Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, is the gentleman from Texas entitled to discuss action which took place on the House floor? Is there any action that takes place on the House floor that any Member of this House is not allowed to refer to?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I have a further parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, what in the rules prevents a Member of this House from discussing an action that has taken place on the House floor? The gentleman from Texas [Mr. Doggett] is not discussing what is occurring in the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. The gentleman is discussing what is happening on the House Floor.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I am simply asking if the gentleman from Texas is within the rules of the House if he continues to discuss a matter which occurred on the House Floor.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I have a further parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, the Chair is not, however, ruling that it is out of order for any Member of this House to address any action taken by the House on this floor, is the Chair?

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. I would simply point out, the gentleman can talk about all the new Russian fighters he wants. My question is how many of them: 1, 2, 5, 10? We have 700 F-15's and we are going to buy another 400 F-22's. He has to be kidding. Come on. The other thing I would say is, if the gentleman thinks that the Russian military power is such a powerhouse these days, I have a one- word reply for him, Chechnya. They could not even handle that one. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. OBEY. I certainly am, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, it is my understanding the gentleman from Pennsylvania is not opposed to the further conference report. If that is the case, then I would ask, under clause 2 of rule XXVIII, to control one-third of the time.

Mr. OBEY. I thank the Chair.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Speaker, as I said in debate on the rule about an hour ago, last night this House voted to promise to the American people that we would have a balanced budget within 7 years. Yet today this bill is coming before us $7 billion above the budget request of the Pentagon and the President. We are being required this year to reduce domestic discretionary spending by $24 billion. This bill is $1.7 billion above last year. Because of the size of this bill and because this is a zero sum game on the appropriations side of the budget, what that means is that the reductions in domestic programs--for things like education, job training, housing, research--those reductions are 50 percent larger than they would have to be if we did not have this budget $7 billion above the President and $1.7 billion above last year. Now, as I said earlier, the money in this bill above the President's budget did not go into readiness, it did not go into operation and maintenance. It went into procurement, and it went into pork: the double P's. This chart, as I mentioned before, demonstrates what has happened to the Russian military budget since the Berlin Wall came down. The red bars demonstrate that the Russian military budget has declined by 70 percent since 1989. The U.S. military budget has declined by 10 percent. Do I think we ought to cut our budget to the level of Russia? No. Do I think that this demonstrates that we have a little margin of safety? You betcha. Now, people will say, ``Well, we have to worry about more than Russia.'' So, again, as I said during the rule, this chart demonstrates how our military spending stacks up against all of the military spending for our potential military adversaries. Russia, China, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, North Korea, and good old muscle-bound Cuba. We spend 2.5 times as much as they do. That does not count the spending by our NATO allies, and I think it is safe to say they are on our side. So I make that point to demonstrate that there is no military emergency that requires this expenditure of money under these tough financial situations. I do not think we should be buying twice as many B-2 bombers as the Pentagon wants. I do not think we should be buying the F-22 years early at a cost of $70 billion. I especially do not think we ought to be loosening up on loopholes which allow executive compensation at military contractors corporate headquarters to be paid for by the taxpayer, rather than out of corporate profits. I have a GAO report which indicates what has happened to executive compensation at corporations that provide military hardware to the United States. We, until this year, limited the amount of that compensation that would be paid for by taxpayers to $250,000 per executive. That is equal to the compensation for the President of the United States, for God's sake. Anything above that amount, the company was supposed to pay for out of its profits. This year, this House adopted an amendment lowering that amount to $200,000. But in conference, they adopted a loophole which provides an exception if the Office of Federal Procurement Policy establishes in the Federal acquisition regulation's guidance governing the allowability of individual compensation, and those words were added to the conference report, which in effect opens the door to charging taxpayers a whole lot more than $200,000 per executive. Now, if you take a look what those contractors are paid, you see that a number of these contractors are paid more than $1 million, some $1.6 million, one of them $2.7 million. I would ask, why should those executive salaries be financed to such a gross level by the taxpayers of the United States? We have one corporation, for instance, where the top executive in 1989 was paid $634,000. Today their top paid executive is paid $1.6 million. Another corporation, which laid off 20,000 workers earlier this year, in 1989 they were paying their top executive $764,000. Today they are paying him $2.1 million. Hardly the kind of action you would expect to see in a corporation that is having huge layoffs of average workers. I do not think the taxpayer wants Uncle Sam to be financing these huge increases in corporate executive salaries for defense contractors when their workers are being laid off. This bill contains a loophole that allows that to happen. My motion to recommit will simply say that we are going to reimpose the hard limit that this House first proposed; namely, $200,000. Anything above that, if the company wants to pay it, they pay it out of their own corporate profits, not out of taxpayers' pockets. So that is what I will have in the motion to recommit. I would urge that Members vote for the motion to recommit and against this bill, because given the so-called promise that was made last night to balance the budget in 7 years, we simply cannot afford the spending in this bill.

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

Mr. OBEY. I did not say that. Quote me accurately.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Speaker, first of all I do want to congratulate the committee for following through on the request that we have had to prevent golden parachutes at defense contractor corporations from being paid for by the taxpayer. I think that is long overdue. I congratulate the committee. I simply want to say again in closing, we voted last night for a balanced budget in 7 years. It is fundamentally inconsistent with that vote for the Congress, the next day, to pass legislation which adds $7 billion to the President's budget for military spending, and adds money above the amount spent last year. This chart demonstrates that Russia has reduced its spending by over 70 percent. I would point out to the gentleman from Florida that this chart takes into account wage differentials. We have only reduced our military budget by about 10 percent. That hardly indicates to me that we are in a military jam. The United States will spend $1.3 trillion over the next 5 years. The defense budget in adjusted dollars is higher than it was under Eisenhower, higher than it was in 1975 under Nixon, and even through the cold war. We spend as much as the rest of the world combined; 4 times as much as Russia, almost 17 times as much as the 6 bad guys: Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Libya, Syria, and Cuba. The United States, NATO, and our Asian allies account for 80 percent of all military spending in the world. I think, with all due respect, that is more than enough. I urge Members to vote ``no'' on passage, and I urge Members to vote ``yes'' on the motion to recommit. That motion to recommit will simply eliminate a loophole in the conference report to assure that corporation profit rather than taxpayers' money will be used to pay for executive compensation for military contractors above $200,000. I do not think the taxpayers should be financing multimillion-dollar salaries for these executives while those companies are downsizing their own workers, and while we are downsizing our own budget. I would simply urge Members to remember that, despite the fact that many people in this House would like to ignore it, this bill is fundamentally related to what happens on Social Security, what happens on Medicare, what happens on education, what happens on housing, what happens on all of the other priorities that we have in our budget. We simply cannot restore any significant amount of the huge reductions in education, in housing, in environmental protection unless this bill is brought under financial control. Right now it is not. I urge Members to vote ``no.'' I urge members to vote ``yes'' on the recommit motion.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I cannot believe what we are about to do in this House. Last night, amid much pontificating, this House told the American people that we were going to be committed to balancing the budget within 7 years. Today, as the very first legislative act after that promise, we are being asked to vote for an appropriation bill which adds $7 billion to the President's budget. That money does not go to the troops. That money does not go to readiness. Because if we in fact take a look at what is happening in this bill on O&M, the major readiness account, it is actually lower than the President's for that account by half a billion dollars, once we deduct Coast Guard funding, which is really a transportation function, once we deduct the adjustment that was made on inflation in this bill but not made on the estimates in the President's budget, and that adjustment should have been made in both legislative vehicles, and once we deduct the contingency fund, $650 million. This added money is put largely in 3 areas: One is in procurement; well, it is put in two areas largely, procurement and pork. On procurement, this committee is insisting that we go ahead with the congressional demand to buy 40 B-2 bombers even though the Pentagon itself only wants 20. The cost of one of those bombers is about $1.2 billion. That would pay the undergraduate tuition for every single student at the University of Wisconsin for the next 11 years. We are being asked to buy the F-22, years early, at a total cost eventually of $70 billion. And people say, oh, we need this, we need a strong defense. Well, of course we need a strong defense, but this chart demonstrates what has happened to our military budget versus Russia's since the Berlin Wall fell. The red chart shows that the Russian military budget has dropped by about 70 percent. The United States military budget, by that same token, has dropped by about 10 percent. That is hardly reacting to reality. People say, well, we have to worry about somebody besides Russia. Okay. Let us take every single threat that has been suggested to the United States, from Russia, from China, from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, North Korea, that well-known military powerhouse, Cuba. Add all of the money together, and you know what? We still outspend them militarily by 2\1/2\ times. That does not count our NATO allies, and you know, the last time I looked, they were on our side. So we are being asked to provide this huge bill, yet we are being asked to cut back on housing, cut back on education. We are being asked to squeeze the life's blood out of Social Security and Medicaid, knock hundreds of thousands of Americans out of health insurance because of Medicaid. This is indeed where the rubber hits the road. Last night was a nice generic promise, but today you have an opportunity to demonstrate whether you were serious or whether you are going to blow a hole in that promise one day after you made it. This country cannot afford to spend $7 billion more than President Clinton wants us to spend on the military budget, if it intends to get to a balanced budget in 7 years. If anybody believes you can do that, you are smoking something that ain't legal. So I would urge you to recognize reality, recognize that if you are going to make the tough choices that were talked about last night, you might as well start now. You might as well start on this bill. We ought to vote this bill down and keep it down until we get a bill back that reflects the financial crisis which the House declared we were in last night. I urge Members to vote against this bill. I have talked to the President's chief of staff, 15 minutes ago, and he has told me he is going to veto this bill. There is no sense sending this bill to him. It is a mission in futility. We cannot afford it. We should not be engaged in wasted motion. This bill is a dead duck, and it ought to be.

Mr. OBEY. I am using the chart to show that we can afford, given the fact that we spent 2\1/2\ times as much as our enemies, we can afford to hold the budget to the amount the President has asked for. That is $7 billion out of a more than $250 billion budget. That is hardly a big slasher.

Mr. OBEY. What proportion is the gentleman talking about? I am not suggesting we cut our budget the same as Russia.

Mr. OBEY. I would like to correct a statement just made by the previous speaker. The fact is the President's budget does not contain any reductions in personnel. We are not asking for any reductions in personnel. We are asking for reductions in the F-22, the B-2, we are asking for reductions in procurement items. We are not asking for one dime in reduction in personnel. You have said it--not you but people on your side have said it time and time again. It does not matter how many times you say it. You are wrong each time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I frankly accept the fact that the rule is going to pass. I am simply legitimately using the rule on the bill to discuss what is at stake. In my view what we ought to do is defeat the rule so that this bill can go back to committee and get fixed. Mr. FROST Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Vento].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for asking that question. The fact is that when this bill was before us originally, we had a time limit imposed that prevented us from raising many of the issues that we wanted to raise at that time. So the only time we have had an opportunity to raise these issues has been on the rule today. When we deal with the conference report shortly, we will only have about 20 minutes during which we can explain our concerns about the bill. So that is why we are taking the time on the rule to explain our concerns about the bill.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I have been essentially involved in virtually every reform issue this House has faced since I first came, whether that issue is limiting outside income or requiring financial disclosure or campaign reform or lobbying gift reform. I have not been involved in that because I thought that most Members did not have integrity, I have been involved in it because I know that they do. Yet what we have often seen is that many Members in this place have their reputations unjustly besmirched because of the careless or thoughtless actions and sometimes the venal actions of a very small percentage of the Members of this body. I do not believe that we can afford, as an institution or as stewards of the political process, I do not believe that we can afford to have a situation continue in which taxpayers can turn on their television set and see their local Congressman cavorting on a beach with his expenses paid for by lobbyists or golfing with his expenses paid for by lobbyists. The system cannot afford it. That kind of scene turns this country cynical. It robs them of any remaining faith they have left in their political institutions. We have got to cut off that kind of behavior and that kind of activity. That is why I would urge the House, when they take action today, to support the committee bill, to oppose the Burton amendment. I respect the gentleman's motives. But I do not respect the judgment that leads one to conclude that we can afford to continue those kinds of relationships. I think that for the good of the country, those kinds of relationships must end, and that is the most important lesson which I think we have to take out of the debate today.