Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I would simply like to point out, we have heard a lot about Hudson Foods lately, and the E. coli contamination which caused a number of deaths around the country. I should point out that OSHA is one of the agencies that has determined just how far from an acceptable norm that plant has been operating. OSHA reviewed that firm's activities and cited them for 34 different violations, including a number of sanitary condition violations. Mr. Chairman, it is no wonder that the American public's health is being endangered when corporations like this are able to produce without having adequate resources that will enable the agencies that are charged with the responsibilities for public health and safety to do their jobs adequately.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object, let me simply say that, as we know, the normal procedure is for Members to get one kick at the cat. The gentleman has had three occasions on which he has spoken on his own time. I have not objected. We have had a number of Members last night who asked unanimous consent to speak a second time. I did not object, and because they had done it on numerous occasions, I have done it once myself. But I simply want to say that I think Members need to be aware of the fact that the normal course around here is to speak once. I understand that there is a filibuster by amendment going on. I would simply ask, and I am not going to object at this point, but I would ask Members to show restraint in the number of times that they make that request, or I think Members will feel constrained to object.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, again, if I could speak under my reservation of objection, I think there has been a misunderstanding of how debate works. There is not assigned time. Members are generally allowed to strike the last word once. We do not have assigned blocks of time when we are operating under the 5-minute rule. The 5-minute rule is different than debating under conditions when we have time assigned to each amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I would just like to make the point that, far from benefiting Washington bureaucrats, the Wage and Hour Division, through the enforcement of our labor laws, last year was able to put an additional $132 million in money into the pockets of workers who had earned that money but were denied it by exploitation. That is the purpose of this account. This account leverages far more money into the pockets of workers than it costs us in the first place, and that is why it should not be diminished one dime.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, let me simply say to the gentleman, as the gentleman knows, the Congress does not administer the laws, we only pass them. It is the responsibility of the Executive Branch of government to administer them in such a way that we have minimum leakage. I am certain the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Porter] and I will both pursue every reasonable avenue in order to minimize that leakage, because we certainly want to see moneys expended to deliver services to people, and not to go out the window for no good purpose.

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

Mr. OBEY. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I would simply point out to the gentleman from Missouri, my understanding is that Hudson Foods of now notorious fame is from his State. OSHA had to cite them because their place of employment was not kept clean and orderly or in a sanitary condition. Drainage was not maintained where wet processes were used. That is the kind of problem that creates a hazard to not only workers but to the entire country as was demonstrated. The previous speaker from Georgia, I would point out, there were 249 fatalities in the workplace in his State last year, 200,000 injuries, and the average workplace is inspected now once every 257 years. That is longer than this country has been in existence. In Kentucky, there were 158 fatalities, 115,000 injuries, one inspection per workplace every 79 years. That hardly is an agency which is overfunded.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, my point was not that this money is a small amount of money. My point was simply that a $4.3 million impact on a $600 million budget is infinitesimal in comparison to its effect on a budget which is only one-sixth that size. I would make the point that the amendment would provide less than $1 in additional help to every child my colleague is talking about, but it would provide a devastating cut in the ability to enforce protection for workers not in Washington, but in sweatshops in Los Angeles, in New York, and Chicago, in Wisconsin or any other State in the Union where workers are being taken advantage of every day.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I take a back seat to no one in my concern for disabled children. There is not anybody on this floor who does not have someone in their family who is disabled or someone close to them. I have a nephew who is disabled. I have another child in my family who was born with so many problems that by the time they left the hospital, his parents had almost $400,000 in unpaid medical bills. So there is not anybody who does not understand that. But the fact is that $4 million added to this account will do virtually nothing to improve the situation that has been talked about because this account is already so large. But cutting $4.3 million out of the agency that is charged with the responsibility to protect workers against slave labor conditions, to guarantee that workers are paid what they are entitled to be paid, to guarantee that they are not forced into working hours that are against the law, that will indeed have a deep effect on the agency because the agency already has a much smaller budget. I would make a larger point. It is true that the account into which the gentleman wants to put money is underfunded. Virtually every account in this bill is underfunded. The fact is that the budget agreement which has been imposed on us leaves this bill at least $5 billion short of where it ought to be. There ought to be at least $2 billion more in this bill for Pell grants. There ought to be more money in this bill for the National Institutes of Health. There ought to be more money in this bill for worker protection. There ought to be less money in the budget, in my view, for B-2 bombers. If we want to correct the problem as large as the problem described, we are not going to do it with $4 million transfers that weaken the Government's ability to meet its obligations to protect workers and see to it they work in decent working conditions. The only way we are going to get that is if we take money out of the areas of the budget that clearly do not deserve it. For the cost of one of those B-2 bombers, we could pay the cost of tuition for every single kid at the University of Wisconsin for the next 11 years; we could pay the cost of hundreds of thousands of families in dealing with disabilities. This amendment does not do that. This amendment is a token transfer that will have virtually no effect on the people we are trying to help, but it will very deeply cut a much smaller agency which is supposed to protect every worker in America so that their employers pay them what they are entitled to, so that their employers do not have them working in slave conditions, so that employers do not illegally hire aliens. Mr. Chairman, I suggest to my colleagues, if they want to correct the problem, go back and correct the budget deal; quit giving billions of dollars in tax relief to the wealthiest people in this country who do not need it while the families we are talking about are getting table scraps. If we want to correct the problem, give this bill a larger budget allocation. Otherwise, they are cutting one deserving account in order to try to fund another account. So I would urge the House respectfully to recognize that this House has no business weakening protections on minimum wage or weakening protections on the employment of immigrants. Some of the speakers who have addressed this amendment have made clear they do not believe in the Family Leave Act, they did not believe in raising the minimum wage, and so what they are trying to do is to eliminate funding that is enforcing legislation that they voted against in the first place. I do not happen to agree with that; I do not think the House will, either. I think there are a large number of Members in both parties who recognize their responsibility to see to it that working people work under conditions that are lawful and equitable. The amendment helps to weaken that guarantee, and I do not believe that people in either party in substantial numbers support it.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I would point out that this is one of those amendments that will determine whether or not this Congress really cares about the conditions under which Americans are expected to work. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman is asking us to add $4.3 million to an account that already has a $338 million increase. We already added $25 million to that account in the Goodling amendment last night. And the source that the gentleman chooses to target in order to move that money is, I think, especially outrageous. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. McIntosh] would remove that money from the wage and hour enforcement division of the Department of Labor. That is the agency that is supposed to enforce the minimum wage. That is the agency that is supposed to enforce the Medical and Family Leave Act. That is the agency which is charged with seeing to it that workers are not asked to work under slave labor conditions. We have just seen some of those stories in newspapers in disgraceful incidents around the country, and this amendment would further cripple the ability of the Department of Labor to deal with those issues. The Wage and Hour Division is supposed to enforce the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Workers Act. It is supposed to enforce the immigration acts so that employers do not illegally employ noncitizens in this country. It is supposed to see to it that employers comply with employment eligibility verification requirements under the Immigration Act. Now, Mr. Chairman, this program, it seems to me, is grossly underfunded as it is. Are we really about to say that this country does a good enough job in protecting workers on overtime issues, on minimum wage, or on slave labor conditions? I do not think we do. We can look at every major urban newspaper in the country virtually every week and find another instance where we have had people employed in deplorable conditions, and yet the gentleman says that we ought to take $4 million away from the agency charged with seeing to it that we treat American workers like Americans. Mr. Chairman, I think that there is something fundamentally wrong with that approach. I cannot believe that this Congress would support that, and I would respectfully urge the rejection of the amendment.

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

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, we think it is important that those employers be able to provide or that OSHA be able to provide that additional assistance to employers, so that employers who want to can voluntarily figure out what they can do to make their workplace more safe. It just seems to me that anyone in this House would like to put more money in the program that the gentleman is talking about, but I doubt that a majority in this House on either side of the aisle would want to take the money from the area the gentleman wants to take it from. The bottom line, if we are going to train workers, they have the right to know that they are going to be working in a workplace which is safe and healthy. OSHA is the agency charged with that responsibility. They have some wonderful programs which we have utilized to increase safety many times over in the logging industry, a cooperative relationship which they worked out, for instance, so loggers who are engaged in one of the most hazardous occupations in the country can do so a bit more safely. We should not be cutting back this appropriation from the committee recommendation one dime. This is a gut, basic requirement that we have to workers in this country. We ought not to walk away from it to any degree whatsoever.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, if the gentlewoman will continue to yield, it just seems to me that there are so many examples where OSHA has not been able to reach where they needed to in time to protect workers' health and safety and for that matter the public health and safety. I think this amendment ought to be recognized as perhaps well intentioned, but ill advised.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I did not raise it.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my reservation of a point of order, and I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order against the gentleman's amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, this is another example of an amendment being offered which attacks the ability of the U.S. Government to protect workers in the workplace. Mr. Chairman, Members of Congress do not serve in very hazardous jobs. We may get an occasional threat against our lives, as a number of us have done, unfortunately, but by and large we do not serve in very hazardous duty. But I would point out last year, or just 3 years ago, some nearly 7 million workers were injured in 1 year on the job, and some 6,300 workers died on the job. A number of workers died in my district just last month. I have had four incidences in the last year of workers dying in my district on the job. Mr. Chairman, I would point out that the gentleman is adding funding to an account to train workers, but the net effect of his amendment would be to reduce the safety of the workplace in which those workers are employed. Mr. Chairman, I would like to point out that in the gentleman's own State, there were 155 workplace fatalities last year. I would like to point out that in the gentleman's own State, there are so many inspectors for OSHA that the average employer would be inspected once every 235 years. That is hardly overload, in terms of inspections. There are only 25 OSHA inspectors in the gentleman's own State to cover that entire State. There were 178,000 illnesses, workplace-related illnesses and injuries, reported in the gentleman's own State last year. Mr. Chairman, I do not think that those numbers indicate the wisdom of reducing the committee recommendation about the amount of money necessary to protect the health and safety of workers. I take this issue very personally. I used to work with asbestos. My father ran a floor covering business and a home improvement business. I worked with asbestos for 11 years, off and on, until I found out what Johns Manville Corp. had known since 1939 that asbestos caused cancer. I also at that time smoked three packs of cigarettes a day. I did not know about the synergistic effect of asbestos and tobacco in terms of geometrically increasing your chances of getting lung cancer. I certainly do now. I did not know that 40 percent of the British shipyard workers who had worked with asbestos had died of mesothelioma as a result. I certainly know that now. The Government had an obligation to protect workers like me from hazards like that. They did not. That is why my colleague from Wisconsin, a good Republican by the name of Bill Steiger, who unfortunately died at a very early age from diabetes, that is why Bill Steiger led the fight to create OSHA, so we would have an agency of the Federal Government that would enforce the laws, so workers knew when they got up to go to work every morning and work 8 or 10 hours, whatever they worked, they would at least be guaranteed government protection, and seen to it that they performed their duties in a safe and hazard-free workplace. Mr. Chairman, I would point out that the OSHA budget that we provided here has a 1-percent increase, which is a pittance compared to the need in enforcing workplace health and safety. The only exception to that is the 12-percent increase that we have for compliance assistance. With Sylvio Conte, I started the first OSHA efforts to see to it that OSHA could go into a plant voluntarily, on the basis of a request from an employer, and review what they were doing and make suggestions about how they could improve their situation without subjecting the employer to a fine. We feel that that increase is necessary.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my reservation of a point of order, and rise in opposition to the amendment.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for the question. Let me simply say that every year I have been on the subcommittee I have attempted to raise funding levels for these programs. The Senate has a higher allocation overall for the bill, so they are able to provide more funding than our House committee is. I certainly in conference expect to try to move very close to the Senate position and increase this account significantly. I agree with the concerns expressed by the gentleman, and that is why I would ask the gentleman to withdraw his amendment so that we can, in fact, work in conference to achieve the end that the amendment has expressed.