Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my objection. So the motion to adjourn was rejected.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman and I thank the leadership for reconsidering that position. I am sorry to take the time of the House, but given the fact that George Brown was the ranking member of a committee, that he served here 35 years, and that he was one of the two people who were driving forces behind the first teach-ins in Vietnam, a very historic occasion in our Nation's history, and I think that is very important.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I have great respect for the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders). I think if all Members of this institution cared as much about working people as he does, that this country just might give everybody in this society an even shake. We have stood together on NAFTA, we have stood together on GATT, and we will stand again together tomorrow on another trade issue, I suspect, and I mean immediately, tomorrow. However, I simply want to say that I think this amendment is an absolute recipe for disaster. I am very much an economic populist, but I am also a committed internationalist. It seems to me that the use of the Economic Stabilization Fund should be determined by the merits of the case, and not how popular an individual country is within the United States Congress, or who happens to be lobbying the Congress if the country in question happens to be involved in foreign policy disputes which significant portions of our own society do not happen to like. The use of the Economic Stabilization Fund is not foreign aid. When the Exchange Stabilization Fund is used, it is used to try to stabilize the world economy, not to help another country but to defend our own country, to defend our own prosperity, to defend our own jobs. In 1929, the collapse of the world economy was not caused by the collapse of the stock market. That was just a very public event. It was started when we had a currency collapse in Austria and the CreditAnstalt bank collapsed. That was followed by a run on the German banking system, and their system collapsed. Then the crisis jumped to Britain, and after the British banks were mowed down in the crisis, then the crisis jumped across the Atlantic and it hit the United States economy. It went worldwide. We know the results. Not only did the economies collapse of the countries involved, we had tremendous political instability as a result. People like Adolph Hitler and Mussolini came to power, and 50 million people died. That is why we have had actions taken to establish not just the Economic Stabilization Fund, but some of the other international economic institutions that some people in this institution love to chastise. It just it seems to me, Mr. Chairman, that there is a reason for the separation of powers. It seems to me that any administration needs to have the authority to deal with an economic crisis internationally in any way that it needs to deal, without having to be second-guessed by the Congress. We saw what happened just a year ago when we had a crisis in Korea that demanded that we marshal more resources to deal with the possible worldwide economic collapse. Disgracefully, it took almost a year and a half for this Congress to act. I would hate to God to think that that would be the pattern, but that would most certainly be the pattern if this amendment were adopted. Mr. Chairman, I would say, should we give a president a blank check? Absolutely not. What this Congress ought to do is exercise its sharp oversight responsibility. It ought to critique administration actions whenever it differs. The executive needs to act, but the Congress also needs to, in my view, to skin the executive if he plays it wrong, or plays it incompetently. But do not handicap and do not hamstring the President of the United States, who is charged with being the steward of America's economic interest in the international arena. That is what this amendment does, and that is why it ought to be defeated.

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I would simply ask every Member how many times have you told your constituents that you are for a program but you just cannot help them because we do not have the resources? How many times have you told your constituents you want to protect national parks, you want to protect wildlife refuges but you simply do not have room in the budget? Well, tonight we have unusual circumstances. Tonight Members can do something about it. With the passage of the Young amendment, there is now room in this bill to do the following. We can restore $87 million to the President's budget for the Land Legacy Program to protect our national parks, to protect our wildlife refuges, to protect our precious natural resources. Members can restore $13 million to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which was cut earlier in debate on this bill, and still keep the Sanders amendment on weatherization. Members can restore $20 million to the President's budget for the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities. Those who went down to the rally 2 weeks ago when the Denver Broncos were in town and told everybody that they are for urban parks programs, they can vote to put their vote where their rhetoric was 2 weeks ago and vote to put $4 million into the urban parks initiative. Members can do all of that and still stay below the 302(b) allocation, still stay below the budget, and still bring this bill in below last year's spending. We have a lot of talk around this town about legacies. I think it is important to remember one that is not often talked about. For every child born in this country, that child's share of our precious national assets, like national parks and wildlife refuges and all the rest, is the dollar equivalent to about $17,000 per child. That legacy is worth investing in. That legacy is worth protecting and cherishing and nourishing. Members can do that tonight by voting for this motion to recommit. This motion to recommit will not kill the bill, it will mean the bill will be reported back to the House forthwith, with these fix-up items. It will mean that it will make this bill just a little bit better than it is, and it will mean that it can be passed by the House on a bipartisan basis. I urge a yes vote on the motion.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, my comments may not exactly be on point on this amendment, but I am supporting this simply out of frustration with what has occurred on an issue that, at its inception, appeared to be fairly benign but has grown into a monster. One tribe in my State established a casino more than 180 miles away from their reservation by simply persuading the city council of a major city to approve their request over the objection of the mayor. I think that is nuts.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I apologize to the gentleman for objecting, and I am, frankly, uncertain about how this amendment affects my district, but I want to use this time to get something off my chest about the whole question of Indian gambling. I find it fascinating, because this amendment, as I understand it, attempts to take away the authority of the Secretary to fashion a compact if States have not been able to agree with the tribes. And yet the Secretary of the Interior at this point is the target of an investigation because he refused to approve a gambling casino in my State where three tribes (the nearest of whom was 100 miles away from the proposed casino), wanted to purchase a dog track which was collapsing economically. And the owners of the dog track thought that if the tribes could buy it they could convert a loser into a winner. And so, in my view, three tribes abusing the theory of tribal sovereignty attempted to take over that casino. So I find it ironic that the Secretary is being pushed in one direction in this amendment and he is being pushed in another direction by the review that is going on now of his activity. I just want to say this with respect to this issue. I detest what gambling has done to my own State. I detest what gambling has done to the politics of my own State. I also have reluctantly accepted the idea that there is not much under court decisions that we can do about on- reservation gambling. But I certainly think that we ought to do everything possible to prevent tribes from abusing the concept of tribal sovereignty, buying a piece of land 25, 50, 100, 200 miles away from their reservation, having it converted to trust status and then being able to set up a gambling casino on that land. So I have doubts about this amendment. In fact, I suspect this amendment, in the case of Wisconsin, where we have a compact, does not even apply. And I may be making a mistake when I say this, but I intend to vote for this amendment simply because I believe that this country has gone far too far in both allowing the kind of gambling that is going on. Secondly, I believe in the concept of tribal sovereignty. I believe, however, that we should not sit here and allow that concept to be abused by its beneficiaries to the point where it loses all public support. And that is what happens when we have these ridiculous land transfers that take place which take land off the tax rolls 100 miles from a reservation. For instance, one of the tribes in my district tried to establish a gambling casino one block from a major high school in a community. They had no damn business trying to put it in that place. And so while I do not think this amendment is exactly on point and there may be some problems that would need to be fixed up in conference, I, for one, will vote for it simply out of my sense of frustration with what has happened. And when I hear people talk about the BIA, I frankly have this view about the BIA. I think for 30 years the BIA did nothing but hammer Indian tribes and fail in their responsibility to deal with tribes with respect and dignity. But for the past 15 years or so I think the BIA has not been able to say no to any tribe. And the problem there is that when we refuse to say no to our friends when they are pushing something that is not right, we do not do them any long-term favors. We, in fact, allow them to get into trouble. And I think the BIA has been lax for a long time in that regard. Everybody around here needs to say no once in a while. That includes the Secretary of the Interior, that includes the BIA, and that includes congressional appropriation subcommittee chairs and ranking members.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I object.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, there are some actions in this House that should be taken seriously, and there are others that should not, and with all due respect to my good friend from Florida this is one of those actions that should not be taken seriously. Mr. Chairman, the leadership of this House has two choices in trying to run the House this year, especially when it comes to finishing our appropriations bills. The first choice is to try to pass our legislation with a great bipartisan coalition of the middle, with the majority of members of both parties finding nonpartisan or bipartisan solutions to our budget problems. That is the choice I profoundly would prefer. But the leadership seems to have chosen a different path. They have decided that because they have a hard-core of right-wing Members in their caucus who are largely term limited, who detest government and who want to have one last swing before they walk out the door, and evidently the Republican party leadership in the House has decided that to satisfy that group they need a budget strategy and an appropriation strategy which will pass all of these bills only on the Republican side of the aisle, or at least with 90 percent of their votes and 10 percent of ours. That is too bad because that polarizes the House, and it also causes a lot of what I call political as opposed to substantive actions, and this amendment is a perfect example; and it is the fifth time that this has happened. If my colleagues take a look at the history of appropriation bills so far this year, what do they see? They see that my good friend, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), produced on the Republican side of the aisle earlier in the year a decision in the committee to go forward on a bipartisan basis. And he produced a supplemental appropriation bill which had great bipartisan support. And then instructions came from on high from their leadership in his party that the bill had to be changed. And so that bill was changed. It was made into a much more partisan document; they walked away from the bipartisan agreement we had. That was Episode One. Then on the agriculture appropriation bill, again the same thing. Because of the demands from that small cadre of Members, a bipartisan bill was turned into a partisan slugfest because the majority party unilaterally decided to change that bill. The same was true on the legislative appropriations bill; the same thing happened on Treasury Post Office; and now we have it happening on the Interior bill today. What is this all about? What it is about is simply this: the allocations that the majority party has provided to the committee to pass our bills this year are about $35 to $40 billion short to where they need to be if we are to have passable bills in the end which are signed by the President. So we have a $40 billion gap. We have got to find some way to close that $40 billion gap between the budget caps and the amount of demand that we have for appropriations. So what we have here is a series of amendments on the cheap. They give the impression of trying to reach the $40 billion goal when, in fact, they are simply token mini-cuts, and if we take them altogether out of a total $40 billion gap, including this amendment, we have less than $600 million to fill up the fund-raising cookie jar or the fund- raising thermometer, to put it in a different vernacular. So I would simply say to that side of the aisle if they are satisfied with political tokenism, if it helps them to cover their ``fizaga'' to go ahead, but the fact is we all know this is not real when all they have done is saved enough money to fill this small amount of the gap between promise and performance. They are not doing anything real. They are taking up the House's time, they are going through the motions, they are perhaps fooling some of the Members in their own caucus. I would say it is bad enough to fool the taxpayers; that should never happen. But an even more amazing thing is when they fool themselves. So, go ahead, pass it; but they should not think that they fooled anybody on this side of the aisle.

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, it is my duty as Dean of the Wisconsin delegation to announce the death of a former Member, the Honorable Lynn Stalbaum, who served Wisconsin's first District in 1965 and 1966. During his service in Congress he served with distinction on the Committee on Agriculture. Before his service in Congress he served on a destroyer for 2 years during World War II. He was the assistant minority Leader in the Wisconsin State Senate, where he served for 10 years. He was once described by Aldric Revell, the dean of State Capitol correspondents, as being a legislator who had the maddening tendency to expect reason to dominate legislative debate. After he left Congress he worked for dairy farmers for a number of years trying to help increase milk prices. He served as the President of Pilgrim Lutheran Church in Bethesda. He also ran a tax filing business, and he taught on a number of occasions, he taught H&R Block people how to do tax returns, so he knew his way around the Tax Code. He was always an individual of immense good cheer. He was also a person who never forgot that our job here is to work for the common man, and he did that every day of his career, both in the State legislature and in the Congress. Services will be held at Joseph Gawler's & Sons, 5130 Wisconsin Avenue, Wednesday night at 7:30. Visitation will be tonight between 7 and 9 o'clock. We all, I am sure, send our sympathies to his family.

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. I thank the gentleman for yielding, Mr. Chairman. Just three points, Mr. Chairman. First, I am not from Minnesota. The gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Sabo) is from Minnesota. Secondly, it was not this Member that voted for the Republican proposition to move $19 billion out of domestic funds into the military budget. That has nothing whatsoever to do with saving money for social security, it has a lot to do with priorities. Thirdly, I would simply make the point, the gentleman has misstated my votes. He has said that I had voted for the Democratic alternative on the budget. The fact is that when we voted, I took the well of the floor and I stated that I voted for that amendment only as a substitute for the Republican amendment, but that I would vote against both on final passage because I felt that neither reflected reality. I still feel that way.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, this bill was developed by an appropriations subcommittee in an attempt to represent all of the elements of the House. After months of hearings and weeks of negotiations, that subcommittee was able to produce a bipartisan product. Nobody got what they wanted, but it was a reasonable compromise. Now, once again, we are faced with the fact that the chairman of the committee has been forced to unilaterally attempt to alter a bill which had been put together originally in a bipartisan manner. We have seen the chairman come to the floor and amend the agriculture bill. We have seen the chairman come to the floor and amend the legislative branch bill. In his defense, he is not doing that because he wants to start a fight. He has done it because he has been instructed, apparently by his leadership, to change the funding level in these bills in order to satisfy a hardline element within the caucus of the majority party. They have a perfect right to do that if they want, but I think we need to really lay out what the reality is. We are being asked to believe that somehow, because of the tiny cut that was made in the legislative appropriations bill and the tiny cut that was made in the agriculture bill and now the tiny cut which is being offered in this bill, that somehow some progress is being made by this Congress in reaching or in producing appropriation bills which will be passable and signable by the President. In fact, that is not the case at all. This chart shows what I mean. Because the majority party has made a decision to increase the military budget by about $19 billion, the fact is that they have produced cuts on the domestic side of the ledger in their 302 allocations, as they are known in the budget. They have produced cuts which total almost $40 billion below last year's budget, adjusted for inflation. We are being asked to believe that these bills are going to be made passable by the tiny cuts that were made in the legislative branch, the agriculture branch, and now this bill today, when in fact if we total up all the cuts made so far by the majority party in response to the demands of the hardliners and their caucus, this is all that we fill up the thermometer with. As we can see, the amount of money represented by those cuts is so small it is virtually impossible to see unless one is standing next to it, as I am. So we are being asked to believe that this amendment today will actually contribute in any meaningful way to savings, and in fact it does not. The fact is that the majority party and elements in this caucus can continue to deny that they are in denial if they want, but the fact is that in order to be able to pass all 13 appropriation bills, they are going to have to do something besides pretending that these tiny little cuts will fill up this bottle, in the end. The fact is that this House is not going to vote for a labor-health- education appropriation bill which is $10 to $12 billion below last year's level in terms of current services. This House is not going to vote for funding for EPA and HUD and veterans benefits. They are not going to vote for a bill which takes those programs down $6 billion to $8 billion below current services. So we are going to continue to come out here with these tiny little amendments pretending that some progress is being made, when in fact the gap between the rhetoric and the reality is the gap between the top level of this little amount of red in the bottom of the thermometer up to the top of the thermometer. When the Majority gets real, when you get into this range, let us know. Until then, there is not a whole lot that the minority can do to help the other side.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I would simply say that the idea that somehow social security is going to be saved because out of a gap of anywhere from $25 billion to $35 billion these cuts are going to save the grand total of almost $300 million is patently preposterous. That does not begin to save either social security or provide a rational balance of priorities within accounts in the appropriation bill. So I would simply suggest this debate has nothing to do with social security. It has a whole lot to do with spending priorities. I would also add, in disagreement with the gentleman from Florida, not all of us did sign onto that budget deal 2 years ago. At the time I called it a giant ``Public Fib,'' and I still regard it as being such, as the numbers in that chart demonstrate.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I offer a preferential motion.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw my request for a recorded vote.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I voted in the end against passage of the so- called juvenile justice bill yesterday, and I will oppose this bill on final passage today. I do not disagree with much of the content. I voted for the Dingell amendment last night. I will vote against this bill today because the process by which Congress considered both of these bills is a national disgrace. It has resulted in Congress making crucial decisions on matters ranging from legal liabilities of families, local school governance, judicial sentencing, and religious liberty and other issues without any clear understanding of the legal impact and the real-world effect of our actions. That happened because neither of these bills was produced through the normal committee hearing and deliberation process, which is the main tool Congress has to protect liberty and protect justice for the people we represent. There is a reason why Congress normally has a hearing process to allow the general public and experts alike to think aloud about what it is that Congress is planning to do, to make sure that they and Congress have a full understanding of the results of the contemplated actions. But these bills were brought to the floor in a process that short- circuits what Congress is able to do best as an institution: Namely, to carefully sort out in committee the nuances of critical issues, aided by the expertise that committee members develop in their specialty areas of jurisdiction. The process by which these bills were considered has contributed to a continuing erosion of this body as a respected legislative institution. More and more, the Congress is not passing real legislation, it is passing institutional press releases aimed far more at sending political messages than they are at solving problems. This chaos must stop or this institution will lose the confidence of the public, which has the right to believe that we will consider each and every matter in a manner that is designed to protect their real- life interests, rather than our partisan interests. I deeply believe in the need to take strong, meaningful action and thoughtful action to deal with the problems of juvenile violence, public safety, and the protection of basic American values. But this process virtually guarantees that this Congress will produce nothing of the kind. So my vote will be a protest against the way Congress has politicized a critical national problem. I also want to note that I voted present on two of the previous four issues that we just voted on, the two relating to the District of Columbia, because in my view I was not elected to be a city councilman for the District of Columbia. I believe the city's issues should be left to themselves, so I voted present as an effort to protest the way that this House routinely interposes its judgment on matters that are strictly local affairs.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, the bill we are now debating will try young people as adults at age 13. It will provide magic solutions on guns, but it will not allow a debate on my amendment to provide a greatly expanded program for early identification and intervention with mental health services to young people at an early age if they exhibit tendencies that might lead to violence. At the proper time today, I will ask unanimous consent to allow my amendment to be added to those other amendments that will be debated so that we can at least try to approach this problem in a comprehensive multifaceted way, so that we can deal with the problem of juvenile violence in the most comprehensive and rational fashion.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that during consideration of the bill (H.R. 1501) to provide grants to ensure increased accountability for juvenile offenders, pursuant to House Resolution 209, the amendment that I have posted at the desk may be considered as though it were the last amendment printed in part A of the Committee on Rules report 106-186.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I demand the gentleman's words be taken down. The gentleman said the gentleman was trying to mislead this body.