Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, that is absolute, total nonsense and baloney. I absolutely totally resent the implication. Anyone who knows me knows I have been around here long enough to write my own amendments. I wrote this amendment in the full committee. I discussed it then. If the gentleman has a copy of something from Planned Parenthood, it is because they got a copy of the amendment and faxed it to somebody else, and the gentleman ought to know better than to even ask that question.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, likewise I would also reserve a point of order.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank].

Mr. OBEY. How much time do I have remaining, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California [Mr. Becerra].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I do not want to see illegal aliens in this country. I want our laws enforced. I do not want illegals to undercut the pay of U.S. workers. There is enough of that going on already. But I frankly am not at all sure that I like the idea of their getting backpay or any other pay. But it would seem to me that unless a provision is created by this amendment that would require such pay instead of going to illegal aliens to go into the Treasury of the United States, then the amendment is deficient and would create an incentive for employers to fire or threaten to fire immigrants and to encourage immigrants to illegally work lest they be exposed by their employers. It is bad enough for employers to hire workers who they know are illegals. But for them to take advantage of illegal aliens, pay them wages which are either substandard or denied at all in the end is to turn substandard wage workers into slaves. That would be even worse. So I would simply suggest that, while the amendment may have a good intention, I do believe that it would have the effect of enabling some unscrupulous importers of illegal aliens to be able to avoid their legal responsibilities and to undercut American wages of American workers in the process. I suspect this amendment is going to be accepted by the committee on the majority side, and there is not much I can do about that. But I will certainly, I want the gentleman to know, work in conference to try to correct the deficiencies that I see in this amendment because right now I honestly do believe that, despite the gentleman's best intentions, it does create loopholes for unscrupulous employers. I do not believe by any means that scrupulous employers would take advantage of that loophole. But laws are not made for people for whom we have great expectation of compliance. Laws are made because we recognize that there are persons who are always looking to avoid compliance. So I express great caution to the House and reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from California, [Ms. Harman]. (Ms. HARMAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 11\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Hoyer].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 10 minutes. Mr. Chairman, this bill, I think, defines in a major way the differences in priorities between the two political parties in this House. For years we have had a decline in the school-age population in this country. It has been going down for a number of years. But the fact is that we are now experiencing a steady increase in school enrollment in this country, and, in fact, next year there will be more students enrolled in local school districts than at any time in the country's history. We would simply ask the question on this side of the aisle: Why should we be cutting per pupil expenditures for those students at a time when we are experiencing an increase in student enrollment? If we take a look at what is happening to per pupil expenditures and look at it in real dollar terms, we will see that per pupil expenditures at the Federal level are declining from $287 per student to $222 by the end of the sixth year of the Republican budget which just went through this House several months ago, and this bill is the first year's step in that budget process. Last year the Republican majority in this House tried to cut $7 billion out of this bill. The public rebelled. After the public rebelled at those reductions last year, we were able, in conference with the Senate, to restore about 90 percent of the education cuts which had been made by House Republicans in this bill last year. This year's bill has a more stealthy plan to make those same reductions. On the surface, it appears to be pretty much a stand-pat budget but, in reality, there is a $500 million reduction in Department of Education programs, and over the next 6 years, we would wind up with a reduction of some $35 billion below current services, and we would wind up with cuts of about $57 billion below the President's requests. That is a 20 percent cut in real deliverable program levels by 2002. We simply on this side of the aisle do not think that that is in the interest of the country. We do not think that that will help the economy grow. We believe that these reductions come at the worst possible time for local schools. Schools face sharp competition for resources from State and local sources. This budget squeeze at the State and local level comes at the same time that Federal education aid dollars are declining in real terms while school enrollment, as I just indicated, is rising. That creates a double-jeopardy situation which we think is unhealthy. This bill begins the process under which this year up to 15,000 Head Start kids will be squeezed out of the program under this bill. Over 150,000 title I children will lose title I services that help them to read and to master science and math. The President's budget would have supported nearly 450,000 additional title I students. By the end of the Republican 6-year budget plan, more than 1 million kids will not be receiving the reading and math help they need under the title I program. Under Goals 2000, which is the program that was begun under President Bush, supported by then Governor Clinton, under that Goals 2000 program which would help 8,500 local schools raise math and science standards so that kids can compete globally, that program would be terminated in this bill. That results in 2 billion fewer dollars provided for school improvement between now and 2002. Nearly 340,000 math and science teachers will lose the training that they need to upgrade their skills because the bill eliminates the Eisenhower Teacher Training Program. Over 300,000 students will lose vocational education and training opportunities in just this year alone under the bill. There will be 14,000 kids who lose bilingual education opportunities. Two hundred twenty thousands students who receive Perkins loans and grants under the State-assisted student incentive program will no longer be able to get the help they need to attend college. There are 107,000 fewer college kids who will receive Pell grant programs compared to the President's budget. Seventy-nine thousand fewer summer youth jobs will be provided under this proposal. Dislocated worker assistance will be provided to 32,000 fewer workers than last year. This is the bill that is supposed to help children and workers get ahead in life. Yet this bill puts us on the road to a systematic disinvestment in education and puts roadblocks in the way of those workers and those children. I would point out that there has been a lot of talk through the past years about how sound Social Security and Medicare will be in the next century. Raising the wages and the earning power of the American workforce is crucial to being able to strengthen those funds, because you need to strengthen the income people have so that they can increase their payments into those funds. This is the bill that most directly impacts our obligation to give kids from working families a chance to make something of themselves and it is being short-sheeted in my view. In addition to the education problem, we have added over 2 million seniors in the last 5 years to our population. Yet this bill continues the downward trend of the 1996 Appropriation Act by again cutting funds for the Administration on Aging. For worker protection, the House bill cuts worker protection programs by 13 percent below the President's request and 9 percent below what is needed to simply maintain last year's level of operations. That means cuts in our ability to help guarantee workplace health and safety, pension protection, and immigration reform. The bill also cuts funding for the NLRB by 15 percent below last year's level and 20 percent below the President's request. We do not think that is wise. In addition, it contains a number of riders which we do not believe make much sense. Low Income Heating Assistance Program, a program which I started with Senator Muskie a long time ago, that Low Income Energy Assistance Program is crucial to help seniors and vulnerable individuals pay their home heating bills. I come from a part of the country where you get 40 below zero weather, and I am not talking about chill factor, I am talking about real term temperature cold. In 1996 the Low Income Heating Assistance Program was slashed by $419 million. This bill provides $100 million less than the President requested and it appropriates not one dime for fiscal 1998 for that program. I would simply point out that from 1981 to 1994, the low-income population eligible for LIHEAP has grown by 10 million people. Yet the percentage of eligible households served by it has dropped from 36 to 21 percent and the percentage of assistance on their fuel bills which people get from the Federal Government has declined from 23 percent to 12 percent in 1994 and it will go down even more. So for this and a variety of reasons, I would simply say that we on the minority side feel that this bill is not adequate to the challenge facing the country and I regretfully intend to vote ``no'' when the bill reaches its final passage stage. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, we likewise think the amendment of the gentleman is a good one and accept it on this side of the aisle.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, this is a funny place. We get elected. We get into our offices out here, and every day we have visitors from home. And sure, some of them are on vacation and some of them are regular working people. But I would venture to say that at least 70 to 75 percent of them are people who are representatives of the business community. They walk into our offices. They wear suits. They are good people, but they have a distinct economic point of view. And we hear a lot of it when they come and visit us in our offices. They are the people who can afford to come out here and lobby us directly from home. Then we go home. Often Members go to the Rotary Clubs; they go to business lunches. They talk to people who are also wearing suits then, and they all generally see life from the upper side. I think we need to get beyond that and we need to think about how the world looks to people who work for a living, whether they wear blue collars or white collars or pink colors, just name it. I do not know what my colleagues do when they go home, but when I go home I often visit plants. I cannot begin to tell Members how many times I walk through a plant, and I have seen a woman wearing something on her wrist and I say, what happened? Carpel tunnel syndrome. I hear that time and time again. Talk to people who have suffered lower back problems. I happen to have an insurance company in my district that is very skilled in the problems of worker compensation. If we talk to people in that field, they will tell us that there are many companies who want to avoid problems but they do not know how. They do not have the expertise to do it. What this amendment says is that it is going to be a long, long time before they learn. OSHA is the agency which is charged with the responsibility to develop standards to protect the health and the well-being of workers. What the committee bill says is that that agency is not going to be allowed to perform its duty when it comes to just about the most expensive workplace injury problem around today, about a $20 billion problem, the most reliable estimate. And the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Pelosi], is trying to correct that problem with her amendment. I do not see why it is in the public interest for us to say that not only can OSHA not promulgate an official standard, they cannot even begin to develop one. They cannot even go about collecting their own data on the problem. I do not see how that is in the interest of workers. I certainly do not see how it is in the interest of companies, many of whom do not know what to do to avoid the problem. Just one example. My grandmother used to work for Pied Piper Shoe Co. a long time ago. One of Pied Piper's competitors was Red Wing Shoe Co. They paid $4.3 million in worker compensation premiums in 1990. After they implemented an ergonomics program and changed production techniques, that company reduced lost time days by 79 percent. By 1995, premium costs had dropped to an estimated $1.3 million from the original $4.3 million. That company knew how to deal with the problem. There are a lot of companies that do not. The value of allowing OSHA to develop voluntary standards, I emphasize ``voluntary,'' is that that would mean that OSHA could do the work which would enable many other companies who are looking for the right way to attack problems to have some idea of how to do it. A lot of them are small companies. They do not have the ability or the financial ability to hire industrial engineers. This agency can help them do that. But it just seems to me that this Congress is lock, stock and barrel in the hands of people who wear suits 365 days a year. It apparently is not going to get beyond the views of those folks and to take into account the fact that there are many, many millions of Americans who have a right to expect that the Government is going to act on their behalf to see to it that they have the safest working place and the healthiest working place possible under existing circumstances. That is what the Pelosi amendment tries to do. I think this Congress ought to be ashamed of itself, if it does not adopt this amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Chairman, let me simply respond to the gentleman who just spoke by saying the following: On defense, the difference between now and Jack Kennedy's time is that when Jack Kennedy was President we were in the beginning of the Vietnam war, we had a raging hot cold war, and the Soviet Union was in its heyday. That is a little different than the situation is today. With respect to interest on the debt, I would simply suggest that that interest on the national debt is not out of control because we are overinvesting in education. In fact, under this bill and under the Republican budget over the next 5 years, we will see a per pupil reduction in the Federal investment of almost 20 percent. On the Pell grant front, which is the main program that helps kids go to college, in 1976 that program covered about 48 percent of the cost of going to college. Today it covers only about 20 percent of the cost. Federal support for education as a percentage of what local school districts provide has shrunk from 5.6 percent just 2 years ago when the Republicans took control of this place to about 4.7 percent under this bill. That is almost a 20-percent reduction. At the same time, the States' share of meeting the cost of public elementary and secondary education at the local level has declined from 50 to 45 percent. So we are seeing both at the State level and at the Federal level a real reduction in deliverable program levels to support education. I would simply add one additional note. I find it quaint that when the gentleman defends this bill he says ``We are not cutting anything, we are just holding it level,'' which denies the fact that because we have inflation and we also have an increasing student population, which means, again, that in deliverable aid to each student we are having a real reduction each year. I find it interesting that somehow this is not a cut when we are talking about education, but last month, on page 2 of the document that the gentleman's committee reported, the Department of Defense appropriation bill for 1997, what they pointed out is that they provided a $3.7 billion increase in raw dollars above 1996, but they described it as a $4.4 billion reduction because it did not meet the cost of inflation. So somehow when we talk about defense, then we are supposed to take into account the ravages of inflation and add to spending; with you, when we are counting what we provide for aid to kids, we are not supposed to do the same thing. That seems to me a very quaint accounting system, especially if we are concerned about making investments in protecting the country's future. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Stokes].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from New York [Mr. Lowey].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 6 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from California [Ms. Pelosi].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Oregon [Mr. Blumenauer]. (Mr. BLUMENAUER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to take my name off the amendment and replace it with the gentlewoman from New York [Ms. Velazquez].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, we have had a timing problem here. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the amendment so it might be reoffered by the original author, the gentlewoman from New York [Ms. Velazquez].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, we likewise congratulate the gentlewoman for offering the amendment, and support the amendment on this side.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I would simply say that on this side of the aisle we certainly accept the gentlewoman's amendment, and I would like to talk just a moment about it because I have such a deep personal interest in the issue myself. I think often in the subcommittee a few years ago, when the human genome project just started to be funded, I was often misunderstood when I raised with NIH witnesses my concerns about the fact that science is getting ahead of the state of the law on the issue of genetics. It would be a tragedy if the billions of dollars which taxpayers are seeing invested on their behalf to discover the secrets of the human genetic makeup, if those dollars, instead of winding up producing a net good for the American people, wind up simply producing a greater ability for different powerful parties in this economy to discriminate on the basis of genes which individuals could not order beforehand but were stuck with after they were born. It seems to me that there has been a very slow reaction to this on the part of both the legal profession and on the part of good segments of the scientific community as well. I very much commend the gentlewoman for her efforts on this. I think it highlights probably the most important fundamental long-term issue associated with this bill, and we very enthusiastically support the amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Olver].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Texas [Ms. Jackson-Lee]. (Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, what this is about is very simple. It is about giving away goodies without having found a way to pay for them. We have seen time and time again that our Republican friends in this Congress want to propose to cut taxes for the wealthy and for special interests. It has been their No. 1 priority. The problem is that they keep running into a situation in which the commonsense budget rules require them to pay for any tax reductions that they provide. We saw last year how the Republicans would like to pay for those tax breaks. They wanted to cut Medicare, they wanted to cut education, they wanted to cut school lunches; the American people objected. And so now what are we back to? We are back to the resurrection of the David Stockman rosy scenario business. I would remind my colleagues what happened the last time the country used dynamic scoring. We were promised by David Stockman, who ran the budget office for President Reagan, that if we passed his magic budget which cut taxes and raised defense spending, we would cut our deficit from $55 billion to zero within 4 years. Instead, using his dynamic scoring, that deficit went up from $55 billion to $208 billion, and finally they shaved it a bit to $185 billion. I would simply suggest, if we were not paying for the added deficits that were added during those Reagan years, this budget would be in balance right now. That is the broblem, that is the problem, and this amendment will simply take us back to those good old rosy scenario days when we use phony estimates on revenue, and that allows us to spend more money on other things. We dare not do that if we want to remain fiscally responsible or even retain a pretension at fiscal responsibility. I would simply say experience, as my colleagues know, is that quality which enables us to recognize a mistake when we make it again, and, if passed, this amendment today will be making the same mistakle again. I urge my colleagues not to do it.