Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. All of the votes will be rolled?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from New York just said that this is about saving taxpayers money. That is not what it is about at all. Just last week, I would point out, this House voted for enough B-2 bombers, which the Pentagon did not want, to pay for the National Endowment for the Arts for 108 years. In my judgment this rule, Mr. Speaker, is a sham and a fraud. It is a cynical abuse of power to prevent Members of both parties from voting to save the National Endowment for the Arts. That is all it is. The rule prevents the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Yates] from offering a simple amendment to restore funding for the NEA on the grounds that it is not authorized, and then it allows an amendment which is 28 pages long which, in essence, is a complete and total rewrite of the NEA: No hearings, no public comment and not produced by any committee that I know. It is not a legislative product; it is a political product. It is a device which was designed by the committee simply to allow Congress to assassinate the NEA behind the smokescreen of this substitute amendment. It is a procedural power play to prevent Members of both parties who went up in the Committee on Rules yesterday asking for the simple right to vote to continue the NEA as is. And it ought to be turned down because it is a smokescreen. Mr. Speaker, it is a sham substitute. It provides block grants to State agencies, but the agencies who are supposed to receive that money have themselves said they do not want this arrangement. They have said: State art agencies rely upon Federal leadership in funding and identifying and addressing cultural needs that are truly national. We need a partner agency at the Federal level to play a leadership role in working with our organizations and agencies. It also provides a tiny bit of funding to each school district in the country, probably about $500 per school. That is an amount so small that we have been urged by our Republican friends on the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education to eliminate a number of programs because those provide such small grants that they are not worth having. Let us not kid ourselves. If we want to save the NEA, there is only one way to do it. It is not to buy into this phony smokescreen of a substitute amendment. It is purely and simply to vote ``no'' on this rule, take this back to the Committee on Rules, put the Yates amendment in order. That is the least destructive thing to do; it is the most fair-minded thing to do. If we were going to have the Ehlers amendment before us, at the very least we ought to have the Yates amendment before us also so that people can choose between conflicting substitutes. I urge people not to be taken in by this sham power play. Vote ``no'' on the rule.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Ohio for yielding. I simply would like to say that I think the amendment of the gentleman from California is a constructive amendment because it both attempts to target some of the high priority items that ought to be purchased and, second, it does not attempt to put this committee in an illegitimate straitjacket, as did the Committee on the Budget in its gratuitous determination of exactly what amount would be provided. Under the Committee on the Budget, under the rules that they would want enforced, it would be permissible and within budget rules if we produced $700 million in acquisition, but it would be against the rules as exceeding the budget amounts if we provided $690 million. That is ludicrous on its face. I think the gentleman's amendment, by saying up to $700 million, brings it back within the legitimate approach of the appropriations process, and at the same time it tries to meet some high-priority needs of the country with respect to Yellowstone and the California lands in question. I, for one, think the amendment would be adopted if the rules of this House made any sense and if the House itself made any sense on this bill.

Mr. OBEY. If the gentleman will yield under his reservation, Mr. Chairman, I am very interested in trying to obtain a time limitation. I have been trying to do that working with the majority party for the last 45 minutes, but I do not think it is an especially sweet deal when all of the time is controlled by that side of the aisle.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I do not care who makes the unanimous-consent request. I think there is bipartisan agreement on the committee at least.

Mr. OBEY. And I think we ought to just proceed with the request, so why does the gentleman from Ohio not go ahead?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, would the gentleman yield under his reservation?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, let me just suggest that it is my hunch that there will be enough time for everybody who wants to to speak provided that people who want to speak simply let the four floor managers know who they are so that they can allocate time to everybody without squeezing people out. The problem they have is that at this time of night people come out of the woodwork and the fellows managing the time do not have any idea who wants to speak. I mean I cannot imagine in 80 minutes that we will not have enough time for everybody to participate. I have got forest lands in my district. I do not need to talk. I will simply be happy to give that time to somebody else. I just want to get this thing done in a reasonable time before people start losing their tempers.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I would simply note that I am going to vote for this amendment because it does not do nothing to nobody. The outlay savings from this amendment are exactly zero. This money is never going to be spent, it is there simply as a cushion against contractual obligations, and so vote for it because this budget authority reduction will result in not one dollar of outlay savings.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I am having difficulty still hearing what the gentleman has said. I just want to make sure. There will be which other amendments then debated tonight after these two? The Klug? Royce?

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, the issue is not whether there is going to be a tax cut. It is who going to get most of it. Under the Republican tax bill, you have the biggest transfer of wealth out of the pockets of low- and middle-income families to the most well-off families in this country that we have had since 1981. The Republican package does not contribute to long-term deficit reduction. It threatens it. The Democratic bill, by contrast, provides far more help to families who make less than $75,000 a year. It does not penalize working mothers who need child care because they are concerned about their children. It helps Main Street rather than Wall Street. I am not envious at all of the Republican package. I am appalled by the fact that it once again, as they have done continuously in this Congress, tried to use virtually every other piece of the tax package as a Trojan horse to drive through this place a giant bonanza for the wealthiest 100,000 or 200,000 tax-paying families in this country. That is wrong and the Democratic package tries to correct it.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, this amendment cuts $331 million, a down payment on 9 B-2 bombers that we do not need, and it moves the money to the guard and reserve. It is simply that simple. But this is not about just $330 million. This will remove a $27 billion time bomb from the budget. In my view, this provision represents Congress at its very worst. It jams more weapons into this bill without having any way to pay for those weapons over the long term, it gives the contractors the goodies that they have lobbied for for so hard and long, but it does not cut out other low-priority items in order to pay for the long-term costs of the system, and we are not talking about loose change. For the cost of just one of these bombers, we could pay for the undergraduate tuition for every single student at the University of Wisconsin for the next 11 years. Now that is not small potatoes. For the cost of just two of these bombers, we could double the cost of cancer research in this country. Which investment do my colleagues think will protect more families from the threat that they really face? An investment in two more B-2 bombers or a doubling of cancer research in this country? There have been five studies that have indicated that this weapon is not needed in preference to other weapons. There have been five studies which say do not go ahead with it. Secretary Cohen's quarterly defense review or quadrennial defense review said this in part in opposing the B-2: It said existing forces would have to be retired immediately to pay for the additional B-2's. Even then the savings from retiring the forces are not enough to offset the large upfront investment for the B- 2's, and there would be a loss in war-fighting capacity during the decade or more between when the outgoing forces were retired and all the B-2's were delivered. Mr. Chairman, that alone ought to tell my colleagues vote for this amendment.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Price].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his clarification. I would strongly urge the State Department to exercise the full authority granted by this section. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from North Dakota [Mr. Pomeroy].

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Speaker, I forgot to do something, at least with clarity, and I would simply like to make sure that Members understand exactly what is in this bill. This is the same bill as the conference agreement: $8.6 billion in disaster relief and funding for Bosnian reimbursement to the Pentagon, minus three controversial riders. The rider dealing with rights-of-way on public lands has been eliminated; the rider on the census has been eliminated and, instead, there will be a report required from the administration indicating how they intend to proceed in conducting that census; and, third, the automatic CR rider, which was also extremely contentious. Other than that, this is identical to the conference report. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Bonior], the distinguished minority whip.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Hoyer].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 6 minutes. Mr. Speaker, I would simply like to say that at long, long last I am very happy that we are here in this posture. As the gentleman from Louisiana has indicated, almost 90 days ago the President of the United States asked the Congress to do essentially two things: He asked us to appropriate additional funds in order to meet the disaster needs around the country because various States had experienced severe flooding and other natural disasters; and he asked this Congress to supply the additional funds needed to fulfill our obligations in Bosnia so that the Pentagon would not have to stand down on crucial training exercises and a variety of other activities needed to maintain our military state of readiness. I want to say that I think the majority on the committee tried to respond to that request in an absolutely straightforward and nonpartisan fashion. I think that the majority on the committee tried to do its duty, as we did on our side of the aisle in the committee. I have noted before my favorite philosopher is Archie the cockroach, and Archie the cockroach said once that somebody is born so unlucky he runs into accidents that started out to happen to somebody else. That is what sort of happened to this bill. Because along the way, the leadership of the Republican Party in this House insisted that two unrelated provisions be added to the bill, and then another item was added in the Senate. When that happened, the President made quite clear that it was unacceptable to him to add those unrelated items as well as some others, and asked the Congress not to do that so that the needed emergency relief could immediately be gotten to the people who were most in need of it. That unfortunately did not happen. Last week before we sent this bill to the President, I stood exactly where I am standing now and I urged the House, as did the gentleman from Louisiana on a previous occasion, to simply pass a stripped-down, clean version of this emergency supplemental so that we could in essence end what amounted, what was tantamount to a second government shutdown for the persons in the regions of the country who were affected by these natural disasters. I indicated that if we did not do that last week, we would most assuredly be here this week doing what we should have done last week. Unfortunately, it has taken a Presidential veto to bring the Congress to its senses, and now we are finally proceeding the way we ought to proceed. This proposal will meet the disaster needs of the country. It will meet the needs of the Pentagon, and it will also require a report from the administration on how they intend to proceed in dealing with the next census. I think we have reached a reasonable bipartisan accommodation at long last. I would simply say that I guess what this episode reminded me of is Franklin Roosevelt's speech on Lend Lease a long time ago when he asked, ``If your neighbor's House was on fire, would you not lend him your garden hose?'' Well, this time around, lots of our neighbors had lost their houses. They had lost their farms. They were looking for help, but still that help was being held up. It was almost as though people were saying, ``Well, we will get you some relief for the fire but first we have to paint the fire engine a different color. We have to get a different crew on the truck.'' Finally, at long last, I think that that unfortunate business is behind us, and I want to simply congratulate the President for doing what was right. I want to congratulate the committee leadership for in all cases trying to do what it knew was right. And I want to congratulate those Members of the Republican Party who indicated by their uneasiness through the last week that they wanted a different direction from that that was being provided by their leadership and by the House. I also want to frankly thank the American public, because I think if the American public had not spoken out the way they did, chances are we would not be here today. I think people saw that, I think the American public recognized that what was happening here was wrong, that it needed to be corrected. I am happy that we can bring a vehicle to the House floor that will provide that correction. I congratulate the gentleman from Louisiana and his staff for bringing this forward. I hope that we can get on with providing finally the relief that is needed to the sections of the country which have experienced such devastating natural disasters over the past several months.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California [Mr. Fazio].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, does the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Livingston] have any remaining speakers?

Mr. OBEY. I yield myself 30 seconds, Mr. Speaker, to simply urge an ``aye'' vote on this proposition. I do not intend to offer a motion to recommit. I think the sooner we get this bill on to the Senate and on to the President, the better off everyone will be. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise for a colloquy with the gentleman from Louisiana, chairman of the committee. I would like to discuss my understanding about the intentions of the conferees regarding section 4001 on assistance to Ukraine. Mr. Speaker, the language indicates that the President may waive the minimum funding requirements in subsection (k) of the 1997 Foreign Operations, Export Financing and Related Programs Act for activities of the Government of Ukraine. It is my understanding that this language is intended to apply to all the minimum funding requirements in that subsection, including the overall amount of $225 million for Ukraine. Is that the chairman's understanding as well?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1\1/2\ minutes. Mr. Speaker, I wish to respond to the previous remarks. I think the record is quite clear, and I really did not want to have to get into past history and all of that, but as long as the gentleman has dredged it up, it requires a response. The fact is that before the government was shut down 2 years ago, on 14 separate occasions the leadership of the majority party was quoted as saying it intended to shut the government down if that was necessary in order to require the President to bend to their will on major matters affecting the future of this country. The public understands that. With all due respect to the gentleman, he has taken a bath on that issue, and I think the public understands what happened, and I do not see any reason to get into that any more. What we are trying to talk about is tomorrow, not yesterday. But I simply wanted to make that point because the rhetoric that is being used today is the same rhetoric that was being used against the President 2 years ago. It is not going to be believed by the American public today any more than it was 2 years ago. And I think the sooner we get away from that and get on with the business of government, the better off we will be. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Minnesota, [Mr. Minge].