Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY

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. Speaker, I think the motion speaks for itself. I will simply again re-read the language so that the Members understand what the motion contains. It simply recommits the bill back to the committee with instructions that the bill not be reported if it does not reduce the bill by an amount at least equal to the average reduction required pursuant to the budget 302(b) allocation process for all domestic discretionary programs, including veterans' medical care, elementary and secondary education, student financial assistance, biomedical research, law enforcement, transportation safety, and environmental protection, and it requires that when the bill does come back, it also makes equal reductions in accounts for Members' offices, leadership offices, and the committees, rather than having the full internal cost of these reductions fall only on the office of rank and file Members. If this is adopted, it would make sure that this bill does not get out of the gate before we actually see the hole card and know how much people are going to be asking us to cut veterans, to cut education programs and other programs of serious concern to our constituents. It would be eminently fair to both our constituents and to the rank and file Members of this House and most importantly fair to the people who work for those rank and file Members.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, I would like to say that for the vast majority of us on this side of the aisle, our concern is not with the amount that is cut. Our concern is where those cuts fall. I honestly believe, as the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Pastor) has said, the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations is a very fair- minded and balanced person. I think that if the committee had been allowed to work out on a bipartisan basis where these cuts were made, we could have come up with a far more equitable distribution than the one that is before us tonight. I would also say that I think the leadership on both sides has an obligation to treat rank and file Members the way they would like to be treated themselves. That has not happened in the way these cuts have been laid out tonight. I would make one other point. If we compare the salaries that are paid to staff persons for rank and file Members of the House versus salaries paid to persons with those same responsibilities in the Senate, Members will see that on average the Senate pays people for those same salaries about 20 percent more for a legislative director or a legislative assistant and for other positions of high responsibility. I think there are severe implications to that differential that do not adequately represent the interests of this body, and I would urge that when these actions are taken, that we remember the context in which they are taken. Because if we do not do that, we are asking our staff members to make sacrifices that are not being asked of other staffers, and in many cases are not being asked of ourselves.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, this argument that we have had tonight is not about cuts in this bill, it is about the way we make choices or should make choices in a bipartisan manner on issues that affect this institution and our constituents. Last month, the majority passed a budget resolution, which it has every right to do, which cut $36 billion below current services for domestic programs. The issue is how those cuts are going to be distributed both between departments and programs and within departments and programs, and it is about whether those cuts will be fair or unfair. After that budget resolution was passed, the Republican majority again, as is its right, divided that money between the 13 subcommittees on the Committee on Appropriations, and the committee began to report its bills. First, we reported agriculture. We reported a bipartisan bill, supported on both sides of the aisle, and I think the committee did a good job in distributing the cuts within the Department. But then the Republican leadership, in response to concerns expressed by some members in its caucus, responded unilaterally by unilaterally changing that bill, by cutting agriculture research, by cutting food and drug funding without consultation with anyone on this side of the aisle. And in the process they turned a bipartisan bill into a partisan one. Now we have the same process, unfortunately, being repeated on this bill. Again, this bill that funds the Congress itself was reported out of committee on a bipartisan basis. Again, the Republican leadership now unilaterally made changes in that bill only a few hours earlier today. Those changes protect committee staff. They leave plenty of room for cost-of-living adjustments for people who work for committees. Those changes leave plenty of room for staffers who work for the leadership on both sides of the aisle. But they really leave very little room for cost-of-living adjustments for people who happen to work for rank-and-file Members. That is one issue this is about, whether people who work for this body are going to be treated fairly and whether the squeeze on the budget is going to be distributed equitably between all of the folks who work very hard for all of us on both sides of the aisle. I have two points I would like to make. First of all, if the majority wants to make additional cuts, fine, let us make them. But do not do it unilaterally. Sit down with us, sit down with people on both sides of the aisle, sit down with the House Committee on Administration that has jurisdiction over most of these issues so that we can make sure that the cuts that are made are fair. I would like to make another more basic point. The cuts that are made in this bill are really, with the exception of its impact on the folks who work for us, relatively minor. But the cuts that will be required for bills that are yet to come will be far deeper in education, they will be far deeper in health, they will be far deeper in veterans' benefits, especially in the out years. And that, in my view, is not fair. If these bills are to be changed from the amount that was just agreed to in the 302 allocation process, then, in our view, this bill should not be considered until we know how other Government agencies are going to be treated. Congress should be treated no better and no worse than any other Government agency. Second, this bill should not be passed until we know how deep the cuts are that are being contemplated for veterans, for education, for health care, and other areas of major responsibility to our people. Because in the end, if this bill is one of the first out of the gate and if it is signed into law before those other cuts are made, then the American people are really going to have a right to ask whether we are more concerned with taking care of ourselves than we are with taking care of their own problems. The most basic issue we have before us is that we have a long way to go in the appropriations process. There are a number of appropriation bills which we expect to be handled in a bipartisan manner. It would be sad indeed if every bill that is brought before this House winds up being dealt with in a partisan manner because the leadership on that side of the aisle makes unilateral choices. We were all elected to represent our people and it is not right to cut half of us out of that process.

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY

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

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I move to reconsider the vote by which the amendment was just adopted. Motion to Table Offered By Ms. Pryce of Ohio

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

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I move to reconsider the vote by which the previous question was ordered.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I would simply say, if the majority party leadership wants to save $50 million, all they have to do is to sit down with us and ask us to participate in shaping that cut so that it could be fair and balanced and real. I would urge them, do not unilaterally take actions that belie their claim to want bipartisanship and do not play games with rank and file Members and squeeze their budgets while insulating the power centers of this body.

Mr. OBEY. To put that in context, when the majority took over, they promised that every agency in the Congress was going to have had a 25 percent cut.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I would simply like to ask one question: If we are going to cut Members' accounts, why should the majority whip receive a 30 percent increase in his account, while the average Member of this House has his account frozen?

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

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY

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

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I take this time to comment on the colloquy that we just heard with respect to regional differences in the fluid milk dairy prices, and I would like to recite for this House what the history of this matter is. Since 1937, we have been operating under an outmoded system of milk marketing orders which mandates, by law, that certain farmers in certain regions of the country be paid more for their milk than are farmers from other sections of the country. That is a Federal law, believe it or not, and it has long since served its usefulness. When the farm bill was up on the floor 4 years ago, then-Congressman Gunderson, the chairman of the Dairy Subcommittee, tried to get a legislative remedy to that long outmoded policy, and when he did that he was blocked, cut off at the pass by the House leadership, the Republican leadership in the form of the Speaker and Mr. Solomon, who chaired the Committee on Rules. In essence, what they told Steve at the time was, ``Sorry, we are not going to give you a chance to vote on a legislative remedy; the best you are going to get is that we will give the Secretary of Agriculture an opportunity to look at these milk marketing orders and decide through administrative action what kind of changes are needed.'' Acting under that limited authority, Secretary Glickman proposed what was known as Option 1-B, which provided very minimal changes in the milk marketing order system across the country. That was found to be objectionable by many Members of this House, certainly not me but by many other Members, and so this House last year passed legislation which blocked the Secretary from moving ahead with those changes, those reforms in the milk marketing order system. So, then, Mr. Glickman went back to the drawing board and he produced a second modified version of his proposal, which would have provided some change, some modernization in that system, and it would have resulted in farmers in 15 of the 33 regions actually getting better prices for their milk than they do right now, and it would have had a downward pressure on some other regions. It just seems to me that it is amazing that the folks who won by preventing us from getting a legislative decision on this issue, and who insisted that this ought to be handled through the administrative route, are now saying that they are unhappy with even the tiny changes that were made administratively by the Secretary and are now suggesting that yet another legislative action is required to selectively amend the farm bill. I do not believe that is the right way to go. It seems to me strange indeed that in a Congress which so often talks about the need to move closer to market arrangements, that we are having people who are insisting on sticking to the status quo which blocks moving agriculture in the dairy area closer to market arrangements. I also find it interesting that some of the same folks who say that we should have free trade internationally are some of the same folks who, when it comes to internal trade within our own country, want to put up all kinds of trade barriers, informal trade barriers, in the form of these regional compacts. So I would simply say I cannot do anything about the colloquy that just took place between the Members of the majority party. All I can say, as one Member from the upper Midwest, is that I do not think it is fair for people to try to have this issue both ways. We were told that we should take our shot at the administrative route rather than the legislative route. That is what happened. And now the Members, at least some of the Members who just spoke, are now trying to suggest that we ought not to have let that happen either. We cannot move agriculture into the 20th century by sticking with this outmoded, old-fashioned milk marketing order system. And I would suggest if we are going to open this issue up, then we ought to open up the whole farm bill; that we ought to open up the question of whether we ought to have any milk marketing orders at all. We ought to be allowed to vote on the question of whether there ought to be one national milk marketing order rather than a whole series of them. So I would urge Members to think carefully before they try to selectively reopen that farm bill.