Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 4 minutes. Mr. Chairman, this is one of the most spectacular cover-up amendments that I have seen offered in a long time. I am the sponsor, the original sponsor, of the low income heating assistance program. Silvio Conte and I and Ed Muskie started that program a long time ago. We did it because we were tired of seeing senior citizens have to choose between paying their prescription drug bills and heating their homes. God knows, there has been no one in this House through the years who has been a bigger defender of the low income heating assistance program than I have. I think it is absolutely crucial, but I want to tell you that this amendment is a last-minute operation which effectively simply covers political tracks for past actions taken in this House. That is the effect of it. If you wanted to keep funding for LIHEAP in the budget, the time to do that is when you voted for the budget resolution that guaranteed that seniors would get clobbered in this bill. If you wanted to save LIHEAP, the time to do that was when we had a fight in the Committee on Appropriations over the 602(b) allocation made by the chairman which decided how much money would be available to this subcommittee and how much money would be available to Defense. At that time, I offered an alternative which every single Republican opposed in that committee, every single one, which would have added $3 billion to this bill and then some and made it possible for us to save LIHEAP. The only real way, the only real way that you can save LIHEAP is to defeat this entire bill so that you can send it back to the committee, send the Defense bill back to the committee, and redo the 602 allocations so you have got some real room to fix LIHEAP. If you do not do that, you are pretending that you are going to finance LIHEAP and you say: ``Oh, it is only going to be a 2 percent cut in other [[Page H 8383]] programs.'' Baloney. Head Start has already been cut by a huge amount. Education has already been cut by $2.5 billion. Older workers have already lost 14,000 jobs, and you are going to cut them again. Drug- free schools have already been cut by 50 percent. You are going to wind up, if you pass this amendment, cutting cancer research, cutting heart disease research, cutting Alzheimer's research, cutting virtually every medical research operation out at NIH. There is nothing wrong with half of the gentleman's amendment, the half that tries to save the LIHEAP program. But the place that he gets the money from ought to be totally unacceptable to anybody who cares about education, about job training, about health care or senior nutrition or senior jobs. I do not know of many senior citizens who appreciate being put in the position where they have to choose between having a tough time paying their home heating bills and dying because cancer research is not going to be strengthened. I do not think that is a choice we ought to be putting most seniors in. I certainly do not think that that is the kind of choice that many Members of this House tonight are going to find very useful. So I would simply say I very much want half of the gentleman's amendment, but I am not going to stand here and pretend that this is the way to fix it. The only way that you can really preserve the ability to protect LIHEAP without cutting cancer research, without cutting NIH, without cutting senior nutrition is to beat this bill, send it back to committee, get a new 602 allocation so that you do not have to decide which senior citizen is going to take it in the chops.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Our job is not to defend programs. It is to defend people. I would say to the gentleman, the real level of your dedication to LIHEAP will be seen by how he votes on final passage on this turkey of a bill. I am the original author of the LIHEAP program, but I am not cynical enough to suggest that it be financed by cutting Social Security, cutting cancer research, cutting breast cancer research, cutting drug treatment, cutting student aid, cutting senior citizen nutrition. I would suggest instead of cutting these programs, why not bring an amendment up here to cut the B-2, to cut the F-22? Why not take the money out of there? The gentleman voted for a budget which allowed the Pentagon to get an increase to $7 billion, while he took $9 billion out of this bill. Now he is suffering the consequences and he is wimping out. That is what is behind this amendment. I urge a ``no'' vote. Mr. STOKES, Mr. Chairman, the actions taken by the majority on the committee devastate the quality of life for two of what should be the most cherished segments of our society--our children and our elderly. This bill is bad for children and bad for the elderly. The $24 million cut in meals for the elderly means that 12 million meals would no longer be available. Tens of thousands of elderly would be forced to go hungry. In my State of Ohio, the elderly would lose over 400,000 meals. Those in California would lose over 1 million meals, Louisiana over 240,000, Texas over 750,000, Mississippi over 100,000, Arkansas over 190,000, Oklahoma over 200,000, New York over 1 million, Michigan over 500,000, Illinois over 400,000, the list goes on and on. While we are asking the elderly to go hungry, we are also asking them to ignore their need for heating in winter and cooling in summer. H.R. 2127 eliminates funding for LIHEAP. One would think that the 700 tragic and needless deaths from the recent heat wave would be enough to make us realize what is wrong with this bill. Without LIHEAP, over 6 million people will no longer have the energy assistance they need, and would be forced to make life threatening choices. With respect to our children, while they are the weakest and most vulnerable in our society. They are among the hardest hit by this bill. The $55 million, or over 50 percent, cut in the Healthy Start Program means that over 1 million women would be denied the comprehensive prenatal and other health care, social and support services they need. The Nation's effort to combat infant mortality at a time when progress is just beginning to be made in addressing this national health problem would be devastated. With respect to Head Start, the $137 million cut means that nearly 50,000 fewer children will be served. Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleague to show some mercy on our children and our elderly, reject H.R. 2127

Mr. OBEY. I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from New York [Mrs. Lowey].

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Bonior], the distinguished minority whip.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California [Mr. Horn.]

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Sabo], the distinguished Chairman of the Committee on the Budget. (Mr. SABO asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 10 seconds to the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Frank].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Markey].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from California [Mr. Fazio].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3\1/2\ minutes. Mr. Chairman, this is not about Ralph Nader. I would need more fingers to count the arguments that I have had with Ralph Nader. This goes far beyond the so-called PIRG issue. This simply prohibits colleges from supporting any activity to influence public policy with fees collected from students in any way. That does not just include the kind of mandatory fees the gentleman was talking about. It also includes tuition itself. You could not support any activity that included debate on campus about a public policy issue. You could not inform students about public policy issues that affected those students. It would even probably apply to college support for student newspapers if they editorialized on public policy. It would prohibit the holding of public policy forums, even if positions were not taken. I would call this instead the Paperwork Enhancement Act of 1995. It would require the Secretary to develop a process to permit complaints to be filed with the Secretary, to allow institutions to respond to complaints, to adjudge complaints, and to permit decisions to be appealed. The regulations would have to define criteria that allowed institutions to pick and choose which groups are educational and which are seeking to influence public policy. I invite you to define that line. I really think that what this does is just go counter to the very idea of what a university is supposed to do and supposed to be. It even prevents on-campus discussion of public policy paid for with tuition. I guess what I would really say is, this amendment so fits into the already existent extremism of the bill that it is perfectly fitting that the amendment be offered to this bill. If that is the philosophy of the majority party, then indeed go ahead and adopt it. It simply makes a bad bill a whole lot worse and it makes it a lot easier to vote against. But with all due respect, I would think there are enough people on this side of the aisle who care about the right of individual expression, of student expression, the right of academic freedom, the right indeed for a university to be a place where you sift and winnow and give people an educational experience. But having seen some of the extreme propositions already added to this bill, I am not in the least bit surprised. It is here and I would be shocked, I guess, if it is not adopted. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I would like to claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. OBEY. This has nothing to do with the majority party's desire to curb lobbyists. It has everything to do with the desire to stifle expression on the part of the new authoritarians who control this House. Their amendment does not apply to corporate lobbyists who can do full page ads telling us every day to spend $50, $60, $70 billion of taxpayers' money on airplanes we do not need while we are trying to starve our own folks. We should be ashamed of ourselves. This amendment is an absolute joke and it is a disgrace to the Congress.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York [Mr. Nadler]. (Mr. NADLER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds. Mr. Chairman, with all due respect, it does have a place in this debate, because your allocation gave the Pentagon $7 billion more than the President asked for. You have cut at least $7 billion out of this bill. That is the problem. Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Hoyer], a member of the subcommittee.

Mr. OBEY. That is right.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Stokes]. (Mr. STOKES asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Barrett].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield a minute and a half to the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Sawyer]. (Mr. SAWYER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado [Mr. Skaggs].

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, twice in debate on the previous rule it was asserted that this bill is going to be debated tonight because that was my preference. That is absolutely baloney. For the last month, at the request of the majority, I have been trying to assist the majority to see to it that they finish all their appropriations bills before we recess for August. It has been my position from the beginning that telecommunications should not even be on the floor until the Labor-HEW bill is finished and until the defense appropriation bill is finished. If after that time there is time for telcom, in my view that is a decision that is made above my pay grade by the leadership, but I personally believe it is a disgrace that any of these bills, especially a bill involving this much money, will be debated in the dead of night in such a limited time frame. Mr. Speaker, this bill should not be here at all this week.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, if that is satisfactory to the majority, we have no objection. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.