Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, what is behind this amendment is very simple. The gentleman would like to hold the low-income heating assistance funding in this bill hostage to drilling in ANWR. He cannot do that under the rules of the House; and so from his standpoint, the next best thing is to eliminate low-income heating assistance in general. I was one of the three original authors of the low-income heating assistance program, along with Silvio Conte, Republican from Massachusetts, and Ed Muskie in the Senate. And I think I know something about this program and why this amendment is destructive. Let me explain what happened last year. The House-passed version of the budget reconciliation bill included $1 billion for LIHEAP to be available in fiscal 2006. But just before the reconciliation conference was completed, the defense appropriations conference report was filed, and that contained an additional $2 billion for LIHEAP as part of the sweetener for ANWR oil leasing provisions. Not wanting to duplicate the ANWR funds, the reconciliation conferees shifted their addition to fiscal 2007. Subsequent to that, however, the entire ANWR package, including the $2 billion appropriated for LIHEAP, was dropped out of the defense appropriations conference report. The end result was no additional funds for LIHEAP in 2006, despite escalating heating oil and natural gas prices. The committee amendment simply tries to move the money back to where it was originally supposed to go, which was in this fiscal year. The problem, however, is that the language, even in the committee amendment, does not guarantee that that money will be spent this year; it only allows it to be. Let me point out the gentleman says he does not think this is an emergency. The gentleman makes $160,000 a year. So does everybody in this Chamber. It is not an emergency to us. We do not have to worry about heating our houses. But there are an awful lot of people who do. Only 16 percent of the people who are eligible by income for low-income heating assistance last year got some help. And the fact is that the average price for home heating oil has more than doubled since 2001 and 2002, yet LIHEAP has increased only 20 percent since that time. Average prices for natural gas are up 31 percent. Average prices for home heating oil are up 25 percent, for propane up 18 percent, just from one winter to another. Over 3 years' time they are much, much steeper. So I would suggest that the family that was able to get through the winter without help when home heating oil was selling for $1.16 a gallon, as it was 4 years ago, is going to have a little more trouble coping when heating oil reaches $2.40 a gallon, the average price now. So I would suggest that to eliminate this funding is unadvisable. I am myself unhappy with the provision in the committee bill, because unlike the original Obey amendment which was offered in committee, this does not even require the funding be provided this year; but at least it allows that funding to be spent in this year or next. And I think that that is better than nothing. I think the gentleman's amendment, while I respect him and respect certainly his right to offer it, I think that the amendment itself is misguided and ought to be defeated. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Chairman, let me simply suggest that the fact is that there are many people in this country who have to choose between heating their homes and eating. I think we ought to make their life just a little bit easier. I yield to the gentleman from New Hampshire.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, in the interests of redundancy, I would urge that we defeat the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, we have moved past the point in the bill where the Flake amendment was to be offered, which would have attempted to strike an earmark that was contained in last year's bill for which a correction is found in this year's bill. I am pleased that amendment was not offered. But I would like to take just a moment to urge every Member of this House to think before they leap on the issue of giving the President the authority for what is, in effect, an item veto. I find it mindboggling that there are some people in this Chamber who believe that the main institutional problem that we have in this Congress is that the President has insufficient power vis-a-vis the Congress of the United States. We have a President who has taken us to war on the basis of manipulated and selected intelligence. We have an administration under whom persons have been tortured, and we are told that more than 100 persons in captivity have died. We have an administration that eavesdrops on American citizens without a court order. And then we say that the problem is that the President has too little power? I would suggest quite the contrary. If any of you are interested in the line item veto, I would urge you to for a moment forget who is in the White House now and think what might have happened under Lyndon Johnson. This was a President of my own party, a President who lied to this Congress about the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Gaylord Nelson, from my home State, was one of the first three people in the Senate to vote against the first appropriation for Vietnam. Can you imagine what Lyndon Johnson would have done to Gaylord Nelson if he had had any version of the item veto at his disposal? He would have put his arm around Gaylord. He would have said, ``Gaylord, you support that war or you are not going to get your wild rivers designation. You support that war or you are not going to get this earmark for the forest service. You support that war or you are not going to get anything that you want in the budget.'' And I can imagine, I can imagine the power that Johnson would have had using that kind of device. I would also suggest I believe that many, many reforms that are adopted in politics wind up being counterintuitive. And I would suggest, for instance, that an item veto could, in fact, significantly raise the cost of doing business in government affairs because Presidents will dangle projects in front of Members if they are ``good,'' ``good'' being defined by the White House. And that could, in fact, enhance the White House's ability to pass questionable legislation by dangling goodies in front of Members and threatening to cut them if they did not. So I think my record is clear on earmarks. This Congress provided many fewer earmarks when I was chairman of the Appropriations Committee than it has in any year since that time. But having said that, I think it is important, in whatever choices we make about earmarks, to not inadvertently in that process enhance the power of the executive branch of government so that they are even more strong than they are today, vis-a-vis the Congress of the United States. In the last analysis, there is only one check on untrammeled executive power, and that check is the Congress of the United States. And I would urge Members of this House, regardless of party, not to weaken that check. That check is not just important to the Congress. It is important to the American people. Not in the 36 years that I have served here, has any President ever seen any Congress change that President's spending request by more than 3 percent. And it is that 3 percent difference that makes a difference between having a President and having a king. With all due respect, I think we ought to make certain we continue to have a democracy, not an unofficial monarchy, and I believe that an item veto would contribute to destroying that very delicate balance of power between the two branches, and give even more power to the executive branch which in so many ways is demonstrating runaway executive power right now.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, as the gentleman from Arkansas says, we have hundreds of thousands of seniors who are faced with absolute confusion on this prescription drug bill. What we are trying to do is help them sort through some of the ridiculous choices they are being forced to make. What we are trying to do is to say that we will move the sign up deadline back to the end of the year to give them more time to sort out which plan best fits their needs. In my State, for instance, there are over 40 plans being offered to seniors. Secondly, we are saying give those seniors one opportunity to change a plan after May. Right now, if they do not make a change before May, they are stuck. Give them an opportunity to change once after May if they discover they have made the wrong choices in plans. Why are we offering this on the appropriations bill? It is very simple, because the rules were abused egregiously in order to enable the passage of this bill in the first place. The bill contained an outrageous gap in coverage now called the ``doughnut hole.'' It also contained a provision which forbade, which forbade the government from even negotiating with the pharmaceutical industry on price. How did that happen? Because the majority leadership of this House held the vote open for 3 hours in order to change the verdict. The way things are supposed to work in the House, as everybody knows, is that when we vote, these machines open, our name lights up on the board, we take our voting card, we put it in, and 15 minutes later the people with the most votes are supposed to be the winners. That is not the way this bill was passed. The way this bill was passed was that this bill was defeated at the end of 15 minutes. It was defeated at the end of a half an hour. It was defeated at the end of an hour. It was defeated after 2 hours. It was defeated after 2\1/2\ hours. But finally after 3 hours of holding the vote open the bill passed. How? Because the Republican leadership of this House broke Members' arms to vote for a bill they did not want to vote for because it contained these defects. That is why we are trying to use the rules that were abused in that action in order to correct the abuse and give our seniors in the process a little more time to make a crucial decision in their lives. I would urge support for the amendment, and I would urge the gentleman not to raise a point of order against the bill. Mr. Chairman, could I ask how much time I have remaining.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I would simply say that what the gentleman is suggesting by insisting on his point of order is that the rules of this House may be bent by the majority in order to provide special interest language in a piece of legislation, but they cannot be used by the minority to defend the public interest in that same case. I would find that a strange interpretation of the rules indeed.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, because this is the only way that we can protest this egregious corruption of the rules of the House, I respectfully appeal the ruling of the Chair.

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, with this bill, we will now have spent as much money in Iraq as we did in Vietnam. If you adjust for inflation, it is now just about the equivalent. It seems to me that spending almost half a trillion dollars of the taxpayers' money is indefensible unless we are willing to see to it that that money is spent as well as we can possibly accomplish that fact. I guess it boils down to this: if Members are happy with reading day after day about stories that are published about waste and fraud and ripoffs by contractors in Iraq, if they are tired of reading about the insider deals and the single-source contracts for work to be done in Iraq, if a Republican-controlled Congress cannot bring itself to conduct a really vigorous investigation of a Republican administration, then they ought to vote ``no.'' But if you think that we ought to be doing now exactly as we were doing in World War II, when Harry Truman conducted the kind of investigation the gentleman from Massachusetts mentioned, if you think we ought to replicate that effort, then you vote ``yes.'' I would submit that the Roosevelt administration was not damaged by the investigations done by the Truman Committee, they were strengthened by it, because that meant they had more resources available to get the job done in defeating the Japanese and defeating the Nazis. I want to congratulate the gentleman from Massachusetts for the leadership that he has shown on this issue. Mr. Chairman, I urge an ``aye'' vote. Point of Order

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. I would simply note, given what the gentleman just said, that is exactly what we have done with Iraq. Every dollar of the Iraq war has been financed through a supplemental appropriation. That is the way the administration has been able to hide from the taxpayers the full long- term cost of this war. That is the way they have been able to avoid systematic oversight. They put it in a supplemental, and then it is a must-pass, hurry-up, piece-at-a-time operation. Eventually you get the whole pie, but you get it in pieces, and the public doesn't know what the total picture is. So I would simply say that I was kind of amused by that comment because the administration is way ahead of all of us. They decided a long time ago that they are going to supplemental the Congress to death, and they put every possible dollar they can into supplementals. They have yet to spend $1 in a regular defense appropriation bill for Iraq. So I just find it interesting that one person is expected to live up to a standard that the administration itself won't live up to.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I would just say I am very happy to work with the gentleman to try to deal with the problem.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. I want it understood that if we do not have an agreement in 10 minutes, I will move to adjourn.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, what I am trying to do still in the interest of cooperation tonight, I am trying to filibuster until Mr. Capuano, who is ready to offer the amendment, is ready to offer at this point. Could I ask if the gentleman is ready? He is ready. This is probably the shortest filibuster in the history of the House.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I am being asked every two seconds by Members, what is the story about tonight. Let me simply suggest, and ask the gentleman from California if he concurs. It is my understanding that what we are trying to do is to put together a unanimous consent agreement under which we would be able to complete our business of debating all of the pending amendments within about another 11 hours. That assumes that we can get that UC agreement. If we can't, the debate could go on far longer. We don't quite have that UC agreement worked out yet, but we are trying to. And what we are hoping to do is to proceed with a number of amendments, the Millender-McDonald, Souder, Engel, Shays, Hyde, Burton, Capuano, Salazar, Doggett, Hinojosa, Melancon, Jefferson, Reyes, Jackson-Lee, and Tierney/Leach. We are trying to get at least that far tonight. We don't know if we can. I would ask the gentleman if he has any disagreement with what I just said.

Mr. OBEY. And I would simply say, my understanding is if we can reach this UC agreement, there will be no further votes tonight.

Mr. OBEY. It is also my understanding that afterwards, there is an intention to have the Energy and Commerce Committee also bring up a matter relating to the Low Income Heating Assistance Program.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I rise to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis) a question. As the gentleman knows there is a tradition of courtesy in this House which dictates that when either party has a function that the House will not be in session beyond say 5 or 6 o'clock. We have made an exception this evening despite the fact that there was a dispute in the Republican caucus earlier in the day, which ate up an extra hour and a half and despite the fact that we have been told that other legislation needed to be brought to the floor. We still indicated our desire to cooperate in establishing a time limit, because we were trying to facilitate the Members of both parties leaving here tomorrow afternoon. It now appears to me that despite our willingness to do that, we are getting a continual stream of new amendments being produced on the majority side, which are preventing us from reaching a time agreement that would enable us to get out of here at a reasonable hour tomorrow afternoon. I would like to know what the status of the situation is because at this point, I frankly see no purpose in continuing tonight if all we are going to do is give people more time to draft more amendments. We have imposed a deadline on our side of the aisle and told Members that amendments will not be considered if they come in after a certain hour. But my understanding is on the Republican side there are still amendments coming in and the majority is being pressured to put them on the list. I do not mind working cooperatively, but I do mind when I am being taken advantage of. I want to suggest that if we can not reach an agreement on time within the next 10 minutes, I for one intend to move to adjourn.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, and I certainly will not, I simply want to point out that right now we are at page 35 in the bill. There are some 83 pages in the bill; and after we dispose of the amendments on those pages, we still have at least 24 amendments that come at the end of the bill, which means that unless we have considerable Member cooperation, we are going to be here deep into tonight and deep into tomorrow night. So I would invite Members to understand what the situation is with respect to the number of amendments still before us. With that, I withdraw my reservation.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I rise to simply agree with every word the gentleman from Virginia just spoke. I cannot think of a more mindless, shortsighted or ridiculous amendment to be offered that affects a serious problem than this amendment. It is absolutely backwards. It is ludicrous. It is absolutely against the interest of the United States. What we are in effect saying is we have such great relations with this country that we don't want to do whatever we can to improve them by going directly to people through exchange programs. I find that to be ridiculous.

Mr. OBEY. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word. I would simply like to make one observation. Scheduling of legislation is done by the majority party. I have, I think it is fair to say, given procedural cooperation every step of the way to see to it that before the House leaves for yet another recess, that we will finish this supplemental appropriation bill. I am Irish, and French, and a few other things. And like a number of other people, I was invited to the Irish Embassy tonight because this is close to Saint Patrick's Day. I turned that invitation down because I knew that we would be here tonight having to work on this bill. And even though my own party had an event tonight, we have agreed to stay here and continue to work on this bill, and we are staying considerably later than we had first agreed to, but we are trying to finish these amendments so that Members can get out of here at a reasonable time tomorrow, hopefully late tomorrow afternoon instead of into the evening. That is why we are staying here late tonight. Now I discover that there is one amendment that could have been offered tonight, but we are told that we can't offer it because the member of the Appropriations Committee on the majority side who wants to handle it is, guess where? At the Irish Embassy. Well, I would simply suggest that I don't mind somebody else enjoying themselves, but I do suggest that if Members of the minority are expected to be here, if members of the Appropriations Committee on the minority side are expected to be here, I do think it is too much to ask that the party setting the schedule expect the same thing of Members on its side.