Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I object.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I object.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. I yield to the gentlewoman from California.

Mr. OBEY. Ten is fine with me, but I am told that we have objections if it is 10 minutes.

Mr. OBEY. Reserving the right to object, Mr. Chairman, let me ask the distinguished chairman of the subcommittee, we have been told that what has happened is there have been four or five speakers in a row on this, on one side. So we are getting objections, both from that side of the issue, as evidenced by the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), and we have objections on the other side of the issue. Could I ask, would Members on both sides be satisfied if it were 20 minutes apiece?

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield, would the gentleman withdraw his objection?

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, this is an anti-obscenity amendment. What this bill says is that the District of Columbia cannot use its own funds to sue in the courts of this land for the right to be represented. That is what this bill says, as it presently stands. That provision is an obscenity in a democracy, and any Member of this House who votes to sustain it ought to hang their head in shame. We all represent at least half a million Americans, and for any Member of this place to have the unmitigated gall to come in here and say that the Americans, the Americans who live in the District of Columbia cannot use their own dollars to pursue the ability to be represented is an outrage. This amendment should not have a single opponent in this House. This House does not stand for public representation, it does not stand for democracy, it stands for taxation without representation, which we fought a revolution to overturn, if it does not support this amendment. That is all we need to know about it, that is all I need to say about it. Shame on anyone who votes against it.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, first of all, let me say that with respect to the bill itself, I think the chairman has tried to do as much as he could under the circumstances he faces. I honestly believe that before this bill goes to the President, it is going to need a significant amount of funding for the Wye Middle East peace agreement. I think we need to promote that in every way we can. I will vote against the rule on this bill because the rule simply does not deal with the Mexico City issue in a fair way. What the Committee on Rules has done is to allow a nongermane amendment to be offered by the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) on the Republican side of the aisle, and then it allows a second amendment as an alternative to that to be offered. But instead of being offered as a substitute, it allows it to be offered as a simultaneous amendment. If both amendments were to be adopted, for instance, the adoption of the Greenwood amendment would have no meaning whatsoever, because under the way we read statutes around here, the most limiting language is the only language that governs. So in essence, the Committee on Rules has pretended to give the House a choice between alternatives when in fact it has given no real opportunity for the Greenwood amendment to have any meaning whatsoever. To me, that is disingenuous, it is unfair, it is biased, and it means that people think they could not win the argument if they had a fair rule. I do not think that is the way the greatest parliamentary body in the world ought to act. Therefore, I would strongly urge a vote against this rule.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, there are four problems with the bill before us. First of all, it does nothing really to strengthen Social Security. It does nothing to strengthen Medicare. Two- thirds of the benefits go to the richest 10 percent of people in this society, and they are paid for by surpluses that are predicted but will not materialize because they assume that, in the end, this Congress will cut education and health care and veterans and environment by over 20 percent in real terms and that this Congress will not restore badly needed funds to Medicare and to home health care. If that is not a public lie, it is at least a huge public fib. I was here in 1981. I saw this Congress whoop through the budget then, making the same kind of promises it is making today about surpluses as far as the eye can see. Instead of that, what that package did was dig us into the biggest deficit hole in history. It has taken us 18 years to dig out those deficits. And now what does this bill do? It gives us a chance to do it all over again. You have institutional amnesia. Vote against the bill and for the Rangel substitute.

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time, and I use the time to ask the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions) whether it is not correct that there is now an understanding that the House will not be in session on Wednesday so that we can attend the memorial service for the distinguished former Member from California, Mr. Brown.

Mr. OBEY. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, my understanding is correct, then, that there will be no committees asked to be running bills on the floor while that is going on?

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. Let me simply strenuously object to that proposition. The fact is that the gentleman from California (Mr. Brown) was a distinguished Member of this House. He had a good many friends, and a lot of those friends were on the Committee on Appropriations. I do not believe it is right, when one of the most senior Members of the House and one of the most distinguished members of the House has a memorial service and a number of us would be denied the opportunity to attend that memorial service because they want our committees to stay here debating appropriation bills that day. It just seems to me that there ought to be another way that a civilized institution could honor one of its own without preventing some of his oldest friends from attending that memorial service. I would say that if we cannot find that kind of accommodation that there are a lot of things that could be slowed down next week.

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

Mr. OBEY. Let me simply point out there are a number of Members in the California delegation who would need to be involved in the debate that would go on if they were here. It is unfair to them to expect that they ought to be here while they would like to be in California at the last opportunity to bid adieu to one of their colleagues. So it just seems to me that this House has adjourned fully for hundreds of Members in its history, and it ought to do the same for the gentleman from California (Mr. Brown).

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote. A recorded vote was refused.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the career of a longtime public servant, Dr. Lawrence A. Johnson, a leading researcher and international authority in the field of artificial insemination and semen physiology and preservation in swine. Dr. Johnson, was born and raised on a livestock farm in Luck, Wisconsin, in the heart of western Wisconsin's dairy country in my district. He received his Bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin at River Falls in 1961, he received his Master's from the University of Minnesota in St. Paul in 1963, and was awarded his doctorate by the University of Maryland in 1968. Thirty-five years ago, in 1964, Dr. Johnson began his career with the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, first as a chemist with the Swine Research Branch, and later as Research Physiologist with the Reproduction Laboratory. He became Research Leader of the Germplasm and Gamete Physiology Laboratory when it was created in 1991. He also served for two years as Visiting Scientist at the Research Institute for Animal production in the Netherlands. With Dr. V.G. Pursel, Dr. Johnson developed the Beltsville Freezing and Thawing Method for preserving swine sperm. This method has been commercially used for cryopreservation of boar semen since 1975 and it has been used for the exportation of the highest quality genetics to upgrade swine production in more than 40 countries throughout the world. Subsequently , Dr. Johnson initiated collaborative studies with Dutch which led to the Beltsville TS Semen Diluent becoming the primary swine semen diluent throughout the world, currently used in 12 to 15 million inseminations worldwide each year. More recently, his research led to the development of the only effective method to control the sex ratio of mammalian offspring, considered a major advance in reproductive biology, which has brought him world recognition as an authority on gender preselection. In 1993, Dr. Johnson and his colleagues successfully adapted the sexing technology to be used for disease prevention in humans. Dr. Johnson has authored or co-authored more than 265 scientific papers, book chapters and abstracts, and he has presented 75 papers at various international symposia and meetings. His numerous awards have included the Alexander von Humboldt Award in 1994 for the ``most significant accomplishment in American Agriculture in the previous five years'', and, in the same year, he was recognized as the Distinguished ARS Scientist for the Year. Dr. Johnson's work has also been recognized in countries throughout the world from the Netherlands to Japan. Upon his retirement from government service, Dr. Johnson will be returning to his home state of Wisconsin. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank him for his years of government service, and wish him well in his future endeavors.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for the time. Mr. Chairman, the administration has two principal objections to this bill. The first is that they oppose the committee decision to cut out funds for the production of the F-22, and I flatly disagree with them on that. I think the committee has made the right choice. Secondly, the administration opposes a number of decisions that inflate the cost of this bill. This bill, in fact, comes in about $16 billion over last year, and on that I largely agree with the administration. I will be voting against this bill because Congress, primarily the authorizing committee, has refused to act on another round of base closings, which could save us about $20 billion by the year 2005. We have seen use of budget gimmickry to artificially inflate the size of this bill, and for those reasons, I do not feel comfortable at this time in supporting this bill. But I do want to say that I think the committee deserves the support of the House and its congratulations for making the correct decision on the F-22. The F-22, no doubt about it, is a beauty of an airplane. It is like a Jaguar or a Cadillac. It would be a great plane to have if we had all of the money in the world, but the problem is that its costs are taking off faster than the airplane is expected to if it is ever constructed. Secondly, the General Accounting Office says that we certainly do not need it yet for a good number of years. And thirdly, it is a $40 billion cancer which is eating a hole in the ability of the Air Force to meet a number of other high priority items. It gets in the way of high priority items such as additional jammers to protect our planes; it gets in the way of our ability to buy more tankers; it gets in the way of our ability to increase or transport capacity. So for those and a lot of other reasons. I simply want to congratulate the gentleman from California and the gentleman from Pennsylvania. I think they have made the right choices for the right reasons, and I think this is a pro-defense action taken by the committee, and I would hope that the Congress would stick with that decision through the process.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I object.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I object.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I object.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I object.