Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, if there is not sufficient movement by, say, midnight or so, is it then the gentleman's understanding that there would be a motion to adjourn?

Mr. OBEY. Does the gentleman have any idea, is there any point beyond which you would want the House to adjourn or could we expect that we might be in session through 6:00, 7:00, 8:00 tomorrow morning?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, if the House has completed its business on special orders and is not in session for special orders, could I ask what the plans would be then and whether under any circumstances Members would have an hour's notice?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, my understanding is we are obliged to deal with that tonight if the House is in session.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I do not know if this would be appropriate the time to ask unanimous consent that I might speak out of order in order to inquire of someone on the other side of the aisle what their plans would be for this evening's schedule? I yield to the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hastert].

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I find the logic strange that somehow the President ought to be questioned about his conduct before we have ever gotten appropriation bills to him. We can all have legitimate differences about what ought to happen on Medicare, what ought to happen on education. That is normal in this country. What is not normal is when you start criticizing the President for not signing legislation that has not yet been sent to him. When the Congress has failed to pass 10 of the 13 appropriation bills, then the issue is not whether the President has vetoed something, the issue is whether the Congress has produced something for him to sign or veto. We have not yet done that, and until we do, it seems to me that it comes with considerable ill grace for this institution to suggest that we ought to short-circuit the process when this institution has not yet performed its basic duty.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Hoyer].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas [Mr. Stenholm]. (Mr. STENHOLM asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. It certainly was.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman asked me a question.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Durbin].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Speaker, let me simply say, the gentleman can talk about deep, ancient history as often as he wants. The fact is that last year, when I chaired the Committee on Appropriations, every single one of these appropriation bills was passed on time before the end of the fiscal year. The reason that happened is because I went to the ranking Republican and we worked out a bipartisan approach to each and every one of those 13 bills. That is what the gentleman from Louisiana's leadership should have allowed him to do. If they had, we would not be here today with the need for this resolution, and we would not be facing an extraneous debate on Medicare just because your party has a compulsion to raise Medicare fees every time they hit the floor of the House of Representatives.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 7 minutes. Mr. Speaker, the primary job of the Congress, when it comes to appropriation bills, is simply to make all of its financial decisions and get all 13 appropriation bills finished by the end of the fiscal year. This year that did not happen, for one very clear reason. It has nothing whatsoever to do with any fault of the gentleman from Louisiana, the distinguished chairman of the committee. He has done a fine job. The reason we are late is because the first 100 days of the session were devoted to passing what was known as the Contract With America, which the Congress and the country were told had been developed through extensive polling to determine exactly what the public wanted. And we were told by, among other people, the Speaker's pollster, that each and every proposal in the contract had been thoroughly tested. Now, in fact, today's newspapers carry the confession from the Speaker's pollster that in fact those ideas were not tested with the American public, that the only thing that was tested were the advertising slogans associated with the sales job on that contract. So we spent 100 days in the beginning of the session working on legislation which was produced without the extensive documentation that we were told had taken place with respect to public opinion. Because of that fact, the Congress did not have time to finish its appropriation bills. This chart demonstrates where we are at this point. This chart, which looks like a number of horses on a race track, shows that there are only 2 of the 13 appropriation bills which have passed the finish line, the military construction bill and the agriculture bill, and they both have been signed by the President. The third bill which has passed the congressional finish line, energy and water, has been finished by the Congress and I expect it will soon be signed by the President. That means that there are 10 of the remaining appropriation bills which have still not gone through both houses of Congress, been conferenced out and sent to the President. That means that those 10 bills are literally stuck in the mud, and at this point they constitute 88 percent of the appropriated portion of the budget for the coming fiscal year. So 88 percent of the Congress's work is not yet done, and yet today, because of that fact, we are told that we should pass a continuing resolution which ``puts more pressure on the President,'' rather than simply passing a straight, clean continuing resolution to give the Congress more time to do its own work. I find it quaint that we are being asked to ratchet up the pressure on the President because he has not signed bills that have not yet been sent to him. I really find that logic very difficult to follow. Instead of sending a simple, clean CR to the President, which he has already indicated he would sign and which we have tried twice already today to get on this floor to pass, instead we are told we have to add two totally unrelated legislative riders. The first is that we are told we have to raise Medicare part B premiums by $13, from basic law; and, second, until a few minutes ago, we were told that we needed to also add the Istook amendment, which put a gag on virtually every major charity in this country. Now we are being told that the motion that the gentleman is going to be making will drop the Istook amendment. I thank you for small favors. That amendment has hung up the appropriation process for 53 legislative days. It does not belong on any appropriation bill whatsoever. I am happy that, belatedly, the majority party recognizes that fact. But I would say also that neither does an unrelated rider belong on this bill which will force the Congress to ratify the decision of the majority party to raise the Medicare part B premium. In fact, they not only want to raise it, they want to raise it by $2 more per month than they did just 2 weeks ago in their basic budget. Now, we have heard today that they are doing that to save Medicare. Well, again, we remember what Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Dole said just 2 weeks ago behind closed doors when Mr. Dole said on October 24, ``I was there fighting the fight, voting against Medicare, 1 of the 12, because we knew it would not work in 1965.'' Then we had the Speaker talking to Blue Cross-Blue Shield, and he was discussing Medicare and saying: We don't get rid of it in round one, because we don't think that is politically smart and we don't think that is the right way to go through a transition period. But we believe it is going to wither on the vine, because we think people are voluntarily going to leave it. That does not sound like a crew interested in compromise. It certainly does not sound to me like a crew interested in saving Medicare. They cannot resist coming to the floor at every opportunity and trying to push up the cost of Medicare to seniors and to squeeze at the same time what the Federal Government will pay to meet Medicare costs. I would simply urge the majority party to do what every person in this room knows ought to happen, to drop the ideological zeal, to drop the hunger for creating additional divisions. Our main duty today is not to have further partisan fights. Our main duty is to simply keep the Government going. You can do that by passing a clean CR without trying to hold Medicare hostage to a Presidential signature on the continuing resolution. I urge a vote no on the Livingston motion.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. Mr. SPEAKER, the issue is not how much time the President has spent massaging the Speaker's ego on the airplane. The issue is whether or not we will try to force the President to provide for a huge increase in Medicare premiums as the price for keeping the Government going. That is not our obligation. Our obligation is to try to keep the Government going. We can do that with a clean resolution. That is what we ought to do. Mr. SPEAKER, I yield the remaining 4\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished minority leader, the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Gephardt].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Frost].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Connecticut [Ms. DeLauro].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, even if it is accurate?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, is there any rule of the House which precludes a Member from bringing to the floor in the form of a chart an exact quotation from the front page of a daily newspaper?

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Appropriations be discharged from further consideration of House Joint Resolution 118, a clean CR, and ask its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, in the interest of seeing to it that the Government does not come to a halt, when is the next point at which I might offer that motion to have a simple, clean, 1-month CR?

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.