Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. I will not yield until I finish my statement. I would appreciate the same courtesy I've shown you. Now, let me point out, the process that they've invented is not one that we have requested. What we have said is that, because of the urgency of substance, we decided we were going to leave pork projects behind for the moment. And what we've decided instead was to focus on oversight and producing substantive bills. We've now also said that in order to assure that there is review of every project, that we are going to be filing, before the August recess, every single earmark that we expect to place in the appropriation bills. And Members will then have over 30 days to look at the process. They can complain about any earmark they want. We are going to ask that it be open, not hidden, behind-the-scenes telephone calls. We're going to ask that people file in writing if they have an objection. We're going to ask the sponsor of the amendment to then respond in writing so that we can make a decent judgment about those earmarks. Now, let me make another point. For people who are squawking about the fact that these earmarks aren't going to be in the bill originally, the Republicans did the same thing on the Labor-H bill in 1998, in 1999, in 2002, in 2004, in 2005. They did not have any earmarks in the Labor-Health-Education bill until the bill was in conference. The only difference was those earmarks were never reviewed ahead of time. These will be. Those earmarks were never in public view. These will be. They also did the same thing in 2002 and 2003 when they couldn't even get a Labor-H bill through the House, and so they went directly to conference in an omnibus. The difference between our process and the one they've been following is that there will be an opportunity ahead of time to know who has asked for these earmarks, and you'll be able to ask questions about it. And I would assume that the leadership of both parties would take a look at the project list for both parties so that they protect this institution from the outrageous scandals that we had because of their mismanagement when they were running the show. And I will stack my record on congressional reform against anybody on that side of the aisle any time. My entire career here has been defined by reform, and I don't intend to change it now.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I am opposed to both the underlying amendment and the substitute amendment, and let me tell you why. I think it's important to put that amendment in context. We had crocodile tears expressed here about the number of earmarks and what will happen to earmarks. Let me cite the record. In 1994, the last year when Democrats controlled the House, earmarks were primarily concentrated in four appropriation bills. They were project-oriented bills like military construction, energy and water, Interior and general government. This Homeland Security bill had not even come to pass yet because it was before 9/11. In the Labor-Health-Education appropriation bill the last year that the Democrats controlled, we had zero earmarks. The last year under Republican control that we had earmarks in the Labor-H bill, we had over 3,000. In the Transportation bill, the authorizing bill, from 1956 through 1995, we had 20 separate highway bills pass this House containing a total of 739 earmarks. Do you know how many we had, Mr. Chairman, in 2005 under Republican control in just one bill? Five thousand. Then we all remember the infamous 3-hour vote on Medicare part D. I would ask my colleagues on this side of the aisle to keep this civil. If the other side wants to turn it into a circus, fine, but I think we ought to behave. Let me say, we remember Medicare part D when the Republican leadership kept the vote open for 3 hours. Meanwhile, the newspaper stories told of how they promised earmarks in the transportation bill in return for votes on Medicare part D. Last year, we had three major scandals. We had the Cunningham affair, then we had the bridge-to-nowhere, which caused a lot of heartburn around the country; and now, just recently, we have another story suggesting that the committee chairman then, the gentleman from Alaska, inserted a project for Florida. Under Republican rules, as they existed then, nobody knew about any of that until about 2 years after the fact. Under the proposal that we are proposing for earmarks, you would know about that 30 days before they went into effect. That is a huge difference. Let me also point out, in 1994, the four biggest appropriation bills that's Commerce-Justice, Labor, Transportation and VA-HUD. The last year the Democrats controlled the House, in 1994, the four major appropriations bills, Commerce-Justice, Labor-Health, Transportation and VA, we had a total of 764 earmarks. Those same bills, just one fiscal year ago, had 8,600 earmarks. With all due respect, I don't want to hear any crocodile tears on the other side of the aisle with respect to the issue of earmarks. They have exploded under their operation of this House, not under ours. In terms of what's going on tonight, I should make quite clear that the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis) told me in January that the minority party would give us no procedural cooperation because they didn't like the way we had handled a continuing resolution. They wanted us to have a straight CR rather than thinking our way through priorities. Now they have simply moved on to another excuse. So I would simply say, whether you vote for the underlying amendment or for the amendment to the amendment, these are not real amendments. It is clear to me that they have only one purpose, to bring this House to a halt, and they are looking for any excuse they can find. They got a mighty weak one, but we are going to stay here until the job is done. This is the people's business. We are not going to be diverted by their trying to play Trivial Pursuit on this bill.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I would like, if I could, in a calm atmosphere to simply walk Members of the House through some of the facts so that they understand exactly what it takes for the staff to prepare earmarks for consideration by the Congress. Yesterday, we were told in the Appropriations Committee by our Republican friends, at least by some of them, they would ask me, what is the hurry? Why can't you slow down these bills until you can attach the earmarks? Today, our colleague from Georgia, Mr. Price, said on the floor, these bills are already 1 month late, implying that the Republicans last year were able to move the bills to the floor faster. That is right. They did. I want Members to understand why if we started tonight it would take a good 3 to 4 weeks to prepare all of the earmarks that Members are requesting. Let me explain why. Our staff doesn't just have to wade through these requests. Some of these requests that we receive propose to place earmarks on programs such as the National Institutes of Health, for instance, which have never before been earmarked, earmarks which the Members on both side of the aisle strongly oppose. So we have to work with those Members to reshape those earmarks. Some requests come in, but they are duplicative. You may have four or five Members propose the same earmark, but they describe it differently, and the staff has to wade through and reconcile them so they understand it is really the same item. Some earmarks that are requested fail to make clear which programs the requested funds are supposed to come from, so we have to plug in with Members to get answers to that. Some requests ask that funds that are earmarked within a specific program be used for purposes which are not authorized by the underlying authorization, so again we have to go back to those Members and review those projects and rework them so that they are eligible. That is why it is an immense job for the staff to review, especially when we have 32,000 requests. There is another reason why we have lagged on earmarks, and that is because we chose to do substance over worrying about pork. What we did, after almost 5 years of virtually no oversight by this Congress, we chose to intensify oversight and devote our staff time and Member time to that, rather than people's boodle. As a result, we held 224 hearings, as opposed to 117 last year under the Republican regime. That is why we have come to the House with the proposition to make certain that we do have transparency, that we will have names attached to every earmark whenever they appear in the process, and we are following a process which has been engaged in by the majority party on the major domestic appropriation bills of each year, and the majority party engaged in this same process for 7 out of the last 12 years. The only difference is, they didn't provide 30 days' notice before those bills went to conference with those earmarks, and our process would. I know it is late in the evening and I know that Members like to score partisan points, but the fact is, Members, especially those who are not on the Appropriations Committee, are owed the courtesy of at least understanding what it is that the staff has to go through in order to prepare earmarks for everybody. Now, I don't have a Republican list of earmarks.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for his courtesy. Mr. Chairman, let me simply say, I don't have any idea what earmarks our Republican friends would want to see included in, for instance, the Labor-Health-Education bill. But the fact is, there is one other protection that we want to have in our process: Unlike the past, when some Appropriation subcommittees simply said Democrats, you look at yours, Republicans look at yours, and then do whatever you want, what we are going to try to do is to make certain that you get to see ours and we get to see yours so that we have that safety valve built into the system. That will protect the taxpayer and that will protect the reputation of this institution, and I think Members know it. Mr. Chairman, I would urge Members to remember that our job tonight, after all, is to try to pass a Homeland Security bill, which has traditionally been virtually without earmarks. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for the time and I thank the gentleman for his courtesy.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman. Let me point out there is one critical difference between last year and tonight: Last year, you agreed that we would shut down at 10 o'clock because we agreed to put time limits on all of the amendments so we could finish the bills. I cooperated procedurally so that you could move every single bill through the House, even though I disagreed with some of them. The key was that we each got something. You got to finish the bills, and we agreed that because we were setting time limits on amendments, that, therefore, there would be no need to work in the evening. You haven't been willing to agree to time limits.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. And I know he is serious on this issue, and I respect his integrity on this issue and I also respect his consistency. But let me ask the gentleman one question. Our job is to try to develop a process. It is not a pro forma process of review but one that is actually effective. The gentleman has offered a lot of motions in the past 2 years to strike earmarks. Could I ask him how many of them have been successful?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would yield further, that is not the gentleman's fault. He has genuinely tried to ferret out what he thought to be troublesome earmarks and occasionally some of mine.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield on that point?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I agree we need accountability. And I want to simply say I don't regard your failure to pass any of your amendments as a personal failure on your part. Mr. Chairman, I think the gentleman has done his dead level best. The problem is that the system is not conducive to producing real results because, as the gentleman himself has said on this House floor, Members look at these motions and they say, I am not going to vote for the Flake amendment because I have got earmarks hanging out there and I don't want to have my endangered. The result has been that nothing has happened. That is why we have had some of the problems we have had. We could have an honest disagreement about what will be the best system, but I would hope that the gentleman would recognize, even though he might disagree with it, it is an honest effort to develop a system which is far more forthcoming than the one we have had in the past. And I would simply point out that while the majority leader indicated that he had adopted transparency proposals last year, they conveniently arranged them so that they didn't apply to any of the appropriation bills that they passed last year. That is not the gentleman's fault. But it is the responsibility of the minority leader. I thank the gentleman for the time.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, let me first address the gentleman's comments about process and time. We have been negotiating with the Senate and with the White House since last Friday. At approximately 12:30 last night, the majority staff on the Appropriations Committee finally wrapped up our work in putting this package together. At about 1:00, we communicated what that package was to the minority staff on the Appropriations Committee. It couldn't have been communicated any earlier because it wasn't done until 12:30. One of the reasons it wasn't done is because as late as 10:00 last night, the White House was still squawking about individual provisions in the bill. And the last time I looked, the White House was in Republican hands. Now, we have negotiated in good faith. I hate this agreement. I am going to vote against the major portion of this agreement even though I negotiated it, because I think that the White House is in a cloud somewhere in terms of understanding the realities in Iraq. But let's not get our nose out of joint about the way this package was put together. We have tried in good faith to find a way to put the administration's request and their opponent's position on the floor on an equal footing to give everybody an opportunity to vote however they wanted on it. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. OBEY. As I was saying, Mr. Speaker, we don't relish bringing a package to the floor that we don't like and that we are not going to vote for. But what I especially don't relish is the fact that, in the process of doing so, we are criticized by people on the minority side of the aisle who, when they were in charge, couldn't run a two-car funeral in terms of the budget. The gentleman claims that it has taken us too long to get here. The fact is, the gentleman's party was in control last year, and it took them 110 days to produce a supplemental that the administration requested. That is 10 days longer than it took us. And we had to spend the first 30 days of this session passing last year's budget because the gentleman's party couldn't get a single domestic appropriations bill through the House because of an internal Republican Party squabble between Republicans in the Senate and Republicans in the House. So that ate up the first 30 days. And the rest of the time we have spent trying to convince the President to change his mind on the policy in Iraq. And so we haven't exactly been doing nothing these last 110 days. We sent a proposition to the President to try to force change in American policy in Iraq. He vetoed it. So if somebody is going to bellyache about the fact that the money isn't getting to the troops, we passed that. It was the President who vetoed it. It is the President's action that has delayed getting anything to anywhere. We then sent a second package over, and the Senate couldn't pass that. And so that is when we faced the inevitability that we simply did not have the votes to force the President to change policy, and so we are now trying to produce a responsible alternative. Let me also say, with respect to the argument that we are somehow playing into the hands of al Qaeda. Who played into the hands of al Qaeda? A fellow by the name of Bush. He lives in that big White House at the other end of the avenue. He is the guy who walked this country into a war he didn't have a clue about how to end, he didn't have a clue about the political realities in the region, he didn't have a clue about what was necessary militarily to pacify the country. He didn't have a clue about what this was going to do to our influence in the world. If anybody in this country has weakened our influence drastically and tragically in the Middle East third of the world, it is the occupant, the present occupant, of the White House and his Republican allies who continue to support this misguided policy on this misbegotten war. So, I get a little tired of people who produced one mess after another. I get a little tired of people who have been wrong from the start on this war. They went after the wrong country. They didn't go after al Qaeda, they went after Iraq. Iraq didn't have anything to do with 9/11. The gentleman knows that, unless he has a faulty memory. Only Dick Cheney is still trying to invent that connection, and his aim is about as bad as it is when he's got a shotgun in his hand. So with all due respect, Mr. Speaker, we have tried to produce change. We have been blocked in obtaining that change by the President. We are now trying to move ahead, on the only option we have available. And the gentleman's nose is out of joint because the action was completed last night too late to provide good notice. You know what? I didn't know about a third of this stuff in this package until I got it in the morning, because we made a number of changes in response to White House requests as late as 10:00 last night. I don't apologize for that. That is what negotiating is supposed to be. You can't have it both ways. You can't squawk at us for being too late in bringing the bill to the floor, and then squawk at us for not giving you enough notice. So, with all due respect, I will take a look at the record of the minority party last year when they were running the show and couldn't pass anything, and I will compare theirs to our record any day of the week. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, let me simply say, in response to the comments from the gentleman, that given what he prefers to see in this bill on this subject, we are very lucky to have the 1-year fix at all because the White House opposed not only the long-term fix, but the short-term fix as well. I would also point out that it was last year's Congress that allowed the program to expire in the first place and never managed to get around to finding the offsets that would have enabled the committee to provide this package long term. So I recognize the legitimacy of the gentleman's concern, but I want to point out that I think that given the resistance of the White House to anything except money for the Iraqi operation and a tiny portion of our obligation for Katrina, with those two exceptions, the White House resisted every single effort made by us to deal with any problem, whether it was Western schools, whether it was kids getting knocked off health-care rolls, or whether it was the need to provide more veterans' health care. They fought it all.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I agree with the gentleman. I just wish the administration would give us as much help in solving American problems as they have given us heat for not supporting their multibillion-dollar on-the-installment-plan request for Iraq.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I am sorry to interfere with the gentlelady's time, but I just wanted to bring something to the attention of the gentleman from California. He mentioned that the time stamp on the proposition he received was 6:31 p.m. last night. That was one of only two packages. That time stamp refers to the time at which the legislative counsel got this copy to the staff. The staff still had to read it, to check it out, to make certain it did what it was supposed to do. And that was on the easiest package, that was on the President's package. And everybody knows what the President's request was and what the Warner amendment is. The time stamp on the other package is 9:30 p.m. last night. What that means is that you have over 200 pages, which we got from legislative counsel, and the staff had to read every page of that to make certain, again, that it did what it was intended to do, and to make sure that, among other things, it reflected the changes that had been demanded by the White House at the same time.

Mr. OBEY. Will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, with all due respect, the gentleman has criticized us for taking too much time to bring this to the floor, and he is now suggesting that we delay it. That is like falling off both sides of the same horse at the same time.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 438, I call up the bill (H.R. 2206) making emergency supplemental appropriations and additional supplemental appropriations for agricultural and other emergency assistance for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2007, and for other purposes, with a Senate amendment thereto, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 438, I have a motion at the desk.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, there are two sets of issues before us, the President's request for almost $100 billion to finance the cost of the war in Iraq for the remainder of this fiscal year, which ends October 1. There is a second set of issues which relate to urgent needs for this year, additional funding for State Children's Health Insurance Program to prevent many thousands of poor children and some of their parents from losing health coverage; gulf coast recovery after Katrina; drought relief for farmers and the 70 percent of the U.S. counties that the President named as disaster areas; and other areas where we believe we must do more than the President wants to do; defense health, such as efforts to provide more help to veterans with traumatic rain injury; veterans' health, to help veterans overcome ridiculous backlogs; homeland security, to strengthen our ports, our borders and our cargo inspection systems; full funding for BRAC, the base realignment requirements; additional funding for military housing needs; and greater resources to wage the effort to root out al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Dealing with these issues is complicated by the fact that this country and this Congress are deeply divided on our involvement in the Iraqi civil war, which has dragged on now for more than 4 years. Several weeks ago, House Democrats tried to use the President's funding request to establish a process to responsibly end our involvement in that Iraqi civil war. To that end, we passed and sent to the President a plan that spent almost $4 billion more than the President wanted on the health and safety of our troops. It established limits on how much sacrifice could be asked of U.S. military units when no one else, except for military families, are appreciably sacrificing anything in this so-called war effort. It also sets standards for judging the success or failure of the administration's policy. Now, why did we do that? Because we agree with virtually every general who has said that this civil war will not be resolved militarily. It will be resolved only politically and diplomatically by Iraqi factions making the compromises necessary to bring that civil war to a conclusion. The President vetoed that proposal. To override the veto, we needed two-thirds of the House and the Senate to concur. We didn't get it for a simple reason, that Democrats did not have two-thirds of the seats in Congress. Next we tried to send another proposition to the President and gave the President a limited amount of money and tried to set another more flexible set of standards for proceeding with this war. That failed in the Senate. At that point, like it or not, we ran out of options for using this fiscal year 2007 supplemental to force a change in administration policy. On Friday we met with the administration and offered to drop all domestic items if the administration would accept meaningful benchmarks and timelines for ending our involvement in that civil war. They flatly refused. That leaves us with the Senate-passed plan, which sets a much weaker set of benchmarks than those passed by the House. It is clear we do not have the 60 votes necessary to end debate in the Senate and force a policy change on the administration by using the fiscal year 2007 supplemental. Because there are only months left in the fiscal year, no serious person can expect that it is possible to redeploy our troops during that time. So the question becomes, how do we continue to press for an end to our involvement in that war on a reasonable time frame? The proposition now before us shifts the debate to the President's budget request for the next fiscal year, which begins on October 1. Weak as it is, the Senate-adopted Warner amendment, with its 18 new benchmarks, at least does end the totally blank check that previous Congresses have provided. Weak as it is, it does at least give Members of Congress whose feet are not firmly planted in the status quo another opportunity to review the futile administration policy by establishing a requirement for two reports to the Congress, one in July and one in September. The proposal before us will mean that, in September, using the required reports, the Congress will have an opportunity to decide what course of action to take on this war. That decision will be just 4 months away. Meanwhile, we also insist that the President accept the fact that there are other pressing needs, to which we have an obligation to respond. This proposal contains a long overdue increase in the minimum wage for America's lowest-paid workers, a wage which may not bother many people in this Chamber but a wage which unconscionably has been frozen for a decade. It will contain $17 billion that the President did not want for added defense and veterans' health care, for BRAC, for military housing, for Homeland Security, for Katrina, drought relief and State Children's Health Insurance Program. Some items it should contain, it does not. For example, low-income heating, home energy assistance and funding for the pandemic flu. This proposition falls far short of containing everything that it should on both the Iraqi war and on our own domestic needs. But I take some comfort in the knowledge that even Babe Ruth struck out more than 1,300 times. But weak as it is, this proposition does provide a structure and a process to continue the fight, and it recognizes reality. I intend to vote against the first proposition that contains the President's military request and the Warner benchmarks because I believe they are far too weak, and I believe it is important to maximize the pressure on Iraqi politicians to compromise by having as many votes as possible for a stronger proposition. I expect to vote for the second proposition, which contains the minimum wage increase, and $17 billion of the $21 billion that we sought to respond to crucial national needs. This proposition will transfer the Iraqi fight to September on the President's fiscal 2008 defense supplemental request, and it will require a vote on a proposition that would require the funds appropriated to be used to redeploy troops on a responsible time schedule. I am sure we will also address the issue on Mr. Murtha's defense appropriation bill, on the regular bill that will come at us as we return from the Memorial Day recess. This proposition is apparently the best that we can achieve given the votes that we have. It is my hope that, when these votes occur in September, a firm majority in both Houses will see through the smokescreens being produced by the administration and send an unequivocal message to both the administration and Iraqi political leaders that our patience is over. Now, some news stories have said that Democrats have ``given up on the time line.'' That is patent nonsense. There has never been a chance of a snowball in Hades that Congress would cut off funding for troops in the field. Now, some people say to us, why don't you do what you did in Vietnam and simply cut off the funds even while the troops are in the field? Well, I've got news for you, that is not what the Congress did in Vietnam. I know; I was here. When Congress passed the Addabbo amendment, there were less than 500 American troops left in Vietnam. What the Addabbo amendment did was to cut off American aid to the South Vietnamese Government. Even if the Congress were to cut off aid to troops in the field, the President undoubtedly would not abide by that. He would simply assert his Commander in Chief authority to manage the troops any way he wanted, and we would be tied up challenging that in the court for months, long past the time period covered by the fiscal year 2007 supplemental which this legislation addresses. The last proposal we sent to the Senate attempted to limit the amount of money available to the President to 2 months' operating expenses, fencing the rest to try to force a policy change. All we are doing by this arrangement is to slip the timetable an additional 2 months from that proposal, shifting the debate from the 2007 supplemental to the 2008 supplemental. That means our Republican friends who continue to support the President on this misbegotten war will have to face votes in July and in September on the same issue. We are not giving up. We are simply recognizing that no one believes that it is possible, given the Senate's inability to produce 60 votes to shut down debate, to change course during the remainder of this fiscal year. That may not be a pleasant fact, but it is a reality. Opponents of the war need to face this fact just as the President and his allies need to face the fact that they are following a dead-end policy which we will continue to make every possible effort to change.

Mr. OBEY. Following are additional explanatory materials regarding the appropriations for the Department of Defense made by the House amendments to the Senate amendment to H.R. 2206. Department of Defense--Military