Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I offer this amendment simply to have an opportunity to comment on what has just transpired on the House floor. My great mentor and friend through most of my public life has been Gaylord Nelson, the founder of Earth Day, and perhaps the greatest environmentalist who ever served in the United States Senate. Just before he died, I had my last conversation with him about environmental issues, and he made quite clear that he thought the greatest environmental threat to mankind over the next 100 years was the issue of global warming. And it is time this Congress face up to that fact and does something about it. I don't know what it takes to have this government get off its you- know-what and start dealing with the most critical environmental problem that confronts the entire planet. If we just take a look at a few of the pieces of evidence that are lying all around: core drillings in glaciers around the world enable us to study bubbles that go back as far as 300,000 years, and we see that we have a higher concentration of carbon dioxide than we have had in the known history of the planet. Since 1970, the duration and intensity of hurricanes has increased by 50 percent, the number of tornados in this country has now reached the highest number in recorded history, some 1,700 in one year. Two hundred western cities have broken heat records in the past 2 years. Glaciers, which are serving really as the proverbial canaries in the mines, are trying to tell us something. Twenty-seven of the 38 glaciers in Glacier Park are gone, and the rest of them are likely to be gone before this century reaches its halfway point. The Larsen ice shelf, 700 feet thick, was expected to last 100 years; it suddenly began to collapse in two weeks. The Arctic ice cap has lost half of its thickness in the last half century. The Greenland ice cap, as was referred to on that side of the aisle earlier, is melting at a highly accelerated rate. And, if it goes, one third of Florida goes with it. It will be underwater. If it goes, it could shut down the major Atlantic Ocean current. The current that drives the gulf stream has already decreased 30 percent in 50 years, and that is driven by differences in temperature and salinity of the water. So this to me is not just an environmental problem; it is a moral problem. It isn't going to affect my generation. All of you who are in my generation are going to be gone within 20 years. But it most certainly is going to affect our kids, it most certainly is going to affect our grandkids. And I would hope that we would demonstrate that we care more about the welfare of the planet than we care about committee jurisdictional dung hills. But what is apparent today is that this Congress is going to be prevented from making a simple statement of fact that humans and human activity are driving, at least significantly driving, the problem of global warming and that we have an obligation to do something on the national level and the international level to deal with it, and we have an obligation to do it now. John Sawhill, who served a variety of Republican administrations in a variety of capacities, said this just before he died: ``In the end, our society will be defined not only by what we create, but by what we refuse to destroy.'' And I think we ought to remember that when we think of this issue. To me, I think we need to remember what those who were present saw in 1933 at FDR's inaugural when he took the oath of office on the very steps of this Capitol. He is remembered mostly for saying that ``we have nothing to fear but fear itself.'' But the line that got the greatest reaction from the crowd at that time was when FDR said, ``We need action, and we need action now.'' We most certainly do. And I regret very much that the gentleman felt it necessary to knock out this language. If he is going to do that, then I would suggest that the authorizing committees have an obligation to sit down with the White House and begin immediately, not 6 months, not 6 years from now, the real process of producing actions that will indeed save this planet from what is most assuredly going to occur if we continue the drift that is implied by this action today. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Yes.

Mr. OBEY. The rules don't allow me to say who I was referring to. The gentleman says we should have studies, we should have hearings. Your party has controlled this Congress for 14 years. The time for studying is over. The time for studying is past. There is a huge scientific consensus that human beings are driving global warming. And James Hansen from NASA has told us that in his view we may have less than 10 years to deal with this problem before we hit a critical tipping point beyond which we will be facing catastrophe. He may be right, and you may be right. If you are right, then moving to deal with this problem costs us very little. If he is right, not moving costs us everything. The gentleman refers to an ice age. If you shut down the ocean currents' conveyors, you are going to have an ice age in one heck of a hurry. So I would suggest the gentleman has committee responsibilities. If he does not want this committee to meet our responsibilities, as we have tried to do, then it is about time you meet yours and actually do something about it rather than denying that this is a real problem. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. I would simply say to my good friend that just about the only scientists left in the world who do not recognize that this is a serious and real problem are those who have an economic interest in not recognizing it, and that, in my view, is an absolute fact. The gentleman talks about not wanting to fall into a trap. What you are going to fall into if we listen to the gentleman is sea levels 20 to 30 feet higher than they are now, and virtually every coastal city in the world is going to be under water, and New Orleans is going to be the norm rather than the unhappy exception. That is what the world is going to face if we do not deal with this problem and begin to deal with it while we still have time. Mr. Chairman, how much time do we have remaining on each side?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Olver).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, let me yield the remaining 2 minutes of my time to the distinguished gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks), who was the originator of the language which was stricken.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield for the purpose of a unanimous consent request to the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Udall). (Mr. UDALL of New Mexico asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I want to congratulate the gentleman from Alaska. He always does the best job possible in selling a very bad case.

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I won't take much time. The Republican bill before us is based on the assumption that the Senate has passed the House Republican budget resolution. It hasn't. This amendment is based on a more responsible assumption. It is in conformance with the Spratt budget amendment. It adds roughly $800 million for restoring the Clean Water State Revolving Fund. We add $50 million to the EPA budget to protect local water supplies from terrorist attacks. We add $300 million for our national parks, refuges, and forests. We provide $150 million to provide some key land acquisitions at Valley Forge, Acadia, Grand Teton, Mount Rainier and a number of other purposes. We pay for it with a modest 2 percent reduction in the tax cuts expected for millionaires. It would reduce the size of their tax cuts by about $2,200. I would hope that no one lodges a point of order on this amendment so we could have a more constructive approach to these programs. Point of Order

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, for weeks we have been wondering whether the Republican moderates were going to stick to their guns when they said they knew that it was wrong to pass a budget that provided $40 billion in tax cuts for people making $1 million a year while you are squeezing the guts out of education and health programs. We now know the answer. They are doing a poor imitation of Bert Lahr, the Cowardly Lion in ``The Wizard of Oz.'' I wish Bert were here. He would cry at their performance. The fact is they are now selling out for a promise that if sometime in the deep, dark, distant future somebody does something to change this budget resolution, then there might be a table scrap or two left for additional education and health care. There is about as much chance of that happening as there is of the Chicago Cubs winning the pennant this year. With respect to what the gentleman from Florida said on education, the fact is the Congress promised the States that on special education we would pay for 40 percent of the costs. Each year for the last 3 years, the Federal share of the cost of special education has been cut by budgets that you have voted for. You talk about Pell Grants. The fact is it costs $3,400 more to go to a 4-year public college today than it did 5 years ago. The President wanted to solve that by adding $100 to the Pell Grant program. House Republicans said, no, that was too much. You cut it to $50, and then when you sent it to the Senate, you cut out the rest of the 50 bucks. So, in 5 years you have not done one whit to make it easier for people to go to college by increasing the Pell Grants. So do not give us your crocodile tears, and do not brag incidentally about how much you have increased education for the last 6 years, because there are $16 billion in the education budget today that would not be there if we had not dragged you kicking and screaming into supporting Labor-Health budgets that in the end were higher than the original House Republican budget. So I do not mind if the gentleman wants to live in the Land of Oz. Just do not take us there with you.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the gentleman from California for being able to give that speech with a straight face. I really admire him for it.

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

Mr. OBEY. Well, I thought you were gritting your teeth; but, nonetheless, that is fine. Mr. Speaker, let me simply say I really regret days like this in the House because I love this institution, and I love what this institution is supposed to represent to the American people. The public wants us to pass significant House reform. Instead, this legislation before us, in my humble view, constitutes consumer fraud masquerading as lobbying reform, and there are two spectacular examples of that. The most egregious example of the corruption of the process in this House is the way in which conference committees have been substantially corrupted by some of the most powerful people in this body. When you have a package that does not prevent powerful people in this body from adding 30 and 40 pages of new legislation to a conference report without ever having a vote on the conference report, as happened last year on the defense appropriation bill, when you have a reform bill that still allows that to occur, I do not think that is much of a reform bill. This bill ought to require that any time any item is inserted in a conference report, that that cannot be considered by the House unless there is an open public vote of the conferees beforehand. That is the way you prevent the pharmaceutical industry from being shielded from suit, as happened on the defense bill last year at the behest of the majority leader of the other body. Let me also say that with respect to earmarks, this bill purports to deal with the problem of earmarks by only going after appropriations earmarks; and yet last year on the authorization bill on highways, there were some 5,000 earmarks, seven times as many as were contained in the comparable appropriation bill. To not do something about authorizing committee earmarks in the process is a joke, in my view. And then I would point out, to not lay a glove on the special goodies that are tucked into tax bills is even more outrageous. The 1986 tax bill, for instance, included 340 separate transition rules each benefiting a small set of individuals and small, ``little'' businesses like General Motors, Chrysler, Phillips Petroleum and Commonwealth Edison. It provided special deals for sports stadiums in Tampa, San Francisco, Denver, Cleveland, and Los Angeles. It provided a special rule for a millionaire stockbroker who had the largest private collection of Rodin sculpture in the Chicago area, and a family listed by Forbes Magazine as one of the 400 richest in America. Any bill that allows those kinds of earmarks to continue is a bill that is not worthy of the name. It is a joke. It is an embarrassment, and I would urge that this House get serious and pass real reform.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, let me say that I find this discussion rather interesting today. We have a bill before us which essentially objects to a producer from Arizona, because he is doing to California what California has done to the rest of the country with respect to milk marketing orders for quite some time. It seems to me that if we are going to be dealing with this issue, we ought to be dealing with it generically, with all of its ramifications. I don't think this bill belongs on the suspension calendar. I think if we are going to take care of somebody's side problem, we ought to take care of other problems that are associated with the milk marketing order system as well. What this process reminds me of is something that happened a number of years ago when Mr. Gingrich was Speaker and Steve Gunderson, a Republican from Wisconsin, was chair of the Dairy Subcommittee. Steve had expected to be able, on the farm bill, to offer an amendment to the committee product dealing with milk marketing orders. He wasn't allowed to do that, even though he was the chairman of the subcommittee handling the bill, Instead, what happened is that there was an insider's fix between then-Speaker Gingrich and then-chairman of the Rules Committee, Mr. Solomon. They guaranteed that in return for their sweetheart deal, Gunderson wouldn't even be able to offer his amendment on the floor. We have seen all too much of that for the past years around here, and so I have no illusions about what is going to happen to this bill, but I for one want to object to the fact that it is on the suspension calendar. I want to object to the fact that if we are going to take care of this little discrete problem that we are not, in the process, taking care of the broader issues that confront us on the whole area of milk marketing order systems.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word, and I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from North Carolina.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word, and I yield to the gentlewoman from California.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, we are here because last year on the defense appropriations bill, in the middle of the night, we were trying to finish action on that bill, and we had agreed that we would add the administration's request for $7 billion to fund a research program to develop vaccines to deal with avian flu. When the majority produced their bill, it only had $3.5 billion. We asked why the other money that was requested by the administration was not included. I was told by Senator Stevens, the chairman of the conference, that that was because the majority party had decided that they would not deal with the issue of drug company indemnification, and until they did, they were not going to put the long-term money in the bill. So they told us in writing, as well as orally, that they were not going to add any language indemnifying the drug companies. The conference ended about eight o'clock. Close to midnight, the majority leader of the United States Senate walked over to the Speaker's office and insisted that 40 pages of language never read or never checked out by anybody, that 40 pages of language never voted on by anybody be inserted in that conference report without a vote of the conferees, and that was jammed down our throats the next day. That language purported to protect drug companies in case they made some faulty flu vaccine; but, in fact, the language went far beyond that. It applied to all vaccines, it applied to all drugs and all medical devices that the Secretary chose to apply it to. It provided no possibility for judicial review at all. So in other words, it said if you get sick, if you lose your health because of a faulty vaccine or a faulty device, you cannot sue the drug company; you have to collect from the government. But guess what? They put no money in the fund that was supposed to be used to compensate victims. So it was a catch-22. We are here today because, in my view, that action inserting that language, without a vote of the conferees, was one of the most egregious corruptions of the legislative process that I have seen in the 37 years that I have been here. And we are trying to use the rules of the House today to reverse what happened because of an egregious abuse of those rules by the leadership of this House and by the leadership of the Senate. Of all people, of all people in the Congress, the leadership of both Houses have an obligation to protect the integrity of the institution and the integrity of the rules. When they themselves lead the charge to obliterate any opportunity to use the rules in defense of normal processes in this House, then, in my view, they have ultimately corrupted the process of legislation. So this amendment ordinarily would not be here, but the damage was done on this bill last year, and so we are trying to use the same vehicle to undo the damage. We recognize there needs to be some indemnification language, but it needs to be reviewed by somebody other than drug company lobbyists; and until that happens, I am going to continue to be mad as hell about this and do everything I possibly can to reverse the outcome. We are trying to preach democracy in Iraq. It would be nice if the leadership of this Congress showed some here at home in this institution.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, did the gentleman rise to make his point of order?

Mr. OBEY. Would the gentleman withhold temporarily?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I do.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, it is ironic that the same rules that were abused in order to pass this legislation in the first place are now being hidden behind the majority in order to prevent us from correcting the flaws in that legislation. We could correct those flaws if the majority refrained from offering their point of order. Unfortunately, it appears that they are going to insist, and so they will have again selectively used the rules of this House to accomplish an end which would not have been reachable had the rules been adhered to in the first instance.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, yesterday, we cast a symbolic vote that got all kinds of political attention from the press having to do with the Dubai controversy. That vote had absolutely no effect on anything because the Dubai deal had already been killed. So the only thing we accomplished was letting Members of Congress get a nice vote that they could take home, stick in their pocket and show their constituents and say, ``Oh, what a good boy am I.'' Now we have got a chance to do something real about port security and about border security. Is there anybody in this House who thinks that our ports are really sufficiently secure so that we do not need to have more resources? Is there anybody in this House who is comfortable with the level of security on the Canadian border? Over the past 3 years, we on this side of the aisle have tried nine times to get the majority to increase Homeland Security funding above the amount that you have had in your bills, and we have been turned down nine times. This Congress is telling us, as this small chart shows, this Congress is telling the country we can afford to spend $64 billion this year to provide tax cuts to people who make $1 million or more a year. They are telling the country we can afford to spend more money on tax cuts for millionaires than we spend on the entire Homeland Security budget. Now, does anybody really think that this country is in greater need of providing $64 billion in tax cuts to people who make a million bucks a year? Do we really think that we need to do that more than we need to shore up port security, border security and the like? With all due respect, I do not think that is very good judgment with respect to our priorities. The Hart-Rudman report in 2002 concluded, that ``America's own ill- prepared response could hurt its people to a much greater extent than any single attack by terrorists,'' and Katrina revealed the truth of that statement. We witnessed the debacle in Katrina because communication systems went down, and the worst problem about Katrina is that no one could talk to anybody because all of the communication systems were put out of order. Now, this supplemental only contains sufficient funds to provide an emergency communications backup capability in the gulf coast. That capability consists of trucks loaded with equipment that can be quickly moved into devastated areas to bring up cell phones and VHF, UHF and SHF radio networks to help first responders in their search-and-rescue efforts. This capability ought to be provided nationwide. That is just one of the many examples that anybody who knows anything about homeland security understands. It is a serious challenge to the security of this country. So I would submit that we can argue about the details, and if the majority does not like some of these items, you can easily fix them in conference because you have got the votes and we do not, but anybody who thinks it is more important to provide $64 billion in tax cuts to people who make a million bucks a year than it is to increase our homeland security capability, in my mind, has a faulty set of judgments, and I think they better think again.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, maybe I did not hear right, but I thought I heard some rather interesting things. Two speakers ago I heard the words ``we need more oversight.'' Really? This from a Congress and a majority party that has provided mighty little oversight of the abuses at Abu Ghraib, mighty little oversight on the question of contractor ripoffs in Iraq? If you want some oversight, I will be interested to see how you vote on the amendment to provide a Truman-like committee to get into the details of contractor abuse in Iraq. I have also heard from the gentleman from Texas express his concern about cancer patients who are being asked to pay taxes to support additional aid to the gulf. I will be interested to see whether the gentleman votes for a budget which for the third year in a row will cut the number of research grants at the National Institutes of Health. The gentleman mentioned the number of people who die in fires. I will be interested to see whether they vote for the recommendation to eliminate fire grants. I could go on and on, but I won't in the interest of time. So I was heartened to hear those comments by both gentlemen. I just hope that when the bills come that provide the services for the activities that they mentioned, that they will have the same attitude that they are exhibiting here today.