Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, let me make certain that I understand this amendment. The gentleman is striking the ability for the agency to receive aircraft, two of them.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, all I am trying to do, if you would have the good grace to let me do it, is to suggest that I do not see any constructive purpose to be served by further delay, and so what I am trying to inform the House, unless I am forced to change my mind, is that I have the right every 5 minutes, if I want, to offer another motion to rise. Mr. Chairman, this is why I do not think it is good to meet this late, because Members do not often act in their own interests. All I am trying to say is that I do not intend to offer any other motions to rise this evening. I would ask only two things: that we complete action on the pending amendments as quickly as possible and that the majority leader take into consideration the right of this House to consider every important issue we deal with under the most optimum conditions possible, and that means, I believe, not considering important legislation at 12, 1, and 2 o'clock in the morning, be it in subcommittee or on the floor. I offer my colleagues my intention to try to cooperate in that, but the majority leader must have some realistic understanding of the time realities which neither the minority on the Committee on Appropriations nor the majority have any power to overcome. If the majority leader wants to insist that every single appropriation bill have totally open rules, then we must accept the logical consequences of that when some 70 amendments are filed. Most are filed on the majority side of the aisle, and it just seems to me it makes no sense to want time requirements that leave Members no time to debate the amendments which the majority leader himself has insisted be made in order. So with that statement I will simply indicate I am not going to offer any more motions tonight, and I would hope over the weekend we can reach a reasonable understanding on this so that we can deal with these issues in a rational way. That is all I have been trying to do all evening long.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I would urge that we support the Fazio amendment, and I would like to, in discussing the Fazio amendment, make a suggestion that might get us out of here a lot earlier. Mr. Chairman, the agreement we are now operating under is virtually the same agreement that I offered to the majority leader at 6:30 this evening. At the time, since it was first suggested to me by representatives of the majority party that we ought to try to get a time limit on title I, we constructed a time limit that was agreed to by Members of both parties on the committee. But, when I then walked over to the majority side of the aisle, I was informed by the majority leader that it was not acceptable. Basically the time limit that had been worked out on both sides at the committee level was that we should finish all amendments to title I, including the votes, by 9 or 9:30 this evening. The majority leader then informed me that regardless of how much progress we made on title I, Mr. Chairman, he wanted the House to stay in session until midnight and expressed great frustration that Members were offering so many amendments. Mr. Chairman, I share that frustration. But I did not ask for a totally open rule. The majority leader happens to believe in it, and it is his privilege. I then suggested, Mr. Chairman, to the majority leader that I would be willing not only to agree to a time limit on title I, but on time limits for the entire bill. I was asked what my estimate was of the time that would be required to do that. Mr. Chairman, I told the majority leader that after consulting staff on both sides of the aisle that I was told that their best estimate of the time needed to complete the 20 expected amendments of title II was somewhere between 4\1/2\ and 5\1/2\ hours depending on what happened in the forestry issue and the arts issue. I suggested we ought to get a time agreement of that amount or any other number that could be agreed to and that, if that kept us into an hour which would be too late on Monday night, that we then stack the votes and have them occur immediately Tuesday morning, and then we try to compress the 12 expected remaining amendments in title III to 2 hours. That is a lot of compression. And that way we could get out of here in what I thought would be the fastest possible way. The gentleman from Texas [Mr. Armey] suggested that he would like to think about that. About an hour later I was told that he did not find that acceptable but that he wanted to finish title I and then go on to consider the arts issue. I suggested that we either finish title I or go, if that was the preference of the majority party, go immediately to the arts issue, and in fact I offered a motion to--I offered a unanimous-consent request to complete title I and then go home. That was objected to. I then offered a unanimous-consent request to proceed to the Stearns amendment, which it was my understanding the majority party wanted to deal with tonight, and then go home and consider the title I items on Monday. That was again objected to. Mr. Chairman, we are now going to get to about where I was asking that we get to at 9 or 9:30 by about 11 or midnight. I regret that we were not able to reach a bipartisan agreement because I honestly believe, if we have any chance of completing our appropriations bills, we need to have cooperation of Members on both sides of the aisle, not just that at leadership level, but the rank-and-file level, because there are lots of people who want to offer lots of amendments to lots of coming appropriation bills, and I do not think we want to be here until 1 or 2 o'clock every night. I do not think we do our best work then. So it seems to me that we have to establish some kind of trust and some kind of willingness to work with each other to help facilitate the majority leader's own schedule. That is all I am trying to do, and I say to my colleagues, If you don't believe it, I invite you to ask any Member of the majority side on the Appropriations Committee, Ask them what I've tried to do on all the bills before us up to this time.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move that the committee do now rise.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I offer a preferential motion.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I offer a privileged motion. I move that the Committee rise and report the bill back to the House with a recommendation that the enacting clause be stricken. Mr. Chairman, what is at issue here, in my view, is whether or not this House is going to be able to conduct its business at reasonable times in public view or whether we are going to be reduced to making virtually every major decision in subcommittees and on the floor at near midnight, with minimal public attention and minimal public understanding and minimum attention. Mr. Chairman, the motion that was just offered by the distinguished gentleman from Ohio is virtually identical to the proposition which I first made to the majority leader 2\1/2\ hours ago. The only thing that has prevented us from being out of here and all of title I finished by now, because our request was to be finished with title I by 9:00, the only thing that has prevented that has been willfulness, in my view. And I am simply suggesting that it makes no sense whatsoever to be doing at midnight what we could have done at 7:00 or 8:00 in the evening. I would simply make the additional point that the motion that I made then was made after a request to provide limitations was offered by those on the majority side of the aisle. So what I am been trying to do for the last 2\1/2\ hours is to get done what majority Members of this House have asked me to help get done. I do not think that is unreasonable.

Mr. OBEY. If I could reclaim my time, I think I will be able to answer that question by the nature of the unanimous consent request that I make. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that debate on all remaining amendments to title II be finished, including votes, by 9:30.

Mr. OBEY. I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.

Mr. OBEY. Then let me simply stop my remarks and let me make the unanimous-consent request if I could.

Mr. OBEY. That is what I had offered, but I was told by the majority leader he would prefer to see to it that we dealt with NEA tonight. I am trying to accommodate that request. The unanimous consent request that I would make would be, unless you suggest just to title I, I would suggest we do NEA tonight, if that is what the majority leader wants, do the Stearns amendment, and come back to title I first thing Monday. I am trying to be reasonably responsive to what I thought the majority leader wanted.

Mr. OBEY. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

Mr. OBEY. I would like to do the same thing. I have been advised that probably on that amendment it would probably take about 15 minutes a side. I do not know if that is true or not. I am willing to settle on any time limit on that amendment that we could agree on.

Mr. OBEY. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I struck the last word so that I could try to make the Members of the House aware of what at least some of us have been trying to do to get people out of here at a reasonable time and to set reasonable time limits on this bill. About 6:30, I was informed by representatives of the majority side that they would like to reach a time agreement on this bill and what was suggested to me is that we try to reach agreement to limit title I and all remaining amendments, finish that by roughly 9 o'clock this evening, go home, work over the weekend to set reasonable time limits for the remainder of the bill, and stick to those time limits when we come back. So, after some negotiation, I agreed to that suggestion. I was informed that at a higher level on that side of the aisle that offer was not acceptable and that, in fact, the intention was to keep us here regardless of what we did until about midnight tonight. I do not think honestly that most Members on either side of the aisle think that that is the rational thing to do. Everybody is tired, and it is well if we are making decisions when we are reasonably fresh, and I think we are also much kinder to each other when we are. So we then went into negotiations to try to find some way to limit time. I then suggested to the majority leader that because I had been told that we had major amendments such as NEA, National Endowment for the Arts, the Humanities, the weatherization amendment, two major amendments on energy program funding, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, another one on Indian education to replace the one that I offered, the best estimate was probably about 4\1/2\ to 5 hours of debate left if we got lucky. There were 20 amendments pending to that title. That is what I was told, that people expected to be offered. So they thought if we limited that to 4\1/2\ hours and then took the votes, that would be reasonable length of time. There were then about 12 or 13 still alive possible amendments to the remainder of the bill. We thought we could compress that to maybe 2 hours in total. So what I offered was a suggestion that we finish title I, get out of here by 9:30, by that time, and then set a time limit under which we would finish all remaining debate on Monday to title II, stack the votes so that they would occur immediately on Tuesday morning, finish the 2 hours of debate on Tuesday morning on the remainder of [[Page H 6991]] the bill and get through at a reasonable hour. I respect the desire of the majority leader to try to do it somewhat faster, but I do not know how, and so we offered that motion. It was considered for roughly an hour. Then an offer was made, which I think was represented as coming from the majority leader, to finish title I and they go to the NEA tonight. That would still mean we would be here until midnight tonight. I do not think that is reasonable. I do think I am willing to do almost anything to get reasonable time limits on this bill, and if the majority would like, I would even be willing to take up immediately the Stearns amendment on NEA, and have a vote on that, if you want, 10 minutes' debate on each side, vote on that baby, and go home for this evening with the same kind of time limits that we have been talking about for the remainder of the bill. I do not know if they are perfect. But at least they end this bill and get us on to the next one. So that is what I have tried to offer in good faith. I do not want to see Members stuck here until midnight tonight for no reasonable purpose when, without time agreements, we are going to continue to be debating title I all night. So at the end of these remarks. I am going make a unanimous-consent request to see if we can reach that agreement, and I would hope that we can get this done so that we can get this finished in a reasonably bipartisan fashion, and that is all I am trying to do.

Mr. OBEY. So as not to inflame people's tempers on arguments over time limits at this point.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I think Members should simply understand there are discussions going on right now between the leadership on both sides of the aisle to try to find some way to get out of here at a reasonable time tonight. We have been asked, until those discussions are over, if we could just continue going in the regular order to keep things as calm as possible, and I would hope that shortly we could get an agreement on time for the remainder of the title.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, could I ask the gentleman from Guam [Mr. Underwood], with the understanding that he would be given 1 additional minute of time, if he would yield to me so I could respond to the gentleman from Arizona [Mr. Kolbe] in a constructive way?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield to me to explain to the membership what the situation is? Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I would simply point out that I happen to support these fossil energy programs, but I would simply take note of the fact that the number in this bill is some $163 million over the authorization number, and I am sure that many of the good conservatives on that side of the aisle do not want to see us violate authorization ceilings. So I think we are being very responsible in taking only $36 million out.

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

Mr. OBEY. I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota.