Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, this motion to instruct the conferees on the highway bill now pending somewhere in this Capitol is an attempt to put some limits on the pork barrel spending in BESTEA by placing a ceiling on the total number of highway demonstration projects that can be included in the conference report. It instructs the House conferees to make a great sacrifice and to limit the number of highway demonstration projects to the total number of highway demonstration projects that have been approved in all of the previous four years combined since the establishment of the Highway Trust Fund. Mr. Speaker, the last time I checked, there were over 1,500 highway demonstration projects earmarked in the House version of BESTEA at a cost of about $9 billion, and the number is growing. Apparently, the conferees intend to keep all of the House demonstration projects and add an undetermined number of Senate projects into the total pot of $9 billion for highway demonstration projects. At 1,500 projects, that is nearly three times the number of projects included in the last surface transportation bill, and 10 times the number of projects in the 1987 reauthorization bill that President Reagan vetoed for going too far. Mr. Speaker, in all of the years going back to the establishment of the Highway Trust Fund in 1956, Congress has earmarked some 1,022 highway demonstration projects, costing about $10 billion according to information supplied by the Federal Highway Administration. If this highway bill passes, which the conferees are intending to wrap up tonight, they will have earmarked in one year 50 percent more pork projects than the Congress passed in the previous 42 years combined. Let me make it clear. I do not object to all highway demonstration projects. Some are perfectly reasonable. I think that some of the projects in this bill will be reasonable, but it is a question of balance. This bill sets a new record of excess. I would simply note that, when our good friends on the Republican side of the aisle were trying to win control of this House 3 years ago, they spoke repeatedly about 40 years of excess and mismanagement by the Democratic majority. Often that phrase was used to deride Democrats for using the legislative process to earmark individual projects that may have helped a small number of people or a particular region of the country but could not be justified in the broader context of what was good for the entire country. But now, the Republican leadership is evidently proposing in a single piece of legislation to earmark more projects than were earmarked by Democratic Congresses during that entire 40-year period. That is enough to give excess a bad name. Mr. Speaker, the bottom line is that my motion will merely trim about one-third of the demonstration projects included in BESTEA. I would observe that we know from previous experience with highway demonstration projects that, frequently, they languish in the pipeline and may never get built. Just looking at the 538 demonstration projects approved in the 1991 ISTEA bill, we know that nearly 200 have not even begun construction; and that has tied up nearly $800 million in resources that cannot be reallocated to more pressing road and bridge projects. In all, over $1\1/2\ billion in ISTEA funds earmarked for highway demonstration projects remain unobligated today. In my view, the pork barrel spending spree in this bill is going to make Congress the laughing stock of America. This is one of those bills that will probably pass tomorrow, and it will not receive very much attention. But I would predict to you that, over the next 5 or 6 months, the press is going to dig into this bill, and they are going to find incredible laughing items. You will see on network news on a weekly basis this outrage or that joke funded by the bill. A lot of Members who vote against this motion tonight or who vote for the bill tomorrow will wish that they had not. This is the time when you have a chance to correct the problem. Frankly, the motion that I am offering is so modest that I am almost embarrassed by it. I want to repeat once more. All this says is that you should not appropriate in this one year, or you should not authorize in this one year more projects than were previously funded in the entire 42-year history of the highway program. I really think that that is the minimum that we should ask the conferees to consider cutting. I would urge Members to adopt the motion. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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 myself 3 additional minutes. Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the gentleman who just spoke approves of the grant to PBS that is in the highway bill? Let me simply say that I must say I find it hard not to chuckle at the observations made by my friend from Kentucky. He indicates that the reason OMB scoring is used is because the administration wants it. If he is telling me that the reason that OMB scoring is being used is to accommodate the administration, I would say congratulations. This is the first time that side of the aisle has paid any deference to the administration this entire year. The rest of the time, they have been savaging them. I would also simply say that I fully agree with the gentleman that the Congress has an absolute right to designate projects that it thinks are high priority. My objection is not that there are projects in this bill. My objection is that there is such a gross number in the bill, that these projects are being used to drive a bill that otherwise would not pass, because this bill is a blatant budget buster. This bill is going to spend at least $10 billion more than we are allowed to spend under the budget which passed this Congress last year. That means that Congress will have two choices. It will either have to take that money out of some other program and, evidently, the conferees have decided to take a good piece of it out of veterans health care, which I object to, or else the conferees are going to simply use a different set of numbers to wiggle their way out of the budget and wind up enabling themselves to spend at least $10 billion more than they will admit to spending publicly through their funny money estimates. That is why I object to these projects. I would also simply say that just because the administration supports or acquiesces in something, does not mean that I always will or that people on this side of the aisle always will. I do not care who engages in this process. In this instance it happens to be wrong. The administration, it is clear to me, is acquiescing in this legislative outrage because they do not believe that they have the votes to sustain a veto, and that is because the bill has been structured so that virtually every State and every Member has a project that will drive them to support this bill. This bill is not going to be a bill that is passed to meet the national interests of the country. It is going to be a bill that is passed to meet the political needs of the leadership in this House and Members individually in this House, and that is not the way we are supposed to deal with a major national responsibility. I passionately support highway construction. I think we need more investment in it. But that is not my only priority. I do not put it ahead of veterans health care. I do not put highways ahead of education. I do not put highways ahead of health. Most of all, I do not put highways ahead of honest budgeting. So that is the reason that I make this motion; not because I have a ``Percy Pureheart'' objection to Congress occasionally selecting a high priority project. It is because this is a blatant political power play to bust the budget, and Members ought not to swallow it. Mr. Speaker, I yield three minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas [Mr. Edwards] .

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Speaker, I would simply say that I really find it incredible that the conferees are going to be bringing back a bill tomorrow which ignores virtually everything that has been promised to the country on this bill over the last month. We had a motion last night, which this House adopted unanimously, asking the conferees not to cut veterans' health care in order to pay for highway projects. Yet the conferees will be reporting back a bill which ignores that instruction. We will soon be leaving for our Memorial Day recess. I wonder how many Members of this House are going to go home and rub shoulders with their veterans and pose for political holy pictures with their veterans organizations, one day after they have voted ``yes'' to pork and ``no'' to veterans? And yet that is what is going to happen, I would predict. I hope that the American people are watching, and I hope that they will understand what is being done. To me, it would be an act of consummate arrogance for the conferees to do that, but I expect that is exactly what they will do tomorrow. The best we can do is to try to urge them through motions like this not to do it, which is why the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Minge) and I are both here tonight. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I would certainly say that is true. Let me stipulate, I am not a ``Percy Pureheart'' on this issue. I think that there are times when it is just as legitimate for the Congress to specify that $5 million will go for a specific highway project as it is for the administration to determine that that is where the money ought to go. But I do believe that, when you have this number of projects, there is only one reason you have this many projects in the bill; and that is to pass a budget busting monster. I did not vote for the budget that passed last year, because, as the ranking Democrat on the Committee on Appropriations, I warned that this Congress would never live up to the cuts that they were promising in that proposal. I need go no further than this bill in order to demonstrate that that was the case. I have had many a Member come up to me today and say, I would like to vote for you. In fact, I would like to speak for you. I had one Member say, do you see that? This is the chart that demonstrates the historical growth of the project. One Member said, you see this little item at the top of that red line? I am afraid that is my project. So you are going to see a lot of folks vote for that bill tomorrow because they have gotten a tiny little bit for their district, and that will mean that they will vote for a product which will bust the budget and, as the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) says, wind up putting much more pressure on Social Security and other crucial problems that we have in this country. So I would urge Members that this bill, in my view, cannot even pass the laugh test. If we still had the TV program Laugh-In, this would consume the entire show. I would hope that the Members would support the amendment and oppose the bill tomorrow if it does not comply with it. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to instruct House conferees on the bill (H.R. 2400) to authorize funds for Federal-aid highways, highway safety programs, and transit programs, and for other purposes.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, the issue that the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Minge) raises tonight is a very simple one. It is one with which many Members on both sides of the aisle are familiar. It is an issue that dominated American politics for most of the last decade. The issue is phoney numbers. David Stockman, when he directed President Reagan's Office of Management and Budget, called it the ``magic asterisk.'' It involves the ability of budget analysts to show that virtually any spending proposal is budget neutral if they are willing to make the right assumptions. Now, the Congressional Budget Office is supposed to decide what proposals that are offered by various Members and various committees will actually cost or save. The game that is presently being played on the highway bill is to simply say that the Congressional Budget Office just does not understand that the savings that the Congress will get from disallowing certain veterans from receiving health benefits that they are now entitled to will be much greater than their analysts estimate. The committee is, in essence, saying that CBO has it all wrong and that we have to use another estimate. At the same time, the conferees are trying to argue CBO just does not understand that the outlays that will occur from the highway bill are much lower than the CBO estimate, so they have got it all wrong; and, so, we are supposed to use another estimate. Well, Mr. Speaker, I do not have any particular hang-up about whether CBO or OMB numbers are used. I think that the goal ought to be to determine who is the most accurate and what is the most real. It is clear that that is not what is happening in this case. What is happening in this case is that the conferees, apparently, are looking for ways to spend almost an extra $10 billion without admitting that they are spending it. So they are simply rejiggering the estimates of the spending regs in order to make that happen. Well, I would say that there is little question that these numerical manipulations have been cleared by the majority party leadership on both sides of the Capitol and that virtually any number that will help sell the highway bill is going to be deemed acceptable. This is the same leadership, as I understand it, that repeatedly shut down the Federal Government over the sanctity of CBO scoring just 2\1/ 2\ years ago. On November 15, 1995, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrich) took the floor and said, ``We do not ask you to agree to anything but two principles, that the budget will be balanced in 7 years and that the scoring will be honest numbers based on the Congressional Budget Office.'' The gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Shuster) himself told the Congress in 1971, ``So we should support our Congressional Budget Office, a bipartisan office. We should not rely on OMB's figures. Because certainly in the past they have been very, very unreliable.'' But that was before the Republican leadership had the opportunity to hand out $9 billion in special projects. So I guess, with that kind of opportunity, we may decide not to be quite so picky about their facts. And so, we have a new set of principles that apparently are going to be applied. We will always use the CBO unless using estimates from another source helps us to pass bills which we want to push through. Well, Mr. Speaker, this is not a budget process. This is not discipline. There is no limit to how far that approach can take us in balancing revenues that outlays on paper even if they will not do it in the real world. We can buy anything we want as long as we can find a friendly estimator, and that is what is happening here tonight. So if we are going to throw the budget process overboard, it seems to me we should not do so selectively and maintain the false pretense that we are still maintaining discipline. If we are going to do that, then perhaps we should plan to eliminate the $26 million we are planning to spend on the Congressional Budget Office, period. At least that would be a real offset to the billions of deficit spending contained in the present version of the highway bill. So I would simply urge, Mr. Speaker, we adopt the Minge amendment in the interest of honesty and budgeting.

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 yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I would simply say to the gentleman from Texas, I certainly do not know of any time in the time that I have been in this Congress when we have even contemplated reducing veterans' benefits by such a large amount, and I would hope that we see nothing like that in the bill that is being reported by the committee, or that will be reported by the committee very shortly.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I do not intend to use all the time, but let me yield myself such time as I may consume to simply recount what is happening here. When this bill first came to the floor, a number of us warned at the time that if the rule was adopted for the consideration of the bill, and if the bill was passed, we would set in motion a series of events that would be totally unpredictable. The bill did not tell us how the overage, above the amount allowed in the budget that this Congress so vociferously adopted last year, the bill did not tell us how that overage would be paid for; it left it silent. We warned at the time the bill was being considered that there were rumors that it would be paid for by reductions in veterans' health care; we warned that there were also rumors that it might be paid for, in part, by eliminating the President's education initiatives, and we urged Members not to vote for a bill until they knew where the money was coming from to pay for it. The House disregarded those warnings and they voted for the bill. Now, we are being told by many sources that the conferees in fact do intend to pay for the excess above the amount allowed in last year's budget agreement by in fact directing scoring on this veterans' health care item, and therefore, they intend to pay for approximately $16 billion in highway funds by the same long-term cutbacks in veterans' health care. We are told that that is virtually the only item at this point that has been tentatively agreed to by the conferees. Now, that is why we are bringing this motion, because we have moved from the general concern to the specific. I would ask every Member of this House who cares about our commitment to veterans to vote for this motion, but I would ask the committee not to accept this motion if they intend to accept it, pat the House on the head, simply give Members a vote to cover their tails on veterans' health care issues, and then proceed to come back to the House with a bill that does something similar to what we are trying to prohibit in this motion. If we intend to in fact reduce benefits for veterans, then do not, I would say to the committee, encourage Members to vote for this motion today. Let us play it on the square. This motion should be passed and the conferees should not, in fact, bring a bill back to the House which does violence to the instruction contained therein.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, before I yield back the remainder of my time, pursuant to clause 1(c) of House rule XXVIII, I hereby notify the House of my intention tomorrow to offer the following motion to instruct House conferees on H.R. 2400, Building Efficient Surface Transportation and Equity Act of 1998. To wit: I move that the managers on the part of the House at the conference on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses on the bill, H.R. 2400, be instructed to limit the aggregate number of earmarked highway demonstration projects included in the conference report on H.R. 2400 to a number that does not exceed the aggregate number of such highway demonstration projects earmarked during the 42 years since the enactment of the Highway Trust Fund in 1956. In other words, I do not believe that veterans' health care should be cut back in order to provide funding for the amount of highway projects which exceeds the total of all special projects provided in that bill in the 42 years since the enactment of the Highway Trust Fund. Having given that notice, I would urge an ``aye'' vote on this motion.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, if I could continue, I would simply say that I believe strongly in additional funds for highway construction. I have led the fight early and often, both in the legislature and in the Congress, for a greater commitment to transportation infrastructure development and certainly to highways. I take a back seat to no one in placing highways as a high priority on my scale, but they are not my only priority, and I certainly would not rank them above veterans' health care. I find it especially disturbing that these veterans' health care cuts apparently are being contemplated in order to pay for a record number of special projects for Members and their districts. Notice of Intention to Offer Motion to Instruct on H.R. 2400, Building Efficient Surface Transportation and Equity Act of 1998

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Speaker, this motion to instruct conferees is very simple. It instructs the House conferees to protect veterans' health care by rejecting any reduction in service-connected disability compensation to veterans for tobacco-related illnesses and then using those cuts to pay for increased highway and transit spending. Mr. Speaker, we all know that when the transportation bill passed, it was a bloated budget-busting bill that staked a claim on more than $217 billion in Federal resources for roads, bridges, and mass transit over the next 6 years, 40 percent more than the levels provided in the previous legislation. The bill, as it left the House, is not paid for at all. So it is no surprise that BESTEA conferees have been struggling for weeks to find the ways to pay the check now that it has to be paid. Mr. Speaker, even though conferees have apparently trimmed the total tab on the bill to somewhere around $200 billion, it is clear that they are having trouble finding the funds they need to pay for the bill. We know that BESTEA conferees evidently planned to use a combination of directed scorekeeping provisions, smoke and mirrors, and what is the unkindest cut of all, a reduction in veterans' compensation for smoking-related illnesses. Mr. Speaker, the Minge amendment which has just been noticed will be offered tomorrow because, as you know, the Office of Management and Budget has estimated that savings of $17 billion over 6 years could be achieved by eliminating existing smoking-related disability benefits to veterans who became addicted to nicotine during military service but whose disability occurred only after they left military service. The Congressional Budget Office has disputed the OMB estimates. Their savings estimates are only about $10.5 billion, and many people believe that, based on VA's current claims, that even the CBO estimate may be too high. Nonetheless, the Senate budget resolution counted the OMB savings as an offset for the increased highway and transit spending, and the conferees on the final version of the highway bill are apparently about to adopt this overblown savings estimate, even though neither the House nor the Senate-passed highway bills included any provision to cut veterans' compensation. What that directed scorekeeping means in plain English is that the Congress would be able to bust the budget by billions of dollars and hide the fact from the general public. That is why the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Minge) wants to offer the motion tomorrow in order to try to prevent that. Meanwhile, we are trying today in this motion to deal with the parallel problem. Apparently, the conferees on the transportation bill have decided to spend $9 billion on over 1,500 pork barrel projects included in the House bill and a nondetermined number of Senate pork projects, and would pay for that pork by cutting health care benefits for veterans. In short, Mr. Speaker, apparently the conferees would produce a product which would commit highway robbery on veterans' health care. Mr. Speaker, over 50 veterans groups and other groups oppose these cuts in disability benefits to sick and disabled veterans, or to sick and disabled veterans who have legitimate service-connected claims. The organizations that oppose this action are the Veterans of the Vietnam War; Vietnam Era Veterans Association; Vietnam Veterans of America; the Air Force Sergeants Association; American Ex-Prisoners Of War; American Paraplegia Society; Association of the U.S. Army; Blinded Veterans Association; Brotherhood Rally of all Veterans Organization; Catholic War Veterans, U.S.A.; The Enlisted Association of the National Guard of the United States; Jewish War Veterans of the U.S.A.; Legion of Valor of the U.S.A.; Military Chaplains Association of the U.S.A.; Military Order of the Purple Heart; National Amputation Foundation; National Association for Uniformed Services; National Association of County Veterans Service Officers; National Association Of Military Widows; National Coalition For Homeless Veterans; Noncommissioned Officers Association; Nurses Organization of Veterans Affairs; Polish Legion of American Veterans; The Retired Officers Association; Society Of Military Widows; U.S. Merchant Marine Veterans of World War II, and so on, and so on. Also I have received a number of letters today from organizations that I did not mention, including the American Legion. I would quote briefly from some of these letters. The letter from the American Legion says: Simply put, Members who support rescinding future veterans benefits to pay for highways and mass transit projects should be ashamed of their actions. The Disabled Americans Veterans letter reads in part as follows: Your effort to introduce a motion to instruct the House conferees on H.R. 2400 not to use so-called ``savings'' from disability compensation for the highway fund is greatly appreciated.'' AMVETS, they say as follows: AMVETS strongly supports your motion to instruct conferees on H.R. 2400 not to use veterans' money to pay for these highway projects. Vietnam Veterans of America: We feel very strongly that this anti-veteran provision must be stricken from the ISTEA conference report. The fact that Congress is considering taking $16 billion away from veterans compensation in order to increase spending in the Intermodal Surface Transportation and Efficiency Act is an affront to every American who served in the military. The VFW says as follows: All Members of the House and Senate must certainly be aware by now of the VFW's outrage regarding the initiative to deprive veterans of the VA compensation to which they are now entitled. This callous assault on veterans in need is made all the more egregious by the fact that the resulting savings are being used to pay for pork-barrel spending in the budget- busting transportation bill. I have a number of other letters which I will submit for the Record. I would simply ask the House, Mr. Speaker, to vote for this amendment, and I would ask those who vote for it not to do so if they then intend to allow the conferees to come back and, through indirection, accomplish indirectly what we are trying to prohibit directly here today. Mr. Speaker, this highway bill should not be paid for by cutting back veterans' compensation or veterans' health care benefits. The House originally said when it passed this bill it would not do that. The chairman of the committee put out a press release indicating that he was strongly opposed to doing that. I would hope, therefore, that the committee would stick to their original promise and not in fact allow it to happen, what we have been told from a number of sources they intend to let happen without this motion. Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the letters from veterans groups referred to earlier: The American Legion, Office of the National Commander, Washington, DC, May 20, 1998. David R. Obey, Ranking Minority Member, House Committee on Appropriations, Washington, DC. Dear Representative Obey: The American Legion fully supports your motion to instruct House Conferees on H.R. 2400, Building Efficient Surface Transportation and Equity Act (BESTEA) of 1998, that insist no provisions to prohibit or reduce service-connected disability compensation to veterans for tobacco-related illnesses be included in the conference report on H.R. 2400 to offset spending for highway or transit programs. Your motion would uphold Congress' moral, ethical and legal responsibilities with regard to veterans service-connected injuries or illnesses that resulted from addiction to tobacco while serving in the armed forces. Furthermore, your motion would uphold the Sense of the Congress language, contained in section 1001 in the House passed BESTEA legislation, ``to not include any provision making a change in programs or benefits administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs.'' Simply put, members who support rescinding future veterans benefits to pay for highways and mass transit projects should be ashamed of their actions. The American Legion appreciates your leadership, commitment and dedication to ensure Congress remains the protector and guardian of veterans benefits and not reckless financial raiders. Sincerely, Anthony G. Jordan, National Commander.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself one minute. Mr. Speaker, I would simply say that despite that interesting rewrite of history on the rule, the fact is a good many of us, you bet, did vote against the rule on the highway bill because that rule provided for the consideration of a bill which spent over $200 billion without telling the country in the slightest where they were going to get the money to pay for the excess in that bill. So the fact is, Mr. Speaker, that because that rule was self- executing, Members never had a chance to vote specifically on that provision. We are certainly giving them one now. But do not kid yourself, the vote on the rule was cast against that rule by most Members of the House who voted against it because of our objection to the sleight-of-hand approach by which the committee was going to be able to bring a bill to the House floor without saying how its budget-busting was going to be paid for. I make no apology whatsoever for the Members who voted against that rule. It was the right thing to do from the standpoint of protecting the taxpayers. Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Arizona.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. Mr. Speaker, again, I find that to be an irrelevancy. The fact is that my only concern with the gentleman's remarks relates not to his position on veterans' health care. It did relate to the gentleman's description of the vote against the rule, which was, in my view, a very large misdescription. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Illinois, (Mr. Evans) the ranking Democrat on the Committee on Veterans' Affairs. (Mr. EVANS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks and include extraneous material.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield four minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards), the former ranking member of the Subcommittee on Veterans' Health Care.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, do I have the right to close?

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to clause 1(c) of House Rule XXVIII, I hereby notify the House of my intention tomorrow to offer the following motion to instruct House conferees on H.R. 2400, Building Efficient Surface Transportation and Equity Act of 1998: I move that the managers on the part of the House at the conference on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses on the bill, H.R. 2400, be instructed to insist that no provisions to prohibit or reduce service- connected disability compensation to veterans for smoking-related illnesses be included in the conference report on H.R. 2400 to offset spending for highway or transit programs.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I submit the following for the Record: Campaign Contributions Congressional candidates who voluntarily agree would not be funded with private money in the general elections. Instead, the citizen-funded Grassroots Good Citizenship Fund would equally provide money to the major party's nominees and provide funds for third party and independent candidates. Soft Money The use of soft money is prohibited with respect to any House of Representatives election. The Grassroots Good Citizenship Fund Money for the Grassroots Good Citizenship Fund will be provided by voluntary additional payments from public spirited citizens and a .1% tax on corporate income of $10,000,000 or above. Major party candidates' funds will be based on the median household income of each district. The maximum amount allocated will be $500,000 per candidate for the districts with the highest median household income and all other districts will be equal to that amount minus \2/3\ percentage difference between the median household income in that district and the highest district. Independent candidates will receive funds based on the corresponding number of signatures collected and verified by the commission. Third party candidates will receive a proportional amount based on that party's vote in the last five elections. ``Independent Expenditures'' and ``Express Advocacy'' Ads Independent expenditures and express advocacy activities relating to the election of Members the House of Representatives are prohibited during the 90 days prior to the general election. Changes in primary election funds The maximum expenditure in a primary will be capped to \1/ 3\ of the amount allocated in the primary election. Large donor PACs will be limited to 20% of this amount. What if these provisions are found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court? If the Supreme Court rules against provisions in this bill, the House will consider under expedited procedures, a constitutional amendment empowering Congress to make reasonable restrictions on independent expenditures and express advocacy ads for the 90 day period preceding the general election.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I submit the following for the Record: Campaign Contributions Congressional candidates would not be funded with private money in the general elections. Instead, the citizen-funded Grassroots Good Citizenship Fund would equally provide money to the major party's nominees and provide funds for third party and independent candidates. Soft Money The use of soft money is prohibited with respect to any House of Representatives election. The Grassroots Good Citizenship Fund Money for the Grassroots Good Citizenship Fund will be provided by voluntary additional payments from public spirited citizens and a .1% tax on corporate income of $10,000,000 or above. Major party candidates' funds will be based on the median household income of each district. The maximum amount allocated will be $500,000 per candidate for the districts with the highest median household income and all other districts will be equal to that amount minus \2/3\ percentage difference between the median household income in that district and the highest district. Independent candidates will receive funds based on the corresponding number of signatures collected and verified by the commission. Third party candidates will receive a proportional amount based on that party's vote in the last five elections. ``Independent Expenditures'' and ``Express Advocacy'' Ads Independent expenditures and express advocacy activities relating to the election of Members the House of Representatives are prohibited during the 90 days prior to the general election. Changes in primary election funds The maximum expenditure in a primary will be capped to \1/ 3\ of the amount allocated in the primary election. Large donor PACs will be limited to 20% of this amount. What if these provisions are found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court? If the Supreme Court rules against provisions in this bill, the House will consider under expedited procedures, a constitutional amendment empowering Congress to make reasonable restrictions on contributions and expenditures.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.