Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I know how we would react as Americans. If somebody tells America, ``You cannot do something or we are going to do X to you,'' that is when the Americans have the fur on the back of their neck go up and they say, ``Tough, buddy, we are going to do it.'' That is human nature. So the question is how do you handle this in a way that people do not do dumb things because they are following emotion rather than logic.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. [[Page H 6250]] Let me, first of all, congratulate both the gentleman from Alabama [Mr. Callahan] and the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Wilson] for the work they have done in putting together a bipartisan approach to this bill and to say that I feel that for a long time, regardless of partisan differences on many other issues, I believe this subcommittee has always served as an example of the way the Congress ought to work, putting policy ahead of party and putting the country ahead of personal considerations. I do not think in the time that Mickey Edwards from Oklahoma was the ranking member or in the time that the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Livingston] was ranking member, and I chaired the subcommittee, that you could tell who was a Democrat and who was a Republican when we were addressing issues on this bill. There were no partisan scenes, and I think that the gentleman from Alabama [Mr. Callahan] has made every effort, as has the chairman, the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Livingston], now that the Republicans are in control of this institution, to see to it that that tradition remains, and I congratulate them for it because that is the only way this country can function on foreign policy. That does not mean we are going to agree on everything, because, as Will Rogers said, when two people agree on everything, one of them is unnecessary. But the fact is that we have many times stood in the well in the last 10 years defending the positions and the prerogatives of the President of the United States, whether that President was a Republican or a Democrat, and I think it is essential on this bill that that tradition continue. Having said that, I also feel an obligation to point out the priorities in this bill are not necessarily my priorities. I would prefer that military aid not be as high as it is in the bill, and I would prefer that some of the economic accounts be somewhat higher. I also have very great doubts about both the administration's position and the subcommittee's position with respect to NATO. I would urge everyone to read the article by Mr. Hoagland in the Washington Post today if they want to understand what I mean. And I am concerned very much about what I feel to be an insufficient appreciation for the delicate situation that exists in the Soviet Union, and I think that this Congress runs a very major risk of not dealing with that relationship in the most constructive way possible. I think there are significant defects in this bill with respect to that issue. But having said that, I still intend at this moment to support this bill because it does represent a reasonable bipartisan effort to hold this institution together. It does not try, as the authorization bill sometimes does, to incredibly micromanage the Nation's foreign affairs. It does state clear policy preferences, but it does not try to micromanage, and I think that is a crucial difference. I would simply concur in the statement made by the distinguished gentleman from Texas who indicated that this bill is very delicately put together and it will remain a bipartisan bill so long as it stands in roughly this shape. The House has two choices it can make. It can choose, if it wants, to pass a partisan bill with nominal but not very enthusiastic support on this side of the aisle, in which case that bill may make a lot of people feel good temporarily. But it will in the end go nowhere because the President in the end has the veto pen, and I have no doubt he will use it if this bill is not consistent with his vision of the national interest. But the other choice it can make is to try to do what we have tried to do many times in this country's history, which is to produce a bipartisan product which meets the needs of the United States without regard to ideological preference, and while this bill certainly has a strong philosophical bent in the direction of the gentleman from Alabama [Mr. Callahan], that is to be expected because they have the votes for the time being, and I think what we need right now on both sides of the aisle is a determination that we will try to keep this bill as bipartisan as possible because in foreign affairs, and this is much more crucial than any other area of governance, although it would be useful in both, in foreign affairs it is crucial that we have continuity of policy so that we do not confuse our friends and that we do not confuse our adversaries. I think this bill tries to do that to a significant degree, and that is why, at least at this moment, I support the legislation with all of my doubts about some of the edges.

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. A parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, would it be in order to point out that if this motion is adopted, the committee would attempt to incorporate the gift ban when it comes back from committee?

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, in response to the previous statement by the gentleman who just spoke, let me say the issue is not whether the Republican Party held a fundraiser or not. That happens all the time on both sides of the aisle. The issue, however, is whether it is in the democratic tradition, big American democratic tradition, not party, for the majority party to shut down this House and cut off an individual Member's right to vote so that they can get to a fundraiser in New York on time. The article in Mr. Murdoch's paper says the GOP ``went to great lengths to make sure its Members got to the Big Apple on time.'' This is the issue. Not whether you had a fundraiser, but whether you were so anxious to go grab the money, that you were willing to shortcircuit the democratic process in the doing. That is the issue.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote, and, pending that, I make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is a very easy to understand amendment. It simply cuts this bill by $50 million. As I think most Members know, this $7.2 billion bill is $2.5 billion above last year's appropriations for the same items and it is one half of a billion dollars above the President's request. Now, many of the projects added by the committee are referred to as quality of life projects which improve the quality of life of our servicemen and women. This does nothing whatsoever to limit those projects, but by my calculation, there are at least $140 million in added projects which have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with improving quality of life for our service men and women. They are simply added projects for Members who are attempting to change DOD construction priorities. My amendment simply seeks to reduce the added spending in this bill somewhat less than that amount, $50 million out of $140 million. It is hardly a radical amendment. For those of you concerned about which projects this amendment affects, I would say it does not affect any [[Page H 6166]] project specifically. I am not trying to embarrass any individual Member on either side of the aisle. I am simply trying to cut the overall amounts so that this committee can, as it deals with the Senate, use its own judgment in conjunction with the Secretary on where those reductions ought to come from. This is a time of stark choices. The bill before us represents an unbelievable increase of 28 percent over last year's appropriation. I do not believe that is justifiable nor do I believe that is defensible at a time when we are seeing major reductions in other key programs that affect working people all over this country. The Labor, Health, and Education bill, for instance, is going to be $10 billion below last year's level. The HUD bill is going to be some $9 billion below last year's level. The Interior bill yesterday had to make very deep reductions in some key programs to help local units of government because of reductions in that area. The Commerce, Justice bill is going to be cut substantially, squeezing our ability to provide decent funding for law enforcement all over the country. The magnitude of those cuts is going to endanger a lot of health programs. It is going to put student loans in a position where the costs for those will rise significantly. Veterans' programs will be at risk. Law enforcement, immigration enforcement, national parks, housing for the elderly, all of them are going to be at risk, and yet we have this bill before us with a 28-percent increase over last year. I think that is phenomenally ridiculous. I think it is a spectacular example of how this Congress is missing the boat in terms of a rational set of priorities when it comes to applying required spending cuts. This is a modest effort, $50 million cut out of a huge, over $11 billion, bill. I would urge that the committee adopt the amendment.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I want to make clear that I think this bill contains far too much spending. I intend to vote against the bill, because it is far in excess of the President's request, as well as last year's budget. However, I think the attack on this particular facility at Bremerton is unfair. In this bill, there are an awful lot of items which are labeled ``quality of life.'' Unfortunately, many of those items are targeted to improve the life of people who already have a pretty high quality of life. That is why I support most of the amendments that are going to be made to cut this bill. That is why I support the Neumann-Furse amendment, for instance, which tries to strike construction for units costing more than $200,000 each. However, this proposal, in my view, strikes at the needs of the people in the services who most need our help. As I understand the situation, there are over 12,000 seamen who are located in this facility in Washington. Many of them live on board ship for at least 6 months at a time. They live in very cramped quarters, and when they do get to shore, they need some recreational opportunities. As my staff has been able to determine, the recreational opportunities for the enlisted people at the lower pay grades are far less than what they need, given the demands put on them in that area. Therefore, it seems to me that if we are going to go after projects in this bill, we ought to go after projects for the most comfortable, not for the most uncomfortable, not for the enlisted guy at the bottom of the totem pole who very seldom gets very much attention paid to his or her needs. Mr. Chairman, I would also simply ask why it is that these two projects have been especially singled out by the sponsor of the amendment. I would point out that the gentleman from California [Mr. Royce], who is offering the amendment, wrote the committee last year requesting funding for two projects at the Los Alamedos Reserve Center totaling $11.9 million. The committee, which was then under my chairmanship, with the gentlewoman from Nevada [Mrs. Vucanovich] as well as the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Hefner] on the subcommittee in the two lead spots, approved $4.2 million to provide for a new logistics facility for him. I wonder if the gentleman from California [Mr. Royce] recalls this committee's favorable response to his request to meet a special need in his district at that time? Mr. Chairman, I do not mind the gentleman going after projects unneeded. I am going to vote against plenty of them myself this afternoon. As I said, I am going to vote against this entire bill because it is far too high. However, in this instance, I find going after the project, especially in Washington, to be especially quaint, given the needs of the enlisted people in that area. I think we ought to turn this amendment down, in the interests of fairness.

Mr. OBEY. I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I would simply close by saying that I think we owe more to those 12,000 seamen in this case than to simply tell them that when they come on shore from their ship, that they ought to use the Y.

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise in very strong opposition to this rule for a variety of reasons, starting with the fact that this bill itself is unbelievably $2.5 billion above last year, even while we are told that we have to reach a balanced budget which requires us to cut most programs in the budget over a 7-year period by about 30 percent. It is to me incredibly irresponsible to be suggesting that we can raise any appropriation bill by more than 20 percent in a single year, given the budget squeeze we are facing. But I think there is an even more basic reason to oppose this rule and that is because this rule would, in its passage, have it deemed that we had already passed the budget resolution when in fact that is not the case. This bill is coming to the floor 2 weeks after the first appropriation bill came to the floor last year. There is still no budget which has been adopted by the majority party. This is the latest in 10 years that the Congress has been without the adoption of a budget. Because we are still not operating under a budget, this rule would have the House, in essence, declare that it is simply the House budget resolution which is going to govern the appropriation process for the rest of the year, when we know full well that that resolution is going to have to be compromised with the Senate and a different set of numbers will be reached. An added problem is that the budget priorities under which we are acting, and under which this bill is brought to the floor, are in fact grossly warped. While this bill is going to be $2.5 billion above last year, the Labor-Health-Education appropriation bill will be about $10 billion below last year, cutting a $70 billion bill to $60 billion. You will see a savaging of the Low-Income Heating Assistance Program. You will see a merciless squeezing of job training programs, of health appropriations, including a potentially very large squeeze on the National Institutes of Health. It just seems to me that that is an incredibly warped set of priorities. I tried in the full Committee on Appropriations to get a different set of 602 allocations adopted for the subcommittee so that we could produce a different set of priorities. Instead of the outlandishly high military budget which is being enforced under this process, I suggested we simply go to what I would call Domenici-plus-one, which would say that we would limit defense expenditures to $1 billion above that provided in the Senate budget resolution. That is hardly a left-wing proposition. That level was supported by a number of well-known conservatives in the Senate who I would name if House rules allowed me to; conservatives in both parties. It would have allowed us, by limiting that defense expenditure to those levels, to provide $900 million in additional support for law enforcement programs under Commerce-Justice, it would have allowed us to provide $1 billion more for highway construction that will be allowed under the proposal which was presented by the majority. We would be allowed to provide $2 billion more to the VA-HUD bill to protect veterans' medical services and to help low-income seniors who otherwise are going to be clobbered in housing budgets. It would have allowed $100 million more to be used to toughen immigration enforcement. It would have allowed a saving of about a half-billion dollars on the squeeze that will otherwise be put in national parks, and it would have allowed us to reduce the incredible reductions which are going to be forced on student assistance, on biomedical research, and grants to local school districts and fuel- assistance programs as I indicated. But because this resolution deems us to be operating under the House budget resolution, and because under that House budget resolution these warped set of priorities have been adopted, we cannot proceed to produce a more balanced set of appropriation bills if we proceed under this approach. I want to make clear, I am not talking about spending one additional dime above the spending levels suggested by the Republican Party, by the majority party. What I am suggesting is that the way the dollars are allocated under the ceiling which we are all going to have to live with is grossly warped and this resolution, by deeming us to be operating under that procedure, simply guarantees that we cannot make any improvements in the situation. I do not think we ought to do that. I think this rule ought to be defeated so that the entire proposal can be recommitted to the Committee on Appropriations so that the committee can produce a different set of numbers which provide a greater sense of mercy and justice for working families who are trying to help their kids go through school, for families who have health problems, for workers who need retraining, rather than sticking to the spending priorities which we are going to be required to stick to under this proposal. So I would urge you to defeat the previous question on the rule, defeat the rule, send this whole proposition back to the Committee on Appropriations so we can produce a much more balanced set of spending priorities in a very tight fiscal year.

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.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Would the Chair yield for another parliamentary inquiry?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, if this motion before us is not passed, how does the authorizing committee, which does not appropriate a dime, assure us that impact aid will not be cut, since the Committee on Appropriations is most certainly going to have to cut it substantially?

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I am going to urge the House to vote for this motion to instruct. It simply says we ought to drop the tax cuts for the rich in the House bill and drop the tax hikes in the Senate bill on the working poor because of the changes in the earned income tax credit. It simply says: ``Don't make war on education, don't make war on Medicare, in order to give the wealthy and the super-rich another big tax cut.'' The Federal Reserve has done a new study which has shown what has happened to the Nation's wealth during most of the eighties. It showed that the richest one-half million families, who in 1983 had 24 percent of the Nation's wealth and had $2.5 trillion in wealth, had their wealth doubled to $5 trillion over a 6 year period in the eighties alone, and that their share of the Nation's total wealth went up from 24 to 31 percent. That means that the richest one-half million families in this country saw their net worths increase by two-and-a-half times as much as the public debt went up during that same period. That increase came because the profitability of their business holdings exploded at the expense of their workers. During the same period that workers' productivity went up by 15 percent, their wages went down by 10 percent, and that gap between increased productivity and lower wages went right into the pockets of the economic elite of this country. That is the same elite that asked us to pass NAFTA; it is the same elite that asked to pass GATT. But it is also the same elite that refuses to support even table scraps for workers by providing for an increase in the minimum wage and still insists that we cut education opportunities for the kids of those workers and cut Medicare for the parents of those workers and cut Social Security COLAs for the parents of those workers in order to give another break to the people whose average net worth rose from $2.5 million per family to over $5 million per family. The previous speaker in the well said, ``Oh, don't engage in this class warfare. Tut, tut, tut, terrible thing.'' Well, I have news for you. We have had class warfare in this country for the past 15 years, and the working class has lost. That is what has happened. Mr. Speaker, I urge Members to vote for this motion to recommit.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. I would simply say that I hope that next time around, we can find reductions that do not in fact attack programs for seniors and children in order to provide tax increases for very high income people that we cannot afford under these circumstances.

Mr. OBEY. Continuing my reservation of objection, Mr. Speaker, I would simply say that I do not necessarily share the gentleman's judgment about the wisdom of the president's veto. I think under the circumstances it was correct. But I do hope that we will be able to get together and work out a rational compromise so that we can proceed to the regular appropriations process without too much delay intervening.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I hope in any bill that can be produced, we can protect the Brewster amendment. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

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

Mr. OBEY. Reserving the right to object, Mr. Speaker, I do not intend to object, but I would simply use this reservation to ask the distinguished gentleman from Louisiana what the intention of the committee would be with respect to the disposition of the president's veto message. Do we intend to take this up for a vote or, if you do not, do you intend that there would be a new bill? If so, what do you think the timing would be and what would be your intention with respect to trying to work out a compromise accommodation?

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words, and I rise in support of the Ackerman amendment. Mr. Chairman, I support the Ackerman amendment for one very simple reason: I think the matter of arms control policing is much too important to be left in the hands of the State Department. I recognize the efforts made by the committee to try to ensure that ACDA will in fact still directly report to the National Security Agency. But the fact is that so long as the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency remains in any way a part of the State Department, it will be under pressure, regardless of the bureaucratic boxes, it will be under pressure to follow the party line of the agency. And with all due respect to the State Department, and I have a lot of respect for it, I think the Congress needs to know that it has an absolutely independent and fiercely independent agency which will call the shots as they see it when they are evaluating whether other countries who share this globe with us are in fact in compliance with arms control agreements or not. And so long as the arms control agreements or not. And so long as the arms control agency is folded into the State Department, we will always have the tendency of the State Department to want to take into account other factors, and they will bring pressure on ACDA to take into account other factors such as our political relationships with those countries. Political relationships are important. But when it comes to arms control, this Congress needs to be able to know that it has the unvarnished facts, and I think there are just too many pressures on the State Department to assure that we are going to get those unvarnished facts, and therefore I would oppose what the committee does. I cannot think of any more important information which the Congress needs to have than to know whether or not some other country in the world is either violating or getting close to violating arms control agreements which they have signed. I do not want to have even the slightest scintilla of pressure be brought on an arms compliance evaluating agency to take into account the fact that we need to have good relations with another country, or we need to take into account what is happening with the political opposition in that country. It just seems to me that the primary obligation of this Congress is to have clear, straight information, and I think we risk the fact that we will not have it if ACDA is submerged into the State Department. So I would strongly urge that the Ackerman amendment be supported. All it says is that this action cannot take place until there is a cost-benefit analysis. That to me refutes the argument of my good friend from Nebraska, with whom I very seldom disagree on foreign policy issues. It just seems to me in this case the Congress' overwhelming interest in having absolutely neutral, straight, hard- nosed information about whether other countries are giving us a snow job or not in terms of their compliance overrides all other considerations. We ought to vote for this amendment.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, it just seems to me in this instance the opponents of the Bereuter amendment are well meaning, but I think in my heart they are misguided. I would urge Members to reject the Smith amendment because it will simply leave a false impression out there, which will cause great additional turmoil in those refugee camps. What we ought to be doing is saying to the Thai Government and other governments in the area, we ought to be asking them to help us in the process by which we give every refugee an opportunity to determine for themselves whether they want to be repatriated or whether they want to come to this country. We ought not be creating artificial incentives so that in the end they have no financial alternative to coming to the United States, unless this committee is willing to guarantee that it is the Federal Government that will then bear the financial burden of that decision. I do not think this committee is going to do that. Absent that guarantee, I think we ought to support the Bereuter amendment.