Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, let me simply say that this motion is very simple. It simply removes the provision in this bill which fences almost $50 billion pending the three reports from the President that we have talked about for the last hour. The effect of it is to give the President every dollar he wants, no questions asked, no oversight, no review, no nothing. It is a blank check, and it guts the bill, and I would urge a ``no'' vote. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, if you remove the fencing, you remove all pressure for policy change. That's the last thing we ought to want to do. If you vote for this motion, it is an endorsement of the status quo. I urge a ``no'' vote.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 387, I call up the bill (H.R. 2207) making supplemental appropriations for agricultural and other emergency assistance for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2007, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration.

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 H.R. 2207.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 8 minutes. Mr. Speaker, in the bill which the President vetoed last week, in addition to funding for the troops in Iraq, we provided funding for a number of other high-priority purposes. We provided additional funding above the President's request for veterans' health care, something which the President did not want. We added additional funding to defend the country against a potential epidemic from the pandemic flu virus that our scientists are concerned about. The President asked for that money 3 years ago, but this time around said he didn't want it in the bill. The President said he did not want to see the money that we put in the bill for homeland security and a variety of other programs. It seemed to me the administration took special pleasure in also objecting to the fact that we had agricultural disaster funding in the bill and that we had the funding in the bill to respond to the court decision on western salmon and we also had funding in the bill to deal with Western school programs that had been allowed to lapse by the previous Congress and several other provisions like that. The President said that those programs didn't belong in this bill because they weren't emergencies. Well, in fact, I think the President had it backwards because what the President seemed to suggest is that the only legitimate funding for an emergency appropriation would be for the war in Iraq. In fact, the war in Iraq should not be funded at all as an emergency appropriation. After all, it has been around for more than 4 years, despite the President's landing on that aircraft carrier. And the fact is that the President, in order to hide the full cost of the war, asked for that war to be funded in 11 different slices. Those funds should have been provided in regular appropriation bills, not in supplementals. So it is the President who has the usual practice figured out just backwards. We didn't object to dealing with the Iraqi problem, and we would appreciate it if he would not object to dealing with other legitimate emergency problems. The President seemed to suggest, in his veto message, that we didn't have the courage to deal with the agriculture and other related issues alone, that we had to slip them in, so to speak, in the Iraq bill. And, frankly, that got my dander up. And so now that we are back in the second bill, I have insisted that when the House votes on this matter tonight that we vote on it separately to demonstrate to the President that there is support in both parties, I believe, for dealing with some of these issues, especially with the agriculture problem. Now, I didn't declare 70 percent of the counties in this country to be disaster areas. The President did. The Congress has an obligation not to ignore those declarations and act accordingly, and that is what we are trying to do. So very simply, we are going to have these votes tonight, and I am glad that we are. There are two items that are not in the bill that should be in the bill. One is spinach. When the President vetoed the bill, his administration made a lot of fun of the fact that we had funding for spinach in the bill. Well, there is no spinach in my district, but let me tell you why we had that funding. Nobody was laughing a year ago when people were deathly sick because they had consumed spinach that was contaminated with E. coli, and then the Federal Government went to spinach growers and asked that they take their products off the shelf voluntarily, and when they did that, that cost those spinach growers a lot of money. Now, I have heard a lot of conservatives and liberals alike in this House complain and cry and whine all over the floor when the government engages in an uncompensated taking from a private citizen. Well, if you tell an industry that they can't collect for their product after they have been asked by the government to take it off the market even though 99 percent of that spinach was perfectly safe, then what have you done? You have engaged in an uncompensated taking. Now, that may not bother many people in a city like Washington, D.C., where a lot of people look down their noses at anything rural, but the fact is that farmers are entitled and spinach growers are entitled to the same kind of consideration any other economic group would have in this country. The second thing that isn't in here is funding for Great Lakes fishery problems. We had several Members of the minority party make fun of the bill 2 weeks ago because they claimed we had money in the bill for tropical fish. Well, I want to tell you what we had in the bill. The Federal Government discovered last year that fisheries in the Great Lakes, especially in Lake Michigan, that fish were being found with a disease called viral hemorrhagic septicemia. It does to fish what ebola does to human beings. It is a bloody problem. And that problem, if left unchecked, has the potential to destroy the entire Great Lakes fisheries. That is an 8 to $9 billion annual business. So what we tried to do was to simply recognize the plight of a few commercial fish growers who were told by the government they could not ship their product across State lines because it would endanger the entire fisheries, and so they complied. The irony was under the law if the fish produced by those farmers had been diseased, they could have collected from the government, but because those fish were healthy, they couldn't. So they were stuck in a catch-22 situation. We tried to fund that, and we got laughed off the screen because the demogogues in this institution and demogogues on the other end of the avenue made fun of a problem that is a very serious environmental problem. We have taken that item out of the bill, too, simply because there is only so much bowl gravy that you can counter in a political debate. So we are left with the bare bones proposition that deals with legitimate problems faced by farmers and faced by Western States with respect to wildfires and the other problems funded in this bill. So I am happy we finally are going to have an opportunity to vote on these items standing alone. I urge an ``aye'' vote. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished chairwoman of the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, Ms. DeLauro.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Let me keep it short and sweet, Mr. Speaker. Let me simply point out that the items contained in this bill are not new add-ons. They are essentially items that clean up and finish last year's unfinished business. That is certainly the case with agriculture disaster. It is certainly the case with rural schools, a program which the previous Congress allowed to lapse. It is certainly the case with western wildfire, and it is certainly the case with the western fisheries' issues which the Congress of last year should have dealt with but didn't. I ask for an ``aye'' vote on the bill.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion to recommit.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, this motion is really quite interesting. What it says is that the same folks who want to spend $57 billion on tax cuts on millionaires this year, all paid for with borrowed money, the same folks who are comfortable with the idea that we have got over a trillion dollars in unfunded tax cuts, all paid for with borrowed money, the same folks that want us to spend, no questions asked, at least $600 billion in a sad, sad war in Iraq, these folks have suddenly gotten religion, and they now have a motion that says they would like to see this bill be deficit neutral. What that mean is they are going to ask the farmers of America to bear the full weight of deficit reduction in this bill. This is simply a device to kill the bill because instead of asking that the bill be reported forthwith, it asks that the bill be reported promptly. That, as you know, is code language for killing the bill. I don't think I need to say anything further. If you want to provide the funding in this bill, you will vote against this motion to recommit. If you care about the farmers, if you care about the western wildfire problem, if you want to meet our obligation to the parts of the country that generally get stiffed and ignored, then you vote against the motion to recommit. If you care about these folks, you will vote against the motion to recommit. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, for purposes of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis), and pending that I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, this issue before us is the kind of issue that the Congress was designed to deal with. This Congress exists today because in 1215, almost 800 years ago, our forefathers many times removed, by adopting the Magna Carta, established for the first time in the English-speaking world the principle that the monarch was not unilaterally sovereign. That expression wound up being turned into a reality for our country in 1789, when the Constitution of the United States was adopted. That Constitution created three coequal branches of government. It gave this body, the legislative body, the Congress, the ability to declare war. It certainly gave us the obligation to oversee the conduct of war. It gave us the obligation to oversee the use of taxpayers' money in dealing not just with war, but with every other issue as well. The President yesterday vetoed the legislation now before us, which, for the first time, had he chosen to use it, would have given him the opportunity to have an exit strategy for a war that has brought incredible frustration and agony not just on the people of Iraq, but the people of our own country. Now, the President has told the public that he is ``the decider.'' Well, he is a very important decider, but he is not the only decider in a democratic form of government. The ultimate deciders are our constituents, and we are elected to speak on their behalf and to participate in that decisionmaking. That is what the Congress did when it passed this legislation through both Houses. I regret very much that the President did not use this legislation to establish a bipartisan approach to the war which has plagued us now for more than 4 years. As we all know, yesterday was the fourth anniversary of the President's landing on that aircraft carrier under the banner ``Mission Accomplished'' and telling us that our troops had fulfilled their mission. Indeed, they had; our troops won the war in Iraq, but it is the White House, in its pursuit of its Iraqi policy, it is the civilian leadership of the Pentagon which systematically, especially in the early days, ignored the judgment of the military that has brought us to the chaos that we see in Iraq today. Now, the legislation before us attempted to do a number of things. It attempted to meet the financial needs of the budget in supplying our troops with everything that they need. Secondly, it attempted to hold the administration accountable and to hold the Iraqi Government accountable for the actions that they have taken. And thirdly, it was meant to provide the beginnings of an exit strategy from that civil war. The President has decided to veto that legislation, and the question before us now is whether we will override that veto or not. The President said in his veto message yesterday that we had all too many so-called nonrelated items in this bill, along with funding for the troops in Iraq. I don't believe that the American people would agree with the President that $1.8 billion for veterans health care, $3.3 billion for defense health programs, $2.2 billion for additional Homeland Security initiatives, $6.9 billion for Katrina recovery, $663 million to protect the country from the ravages of a potential world flu pandemic, or $650 million to prevent kids from losing health insurance is unnecessary funding. I think the American public recognizes each of those as a legitimate expenditure of public funds. I also think that the President has focused so much attention on those items simply to divert public attention from the fact that this bill is first, last and foremost about the war. It is about how we get our troops out of the war. It is how we send a message to the Iraqi politicians that our troops cannot be expected to accomplish the compromises that only they can reach if that war is to be brought to a conclusion. Mr. Speaker, I would urge every Member of this House, regardless of party, to vote to override the President's veto. And I would point out to the President that we already have provided for two major compromises in this legislation. When we first established the Murtha principles for unit readiness, the White House objected. And so we said, all right, we'll change that, we will give the White House a waiver. When the White House objected to the timetable that we laid out for withdrawal of our troops from that civil war, again we compromised, and we said we will keep as hard deadlines the deadlines by which we must begin that process of redeploying troops, but we made the end date for the actual withdrawal of our troops from combat in a civil war, we made those dates extremely flexible in response to the President's views. So we have already compromised on two very major items in this bill. Now that the President has laid down his veto, it seems to me that he has an obligation to lay on the table what compromises he is willing to make in order to bring us together in pursuit of an exit strategy from a war that we should never have gotten into in the first place. With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. LEWIS OF California. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 4 minutes to the gentlelady from Florida.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the distinguished Speaker of the House.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1\1/2\ minutes. The gentleman expresses his concern about funding designated as emergency spending. In fact, I would point out that the President himself asked for the antiflu money that we put in this bill. The President himself asked for that money 2 years ago as an emergency request. I would also note, since he has expressed concern about our micromanaging the war, I would simply say we have had the administration providing us with bad intelligence. We have had the administration demonstrating bad judgment in saying we would be welcomed with open arms. We have had them demonstrate bad judgment in ignoring General Shinseki's warnings about the number of troops that would be needed to pacify a postwar Iraq. We have seen bad judgment in the President's refusal to talk to the Syrians and the Iranians. We have seen bad judgment all across the board for the last 4 years. It seems to me that we are badly in need of having some kind of management to that war, and if it is not going to come from the executive branch, then the only alternative is for the Congress to express its views. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland, the majority leader, Mr. Hoyer.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Welch).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. I would simply point out to the gentleman who just spoke that the bill before us specifically allows our troops to continue to go after al Qaeda in Iraq, even after they are repositioned out of fighting that miserable civil war. I would also simply say, the gentleman asks ``What do you think al Qaeda thinks.'' I think al Qaeda wants us to stay in Iraq. It is clear from the beginning that they were happy that we went there, that we got sucked in there, because we have served as a recruiting poster for al Qaeda. That is what al Qaeda thinks.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 20 seconds. I would also observe that our soldiers don't have the power to require Iraqi politicians to quit killing each other and make the diplomatic and political compromises necessary to end this civil war. Only Iraqi politicians have that, and we are trying to send them a message with this bill. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews). (Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton).

Mr. OBEY. We are ready for our summary statement.

Mr. OBEY. Absolutely.

Mr. OBEY. I would simply say that I appreciate the work that the staff has done on both sides of the aisle, and the work that they will continue to do. It's going to be a long time before this issue is disposed of. I appreciate the fact that they worked, literally, night and day to bring us to this point.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman who just spoke said that withdrawing from Iraq will destabilize the Middle East. The President's policy has already destabilized the Middle East. He says that this policy endorses failure. The fact is that the only endorsement of failure comes on the part of those who will vote to continue the President's existing policy, because the President's policy in Iraq has been a 4-year failure. We need a change in direction. The only question about the President's policy is whether it will produce a disaster or whether it will produce a catastrophe, and I am afraid it will produce the latter. Mr. Speaker, I now yield the remainder of my time to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha).