Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order on the amendment, Mr. Chairman, and I claim the time in opposition.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order on the amendment.

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

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, let me simply say that I am moving to strike the enacting clause to give the House an opportunity to reconsider what it is about to do on this legislation today. Everyone recognizes in this House that we need to save money. Let me stipulate again as I have throughout the process, I fully support cutting every dollar in the macro amount, in the total amount in this bill. The only dispute that we have on the Democratic side of the aisle with those on the Republican side of the aisle is where you cut the dollars in this bill and where you do not. We think you ought to change the targets. We think you ought to cut more congressional pork, for instance. We think you ought to reconsider your decision to prevent the Coleman amendment from coming to the floor which would have allowed us to cut $400 million in Members' highway pork. We think you ought to reconsider your decision to prevent us from offering an amendment which delays for 5 years the construction and purchase of the F-22 aircraft. The F-22 aircraft is meant to replace the F-15. The F-15 is the best fighter in the world. Nobody can come close to that fighter. For us to move to replace the F-15 with the F-22 when the F-15 clearly has a military life extending out to the year 2014, for us to decide we are going to buy the replacement plane at $150 million a copy is budgetary nonsense. We think that we ought to delay the construction of the F-15 for 5 years so that you can save $7 billion so that you do not have to cut school lunches by $7 billion. We think that is a better tradeoff. We think you ought to cut less in the programs that you have targeted that hit kids. We think we should not cut public broadcasting to the extent that you have cut it. We are willing to take We think you should not eliminate summer jobs for 610,000 kids around the country. We think you should not do what you are doing on the school lunch program. We think you should not cut 100,000 scholarships for kids who need it. Our concern is that this bill mirrors what you are trying to do with the tax bill. On the tax bill, you have a capital gains provision which provides 75 percent of the benefits to people who make more than $100,000 a year. It is elitist. We think you should not in your tax bill have the provision which eliminates the requirement which we have had for years that requires Fortune 500 corporations to pay taxes. We do not think we ought to go back to the days when you had companies like AT&T, Du Pont, General Dynamics, Pepsico, Texaco, Greyhound, Panhandle East, W.R. Grace, et cetera, et cetera, who paid no taxes. We think this bill mirrors that mistake that you make in your tax package. What I would simply say to you is this: We believe that this bill is warped and we believe there is no underlying sense of decency in the way the cuts are focused in this bill. I would ask, in the words of Joseph Welch, the great counsel to the Army during the Army-McCarthy hearings, I would ask with respect to the targets you have selected in this bill, ``Have you no sense of decency?'' Why on earth attack children? Why on earth say to 2 million senior citizens, ``We are going to make you choose between paying your prescription drug bills and paying your home heating bills''? Why on earth do you do that? Some of you say, well, seniors will still get their heating paid because the ulilities will be required to provide that heat. The fact is an awful lot of seniors get their heat from fuels that are not publicly regulated. So there is no guarantee that they do not get shut off in 30-below-zero weather. Why on earth would you say to 2 million seniors who make less than $10,000 a year that you are not going to help them meet the cost of their heating bills so that they have to choose between food, prescription drugs, and heat. This is a merciless bill and you ought to go back to the committee and start over.

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Chairman, Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster, sent a memo to the Republican party leaders. In that memo he said: ``Look, whenever you are talking about cuts for these programs, do not talk about the program because programs have friends. So simply talk about the bureaucrats.'' That is what is happening here. This amendment is being presented as though it is a discipline for bureaucrats. Let me tell my colleagues what happens. When they continue to cut back at OSHA the way they have done in this bill and the way they want to intensify it by this amendment, you assure that people are going to be injured and you assure that people are going to die. Now, when my father ran a floor covering business many years ago, I worked with him in it for 7 years. I worked with asbestos products. Johns-Manville had known since 1939 that asbestos caused cancer. The first time I knew about it is the first day I served on the Labor-HEW Appropriations Subcommittee, and I walked in here and I listened to the NIH person testifying. And they told us that 40 percent of British shipyard workers who had worked with asbestos had contracted mesothelioma and were dead. Now, mesothelioma is a form of cancer. So I think I have a pretty good idea of what is going to get me eventually, especially because I was a heavy smoker in those days. And back when I was laying that floor covering and working with asbestos products, we did not have an agency called OSHA to protect workers. And the official position of the U.S. Government with respect to worker health was: ``We do not give a damn!'' That was the official position. Today, thanks to a very fine Republican Congressman from Wisconsin, Bill Steiger, who was the father of the OSHA provisions, we have an agency charged with the responsibility to protect worker health and safety. And sometimes it does a lousy job of it, and sometimes it does a darn good job of it. But I will tell Members something. You talk about unhappiness with the cannot tell you how many times I have walked through plants or offices and run into women who have had devices on their wrists and I have said: ``What happened to you?'' They said, ``I just had carpal tunnel surgery.'' I said, ``What is the matter?'' They said, ``Well, you know how it is working at terminals all day long.'' Those women are working mothers most of them. And they need our concern. Now, the gentleman is worried because he says the ergonomics standard is going to be very expensive. Of course it is. Because right now the lack of protection for workers on standards like that is causing them an immense amount of health problems, and health problems cost money. So now we are told, oh, we ought to support another cut in OSHA because the majority whip does not happen to like the agency or does not happen to like the standard. I would suggest, I read the story in the Washington Post 2 or 3 days ago, discussing how lobbyists for big business were crawling all over the office of the majority whip when they were preparing the strategy to go after regulation, and the gentleman may be proud of it. I was appalled. I was appalled. He can laugh if he wants. I would not want to go to my district and brag about the number of lobbyists working in my office to supervise the work that I was performing. And so if you want to go ahead, this just makes a rotten bill a little bit worse. So go ahead. If you do not want to have workers protected from things like carpal tunnel syndrome, go ahead. Vote for this turkey of an amendment. But recognize that according to OSHA's own estimates, at least 2,500 more people will be injured because of the budget reductions provided by this amendment. If you do not like what OSHA does in specifics, correct their mistakes. Do what some of us have done. Work to try to see to it that you get proper training and education for those inspectors. But do not require an agency to cut back on its whole operation because you do not want some more workers to be protected from things like carpal tunnel syndrome. It is a stupid amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Durbin].

Mr. OBEY. Yes, I am, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is irrelevant. The Republicans have already decided to kill public broadcasting. This is simply a late- night sideshow to enable the reluctant dragons of the GOP Gingrich gang to get off the hook. That is all it is. I never want to hear another lecture about family values from the Republicans in this House. I just heard someone on that side of the aisle, on the Republican side of aisle say our kids could not afford the money we are spending on public broadcasting. What our kids cannot afford is the garbage that passes for entertainment on commercial television. That is what our kids cannot afford. This is a debate between family values and commercial values. And when you kill the only kind of television that gives young kids a decent opportunity to see something other than the garbage that passes for national network television, what you do is abandon them to the commercial marketplace. You abandon them to the commercial market forces. You say, ``Values out the window, dollars come first.'' I do not think this country wants that.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Livingston].

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York [Mr. Engel].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from North Carolina [Mrs. Clayton].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas [Ms. Jackson-Lee].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Moran].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Markey].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Durbin].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from New York [Mr. Boehlert]. (Mr. BOEHLERT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Pelosi].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Porter], the distinguished subcommittee chairman.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\3/4\ minutes to that noted defender of Big Bird, the gentlewoman from New York [Mrs. Lowey].

Mr. OBEY. Yes, Mr. Chairman.

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

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