Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, no, I will not. I do not have the time. [[Page H 12118]] For the gentleman to suggest that it is the President to blame for the Government not functioning, when the Congress has failed to pass 88 percent of its appropriated items is, to me, baffling logic. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas [Mr. Edwards].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. Mr. Speaker, the previous speaker needs to understand, we have not passed our bills. The President cannot sign appropriations bills we have not yet sent him, and 10 out of the 13 appropriation bills have not escaped the clutches of this Congress.

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

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 continuing resolution, and ask its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I hope it is soon cleared, because that is what we need to do to avoid the Government shutting down on Monday.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I understand that Members are impatient to get out of here, but pardon me, there is the public's business to be done. I do not make any apology whatsoever for taking a couple of minutes to talk about that public business. Mr. Speaker, I think what is happening today is truly sad, and I think it is an example of why this Congress is held in such low esteem by the general public. In November, I think the American people put the Republican Party in charge of both the House and the Senate because they honestly thought that that would force both parties to get over their ideological and political hangups and maneuvering and it would force both parties to work together for the good of the people we are supposed to be representing. Mr. Speaker, instead, I think on a bill such as this they are getting more maneuvering, more political posturing, and more business as usual. Today is Veterans Day. I had intended to be in my district today at three separate veterans celebrations and one additional one tomorrow. Obviously, I am not going to get there under these circumstances. My planes have already left. [[Page H 12094]] We are supposed to be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. The veterans who fought in World War II did not have the luxury of playing political games. They did not have the luxury of cynical maneuvering. They simply had to plow ahead and do their job. I wish that we were following their example today. But unfortunately, we are not. In fact, we can go home and give all of the speeches we want to veterans telling them how much we care about them, but in fact the reality of this maneuver today is simply going to be that what we are going to be saying to every single veteran of World War II is: ``Guess what, I have got a Veterans Day present for you, we are going to raise your Medicare part B premium on the order of between 11 and 13 bucks,'' depending upon whose numbers you listen to today. So I guess it is kind of fitting that most Members of Congress will not be able to be home with their veterans today, because I think we ought to have a better message to give them than that. Now, what this budget, what the budget does that is being pushed through the Congress is to cut education. It is going to cut health for kids. The idea behind it is that we are telling people to rely more on charities. But then what this vehicle proposes to do with the Istook amendment today is to say: Oh, by the way, we are giving these charities much more to do because Government is bugging out on its concerns for children and its concerns for the poor, but by the way, we are going to shut things off so that these charities cannot lobby Congress and tell us what they think about those changes. We know that the President will not sign this legislation. We know that the only result of what we are doing today is that the Government is going to shut down come Monday. I would like to make one point and compare the way we proceeded last year with the way we are proceeding this year. Last year, when I chaired the Committee on Appropriations, every single appropriation bill was finished by the end of the fiscal year. That happened for one very simple reason, because when I took over as chairman, the very first thing I did was to go to the senior Republican on the committee and say: ``Look, let us bridge our partisan differences and work out a bipartisan allocation of dollars among the 13 appropriation bills.'' That is what we did. We worked it out in a bipartisan way, in a conciliatory way, and we passed all 13 of those bills for the first time since Harry Truman was President. This time around my distinguished friend, the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Livingston], chairman of the Committee on Appropriations in this session, has not been given the opportunity to do that. Instead, it is pretty apparent to me he has got his marching orders and the marching orders are very clear: ``Load up these appropriation bills with as many partisan gimmicks as you can, create as much confrontation as you can, divide people as much as you can.'' And after those instructions have gone out, is it any wonder that Congress has not been able to finish its work? This chart demonstrates that it has not been a Presidential failure of leadership which has resulted in this budget impasse. It has been a congressional failure of leadership. We have so far these three bills down to the White House. They have crossed the finish line. We have nine bills remaining that have a long way to do before they even get to the White House. The Labor-HHS bill passed by the House was in such an extreme form that the Republican-controlled Senate will not even take it up. Four other appropriation bills are tied up on the issue of abortion, a nonbudget item. Others are tied up because of extremist language that was attached on the environmental and several others are tied up because of money differences. The fact is that 89 percent of the appropriations business that this Congress has to do is still not done. And that is not because of the failure of the President to provide leadership but because of the failure of this Congress to bridge partisan differences and philosophical differences and do what is necessary to compromise in the interest of the people we represent. That is why this rule is a fool's mission. This rule is going to produce a product which is going nowhere. We will all be back here Monday, after we have gone home and preached our psalms, we will come back Monday to pick up and clean up the damage done by the passage of this legislation today, because this will never become law. All it will do is increase the risk--and decrease the time necessary to avoid the risk--of blowing up this process with innocent people getting hit by the shrapnel. That is all that is happening today. I speak with a great deal of regret because it seems to me that the job of Congress, instead of attaching the Istook amendment, which we know will simply bottle this legislation up, instead of insisting that we raise the Medicare part B premium, we ought to have a simple 1-month clean extension so we have some time to do our real work rather than the nonsense and posturing that is going on today represented by this joke of a bill and this joke of a rule.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Minnesota.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Doggett].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. Mr. Speaker, I cannot believe that this debate has become so trivialized that this bill is going to rise or fall based on how much the Speaker's ego was damaged because the President on the way to a state funeral for a fallen friend did not spend enough time schmoozing with the Speaker when he had two former Presidents in the plane and had a few things to do on the way. If the Speaker is not bigger than that, if the majority's nose is out of joint on that, then we really do have a problem in this country.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, could the Chair advise Members of the time remaining?

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, the silly flap about whether the President paid enough attention to the Speaker on Air Force One reminds me of a poem written by my favorite philosopher, Archy the Cockroach. It goes as follows: i met a toad the other day by the name of warty bliggens he was sitting under a toadstool feeling contented he explained that when the cosmos was created that toadstool was especially planned for his personal shelter from sun and rain thought out and prepared for him do not tell me said warty bliggens that there is not a purpose in the universe the thought is blasphemy a little more conversation revealed that warty bliggens considers himself to be the center of the said universe the earth exists to grow toadstools for him to sit under the sun to give him light by day, and the moon and wheeling constellations to make beautiful the night all for the sake of warty bliggens

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute and 30 seconds. Let me simply say, I think that the gentleman from Louisiana misspoke. This proposal does not make it illegal for lobbyists to use taxpayers' money to lobby. That is already in the law. That is a red herring. It is a phoney argument. No group who receives Federal money under a grant from the Government of the United States can use one dime of that money to lobby and the gentleman knows it and ought not to imply otherwise. Let me simply say that my motion to recommit will do what the committee ought to have done today. It will simply bring a simple 1- month extension to the floor of this House, stripped of any ideological bells and whistles on either side of the philosophical aisle. It will simply provide for a 1-month extension so that we do not hurt innocent people because the Congress has not been able to fulfill its work. The President has not prevented these bills from becoming law. This Congress' own mismanagement has prevented these bills from becoming law. Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the distinguished gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Bonior], the minority whip.

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

Mr. OBEY. I think that is safe to say, Mr. Speaker.

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

Mr. OBEY. The President has the right to review every bill, once he gets it.

Mr. OBEY. You are trying to blame the President for not signing bills you have not been able to send him yet.

Mr. OBEY. How can the President decide ahead of time what he is going to sign?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, this bill has been described as a bill to continue the Government. In fact, it is just the opposite. It is a bill to bring the Government to a halt. If indeed this bill was intended to continue the Government, it would not come before us slashing education, cutting veterans' benefits, tying up every charity in the country, virtually, in red ink, jacking up Medicare premiums, and increasing the differences between the parties. It would, instead, be trying to bridge those differences. Eighty-nine percent of the appropriations, which are supposed to be passed before the beginning of the year, have not yet become law. We have only 11 percent of the appropriations which have passed so far. That is not the fault of the President. This bill ratchets up the pressure on the President because he has not signed bills that Congress has not sent him yet. That is a legislatively impossible act, yet that is what they are asking him to do. There are only four bills which have passed the finish line and gotten to the White House. Two have been signed, two more will be signed. This gap for every other major appropriation bill, representing 89 percent of the total appropriated items, is the fault of the Congress, not the President, because you have had fights between the Republicans in the Senate and Republicans in the House over abortion language, over environmental language, over the Istook language. That is what is holding us up. This bill ought to be a simple continuing resolution for 1 month, rather than having all of these bells and whistles which will just cause problems.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Hoyer]. (Mr. HOYER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Levin].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote. A recorded vote was ordered.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, today, I would like to salute six outstanding young women who have been honored with the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. Gold Award by Birch Trails Girl Scout Council in my home town of Wausau, WI. They are Jill Whitney, Katie Jenkins, and Sarah Olson of Girl Scout Troop 199, Beth Neitzel of Girl Scout Troop 6, and Holly Perry and Betsy Pugh of Girl Scout Troop 144. They are being honored for earning the highest achievement award in Girl Scouting. The Girl Scout Gold Award symbolizes outstanding accomplishments in the areas of leadership, community service, career planning, and personal development. Girl Scouts of the U.S.A., an organization serving over 2.6 million girls, has awarded more than 20,000 Girl Scout Awards to Senior Girl Scouts since the inception of the program in 1980. To receive the award, a Girl Scout must fulfill five requirements: earn four interest project patches, earn the Career Exploration pin, earn the Senior Girl Scout Leadership Award project, earn the Senior Girl Scout Challenge, and design and implement a Girl Scout Gold Award project. A plan for fulfilling the requirements of the award is created by the Senior Girl Scout and is carried out through close cooperation between the girl and an adult Girl Scout volunteer. The earning of the Girl Scout Gold Award is a major accomplishment for these young women, and I believe they should receive the public recognition due them for this significant service to their community and their country.