Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, the list of violations by that company is stunning. They failed to properly guard machines. They failed to lock up dangerous equipment when not in use. They failed to provide respiratory protection for workers. They failed to provide protective clothing. DeCoster's workers were shipped in from south Texas and stranded in inhuman conditions. They were forced to live with sewers that were so backed up that they had to discard their used toilet paper in a trash can. They were given a chance by OSHA to comply voluntarily, and they misused and abused that chance, and that is why OSHA had to come in with enforcement actions. Mr. Chairman, I would like to read just three paragraphs from a newspaper article entitled, ``A Shameful Legacy.'' It reads as follows: The transgressions for this company date back nearly a decade when the Federal Government fined him in 1988 for 184 workplace violations, including hiring illegal aliens. Last year, OSHA inspectors found immigrant workers living in cockroach- and rat-infested housing and forced to work in hazardous settings. The violations included having workers handle chicken waste with their bare hands. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich called DeCoster's operation ``* * * as dangerous and oppressive as any sweatshop I've ever seen.'' Now, it just seems to me that the responsible thing for this Congress to do is exactly what the committee has done. We have provided an 11- percent increase in the voluntary compliance operations at OSHA. We have provided roughly a 1-percent increase for the rest of OSHA operations, which means that in real dollar terms, the rest of those operations will already suffer a real dollar reduction in terms of the services they are able to provide. We have already had a 17-percent reduction in the number of inspections around the country under the new OSHA administration, under Joe Dear. This amendment is really a gutting amendment. It guts this bill. It guts the ability of OSHA to prevent additional fatalities by being able to inspect and fine where they need to. Mr. Chairman, I would urge the House on both sides of the aisle to recognize the committee has produced a balanced approach to this problem, and I would ask the House to reflect that same balance when it votes on this amendment.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Neumann] gave the House some interesting comparisons in the difference in voting patterns between the Democratic Caucus and the Republican Caucus. I find those interesting, but what I think needs to be understood is that what the committee tried to do is not to find a Democratic answer or a Republican answer to these problems, but to find a bipartisan American answer, and it came up as the committee product and I think it ought to be supported. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman says that OSHA ought to engage in voluntary compliance activities and not mandatory enforcement activities. My response is that they ought to do both, because we have, as I said earlier, good businessmen and bad businessmen. We have 6 million businesses in this country. We have only 900 Federal inspectors to review the activities of those companies. It seems to me that those numbers alone indicate that there is a lot of work to be done to protect workers' lives in both the voluntary compliance portion of OSHA's responsibility and the enforcement compliance portion. Mr. Chairman, I would hope that Congress would recognize its obligation to also support both.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, could I interrupt to ask which page the Clerk is on? I think Members had been under the impression that we were still reading title I.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I would like to recite the numbers to demonstrate the change that has occurred since the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Porter] has become chairman. The enforcement portion of OSHA's budget has declined by 5 percent in those 3 years. The compliance portion of the budget has been increased by 80 percent, from $45 to $81 million. I think that is a very large swing in emphasis which continues under this bill. I hope that the House will recognize the good efforts made by the gentleman from Illinois.

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

Mr. OBEY. Did the gentleman say that this is the last amendment to title I?

Mr. OBEY. In that case on this side of the aisle, we would be delighted to accept the gentleman's amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I simply want to repeat some facts and make a point. The program that the gentleman seeks to add money to has already been increased by the committee under the leadership of the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Porter] this year in this bill from $167 million to $299 million. I challenge you to find a larger percentage increase in a large program in the bill. It will be very difficult to do. I think, under the circumstances, the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Porter] and the subcommittee, and the full committee that reported this bill to the House on a bipartisan basis, have more than responded to the need. Now, the gentleman is perfectly entitled to his view that there ought to be more. But the fact is the newspapers have been full of accounts from Members who are offering these amendments, including the gentleman, that they intend to keep us here for a long, long time on this bill. The rules of the House require Members to be here in a situation in which they are prepared to offer their amendments at the proper time. Because it was apparent to me that we were already in title II, even though it was a Parliamentary disadvantage to the committee and to myself, I interrupted the Clerk's reading in order to note to the House that we were already far ahead into title II. That should have alerted the gentleman. I extended a courtesy to him. The gentleman should be thanking me instead of attacking me. Mr. Chairman, I would simply say that I have tried to be courteous to Members on both sides, and I have tried to extend many courtesies, including the opportunity to strike the last word many times, when the normal course of events in the House and the normal rules would not provide for that. With all due respect, I am sorry the gentleman did not offer his amendment at the proper time, but the rules are meant to eventually enable the House to produce legislation. I think we have been more than fair to those who have been taking a good deal of time. I think the committee has been more than fair to the program at hand. This subcommittee takes a back seat to no one, certainly the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Porter] does not, the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Pelosi] does not, and other Members, when it comes to dealing with this problem. I would say that I think the most sensible thing for the House to do at this point is to move on. There are a good many other amendments, and I have already been informed by the gentleman and others that we will be here for at least 2 weeks on a bill that was expected to take 2 days. I think I have been very patient, but I do not intend to be a sap.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, once again, I object.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time under my reservation, let me recite again for Members who have come to the floor what the situation is. After the adoption of the last amendment to title I, the Clerk began to read title II. There were a number of Members on both sides of the aisle who were entitled to offer amendments in title II. I stood and asked the Clerk to stop reading to make clear to the House where she was in the bill so that Members who had amendments could be alerted to the fact that they should be offering their amendments at that time. I cannot recall a single instance in which a committee manager has done that before in the years I have been in this House. I did it even though it disadvantaged the committee because I wanted to be fair to Members who were offering amendments. No amendments were offered. We passed some 10 pages of that section. At this point there are a number of amendments that are no longer eligible to be offered at this point in the bill. The Chenoweth amendment, the committee had determined that we were going to accept the Chenoweth amendment, if the gentlewoman offered it, because we regarded it as a reasonable amendment in contrast to the other amendment that engendered controversy, which tries to increase an account which we have already increased by almost 100 percent in the bill. As a courtesy to the majority, I am willing to withdraw my objection to consideration of the gentlewoman's amendment, but not without an appreciation of the fact that the committee has bent over backward to be fair to each and every Member who had an opportunity to offer an amendment. It is the responsibility of this committee, when we are informed through the press and on the floor by two gentlemen last night that they intend to keep us here for more than 2 weeks on this bill, it is our responsibility to move the bill forward wherever we can. Despite that fact, in this instance I am willing to withdraw my objection to this amendment but only this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

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

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, on this side we also accept the amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, let me say, I was born in the gentleman's district. I was born in Okmulgee.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order on the amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my reservation of a point of order. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Could I ask the gentleman from Oklahoma a question. Does he represent Okmulgee?

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

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, the fact is that many of them are coming to the United States right now because those refugee camps have just been closed down. They are entering California, Minnesota, Wisconsin, thousands of them.

Mr. OBEY. I do not know last year. Three thousand to four thousand will come in this year.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Castle amendment. Mr. Chairman, first of all, let me say that there is virtually no Member of this House, certainly on that side of the aisle, for whom I have more respect than the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde]. I have a great deal of fondness for him personally as well. I want to say that I very much enjoyed the opportunity to work very closely with him just a couple of weeks ago in fashioning a new compromise on this bill which expands the effect of the Hyde amendment to cover HMO situations. I think that the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde] correctly indicated that there was a problem with HMO's who tried to get around the Hyde amendment, and I am pleased that we were able to work with him to expand that amendment. I think that should help unify the House behind this bill. In this instance, however, I differ with the gentleman's judgment, although I did not on the other question, because I think here the issue is not what we want our children to do but how we think we can best affect what it is they do. This is not a question about goals. It is a question about approaches. It is a question of what you think works, at least in my view. I think the virtue of the Castle amendment, and I would urge Members to just read the language, because what the Castle amendment says is that none of the funds in this bill may be used unless clinics certify that they encourage family participation in the making of these decisions and that they also provide counseling to their clients on how to resist efforts at coercive sex from adults. I think that is important. If there are sexual predators walking around communities, the answer is not to screw up the ability of these clinics to provide needed services. Those services which will, in my judgment, help to prevent abortions. The answer is to throw the book at those sexual predators and keep them in jail. Now, I thought that when we passed legislation such as the welfare reform bill that we were trying to send a message that we expect people to recognize personal responsibility. I do not believe we ought to take off the hook the predators who engage in the kind of acts cited by the gentleman from Oklahoma by saying: ``Oh, it was the fault of the clinics because they did not have the right procedures.'' It was the fault of the individuals who engaged in that conduct! Let me simply say that I wish that every family in America worked in a way that enabled young people to talk to their parents. The problem is, and I run into a lot of them, the problem is that there are a lot of families that do not work that way. These youngsters on some occasions are going to wind up engaging in inappropriate sex either with consultation with some adult or they are going to engage in it with consultation with no adult at all. If, for those children, that is the choice, then I would prefer that they at least have some opportunity to talk to an adult, because the consequences are not only unwanted pregnancies, there are also unwanted abortions and an increase in sexually transmitted diseases. I would also like to make a point that the American Hospital Association and the American Public Hospital Association have reviewed the text of this amendment and they indicate that their reading of it is that the parental consent requirement applies not just to title X funds, but to all funds used to provide contraceptives, including State and privately raised funds. That means if a hospital or clinic fails to abide by the parental consent requirements, they believe that they would have to forfeit all Federal funds. I do not think we want to see that happen, and so I would respectfully urge that we support on a bipartisan basis the Castle amendment.