Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. The fact is that an earmark is something that is requested by an individual Member. This item was not requested by any individual Member; it was put in the bill by me. And it is there because we are simply doing the same thing with this facility that we are doing throughout the gulf coast, which is to make investments that mitigate against risk because of hurricanes. This is a valuable Federal facility, and it certainly does not pass any definition of earmark that I know. I know the gentleman wants to see earmarks in every closet that he can find, but the fact is it is not an earmark. It was not asked for by any Members of Congress.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. Mr. Speaker, the characterization just placed on the previous speaker is flat out wrong. Last night we had plenty of time for a lot of Members who didn't show up before the session expired. We called the gentleman from Ohio's office twice to inform him he had time available last night even though he was opposed to our position. He wasn't in a position to take it last night. So I would suggest that we have a different set of speakers today. We called on four Members of the caucus last night who were opposed to our position. And if the gentleman is suggesting that we have not called on Members who are opposed to our position, he is just flat out wrong.

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

Mr. OBEY. With all due respect, we called your office twice last night, and we were informed that you had already gone home.

Mr. OBEY. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks). (Mr. DICKS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey), the subcommittee Chair on Foreign Operations.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Mr. Skelton.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from California has quite a bit more time remaining. I suggest he run some off the clock.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price). (Mr. PRICE of North Carolina asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha), the chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. (Mr. MURTHA asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. I yield 1 minute to the distinguished majority leader, Mr. Hoyer.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands (Mrs. Christensen) for a unanimous consent request. (Mrs. CHRISTENSEN asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 4 minutes. Mr. Speaker, I understand that at the end of the debate the closing speech on the Republican side will be given by our good friend from Texas Mr. Johnson. I think everyone in this place respects him and loves him. I must say that having gone through this for the last 3 weeks trying to talk to each and every person who I could reach about this measure has given me a profound respect for a good many Members of this institution whom I had not known before, especially the newcomers. The caucus that we had this morning was one of the most moving experiences that I have ever felt in my 38 years in the Congress. I heard Member after Member stand up and discuss this issue as a matter of high principle; but they also discussed it in terms of what the impact of their votes would be, not on themselves, but on the people of this country, on the soldiers who are fighting in the field, on the people in Iraq, and on our country's ability to influence the world. This is a very tough issue. There are many considerations that each of us brings to this judgment, but in the end, I think we have a choice. As I said earlier today, we have a choice in determining what kind of Congress this is going to be. We can continue the practices of the past which rubberstamped virtually everything the President wanted on Iraqi policy. We can continue to do what he wants and only what he wants and only when he wants to do it and only in the way he wants to do it; or we can do what our Founding Fathers envisioned when they created the Congress. We can exercise checks and balances in order to try to move policy into a more constructive direction for this country. If you oppose this bill today, and if you take the position that all it should contain is what the President sent down, then you would be saying that you wanted to finance BRAC, the base-closing program, by gutting key education programs as the President recommends. You would be opposed to additional border security, additional port security and additional cargo security. You would be opposed to finally, after all of the horrendous pictures and all of the horrendous human suffering, you would be opposed to finally meeting our total obligations to the victims of Katrina. You would be opposed to asking for the money which the President himself asked that we provide in 2005 on an emergency basis to prepare this country to meet the pandemic flu epidemic which will surely at some time come. You would be opposing the additional $3.5 million that we have provided in this bill for veterans' health care and defense health care, and you would be opposing the timelines and the benchmarks which we place in this legislation, not because they are so perfect, but because they are the instrument by which we communicate to the Iraqi politicians that they must begin to resolve their differences, they must step up, because we are not going to run our baby-sitting service forever. It is imperative that we finally send that signal. The President cannot send that signal, but we can help General Petraeus. We can help our own government by sending the signal that this Congress is going to play bad cop until the Iraqis get the message. That is what Mr. Murtha's efforts have been about, that is what mine have been about, that's what the Speaker's efforts have been about, and that's what the efforts have been about by virtually every person in this caucus and this House who has had a say in what this bill was going to contain. I strongly urge an ``aye'' vote. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. The gentleman is entitled to his own opinions; he is not entitled to his own facts. There is nothing in this bill whatsoever that has anything to do with tropical fish, unless he thinks that Lake Erie is in the Tropics. Mr. Speaker, I yield 10 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha), the chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, how much time is remaining on both sides?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Speaker, I regret that the minority leader has chosen to trivialize one item in this bill, which represents our direct responsibility to people who work in the most outrageous conditions on Capitol Hill. Roll Call itself, in describing the funding that we have in this bill on the Capitol heating plant, which the majority leader just trivialized, wrote that ``what we have on our hands is a `horrific scandal'. The working environment for the 10-member Capitol tunnel shop team resembles that of hell.'' One of our own Republican colleagues in this House is mentioned in the editorial as describing the conditions in that heating plant as, quote, ``inhumane and unprofessional,'' and said of the tunnel workers, that they are ``probably going to end up dying because of their exposure to asbestos.'' The money in this bill is for cleaning up the asbestos problem, which people in that tunnel have to work in every day. I make no apology whatsoever for providing that funds. The minority leader ought to be standing side by side with us to meet our obligations to clean up that mess. I am surprised he doesn't recognize that. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Patrick J. Murphy).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, to close the debate I yield the remainder of our time to the distinguished Speaker of the House.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 261, I call up 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 yield myself 12 minutes. Mr. Speaker, why are we here? We are here because 4 years ago the President plunged us into a preemptive war in Iraq, a country that had not attacked the United States, and we took that action on the basis of bad information, manipulated intelligence, with no visible plans for governing after the war was over. Mr. Speaker, that attack diverted us from the hunt for bin Laden, the person who did attack us. The war has now gone on for 4 years and, as a result, we have seen chaos and carnage. We have seen over 3,000 American service men and women die, many times more wounded and maimed. We have seen our influence decimated throughout the Middle East. We have seen our reputation as the democratic hope of the world tarnished by stories about torture and rendition. I voted against that war. There were 215 Republicans who voted for it and 6 that voted against it. There were 81 Democrats who voted for it and 126 Democrats who voted against it. We had 132 votes, in total, against going to war. And ever since that time, we have been trying to get to 218 votes so we can turn this country and this war around. Over the last 4 years, this war has been fought with virtually no sense of shared sacrifice. Military families have done double and triple duty, while the rest of America has had to accept the sacrifice of a tax cut. That is about all that has been asked of most Americans. We have spent a huge amount of our national treasure, and now the President is asking for another almost $100 billion for this war and asking for an additional $3.5 billion for his own domestic priorities. This bill is our response. It says to the President: ``Okay, you can have that money, but only under certain terms and conditions.'' And we try to do three things: number one, to redirect a greater effort to the right war in Afghanistan, rather than the wrong war in Iraq. Secondly, we try to protect our troops to the maximum extent possible and correct the neglect that they have suffered as they have returned from the battlefield. And, thirdly, we are trying to send a message to Iraq politicians that they need to change direction; that we will no longer tolerate an open-ended, interminable babysitting job; that they must get together and begin to resolve their own differences. This bill sets a timetable for repositioning our troops out of Iraq. The exact timetable will be determined by the performance of the Iraqis and whether or not they meet important political and military benchmarks. And this bill establishes a target for finishing our redeployment in any circumstance. It recognizes that our troops won the war, but it also recognizes that the President's plan calls upon troops to do something that they do not have the power to do, namely, to convince Iraqi factions to reach reasonable compromises on their own turf. It sets reasonable conditions for moving our troops into a different posture. It holds Iraqis accountable to standards that the President himself has laid out. And it puts us on a new direction with respect to the war in Iraq. And it does some other things, too. It completes action on a number of leftover pieces of business that the previous Congress left to this new incoming Congress. The President himself asked for $3.4 billion to deal with the needs of FEMA. We are also finishing action on the BRAC action which requires $3.1 billion in additional funding. We are finishing action on the need to improve family military housing to the tune of $3.4 billion. We are finishing action on rebuilding the lives and providing other assistance to the Katrina victims after the most devastating natural disaster in the history of our country. We are finishing the action on the agriculture disaster problem that Congress wrestled with for well over a year in the previous Congress without coming to resolution. And we are providing the final $1 billion in funds to combat a potential pandemic flu, funds which the President himself requested in an emergency appropriation in the year 2005. And we are also finishing action on the action begun last year by the Congress in trying to deal with the fact that 14 States are going to run out of child health money; and we need, therefore, to provide $750 million to see to it that low-income families and children in low- income families are not pushed off those State health care rolls. This is a request that has come in from Republican and Democratic Governors alike. And we have also provided some additional funding, above what the President asked for, items which are not last year's business, but which we think are important in terms of this year's business. We are increasing funding for veterans health and defense health by $3.4 billion. We are, on the homeland security front, increasing funding substantially. The President, since days after 9/11, has been resisting virtually every congressional effort to add funding for homeland security, for border security, for cargo security and the like. We are continuing the effort to provide significantly more money than the President has asked for. If anybody wants to argue with that, I would suggest they take it up with the 9/11 Commission. I would suggest they take it up with the Hart-Rudman Commission. I would suggest they take it up with the 9/11 families. Everybody but Anne Coulter, I think, would be responsive to what those families think. And then we are also providing $1.2 billion in additional funding for our war in Afghanistan. Mr. Speaker, I sat at CIA headquarters and watched, right after 9/11, as our predator aircraft were searching Afghanistan for bin Laden. And I know what the people at that agency were saying when they expressed their frustration that the President was diverting a huge share of our resources in the hunt for bin Laden to prepare for the unilateral attack on Iraq. What this bill is trying to do is to correct that by, again, refocusing additional attention on the war against Afghanistan. And I make absolutely no apology for the funds that we have in here. Now, some will say this is not a perfect instrument. They will differ with the time line that we have for the repositioning of troops, and they will differ with the benchmarks. But what I would say to them is that what is important in this document today is not the exact wording. What is important is not the exact timetable. What is important is not the exact enumeration of benchmarks. What is important is that, for the first time, this Congress will be exercising its constitutional responsibilities to provide real oversight on the executive branch of government, and we will be trying to set this country on a new direction. Someone in this House said last week that we are similar in our position to a board of directors for a corporation. He said the President is the CEO. The President's Cabinet represents his management team, and we are the board of directors. And when a board of directors of a corporation sees that the management of the corporation is leading it down a disastrous path, it has a fiduciary responsibility to its stockholders to step in and correct the problem. That is what we are trying to do in this legislation. In this case, we have a fiduciary responsibility and a representational responsibility to the taxpayers and to our constituents, and we are trying to meet that responsibility today. Now, there are some who have criticized us for doing so, some in newspapers and some on this floor. Very frankly, I am getting a bit tired of those who were consistently wrong from the beginning on the issue of Iraq, I am getting tired of them lecturing those of us who were consistently right from the beginning in our opposition to this war. And when people ask me why we don't have a better solution, I tell them of the old story about Eddie Stanky, who used to play second base for the New York Giants many years ago. And one day, Leo Durocher, the manager, was hitting ground balls to the infield, and Stanky dropped two in a row. And so Durocher grabbed a glove and said, ``Here, kid, I'm going to show you how it's done.'' And he went out to second base, and the very first ball Durocher dropped. And he turned to Stanky, and said, ``Kid, you got second base so screwed up, nobody can play it.'' The fact is, if you substitute George Bush for Eddie Stanky and Iraq for second base, you have got the picture of what the problem is today. Now, this Congress cannot run foreign policy, but it has an obligation to try to influence the policy and influence the conduct of that policy when we see it headed down the wrong path. Mr. Murtha has tried to lead the way in seeing to it that we face up to those responsibilities, and this legislation will give us an opportunity to do that. I would hope it would be supported on a bipartisan basis. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.