Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Let me finish and then I will be happy to yield. I cannot believe that any thoughtful person in this House would say it is in the United States' interest to throw away the agreement on enriched uranium that we are about to get, that the Russians have already agreed to, except for signature. The second point I would like to make, the gentleman says we have got a lot of Members who would rather see this money used in this country. I would say I am not at all worried about uranium and plutonium in American hands. I am very worried about uranium and plutonium in Russian hands, because their scientists and their military people have not been paid for months, and we are worried that for a small expenditure of money, they might very well be willing to supply some of that material to terrorist organizations around the world. I would suggest that anyone who believes that it is more important to worry about fissile material in the United States versus fissile material in the hands of the Russians simply does not understand the history of the last 50 years.

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

Mr. OBEY. Taking back my time, I would simply say it is crucial that we get both agreements. If you are blown up in a nuclear explosion which is delivered to this country by a terrorist organization, it does not much matter whether the bomb was made out of uranium or plutonium. You are just as dead. That is why we need both agreements.

Mr. OBEY. Again taking back my time, I would simply say, Mr. Chairman, that the threat to the security of the United States, to the survival of the United States, comes from nuclear weapons. The gentleman's party seems to be very concerned about building a Star Wars program at huge expense to defend us from nuclear weapons but they apparently are not willing to proceed as fast as possible to get tons of plutonium out of the hands of the people who might be firing those weapons. With all due respect, that dichotomy makes no sense.

Mr. OBEY. With all due respect, I think the gentleman is dead wrong on the issue.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished minority leader, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt). (Mr. GEPHARDT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), the ranking member on the Subcommittee on Agriculture.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I am going to say this only once. Do my colleagues know how many dollars are saved for Social Security by the Tiahrt amendment? Not one dime. Do my colleagues know how many dollars are saved that would otherwise be spent under the Tiahrt amendment? Not one dime. Do my colleagues know how many dollars are saved that would otherwise be added to the deficit if the Tiahrt amendment passes? Not one dime. The fact is that callable capital to our international financial institutions, is appropriated but it is never spent. There is never an outlay expenditure. When we measure the deficit, what we measure is not what the government thinks about spending. What we measure is what the government actually spends, and that is called an outlay. If we take a look at this committee report, if we take a look at the Congressional Budget Office scoring of this bill, we will see that the Tiahrt amendment saves not one dime for Social Security or the deficit or anything else because this money was not scheduled to be outlaid. The only way that we can measure savings is on the outlay side. And since there were never going to be any outlays, there are no savings. The gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Tiahrt), by his amendment, is suggesting to the House that $195 million will not be spent that otherwise would be spent. That is false. Callable capital, by its nature, is never meant to be spent. So if anyone says that they are saving one dime for Social Security or saving one dime for the surplus or the deficit by the Tiahrt amendment, they are telling this House something that simply is not true.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, and in closing, let me simply say this bill, if it passes, will actually add $445 million to the deficit, and the Tiahrt amendment, if it is adopted, will not save one dime of that number.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, let me simply say the statement that this is similar to what happened in 1994 is again totally, absolutely wrong. What happened in 1994 was very, very different. It did not involve rescinding one dime of obligated callable capital. I would simply recite from the Secretary of the Treasury the following from his letter. He says, ``Some have cited the 1994 rescission as a precedent for this goal. The 1994 action and the current proposal are not analogous. In 1994, the U.S. had not subscribed to paid-in capital and callable capital which were rescinded. The current proposal, however, would reach back to capital to which we have formerly subscribed and on the basis of which we have exercised voting rights for many years. This proposal has rightly become a concern of the markets.'' If any Member says that this is identical to what had happened in 1994, they are either ill-informed or they are misleading the House.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I will not take the 5 minutes. I simply want to say, in light of the comments by the previous speaker, that repeating a misstatement of fact does not make it a fact, no matter how many times that misstatement is repeated.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Jackson). (Mr. JACKSON of Illinois asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, under the circumstances, I do not believe that we should be taking these actions. If we reach agreement, the cost will be far more than the amount of money now available. We will have to appropriate more money, not less. I do not know of any responsible person who would not think that that is the right thing to do, because we make the world safer from the standpoint of nuclear weapons. So I will be offering an amendment to delete those four items from the bill, and if it is not adopted, I would urge Members to oppose this bill on final passage. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, my amendment will also do a number of other things. First of all, this bill also makes some reductions in PL-480, agriculture funds, and it eliminates $25 million in funding for the Export-Import Bank war chest. Again, Members will be told by the committee that this money was largely not going to be spent and, therefore, will create no harm. I would point out that the war chest money in the Export-Import Bank is never supposed to be spent. It is there as a visible warning to our trading partners that if they artificially subsidize their corporations in order to steal markets from us overseas, that we will retaliate by doing the same things in support of our American businesses. We should not be reducing the number of arrows in that quiver. I would also point out that the tiny amount of money which is saved by cutting PL-480 funds will be blown away by the added money that we will be asked to appropriate in direct assistance to our farmers because of what has happened with farm prices. And the PL-480 actions will reduce our ability to help our farmers through exports. We should not do that, either. The last item which I will try to correct in my amendment goes to what I view as the most egregious and reckless of the recommendations in this supplemental. We have presently available $525 million to be used for the United States to take plutonium and uranium from Russia and to convert it from weapons grade material into material which is not weapons grade. Mr. Primakov is about to sign a $325 million uranium agreement with the United States Government. That is intensely in the interest of the United States. We need to take from the Russians every ounce of weapons grade uranium and plutonium that we can possibly get our hands on so that that does not continue to be at risk of falling into the hands of the wrong people around the world. In addition to the uranium agreement which Mr. Primakov is supposed to sign, last fall Senators Domenici, Stevens and Byrd and I and Mr. Livingston agreed to insert $200 million into the budget last fall in order to help restart negotiations with the Russians on a parallel agreement to also purchase plutonium from the Russians so that they do not continue to have that plutonium in their country available for use in nuclear weapons. That is enough plutonium to create anywhere from 15 to 25,000 nuclear warheads. I do not think we have any business putting at risk the start-up of those negotiations by taking that money off the table. Now, Members again will be told by the majority that this money is not supposed to be spent this year, anyway. I know that. We all know that. But the money was put on the table so that the Russians would understand it would be immediately available once we reach agreement with them on that plutonium agreement. It seems to me that, well, all I can tell Members is that our negotiators again as well as the Secretary of Energy tells us, quote, that withdrawing this money would severely set back and might even bring to a halt our constructive discussions on this important nonproliferation and national security issue.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Berry). (Mr. BERRY asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Sabo).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, I have before us a letter from the Bretton Woods committee. It reads, in part, as follows. It is addressed primarily to the Tiahrt amendment, but also applies to the base bill. Among others things, it says this: ``This is to alert you to the enormously damaging impact of the Tiahrt amendment to divert appropriated World Bank callable capital to offset portions of the emergency supplemental.'' It then goes on to say, at a later point, ``Disturbing reports from Wall Street say that some bondholders are already growing nervous over the threat and are dumping World Bank bonds.'' It then goes on to say, ``This will undermine the recovery strategy for Asia and other vulnerable regions, and it creates new international financial instability at a time when we can ill afford it. Ultimately, this move will hurt U.S. exports.'' At a later point in the letter, it also says, ``This is a retreat from international commitments made by every president since Harry Truman, including Republican stalwarts Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan.'' Then it says, ``Disappropriating callable capital from which no outlays can be gained is a sham solution, but paradoxically, a congressional raid on appropriated callable capital could even force the United States to make new cash contributions with real outlays attached.'' I agree with that letter. What the committee is doing, as my good friend from Minnesota (Mr. Sabo) and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) pointed out, is a sham. In fact, if we take a look at the four items I am trying to deal with in my amendment, those items pretend to save $853 million. In fact, they would save only $19 million on the P.L. 480 item and on the war chest. Possibly they might save $80 million more if CBO is correct on its assumption that $80 million of the amount which the majority is trying to rescind from the nuclear weaponry account will be spent. The ironic point is that the majority party says that they are rescinding that money because none of it would be spent in this fiscal year, anyway. So we are left with this situation. If the majority party is correct, then no money will be spent, and there are no outlay savings in the amounts they are claiming. If the majority party is wrong, then we wind up doing huge damage to a key negotiation to make the world safer by removing plutonium that would make at least 15,000 nuclear weapons. Either way in my view is incredibly misguided, so I would again urge passage of my amendment, and defeat of this bill if that amendment is not passed.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I would like to say to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), the distinguished chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, that there may be a lot of good arguments that he can make in opposition to our position on the plutonium issue, but he should not make the argument that he just made, and I would ask him not to make that argument again, because it is based on his perception that the administration does not really care very much about this amendment and this issue. That is as far away from the truth as it can could possibly be. Here is what the facts are with respect to that issue: The administration submitted its original budget in January. The omnibus appropriations bill did not pass until October. What happened between January and October is that it became clear that the Russians were not going to negotiate for the removal of plutonium from their country unless money was put on the table to help visibly finance those efforts. So in the conference on the omnibus appropriation bill, Senator Domenici led the effort to insert the money, and he had the full, strong, four-square support of the administration. He had the support of the Energy Department. He had the support of the State Department. He had the support of the White House. He had the support of OMB. It should not be stated otherwise on this floor. The fact is that the gentleman from Florida (Chairman Young) now very well knows that he has in his possession various letters from the administration, from the Secretary of Energy, from the Department of the Budget, which spell out in very clear terms that the administration believes it is of the highest priority that these funds not be rescinded. The administration has made quite clear in letters to the gentleman and to me that, without that money on the table, our ability to move forward in negotiations with the Russians to remove the threat of 15,000 nuclear weapons that could be built from that loose plutonium, it has made quite clear that, if that rescission takes place, they put at risk our ability to get any results from those negotiations. So use any argument my colleague wants, I would say to the gentleman from Florida, but do not suggest that this is not a serious matter. Do not suggest that the administration is not four-square for the preservation of this money, because that is at variance with the facts.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I just have to say that I am very confused by the position taken by the majority party on the Stenholm amendment. This is the first time in at least a few days that I have seen the same train trying to run in both directions on the same track simultaneously. And yet that is what the gentleman is arguing. One minute they are arguing their offsets do not do anything because the money is not going to be spent next year; the next minute they are arguing that their offsets are meaningful. Now, I do not know which argument is correct. I can debate somebody who is taking only one position at a time; I do not know how to debate somebody who takes two positions at the same time. That gets a little difficult. So it just seems to me that while I do not believe the Stenholm amendment is necessary because I believe that these items, getting assistance to our farmers, given the collapse in their prices, is an emergency; it may not be to a comfortable Member of Congress, I think it is very much an emergency to those farmers; and I certainly believe that what happened with the hurricane was an emergency. So I do not believe the Stenholm amendment is necessary, but if this bill is going to do what it pretends to do, then the Stenholm amendment is consistent whereas the base bill itself is not, and I think Members need to understand that.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, it reminds me of an umpire who calls the runner both safe and out at the same time. He is trying to satisfy both sides, but it leaves the audience very confused.

Mr. OBEY. Did the gentleman hear me say I was supporting the Stenholm amendment? I never said that.