Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 6 minutes. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the Lowey amendment, but I do so in despair of our ability to discuss this on substance rather than on symbolic grounds. This controversy started when the gentleman from Arkansas [Mr. Dickey] offered an amendment in subcommittee which purported to eliminate the ability of CDC to engage in research on gun control and which purported to prevent that agency from engaging in unbiased research. I voted against that amendment in subcommittee because I have always resisted the idea of telling anybody in this Government what kind of research they can conduct in the health field. I just do not think that lay people know enough to do that. I think health research issues ought to be decided by scientists, not by politicians. But the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Livingston] and I jointly cosponsored an amendment to the bill which reads as follows, and it was adopted. On page 26 of the bill it says: ``None of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.'' We then added this paragraph to the report on page 49: ``The bill contains a limitation to prohibit the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Center for Disease Control from engaging in any activities to advocate or promote gun control. The CDC may need to collect data on the incidents of gun-related violence, but the committee does not believe that it is the role of the CDC to advocate or promote policies to advance gun control initiatives or to discourage responsible private gun ownership. The committee expects research in this area to be objective and grants to be awarded through an impartial peer review process.'' What the gentleman and I tried to do was to make certain that CDC, in fact, did not engage in biased research, and that is the language that we adopted. When we got to the full committee, the gentleman from Arkansas [Mr. Dickey] then did not offer the report language to which we objected and merely offered an amendment which moved money from CDC to the area health education centers, and I supported that amendment because it was essentially a judgment about where we thought the money would do the most good. Would it do the most good in this controversial program at CDC, or would it do the most good in the area of health education centers? I come down on the side of the education centers primarily because I represent rural areas, and I know that they are medically underserved communities. The area in which this money was put simply enables us to support training of medical residents and students for medicine, nursing, allied health, pharmacy and related fields. I would point out that in my State, for instance, these agencies are administered by a partnership between Wisconsin's two medical schools, the Medical College of Wisconsin and the University of Wisconsin Medical School. So basically what I would suggest to my colleagues is that this amendment, while it is being debated in terms of gun control, the effect of the Lowey amendment will not be to enhance gun control any more than the effect of the Dickey amendment was to diminish gun control. The only direct effect on CDC's ability to get involved in the gun control issue is determined by the language which we already have in the bill and have in the report by virtue of the amendment sponsored jointly by the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Livingston] and myself. So I would say the House simply has a choice to make. If they think that the money ought to be put in CDC where the gentlewoman from New York [Mrs. Lowey] puts it, then vote with her. If they think the money ought to stay in the area of health education centers where I believe it ought to be and where the gentleman from Arkansas [Mr. Dickey] put it, then vote against the Lowey amendment. I would urge that my colleagues vote against the Lowey amendment because I think that the dollars have been placed in a preferable place by the effect of the Dickey amendment offered in full committee. As I say, I despair of this issue ever being discussed in anything but symbolic terms. I know that at the presidential level we have Mr. Dole, in my view, trying to exploit the gun issue one way and the White House trying to exploit it dealing with it the other way. I am not interested in that phony debate. What I am interested in doing is making rational choices as a policymaker about where scarce dollars ought to go, and I frankly think that it has become so controversial at CDC that the money is much more rationally spent where the committee wound up putting the money. So this may seem a very quaint position on my part, but my trouble is that I read the amendments, I do not just read the titles. So it seems to me that Members ought to focus on what the real effect of this amendment really is. It simply moves dollars. It is only indirectly related to the gun issue, and I wish we could address it in that fashion because we are qualified to decide where research dollars ought to go. We are not qualified to pretend that we are doing something that we are not doing.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Montana [Mr. Williams].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Clay], the distinguished ranking member of the Education Authorizing Committee. (Mr. CLAY asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, that is exactly what I am talking about. The gentleman is talking about a 1-year bridge. What he is forgetting is that from 1980 up to until 2 years ago, the Department of Education had major, major, major reductions. If the gentleman is going to compare apples to oranges, let us do it over the decade not over the nanoseconds.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would bother to look at the size of DOE going back to 1980, he would discover that Department has declined in size already by 20 percent.

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

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Hostettler]. (Mr. HOSTETTLER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, as I said earlier, we are adding $1.246 billion to the bill.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for helping us to raise this issue because it is important for Members to understand what is happening. I happen to share the problem that the gentleman has in his district.

Mr. OBEY. The gentleman referred to Hmong refugees. For those people who do not understand who they are, during the Vietnam war, the Hmong did our CIA's dirty work in Laos. They took a lot of guff. They suffered a lot of casualties. When the war effort collapsed, a lot of them came to this country. More are now coming. If we did not want to incur more obligation to the Hmong, then we should not have asked for their help undercover during the Vietnam war. It is just that simple. They performed a service for this country and that is the reason that they are now here, because their country has collapsed. The problem, however, is that when the Federal Government made a foreign policy decision to allow them into this country, it did not follow up that decision with the provision to deliver adequate support to the local districts so that education costs, welfare costs, and other costs would not have to be borne by local taxpayers who never made that foreign policy decision. That is why, during the immigration bill, I tried to offer an amendment which would correct the problem, because I think that there is a bigger problem than just the absence of money. I think the current system is broken. The problem is that refugees are abandoned at the doorstep of the local welfare office. This condemns those refugees to the welfare treadmill and it condemns local communities to having to pay large amounts of their support. Mr. Chairman, that is why I tried on the immigration bill last year to require private voluntary organizations to actually assume their obligations and become true sponsors of refugees through an intensive case management approach of job skills and that our proposal would have barred able-bodied refugees from any cash assistance during their first year in the United States. This approach was tried on a pilot basis by Catholic Charities in Chicago and San Diego. They reduced welfare levels to a very low level. It was also tried by the Cuban American National Foundation in Florida. Both the Bush administration and the Clinton administration tried to adopt this approach but they were prevented in court from doing so, and I am extremely unhappy that the Committee on Rules prevented us from attacking this problem on the immigration bill. But I want to assure the gentleman that my interest remains and I know the gentleman has already joined in sponsoring that legislation with me. But I would invite other Members who are aware of the problem to join us, as well, because it is a serious problem. Local taxpayers should not be left holding the bag for a foreign policy decision, and I congratulate the gentleman for helping us to once again bring this to the attention of the House and look forwarding to the opportunity to work with him.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will continue to yield, I am, too. I must say two things. First of all, this is not the only thing that has come out with considerable surprise to Members of this House today, as Members will find out in days to come. And I would certainly say that I apologize for the fact that we did not make the gentleman aware of this amendment. We have been perfecting it up until the very moment, literally, that we offered it. And as the gentleman knows, because of the great difficulty in making certain that it was in order parliamentarily, we had to keep making adjustments until we could get it in shape to offer it.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, none that I know of. Again, I would apologize to the gentleman for not getting it to him. I literally had still been working with the staff on this into the hours this afternoon trying to perfect it so we could, in fact, offer it and have it be made in order.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, we are adding that by moving, just as the committee bill did on title I, we are moving a significant amount of money from title I expended in this year, moving it to the October payment, must as the committee has provided for an October payment, and that gives us ample room to provide the additions that I described.

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I find the comment ironic, because for the last 2 weeks Planned Parenthood has been lobbying against my amendment, and only after they reached the rational conclusion that they could not win by following their own whim did they finally reluctantly come in behind my amendment and support it. I have spent many an hour trying to persuade people that my amendment should be offered in order to demonstrate respect for the idea that we ought to support consultation with parents any time you have teenagers involved. The gentleman very well knows that for the first 10 days, Planned Parenthood was opposing my amendment, and only in the last day and a half did they agree to support it. I would say that is about 10 days late, but I would rather have their support late than not have it at all, because I deeply believe that there is an obligation on the part of all of us, no matter what side of the issue we stand on, to try to work together to find common ground, rather than to always try to find ways to exploit differences. That is why I offered the amendment in the first place. That is why we had bipartisan support for it, because we were trying to demonstrate strong and sincere respect for the idea that parents ought to be consulted whenever possible. I have worked with the gentleman time and time again trying to work out language on these touchy amendments, and the gentleman knows better than to even raise that kind of a question.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, this is a straight motion to recommit. I will not push it to a rollcall vote. I would urge a ``no'' vote on final passage.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my reservation of a point of order and seek the time in opposition.

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

Mr. OBEY. Let me simply suggest, I know the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Porter] is probably trying to get a bite to eat just like I am going to be trying to get a bite to eat. I am sure that both of us would like to see additional funding for Pell grants. I think we have considerable concern about making the kind of reductions we would have to make in some of the worker protection agencies, for instance, in order to fund this. Let me simply say it is my hope that the Senate is going to be adding some money to Pell grants, and if they do, I certainly will want to see funding added in conference. I thank the gentleman for raising the issue and thank him for being willing to withdraw the amendment and work with us to try to produce a better number in conference.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, let me simply say on this side we have no objection to the amendment, and accept it.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I must confess that I am not a lawyer, and that is the first time in the week I have had any applause from that side of the aisle. Keep it coming. I yield myself the balance of the time. Let me simply say, Mr. Chairman, that I do believe that the way to deal with this is in the authorization process. I think that if this amendment were adopted into law in its present form, it would in fact create perverse incentives which would have the effect of encouraging illegal immigration, and that is why I do not personally want to accept it at this moment. However, I understand that the majority is going to accept it. I will not press the point. I will simply say that we must work this out so that we can avoid a situation in which employers will wind up benefiting from their ability to break the law, and with that I would yield back the balance of my time. parliamentary inquiry

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I would simply say that the subcommittee chairman has already indicated why we should oppose this amendment. I do not know many of my constituents who are asking that we cut this bill, this bill's Cancer Institute funding, by $45 million; or that we cut our efforts to combat heart disease by $27 million; or that we cut our child care efforts by $18 million, especially in the midst of efforts to provide welfare reform; or that we cut Head Start by $68 million; or that we cut vocational education by $20 million; or that we cut the Federal work-study program, where students work for the assistance they get to go to college, by $13 million. The preventive health services block grant, there is not a politician in this House who does not go home and repeat the mantra, ``We must engage in preventative health care.'' This amendment would cut the preventive health service block grant by $3 million. I think the chairman has already adequately summarized why this amendment is ill- advised. I do not think the country wants us to provide billions of dollars in the purchase of new fighter aircraft that we do not need to buy until 7 years from now at the same time that we are even further reducing the efforts to help our children get a good education and our workers get the best training in the world.