane to the bill to begin with. I think the committee made the proper decision. I think a number of things happened in the conference that should not have happened. Example: we had a serious debate on the issue of sanctions. I think this country's sanctions policy is deeply flawed. I think it makes no sense to use farmers as pawns in foreign policy. I did not agree with the Senate language on sanctions because I thought it was open sesame and I thought it was carelessly applied; and it could have made available to a number of dictatorial regimes around the world items which they could use to build their own foreign exchange, and we do not want to do that. I think we could have, if we had had the opportunity in conference, worked out a recalibrated sanction program to meet the national interests of the country without making farmers be the infantrymen in every argument we have with a foreign power, but we did not get the chance because the conference was shut down. I think that the distribution of money under the emergency bill should have been along the lines of the suggestions by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm), because that would have guaranteed that the aid would go to people who are actually farming; but we did not get a chance to deal with that issue because the conference was shut down before we were able to offer amendments. I agree, there is not enough money in this bill for disasters, for the Carolina region and for other areas. I think the basic problem in this bill is not the Committee on Appropriations. All we can do is deal with funding issues. The basic problem is that we are dealing with an underlying law that makes no sense because it is based on ideology rather than real-world economics. Somebody said once that economists are people who spend their time worrying about whether what works in real life could actually work in theory, and that certainly is the case when we are dealing with agricultural economics. We have a law right now, the Freedom to Farm Act, which basically says we are going to let the market work, but there is no true market in agriculture for the most part. There is not a country on this globe that does not play games with trade to the detriment of somebody else's farmers. Processors have a fundamental advantage in dealing with farmers in the exchange of most commodities. Markets need to recognize that there are weather problems, there are pest problems, there are disease problems, and we need to try to use government to even out what happens to farmers when they get hit with those problems. Otherwise, we are not going to have family farmers left to produce any commodities in this country. What ought to happen is that the Freedom to Farm bill, which in my opinion has become the freedom-to-lose-your-shirt bill, that bill ought to be tossed out and we ought to start over and produce a bill that makes long-term sense for American farmers. Until that is done, the Committee on Appropriations cannot fix up the problem.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 12 minutes. Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier, I do not in any way blame the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) or his colleagues in the majority party on the Committee on Appropriations for the fact that we are here with only about 5 percent of the budget passed for this year because I think they genuinely tried to perform in the tradition of the Committee on Appropriations, which is to try to reach bipartisan agreement on all appropriation bills. The gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier), the distinguished chairman of the Committee on Rules, indicated that when I was chairman of the committee that the committee had finished its work on time and no continuing resolution was required. That is true. He cited some reasons for that. I would suggest that there is a very different reason for that. The reason that we got our work done on time that year is because the first thing I did when I became chairman was to walk across the partisan aisle, sit down with my Republican counterpart, then Congressman McDade, and suggest that we in a bipartisan way determine how much could be spent by each of the subcommittees, and we did that. That was the only time in the history of the Budget Act that that was done in a bipartisan way, and because we worked out our differences ahead of time and agreed to compromise ahead of time, we were left only to argue about the details, and we were able to finish all of the budget on time. I am sure that if the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) had been left to his own devices, he would probably have done that again this year, but we are in a very different atmosphere. We do have in this House a good many Members elected in very recent years, many of whom have term limited themselves and who believe that, if things do not happen on their watch, they do not happen at all, and as a consequence, the majority party caucus has been split into three factions, and one of those factions has come to govern political strategy when it comes to budgets. That faction has decided that they will resist all attachment to reality and they will continue to pursue the idea that somehow, even though they control only one branch of government, that they can somehow force their will on all of the branches of government including the President. Mr. Speaker, it is that kind of mentality which led to the famous government shutdown of a number of years ago, and while I think some members of the majority caucus have been sobered by their sad experience with that chapter, I think a good many others still feel that they simply do not want to go through the hassle of resisting the militants within the Republican caucus, and so they continue to pretend that the Congress is living within the limits set by the budget agreement 3 years ago, and they continue to pretend that Congress has not already spent substantial amounts out of the Social Security surplus for the coming year. The fact is that while they may pretend that, I have yet to run into a single member of the press, I have yet to run into a single member of the general public, certainly not in my district, who believes that propaganda. I think objective observers recognize that what is going on here is that an adherence to mythology is requiring all kinds of gimmicks that further discredit the Congress in the eyes of the American people, and I would like to quote from a few editorials to demonstrate my point. Washington Post, in an editorial entitled ``Fake Debate,'' September 23, 1999, said as follows about the Republican leadership in the House: What they are doing now is pretending otherwise, not by cutting spending, but by shifting it around so that under budget conventions it won't count against next year's fiscal total. They have designated billions of dollars for the census, agriculture and Defense's emergency spending, they propose to move billions more into either the current fiscal year by hurrying it up, at least on paper, or into the fiscal year after next by delaying it even for a few days, but that matter is only in the world of accounting. In the real world the money still will be spent, and the more that is spent, the less will be available for debt reduction. When they move the money into the adjacent years, they merely eat into those years' likely Social Security surpluses in order to keep up the appearance that next year's will be left intact, but it is merely show. Then they go on to say, The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that Congress has already used about $11 billion in Social Security funds. That's without the pending $8 billion plus in emergency farm aid and without the $8 billion to $9 billion that Congressional leaders themselves now acknowledge will be required to complete the appropriation process. When we add up that 11 billion, that 8 billion, and that 9 billion, we come to the conclusion that they have already committed to spend $28 billion out of that Social Security surplus. Then the editorial goes on to say, Missing also was the money, about 3 billion, that the administration is expected to seek to cover peacekeeping costs in Kosovo. Nor were allowances made by the Congress for Hurricane Floyd, the earthquake in Turkey the stub of a tax bill that is still likely to pass, et cetera, et cetera. Then the editorial concludes: In that real world, they are already past 30 billion and counting. Then it says: What does the harm is not the money they are about to spend. It's the fake debate they continue to conduct, and I would fully subscribe to that. Mr. Speaker, I will insert in my remarks the text of editorials from the Washington Post, an article from the New York Times and an editorial from USA Today, all of which make the similar points that I have just described. Mr. Speaker, I think we are all living in a fiction. I did not vote for the budget that passed 3 years ago, the great budget deal that was described as the so-called Balanced Budget Act of that year, because I knew it was a public lie, and I called it a public lie at the time. I still call it a public lie; and if it is not a public lie, it is the largest fib that I have seen in a good long time because it was premised on the idea that this Congress would in the future make spending cuts in education, in health care, in Medicare care, in all kinds of programs that we know neither side of the aisle really in the end would have the votes to carry out, and that is problem number one. Problem number two is that that has been compounded by the compulsion of the majority party to pursue a tax cut of immense proportions which, if it were passed, would prevent us from adding one dime to Social Security, one new dime to Medicare. It would prevent us from meeting our obligations in the area of health care and education, and it would in the end produce huge reductions in what is known as the people's bill, the Labor, Education and Health appropriation. If we had continued that fiction, that pursuit of that tax bill was, in fact, a rational policy goal. Education and health and worker protection programs would have had to have been cut by 32 percent in real terms, and I do not believe in the end that any responsible Congress would propose those kinds of reductions in those programs. So what I guess I would simply say is: We have seen the charades, the gimmicks, the advanced funding, the delayed funding; we have seen them call a 24-year-old program to help people, old folks, pay their heating bills in the wintertime, we suddenly see them declare that an emergency; we have seen them declare the census, which has to, by law, take place every 10 years in accordance with constitutional mandate, we have seen them claim that is $4 million in emergency spending; and whether it is emergency spending or not, Treasury still has to write the checks, and so that money will be spent no matter what they label it. So it seems to me that the sooner this House and the leadership of the other body sits down with the White House and works out its differences, the better off we will be and the better off the country will be. Now, I know that speaking to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) I am probably speaking to the choir because I am sure that he has made some of the same arguments, certainly not all of them because I am sure he disagrees with some, but I am certain he has made at least some of these same arguments within his own caucus. If members of his caucus had listened 8 months ago, we would not be in the fix we are in today; and I must say I am baffled by the fact that when I was at the White House picnic last week I had three different members of the Republican majority in this House come up to me and say: ``Now look. We understand we made a wrong detour when we followed the cats down this road, but you know we can still climb back on board and put things together.'' Mr. Speaker, my only comment is I wish they would quit saying that to me privately if they do not do it publicly because until we get private and public rhetoric to match, we are not going to get out of this box, and we will be spending a lot of time on false motion. So, Mr. Speaker, I would simply urge that Members recognize that we really have no choice but to extend this or to pass this continuing resolution extending authority for the government to remain open. But I really hope that folks will come back to reality, because otherwise the additional 3 weeks will do no good, and we will be back here 3 weeks from now chewing the same cud, as they say in farm country; and I do not think that will do anybody any good. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 8 minutes. Mr. Speaker, I have a great deal of affection and respect for the gentleman from Florida, but I do think that he should not be rewriting history, as he just did. He just indicated that in 1974, when the Congress was under Democratic control, it added 3 months to the fiscal year, implying that it did it simply for some fiscal gimmick reason. That is nonsense. He and I were both here at that time, and we ought to both remember what happened. We had a new budget act passed that year. What that Budget Act did was change the fiscal year. The fiscal year used to start on July 1; and because Congress could not get its work done since it only came in in January and had just a very few months to do its work, what they did was to change the fiscal year so that in the future, instead of running from July 1 to July 1, it would run from October 1 to October 1, recognizing the reality of the Congressional schedule. We did not do, as the majority party at least in the Senate suggested doing, we did not add a 13th month to the fiscal year in order to hide the spending of $20 billion, as is now being done on the Labor-Health- Education bill. Mr. Speaker, I also will insert in the Record an article in USA Today dated September 28th which is entitled ``Congress Looks to Gimmicks to Bend Budget Rules.'' Mr. Speaker, I would like to return to some of the thoughts that I was trying to complete a few minutes earlier. We have heard a great deal of debate today about whether or not Congress is going to be invading the Social Security surplus in the coming year or not. I want to lay out what the facts are. The Congressional Budget Office on July 1 indicated that we would have for the coming year a surplus of about $14 billion. That was based on the assumption that Congress would stick to outlay caps for appropriations bills which were in existing law. But the Congressional Budget Office, which is, after all, the fiscal referee and the chairman of which is appointed by the Republican majority, that Congressional Budget Office says that the House Committee on Appropriations has already allocated $17 billion above the caps for non-emergency spending. Then, on top of that, they are well down the road to allocating $14 billion more to the various appropriations subcommittees, pretending that the $14 billion surplus which existed in July still exists. It does not, as CBO makes quite clear. Then if you add to that the $4 billion which they have set aside for the so-called emergency census, and if you add to that the funding which the majority party leadership has already indicated it supports for supplementals totaling about $10 billion in outlays, and if you add to that the tax extenders which they intend to pass and the Medicare give-back package which they intend to pass, you can see why virtually every major national newspaper already recognizes that this Congress is spending $35 billion or so out of that Social Security surplus. I am not criticizing the individual decisions made by the majority. I am simply suggesting that if those decisions are to be made, they ought not be masked behind a smoke screen of false rhetoric; and, in my view, that is what is happening on this issue. I would simply point out as a practical person that when we get rid of these artificial constructs, if we handle things right, we will still be in a position where next year we will pay down the deficit by about $10 billion. No matter what phony Social Security construct or what phony budget cap construct is put on it, in the end, when this Congress comes to its senses, recognizes it cannot gut the President's priorities and that it cannot fool the public into thinking that these gimmicks that they are engaging in do not spend money, what I am saying is, in the end, if we negotiate this outright, we will still bring down that public debt this year by about $120 billion; and we will have done the same thing this year in a fairly similar amount. We all ought to be able to recognize that that is a reasonable achievement, and if we would just recognize that, rather than wasting immeasurable time building these phony constructs, I think, in the end, we would produce a better budget and we would have more time to focus on what works, rather than focusing on which accounting gimmick is the most sly, and, in the process, just by accident, we might even improve the public's ability to believe what we say. So I would say in closing, I think rather than listening to the false rhetoric that we heard on the floor earlier today on the Social Security proposition, I think the public, in judging what this Republican-controlled Congress is doing on the budget, ought to take the advice of that well-known defender of liberty, John Mitchell, the former Attorney General under Richard Nixon, who said once that to understand what the Republicans were doing, it was necessary to ``watch what we do, not what we say.'' I think the press has been doing that; I think the public has been doing that. And that is why their false arguments are falling on fallow ground. Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the articles referred to. [From USA Today] GOP Leaders Fall Short on Fiscal Promise Republican congressional leaders have spent the past year promising the public that they've reinforced their commitment to fiscal discipline. They vowed they'd pass the required budget bills on time, live within agreed-upon spending caps and resist raiding the Social Security trust fund. But with three days left before 1999 funding for every government agency runs out, the script has hit some snags. The GOP majority hopelessly has blown the first two promises and shows little of the self-discipline needed to keep even its oft-repeated Social Security pledge. And instead of revealing the flaws behind their fiction, Republicans still are scrambling to manipulate a happy ending. Only four of the 13 annual spending bills for the new year starting Friday have been sent to the president. House Speaker Dennis Hastert finally acknowledged over the weekend that a stopgap measure will be required to avoid another government shutdown like the one that backfired on the GOP four years ago. Further, the spending approved so far and in the congressional pipeline will exceed the 2000 spending cap agreed to in 1997 by roughly $30 billion, swallowing the much heralded $14 billion surplus while leaving the government's non-Social Security accounts $15 billion overdrawn. What happened? Despite talk about economy in government, lawmakers have been unable to resist throwing more money at weapons purchases, military salaries, home-town projects and other favored causes. Paying for all that without cheating would require dipping into surplus Social Security income, as Congress has done for decades. So much for the promise of putting Social Security surpluses into a ``lock box'' untouchable for other purposes. To avoid acknowledging reality, Congress has tried one bookkeeping gimmick after another: Declaring fully predictable costs like the 2000 census and a long-established program of winter-heating aid for the poor ``emergencies,'' and thus outside spending limits. Trying to charge politically potent spending, like more than $5 billion in new aid to farmers, against this year's books even though it won't reach anyone until next year. Snatching back, at least for a year, $3 billion in federal aid promised to the states as part of the 1996 welfare reform. Disguising still-unknown billions in 2000 spending by charging it against a hoped-for surplus in 2001, exploiting an established loophole to create in effect a 13-month year. Republicans are not unique in their gamesmanship. Democrats have been fully complicit in fudging budget caps in recent years, and President Clinton's spending proposal for 2000 had its own similarly surreal qualities. For example, Clinton's claim to a balanced budget was based on increased tobacco taxes and other changes that were clear non-starters. But the majority party in Congress controls the legislative agenda and carries prime responsibility for enacting a budget. So far, GOP leaders can't muster the discipline to keep their promises, or the courage to explain why not. So they shouldn't be surprised if voters who were promised a surplus and a safe Social Security hold them responsible when they discover neither exist.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, my concern is also that this is a Congress which has a rendezvous with prevarication. We just heard a lot of debate on the previous bill where Members promised that they would not be dipping into the deficit and promised they would not be dipping into Social Security. We have had a lot of posing for pictures about resisting breaking the budget caps. I want Members to understand when they vote for this continuing resolution, Members who vote for the continuing resolution will be voting to break the caps, because if this continuing resolution were to be carried out on an annualized basis, which is the only prudent way you can score it, it would mean that we would be spending more than $30 billion above the amount allowed by the caps. So before people cast these silly, meaningless and in some case prevaricating votes, I would urge them to recognize what in fact they are doing when they support this continuing resolution. It is about time we face reality.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, let me simply say there is nothing new about the Congress not finishing its appropriations bills on time. That has happened many times, and it will undoubtedly happen again in the future. My concern is not so much that all of the bills have not been finished, my concern is the mind-set which has led us to this situation. And that mind-set can be revealed by describing what happened to the appropriations bills over the last 8 months. First, this House spent 3 months trying to impeach the President of the United States. It then spent the next 8 months trying to pass a huge tax package, which would have prevented us from putting one additional dime into Social Security, into Medicare, and the like. It has, today, just debated a resolution which says we pledge not to spend one dime of the Social Security surplus at the very moment that papers are being circulated for the agriculture conference report which adds $700 million to the appropriations bill in the form of so-called emergency spending which will raise to well over $20 billion the amount of money that has already been spent by this House out of the Social Security surplus. Then we have one other complicating factor. Seven times the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) and the Republican majority on the committee worked in cooperation with the Democratic minority to produce bills which were bipartisan and signable. And each time he was cut off at the pass by the militant elements of his own caucus which said, no way, Jose, we do not want that kind of coalition that can pass these bills with a coalition of the great middle, a majority of the people on both sides or in both parties. Instead, we want 13 bills which reflect only our vision of what this country ought to look like. And so they turned seven bipartisan bills into seven partisan war zones. And, as a consequence, we now sit here with only less than 5 percent of the total Federal budget completed by both Houses. I do not for one moment blame the Republican majority on the Committee on Appropriations for this situation. I do blame a mind-set which has allowed the appropriations process to be hijacked by a militant element within the majority party caucus which says our way or no way time and time and time again, and leaves us in a situation today where we are still, in my judgment, months away from having a real compromise between the White House and between both parties in this Congress. In the end, the right people will learn one essential fact; that appropriations bills cannot be passed solely on one side of the aisle. In the end, they will recognize what virtually every Member of Congress has learned before them; that in order to pass appropriations bills, we must have coalitions made up of Members of both parties. Because those bills are too complicated and deal with too many conflicting concerns and values to do otherwise. So that is the reality we face here today. We have a 3-week CR which will keep the government open for another 3 weeks. The question is whether in that time people will really get serious about passing bipartisan appropriations or whether they will continue the policy of confrontation and the other fictions attendant to the debate that took place in this House just a few minutes ago.

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Wisconsin (Ms. Baldwin).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, would the gentleman repeat that?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the remaining time. Mr. Chairman, the question before us is very simple. Should the highest cost producers in this country get a special bonus from the taxpayers in order to drive up the overall supply of milk which drives down the price that all farmers in the country receive? That is the issue. The USDA, in contrast to those of us who have regional biases, and that is all of us on this floor, the USDA is supposed to be neutral. What the USDA estimates is that if the modest reforms under Option 1-B had been in effect last year, over all dairy farmers throughout the country would be better off by 87 cents per hundred-weight for Class I milk and dairy earnings would be 15 to 20 cents per hundred-weight higher. That means a farmer with 50 cows, each producing 20,000 pounds of milk, would be $1,500 to $2,000 better off with the dairy reform preferred by USDA. Dairy farmers nationwide, according to USDA, would have received $300 million in additional income. They are not going to receive that if this legislation passes today. Since it appears that it is, then I would urge Members, as an alternative, to support the Boehner-Obey amendment because if Government is going to involve itself, it needs to do so in a fair manner. It is clear that involvement is not fair in this instance, and that is why no involvement is better than unfair involvement. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 4 minutes. Mr. Chairman, I would ask Members of the House, when is the last time they have seen the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner) and the gentleman from Wisconsin agree on anything? It has been a long time. The reason we are here is because of Old Bossy. Old Bossy is a Holstein cow. Now, if one is Farmer Jones, and one milks Old Bossy in Oklahoma, the Government says one gets a bonus of $1.40 for every hundred pounds of milk one can get from Old Bossy in comparison to what one would get if one milks that same Old Bossy in the State of Illinois. Now, if my colleagues can convince me that that makes sense, I would nominate them for the Pulitzer Prize in any field they want to name. I would nominate them for the Nobel Prize or any other prize they want. But I do not think they can convince me. I do not think they can convince the members of the press. I do not think they can convince farmers. And I do not think they can convince the general public that that system makes very much sense. Now, the market does not dictate that difference in price; the law does. That is what makes it even crazier. Welcome back, Henry Wallace. Things have not changed since 1937, except for 1985, when this whole system got even crazier. Because in 1985, a fellow by the name of Tony Coelho, my good friend and colleague, came to this floor; and he decided that those bonuses were not big enough. He was going to make them even bigger. So he did. Now, we could have lived, I guess, with the original differentials, as bad as they were, because they were at least determined by agricultural economists who were trying to balance the needs of all regions fairly. But in 1985 that system was changed, and it was switched to a straight decision based on raw political power. Now, 3 years later, Steve Gunderson, then Chair of the dairy subcommittee, tried to get reform pushed through. He was told by the leadership of this House, Sorry, you cannot have a legislative remedy. All we are going to do is give you an opportunity for an administrative remedy. Let the USDA decide what is fair. So we said okay. That is what USDA did. They brought forth modest, and I mean modest, reforms. Now what has happened, the very folks who said we could not have a legislative remedy are now saying, oh, gee whiz, we do not like what the administrative remedy was. So we are going to overturn it through this legislation. That is why my colleagues have the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner) and I united today. Because I for one have concluded that, while I prefer supply management, dairy is the only industry in the world I know of where one does not cut back supply in order to meet demand. But if one cannot get supply management, then one ought to have a reasonable government program that dictates how this is handled. But we do not have a reasonable government program. We have a totally arbitrary program based on how many votes one can get on this floor, not based on the legitimate economic needs of every farmer in the country regardless of where they come from. That is why I have reluctantly concluded, if we cannot get a square deal out of this Congress, then let us not have any deal at all. Let the market deal it. Then at least we will not have politicians to blame for the ridiculous situation you have across this country when it comes to dairy prices. That is why I support this amendment. I urge my colleagues to support it along with us.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Peterson).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, could I inquire how much time is remaining for all parties.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, for the last 10 years, we have had a lot of people on this House floor demanding that Russia move from a Marxist market system to a free market system. Yet, they are going to come to the floor tomorrow and support this bill which says that we must keep in place the most Soviet-style pricing system in the history of this country. That is what the existing status quo is. What they are saying is, if it was good enough for us in 1937, it is good enough for us right now. With all due respect, I disagree. What existing law says and what this bill seeks to continue is that, if one produces 100 pounds of milk in one place in this country, one is mandated by the government to get $2 to $3 more for 100 pounds of milk than one would if one produced that same amount of pounds of milk someplace else in the country. That is nuts. That is absolutely nuts. So what we are trying to do is to have this Congress live up to the promise it made a few years ago. When the Freedom to Farm bill was on this floor a few years ago, Congressman Gunderson, Republican, chairman of the dairy subcommittee, was trying to get on this floor an amendment to change the existing system. He was told by his own party leadership, ``Sorry, you are not going to get a legislative remedy. You are going to have to rely on what USDA does.'' So that is what we did. Under that limited authority, USDA tried in a modest way to make the system more equitable. Now that the folks who denied us the legislative remedy 3 years ago do not like what the administrative remedy has produced, they are now flipping their word. Now what they are saying is, oh, forget what we said about doing it administratively, we are now going to overturn the USDA and impose our own will. What does that mean? It means this decision will not be made on the basis of economics. It will not be made on the basis of economic fairness. It will be made on the basis of raw political power. Simply put, that is what the issue is before us. That is why this rule should be defeated. That is why this bill should be defeated. The folks who are defending the status quo told us, Rely on the fair shake that we can get from USDA. We did it. Now they are trying to bust the deal. That is not the way the people's house is supposed to work.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I strongly support this motion and will vote for it, but I want to take this time to discuss my broader concerns about the budget crisis that we face. As Members know, yesterday the Republican leadership indicated they wanted to solve the problem of our budget caps by providing for a 13- month fiscal year. I want to say today that I enthusiastically support that plan and I urge that the new month be named ``Orwellian.'' The reason I say that is because George Orwell in his famous novel ``1984'' began that novel with the words, ``It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking 13.'' I think there are 10 advantages of a 13-month year as the Republican leadership is suggesting. First of all, everyone could take 8 percent off their age. Adding 1 month to the year reduces the number of years we have lived by 8 percent. Second, we could bring back Ronald Reagan as President. By making this retroactive, we could arrange it so that it is 1984 all over again, which is what the Republicans have been trying to do for years. That would be appropriate, because it was with the Reagan budgets that the deficit first exploded and put us where it is today. Third, it could add 30 more shopping days till Christmas. That would add immeasurably to economic growth, although it could cause the economy to overheat which might cause Alan Greenspan to raise interest rates. Fourth, it could give every child in America 1 month more of summer vacation. That could add to economic growth in the tourist and resort industries as people have more time to travel. Fifth, as an alternative we could add 1 month to the work year. That could add to worker productivity and raise economic growth that way. Sixth, it would help at least two more major league baseball players to join Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa in breaking Roger Maris' single season home run record because they would have 30 extra days to do it. That would bring millions of additional fans into the Nation's ballparks, and we would have millions more to add to the economic strength of baseball and to the economy in general. Seventh, it would make all taxpayers happy by delaying tax filing deadlines by 1 month. Eighth, it could give Republicans 1 extra month to complete their budget, although at the rate they are going, that probably would not make any difference. Ninth, it could delay the Y2K problem by 1 month if the month is inserted before January. And, tenth, it could prove that the Middle Age critics of Galileo were correct when they denied his theory that the earth circled the sun once every 12 months. They could thus join the Kansas school board in helping turn back the clock. I would urge that we support the Republican leadership's proposal. It is the way out of this mess for everyone. And while we are considering that proposal, I hope we get serious and in fact pass the motion to instruct that the gentlewoman is proposing on the East Timor question today. It is a serious issue. We should not be providing military aid to Indonesia under these circumstances. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me the time.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to instruct conferees.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments. I would simply say to the leadership of the House, we are trying to be cooperative on this committee on both sides. It is pretty hard to cooperate if we don't have prior notice. The gentleman has indicated he hasn't had that notice either, and I think that's equally unfortunate. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question. The previous question was ordered.