Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. Mr. Speaker, I have a great deal of respect for the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe) who just spoke. He is one of the best Members of the House, in my view. But I simply want to correct the Record. This is not what happens every year. Last year, the majority of the appropriations bills were finished by the beginning of the fiscal year. We had a bipartisan approach last year. The last year that I chaired the committee, every single one of the appropriations bills was finished on time. There was no need for any continuing resolution. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Gejdenson).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Speaker, as my colleagues know, as a lot of people in this building know, since the end of the fiscal year, those on the Committee on Appropriations, most especially the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Livingston) and myself, have been locked in meeting after meeting after meeting, trying to resolve the literally hundreds of items that still must be resolved before we can finish this congressional session. I must say that while the gentleman from Louisiana and I are very good friends personally, I am getting about as sick of him as he probably is of me. In fact, I think we have spent more time in the last week with each other than we have with our wives. That shows us how much bad judgment both of us have. But, having said that, I would simply say that I think we have been making considerable progress on a number of items, and I think as that progress comes forth that the atmosphere in the room has turned from the initial atmosphere of confrontation and distemper on occasion to one of more friendliness. We have been making some progress. But I do want to say I think we need to have an honest understanding of why we are in this position. I feel myself incredibly lucky to be a member of this body. Every day when I wake up I have to pinch myself to make certain that it is really true that I have been accorded the privilege of representing not only the people of my district in this institution but, on cases like this, representing my party with the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Livingston) representing his in these negotiations. I have tremendous love for this institution and tremendous respect for the appropriations process. But I think that there have been some things said about why we are here which are really not accurate or fair. A number of high-ranking members of this House have indicated when they talk to the television cameras that the reason we are here at the end of the year with the appropriation bills still not being signed into law is somehow because the President has not been sufficiently engaged in these discussions; and yet, those comments are directly at variance with what is being said behind closed doors in the meetings that I am participating in to try to end this impasse. Because behind closed doors in those budget negotiations, we are being told by people who I respect that the President, really, and his representatives should not really be at the table at all, that this should simply be a congressional process, and that the Congress ought to take whatever action it is going to take, and then, if the White House does not like it, it should veto that. And I would say that at least with some parties, most certainly not the gentleman from Louisiana, on the part of some parties in the conference, the assistance that we have been given by the White House staff in this process has been accepted most grudgingly and I think sometimes with a great deal of resentment on the part of certain Members of Congress. Now, it would be nice to say, and I would say I agree that, institutionally, the best way for us to proceed is for us to produce our appropriation bills and send them up to the White House, and if the White House does not like them, then they have a right to veto them. But it is rather easier to take that institutional position in July than it is at the end of September, the beginning of October when we are at the end of the road and need to get things done. Then we have no choice but to have the White House representatives in the room, because they, after all, have to agree to a significant amount of what we do, or there would not be agreement. I think we have to look at why we have gotten in this position. We have gotten to this position, in my view, because of the forces largely outside of the appropriations process. To start with, the House leadership scheduled far fewer days of session than at any time in my memory. That was followed up by a complete lack of action on the part of the Committee on the Budget. We still do not have a budget for the United States Government. The Committee on the Budget still has not produced a budget conference; and, because of that delay, the appropriations process was put hopelessly behind. We were supposed to have our appropriation bills done by July, and yet, because of the delay in the budget process itself, our committee was not even allowed to come to the floor with many of these bills in July, bills that normally would have come to the floor in mid-April or early May. That was compounded by the mistake that--out of all of the years, this was the worst possible year to do this--that was compounded in my view by the mistake of having double the length of time that is normally taken for the July 4th recess. And, as a consequence, if one walks into the appropriations room and looks at the calendar and sees how many days were left for the Committee on Appropriations to do its business, the answer is, only a handful of days between the July 4th recess until we again recessed for some five full weeks in August. As a result, we were dealing with conference reports between the two Houses on appropriation bills in early October that we should have been able to deal with in early September. Now that is not the fault of the Committee on Appropriations. It is not the fault of the chairman of the committee. It is not the fault of any of the appropriation subcommittees. It is simply a fact of life. And I am going through this simply to make the point that the President had nothing whatsoever to do with any of this problem. This is a problem that Congress as an institution has brought upon itself by its failure to get its work done. So now we have no choice but to try to sit down around the table with people from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue and get our work done. We still have a large number of issues that divide us. We still have some major issues in the area of education that divide us to a great degree, matters of the President's initiative on class size, and matters of the President's initiative on school construction, so that we can see to it that children in this country are not, as the President says, brought up in buildings that are falling down. We also have another cluster of issues involving a woman's right to have her insurance policy cover basic contraceptive services. Those issues still have not been resolved. We have a large number of issues on the environment that still divide us. We have a number of foreign policy issues that divide us, including the appropriate level of funding for the United Nations, which is crucial if we are going to be getting involved in a war in Kosovo, as it appears we may very well be getting into. So it just it seems to me that we have an immense amount of work to do. We are going to have to have a great deal of flexibility in order to get it done. I would urge Congress to recognize that the President is serious. He intends to get these initiatives, and in my judgment, we are going to be here in Washington until he does. With that, I would like to pack my bags very early, but I am not packing yet, because I think it is going to be a number of days before this work is completed. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. OBEY. Is it possible to have the rollcall machine turned on at this point, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. OBEY. Is it possible to have the rollcall machine turned on, so we can see the names of Members of the House displayed before us?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I yield 7 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior), the Democratic Whip.

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Gejdenson).

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the remainder of the time. Madam Speaker, first of all, I would like to thank the suddenly moderate gentleman from Arizona for his pieties, and I would simply like to say that I love this institution, and I respect many, many Members in it. And I revere what this institution is supposed to mean to each and every citizen of the country. But in the last analysis, I think they are going to be impressed much less by our pieties and by our rhetoric than they are by our actions. It seems to me if we really want to inspire the American people, we will take action in the next week, as we make our final decisions on the budget, a budget which, after all, does define what our values are, and as we make those choices, I hope that the choices that we make will indeed help to make a difference for struggling working families who need every bit of help they can to make education affordable, to provide decent classrooms for kids, to provide decent teacher-student ratios so that kids have a chance to learn in the poor school districts as well as the wealthy school districts in this country. I hope that in the area of health we will recognize that every American has a right to full access to health care, just by virtue of the fact that they were born one of God's creatures; and I hope that we will recognize our obligation to strengthen people's retirement security, and I hope we will recognize our obligation to drop the innumerable attacks on the environment that we see in appropriation bills that threaten the future environmental health and safety of this country. So I would urge Members to vote for this simple extension of time so that this very tardy Congress can get its work done. I make no criticism of the gentleman from Louisiana in this. I think we have said many times, if all of these issues were left to us to work out between the two of us, I do not think there is an issue that we could not solve. But unfortunately, there are many pressures above our pay grade which have often interposed themselves and made it very, very difficult for our committee to reach the same kind of accommodation that we were able to reach last year, and that is why we stand here tonight with still so much work to be done, and with still so many public needs to be met. I would hope that in the time that we have remaining and the time that is provided by this resolution will help us indeed to put people first.

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. I would also remind the gentleman from Arizona, he says that when the Democrats controlled Congress, we did not take up campaign finance reform. The fact is we passed campaign finance reform three times in this House. I was the sponsor of it on two occasions. He says that we did not do much to help senior citizens. All we did under the Democrat watch was to pass Social Security, to pass Medicare, two programs that the gentleman's Speaker has spent a lifetime trying to destroy. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez). (Mr. MENENDEZ asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. Madam Speaker, we have heard a lot of touting over there about the fact the administration is not offsetting some of the items it is asking for us provide. I see in the National Journal's Congress Daily the fact that the Senate majority leader is asking us to spend $385 million in so-called emergency funding to bail out ConAgra and Tyson's and other big chicken exporters who, on the private market, ship chickens to Russia and now cannot find a buyer. So when we start talking about declaring something as an emergency, I did not realize it was an emergency that we would bail out big business when they make a bad detail. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. The gentleman says that the Democratic Party has screwed up education. I guess that means that he feels we should not have passed the Nation's student loan programs which we would not have had without a Democratic Congress. I guess that means he feels we should not have Pell grants that helped the kids from working families go to college and technical school. I guess that means he feels that we ought to repeal handicapped educational legislation. I guess that means he feels we ought to repeal Head Start that is the main program that we provide so that kids who are having trouble learning to read and deal with mathematics get a decent start in the early grades on that. The gentleman may think that that is screwing up America. I think it is creating opportunity for every working family in America. On this side of the aisle, we make absolutely no apology in being for that kind of spending. In contrast, in the last 3 years, this Congress has added $20 billion to the President's defense budget but $17 billion of the $20 billion has gone for pork rather than readiness. I will compare and debate those priorities anytime. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Miller).

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior), the distinguished minority whip.

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone).

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 10 seconds. Madam Speaker, I wish we had heard that same speech yesterday. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Mr. OBEY. The gentleman assumes wrongly.

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, how much time remains?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 7 minutes. Mr. Speaker, everyone knows that the gentleman from Louisiana and I are good friends. We are an awful lot alike; we are both very placid individuals. Neither one of us ever gets excited; neither one of us ever gets mad; and we are always the quietest, most calm people in the place. Let me simply say that I have enjoyed listening to my friend's speech, and he is doing his duty in bringing this extension of the continuing resolution to the floor. But I kind of feel like Yogi Berra. This is deja vu all over again. And I think we really do need to understand why we are here and what the practical steps are that must be taken if we are to get out of here in a reasonable length of time. This House has had sort of a schizophrenic history the last 2 years on appropriations bills. Last year, I thought we had a very good year, and I thought that both parties could genuinely be pleased about what was produced in the appropriations process. After the fight over the government shutdown several years ago, where my friends on the other side got badly burned because they thought they could shut the government down to force the President to cave into their priorities, and they were proven wrong, in reaction to that, last year, I thought they behaved quite responsibly. And, as a result, we had a bipartisan approach to virtually every appropriations bill except one. And at the end of the process I thought we all felt pretty good about ourselves and about each other. But when this year's appropriations cycle began, it was apparent that the majority leadership was in a new mode, and they were telling the leadership of the Committee on Appropriations on the other side of the aisle that they wanted them to adopt a more confrontational mode so that they could more clearly define the differences between the two parties. The press has written about that. I have been told that, frankly, by a number of Members on the other side of the aisle. So, as a consequence, what has been the track record? The track record is that this Congress never did produce a budget. We are now through the entire fiscal year, and we still do not have a budget. We also have very few bills that have gone through the entire process. I think only two of them have been signed, one has been vetoed, and the rest are still stuck in the Congress somewhere. One of the reasons for that, in my view, is because the leadership on that side of the aisle in this House decided that they wanted to try to pass a series of appropriations bills with only Republican votes. And so, for instance, on Labor, Health, Education, they produced a bill which is some $2 billion below the President's on education; they eliminated the Low Income Heating Assistance Program; they eliminated Summer Jobs; they shredded the President's education initiatives; and they produced a bill which was so extreme that their Republican brethren in the Senate would not accept that bill, and that bill has never even been finished by either body. Finally, yesterday, that bill came to the floor, and then we simply had a brief debate on family planning and then that bill was pulled from the floor. Now, we do not run this place; the other side does, because they are the majority. I recognize that. But when the other side follows a policy of confrontation rather than cooperation, they have to expect that we are going to have problems. And so now we are stuck. No budget. Almost no appropriations bills passed. Fiscal year gone. We have already had one continuing resolution and now we have yet another one. I would predict for my colleagues that this is going to have to be extended again. Members in this House need to understand there is not a chance of a snowball in Hades that we can possibly reach all of the agreements that have to be reached and have a bill to the floor on Monday. I have talked to a number of our friends in the press, and they seem to have been told that there were only 9 or 10 items that separated us. We still have over 300 items that have to be resolved, in numbers and in language. And that is a practical fact. That means that we are going to need every second of this extension and then some, in my view. I would just ask that we recognize that while the majority party controls both Houses of the Congress, and it is their right to produce a bill that can only be passed with Republican votes, they must understand that if they want those bills to become law, they do need a Presidential signature, and that means there is going to have to be compromise. We are going to have to find common ground. And, until we do, we are going to be stuck here. I hope we can find that common ground sooner than later, but it is going to be very difficult. With respect to the chairman's comments on offsets, offsets are simply what is produced in order to pay the bill. The check comes after we know what the bill is. Well, until we know what the differences are between parties, and until we know the size of those differences, it is pretty hard to say how we are going to pay for them when we do not even know what the differences are. So what we have to do, with all due respect to my friends on the other side, we have to sit down and lay out what our differences are so that we know rather than are guessing about how the other feels, and then we can proceed to try to bridge those differences. I hope we can be here early next week with a resolution to these bills, but we are a long way from settlement. And as the President said in the White House, we are not going to leave, we are not going to leave until this Congress is responsive to the President's education initiatives and we have those funded to considerable measure. And that means that we had better start recognizing that right now. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. I would like to ask the gentleman a question on my time. He is asking what the administration will do to pay for its initiatives. The Speaker is asking that we spend at least $8 billion in additional funding for the Pentagon, in addition to the bill that we just passed through here 2 weeks ago. Where are you going to get the money to pay for that?

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask a simple question. What in God's name are we doing bringing up this bill at this point? The authority for the government to remain open expires in one day. We still have seven major appropriation bills, funding more than half the government, that have still not been acted upon. And if they are not, a whole lot of government will not be operating two days from now. Yet we are about to debate a bill which is going nowhere. Now, we have been trying to get together to resolve the remaining differences on the seven major appropriation bills that have still to be disposed of so that we can finish our work, keep the government open and go home. We have some rather major problems. If anybody has noticed what has been happening today and yesterday with the stock market and NASDAQ, you have a huge collapse on your hands. And it is probably going to get a lot worse. We are trying to figure out how to reach agreement on things as controversial as the IMF. We have been trying to get to a meeting since 10 o'clock this morning between the principal conferees on the labor-health-education budget, and we have a wide variety of other disputes that are preventing us from finishing our work. I would point out that while the press seems to be under the impression that there are only five or six items that still are in dispute, we have over 300 open issues that are still highly controversial that must be resolved before tomorrow night. Yet we are being asked now to begin debate on a bill which we know is going nowhere. This bill is so extreme that the Republican majority in the Senate has shoved it aside and produced an entirely different bill. We have yet to finish action on the Labor-Health bill, the Transportation bill, the State-Justice-Commerce bill, the Foreign Operations bill, the District of Columbia bill, the Ag bill is being vetoed so we have to deal with that one again. We have the Interior bill that still is not passed. Yet what is happening? This Congress is being tied up on bill after bill on one issue, sex. On the Treasury-Post Office bill, that bill has been hung up and still remains at issue because of resistance to insurance coverage on contraception on the part of some members of the majority party. The Agriculture bill was held up for many weeks because of a strong feeling on the part of some members of the majority party that the FDA ought to impose a ban on another birth control device. The State-Justice-Commerce bill is being held up on an issue relating to abortions in prison. The Foreign Operations bill, which is our basic foreign policy document in the appropriations area, is being held up because you have a small group of persons in the majority party who insist that if they do not get their way on the international family planning issue, the entire bill will be held hostage. And now we are asked to bring this bill up and debate the issue of family planning services once again. That issue is being brought up not to resolve anything on the House floor but to resolve a difference within the Republican Caucus between a group that calls themselves moderates and a group that calls themselves conservatives. I just want to say, sometime, sometime it would be nice if this Congress stops being bogged down on this issue, if we could quit debating bills that are not going anywhere so that we can get in the rooms and work out the differences on bills that are going somewhere and must go somewhere so that we can finish our work on time. This debate does nothing but satisfy political problems within the majority party caucus on a bill that is going nowhere.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I make a point of order.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, this is a fairly important issue. It seems to me that if Members are going to vote on it the least they could do is be here in the chamber when it is debated, and I would hope that the leadership of both parties would be sending out messages to the Members that whatever they are doing, they ought to drop it and get their tails here.