Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 332, I call up the conference report on the bill (H.R. 1591) making emergency supplemental appropriations 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 and include tabular and extraneous material on the conference report to accompany H.R. 1591.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 9 minutes. Mr. Speaker, this bill gives the President the exit strategy from the Iraqi civil war that up until now he has not had. Next Tuesday will be the fourth anniversary of the President's ``Mission Accomplished'' landing on that famous aircraft carrier. On that date, U.S. troops had won the war in Iraq, but since that time the administration's mismanagement, their misjudgments, and their missed opportunities have entangled us in a quagmire that has become a prolonged civil war. That civil war has gutted our influence in the Middle East and much of the world. In the last 4 years, the administration has spent over half a trillion dollars. It has stretched the Army to the limit, brought our Guard and Reserve to the breaking point, and reduced our military to the lowest state of military readiness in modern history. The President has refused to finance this war through the normal appropriations process. He has chosen to mask the true cost of the war by paying for it on the installment plan through a series of supplemental requests. He has now requested another supplemental of almost another $100 billion in military spending, and almost $4 billion in other additional spending. The bill before us today is our response. We provide $4 billion more than the President asked for for troops in the field. The President is objecting on two grounds. First, he does not like the conditions we have placed on funding for the war. Second, he objects to the money we have added for other crucial activities. He calls it ``pork.'' So do some of the charter members of the ``Invent Your Own Facts Club'' that seems to populate this institution. We have provided $4 billion more than he has asked for for operation and maintenance for personnel costs and for procurement. We have provided $750 million more than he asked for for Afghanistan. We have provided $2.2 billion more for military health to meet the medical needs of our returning soldiers. We have added $1.8 billion for veterans health care above the amount the President asked for. We have provided $2.2 billion more for aviation security, port security, and border security. We have provided $80 million more for nuclear nonproliferation, and we have added $150 million for the FBI. We have provided $650 million more than the President asked for for the pandemic flu emergency, cleaning up an action that last year's Congress never got around to completing. We have provided $3.3 billion more for Katrina, again cleaning up some more business that last year's Congress failed to complete. We have also provided $3.1 billion more for BRAC which the administration itself asked for in its budget last year. We provided $500 million for wild land fires, the same amount put into the same account by the Republican majority 2 years ago for the same purposes. We have added $400 million to low income heating assistance because the previous Congress cut that by $1 billion. We should have added back the whole billion dollars, but in the interest of saving money we confined it to $400 million. We have added $425 million to continue the rural school payments in the West that the last Congress never got around to renewing. Unfortunately, they allowed that program to expire, as they allowed so many other things to expire last year. We have also provided $3.5 billion for agriculture disaster, again an issue which has been hanging around for more than a year. The President has declared more than 70 percent of the counties in this country to be agriculture disaster areas. There ought to be some action that flows from that unless we are taking the President's initial action to be meaningless. We have also provided $396 million in SCHIP to make certain that low income children and low income families don't fall off the State health care rolls. We have been asked to do that by bipartisan Governors from 14 States. If the President wants to object to those items and call them pork, or of members of the flat earth club in this body want to call it pork, that's fine with me; I think the public will look at those issues somewhat differently. The President is attacking these additional items as a smoke screen to obscure the fact that the key issue on this bill is whether or not there will be a change in direction with respect to our policy in Iraq. This bill supports the troops. It begins to hold Iraq and the administration accountable, and it points the way to ending our involvement in a protracted civil war. As a condition of providing the President with the funds he has asked for, we require that our American military units meet certain standards that are known as the Murtha standards. They simply require that any unit sent into battle be fully combat ready. They would require, as the Defense Department already has for the most part, they would require that any unit that has been in Iraq does not have to stay there for more than a year without relief, and they also require that if they are sent back, they get to spend at least a year at home before they go back. And in an era where no one is being asked to sacrifice except military families, it seems to me those are all minimum goals that we all ought to be willing to adhere to. Because the President rejected these requirements, we have given him the right to waive these requirements, but only if he spells out to the country why he has departed from them. That is imminently reasonable. He owes the country that explanation. We require that Iraq meet certain performance benchmarks, benchmarks that were first laid out by the President himself, and we tie those benchmarks to a timeline. If those benchmarks are met, redeployment of U.S. troops must begin by July 1. If they are not met, they must begin by October. Those dates are firm. The goal for completing such redeployment is 6 months after it starts. Now, the President objects to the fact that we are setting timelines, but the Secretary of Defense himself was quoted in the Washington Post as noting that these timelines, in fact, have helped give the Iraqis a message that we are not going to stay in Iraq forever. We stand by them. We believe these benchmarks and these timelines are necessary in order to give General Petraeus the ability to make clear to the Iraqis that we are not going to stay there forever, while they refuse to make the political compromises necessary to end the civil war. Iraqis and the President must understand our troops won the war. They cannot achieve the political and diplomatic compromises that are needed to end the civil war, only the Iraqis can do that. Four years after ``mission accomplished'' is long enough, Mr. Speaker. If the President were here I would simply say to him, ``Mr. President, with this bill we have compromised on two fronts. We have responded to your objection to the Murtha principles by giving you the ability to waive them; all you have to do is explain why to the country.'' We have responded to his concerns about those timelines by adjusting them and making them somewhat more flexible in terms of their completion. So I would say to the President if he were here, ``Mr. President, it is your turn; we need a new direction and we need it now. Please do not say, as you said last week'' I will talk but I will not compromise. ``Mr. President, after 4 years, you need to change the direction. You need to sign this bill.'' Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the following tabular material reflecting the funding levels in the conference report. 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Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished Speaker of the House.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey), the Chair of the Foreign Operations appropriations subcommittee.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the distinguished majority leader.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Kilpatrick).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Scott).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Murphy.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Speaker, I would simply say in response to the previous speaker, last session your party couldn't even pass a budget. Last session your party couldn't complete action on a single domestic appropriation bill. You may not like the decisions we have made, but at least we have made them. And we have had to spend the first 30 days of this session finishing the work that you could never manage to get around to. So I suggest you look to your own house before you start criticizing somebody who has at least gotten the work done that you couldn't get done last year.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I simply want to take this time to thank the staff on both sides of the aisle. They worked overtime for many days and many nights, and I appreciate it very much, especially the committee staff director, Rob Nabors. I would also simply say that we have heard twice now from the minority that this bill endorses failure. Not at all. What we have seen the last 4 years is a failure of intelligence. We have seen a failure of the administration to listen to career military. We have seen a failure to plan for the occupation of Iraq. We have seen a failure on the part of the administration to give the Congress accurate information. We have seen a failure to focus on al Qaeda and Afghanistan rather than being diverted to Iraq. We have seen a failure to understand the nature of the civil war in Iraq. And as a result, we have seen a tremendous collapse of American influence in the world. It is tragic. I urge an ``aye'' vote for the resolution. Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to Mr. Murtha.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to clause 1 of rule XXII and by direction of the Committee on Appropriations, I move to take from the Speaker's table the bill (H.R. 1591) making emergency supplemental appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2007, and for other purposes, with a Senate amendment thereto, disagree to the Senate amendment, and agree to the conference asked by the Senate.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I have to tell you, some days it is very interesting to watch what happens in a place like this. This is the most serious issue that this Congress will confront this year, and this motion is addressing that issue in the most unserious manner possible. This motion is presented by the distinguished ranking minority member of the committee, and then he says he is going to vote against his own motion. I would like for a moment to remind the body of what this House is supposed to be. The core purpose of this Congress, the main reason for its existence is to deal with issues like this. Today, the United States Congress is supposedly regarded as the greatest deliberative body in the world. We exist today, if we remember our history, we exist today because almost 800 years ago our British forefathers placed the first limitation on the absolute use of executive power in the history of the English speaking world when they forced the English monarch to sign the Magna Carta. Over 500 years later, that evolved into the United States Constitution, which created three branches of government, with checks and balances designed to prevent arbitrary and unilateral exercise of unchecked executive power in order to protect liberty. Because of that Constitution, and under the procedures defined by that Constitution, we are here in the fifth year of a war which this country was led into under false premises. And we are debating how the Congress should respond to the President's escalation and intensification of our involvement in an Iraqi civil war. We are also debating his request for another hundred billion dollars to continue that war. He is also asking for billions of dollars in additional spending for other domestic and international activities, including flood control, nutrition programs, education and cultural exchanges, disease control in Southeast Asia, and salaries for U.S. marshals. The majority of both Houses have voted to try to bring about a change in direction in that war. We believe, at least those of us who supported the bill two weeks ago, we believe that our soldiers won the war that they were asked to wage, but that it is unrealistic to expect them to do something that they have no power to do, which is to force Iraqi politicians to make political compromises necessary to end the carnage in that country. By this bill, we are attempting to put enough pressure on those Iraqi politicians and those Iraqi factions to make the compromises necessary to allow our troops to end their involvement in that civil war. And to do that, we have in the legislation now before us conditioned our continued presence in Iraq on Iraq's meeting certain performance benchmarks, which were first laid out by the President himself. This motion, which has now been offered by the gentleman, is an example, I think, of people falling off both sides of the same horse at the same time because we have people who say they don't want us to put limits on the President's conduct of the war, now insisting that in fact we adhere to the very proposals that we passed just 2 weeks ago. I want to say that this is, I think, despite the fact that it is an unserious motion, I intend to accept it because it is simply, in essence, a re-vote of what the House committed itself to 2 weeks ago. The reason we have timelines in this bill is because we want to give General Petraeus the ability to use Congress as sort of a bad cop/good cop routine in order to convey to the Iraqi politicians that they must resolve their differences if they expect us to remain there for any significant length of time at all. There is no way that we can create that kind of pressure on Iraqi politicians unless we maintain the proposals that we made in this House bill. The President wants none of these limitations to pass. I find it interesting that people who say that we should proceed to compromise are now offering a motion which in essence tells us not to compromise. In the end, we know that both sides are going to have to compromise; but in the interest of getting us to conference so that we can begin that long arduous process, which I fear will take many months, I am going to accept the motion of the gentleman, even though I regard it as a very quaint way to move to a position of compromise between the President and the Congress. Mr. Speaker, with that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished chairman of the defense appropriations subcommittee, Mr. Murtha.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Speaker, I think that we need to understand what this war has really done. This war has gutted our influence in the Middle East, it's gutted our influence in the world, it's divided our own country, and it's united our enemies. Outside of that, it's been a terrific idea. Our troops won the war clearly, cleanly, and quickly. But now they are stuck in a civil war. And as the gentleman from Pennsylvania points out, the only solution to that civil war is a political and diplomatic compromise, and there are no American soldiers who can get that done. Although it certainly isn't intended to do it, this motion in fact carries out the comments made by Secretary of Defense Gates, who testified before our committee, before Mr. Murtha's subcommittee, that the war was militarily unwinnable, that it could only be won on the political and diplomatic front. In fact, The Washington Post carried this paragraph this morning. It said: ``Secretary Robert Gates told reporters traveling with him in the Middle East that congressional demands for withdrawal had been constructive. `The strong feelings expressed in Congress about the timetable probably had a positive impact, in terms of communicating to the Iraqis that this is not an open ended commitment,' Gates said.'' When the bill was before us the first time, our Republican friends did not bother to offer a recommital motion. Why? Because they were divided about how to proceed. They could reach no agreement. They had no policy. Now they are offering a motion which they say they are going to vote against. Is that the best they can do? We have heard talk about a surrender date. The only surrender that is involved here today is the surrender of the obligation of this Congress to oversee Presidential and executive branch policy. The only surrender is the total surrender of our obligation and our authority to a White House that has demonstrated from day one that it had not a clue of what it was getting into, and it today has not a clue about how to get out. We have to provide better leadership than that, and that is what this bill before us tries to do. I would urge support for the gentleman's motion.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished majority leader, Mr. Hoyer. (Mr. HOYER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

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

Mr. OBEY. Then let me yield myself 2 minutes before the gentleman closes. Mr. Speaker, 2 nights ago I was watching the Public Television series on the Iraq War, and I saw one of the gentlemen who is generally regarded as being one of the intellectual architects of that war, Richard Perle, say the following: ``We do not leave the battlefield with the first casualty.'' I would simply note that an awful lot of people who have never seen a battlefield or been anywhere near one seem to be awfully anxious to make that kind of a statement. When I heard that comment, I was reminded of a comment of my old friend, the philosopher, Archie the Cockroach, who said once that there is always a comforting thought in time of trouble when it's somebody else's trouble. But as the gentleman from Pennsylvania has pointed out, there has been no sense of shared sacrifice in this country over this war. The only sacrifice most Americans are being asked to undergo is to take a tax cut. Well, it seems to me that we ought to start asking whether it is right and indeed whether it is moral to allow a tiny band of American citizenry, military families, to bear the entire burden of this war that so many noncombatants seem to be so enthusiastic about. It seems to me we need to bring about a different policy that will indeed have equal sacrifice. There are a lot of people who are apparently willing to fight to the last drop of somebody else's blood. I think it is time for that to stop. We, on this side of the aisle, choose to take seriously the gentleman's motion, even though he himself indicates he does not intend to take his own motion seriously because he intends to vote against it. I would urge that every Member on this side of the aisle, and I hope on the other side, would take this motion with the deadly seriousness that it deserves. Because lives are at stake. They are the lives of innocent Iraqis and they are the lives of innocent American troops who are simply being asked to carry out a policy which is increasingly futile. I urge an ``aye'' vote on the gentleman's motion. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 1591.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 10 minutes. Yesterday, a number of Members on the Republican side of the aisle sought to belittle the legislation before us because, in addition to funding the needs of the troops in Iraq, it contains money to address a number of domestic priorities. To ridicule that legislation, they tried to belittle items such as funding for levees in New Orleans, and agriculture disaster payments. In that they have been joined by editorial writers at papers such as the Washington Post. Like the Post, the Republican speakers of yesterday indicated that their main objection to this legislation is the way it tries to create pressure to end our military involvement in an Iraq civil war. Those speakers and the Washington Post editorial writers make no effort to understand why these additional items are there. They simply ridicule them for their own purposes. This bill has my name on it, and I take full responsibility for each and every item in the bill. Despite the comments of my good friend from California suggesting that if I could have written this bill, it would have been quite different, this is not a bill that was imposed from Nancy Pelosi's Speaker's Office. Oh, yes, she was consulted. But every last provision in this bill was not included until I personally approved of it, and I take full responsibility for it. I want to be very clear about some of the items that the editorial writers and certain Members of this House have been criticizing. Let's start with agriculture. I haven't voted for a farm bill in the last 10 years because I believe that existing farm programs provide way too much funding for large farmers and way too little funding for family farmers. But the fact is that over the past 2 years, over 70 percent of the counties in this country were declared disaster areas, not by me, but by the President of the United States. That entitles farmers who have suffered that weather-related disaster to certain forms of compensation. The previous Congress tried to work its way through that problem for well over a year and failed. We at one time this year were looking at a bill in the Senate costing $6 billion. Thanks to the efforts of Chairman Peterson on this side of the Capitol, the cost of those agriculture disaster programs have been cut by one-third, by tightening up eligibility requirements. I applaud him for making those changes. There is a second criticism being made about the fact that there is some money in here for dairy. You bet there is. Because under the Republican stewardship, during the last Congress, or two Congresses ago, actually, in order to use an accounting gimmick, the then majority on the Agriculture Committee arranged to have the dairy program expire one month before every other farm program. That was done only for budget fiction purposes, to hide the true cost of the farm bill 5 years ago. You bet, in this legislation there is a 1-month fix so that when we go into writing the next farm bill, dairy will have a chance to compete with other farm programs. I find the Washington Post criticism of this especially interesting, since they often squawk about the fact that farm programs give too much to large farmers. The MILC Program happens to focus on small farmers, which is why so many big farmers don't like the program. I make no apology for recognizing that is an inequity that needs to be fixed. Then we have a squawk about spinach. Let me tell you why spinach is in here. You can laugh about it now, but people were dying last year because of an E. coli outbreak. Now, the FDA did not have the authority to require mandatory recalls of spinach. What some of these companies did, despite the fact that their product was clean, they voluntarily withdrew their product from the market. That cost them a bundle and brought a lot of people to near bankruptcy. I have heard a lot of conservatives on this floor talk about how outrageous it is when the government engages in an unconstitutional taking. They usually are talking in terms of land or environment. Doesn't the government that required or that asked these people to participate in the withdrawal in order to protect public health, doesn't that government have an obligation to people who exercise their patriotic duty and did what they were asked? I think they do. That is why this is in here. Then they are squawking about aquaculture. Well, let me explain why that item is in the bill. In eight States in the union, fish farmers woke up one morning and discovered that the Federal Government had issued an edict which prevented them from transferring their product across State lines because lake trout, in the Great Lakes region, had been discovered to have viral hemorrhagic septicemia, a highly virulent fish disease. If it was allowed to get into lakes, in the Great Lakes, it could have ruined the entire fish supply. So, the government said you can't sell your fish across State lines. Again, the problem was that the fish that they were prohibited from shipping across State lines was all healthy. In a catch-22 situation, if their fish had been diseased, they could have collected under disaster programs. But because they were healthy, they couldn't collect. So the government put those people out of business. Does the government have an obligation to correct that problem? You better bet you they do. That is why it is in this bill. There are some other items in the bill as well that people don't like. But the main frustration on the part of the opponents of this bill is because people don't like the way that we are going about trying to end our military participation in an Iraqi civil war. Let me submit to you the problem we have today is not that we didn't listen enough to people like the Washington Post, it is that we listened too much. They endorsed going to war in the first place. They helped drive the drumbeat that drove almost two-thirds of the people in this Chamber to vote for that misbegotten, stupid, ill-advised war that has destroyed our influence over a third of the world. So I make no apology if the moral sensibilities of some people on this floor, or the editorial writers of the Washington Post, are offended because they don't like the specific language contained in our benchmarks or in our timelines. What matters in the end is not what the specific language is. What matters is whether or not we produce a product today that puts pressure on this administration and sends a message to Iraq, to the Iraqi politicians, that we are going to end the permanent, long-term babysitting service. That is what we are trying to do. If the Washington Post is offended about the way we do it, that is just too bad. But we are in the arena, they are not. This is the best we can do, given the tools we have, and I make absolutely no apology for it. I would say one thing, those of us who voted against the war in the first place wouldn't have nearly as hard a time getting us out of the war if people like the Washington Post and those who criticized us on the floor yesterday hadn't supported going into that stupid war in the first place Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield for a unanimous consent request to the gentleman from Texas. (Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Speaker, let me simply say that we could do as the distinguished speaker has indicated and simply rubber-stamp what the administration asks for and do nothing else. But the fact is, what we are doing is exercising our responsibilities to provide checks and balances; Congress has every right to limit the terms and conditions under which appropriations are made, especially in wartime. I would also point out that lest there be any doubt for the support of the troops, in addition to all of the funding that Mr. Murtha has put in his section of the bill to meet the everyday combat and readiness needs of the troops, we have $1.7 billion above the President's request for veterans health care; we have another $1.7 billion above the President's request for defense health care. I think that makes quite clear that if you are concerned about the troops and concerned about the veterans, you will vote for this bill. I will now yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards).