Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, frankly, I have mixed feelings about this amendment. I don't think that the appropriations bill is the proper place to consider issues that are clearly authorization issues, and yet I know that there is considerable concern about this program. Let me simply say that in the interests of time and because I think the equities are split, that we would be willing to accept the gentleman's amendment, with the understanding that we would need to give the administration an opportunity in conference to express any concerns about it and consider any adjustments that might be made that would be mutually agreed to. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield back my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would yield, I would be prepared to accept the gentleman's amendment, with the understanding that the committee will continue to investigate the effect of the amendment as we take it to conference with the other body later in the year.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would yield, at this point I am simply standing in for the subcommittee chair, but I would simply say that while I am not frankly as totally familiar with the issue as I am with, for instance, the record of the Egyptian Government in jailing Mr. Nour and other political opponents, I certainly have seen that concern expressed many times, and I would think the conferees would be interested in improving human rights records on Egypt's part with respect to all groups, including Coptic Christians.

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

Mr. OBEY. With respect to the amendment of the gentlewoman, I have some considerable disquiet about the Appropriations Committee on the basis of 3 minutes discussion pronouncing judgment on complicated matters with respect to immigration, but let me simply say I would be willing to accept the amendment as an expression of concern on the subject and would hope that the administration would deal with the concerns as the committee goes to conference.

Mr. OBEY. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. OBEY. As I understand this amendment, it simply indicates that the Department ought to enforce the law. I am not really inclined to object to that. In the interest of time, I am willing to accept the amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. OBEY. In light of the fact that you and the other sponsors of the amendment have worked to narrow the scope of the amendment to just the funds that are involved to operations in the United States, the committee would be happy to accept the amendment.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I must very reluctantly lodge a point of order against the gentleman's amendment. The amendment proposes to appropriate funds in excess of the authorized amount. It therefore violates clause 2 of rule XXI, and I would ask for a ruling from the Chair.

Mr. OBEY. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. OBEY. The gentleman has persuaded me. I would be happy to accept the amendment in the interest of time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I had not wanted to take any more time this evening, but I was in my office and I heard several silly suggestions that somehow bills like this are going to seriously add to the deficit and require a tax increase and all of that other frothy nonsense. I would simply like to quote from a document by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, one of the most respected organizations in this country in terms of keeping everybody honest about budget facts. This is what they said in a report issued today: ``The main dispute between the administration and Congress is over a $21 billion difference in domestic appropriations. The administration proposes to cut these programs $16 billion below the 2000 levels after adjusting for inflation and threatens to veto bills that do not contain these cuts. Congress would reject these cuts and instead provide a modest increase to these programs of $5 billion or 1.4 percent.'' The report then goes on to say the following: ``Some 81 percent of the increases in appropriations under the emerging bills consist of increases for military and homeland security programs that the President himself requested. Less than one-tenth, or $5 billion of the funding increases reflected in the congressional targets for the 2008 appropriation bills, are for increases for eight domestic appropriations bills.'' Then it goes on to say, ``Under the planned appropriations, those bills would increase a modest 1.4 percent above the Congressional Budget Office baseline.'' Then, get this: ``In real per capita terms, that is, after adjustment for both inflation and population growth, funding for these programs would barely increase at all.'' And as for the nonsense that somehow these bills will require a tax increase or add to the deficit, the report goes on to say, ``As a share of the economy, funding for these programs would actually edge down slightly.'' Then it points out also that the increases in these bills rise more slowly than the expected increase in revenues. What that means, for anybody who has been through second-grade math, is that you cannot add to the deficit, if that is the case, unless you decide to pass further tax cuts paid for with borrowed money, as the former majority so blithely did over the past 5 years. I would also say one other thing. It is easy for any citizen and any Member to demagogue foreign aid. I chaired that subcommittee for 10 years. And let me tell you, there is no piece of legislation that this Congress passes each year that saves the lives of more children than this bill. If you take a look at what we do for children's health, if you take a look at what we do through immunizations and these other programs, there is no program that we pass that saves the lives of more children. We spent a lot of time talking about the right to life today. Well, this bill is a whole lot more effective than lectures from politicians about celibacy or any other matter. This bill actually delivers the goods in terms of the practical things we can do to help our fellow creatures on this planet. I want to say one other thing. My religious values teach me that we are not Americans because of any special merit that we have. We were just lucky enough that God decided to infuse our soul in a body born in the USA. He could just as easily have made us a child born in Bangladesh, Sudan, or any of the other most troublesome spots in the world, the most agonized spots in the world. Any idiot can put together an across-the-board cut. All that means is that you don't think. This is supposed to be not the mandatory part of the budget, but the discretionary part of the budget. It means you are supposed to think and apply your values to what you do. That is what this bill does, and I urge you to reject these amendments. Parliamentary Inquiry

Mr. OBEY. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, talk about crocodile tears. This bill is $700 million below the amount requested by the President of the United States. The other side cries about the fact that it is $2.9 billion over last year, and they say this is the baby that is going to break the bank. This is the same crowd that has supported over $600 billion, all borrowed money, to pay for the most misguided, misbegotten, destructive war in the modern history of the United States, all paid for with borrowed money. I didn't hear any cries about fiscal responsibility then. No, no, no. They spent it blindly, and now they are saying that this bill, which is really an attempt to clean up a lot of the world's messes left over from past wars, that somehow this bill is the one that broke the bank. That is so silly, I would laugh if it wasn't so serious.

Mr. OBEY. I move to strike the last word.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I won't take the 5 minutes. But let me say that I find it rather humorous that our good friends on the other side of the aisle would utter not one peep when this President decides to spend over $600 billion on a war in Iraq which he misled the country into, which he didn't have a clue of how to get out of, and now he's asking us to make a commitment that will lead over the next 20 years to the expenditure of at least $1 trillion more for that same misguided cause. Not a peep; most of their buttons wired right to the White House, wired right to Karl Rove's desk. And yet, it's the same crowd that will then make a Federal case out of the fact that when we cut the President's budget for foreign aid we didn't cut it quite enough. And so they're making a Federal case out of one-half of 1 percent. My good friend, Archie the Cockroach observed once, ``Remember the importance of proportion. Of what use is it for a queen bee to fall in love with a bull?'' Think about it. If you do, you'll realize just how silly and misguided this debate is, because this is a crowd who spent willingly $600 billion on the most damaging war in recent American history, and yet are now objecting to the President's request to fund a bill which is traditionally meant to repair our relationships around the world and to pay a little bit of the cost of citizenship on a planet where many millions of people are a whole lot less fortunate than we are. I'm also amused by the fact that we hear a constant cry from the other side of the aisle, ``We need bipartisanship. Politics ends at the water's edge.'' And then when we try to demonstrate a little bipartisanship by giving the President most of what he asked, but not all, we then get the White House complaining because we've cut this bill too deeply, and we get their supporters in this House crying that we didn't cut it deeply enough. I get whiplash trying to follow the direction of a party that is that schizophrenic. So with all due respect, we understand that this is a marginal debate. It is a debate ginned up to try to find any excuse whatsoever to bring down this bill. It's not going to do it. Let's get on with the public's business. Let's be responsible. Let's reject this amendment.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I won't take the 5 minutes. I simply want to say that I appreciate the fact that the committee has accepted this amendment. But let me simply make one point. Because we have heard on this side of the aisle that the minority party is whipping against the bill, let me simply say that I would hope that there are no Members of this House who would engage in an act which would give hypocrisy a bad name by voting for this amendment, which in essence simply repeats existing law, and then use that as cover as an excuse to then vote against the bill in final passage. I don't think that friends of Israel would be conned by that. And I would hope, and I have full confidence, that no Member of this House would engage in such hypocrisy.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I think after that speech, there is absolutely no need to say anything more. The amendment says a whole lot more about the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) than it says about the Speaker of the House. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for the time, and I want to congratulate the gentleman from Indiana and the gentleman from Ohio for doing a first-rate piece of work on this legislation. They know their business, they work with each other well, and I am proud of both of them. I would like to discuss two matters. The first is the question of congressional earmarks, and the second is the actual substance of this bill. We have seen much attention paid over the past several months to the practice of Congress earmarking certain projects. This bill is a project-oriented bill, and so there will be quite a lot of that going on before the bill is finished. But I would like to put that in context. The fact is that the administration has requested far more dollars for earmark projects for this bill than the Congress traditionally provides. Example: in fiscal year 2006, which is the last year we had a completed bill, the President asked for 987 specific earmark projects in the budget for the Army Corps of Engineers, costing $3.8 billion. The Congress appropriated $1.1 billion for projects that it ranked as high priority. The result: 77 percent of the Army Corps budget went for projects earmarked by the administration; 23 percent went for projects earmarked by the Congress of the United States. In fact, this is a copy of the report for that 2006 bill. The list of administration project earmark requests goes on for 46 pages, and I would submit that if the administration had been Democratic, it would have been the same result. Now, how does the administration decide how to allocate money to specific projects? Here is what the instruction sheet reads for the Corps of Engineers: ``To be included in the recommended program and considered for the ceiling program for fiscal 2008, a construction project or separate element must be consistent with policy.'' Well, guess what? That is the same policy that Congress provides. Projects have to be consistent with policy in order to be included. The document from the Army Corps of Engineers also says it must have a decision document for which executive branch review has been completed. And then it goes on to say, each project or separable element must meet at least one of nine criteria, which are listed. But then it goes on to say, ``however, the agency may propose to relax those criteria, to use additional criteria, or to include special cases.'' Guess what? That is exactly what the Congress does in determining which projects it feels are high priority. Now, let's turn to 2008. This year, the administration has requested some 991 projects. If you string them end to end, that is how long their project list is for this year. I would submit, in the end, this will be a longer list than the project list provided by the Congress in this bill. So let me simply state that whether projects are funded because of directed spending on the part of the administration or directed spending on the part of the Congress, the result is the same: public money is expended on projects that either the executive branch or the legislative branch thinks represent high priority needs. So much for earmarks in this bill. Now, let me simply discuss the substance. There are three major areas of funding critical to our country's future in the bill: climate change, the energy crisis, and nuclear policy. This bill includes more than $1 billion above the President's request for climate change. Funding goes to energy research, for development and demonstration of energy technologies that don't release greenhouse gases. They include conservation, research and development, and demonstration to reduce energy consumption in buildings, vehicles and energy-intensive industries. They include deployment of conservation measures in Federal buildings. They include demonstration of capture and sequestration of carbon dioxide. In the 1970s, the United States responded to the energy crisis in those days with substantially increased funding for energy research, for development and demonstration. But with the collapse of oil prices in the eighties, the interests of the administrations and the interests of Congress, unfortunately, subsided. So the result is that by fiscal 2006, after adjusting for inflation, research budgets for renewable energy were only 20 percent of what they were in real terms in 1980. Research budgets for fossil energy were only 25 percent of 1980 levels. Funding for conservation research was only 49 percent of 1980 levels. In the year-long continuing resolution which we passed just 3 months ago, we raised those percentages considerably. So 2007 funding for renewable energy was boosted up to 38 percent of 1980 levels, and 2007 funding for conservation was boosted to 54 percent of 1980 levels. This bill continues that effort: 2008 funding for renewable energy will now under this bill be upped to 47 percent of 1980 levels, 2008 funding for fossil energy will be upped to 31 percent of 1980 levels, and 2008 funding for conservation will be up to 67 percent of 1980 levels. This bill also provides for a $2 billion operating level for the nuclear nonproliferation activities of the Department of Energy. This bill does not fund new nuclear weapons nor major new weapons facilities, because the administration has not developed a strategy for strategic nuclear weapons in the post-Cold War era. So let me simply say in conclusion that this bill reverses a quarter century of decline in energy research. It increases critical funding to prevent nuclear weapons or material from falling into the hands of terrorists. It represents a responsibly balanced bill. I congratulate both gentlemen for producing this, and I would urge strong support for its passage.