Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, if I could respond to the gentleman's comments. The assertion that the Hall amendment eliminates the reforms that this committee is pressing forward with is totally, absolutely false and misinformed. The Hall amendment eliminates lines 8 through 18 in the bill on page 80. That is only the language that refers to the requirement for authorization. It leaves in place the following language: None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available under this heading for payment of arrearages may be obligated or expended until such time as the share of the total of all assessed contributions for any designated specialized agency of the U.N. does not exceed 22 percent for any single member of the agency.

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

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

Mr. OBEY. I would just like to ask, why does the gentleman continue to say that this amendment eliminates the conditions when in fact the conditions still remain in the bill. I mean saying something 15 times that is not so does not make it so.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, in the interests of time, I would ask the gentleman one additional question: Why should we continue to allow appropriation bills to get bogged down by authorization issues? When is the last time the authorization committee has been able to pass their legislation, except for the year when they were able to attach it to the Committee on Appropriations? The answer is 1994. On the foreign aid bill, that committee has gone over 10 years without being able to pass a foreign aid bill. Why on Earth should we allow a committee that can never get its own work done to interfere in our ability to get our work done?

Mr. OBEY. I am continuing to read: And the agencies have achieved zero nominal growth in their biennium budgets for 2000-2001 from the 1998-1999 biennium budget levels of the respective agencies. That makes it clear. Those reforms stay in place. What the gentleman from Ohio is trying to do is to simply get us out of the business of being a deadbeat because he understands that we have more leverage, not less, if we paid our bills. The fact that we have not paid our bills has already cost us $100 million because since we had not paid our bills we were not able to convince the U.N. to lower our percentage payments for the shared cost of those programs. So if my colleagues are interested in saving the taxpayers' dollars, pass the amendment offered by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall). If they are interested in keeping the reforms in place for the U.N., pass the Hall amendment. Let us not confuse the facts.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I would like to put this in hard-headed Midwestern terms. I do not believe that anybody in this House should vote to spend one dime on the United Nations if they think it is to help the United Nations or to help somebody else. We are supposed to be defending taxpayers' money, and what I would say to my colleagues is: ``Don't contribute to the United Nations unless you think that those contributions are helping our own country and helping us defend our own national interests,'' and they most certainly are. What are the fund supposed to be spent for that the gentleman is talking about? He is talking about money that has been withheld from the World Health Organization. What does that agency do? It is helping to eradicate polio around the world. One of its responsibilities is to try to deal with one of the most dangerous items known to man, ebola, which causes wretched epidemics whenever it breaks out. In a world of instant transportation, the United States can just as easily be the victim of that as some African or European country. We need to eradicate worldwide diseases not just because we are trying to help somebody else, but because we are trying to defend our own populations from those kinds of diseases. Those funds are also supposed to be going to the Food and Agriculture Organization to address global famine conditions. Now, if my colleagues do not think that it is in the American national interest to eliminate famine, then I invite them to remember what has happened in region after region around the world when economies are destroyed and when agricultural bases are destroyed. What happens is we have political instability that leads to the rise of governments that are not in our interests, and that often leads to war, and we often get involved in those wars. We are also holding back funds for the International Labor Organization. That is the agency that is supposed to monitor compliance with child labor laws. We have had fights week after week on this floor about protecting American workers from competition, from goods produced in slave labor conditions or produced by child labor around the world. What the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall) is saying is that we do good for the world, we do good for America, we do good for our own people when we pay our bills and participate fully in an agency that frankly we have far more influence in than any other country in the world. Does anybody really think the United Nations makes any major political decision without the agreement of the United States? Very few that I know. It just seems to me that it is time to recognize that if we want to save our money, if we want us to be able to negotiate a lower payment rate to the United Nations, if we want to enhance our ability to do tough bargaining at the United Nations, we are in a stronger position if we paid our bills than if we have not. And I would point out if we do not pay our bills, we will lose our U.S. voting rights in the General Assembly eventually. So I would suggest there are plenty of reasons to listen to the wise counsel of the gentleman from Ohio. We ought to pass this amendment and end this outrageous linkage that occurs when a tiny band of Members each year find one issue that matters to them more than any other, and so they tie up virtually every other issue in this place until they get their way. Let us have clean, stand-up, up-or-down votes on all of these issues rather than linking them until we are virtually tied like Gulliver because we have got these lilliputian issues that do not allow the Congress to accomplish anything. The gentleman from Ohio is right. He saves taxpayers' money in the long run; he serves the U.S. national interest. We ought to support him.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me and let me apologize to the House ahead of time for the length of time of this reservation but this will in fact save time by avoiding the necessity to use a rule. Mr. Speaker, this process will have the unfortunate but completely avoidable effect of shutting down the Airport Improvement Program. On Saturday, the authorization for the airport program, AIP, will expire and the program will shut down for the rest of this fiscal year unless an extension is provided. S. 1467, as passed by the Senate, would provide the simple extension needed to keep this program afloat. Nonetheless, this process makes in order a motion to amend that simple extension with the text of AIR-21, the multiyear FAA reauthorization bill that is replete with controversial provisions, including taking $39 billion in spending off budget, airport slot extensions at O'Hare and National Airports, and other matters that will not be easily resolved. Since we know that no conference on the FAA reauthorization could possibly be completed by tomorrow, in fact the Senate has not even passed their version of the reauthorization bill, adoption of the pending motion to amend S. 1467 will have the effect of shutting down the AIP program. Mr. Speaker, last year the Committee on Appropriations sought to provide a full year of funding at $1.95 billion for the AIP program for fiscal 1999. We were denied in that effort by authorizers who insisted on less than a full year's funding. We have now had two short-term extensions of that program since the fiscal 1999 transportation appropriations bill was signed into law last year because of the authorizers refusal to agree to full-year funding. The first extension continued the program from March 31 through May 31 of 1999, the second extension was included in the fiscal 1999 Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act and continued the program only through August 6 at the insistence of the authorizing committees, despite the desire of the Committee on Appropriations to extend the program through the end of the year. Now we find ourselves facing yet another shutdown of the program because of the insistence of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure in using the AIP Program as a pawn to get the Senate to the conference table on AIR-21. I strongly object to the process that the gentleman from Pennsylvania is using to get to the conference with the Senate. There is no need to hold our airports hostage and deny them the additional funding that they are due this year because of disagreements over slots, off-budget provisions, and other controversial issues in the FAA reauthorization bill. There is absolutely no need to shut the an airport program down. It is completely avoidable. Yet that will be the result of the actions proposed by the gentleman. If the airport grant program is shut down after August 6, airports could lose $290 million in fiscal 1999 funding that we intended to provide this year. The loss of that $290 million in AIP funding would mean the following: States would not get their remaining 15 percent of their AIP apportionments, a loss of $54 million. That means that small commercial airports and general aviation airports funded by the States are effectively cut by 15 percent. For example, California will lose $4.5 million; Texas will lose $3.7; New York will lose $2.3 million; Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Michigan will lose $1.6 million each. Cargo airports will not get the remaining 15 percent of their entitlements, a loss of $7 million. Noise projects will be underfunded by 30 percent, a loss of $71 million. High priority capacity and safety projects, under the discretionary set-aside for larger airports, will be underfunded, a loss of $149 million. Military airports will not get their remaining set-aside, a loss of $9 million. Mr. Speaker, I will include a list in my extension of remarks of airports that will be cut. Mr. Speaker, S. 1467, adopted by the Senate last Friday, would allow the airport program to continue for another 60 days through the end of the fiscal year and into October. This is a simple extension of the program that will otherwise expire, and we ought to adopt it without amendment. Mr. Speaker, I believe this action is unwise also because I strongly disagree with the provisions of AIR-21, which take $39 billion in aviation spending off budget over 4 years beginning in 2001. CBO estimates that $13.6 billion of this spending will come out of the surplus revenues and that the bill would require a downward adjustment in the discretionary caps of $26.5 billion over 4 years. We have already exhausted the on-budget surplus for fiscal 2000 due to emergency designations, directed scorekeeping adjustments, and other actions taken by the majority in the 2000 appropriations bills considered by the House so far. The tax bill just passed today assumes another $792 billion in surplus revenues over 10 years. Now we are apparently going to spend surplus revenues for aviation beginning in 2001 before we consider any other domestic needs for defense, cancer research, education, drug treatment, national parks, law enforcement or other important priorities. Under AIR-21, by the year 2004 aviation spending will consume nearly $1 out of every $4 of the projected remaining on-budget surplus revenues not required for the massive tax cut package just adopted today. Moreover, AIR-21 will result in $26 billion less room under the existing discretionary caps that are already squeezing high priority programs. Under the budget that the House has already adopted for the year 2000, a 32 percent cut would be required in programs funded under the labor, health, education bill. That means a $5 billion cut in NIH, a $1.5 million cut in Head Start, a $2.5 billion cut in Pell Grants for college students, and a $2.5 billion in Title I, which would cut reading and math to help 3.8 million students. Airport infrastructure is important, but do we really believe that airports are a higher priority than education, which could face even deeper cuts under the caps if AIR-21 is enacted? I certainly do not. What AIR-21 offers is a choice between binge buying on aviation and thoughtful budgeting where we carefully balance all domestic priorities. If my colleagues believe we should not lavish a significant portion of the surplus on aviation without examining the competing needs in education, biomedical research, veterans care and defense, then they will not believe this action occurring tonight is the proper action. So, Mr. Speaker, I simply state my opposition to what is happening here, and I thank the gentleman for his courtesy. Mr. Speaker, I submit for the Record the information referred to earlier regarding airports that will be cut: Pease International Tradeport in New Hampshire Myrtle Beach International in South Carolina Austin-Bergstrom in Texas Homestead Regional in Florida Millington International in Memphis Williams Gateway in Arizona South California Airport in California Alexandria International Airport in Louisiana Rickenbacker International Airport in Ohio Sawyer Airport in Michigan Chippewa County International in Minnesota

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. Mr. Speaker, today this House passed a tax bill that is not real. It is a campaign document more than it is legislation. This bill is not real, either. It is another political document that is not legislation. We all want to be able to cut taxes, but the majority party apparently wants to push its political plans so hard that they are willing to say no new dollars for social security, no new dollars for Medicare. Now they are willing, in this bill, to crush our ability to conduct science, except for the station and the shuttle. They are willing to trash one of the President's top priorities, AmeriCorps. They are willing to take a half a billion dollar cut in public housing. They are willing to take $3 billion out of the Labor-Health-Education appropriation bill to pay for this bill. The majority party is telling the country that to pay for their tax scheme and to pay for this bill, they are willing to cut education, cut health care, cut the National Institutes of Health by one-third. Members know that is a phony promise. That is a false promise. It is a phony budget. Mr. Speaker, we asked the Committee on Rules for one amendment, to delay for one year the capital gains gift to the high rollers of this society, and use that money to pay for additional veterans' health care, because the President's request was inadequate and so is this bill on the item of health care. But the majority party says no, we cannot do that, because we will bend jurisdictional rules. Mr. Speaker, I would say to my friends on the majority side of the aisle, they have obliterated budget rules. One day they use CBO spending estimates. The next day they use OMB spending estimates. The next day they make the most laughable claims that routine activities like the Census are emergencies in order to cover spending. If they can do all of that, it seems to me that they can bend their rules a little to help veterans who did not bother about budget rules when they answered their country's call. In the words of the old song, ``Whose side are you on?'' Are we on the side of the high rollers, or are we on the side of the schoolkids, on the side of sick people, and on the side of veterans? What Members do on this vote will speak more loudly than all of the summer speeches we give when we go home tonight after this session is over. I urge Members to support the Paralyzed Veterans of America, support the Disabled American Veterans, support the Vietnam Veterans of America. Vote no on the previous question on this rule. Get a new rule. Put veterans ahead on the train, rather than having them ride in the caboose. I urge Members to vote no on the previous question on the rule.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I make a point of order that the House could not hear the motion, and I would ask that the Clerk reread the motion. The Speaker pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Wisconsin?

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, this rule is one of the most important items to come before the House in this Congress. It would permit the wholesale breach of the budget caps under the pretense that the decennial census is an emergency and, as it is currently crafted, it would even deny the House a vote on whether that designation is appropriate. What is at stake here is more important than this bill or the $4.5 billion it spends off budget. What is at stake is the total abandonment of any pretense of orderly decision making on the budget. If the decennial census can be classified as an ``unforeseen emergency,'' then any item in the appropriation bills is fair game. At that point, we have returned to the era of totally ad hoc budgeting, we have thrown away the budget resolution that was adopted this spring, and we are striking out with no end game and no plan for how much we will spend or what we will spend it on. We will continue to make daily adjustments based on the Republican whip meetings and complaints delivered to the Speaker's office. That is not a process that is acceptable to the American people, whether they hope to sustain existing services or whether they wish for deep tax cuts. It is a prescription for chaos. Equally important, this would devastate Congress' credibility in using the discretion provided in the Budget Act to deal with real emergencies. If we permit this wholesale abuse of emergency spending powers in the Budget Act, we will end up having those powers challenged and we will find that Congress is unable to meet its fundamental responsibility in confronting future emergencies. Whether we face a question of war or peace or whether we face a great domestic disaster, our ability to act without rewriting the funding levels agreed to over the arduous course of the previous appropriations cycle will likely depend on how responsibly we act at this moment. I urge the House to defeat this rule and adopt a rule that will permit the House to at least vote on the emergency designation. I would urge Members to take note of the letter from Taxpayers for Common Sense, which indicates that this is an extremely shaky way in which to proceed if we are interested in responsible budgeting.

Mr. OBEY

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

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I rise simply to respond to something the distinguished gentleman from Kentucky just said. He claimed that this funding is occurring out of the surplus and that it is not coming out of Social Security. I want to correct that statement. Legislation brought to the House by the majority so far this summer would more than exhaust the $14 billion on-budget surplus projected by CBO for fiscal year 2000. First, the tax bill passed by the House cost $4.5 billion in fiscal year 2000. Second, the emergency designation for the entire cost of the 2000 census allows more than $4 billion of fiscal year 2000 outlays to occur without being counted against the committee's allocation or the budget caps that we are talking about. Even though those outlays, Mr. Chairman, will not count under the budget rules, they still will occur and they will eat into the surplus. Third, the majority has been instructing CBO to lower its outlay estimates for most of the appropriations bills that have been reported by the committee. Those scorekeeping plugs reduce outlays counted for the defense bill by $9.7 billion and for various domestic bills by at least $2 billion. Doing so allows the bills to spend more than the allocations and caps would normally allow by an amount equal to the downward adjustment in the outlay estimates. That means that the three items that I have just listed more than consume the $14 billion in on-budget surplus projected by CBO for the year 2000. In fact, they would turn that $14 billion on-budget surplus into a deficit of at least $6 billion. Other past and future gimmicks raise that deficit even further. To make a long story short, under either the CBO or OMB forecasts if consistently applied, any projected on-budget surplus for fiscal year 2000 is already gone due to actions taken by the Majority in their appropriations bills.

Mr. OBEY. Mr Chairman, reclaiming my time, no, I did not.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, the gentleman is consistent because the gentleman voted against the rule. Some of the other persons who spoke on this issue have not. I would simply say that, again, while I agree with the motivation of the gentleman, I believe the result would be every bit as phoney as the bill before us because it would be pretending that we could save $4.5 billion which the Constitution requires us to spend.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I certainly understand the motivation that leads the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn) to offer this amendment. It is ridiculous that this bill carries the $4.5 billion required to conduct the census as an emergency expenditure when the Constitution has told us since 1789 that we are going to have to be doing this every 10 years. I mean, I have heard of advance notice in my time, but I think that is about the longest. So I understand how ridiculous it is. That is why I asked the Committee on Rules to allow me to offer an amendment which would strike the emergency designation. We just heard a speech in the well saying that this is not an emergency and so this amendment should pass. The problem with this amendment is that it does not do what the debate would seem to indicate it does, because the amendment does not strike the emergency designation. It strikes the money to run the census. And that is an irresponsible thing to do. I do not, for the life of me, understand why we should take seriously the claim that this is an emergency. But the way to deal with that if Members truly objected to the fact that it was an emergency was for Members to oppose the rule so that we could have gone back to the Committee on Rules and have gotten a rule that allowed us to strike the emergency designation. Having failed to do so, the House is now stuck with the choice of funding the census or not, and I believe it has no choice but to fund it. But I have to say that I, again, understand the frustration on the part of the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn), which I share. Because, unfortunately, we have no more rules around here when it comes to dealing with budget issues. Four years ago, the government was shut down by the majority party because they insisted that we follow only the spending rules of the Congressional Budget Office. Now, this year, because a different process suits their political convenience, they will pick and choose. One day we have to abide by the CBO rules; and the next day, when it comes to directed scoring upon the Pentagon, we have to apply the OMB rules. And then when neither one of those agency's scorekeeping fits, then we consult the Wizard of Oz. Lord knows who we will consult next. It just seems to me that we have destroyed all semblance of order. And so, when we play those kinds of budget games and when we declare something like the census to be an emergency, then it is no wonder that this institution has no credibility. Now, the argument the majority party makes is, well, we could not anticipate that we were going to have to run two different kinds of census because of the court decision. I understand that. That is why in committee we offered the amendment and why I tried to get the Committee on Rules to make in order on the floor an amendment which simply limited the emergency designation to the $1.7 billion that truly represented spending over and above the normal census. Yet, the Committee on Rules refused to allow that; and the House supinely went along with the decision of the Committee on Rules. So I am of a split mind on this amendment. I recognize the motivation. If this amendment eliminated the emergency designation, I would vote for it. But I do not think we can in good conscience eliminate funding that we know we have to provide. That is every bit as much a sham as the bill now before us.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, no, I did not. I led the opposition to it. I called it a public lie.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I would just like to say that the remark that there is nothing in this motion that affects pay is, in my view, at least indirectly ingenuous. The fact is that Members provide for the cost of living increase for their staff from the office accounts that are funded in this bill. We do not have to directly go after those COLAS. If we simply shrink the total amount available, we effectively shut off the Members' ability to provide that cost of living for their staffers. I think every worker in America ought to judge Members of Congress at least in part on whether or not they treat their staffs at least as well as they treat themselves. A Congress that provides itself a pay raise and makes it more difficult at the same time for their employees to get a COLA is hypocritical.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I would simply make two observations. A short while ago I was asked by the majority leadership whether, as the ranking minority member on the Committee on Appropriations, I would agree to unanimous consent to bring up the legislative appropriation bill and the District of Columbia appropriation bill and one other appropriation bill so that we could finish our work tomorrow, instead of spilling over into Friday. I told them I would try to get that done, at least on two of the three. Now we are being told that we perhaps should not consider that on this side of the aisle because the gentleman is going to offer a motion to instruct on a package which the leadership has already asked me to cooperate with in getting to the floor as soon as possible. We cannot cooperate in both efforts at the same time, because they go in different directions. Second, I would simply say that the cut that was made in the House bill originally averaged about $65,000 for each and every Member's office account. I would simply point out that the result that the gentleman says he is trying to seek, where the House would stick with its numbers and the Senate would stick with its numbers, would continue a practice which has led to a situation in which the average staffer for a Senator, for the same work done by the staffers for people in this House, gets $16,400 more. That is just not justified, but the reason it happens is because the Senate continually assures that there is enough room in office accounts to fully provide for COLAs, and the House often does not. On a number of occasions, we have denied them to our staffs. I would point out that given the House action earlier this year on Members' pay, where this House voted by a very large margin to assure that Members would receive a COLA, it would be the height of outrageous behavior if, having received that COLA for ourselves, we then take actions which would make it very difficult for a good many Members in this institution to provide that same cost of living increase for the people who work for us. Mr. Speaker, there are some Members, no doubt, who have enough room in their office accounts, but there are many more who do not. The fact is that there are a lot of Members of this House who represent almost 100,000 more people than some of the rotten borough districts that we have in the country. So I would suggest that the average amount left in each Member's office account is misleading. In fact, it is meaningless. What we have to do is to determine on a case-by-case basis the situation for every office. I would simply say I would find it, indeed, ironic and cynical if this House allows Members of Congress to receive a cost of living increase while it takes action on this bill that denies people who get paid a whole lot less than we do.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Mr. Chairman, let me say the remarks that I will make are in no way intended to criticize either the distinguished chairman of the subcommittee or the distinguished ranking member. They have both done the best job they can under the circumstances. The problem is that the circumstances are ridiculous. Let me cite first my concerns with the specifics of this bill. This bill, despite evidence that community policing has been of great assistance in lowering the crime rate, this bill effectively ends the Cops on the Beat program. It provides the last remaining money that is needed to fund that program, but it does not fund the follow-on program that is meant to put additional police on the streets in our communities, because it is not authorized. If this Congress does not provide that money, it is a serious mistake. This bill would take a number of actions which I think are extremely mean-minded in terms of the way it deals with the poor and with minority groups in our society. The bill effectively terminates the Legal Services Corporation. The funding provided would effectively result in a 3-year phaseout of that corporation. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, it cuts $33 million or 11 percent below the request. We ought to be doing more to enforce the law against discrimination, not less in real terms. The bill eliminates the entire $20 million requested for the Justice Department to initiate litigation against the tobacco industry to recover Federal costs for smoking-related illnesses under Medicare. The bill effectively will provide for the loss of the U.S. voting rights in the General Assembly in the United Nations. That is definitely not in our national interest. It provides very deep cuts in environmental programs, such as our National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration programs and the National Weather Service, and it has an outrageous provision which, in a gross abuse of the Budget Act, pretends that somehow the Congress did not know we were going to have to appropriate over $4 billion to run the decennial census. That abuse of the budget process by declaring those funds to be emergency funds outside the normal limits of the budget process discredits the committee. I believe in the committee having the right when we have a legitimate emergency to declare one and to move forward to meet that emergency, but if we pretend that amounts that we know we are going to spend on a regular basis are actually emergency appropriations, we lose the right to have people view our request with credibility when we make requests for a legitimate emergency designation. The problem with this bill is simply that it is not real. It is yet another bill that allows the majority in this House to maintain the fiction that we can afford to pass out $1 trillion in tax cuts, two- thirds of the benefits of which are going to the highest income 10 percent of the people in this country. It pretends that we can do all of that, but there is a hidden assumption. That hidden assumption is that the government is going to take everything that we do in the appropriations process, the education programs, the health programs, the anti-crime programs, and that we are essentially going to carve those up by at least 20 percent. Right now we spend about $1,100 per person to provide those kinds of services to the American people. If we can hold the defense budget to the level that the President has asked, we will only see under this and other bills provided by the majority, we will only see that cut to $780 per person. That is a huge per-person reduction in services for education and health and environmental cleanup and the rest. If the Clinton budget numbers for the military budget are not held and if in fact we spend more on defense, as this committee has already done, then what we are providing by way of those investments per person in this country will drop from over $1,100 per person to just over $600 per person. Does anybody really believe that this Congress is going to make those kinds of cuts? That is a false promise, that is a phony promise, and I do not think we ought to be making promises this institution does not have any intention of keeping. That is why this bill is going to be vetoed by the President. This is another one of the appropriations bills which is on a short route to nowhere. I would remind you, we have only 18 legislative days left before the beginning of the next fiscal year. We need to have our work done. This is going to delay our ability to get our work done. That is why I think we ought to vote against the bill on final passage.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, every time I tour a plant in my district I run into workers, especially women, who are wearing wrist braces. When I ask them about their problem, the answer over and over again is the same: carpal tunnel syndrome. Where does carpal tunnel syndrome or many of those other injuries come from? They come from workers having to do the same thing hundreds of times and thousands of times without properly designed equipment and work stations. And workers I see are not isolated examples. Repetitive motion injuries affect 650,000 workers each year. That is more than the number of people who die each year from cancer and stroke. Those injuries account for more lost workday injuries than any other cause, especially for women workers. Nearly half of all workplace injuries for women are due to repetitive motion problems. Now, there are those in this body who say there ought to be more delay in protecting those workers, but they are virtually alone in the world. Every industrialized country has recognized that there is more than enough evidence to move forward on a repetitive motion standard. Most progressive businesses recognize it is their duty to protect workers and to protect their stockholders from the economic impact of huge amounts of lost work time. But a powerful band of economic royalists in this country and in this Congress continue to fight that protection, and it is time to get on with it. In 1990, that well-known ``radical'' liberal Elizabeth Dole said that it was time to move forward on this. In 1995, the Republican majority attached a rider blocking the issuance of draft regulations. In 1996, they tried to prevent OSHA from even collecting the data on repetitive motion injuries. In 1997, they tried to block it again but failed. At that time, the National Institutes for Occupational Health and Safety conducted a detailed review of more than 600 scientific studies on the problem, and they found a strong correlation between workplace conditions and worker injuries. That study was peer reviewed by 27 experts throughout the country. But that was not good enough for some of my colleagues. So in 1998, they pushed the National Institutes of Health to fund another study at the National Academy of Sciences. They convened 65 of the world's leading scientists, and again they found evidence that clearly demonstrates that specific intervention can reduce injury. But that is not good enough for some of my colleagues. They want yet another delay. That delay does not hurt anybody in this room. The only repetitive motion injury that Members of Congress are likely to get are knee injuries from continuous genuflecting to big business special interests who want us to put their profit margins ahead of worker health. Maybe the time has not come for my colleagues. But, by God, it has come for those workers. We need action and we need it now. No delays. No foot dragging. No excuses. We need action and we need action now.