Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, I will not object, but I do want to take this time simply to point out that the minority was not told until a very few minutes ago that these motions were going to be made at this time today. We are in the situation where several of our ranking subcommittee members are not on the floor because they did not know this motion was going to be made. I do not think it is quite fair to them to proceed under this kind of a situation. I recognize it is not the fault of the gentleman from New Mexico, so I will not object; and we have no interest in delaying the action of the House, but I would simply ask that in the future, action be taken to make certain that the minority is made aware in a timely fashion of the intent to make these motions at a time so that we can be prepared as quickly as possible in making the correct motions.

Mr. OBEY. I yield to the gentleman from New Mexico.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I will not take very long. The situation is very simple. The House bill is $15 million above the Senate bill for the Department of Agriculture's food and safety inspection service programs, and it is $5 million above the Senate bill for FDA food safety initiatives. We believe the public has a right to have total confidence in the safety of its food supply. It certainly, in some instances unfortunately, does not have that to date. We think that the numbers in the bill will be at least minimally affected in increasing our ability to assure a safe food supply for the American public and would urge, therefore, that the conferees be instructed to provide the higher of the two numbers in each account in order to do the maximum that is allowable under rules, given the difference in scope between the two bills, to assure that food safety is the highest priority in the bill as it comes back from conference. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, in case people are wondering what is happening here, why the House looks so disorganized, it is for the following reason: Those of us on the Minority on the Appropriations Committee have been working with the Majority on the committee all today under the assumption that we would have a common understanding about what the schedule would be for the remainder of the day, and we had expected one and perhaps at most two motions would be made to go to conference on appropriation bills. We were trying to cooperate with the Majority in making sure that that went smoothly on the matters that we understood might come before us. Then what happened is that evidently the House leadership decided it wanted to make a unilateral decision to have motions on five different appropriation bills. The problem is that the Majority on the Committee on Appropriations did not know that that was going to happen and neither did the Minority. In my view, that is a lousy way to run a railroad. The House is running around here now looking confused because it is confused. It just seems to me that there is no particular purpose to be served in rushing to conference on these bills when neither side even understood that we were going to be doing that. I am still trying to cooperate under these circumstances, but I would ask the House leadership that if we cannot do this in an orderly fashion for some of the remaining bills that we simply deal with it tomorrow morning, if we run out of bills that we can handle in a rational fashion, because otherwise we are simply stumbling around here. And in the process, we will be denying Members the opportunity to debate questions which I know Members wanted to debate on at least two of the bills that are coming up today. Members did not know this would be happening before they got back, and I think the leadership has an obligation to avoid situations like that.

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I did not expect to be here alone on this question today. I regret that because of the surprise nature of the consideration of these issues that the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) was not able to be here to deal with the agriculture bill that was brought before us. The gentleman from New York (Mr. Serrano) had no notice either of the intention of the House to deal with the State, Justice, Commerce bill. The gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha) is in the same situation with respect to the Defense appropriations bill. Let me say that this motion to instruct is very simple. It asks the Congress to think about the kind of threats that we will face in the future, not the kind of threats that we have faced in the past. We must be mindful of the latter, but we must be even more alert to the former. It seems to me that we have to recognize the fact that one of the largest dangers to our security interests over coming years will be a threat that comes from potential terrorist attacks using chemical and biological and other different kinds of weapons that are traditionally thought of when one thinks of war. As we move more and more into an electronics age, as we are more and more both aided by and imprisoned by computers, we need to recognize the fact that there is a substantial security risk to this country on the part of persons who can weave their way into our own computers, not just at DOD but other agencies across Government. So this motion simply asks that the higher amounts that are within scope in the conference on these items be approved so that we do whatever it is possible to do to the maximum given the nature of the bills before us to enhance our security against terrorist attacks and to enhance our ability to defend against computer hackers. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I would simply say in closing that I think this is one point on which there is no difference of opinion between the administration and the House on either side of the aisle in the House. I do think if I were the administration, I would be hard-pressed to follow the conflicting instructions that seem to be coming from the two congressional bodies, with the Senate going in one direction and the House in another, but I think they are going in the right direction on this item with their amended request. I think the House agrees with that. I think this motion to instruct will make it clear to the Senate that we believe they ought to back off and accept the higher number now contained in the administration request. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, what is at issue here is what level of funding we ought to provide to do our dead-level best to provide security arrangements for our various embassies around the world. As we very well know, we have had a number of terrorist attacks against those embassies. Many people in our society have a tendency to dismiss State Department officials as being ``stripe pants boys.'' But the fact is that many of them have lost their lives promoting U.S. interests around the world and a number of those lives have been lost in terrorist attacks. I find it somewhat interesting that the administration seems to be in a position where they are damned if you do and damned if they do not in terms of embassy security. I remember earlier in the year the House committee held a hearing and at that point demanded that the administration support a higher level of funding for embassy security. The administration requested an additional $314 million in this bill, and the House committee approved $314 million. But then when it got to the Senate, the Senate cut back that number to $110 million. In my view, the House number is correct. The purpose of this motion is to send a clear signal that the House would prefer to fund the highest level possible given what the spread of the difference is between the House and the Senate on this issue. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object, I would simply like to reiterate to the gentleman what the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Stupak) has indicated; that when we first discovered the possibility of the reduction of the beds for that facility that Senator Kohl and Senator Feingold and Senator Levin, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Stupak) and I sent a letter to the VA noting the illogical nature of closing the remote hospital beds while we had such an overlap in some of our largest urban areas. I talked personally with the leadership of the VA; and after that conversation, they made it quite clear to me that they had no intention of closing any of those beds in that facility. Certainly this budget has no provision for closing those beds. I appreciate very much the willingness of the VA to reconsider what, to me, was an ill-advised approach. I do think Members of Congress have to be careful because it is very difficult for us to be logically consistent if we are voting for budgets which appear to demand overall reductions and then if we object when specific reductions are then made in either our own areas or in our own favorite programs. But in this instance I am very happy that we received the response that we have from the VA. Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, this bill pretends to spend $19 billion on veterans health care, $3.6 billion on National Science Foundation, $17.4 billion on housing, and $7.3 billion on environmental protection. But to make this bill eligible for consideration on the House floor it contains a phony $3 billion cut in the Tennessee Valley Authority that the congressional Budget Office and OMB both agree saves not one dime. That means that, in the end, unless $3 billion in real savings are found, the law requires every item in this and every other appropriation bill to be sequestered; or, in plain language, to be cut by $3 billion. That would mean defense would be cut by $1.5 billion, veterans would be cut below the amount in the bill, and science would be cut further below the amount in the bill. This motion simply tells the committee to find a real $3 billion offset rather than the phony TVA offset which is now contained in the bill. Unless the committee produces a real offset, we will cause real reductions in veterans health care, in health and education programs in the budget, in environment, in defense, in science and virtually every other function of the government. Mr. Speaker, so far this year we have seen several bills which use CBO scoring, then we see one other bill which simply uses what is called directed scoring. In other words they order the scorekeeper to tell us how much money the bill will be estimated to spend, which hides almost $10 billion. And we see other bills that pretend they meet the budget requirements by labeling items as emergency expenditures. This one is the most dangerous of them all because it actually will produce sequestration, or cuts in other programs, including the programs in this bill, of almost $3 billion. The way to avoid those unnecessary actions is to support this recommittal motion.

Mr. OBEY. In its present form, Mr. Speaker, I certainly am.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to recommit.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, let me say I very much understand what motivates my colleague, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kleczka), to offer this amendment. I have not the foggiest idea whether the standard being proposed or even contemplated by the agency is the correct one. My problem is that I have stood many times on this floor and resisted congressional efforts to, on the basis of a very short debate, reach what, in essence, is a scientific conclusion to prohibit an agency charged with protecting public health from taking whatever action they think is necessary to protect the public health. It seems to me the best way to approach things is to try to work together and go to the agency and to insist informally that they produce hard evidence that what they are doing makes sense. My concern with the gentleman's amendment goes to simply one word: prohibit. I do not know enough to either prohibit or to encourage what they are doing, and I would urge that the gentleman follow the advice of the gentleman from New York (Mr. Walsh). I think that is the most constructive way to try to work together to get the right answer. None of us want to see municipalities or anybody else have to incur expenses that are not necessary. Even though in this instance it is my own State, I don't feel comfortable in, in essence, making a legislative judgment about a scientific matter until we ourselves know what we are talking about. At this point, the gentleman from Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Mr. Kleczka) may be comfortable in assessing what the agency is doing, but I know this Member is not.

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Oklahoma says that the District of Columbia should not be able to use taxpayers' dollars to petition for the right to be represented in this body. What he forgot to tell us is that it is their money. Each of us represents half a million people, and we cast a vote on their behalf in this chamber. This bill says that the city cannot even use its own money to pursue the right in court to have their own voting representative. Now, one may disagree with their right to have that idea, but to say that the City cannot use its own resources and has to depend on private fund raising in order to achieve a public right is, to me, the ultimate act of antidemocratic arrogance. These are Americans we are talking about. These are taxpayers we are talking about. Yet, we say that they have to go hand in hand to raise private money in order to achieve their own public rights. That is outrageous to be heard in any democratic institution. If big brother is going to tell the City what their own ordinances can contain, then at least that City ought to have a voting right in this body, and they ought to be able to use their own resources in order to try to achieve that end. If he disagrees with the idea that they ought to have a voting right in this body, so be it. But they have a right to use their own money the way their own local taxpayers want it to be used, not the way the gentleman from Oklahoma thinks is correct. That is the ultimate big brother arrogance.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I make a point of order against the consideration of the bill.

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I make a point of order that the bill provides new discretionary budget authority in an amount which would exceed the applicable allocation made pursuant to section 302(b) of the Congressional Budget Act, and therefore violates section 302(f) of the Congressional Budget Act. The most recent subcommittee allocations filed under section 302(b), as contained in House Report 106-288, allocate a total $68.633 billion in new discretionary budget authority to the Subcommittee on VA, HUD, and Independent Agencies. According to the scoring table from the Congressional Budget Office, the bill appropriates $71.632 billion in discretionary budget authority. Therefore, and as the CBO scoring table indicates, the bill exceeds its section 302(b) allocation by $2.999 billion. A point of order, therefore, should lie against its consideration under section 302(f) of the Budget Act. The reason that the bill is scored as exceeding its allocation is that the Committee on Appropriations is apparently counting as an offset a $3 billion reduction in the borrowing authority of the TVA. This is authority for TVA to borrow from the public and has nothing to do with appropriations or amounts in this bill. Neither CBO nor OMB regard this so-called offset as producing any budget authority savings whatsoever. Therefore, the bill exceeds its allocation. I should also note a second consequence. Because OMB does not recognize the $3 billion supposed offset, if this bill were enacted in its present form, it would trigger an automatic across-the-board sequestration of appropriations under the Budget Enforcement Act, in the amount of $3 billion. That would roughly be about a billion and a half dollars sequestration that would be required in the Defense budget and about a billion and a half dollars that would be required to be sequestered on the domestic side of the appropriations ledger. Now, I recognize that the chairman of the Committee on Budget could produce a letter which, in essence, urges the Congress to ignore this financial fact, but the fact is that, if it chooses to do that, there will, in fact, be a sequestration under this bill. Because if we take a look at the OMB Sequestration Update Report to the President and Congress for Fiscal Year 2000, we will see that, on page 11, it states: ``Current OMB estimates of House action to date, unless offset, indicate that a sequester of $3.7 billion in budget authority and $2.9 billion in outlays would be triggered.'' The major amounts in question are related to this bill. If we take a look at the table sent down by the CBO on their budget analysis, on page 18, we will see that they report the same results. So, therefore, I would suggest that this bill, for reasons that I have cited, should not be before the House. I would certainly say that, even if the Committee on Budget chairman produces a letter which claims that this bill is not $3 billion over its authorized allocation, the fact is that, according to the people who are charged by law with actually measuring the bill, it is; and, therefore, it will result in the automatic reduction in the other programs that are not in this bill that I have just cited.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Chairman, this bill is an absolutely wonderful bill unless my colleagues think that the Congress ought to spend our time responding to the legitimate needs of the American people. If they do, then it turns out to be a bit of a turkey. I do not blame the chairman of the subcommittee for that fact. He is a good man, and he is doing the best that he can under a ridiculous budget situation. But let me tell my colleagues what is wrong with this bill and why I intend to vote against it. First of all, the bill is $2 billion below the request and $1 billion below last year for housing. It is $1 billion below last year for science at NASA. It is $275 million below the request of the National Science Foundation. The administration's budget for veterans was totally inadequate. Everybody knows that. I do not know of any Member of the Congress who supports it. This bill itself is $1.3 billion below what the veterans groups regard as necessary to fund veterans' health care. The rule under which this bill is being considered denied us the opportunity to add $750 million to take care of at least half of that shortfall by delaying for 1 year the capital gains give-away that was in the recent tax bill that just passed. That alone is reason enough to vote against this bill. The bill also zeros out funds for Americorps, which is a high Presidential priority. As I indicated when I made my point of order, in spite of all of that, this bill is $3 billion out of whack in its accounting because it has a ``let's pretend'' cut in TVA that does not save a dime. It then uses that ``let's pretend'' cut to fund $3 billion worth of money for other programs. But in fact, since neither the Congressional Budget Office or the Office of Management and Budget recognizes it as a real cut, this bill will trigger a sequestration and an across-the-board cut of all domestic programs of $1.5 billion; and we will trigger a defense cut of about $1.5 billion, as well. On the issue of housing, I would simply like to make this observation. This bill accelerates the already rapid separation of this country into two separate societies. A report issued this past weekend by the Center for Budget Priorities indicated that the lower two-fifths of this country in terms of income are actually losing economic ground, while the top one-fifth are enjoying unprecedented prosperity. Overall, the personal incomes of Americans have increased by about 20 percent over the past 22 years. But that increase has been distributed in a very even manner. Incomes at the top have doubled, while incomes for the 50 million households at the bottom have fallen. This is taking place at the same time that housing costs have been rising and the number of rental units that were affordable to low- income families has been shrinking at a dramatic pace. The Department of Housing and Urban Development estimates that the number of rental units available to very low-income families dropped by $900,000 just between 1993 and 1995, and the number of very low-income families who must spend more than 50 percent of their income on rent has jumped from 3.2 million in 1978 to over 5 million people today. In other words, low-wage families are getting squeezed twice. First because their wages are not keeping pace, and secondly because housing costs are chewing up more and more of their meager paychecks. And neither party, in my view, is doing enough to deal with that problem. This bill makes the situation markedly worse. It cuts about $1 billion below last year's level from federal housing programs at about $2 billion below the request at a time when construction and rehabilitation costs are rising much faster than other costs in the economy. Anybody who believes that this continued bifurcation of America can produce the kind of stable and peaceful and productive society that we all profess to want is simply not seeing things clearly. I would also point out that Business Week carried a very interesting article which states in part: ``We have demonstrated that scientific research has created the New Economy, but now we are concerned that we are being trampled on as a reward for creating the economy that made the surplus possible.'' Those were the words of a scientist in describing the need to continue to invest in science programs that have been at the root of our ability to continue to expand this economy. Politicians brag a lot about what we have done to keep the economy going, but mostly what keeps the economy going is the right investment decisions both by the private sector and by the Government. And we are falling far short in meeting those obligations in science. Allan Bromley, former science advisor to President Bush, says, ``Congress has lost sight of the critical role science plays in expanding the economy.'' I would very much agree with that. So I would simply say there are a lot of good reasons to vote against this bill. We ought to be able to do better by veterans. We ought to be able to do better by housing. We ought to be able to do better by the basic science budget. And until they do, this Member is going to vote ``no.''

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I have no desire to delay this bill, and so I guess what I would say is that I think I have demonstrated, by raising the point of order, that this bill, in fact, is not in compliance. If the House wishes to proceed and vote for a bill which is going to result in the kind of massive sequestration that I have just indicated, then so be it. That would be the House's choice. So I guess I am in a position where, in order to contribute to the ability of the House's ability to do its business, I will withdraw the point of order, but I would caution every Member who intends to vote for this bill that, if they do so, they will in fact be imposing just such a sequestration on both the Defense budget and on the domestic programs. With that, Madam Speaker, I withdraw my point of order.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I demand that the gentleman's words be taken down and engraved upon the door, because they are absolutely correct.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. I would simply say that I very much agree with the intent of the gentleman's amendment and I hope that it can be accomplished.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, it is nice to have a little exchange, instead of five minute speeches. Let me simply say in response to my good friend, you do not pass a bill if all you do is get it out of the Congress. The Constitution says that a bill becomes law only when you have agreement between the authorizing committee and the executive branch. The problem with your committee, very frankly, is it has been so extreme in its positions, it has not been able to pass its bills except when they attach them to appropriation bills. You have not been able to put together a one-car funeral in your own jurisdiction in over 10 years on foreign aid. Yes, we have an authorization in an appropriation process, but that implies that the authorization committee be functional. Yours has demonstrated that it is not.