Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. Yes, and I appreciate the gentleman's removal of his objection.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, would the gentleman yield under his reservation of objection?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, before the gentleman reaches that conclusion, I would urge him to consult with the central office of the committee. I have been asked routinely to approve unanimous-consent requests to facilitate the needs of the majority and have given that unanimous consent on numerous instances, sometimes over the objections or at least in the teeth of concern of our own party leadership. We can rapidly have that kind of cooperation come to an end, if that is what the other side prefers.

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. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I would say to the gentleman that, no, this does not have anything to do with that. On that issue, if I could take both HUD and several other parties to the issue and put them in a room and forget about them for 2 years, I would be happy to do that.

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

Mr. OBEY. All right. Mr. Speaker, let me simply say that I do wish that we could have contacted the ranking minority member of the subcommittee. He was unreachable this morning because he was engaged in other activities. That is the only reason he was not contacted. I think it is very clear that we are simply offering this motion because the House spoke clearly about its desire to fund the veterans' health care budget as fully as we could. But at the time it spoke, a number of Members were under the impression that that action could not be taken by crippling the FHA housing accounts. Since we now find out that that concern has been corrected by the OMB ruling, we felt this was the logical action to take, and that is why I offered the amendment.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes. I would like to make one comment, if I could have the attention of the gentleman from California. Surely this is not the most startling action that I have ever taken in the gentleman's eyes. The gentleman said he was startled.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Vento) for his support. I would simply say that with respect to housing in general, this Congress is going to have some severe problems in the coming 2 or 3 years because of some severe shortfalls that are going to occur in that account. I am happy that OMB and the agency involved have now been able to make certain that we will be able at this juncture to fund the increase in veterans health care without crippling further the operation of the FHA housing account. I think it would be a very useful thing to accomplish and that is why we offer this motion and make clear that that is how everyone in the House feels. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I do not think this will take very long. Let me simply explain what is in this motion to instruct. During House consideration of this bill a number of weeks ago, an amendment was adopted which reduced nonoverhead administrative expenses of the Federal Housing Administration by $303 million and transferred the funding to the Veterans Medical Care account. During that debate, I do not believe that anyone spoke against providing additional funding for Veterans Medical Care. There were, however, concerns about the source of the funding used as an offset for the increased funds. That concern was that reducing FHA administrative expenses by approximately one-third would cripple its operations with disastrous effects throughout the country. Since that time, we have now had a ruling by the Office of Management and Budget, and it appear that the reasons for those concerns, because of that ruling, have now gone away. I am not sure what the rationale for their change of heart is, but apparently the general counsels of both OMB and the Department of Housing and Urban Development have determined that at least for fiscal 1999, the FHA does not have to have appropriated funds to pay for its nonoverhead administrative expenses. If adopted by the House and followed by the conferees, the motion now before us would result in providing $17.36 billion for Veterans Medical Care in 1999. While this amount is still far below the $18.8 billion recommended by the veterans service organizations' independent budget, it is a big improvement above the $17.06 billion in the House-reported bill and higher than the Senate recommendation of $17.25 billion. So, Mr. Speaker, my motion is very simple. It simply reaffirms the action of the House, providing an additional $303 million for Veterans Medical Care, but without the negative impact of virtually shutting down the Federal Housing Administration in order to do so, the concern which existed prior to the OMB ruling. Since the OMB has now decided that the appropriated funds are not required for the FHA administrative expenses, this is, in essence, a win-win situation. Veterans health care is increased and, unlike the situation when the bill was before the House, it will not have to cripple its operating expenses in FHA in order to pay for it. Mr. Speaker, I therefore urge all Members on both sides of the aisle to support the motion.

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

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 yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I note that there are stories that continue to appear in the press to the effect that we are facing a possible government shutdown. The fact is that, in my view, there is virtually no chance whatsoever that we will experience a government shutdown. The President has already made clear that if the Congress cannot get its work done before the fiscal year expires on October 1 that he will immediately sign any neutral short-term continuing resolution in order to keep the government open while the Congress does catch up to the schedule that it is supposed to be on. I would assume that the majority leadership of this House would make certain that such a short-term continuing resolution is in fact ready, because it is obvious that this House is way behind the curve in getting all of our appropriation bills done in the necessary time period before the beginning of the next fiscal year. So I think rather than hearing more of this rhetoric about a possible government shutdown, I think that people need to be aware of the fact that there certainly is no predisposition on this side of the aisle nor is there any predisposition on the part of the White House to allow that to happen. And assuming that the House and the Senate meet their responsibilities to pass a neutral short-term continuing resolution that would take us sometime into October so that Congress would have a chance to produce an omnibus appropriation bill, because I assume that that is going to happen, there is absolutely no reason to expect that there will be a government shutdown in the wings. I just do not see that happening.

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 have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Speaker, I would point out that the gentleman has indicated a number of things which are factually correct, but I think they need to be placed in broader context. Example: At one point under the previous administration, the Bush administration, there was a complete pause in funding improvements to quality-of-life items for our troops in a number of areas. I would also point out that the President just today is engaged in a readiness conference with the Joint Chiefs. The reason that I raised this motion today is simply because I find it ironic that the Congress is considering adding a special supplemental to deal with readiness issues before it has eliminated a good deal of the waste and low-priority pork initiatives that this Congress has been renowned for through the years. And I want to give my colleagues another example. The highest priority request from the Navy was to fund F-18s to replace aging F-14 aircraft. Thirty-one of those F-14s have gone down! Those planes need to be replaced, and yet the House cut that request in order to fund additional C-130s that the Pentagon had not asked for. Those C-130s were directed to the National Guard. And we should not kid ourselves, most of them were done that way simply to meet pork requests from Members of Congress who are trying to represent the need of their districts. People will say, ``Oh, gee whiz, but some of those C-130s are hurricane fighters.'' The fact is that the Pentagon showed there was another way to provide hurricane-fighting capacity by having greatly updated C-130s provided in those same areas but not going through an expense that was four times as high by providing new planes rather than updated older versions. My point is simply that we could have met that need in a cheaper way and still maintained our ability to provide the No. 1 priority that the Navy had: F-18s. And yet this Congress, or this House at least, choose up to this point not to do so. It just seems to me that this Congress ought to adopt this motion and really mean it and bring a bill back from conference that does eliminate many of the low priority pork items that the committee has added to the bill simply to garner votes for passage of the bill. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Hefner), the distinguished ranking member on the Subcommittee on Military Construction. (Mr. HEFNER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, my understanding is that the majority party leadership is contemplating an emergency spending supplemental to add substantial sums of money for military readiness to be paid for out of the surplus. The concerns for slippage in military readiness are legitimate and I share them. What I do question is whether this Congress needs to spend sums out of the surplus to take care of those needs when it is evident that we have not come close to squeezing low priority pork barrel spending out of this bill so that that spending can be shifted to meet those legitimate readiness needs. A lot that often happens in this town is enough to give hypocrisy a bad name, and on this issue I think we have the same principle operating. This Congress has added $20 billion to military budget requests of the President over the last three years. The vast majority of that money, over 85 percent, has not gone to address readiness shortfalls about which we now hear so many crocodile tears. It has gone for procurement and research, some of it useful, much of it of low priority to meet the political needs of Members for things like additional C-130 aircraft that the Pentagon has not asked for, or questionable studies of the Aurora Borealis. It has been reported that there is $4 billion in the House defense appropriation bill this year for congressionally-directed projects not requested by the Pentagon. I want to say that I am not a Percy Pureheart on these items. I think there are times when the Congress has a perfect right to substitute its judgment on the need for projects for that of the executive branch. I recognize that that is our prerogative. What I do object to is when we go overboard in the process, and I would like to say that we ought to be able to take at least one-fourth of the congressional add-ons that in my judgment, and in the judgment of many others who know a lot more about it than I do, were made principally to meet the political needs of Members of Congress rather than to meet the defense needs of the country, and we ought to take that money, eliminate those low-priority projects and move that into true readiness portions of the budget for things like quality-of-life improvements for troops, spare parts, recruitment and retention initiatives. Mr. Speaker, this amendment does not specifically require a specific amount to be moved, but it does instruct the committee, to the maximum possible extent, to move whatever items they can move out of these low- priority pork and project areas into readiness parts of the budget. Now, I earlier mentioned hypocrisy. We have seen this Congress on several occasions bemoan the very shortfalls that it has helped create. One example: Just last year, when the leadership of this House attacked the Clinton administration intelligence budget for being too low and then proceeded to cut it even more in order to free up more money for congressional pork. I do not, as I said, object to the Congress occasionally exercising its independent judgment on the values of some of these projects. What I object to, whether it occurs on the highway bill, or the committee of jurisdiction added over 1,800 pork barrel projects, or whether it happens in this bill, what I object to is when the practice of adding these projects becomes so gross that in the end that itself drives through this place legislation which otherwise would be considered in a more thoughtful way and with a more skeptical eye. And so I simply want to repeat: This Congress has added in the last 3 years over $20 billion in military spending, 85 percent of which went to nonreadiness accounts for destroyers that the Pentagon did not ask for or C-130s the Pentagon did not ask for and other items. In my own district, I have tried to eliminate one military project for 14 years and still have not had any success. I do not know if there is another Member of Congress who has asked the Congress to eliminate a project in his own district. I have not succeeded, but I am going to keep trying. But what I object to is the mind-set on this bill that always assumes that money should be spent, rather than saying that the burden of proof falls on those once in a while who want to spend the money. It just seems to me when we are told that there are 11,000 military personnel who are still on food stamps, that what we ought to be doing is putting our money in places that alleviates that demeaning need for them to ask for food stamps when they ought to be compensated at a level decent enough to avoid having to ask that, and it seems to me we ought to be putting our money into items like that and into other areas of readiness rather than putting so much of it in items that are simply here to make the grease on the bill move the bill a little faster through the process. So that is all this motion does, and as I said, out of deference to the committee I did not specify any specific dollar amount because the committee knows which items are pork and which items are truly high- priority congressional differences of judgment with the executive branch, and it seems to me that the House ought to adopt this motion and get on with the other business that faces us. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I am profoundly disappointed that this process will begin with a blatant disregard of fairness and bipartisanship. The information in this report has to be made public, and that is why I will vote for this resolution, but it violates fundamental fairness in two respects: First of all, in the refusal on the part of the majority to give the President even one hour of prior notice so that they can intelligently respond. Mr. Speaker, as has been pointed out on numerous occasions, you yourself were given five days to respond when your matter was before the House. Why is this President not entitled to the same act of grace and fairness that you were provided with? Secondly, this motion walks away from the agreement reached between the leaders of both parties that the backup material would be reviewed by the gentleman from Illinois (Chairman Hyde) and the ranking Democrat before it was released in order to protect third parties, as has been noted by Mr. Starr. This proposal walks away from that agreement and makes that information available to the entire membership of the committee. That increases the likelihood of selective partisan leaks by some of the most zealously partisan members of that committee. Mr. Speaker, I was here during Watergate. I hated it, because it bittered up the politics of the entire country, not just toward Republicans, but toward all politicians, and we are still suffering from that. But the reason in the end that the Congressional process worked is because it was seen by the minority, then the Republicans, as being fundamentally fair to them procedurally and substantively, and that is why many of the Republicans joined in the final verdict in that process. This action does not meet that standard. I urge the majority not to begin this process by taking unilateral actions before it begins. Our respect for our responsibility, our reverence for this institution, should have produced a fundamentally more fair beginning than this.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 10 minutes. Mr. Chairman, I do not intend to ask for a vote on the proposal that I am offering, but I have some things that I have wanted to say for a long time and now is the best time to say them. The general public knows, and any politician with a conscience ought to know, that our existing campaign finance system is a disgrace. What people do not know is that we are not operating under the laws written by Congress. We are operating under what was left of reforms passed by the Congress after the Court shredded those reforms in a series of misguided decisions. Under the Buckley v. Valeo decision, the Court equated dollars with speech, and in the process prevented the establishment of real limits on campaign spending. Through so-called independent expenditure and advocacy ads, they have allowed the cynical manipulation of campaign laws by special interests with the deepest pockets in this country. In trying to come up with an honest solution to the problem of campaign finance, we need first to understand what the basic problems are. The biggest problem is the lack of public participation. At least 50 percent of Americans do not vote. That means the question of who runs the country is decided in most elections by a majority of the minority. Ninety-four percent of Americans never contribute to a political campaign. They believe in political campaigns through immaculate conception. They do not want to contribute, and they do not like it when anybody else does, either. Many of them do not contribute because they cannot afford it. Some do not care. Some do not know how. Some do not believe that their contributions would make a difference. Some do not contribute simply because they have never been asked. That means that in terms of financing campaigns, politics for most people has become a sideline sport. That is unhealthy. Only one-third of 1 percent of all Americans make contributions of $200 or more, and that constitutes over half of all of the money given by individuals in campaigns. That is one reason that 75 percent of the public says, in the Yankelovich poll, that our system of government is democratic in name only and that special interests run things. When Congress passed campaign finance reform after Watergate, and I was here when we did, we thought we had created a system under which no individual could give more than $1,000, and no organization could give more than $5,000. Today corporate and party attorneys have expanded loopholes which enable corporations and high rollers individually to routinely give $200,000 contributions to both parties. The system is bad for both parties, because it makes the public gag when they think about politics. That is not the way it is supposed to be in this country. I will vote for the Shays-Meehan bill today because I think it does some good, but I think it does some very modest good. It does not go nearly far enough, in my view, and will be ineffective, if passed, on the question of independent expenditures and issue advocacy, because, like almost all other proposals, it is forced to dance around the court decisions such as Buckley v. Valeo and the Colorado case. It seems to me that as long as we accept Buckley v. Valeo, that what we are doing is pretending that we can get meaningful reform without modification of Buckley v. Valeo. There is a group of legal scholars in this country, exemplified by Joshua Rosencrantz from New York University School of Law, who believes that if the Congress passes legislation containing a congressional finding that the existing system has become so fundamentally corrupting of America's faith in our institutions that it is necessary to limit campaign activities by candidates and special interests, that the court might modify its original decision in light of those changing circumstances. I would like to think that is true, but I am dubious. But I am willing to try it, because it offers one of only two meaningful ways to get out of our dilemma. That is why I am offering the proposal that I am offering today. This proposal contains a congressional finding that America's faith in our election system has been fundamentally corrupted by big money, especially soft money, and cynical, manipulative expenditures by outside interest groups. This bill would establish a voluntary system of 100 percent public financing for candidates who agree to take no private money whatsoever from any private source in general elections. It provides that candidates who receive public financing would agree to reasonable spending limits to finance congressional campaigns. The bill creates a grass roots citizenship fund into which individual public-spirited Americans may contribute on a voluntary basis. The Federal Elections Commission would be authorized to conduct a major advertising campaign each year alerting the public to the existence of that fund, and explaining that they can help take back their government from special interest domination by voluntarily contributing virtually any amount they want. That is accomplished in the form of a dollar check up, not a check-off on their Federal tax return. So this is not mandated public financing, and it has not one dime of impact on the deficit. In addition to that, we would supplement that by a one-tenth of 1 percent fee charged to all corporations whose profits are above $10 million. That is not going to break any of them. The bill ends the scam of corporations and unions and special interest groups spending money to influence elections, all the while pretending that they are not doing what they in fact are doing. It would simply say that for a short 90-day period before the election, no independent expenditures and no issue advocacy ads would be allowed, period, if they could reasonably be determined to be aimed at influencing the outcome of the election. If the court overturns those limitations, then this bill contains a requirement for an expedited procedure for the Congress to consider a narrow constitutional amendment only for the purpose of limiting such expenditures for that narrow 90-day period before the election. Under normal circumstances, I frankly detest the idea of a constitutional amendment, because, with all due respect, when I look around this House floor, I see as many Daffy Ducks as I do James Madisons. But I would make an exception to my general resistance to a constitutional amendment, because this issue involves the very survival of our democratic form of government. Today our system is grotesquely warped to respond to those in this society with money. The court did not know it at the time, but the result of the Buckley v. Valeo case has been to subvert the court one man-one vote decision on a reapportionment. We really do not have a meaningful one man-one vote system at the ballot box, when one man's vote can be magnified by $1 million times if he has $1 million bucks. It turns ``One-man One-vote'' into ``Big Bucks, Big Megaphone'' and that is a lousy way to run what is supposed to be the greatest democratic system in the world. I have served in this institution for quite a while. I love what it is supposed to be. I cannot walk by the Capitol building at night without continuing to be thrilled about what our form of government is supposed to mean for every man, woman, and child in this country. But I have been profoundly angered by what the dominance of the economic elite in this country has done to public policy in this country, and to the process by which that policy is determined. I have read a lot of things in public opinion polls that mystify me. I read some that profoundly disturb me. The most disturbing is that 2 years ago, one pollster asked the public, ``Who does the Republican Party best represent, the rich, the middle class, or the poor?'' The response overwhelmingly came back, ``The rich!'' When the same question was asked about the Democratic Party, and who it represented, the rich, the middle class, or the poor, the response again came back: ``The Rich!'' The public, it is clear, thinks that both parties are far too influenced by people who have the most money; and do you know what? They are absolutely dead right. The only way we can restore public confidence in this election system, and the very democratic processes enshrined in the Constitution, is to take private money totally out of general elections by providing 100 percent public financing. Elections are supposed to be public events, not private events. They are not supposed to be auctions. They are supposed to be competing between ideas, not bank accounts. In the middle of the 19th century, my district was represented in Congress by Congressman Cadwallader Washburn. He also had two brothers serving in the Congress at the same time. One of the brothers represented the timber companies, a second represented the railroads, and the third represented the mining companies. They had all the big bases covered. Times have changed since then. But unless we make dramatic changes to campaign finance, this Congress is slowly but surely reverting to a situation in which individual Members are being seen as tools or mouthpieces of major economic interests in this country. Our principal responsibility as Members of this sacred body is to see to it that that does not happen. That is why I have tried to raise this issue today, and that is why, while I will support Shays-Meehan and I will oppose the freshman bill, I honestly believe that after the court gets done mucking up again honest efforts at reform, we will have to, in all honesty, turn to the recognition that we are going to have to look at a narrow constitutional amendment, if we are to save this Republic from the clutches of the wealthy elite which would turn ``One- man One-vote'' into ``Every man for the elite!'' That is not the way this country is supposed to be shaped, but our election politics right now guarantees that is the way it is going, without fundamental reform. I congratulate the supporters of Shays-Meehan. They are trying to do the best they can under ridiculous court decisions, but they cannot go very far under those ridiculous decisions. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.