Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

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

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, a moment ago the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Goodling] offered an amendment to correct a misjudgment in the bill, and I am doing the same thing in this instance. I understand the amendment will be accepted by the majority. Mr. Chairman, I am offering this amendment on behalf of myself and the gentleman from Oregon [Mr. DeFazio]. This would simply restore $32 million for the child abuse prevention and treatment program, for the community-based family resource and support grant program within that program. It would pay for it with offsetting reductions in computers, in the contingency fund, and in Goals 2000 of $12,800,000. I do not think there is any controversy associated with the amendment. We are simply trying to provide the same level of funding that was provided last year to support community-based efforts at preventing child abuse.

Mr. OBEY. The gentleman is correct.

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

Mr. OBEY. I thank the gentleman. Mr. Chairman, I really do not want to say anything more than that. There are evidently some Members of the House who would prefer to create an argument for whatever reason they have. But to suggest that this is a model that imposes a solution on local schools is exactly the reverse from what it in fact is, and I doubt very much that we would find either the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Porter] or me supporting anything which required local districts to produce anything but what they wanted to produce in order to improve their own local schools.

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

Mr. OBEY. Let me speak very frankly about this. I have had some considerable difference with my own administration on the issue of testing, as has the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Goodling], on the issue of Goals 2000. There is great debate about the value of either of those programs. I do not know whether Goals 2000 is going to turn out to be worth much or not, and I do not know whether their testing program is going to turn out to be worth much or not. What we have been trying to do is to find some way to encourage school reform on a neutral basis so that we can help local schools develop their own ideas, to have the time to think through what it is they want to do to improve teacher performance with only one requirement: that they agree afterward to have that approach evaluated so that we can determine which approaches really produce results and which ones do not. Because otherwise the administration can make its claims till the cows come home, so can its philosophical opponents, and we never reach a conclusion in this country although we spend billions of dollars on title I and billions of dollars on research. I supported title I for many years, but I have come to the conclusion that unless it is buttressed with whole school reform, it is not going to produce the kind of improved performance we need from children. I would think every conservative in this body would agree with that conclusion.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I would simply like to make one point about the term ``whole school reform.'' We see some people in this country who say the only answer is to bring in computers. We see other people who look at a school and they say the only answer is to have the teacher retrained. We have someone else say the only answer is some other partial approach to the problem. What our leading American businessmen have discovered through research that they financed on their own is that schools usually produce better performance if they think through how the entire school works rather than just thinking single shot, such as whether we need more computers or whether we need retraining for reading teachers and things like that. That is all whole school reform means. It means to take a look at the way the entire school operates rather than having some single shot, slap-dash approach at which we have usually thrown money through the years, and it seems to me that conservatives would be far more interested in promoting this than they would be in simply continuing to shovel out large amounts of money without reviewing the way, in fact, we produce the best results for the children we are supposed to be here working for.

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

Mr. OBEY. One principal in Maryland explained that what he was doing under his, and it is a Comer school; he explained he was spending about 30 percent of his time simply in the parking lot getting parents as they bring their kids to school every day, talking to the parents to tell them to get involved, to show them how they can get involved in volunteer programs in the schools, how they can get involved in programs that track what their own kids are doing so that we can involve the parents in buttressing what it is the children are learning. I would like to ask what in God's name is wrong with that?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I neglected to say that I was offering the amendment on behalf of the gentleman from Oregon [Mr. DeFazio] and the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Fox]. I apologize and I appreciate the gentleman's activity on the amendment.

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

Mr. OBEY

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

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I do not intend to take the 30 minutes. Let me simply explain what is in the motion. We are about evidently to proceed to spend $80 to $100 billion to build a new fighter aircraft, the F-22, to take the place of the F-15 and the F-16. We are being told that the reason we have to do that is because we have sold some 1,700 F-16's to other countries around the world plus a good many F-15's, and so therefore we must develop a new generation fighter aircraft. We are told that we have to proceed to do this because we sold so many F-15's and F-16's to other countries around the world that we have to build a new generation aircraft in order to regain our technology edge. All this amendment says is that if indeed we are going to proceed to build the F-22 and spend $80 to $100 billion on that project to regain that technology edge that we ought to keep that technology at home and we ought not then sell that advanced technology to other countries. We are already being told that the contractor for the new F-22 is already talking about fully marketing that technology abroad. That is how we got into this problem in the first place. Mr. Speaker, it seems to me if we want to stop chasing our tail, we will adopt this amendment and simply spell out that if we are going to spend $80 to $100 billion in order to regain a technology edge around the world, we are not then going to sell off that technology to other countries. That is all the amendment says, and I would simply suggest that if we do not do that, we will be back here in 10 years having to supply more money to replace the F-22 with an F-44, and 10 years after that replace it with an F-88 because we will have given away our technology edge time and time again. If we are going to spend taxpayers' money, we ought to keep the benefit of that technology here at home. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for the time. I would urge the House to adopt this motion. I think there is absolutely no reason why joint committees ought to be allowed a higher level of funding than was approved for any other committee in this House when the committee funding resolution was brought to the floor, especially in light of the nature of the publicity which has been directed lately at the committee that would be the beneficiary of the largess contained in the House bill. I would like to read from a newspaper article from USA Today. It says tobacco industry representatives wrote the provision of the balanced budget law that allows cigarette makers to reduce their future liability in smoking related lawsuits, Congress' chief writer told USA Today. The industry wrote it and submitted it; we just used their language, Kenneth Kies, staff director of the Joint Committee on Taxation said. Kies declined to identify the lobbyist who presented the provision or the company the lobbyist represented, but his statement is the first public acknowledgment that the controversial provision which could save cigarette manufacturers an estimated $50 billion over 20 years originated with the industry itself. Now, that statement was made by the director of the committee, which is being given a higher level of funding than any other committee has been given this year. It seems to me that if the staff director for that committee admits that they are not even doing their own job and they are turning part of it over to K Street and the lobbyists downtown, they have given up any excuse for needing additional funding to prepare tax legislation. We have already finished most of the tax legislation that we are going to see for this session and next. We have had a huge change in the Tax Code. It seems to me that it would be highly out of order to provide this special treatment for the Joint Tax Committee, especially when they indicate that they are allowing a lobbyist from K Street to write $50 billion amendments that are included in the major legislative action taken by the Congress this year. Mr. Speaker, I would strongly urge the support for the gentleman's motion.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I had not intended to get into this debate until I heard the previous speaker's comments, and they compelled me to say what I am going to say now. I would much rather be a ``do-gooder'' than a stand-byer, while a school which is supposed to teach American values instead consistently produces graduates who defile the very values that that institution is supposed to support and promote. I do not mind being called a ``do-gooder'' at all in comparison to being a do-nothinger. I also do not mind being called ``namby-pamby'' because I happen to be offended by the fact that, time and time again, graduates of the School of the Americas have engaged in conduct that would make every decent American gag. If being ``namby-pamby'' is being opposed to instruction manuals on torture, if being ``namby-pamby'' is being opposed to the consistently failed record of this institution in turning out graduates who understand democratic values, if it is being ``namby-pamby'' to object to the fact that graduates of this institution have systematically in a number of countries around this hemisphere wiped out innocent women and children, then call me namby-baby. I do not mind it at all. You are doggone right, we are opposed to this institution continuing. This institution has been given the opportunity year after year after year to demonstrate that it can turn out a different kind of military for Latin America. So far, there is very precious little evidence that in fact it has done so. The gentleman from Nebraska is right: What this institution is charged with doing is a very difficult thing to do. It is very difficult to take people from the kind of culture which has produced many of them, bring them to this country, and in a very short period of time inculcate the kind of values that we would like to see those graduates represent. But the fact is that you have to make a judgment sooner or later about whether that institution has succeeded or not, and there are a lot of us in this institution who do not think that it has succeeded. So I would suggest that to call people ``do-gooders'' or to call them ``namby-pamby'' because we happen to object to the fact that thousands of individual innocent civilians have been slaughtered by the graduates of this second-rate institution, is, I think, to do something to the dialogue in this House that you ought not to do. I would say one other thing: For years we have heard every justification dragged up that it is possible to drag up in order to defend the continued funding for this institution. Now the latest argument we hear is, ``Oh, they are necessary to prevent the drug traffic from succeeding in this hemisphere.'' Well, I just have to tell you that drug program administrators who cannot run an antidrug program without relying on this kind of institution ought to find themselves another line of work.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, I think it would be helpful if the resolution was read.

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, this is not a fight about whether there should be a tax cut. It is a fight about who gets it. There is much in this bill I support. It is a far better bill than the House originally passed. I was an original sponsor of the child tax credit, which is contained in this bill. I support the education tax credits and child health provisions. But I would remind my colleagues that the fundamental test of any democracy is to fund its activities through a tax system which is fair to each and every one of our citizens. Because this is, after all, a volunteer compliance tax system. We fought a revolution over the principle of fair taxes. This bill, I am sorry to say, fails that test. The most well-off 5 percent of families in the country who make over $110,000 will get seven times as much relief as all of the 60 percent of Americans who make less than $37,000. That is simply not fair. In fact, the wealthiest 1 percent of our citizens, who make more than $250,000 a year, will get more in tax relief than 80 percent of all Americans who make $60,000 or less. That is simply not fair. We can do better. Then if we take a look at the dollar relief in the bill, we see that the top 1 percent, whose average income is $650,000, will get a $16,000 tax break under this bill. But if you are in the middle bracket, if you are in the middle bracket, you will get about $3 a week and you lose half of that because of what it costs you to get a tax preparer. If you are among the poorest 20 percent, you will lose $39. You will actually have a tax increase of $39.

Mr. OBEY. I have no idea. All I know is that this distribution is not fair. We can do better. Mr. Speaker, the other problem with this proposal is that it is based upon promises that in the next 5 years we are going to cut the Social Security Administration by 25 percent, that we are going to cut community development by 30 percent, that we are going to cut veterans' benefits by 20 percent over the next 5 years. I do not believe that Members of either party will vote for those kind of reductions when those budgets come to the floor. That is why the claim that this budget is going to produce a balanced budget is built on a false promise. In short, in terms of a fair distribution of tax benefits to our people, in terms of an honest description of how they are paid for, this bill I regret to say fails both tests. We can do better. I urge a vote against this bill until we do.

Mr. OBEY. Not in mine.