Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, let me simply say here that I think it is important to understand that this is not just a technical change. As I understand it and as the gentleman from Colorado will point out shortly when I yield to him, this language not only accomplishes the technical changes desired by the chairman of the subcommittee, but also makes a substantive change to carve out individuals from the prohibition in the Istook amendment that should not be here in the first place. So, it is an effort to put a rose on a pig, so-to-speak, and that does not mean that the pig is still anything but a pig. So I do not have any objection to the fix-up, but I want people to understand, it does not improve the general picture of the animal. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Colorado [Mr. Skaggs].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Well, I guess what I would say is we have been told that this bill represents payback time, and I guess when we see this chart, we can see who is getting paid back.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to reclaim my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Chairman, working people pay most of the taxes to support the activities of Government. Yet the activities of Government that are most being chopped by this bill are those that help workers, that help the children and the families of workers by way of education, training, and health. Our Republican friends are evidently not satisfied that between 1980 and 1993 only 97 percent of all of the income growth that occurred in our country went to the wealthiest 20 percent of people in this society. The rest of the 80 percent in this society had to settle for sharing that tiny little 3 percent. And yet this bill will in fact make that situation worse. They think workers have too much power in the marketplace. In my view that is a joke. Yet their bill goes ahead and guts the ability of the NLRB to enforce laws to protect workers on everything from wages and hours to the minimum wage. It savages the ability of OSHA to provide a safe and healthy workplace; $1 out of every $4 that were present a year ago to defend the interests of workers in this society will be gone under this bill, $1 out of $4. This bill, for instance, provides a healthy appropriation for the National Institutes of Health. I applaud that. They deal with diseases that anybody can get, whether you are the CEO of a plant or the janitor at that same plant. But the National Institutes of Occupational Health and Safety is supposed to be that one agency which does the research, the medical research which is supposed to underlie the actions that OSHA then takes to protect the health of American workers. That agency is savaged. All ability to train occupational health workers in that agency is ended. Its budget, the budget to provide the desperately needed research, is gutted. I think the majority party ought to be ashamed of itself. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Pelosi], who will begin essentially our side of this 1\1/2\-hour discussion on title I, focused on the problems that it presents to American workers.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island [Mr. Kennedy].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens]. (Mr. OWENS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Doggett].

Mr. OBEY. I yield to the gentlewoman from Colorado.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Ohio [Ms. Kaptur].

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Clay]. (Mr. CLAY asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Ohio [Ms. Kaptur].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from California [Mr. Miller]. (Mr. MILLER of California asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. Ward].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut [Ms. DeLauro].

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, let me simply say that I am of a split mind on this rule because this bill is so bad. But I guess what I would say is I would like us to pass this rule so that we can just as quickly as possible get to a vote on final passage so we can vote ``no.'' I said earlier, when this bill came out of committee, that in my view this bill was the meanest and the most vicious and the most extreme attack on the children of this country, on the dignity and the rights of workers, and on many of our most vulnerable citizens that I ever seen produced by the Committee on Appropriations in all of the years I have had the privilege to serve in this House. I do not believe this bill is fixable. The basic problem with this bill is that earlier in the year the majority party adopted a budget. And under that budget what is called the 602 allocation was made by the committee, which decided how much would go to each department of Government, and this subcommittee is operating under constraints imposed by those 602 budget limitations. That means that even though the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Porter], who is the subcommittee chairman, and in my view one of the finest Members of this House, even though I am sure he would have liked to have done otherwise, he could simply not, under the conditions in which he was operating, produce a bill which meets our national obligations to our children, our workers, and the most vulnerable among us. The bill also continues 17 major changes in authorization law, and each of those changes ought to be considered on their own by the committee of jurisdiction. They should not be slipped in as legislative riders in this bill so that the authorizing committees can avoid confronting not only the language that you have for each of these provisions, but also confronting rational amendments to them. Under the way we work, the way the House governs appropriations bills, or the way the House rules govern appropriation bill consideration, you cannot offer many rational amendments to the extreme language which is in this bill, and because that language makes a wholesale assault on the ability of workers to expect even a reasonable degree of protection and dignity at the bargaining table, because it imposes a set of values on women of this country rather than trying to encourage a set of values, I think that this is a highly illegitimate process, and so I think the bill ought to go down. But the rule does facilitate our ability to at least address each of these issues in a rational way. With the amended suggestions of the gentleman from New York [Mr. Solomon], it will be a rational way in which we can focus the debate on education, on what we are doing to workers, on what we are doing to the seniors, and we will have an opportunity to at least debate in some fashion the legislative language which has illegitimately been attached to this bill, in my view, so I think the rule is far more legitimate than the bill which has spawned it. So I would urge Members to vote for the rule, and I would ask the cooperation of Members on both sides of the aisle in helping us to focus the debate on each of these subjects without getting into the constant repetitive offering of individual amendments. This bill is so bad it cannot be fixed by amendment. The key vote on this, in the end, will be the vote that occurs on final passage. So I would urge Members of both sides of the aisle to vote for this rule, but when we move on to the bill itself, I would urge Members of both parties who recognize that this is an extreme attack on the education of children, the rights of workers, the rights of women, and the needs of the most vulnerable in our society, to join me in voting against the bill on final passage.

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

Mr. OBEY. Let me point out that the language on that was specifically requested by the gentleman's party leadership.

Mr. OBEY. I was most reluctant to agree to it because I think it can put them procedurally in the driver's seat, but in the end I was persuaded to accept it on two grounds.

Mr. OBEY. Let me explain the process under which we are going to proceed. I think it will alleviate the concerns of the gentleman. What we are doing is we are starting with 2\1/2\ hours of general debate under the proposal that is being offered by the gentleman from New York [Mr. Solomon]. We are trying to group debate so we can have a focused discussion title by title on Labor, on HHS, and on Education. We will also then have a focused discussion on a number of the language amendments. We have, for instance, the Istook amendment, the rape-incest provision, we have a number of those. We have tried to structure a good deal of debate time so that Members on and off the committee will be able to participate. I know we certainly worked out a very large number of participants on this side of the aisle, and I would be very surprised if the gentleman from Illinois has not done the same thing. So I, speaking as a Member of the minority who used that right the other night in order to make a point, I am very reluctant to give that up. If you ask the Speaker's representative, he will tell you we had a quite heated discussion on it. But I think the rights of Members to be able to participate meaningfully are being protected by the rule. I do not have a dog in this fight. This is your leadership's request, but it is our efforts to try to accommodate them.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

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.