Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, my views on this bill are well known, as well as the provisions in it. I think the report speaks for itself.

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, the President said in December of 2004 that the intelligence bill, ``took an important step in strengthening our immigration laws by, among other items, increasing the number of Border Patrol agent.'' Yet neither the Congress nor this administration has provided the funding for those increased agents. The committee bill falls short in meeting our border security responsibilities. The committee bill cuts 300 agents from the Bush Border Patrol agent request. It is 1,800 agents short of 4,000 additional Border Patrol agents called for in the Intelligence Reform Act. The committee bill cuts 1,846 detention beds from the Bush request. That is 9,000 detention beds short of the bed space called for in the Intelligence Reform. My amendment would provide an additional $2.1 billion to increase border enforcement. It would fund an additional 1,800 border patrol agents above the committee bill and meet the Intelligence Reform Act requirements. It would also fund an additional 9,000 detention beds above the committee bill and meet the Intelligence Reform Act requirements on that front. The detention bed space level funded by my amendment would meet the 34,653 detention bed level recommended by the DHS Inspector General as necessary to detain all criminal aliens and aliens from special interest countries. My amendment would further increase our border detection capacities by providing funding for additional air patrols and operating hours, by cutting in half the number of unfunded radiation portal monitors, and by replacing old Border Patrol vehicles and expanding border facilities. It would also provide for the port security grant program at the $400 million level passed by the House in the Safe Port Act 2 weeks ago. The committee bill provides only $200 million for those grants, and it contains a number of other increases. Despite the lessons from Hurricane Katrina, the committee bill cuts funding for programs geared to improve the preparedness of local police, fire departments, and emergency responders by $186 million, or almost 6 percent, from 2006. My amendment would provide additional funding for State emergency managers, for firefighters and for updating flood maps in critical, high-risk areas more quickly. It would also provide an additional $750 million for urban areas and State homeland security grants so that all States and urban areas would receive at least as much as they received in 2005 or 2006, whichever is the highest. That would mean, for instance, that New York would receive almost $115 million more than it received in the recent DHS grant announcement. It would mean that Washington, D.C., would receive $40 million more than it received in the recent grant announcement. This amendment would also provide more funding for aviation explosive detection for air cargo and for passenger and carry-on bags. The amendment is fiscally responsible. It would offset the $4.5 billion in additional funding by capping the tax cut that people making over $1 million this year would receive at $102,400 instead of $114,200. I would urge the chairman to withdraw his point of order against the amendment so that the House could have an opportunity to meet these essential national obligations. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time. Point of Order

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, the purpose of this amendment is to meet critical national responsibilities that the President of the United States has already indicated we should be meeting and that this Congress has indicated on previous occasions that we should be meeting. Unfortunately, because of the rules under which the House is operating, the gentleman is technically correct. The House could vote on this amendment if the House Republican leadership saw fit to allow us to do so, but I must say that under the rules that the House is operating under I must reluctantly concede the point of order.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word and yield to the gentlewoman from New York so that the Members might understand what is going to be in the motion to recommit and what will come next. I yield to the gentlewoman.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, let me simply explain that the Lowey motion to recommit will be with instructions to report it back forthwith to the House with an amendment adding an additional $750 million for State and local formula-based grants and high-threat, high-density urban area grants so that no State or urban area receives funding below which it received in 2005 or 2006, whichever is higher, and is offset by a 1.8 percent reduction in the tax reduction resulting from the enactment of Public Laws 107-16, et cetera, for taxpayers with incomes in excess of $1 million for calendar year 2007.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for the time. Madam Speaker, we have a bill here with which I cannot argue in terms of the allocation of resources within the total dollar amount assigned to the subcommittee, but I can argue with the overall total because I think, despite the fact that the chairman and ranking member have tried as hard as possible to put money where you will get the biggest bang for a buck, the fact is, we do not have enough bucks in here to get enough of a bang to really protect the country. We tried to do something about that in committee, and I would like to describe what some of the provisions were that we wanted to change. We essentially tried to add $3.5 billion in committee for key Homeland Security actions, border protection, harbor protection, port protection and all the rest, and we did it in a fiscally responsible way, because what we suggested was that we simply reduce the amount of the tax cut for persons making over $1 million a year by about $10,000, which would mean that those persons making $1 million, instead of getting on average a $114,000 tax cut this year, would only get a $104,000 tax cut. The poor devils just would have to scrape along on that amount. I think the country needs added homeland security, much more than millionaires need a supersized tax cut. Let me tell you what some of the items were that we would fund with that money. We wanted to add 1,800 additional Border Patrol agents, and we wanted to add 9,000 additional detention beds. We wanted to provide increased funding to meet all of the Intelligence Reform Act mandates for increased Border Patrol agents, increased immigration investigators and increased detention bed spaces. We also wanted to increase our border detention capabilities, and we wanted to provide for additional air patrol and operating hours and cut in half the number of unfunded radiation portal monitors. We also wanted to replace older Border Patrol vehicles and expand border facilities. We wanted to provide additional funding for Customs and Border Protection and the Coast Guard to expand the number of overseas ports that are monitored. We wanted to provide for an updating of flood maps in critical high-risk areas, and so on and so on. I know there are those in this House on the majority side who say, you should not try to link taxes with spending; those are two separate issues. The fact is that every dollar of tax cuts provided, in tax cuts that the Congress passed just 2 weeks ago, comes at the expense of programs like this, programs to strengthen border security, whether it is on the Mexican or the Canadian border, programs to strengthen our ability of local law enforcement officials to have interoperable equipment so that they are speaking to each other on the same frequency. I think while a good many Members of this chamber do not like the fact that we keep dredging this up, the fact is, this is the most important priority choice the Congress will make. I really do not believe that the average taxpayer thinks that we should accept less effective immigration enforcement, less effective border control in order to provide another supersized tax cut for people who are already the most well-off people in this society. I think the country as a whole would be far more strengthened by some of the items that we have talked about here than they would be by such tax cuts, and that is why I will be voting against the previous question on the rule and the rule itself in order to protest the fact that we are not able to actually vote on these specific tradeoffs. The Budget Act was meant to force Congress to make tradeoffs between spending and revenues. In fact, the way the Budget Act is being managed by the leadership of this House, those tradeoffs are being avoided. We should not do that in what is supposed to be the greatest deliberative legislative body in the world.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, I was simply confused by one thing the gentleman said. It was my understanding that the agreement would reflect an understanding that the last vote would begin around 10 o'clock. I thought I heard the gentleman say that, under this motion, the last debate would conclude at 10 o'clock.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation with the notation to Members it would be helpful if they would get here to the floor so we can dispose of as many amendments tonight as possible so that we have as few amendments as possible left when we return after the recess, because we do have a lot of other bills we need to get done. I thank the gentleman for helping to work this out.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, reserving the right to object, I would simply like to point out that if this unanimous consent agreement is accepted by the House, we are looking at at least 7 hours of time, not counting the votes that will be cast on these amendments, and if every single one of these amendments were pushed to a vote, you would be adding another 3 hours to the debate time. So I would ask Members to recognize that perhaps it isn't crucial to have the House learn as much as it will learn in a 5-minute discussion on some of these amendments, and I would hope that Members would withhold on some of them so that we can focus on the major matters before the House and not deal with this at some time around midnight. Madam Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, yesterday, we spent an inordinate amount of time focusing on a few relatively tiny earmarks on the agriculture appropriations bill and spent almost no time discussing whether or not that bill was adequate in responding to the needs of rural America. Today, we are going to be debating the shape and nature of some of these individual programs, but we are likely, except for the Visclosky amendment, never likely to really discuss the adequacy of this bill in terms of the challenges that lie before the Nation. So I want to take just a moment to express my regret that the majority felt it necessary to strike the Visclosky amendment on a point of order. We have been drifting aimlessly on energy policy ever since President Carter left office, as Mr. Visclosky pointed out last night. In a variety of program categories, when we are discussing (energy and conservation research, renewable research, fossil fuel research and energy conservation) we are funding these efforts at levels that range from one-quarter to one-half in real-dollar terms of what we were funding those same efforts when Jimmy Carter was President. As a result of that two decade or more drift, we as a society today are extremely vulnerable to higher energy prices, and especially higher gas prices. The Visclosky Amendment was an attempt to, at least for a few moments on the debate on this bill, focus on the adequacy of our effort. No one faults the gentleman from Ohio for the job he has done in allocating what resources are available. But the fact is, if we are really serious, if we were really serious about meeting the flood control needs of the country, if we were really serious about meeting the energy conservation and energy development needs of this country, we would be putting those items first. We would be putting an extra billion dollars into those items, rather than providing super-sized tax cuts to people who make $1 million or more a year. The Visclosky Amendment would have simply asked that we cut back by $2,000 per taxpayer the size of the tax cuts going to people who make $1 million or more a year. The tax bill that this House passed 2 weeks ago provided over $40 billion in additional tax cuts to people who make over $1 million a year. We would have simply taken $1 billion of that $40 billion and transferred it from tax cuts for the most privileged among us to investments in flood control, to investments in the kind of energy promises that Mr. Visclosky was talking about today. It is regrettable that this House does not see fit to put first things first by passing an amendment such as the Visclosky Amendment. I simply wanted to take the time to express that thought.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. OBEY. Reserving the right to object, Mr. Speaker, as I calculate the time that would be required to dispose of all the amendments made in order by this unanimous consent agreement, it appears to me that it amounts to about 6\1/2\ hours just of palaver, without the time consumed by votes; or for that matter, without the time consumed by slippage as we go through the procedures around here. That means that if every person offers each amendment that is provided for in this unanimous consent request, and if they take the time allotted, we will be here until at least 10:30 or 11 o'clock before we even get to the votes. Given the fact that there are many amendments, that means, as I see it, that we could be here as late as 2 o'clock tomorrow morning. I would ask Members to keep that in mind when they are determining whether or not they actually want to offer many of these amendments.

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Mr. Speaker, I had originally intended to vote for this bill and for this rule; but the action of the Rules Committee on one item last night has changed all of that, at least for me, and I would like to alert Members of the House as to the reasons why. In the farm bill that passed several years ago, the expiration date for various programs wound up not being identical; and that meant that the dairy program was hugely at a disadvantage after the expiration of the dairy title of the farm bill. Last year the Congress renewed the dairy section of the bill that related to the milk program, but it contained a budget gimmick which ended the dairy program one month before the end of the fiscal year and one month before the other farm programs in that bill. As a result, when the next farm program is put together next year, dairy will be at a huge disadvantage because there will be nothing included in the budget baseline for dairy. That will not only be a problem for dairy farmers; that will be a problem for all other farmers, because if in the end the Congress decides under those circumstances to extend the milk program, the funding for that will come out of the hide of each and every other farm program, all because of this 1-month gimmick that we tried to correct in the Appropriations Committee. Now, the Appropriations Committee adopted an amendment that I offered last week which attempted to correct that problem by simply extending the milk program by 1 month so that it would expire at the same time as the other programs in the farm bill. But now our friends on the authorizing committee have insisted that the Rules Committee not protect that provision from being stricken on a point of order. As a result, if such a motion is made and upheld by the Chair, it will mean that we are going to create the conditions for a billion dollar war between farm groups all over this country. That could easily be avoided by the $40 million provision represented by section 752 of the appropriations bill that will shortly be before us. That $40 million correction is fully paid for so that at this point there is no budget problem associated with 752. So I would simply want to alert every Member of this House who represents dairy farmers that they will be at a substantial disadvantage in considering the farm bill a year and a half from now if this section 752 of this bill is stricken. And I want to alert Members who represent other kinds of farmers that lest they think this is only a problem only affecting dairy farmers, I'm sorry, it will affect all farmers because financing for whatever dairy program that eventually emerges from that authorization bill will come out of reductions for other farm programs. Now, this may not be a big problem for persons who have thousand-cow dairy herds, but it is a huge problem if you represent a district like mine where the average herd is 50 or 60 cows. The extension to the milk program will determine whether or not many of those farmers stay in business. And I would submit that the House would be doing itself a great favor if they could prevail upon our friends on the authorizing committee not to lodge a point of order against this provision in this bill. There is another provision in this bill which affects an extension of the peanut program for storage. It seems to me that there are good reasons for extending both of those programs. So I would urge any Member of this House who is concerned about being able to pass a decent farm bill down the line to recognize that if this action takes place today, if this action takes place today, anyone who votes for the farm bill, if this is stricken today, anyone who votes for this agriculture appropriations bill will be voting to put dairy farmers at a huge disadvantage a year and a half from now when the reauthorization is considered and they will be inviting a very nasty war between different commodity groups and different regions of the country. That is what the milk program sought to end 3 years ago when we wanted to end all of these regional fights on dairy, and I would suggest that the House would be ill advised if it produces that result by allowing this provision to be knocked out on a point of order. So I will be calling for a roll call on the rule to protest the action of the Rules Committee, and I will urge Members from farm country to vote ``no'' on the rule and ``no'' on the bill if that provision is stricken.

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I want to renew my comments on something that is likely to happen here later with respect to the dairy program; but before I do that, in the unlikely event that anybody in any of the congressional offices is listening, I hope they understand that there are at least 50 amendments pending to this bill. If we only take 10 minutes on each of those amendments and if we only have votes on about half of them, we will be here until about 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. So I hope that Members will not expect us to have a schedule which allows them to go to supper and allows them to do other work around here and, at the same time, expect the committee to get us out of here before the wee hours of the morning. If all of these amendments are offered, that just isn't going to happen. Let me say, Mr. Chairman, that I want to once again take note of the fact that because the Rules Committee chose not to protect a provision in this bill that is very important to small dairy farmers around the country, we face the likelihood that a point of order will be lodged against section 752 of this bill. That section is meant to correct a major flaw in the authorization bill that was amended last year. Under existing law, supplemental payments to dairy farmers, the so- called MILC program, will expire 1 month before the other major commodities programs expire in the existing farm bill. What that means in practical terms is that there will be no dairy component in the budget baseline when the next farm bill is considered by the authorizing committee. If that happens, we are guaranteeing that there will be fewer dollars in the Federal budget that will be flowing to rural America than would otherwise be the case. If people think it is a good idea for rural America to voluntarily relinquish any portion of their share of the Federal budget, then by all means they should be enthusiastic about the point of order. If they do not, then I think they ought to ask the authorizing committee chairman not to make that point of order. I would point out that the provision in this bill which extends that MILC program for 1 month so that we can correct that budget baseline problem. I should point out that that provision is supported by the Midwest Dairy Coalition, the Northeast Dairy Producers, including Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont. It is supported by the New York Farm Bureau, by the National Farmers Union, by the Wisconsin Farm Bureau, and by a good many other farmers around the country. Mr. Chairman, I would simply say that if that point of order is lodged, and if this bill therefore does not carry that correcting provision, it will not just be dairy farmers who are hurt, it will also mean that if a dairy program is continued, financing for that program will have to come out of the base for each of the other farm groups. That is a great recipe for having a regional war between different farm groups, and it is a great recipe for having a war between various commodity groups in the agriculture community. So I would urge the majority party leadership to prevail upon the chairman of the Agriculture Committee not to make that point of order, because, if he does, we are not going to be able to fix this problem and dairy farmers are going to be at a huge disadvantage when the next farm bill is written.

Mr. OBEY. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Let me simply say that I appreciate his comments, especially in light of the fact that last year in the conference on this bill after the conference was gaveled to a close, the conference committee then made arbitrary and anonymous changes in the definition of organic foods without a vote of the conference. So it seems to me that the gentleman is correct that we need to be vigilant in terms of who is trying to manipulate their definition of what represents a high organic standard. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I simply want to express my chagrin at the fact that the chairman of the authorizing committee has exercised a point of order against the provision in the appropriation bill, section 752, which would have corrected a gross shortcoming in the dairy program. The fact is that with the language in the appropriation bill being stricken, we will now face the situation under which dairy will be at a distinct disadvantage when the farm bill is renewed in 2007 because the authorization committee arranged in previous legislation to see to it that the milk program expired one month before the end of the fiscal year. What that means is that evidently the Agriculture Committee majority desires to see the supplemental milk payment program die. I hope that every small dairy farmer in America takes note of that fact. It is a pretty clear indication of whose side people are on. And I simply want to make the observation that this provision that required the milk program to expire 1 month early was not done for any policy reason. It was done as a gimmick to get around the budget act. And it is another illustration of the fact that when our principal goal is to find whatever parliamentary gimmicks we can find in order to fit programs into a defined box, then real people get hurt. The fact is that there will be many small dairy farmers who go out of business if they do not have the support that comes from that supplemental milk payment program. So, Mr. Chairman, I regret very much the gentleman felt required to do that. I hope that dairy farmers will take note of the fact that the only possible dairy farmers who could benefit from this are the giant operators, the 1,000- and 2,000-cow herd operators, but the average dairy farmer in the United States is hurt by the action that was taken today, and I hope they take that into account when they go to the polls in November.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, as the gentleman from Texas knows, I have a great deal of respect for him. He and I do not agree very often, but I think that he is a very thoughtful watchdog in this House, and I appreciate the fact that he is suspicious of government overreach wherever it comes from. Having said that, I want to echo the words of the gentleman from Minnesota. If you think that we are going to be able to sell our meat products on international markets without eventually having a system like this, you are smoking something that ain't legal. It simply is not going to happen. To defend the ability of our producers to export, we are going to have to have a decent animal ID system. We are also going to have to have a decent animal ID system in order to protect the public health of our own citizens. So we need to have this go forward. What the committee is doing is recognizing that the Agriculture Department has handled this issue so badly that they have given incompetence a bad name. And what the committee has therefore done is to say that until the department gets its act in order, there will be no funds provided, but we leave the possibility open for funding once they get their act together. That is the responsible way to force the agency to quit jerking farmers around. I mean, it is like watching a tennis game; bump, bump, bump. They change their mind every 5 minutes. You cannot keep your eye on the ball. One day they have one approach; one day they have another. And as a result, farmers are frustrated, consumers are confused, and taxpayers are bilked for a heck of a lot more money than this system ought to cost. We would not even be having this debate today if USDA had handled this in a fashion which was in any way competent, but they did not. So now we pay the price with debates such as this. I would urge that the House support the committee in this position. It is taking the responsible path on this issue. And I would urge that we turn down the amendment even though I fully appreciate the frustration that lies underneath the actions of the people who have offered the amendment today.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I come from the State of Joe McCarthy, and he was famous for his use of innuendo. I don't appreciate it when I hear innuendo on this floor from any source. Let me start this way: my opinion of earmarks is pretty clear. When I was chairman of the Appropriations Committee, for instance, we had no earmarks in the Labor-Health-Education bill. I think the number of earmarks has gotten grotesquely out of hand. I think it is beyond the ability of our staff to police. On that, I agree with the gentleman. But I don't think that we need to drag in a reference to an obscene player in the game like Mr. Abramoff in discussing a specific earmark such as we were discussing 5 minutes ago. If one is serious about providing oversight on earmarks, then they would not have voted for the budget resolution to begin with, if they were serious about fiscal responsibility, I should say. If they were serious about fiscal responsibility, they would not pick and choose a few random earmarks to go after on the floor. They would have insisted that this House have systematic reform of earmarks so that, for instance, we go after the big targets, the authorizing committee. The committee that provides highway authorization, for instance. The mother of all earmarks was the ``bridge to nowhere.'' That wasn't in an appropriation bill. That was in the authorization bill, and that authorization bill last year, the highway bill, had seven times as many earmarks as the relevant appropriation bill, seven times the amount. If people were serious about going after earmarks, they would go after authorization earmarks. If they were serious about earmarks, they would go after tax bills. The 1981 tax bill was replete with special transition rules for corporations, and every time I would talk to a big businessman who would complain to me about the deficits that Ronald Reagan was building up, I would say, ``Well, why don't you raise hell about what they are doing in the tax bill?'' ``Oh, we can't, because we have got a special transition rule in there and we don't want the committee to take it away,'' they would say. If you take a look the 1986 tax bill, the same problem. If you take a look at the most recent tax bills, laced with special privileges. And the fact is that those special privileges aren't just 1-year affairs, as a lot of appropriations earmarks are. They continue giving again and again and again, as the TV commercial goes. So I would say if the gentleman has legitimate objections to specific earmarks, by all means, it is his right to raise that on the floor. But I think if the gentleman wants to be taken seriously on this effort in the House, then he needs to support a systematic and systemic approach, which will reduce the number of earmarks to a number which this House has the capacity to handle. I don't think that we particularly add to the effort if we just pick and choose on the basis of, say, funny names. I recall once, for instance, when a Senator from will my own State, Bill Proxmire, made fun of an earmark for a research project because it was research on Polish pigs, and everybody laughed about Polish pigs. But the fact is, out of that study came a new blood pressure medicine, which has been used by millions of Americans for years. So I would suggest there is a constructive way and a not so constructive way to go after earmarks. I would prefer we follow a constructive road.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I was not going to say anything on this point until the gentleman made his last remark about people taking earmarks away if they do not vote for a bill. I do not recall a single Member of the majority party helping me when, 2 years ago, I urged Democrats to vote against the Labor, Health and Education bill because it was grossly insufficient to meet our education and health care and science needs. I well recall when the Republican Appropriations Subcommittee chairman announced to his entire caucus that, because not a single Democrat voted for that inadequate Labor bill, that no Democrat was going to get a project. I am proud of the fact that Democrats stuck against that bill anyway because we saw our duty as requiring us to oppose that bill because it put cuts for millionaires ahead of increasing the Pell Grant for kids trying to go to college. They put tax cuts for millionaires ahead of funding health professions training. They put tax cuts for millionaires ahead of worker protection programs. So I would simply say, I welcome the gentleman's finally saying tonight that it is improper for earmarks to be used as internal blackmail. I just wish he had spoken up when we actually faced that issue 2 years ago.