Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 13 minutes. Mr. Chairman, what I would like to do here is to set the stage and explain why we are here and why we are doing this today. We have heard the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Livingston] and a lot of our Republican friends talk to us about deficit reduction and give us lectures about the need for deficit reduction. I think it is important to explain how this country got to this moment. This chart will I think demonstrate what has happened to this country since the end of World War II. At the end of World War II, because we needed to borrow money in order to pay for the war, we wound up with a national debt which was roughly 115 percent of our total annual national income. Under a series of Presidents, Republican and Democrat, and under Congresses which were mostly Democratic but sometimes Republican, we brought that down on a bipartisan basis through the years to the point where in 1980 our debt as a percentage of gross domestic product was about 23 or 24 percent. Then what happened is that Ronald Reagan was elected to office. He presented us a budget which essentially doubled military spending and which provided huge tax cuts for rich people, and that package was rammed through this House. I know, I was here; I offered alternatives to it. I warned at the time that if that budget package passed, we would have an explosion of both the national debt and the Federal deficit. Mr. Stockman, who was the budget director for President Reagan at the time, admitted that, in his words, ``the numbers did not add.'' In fact, his exact words were these: He said: In the budget that we sent down to the Congress we got the deficit down to $31 billion by hook or by crook, mostly the latter. We didn't think it all the way through. We didn't add up all the numbers. We should have designed those pieces to be more compatible. But the pieces were moving on independent tracks. That's what happened. But for about a month and a half we got away with that because of the novelty of it all. Now that is Mr. Stockman talking, not me. So the Reagan budgets were passed, and what happened? The Federal deficit which had never been larger than $74 billion exploded to nearly $300 billion over the next decade, and the national debt tripled and quadrupled. As a result, this line began going in the wrong direction; it began going up, so that today we are at a national indebtedness which is about twice the level as a percentage of the national income as it was in 1980. So in the 1980s we had three different efforts to try to correct the problem because the Republican party was embarrassed by what they had produced. And we had three magic fixes: Gramm-Rudman I, Gramm-Rudman II and Gramm-Rudman III. None of them fixed the debt, none of them affected the deficit, although each of them promised within a time frame of 4 to 5 years to balance the budget. The public finally got fed up with it, and 2 years ago they elected President Clinton. They expected he would do something about it. He produced a budget which called for $500 billion in deficit reduction. He got not a single Republican vote for that in the House or in the Senate. Under that, our committee, after that budget was passed, our committee produced cuts in 500 separate programs in the first year of the last biennium and last year we produced cuts in 400 programs in the year during which I was chairman. Now I will fully grant that our Republic friends did a much better job of getting their message across about what happened on the budget than we Democrats did. I will grant that. And as a result, we lost 53 seats because the public apparently did not like the fact that we had voted for the Clinton budget. They did not apparently like the fact that we had voted for the Clinton budget program which did bring that deficit down from the $323 billion that George Bush told us it was going to be on the day he walked out of the White House, down to around $180 billion today. But I will grant we did not do a good job of explaining what we did. We paid a price for it. I think that demonstrates that our party is willing to pay whatever price is necessary to get I would remind you that not a single Republican voted in either the Senate or the House for that deficit-reduction package. I say that simply to try to make the point that what we are talking about here today is not a difference over spending levels. Every single amendment that I asked the Committee on Rules to make in order would have saved precisely the same amount of money that is being saved in this bill today. What we argue about is where you are making the savings and where you are not making the savings. This is not an issue about the number of education programs or the number of job-training programs. I stipulated at the beginning of the markup that we supported the elimination of most of the programs in question. But here is what we do not support: We do not support hitting kids before they are born by cutting back on the Healthy Start program as this bill does. We do not support clobbering kids by wiping out over a 3-year time frame public broadcasting, because that is the only decent television that most preschool kids get these days. We do not support, as you do in another bill, cutting $7 billion below current services in the school lunch program. We do not support that. We do not support going after job-hungry kids by eliminating the summer jobs program, 610,000 kids just told to go take a walk this summer. We do not support whacking tech prep and the school-to-work programs as this bill does, and we do not support wiping out the drug-free school program that you wipe out, and we do not support eliminating 100,000 scholarships for kids who need help to go on to college. Neither do we support shooting old people. What this bill does is say to 2 million senior citizens who make less than $10,000 a year, ``Sorry, but even if you live in my district, 30 below zero weather, you are not going to get any help to pay your fuel bills anymore.'' That means those seniors are going to have to choose between prescription drugs and heating their homes. I think that is a lousy choice for any Member of Congress who makes $133 thousand a year to impose on somebody in that income bracket. I think morally that stinks. I also think it is wrong to say that you are going to take 40 percent of the housing hits and target them to senior citizens. So that is what we object to. We object to where you are getting the cuts. We also object to where you are not getting the cuts. We tried to get the Coleman amendment made in order that would have allowed us to cut $400 billion in highway demonstration pork, but the Committee on Rules under the Republican leadership said, ``No, you cannot cut there.'' I tried to offer an amendment which would delay for 5 years the development of the F-22 aircraft which we do not even need until the year 2014, but which is going to cost us $150 million a copy. We tried to delay that for 5 years so we could save $7 billion so you would not have to wipe out the school lunch program. The Committee on Rules said, ``No, we do not want you to have that fix-up.'' So they said we could not offer that amendment. We also wanted to set up a new system for disaster relief so that every citizen who needs help can still get it, but gets it under a system of loan guarantees paid for by State governments, not Uncle Sam. That would have enabled us to restore a whole series of programs. We would have been able to restore Healthy Start, Chapter 1, safe, drug- free schools, education for the homeless, SSIG State scholarships, Public Broadcasting, summer jobs, Eisenhower teacher training, senior- citizen housing, older workers' programs, and veterans' benefits. But, again, the Committee on Rules said, ``No, you cannot save the money there. You have got to go after seniors. You have got to go after kids.'' We think that is the wrong thing to do. Now, why are we here? We were told a few months ago we were cutting the $17 billion in order to free up money for the Republican tax package. Two days ago we saw what that tax package does. We see what that tax package says to corporations like AT&T, du Pont, Boeing, General Dynamics, PepsiCo, Texaco, Greyhound Corp., Panhandle Eastern Corp., W. R. Grace, Sundstrand Corp., Burlington Industries, Westinghouse, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. These are the folks who years ago paid no corporate tax, because we did not have an alternative minimum tax in the tax code. Now, the Republicans are ripping out the provision in the tax code which says they have got to pay taxes. We are going to go back to the years when we have these giant corporations paying no taxes. The second thing the Republican tax package does is say they are going to give three-quarters of the capital gains tax breaks to people who make more than $100,000 year. So we argued in committee you should not do that, you should not be shooting seniors, you should not be shooting kids in order to provide these kinds of tax bennies. When we offered the Murtha amendment to prevent these cuts from being used to finance this kind of a rip-off, every single Republican in the committee voted against our amendment. But now they have not been able to take the heat. Why? Because the public understands you should not be gouging seniors and kids in order to provide these kinds of tax rip- offs, and because I frankly think that a lot of thoughtful Republicans on your side of the aisle recognize that is not the right thing to do. And so now we are told that they are suddenly going to accept the Murtha amendment and accept the Brewster amendment and provide us with the fig leaf by which they can now say, ``Well, we are not going to cut taxes by making these reductions after all.'' I would simply say what this really means is that there is a great deal of confusion apparently on the Republican side of the aisle about what they are going to do with their taxes. We were told first they were going to pay for whatever tax cuts they provide. Now we are being told, ``well, we are not going to do it after all.'' We are going to be told tomorrow in the Committee on the Budget that they are willing to make generic cuts buy simply lowering the caps without describing which programs are going to actually be cut. But what this demonstrates is that whenever you have a specific program which the Republicans are talking about cutting, then it is going to be very difficult for them to get the votes in their own Caucus to produce the votes for those cuts in order to finance the kind of outrageous tax breaks which they are talking about in the Committee on Ways and Means bill. So I would urge Members today to vote for both the Murtha amendment and vote for the Brewster amendment. But do not kid yourself, do not kid yourself. In the end, they are still going to provide those wild tax breaks for corporations and high-income people. That tax package is just as misguided as shooting seniors and shooting kids' programs in order to free up a few dollars so they can pretend that they are going to make a significant impact on the deficit. I urge a vote against this bill and to vote for those two amendments. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Why do you not tell the whole story? You asked me if I would support the rule if you made my amendments in order. I told you not if you included the other language which was being objected to by 40 Members of your own party.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield? He mentioned my name. He will not yield to me?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I would urge a ``no'' vote on this rule for a number of reasons. First of all, this fight between us today has nothing whatsoever to do with the amount of deficit reduction that is being proposed. Every amendment that I asked the Committee on Rules to make in order, and every amendment that they turned down that I tried to get made in order, would have cut exactly the same amount from the deficit as this proposal before us today. The only difference is that we would have cut that money in different places. The bill before us is a contract on kids; the bill before us is a contract on old folks. It clobbers programs for both, and yet I think we ought to look at what it does not hit. It does not hit pork. We asked them to make in order the Coleman amendment so we could knock out $400 million of congressional pork. The Committee on Rules said no, no, no, you cannot touch that. It does not touch the Pentagon. We are told by such well-known ``liberals'' as Senator McCain that we have at least 8 billion dollars' worth of waste in the Pentagon, and yet the Rules Committee says ``oh, no, no, you cannot take a single dime out of there, precious precious, precious; better we go after the kids, better we go after the old folks.'' So that is what we are being asked to do today. This bill is laughable, and so is the justification for it by the majority party. We have been told since January that the reason they were going to pass this bill is to create a kitty of money so they could finance their tax cut. So they go after veterans, they went after kids and old folks in order to create a nice pot of money for their tax package. We found out in the Ways and Means Committee 2 days ago what that tax package is. They are going to provide 75 percent of the capital gains tax relief to people who make more than $100,000 a year. Do Members really think that is what the public voted for in November? Baloney. What else are they going to do? They are gong to repeal the alternative minimum tax on corporations. What does that mean? It means a laundry list of Fortune 500 corporations who used to get by with paying not a dime in Federal taxes will revert to form. And they will; I have a list here if anybody wants to see it. But then after we raised cain about it, they say well no, we do not think we are going to use that money for tax cuts after all. In the Committee on Appropriations when we tried to pass the Murtha amendment, which said that you could not use any of these cuts to finance the Republican tax cuts for the wealthy, every single Republican in the committee voted against that amendment. Now they have had a ``religious conversion'' on the road to Damascus. They say: ``Oh well, Saint Paul told us that we better have a similar experience, and so what we are going to do now is we are going to pretend we are not going to use this for tax cuts.'' I think that side of the aisle does not know what it is doing on this bill and the Congress should not pass this rule under those circumstances.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Ney].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Costello].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time, 3 minutes, to the gentleman from West Virginia [Mr. Mollohan].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, we on this side of the aisle would also like to congratulate the Chair on his fairness and firmness today.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I want to take this opportunity to bring to my colleagues' attention the work of a true pioneer in the field of ``Les'' T. Davis, chief operating officer and one of the cofounders of Cray Research, Inc. in Chippewa Falls, WI, recently announced he would retire after 22 years with the company. Cray Research began in Chippewa Falls in 1972 as a small start-up company with a handful of employees. Les Davis took financial risks, made personal sacrifices, and worked extraordinarily long and hard to create the first broadly used supercomputer. That in turn created a new industry, and with it the company that became synonymous with super- computing. Cray now has 5,000 employees worldwide. Mr. Davis has served as the heart and soul of Cray Research, exhibiting both technological and managerial leadership. In addition to his role as the technical and design leader of the company, he has also been Cray Research's No. 1 salesperson, winning and retaining many global customers over the years with his thorough knowledge of Cray architecture, software, and applications. Mr. Davis has made a significant contribution to the people of Chippewa Falls by helping to increase the economic development in that area for over two decades. He also has made an exceptional contribution to our Nation in advancing America's leadership in the critical field of supercomputing. I want to thank Mr. Davis for his vision and the spirit he instilled in our Nation's scientific community. We all wish him the best in whatever his future holds.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, speaking of children, in a press conference yesterday, Republicans asserted that their proposal to end the school lunch program by block-granting it would not shortchange kids, because Congress could always pass a supplemental if we ran into trouble. That is absolutely preposterous. Anybody who has watched Congress the last 2 years knows that supplementals are virtually a thing of the past. Right now the Congress has bottled up at least two major supplementals, and you can expect to see more of that. Make no mistake about it, under this plan States will be left holding a very empty lunch bag. This plan is vicious, this plan is mean. It ought to be stopped.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to recommit.

Mr. OBEY. I thank the gentleman for making that clear. They are getting the pay raise.

Mr. OBEY. I thank the gentleman.

Mr. OBEY. Does the gentleman not grant that the troops already have their pay raise and will continue to get their pay raise? Is that not the truth? It is and you know it.

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

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

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

Mr. OBEY. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I simply want to again point out that this bill has nothing whatsoever to do with whether servicemen will or will not get their pay raise. As the gentleman knows, they will get their pay raise whether the Obey amendment passes or not. They have already gotten it. The only question is, Will the money to reimburse the Pentagon for that pay raise come from low-priority defense projects, including pork projects, or will it come from other domestic programs which are cut? They already have their pay raise. Your bill does not change that, my amendment does not change that, and we both know it.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1\1/2\ minutes. Mr. Chairman, this bill has two fundamental flaws, both of which my amendment attempts to correct. The first is that despite the fact that the gentleman from Louisiana has indicated that $15 billion in domestic cuts, rescissions, will be provided in the next 2 weeks, they still insist on digging into the domestic side of the budget for an additional $700 million. Why do they do it? So that they shield low priority pork in the defense budget from scrubbing by the Secretary of Defense. That is why it is done. The second problem is that even after they do that, even after they pretend that their bill is paid for, they still wind up with $640 million being added to the deficit over 5 years and $284 million being added in this year alone. Mr. Chairman, I would simply say to my friends on the other side of the aisle, if they are going to vote for the constitutional amendment to balance the budget, then they should not tell the American people that the first time they actually have an opportunity to produce on that promise by actually doing something real, on a real bill, which spends real dollars or cuts real dollars, that they are going to fail the test. They will fail the test if they do not support the Obey amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield the remainder of my time to the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Gephardt], the distinguished minority leader.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums], the distinguished former chairman of the Committee on Armed Services. yielding time to me. Mr. Chairman, I take this brief time to rise in opposition to the original bill presented by the Committee on Appropriations and in support of the substitute. Just to put this in some reality-oriented context, Mr. Chairman, the administration presented a $2.6 billion supplemental request. The Committee on Appropriations chose to fund $2.5 billion of that $2.6. Then on top of that added $670 million for so-called readiness enhancement. So what we are looking at now is not a $2.6 billion but a rather $3.2 billion bill. We raided $1.5 billion of a number of domestic programs. It is a Robin Hood in reverse, as it were. The military budget is huge, some $200 billion. Many of these domestic programs have been scraped to the bone. There is no need, it seems to me, to do that. The Pentagon was about the business of finding the necessary dollars to fund these 670 million dollars' worth of programs that are high priority. It seems to me what the Committee on Appropriations did was inappropriate at this time. Finally, the authorization process is just going forward, Mr. Chairman. All of us, the dance that is going to be done is fiscal 1996, I call it the ``readiness dance. Everybody is going to try to ``out readiness'' each other. The one account that probably will end up overfunded is the readiness account. We do not need to do it in the supplemental. For those reasons, let us bring back some reason and sanity to this process. In that regard, I would rise in support of the Obey amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Studds], the distinguished former chairman of the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Guam [Mr. Underwood].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from New York [Mr. Ackerman]. (Mr. ACKERMAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Chairman, the exchange that we just heard demonstrates why the committee bill does not in fact balance the budget. On the wind-tunnel item, that money was appropriated subject to authorization. It has never been authorized. Therefore, CBO itself has indicated correctly that since it has not been authorized, it cannot be spent. Even though it cannot be spent, the committee amendment cuts the money and pretends it saves money. CBO says we have not saved any money by cutting the wind-tunnel item because there was no money there to be spent in the first place. Mr. Chairman, that is why the Republican proposal does not balance the budget, because it cuts funny money, and it does it twice. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Peterson].

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spratt]. (Mr. SPRATT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)