Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Madam Chairman, if I might point out to the gentleman, just because it is neutral in budget authority does not mean it is neutral in outlays. It is not neutral in outlays, and, therefore, it is out of order.

Mr. OBEY. Then I would suggest accepting the amendment on this side. This is an amendment that does nothing, Madam Chairman, except, in my view, it is an effort to put people on the hook by ratifying some unacceptable conduct by someone who is no longer associated with the program. I don't intend to be associated with that kind of a problem, and so I think this is one of those nuisance amendments that is meant to enable someone to pose for political holy pictures without much effect. Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. OBEY. Could the gentleman tell me, have there been any more labor leaders indicted lately than Members of Congress?

Mr. OBEY. Madam Chairman, I reserve a point of order on the amendment. We don't have a copy of it.

Mr. OBEY. I withdraw the point of order and move to strike the last word.

Mr. OBEY. Madam Chairman, let me simply point out that the administration has sent us a statement of administration policy, or SAP as it is known in the trade, and they indicate that the President intends to veto this bill. And one of the reasons they intend to veto the bill is because they say this bill spends too much money. I would simply point out that virtually every Republican amendment that has been offered so far is an amendment to increase funding for a specific program. On this program the President zeroed out this very worthy program. The committee fully restored the funding at the previous year's level of $19.8 million, and now this amendment seeks to add a small amount in addition by taking it out of departmental management. As the Chair of the committee, I think it is my obligation to the administration to try to be somewhat objective about the funding level that they need in order to fund their agency activities. But if we are going to continue to get amendments from the administration's own side of the aisle that further reduce Cabinet Secretaries' operating budgets, who am I to object? So if the administration can't save itself from its friends, far be it from me to intercede, and so I would simply say that on this I will accept the amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Madam Chairman, this amendment is very simple. It seeks to reinstate the President's 81-percent cut in the International Labor Organization appropriation in the bill. Madam Chairman, I cannot walk into a union hall in my District, I cannot walk into a restaurant, I cannot walk into a barber shop without having someone say to me, Obey, what are you guys going to do to protect workers from unfair competition? What are you going to do to protect us from slave labor in China? What are you going to do to protect us from countries that pretend that they are free market countries when, in fact, they are centrally directed Marxist countries? When are you going to protect us from goods being produced by child labor around the world? The purpose of this International Labor Organization is to serve as the one agency that serves as a red flag when our workers' wages are being undercut unfairly. So I think the issue is very simple, and I don't intend to take the full 5 minutes. If you really are comfortable with the idea of just letting the wonders of the world market determine what wages are for American workers, if you are really comfortable with the idea of letting substandard wages and substandard working conditions undercut legitimate American workers' interests, then by all means vote for the gentleman's amendment. If you think that the American worker deserves a square deal in the midst of this globalization rampage, then I would suggest you vote against the amendment. And, I do think that workers and the organizations who represent them will be watching. Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Madam Chairman, I don't like to have to oppose this amendment, but the fact is where some of the previous amendments were merely troublesome, this amendment is irresponsible. Now, let us point out what's happened so far. What we have going on here is a ``let's pretend'' game. We have the administration telling us that this bill is runaway spending, and they threaten to veto the bill when in fact this bill in real terms is only a little over a 2 percent increase over last year. It is a large difference with the President's budget, but that's because he tried to cut $7.5 billion of it. In real terms, this bill goes up by less than $5 billion. By now we have a number of people in this House who are trying to escape from the consequences of the President's budget. So we have pretended in one amendment that we can add money to AmeriCorps by taking money out of administrative management accounts for the Labor Department. Then we are pretending that we can take out, yes, just a small amount, $500,000, out of that same account in order to deal with National Labor Relations Board. Then we are having another effort to escape the squeeze on behalf of another very worthy cause, deaf and blind children. And those have been accepted. But now this amendment comes in, and it proposes to increase funding for a very worthy cause, Center for Disease Control TB Elimination Program. That is funded in the bill at $150.7 million, an increase of $13.7 million over fiscal 2007 and $13.9 million over the President's request. The funding included in this bill is a 10 percent increase over fiscal 2007. Now, everybody knows that we would like to be providing more money for that program and a dozen others in this bill. But we are trying, evidently, to give some credence to the administration's complaints about dollar levels in spending. So what does this amendment do? It savages the ability of the Secretary of Labor to run any programs at all, because what it does is to require a 25 percent cut in the ability of the Secretary of Labor to manage all of the programs within their jurisdiction. So that means that you have to chop the living guts out of the Secretary's own office; you have to chop the guts out of the Solicitor's office. And that is the office that deals with enforcement for mine safety, for OSHA, or even the OLMS union violations that were the subject of a previous amendment just a couple minutes ago. And what this all is is a giant ``let's pretend'' operation. It's a game that pretends that we are doing something real by adding money for these accounts, when you know that if you're going to be responsible, when we go to conference we're going to have to restore most of these management accounts or else we will have a government agency, admittedly one run by a very conservative Republican, but still a government agency which will be crippled in its ability to provide its functions. I have in my office two signs. And whenever anybody comes to me asking for money, I make them read those signs out loud. This is what one of them says: ``What do you want us to do for someone besides yourself that's more important than whatever it is you want us to do for you?'' And I think that's the basic question we always ought to be asking in a Judeo-Christian society. My problem with this amendment is, while it seeks funds for a very worthy cause, in the process it takes away crucial funds for many other worthy causes. And sooner or later, even in the Congress of the United States, we need to think about the needs of the whole. We need to think about all of the needs that the government has to deal with, not just one concern of one Member or one concern of another. So in the interest of responsibility, I would urge a, very regretfully, defeat of the gentleman's amendment. Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Madam Chairman, this bill contains a provision that freezes public-private competitions at the Department of Labor under OMB circular A-76. That process is used to compete out jobs now performed by Federal employees. Significant resources have been spent by the Department over the last several years on contracting out government jobs, and the committee believes it is time to take a step back and examine how the process is working. Government-wide statistics cast doubt, frankly, on the overall effectiveness of this process. OMB reports in fiscal year 2006 that government employees won the competition in more than 85 percent of the cases where competitive sourcing was used. At DOL, the results have been similar. Since the process has begun, DOL employees have won 22 of the 25 competitions. Now, aside from questions about the lack of compelling evidence of cost savings or increased efficiency, there is concern about the fact that the Department is not taking proper care to assure that functions that ought to be considered inherently governmental or are otherwise unsuitable for contracting performance are excluded from these competitions. We have seen some competitions where regulatory and policy functions are included and believe that an independent look at the Department of Labor's use of this authority is warranted. The gentleman says that it is labor bosses who are concerned about this. The last time I looked, this was having a disproportionate impact on women and on minority workers, and we are asking the GAO to assess the impact on them. The bill language freezes the A-76 process at the Department of Labor until the committee has the benefit of a GAO review of that process. What is wrong with that? The Comptroller General chaired a panel that submitted a report to Congress in 2002 and the request to GAO will be to ask for an assessment of the extent to which the sourcing principle adopted by the panel, including the recognition of inherently governmental functions, are being followed by the Department. This department is frankly not known to be a friend of the worker, certainly not under the present regime. It certainly is not known to be a friend to Federal workers, and it seems to me that we have seen in Iraq what happens when we contract out everything in sight. We have seen what happens in the Labor Department when 90 percent of one of their most important manpower programs, when 90 percent of the money in that program is farmed out on a noncompetitive basis. Frankly, we have sincere doubt about the balance with which the Department is approaching this issue. Therefore, we asked the GAO to review the process. What on earth is wrong with that? I urge opposition to the gentleman's amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. OBEY. Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Madam Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Ms. Roybal-Allard). (Ms. ROYBAL-ALLARD asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Madam Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Minnesota (Ms. McCollum), who is really not celebrating her birthday on the same day as the Baltimore Orioles.

Mr. OBEY. Madam Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Kennedy).

Mr. OBEY. I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

Mr. OBEY. Madam Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan).

Mr. OBEY. Madam Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hinojosa).

Mr. OBEY. Madam Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney).

Mr. OBEY. I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. OBEY. I thank the gentleman for yielding and for his question. Yes, it was our intent to fund both the Credit Enhancement for Charter School Facilities program within the larger Charter School Grant program at their fiscal year 2007 levels, not to eliminate the credit enhancement program. We consolidated the programs for administrative efficiency and fully expect the Secretary of Education to continue funding for existing charter school programs from this single line item.