Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. I thank the gentleman for the time. Talk, talk, talk. Blah, blah, blah. Yap, yap, yap. The country is sick of it all. They are sick of it all. Thank God finally there will be a cease-fire for the moment on the yap-yapping and the talk-talking while the Congress actually takes some action to restore unemployment benefits for nearly 85,000 people in my State and over 2\1/2\ million Americans who are caught up in the partisan delay game that was being played every day by some of our friends in the other body. We're told, ``Oh, we can't afford this.'' We hear that from the same people who blew up the economy in the first place with two wars paid for with borrowed money, with two tax cuts primarily aimed at the highest income people in this country paid for with borrowed money, and with years of economic policies that allowed Wall Street banks to morph into casinos because the referee was taken off the field. And now they're crying crocodile tears at this late date about the cost of helping folks who are unemployed. And they want us to take actions in dealing with that that would further weaken the ability of the economy to grow. And then some of them even have the gall to challenge the work ethic of Americans who are drawing unemployment. And some of them are off- the-wall enough to even believe that those folks would rather get a few hundred bucks a month rather than a steady paycheck. Well, if you believe that, I've got a lot of unemployed workers in Wisconsin I'd like to have you meet. If you want, if you must, by all means debate economic theory, debate your academic theories, debate anything you want. But for God's sake remember that in this debate the people who are being affected are flesh-and-blood human beings. They are families who need our help. And it would be nice if we could quit yap-yapping long enough to provide that help. Don't use the unemployed as cannon fodder in academic and political debates. For God's sake, remember there are simply people who need our help. Get it to them. We can have the phony political debates on another day.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1500, I call up the bill (H.R. 4899) making emergency supplemental appropriations for disaster relief and summer jobs for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2010, and for other purposes, with the Senate amendments thereto, and offer the motion.

Mr. OBEY. I yield myself 1 minute. Somehow we are being told that we are committing a mortal sin because we are trying to attach some material to the bill sent to us by the Senate. I would simply point out that just a few weeks ago, as the gentleman from Massachusetts pointed out earlier in the debate, when the defense authorization bill was on the floor only nine Republicans in this House voted for it. They felt then that another matter was evidently more important than providing passage for that bill. And yet today they criticize us because we are suggesting several additions to the appropriations bill. I find that inconsistent. I would also point out that there are a number of high-priority national items that we are trying to add besides education funding. We are trying to provide additional funds for Pell Grants, some $5 billion. We are trying to provide $700 million more for border security, $180 million more for energy loans, $163 million more for schools on military installations, $142 million for gulf coast oil spill funding, and $16 million to build a new soldier processing center at Fort Hood.

Mr. OBEY. I yield myself 30 additional seconds. I would like to know what's wrong with any of those items. I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Reyes) to explain why it's necessary to do additional funding for border security.

Mr. OBEY. I object.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, as was pointed out earlier, those who suggest that any efforts to add any items to what is called a military supplemental are somehow out of line are simply wrong. This legislation started out as a disaster relief bill. It went to the Senate, and they morphed it into a military supplemental, and we're simply now responding to that action. I want to talk about the problems in Afghanistan. A year ago, I made the statement that while I was dubious about the mission in Afghanistan, I would give the President a year to see whether his policy would bear fruit. But I warned at the time that we could have the best possible policy in the world and, if we did not have the tools to implement it, it would be a failure. And I would suggest that the only two tools that we have available to use in that region of the world are the Pakistan Government and the Afghan Government; and I think it's safe to say that both of them have been less than a spectacular success, to say the least. Since then, I think it's also fair to say that events have gone downhill, especially in Afghanistan. And in addition, since we're now spending $167 billion on these two wars, I think it's also obvious that we're having a profoundly negative effect on our ability to reinvest in and rebuild our own economy. And I think the time has come for new consideration. Now, last December the President indicated that it was his intention to follow a policy which would begin to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan beginning in July of 2011. This amendment is meant to simply buttress that commitment, and what it says is this: It requires that in January, a new intelligence estimate be provided, and that after that is provided, the administration, by April 4, must respond to it by sending to the Congress an outline of its plans to follow the policy which they have announced which would begin to get us out of there starting in July of next year. What this amendment also says is, if the administration decides to follow a different policy by, for instance, extending that date, then they cannot do that unless the Congress explicitly votes to allow the funds to be used for that purpose. What I'm concerned about is this: What I can see happening is come next July, we can be told by the Pentagon, well, things are marginally better than we thought they would be and so we're going to need more time and that target date will be slipped. On the other hand, they can also say things are really going badly and so we obviously can't get out at this time. We need to have more time. I want to know that there is a serious, determined commitment to withdraw our troops beginning in June of next year. That is more than ample time for the Pakistani Government and the Afghan Government to demonstrate whether they are capable of doing this mission or not. I think it is obvious that we are not going to be able to rebuild our own country and make the investments we need here at home so long as we're continuing this mission in Afghanistan. And so I think this provides an orderly, rational, responsible, thoughtful way by which we can reach a conclusion to get out of that country rather than spending another 9 years before we finally face up to reality. I thank the gentleman for the time. Disclosure of Earmarks The following table lists the congressional earmarks (as defined in clause 9(e) of rule XXI) contained in the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 4899. The House amendment does not contain any limited tax or tariff benefits as defined in paragraphs (f) or (g) of clause 9 of rule XXI.

Mr. OBEY. I object.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the pending legislation.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Speaker, the underlying bill presented to us by the Senate is, essentially, a bill to provide funding to continue the war activities in Afghanistan. Why, people might ask, are we trying to add this amendment to that proposal? I would suggest the numbers tell the story. With this bill from the Senate, we will be spending, in this fiscal year, $167 billion on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is obvious to any but the most obtuse that that expenditure is killing our ability to finance a recovery of our own economy. We tried to deal with that problem in December with a $90 billion economic package. The Senate declined to act on it. We've proposed smaller packages on two occasions since then. About a month ago we offered a $23 billion package aimed primarily at trying to save teachers' jobs, teachers who otherwise are going to be laid off because of the severe economic conditions in virtually every State in the Union, except a few lucky exceptions like North Dakota and South Dakota. We now bring before the House a bill which reflects what we've been asked to do by a great many Members. It attempts to provide a much smaller aid package to keep those teachers on the job, about $10 billion; and it contains a few other small items, including almost $5 billion in additional Pell Grants funds for some 87,000 students who are going to need them badly. We were also asked to provide offsets, and so we have done that. We have offsets for virtually every dollar above the President's request, and those offsets are not pleasant, and they are not popular. Certainly, I don't like some of them myself. But the fact is that they are necessary if we're to provide a fiscally disciplined bill that has a chance of getting the votes to pass this House, and that's what we've done. I think people need to ask themselves one question: Are they interested in simply standing by and allowing teachers to be fired day after day for the next 3 months all around the country, or are they willing to do something about it? I hope the answer is the latter. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards).

Mr. OBEY. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, how much time does each side have remaining?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price).

Mr. OBEY. I yield the gentleman an additional 15 seconds.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield for the purpose of making a unanimous consent request to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich). (Mr. KUCINICH asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks and include extraneous material.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, let me simply say that our Republican friends are running true to form tonight. In the past 2 weeks, they have voted against funding unemployment insurance for people who have been laid off in the most excruciating recession in 70 years. Now, today, they are refusing to support a proposal which will help us stave off the laying off of well over 100,000 additional teachers around the country--something which, I think, thoughtful people would recognize would injure not just those teachers but their students and the communities in which those students are supposed to learn. There is nothing as expensive as ignorance, and ignorance is fed when you have an inadequate number of quality teachers. Let me devote the rest of my time to something that I consider to be fairly off the point today because it had been suggested to us that the Secretary of Education is somewhat unhappy because of the offsets that we have required in order to pay for this additional funding. Let me put that into perspective. We are trying to provide $15 billion in additional education resources to this administration--$10 billion to stave off the firing of teachers and about $5 billion to fill the shortfall that developed in the Pell program this year because of the economy. In order to finance that, we have had to cut many programs. I don't like to do that, and the administration certainly doesn't like to see it either. But we also had to require that the Secretary's department itself take a cut that is equal to about 5 percent of the value of the additional education dollars that his department would receive. One of the Secretary's objections, evidently, is the fact that last year in the stimulus package we provided him with a $4.3 billion pot of money to use virtually any way he wanted to stimulate educational progress in this country; $4.3 billion. He has spent a very small amount of that, about $600 million, and we decided we had to cut about $500 million out of that fund in order to finance and fully pay for the package before us. That still leaves him with $3.2 billion in money that he can spend any way his department wants. We had a big discussion yesterday in the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee about whether or not it was acceptable for the Secretary of Agriculture to have a $38 million pot, yet the Secretary of Education is somehow offended because he only has $3.2 billion to pass around. I would suggest that that loose money, that untargeted money that he has available, is roughly functional to what could be called a congressional earmark. In fact, what I would call that fund is a fund that enables the Secretary to provide executive branch earmarks. I would point out that all of the legislative-directed earmarks in the Labor-H bill last year amounted to less than $1 billion, and yet the Secretary seems to be offended by the fact that he only has three times that amount to spread around as he sees fit. I would also point out that in the year-and-a-half they have only gotten grants out to two States, and the department has already announced that at most there will be about 15 other States that might get winning grants, which means that more than half the country will never see a dime from that money. I would suggest that there is nothing wrong with providing the Secretary a modest amount of funds to promote educational change. God knows we need it. But to suggest that we are being unduly harsh is a joke. With that, I urge support for this amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. OBEY. The gentleman seems to think the Senate bill is the original bill. The Senate amended the House bill, which was a disaster bill. If you wanted a clean vote, we would be voting on the disaster bill tonight, not the war.

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

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. I thank the gentleman for the time. Mr. Speaker, for most of the last 15 years, Senator Robert Byrd led the Senate Democrats on the Appropriations Committee. And for roughly that same amount of time, I had the same privilege on the House side, and I got to know him extremely well. I loved Robert Byrd. For one thing, he and I shared a love of bluegrass music. I daresay he was the finest fiddler in the history of the Congress, but that's not the real reason that I hold him in such high esteem. He began as a product of a segregated background, but through sheer intense pursuit of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom, he became a person who is a powerful representative for the cause of equal opportunity for everyone. I can think of no one in the history of the Senate who demonstrated a greater capacity for personal growth than did Robert Byrd. He was truly unmatched in his recognition of our obligation to the Constitution and to the institution of the Congress itself. And the greatest thing about him, in addition to his dedication, was, simply put, he had guts; and he wasn't afraid to demonstrate that on many occasions when the Nation needed to see it demonstrated. He made the point that he never served under any President. He served with many, honorably and with distinction. They really don't make them like him anymore.