Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from California. Well, no, I wouldn't be happy to, but I will.

Mr. OBEY. Well, I am truly sorry we can't make as much progress on this bill tonight as I had hoped we would be able to make, but I find some of the reasons for that to be quite interesting. And, Madam Chairman, I am going to ask unanimous consent that we might move to another amendment by Mr. Melancon at the end of the bill.

Mr. OBEY. We will wait until he is here. Amendment Offered by Mr. Melancon

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, this bill, or the bill which will be debated under this rule, will spend $92 billion of the taxpayers' money. The largest portion of it will be to fund the continuing war in Iraq. It is here because of the most spectacular military blunder committed by any President of the United States in this country's history. We went to war on the basis of bad information, and we are now mired in that war because of the spectacular incompetence and stubbornness of the Secretary of Defense. We are also going to be asked to fund additional payments to meet the aftermath of the Katrina hurricane, which is another spectacular example of the incompetent management of government by this administration. I am going to vote against the previous question on the rule because, while some 48 amendments have been noticed to the committee for consideration over the next 2 days, this House has still apparently not found a way to enable us to consider two other amendments. The first is the one mentioned by the gentlewoman from New York. We feel it is an obligation of this Congress to begin to conduct decent oversight on both the expenditures in Iraq and the expenditures in Katrina. This Congress has a miserable record on oversight. My colleague in the Senate, Mr. Feingold, introduced a resolution censuring the President for various actions that he has taken outside of the law. I believe that the Congress itself deserves censure for not meeting its oversight responsibilities. One way to meet those oversight responsibilities is to repeat what this Congress did during World War II when it created the Truman Commission. At that time, you had a Democratic Congress that was not afraid to investigate the activities of a Democratic administration, and Harry Truman investigated waste and war profiteering. They held 432 public hearings, 300 executive sessions, went on hundreds of fact- finding missions, issued 51 reports and saved some $15 billion of the taxpayers' money. We have stories that are rampant today about the abuse of taxpayer money in Iraq and Katrina, and yet this Congress is doing very little by way of aggressive oversight. I am going to vote against the previous question because I want to see an amendment creating a new Truman committee made in order. The second thing I want to see is I want to see Congress, since the committee has already voted to block the Dubai port deal, I want to see the Congress go beyond that and to establish a rational process to guarantee that in the future our government will know every time a similar transaction is being contemplated. Right now, the only way our government knows is if the two parties who have an economic interest in the deal voluntarily tell the United States Government. Mr. Sabo tried to get that amendment adopted in committee. It failed. In my view, if you are going the pass the Lewis amendment, which all but two members of the Appropriations Committee supported, it ought to also contain the Sabo amendment so that we do, in fact, establish a rational process so that we are not just looking like a flock of chickens every time something happens that panics the Congress. In that way, we would at least have a systematic way for the administration to review each and every one of these potential sales or transactions, and we would have a way for Congress to do the same. So, unless those two amendments can be considered by this House, I see no reason why I should support the previous question or the rule, for that matter.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. OBEY. I would simply say, ordinarily, I would agree that the authorizing committee should deal with this issue. But given the fact that the Appropriations Committee at the leadership level took the action to wipe out the Dubai deal, to me it was appropriate that we make that provision have even more sense by having it attached by the same committee that did the other deed.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey), the ranking member of the Foreign Operations Subcommittee.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 10 minutes. Mr. Chairman, as I said earlier, this bill is here because of a massive failure of American leadership, which goes right to the very top in the White House. We are going to be spending $90 billion in this bill, most of which goes for Iraq, a war which was engaged in by our country, initiated by our country on the basis of bad information and manipulated intelligence. After we were in the war, we were told by the administration that Iraqi reconstruction would cost between $1 and $2 billion and could be financed by Iraqi oil revenues. After the administration submitted its reconstruction request for over $18 billion, Secretary Rumsfeld told us, ``We just had no idea of how bad the Iraqi economy was.'' That certainly is an understatement. The administration then claimed that we would be greeted as liberators and that 6 months after the invasion, we could begin withdrawing troops. Since then, the insurgency has exploded. We have lost over 2,300 U.S. troops who have been killed. Thousands have been injured. Many more Iraqis have been killed and a continuing U.S. troop deployment in Iraq of around 130,000, down only slightly from the 150,000 in the year before. We have had a failure to plan for adequately equipping our troops with armor. And as a result, our troops have been rummaging for scrap metal from garbage dumps and they have had to deal with a myriad of other equipment shortages. Then we have seen the disgraceful stories about Abu Ghraib. We have seen stories about torture all being done in the name of the United States, in the name of every citizen of this country. We have reports that more than 100 people have died in custody, and then we have reports that the administration is spying on Americans and eavesdropping on Americans. I want to make it clear, I want our government to eavesdrop on every person that it needs to eavesdrop on in order to protect this country, but I want it done in a way which is constitutional, and in a way which is in conformance with the law, not outside the law, and right now that is not the case. So this bill comes before us with the United States divided and with the American people confused about what our mission is, what our purpose is, and what our plans are. And now we are asked to provide this additional money. I will vote for this bill because, while I have grave misgivings about the war, and while I believe that Mr. Rumsfeld should have resigned a long time ago, I intend to support whatever money is necessary in order to support our troops. But having said that, let me just make another observation. We are going to be spending $91 billion. $19 billion is for Katrina. Over almost $70 billion is for Iraq. And I am told that those funds will be expended at a rate of about $6.8 billion a month. And yet we are going to be squabbling over the next 2 days over a fraction of that amount that some of us believe should be used to provide heating for our elderly, education for our kids, and medical care for our veterans. Three years after this war began, does anybody here really believe the President of the United States when he tells us that this is all about bringing democracy and freedom to Iraq? $400 billion and then some later, does anybody believe that Congress did the right thing when this Congress handed a blank check to the administration? After more than 17,000 Americans wounded in Iraq, does anyone think Congress was right to sit on its hands when it was clear that this White House and the civilian leadership at the Pentagon did not have the first clue about what they were doing? Mr. Chairman, in addition to the divisions which we face on Iraq, we face some other problems with this bill. This bill, for instance, contains Mr. Lewis' amendment shutting off and shutting down the ports transaction involving Dubai. At the same time, however, the committee blocked the Sabo amendment which would have created a process which would have guaranteed that our government would know each and every time such a transaction was being contemplated. Without the Sabo amendment, we are still in a position where notice to the American government of any such transaction is optional. We do not believe on this side of the aisle it ought to be optional. Secondly, the committee blocked efforts, again by Mr. Sabo, to add $3.4 billion for crucially needed funding to strengthen port security and border security. The committee cut back my amendment to provide $1 billion to help low-income Americans pay for higher energy prices which are in large measure arising today because of our misadventures in Iraq. The committee cut back that effort to $750 million with no guarantee that a single dollar of that will be provided to people who need it this year. Then the committee declined to support a provision by Mr. Berry which would have repaired the prescription drug plan that has now gone into effect and which would have at least given seniors more time to sort out their confusion before they have to commit themselves to signing up for one plan or another. The committee also refused to adopt, well, to save time, I will skip the other three points that I think were important to discuss, but let me simply say this, Mr. Chairman. There will be a lot of debate on this bill over the next 2 days, and a lot of it will be focused on Iraq. But I think it is important for each and every American to understand and it is important for each and every man and woman representing this country in uniform to understand that our divisions about the advisability of the war and about what ought to happen next in that war have nothing whatsoever to do with our feelings for those who wear the uniform of the United States and are presently engaged in this contest. They have done every possible thing that could be asked of them. We owe them our gratitude for their sense of sacrifice, their willingness to answer the call of their country, and I do not think that turmoil over the advisability of the war ought to be mistaken for disagreement that we owe a debt of obligation to each and every person who is fighting in that war. I wish we had a similar sense of self-sacrifice on the part of persons who are not participating in that war. It sometimes seems that the only people who are being asked to sacrifice are military families. We are telling the rest of the country, while some folks are off to war, ``Do not worry, folks, we are going to give you a nice fat tax cut, and people who make $1 million a year are going to get $110,000 tax cut.'' No sense of self-sacrifice there. So, Mr. Speaker, I intend to vote for this bill in the end, but we could have adopted a number of amendments which would have made this a much more balanced product, and I would hope that as we go through the debate that we will find a way to at least address some of the issues which we failed to address when the committee dealt with the bill last week. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 7 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran).

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Chairman, this has been a very frustrating day. I can remember when this place used to be a legislative body. Now it has unfortunately become 99 percent a political institution, and even the politics of the institution doesn't seem to be working out too well on either side of the aisle. What we have before us now is a holy picture debate. This is a Potemkin amendment. It is a Potemkin debate, and it is another example of how Congress has been reduced to dealing in symbols rather than dealing with substance. We have had this country in a frenzy about the Dubai involvement in American ports over the past couple of weeks. The Appropriations Committee had a vote, and by vote of 62 to 2, the committee adopted an amendment by the distinguished chairman of the committee, Mr. Lewis, which shut off the ability of the Dubai company to make their purchase of American port facilities. We tried, in the committee, to make that action more rational by also establishing a process under which we would have a regularized notice to our government every time such a transaction is being proposed. The committee saw fit to turn that down. We are now out on the floor. What is going on now is that there is such a frenzy to have every single member of the House also on record on this issue, that we now have a faux debate going on. As I read this, the only purpose of this debate today is to allow every Member of the House to cast a vote. It is what I call a holy picture vote, and it means that when the votes come, this amendment is going to be overwhelmingly defeated. The only purposes I see that will have been accomplished by taking this time, is that Members will then have a vote in their pocket that they can take home and brag to people about. I admire the gentleman from Maryland and his willingness to be a sacrificial lamb on the amendment. I know that one or two people on this side of the aisle, such as Mr. Moran, share his view, and I admire them for their courage. I have to say that I really am frustrated to see on this, and a number of other amendments today and tomorrow, this House is going to deal with these issues in a symbolic manner rather than discussing it in a thorough, systematic way that might bring some additional credit to the House. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, this place is really something else. We just had a debate on an amendment that doesn't do ``nothing'' to or for ``nobody''. The Dubai deal is already dead, and so it is irrelevant whether this House votes for the Gilchrest amendment or not. Because the Dubai deal is already dead, the Lewis Amendment is eviscerated; it does not do anything. It leaves the country with the same problem that we had before we discovered the Dubai controversy. What Mr. Sabo is doing today is what he usually does, which is to try to bring a bit of objectivity and concern for substance into a political pit. And what Mr. Sabo is saying in his amendment is ``Let's fix the process so that we do not have the future spectacle of a President to the United States being clueless when a transaction like Dubai is about to take place.'' So what Mr. Sabo is saying is, ``Look, the problem with the process is that, right now, it is voluntary, whether or not the people with an economic interest in such a transaction ever notifies our government or not.'' What the Sabo Amendment would do is to say, ``Let's make sure our government always knows what is happening with these kind of transactions.'' And the second thing the Sabo Amendment does is to make certain that Congress can have a role, if it chooses, in this process. Because right now the only time Congress is ever informed is if the President turns down a transaction. They are not informed if the President goes ahead with it. So I would suggest it would be quaint indeed if this House uses a technicality in the rules to eliminate the only amendment that does something and then makes a big political production out of voting on the Gilchrest amendment, which is totally irrelevant. It is as irrelevant as the Lewis amendment is, because Dubai is already done, the deal is gone, it is quashed. What Mr. Sabo is trying to do is to create some order for the future.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Mr. Speaker, I am asking the House to vote down the previous question on this rule today so that the House might have an opportunity to consider two provisions which were dealt with in the Appropriations Committee yesterday. As we all know, this country has been rocked with stories about the potential purchase of port facilities in this country by a foreign corporation. I am not quite sure what the policy ought to be, but I do know that we ought to have a policy. In fact, this country needs to have an overall policy with respect to the question of foreign investment in this country in general, but we do not. What we have discovered in this episode is that when a company such as the port terminal that has been discussed in newspapers, when a company like that is purchased by another foreign entity, it is only at the option of the two parties who have an economic interest that our government is even informed that the transaction is taking place. That is why our President had to tell the Nation that he did not have a clue about this port transaction. Well, our President ought to have a clue and we ought to have a process that guarantees that he will be informed and that process should not rely on the voluntary action of the parties who stand to make money in the deal. Yesterday in the Appropriations Committee we had an amendment adopted by Mr. Lewis, the chairman, which threw out the Dubai port deal. But the committee in that process declined to support the Sabo amendment which would have tried to establish a process under which this country would be guaranteed that our government would always know when such a transaction is being contemplated. And it would have set up a process which would have assured a time certain for Presidential action and would have given the Congress a role to play in that process. Without the action of the Sabo amendment, we are simply, on an ad hoc basis, taking one action to forbid one port from being purchased by a foreign party but we are still leaving the country open to other deals about which our government could know nothing. I do not think there are 10 people in the Congress who knew, for instance, that a Chinese corporation had taken over the port at Long Beach. It would be nice if our Government knew things like that. The only way that we are going to get something like this done is if we force the Congress to face the entire issue. And it seems to me that this bill is a handy vehicle for doing that. I know that people will say, ``Well, you are trying to attach a matter to a bill that does not have anything to do with the matter at hand.'' I would simply say I have learned plenty from the majority leadership of this House about how to do that in the past few years, and I think we need to take advantage of that learning at this point to deal with what is a very serious problem facing our country on this question. We need to have a policy on this so that we do not look as we did yesterday, like a bunch of chickens flying in all directions the minute an issue becomes controversial. We need to have a long-term policy to deal with this issue. The Sabo amendment, as it amends the Lewis amendment in the Appropriations Committee yesterday, would do that. And this bill before us today would be a decent venue to discuss that in a broad fashion, which is why I would urge defeat of the previous question so that we might be afforded the opportunity to offer such an amendment and have the House work its will on it.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 7 minutes. Mr. Speaker, as the gentleman from California has indicated, the majority is bringing to the floor a bill that transfers $712 million from FEMA to SBA for Katrina-related costs. We are told that SBA projects they will run out of money by February 21 without the action contained in this bill. That is despite the fact that the Congress has just passed a supplemental appropriation for Katrina that was signed into law on December 30 of 2005. At that time, Congress actually provided SBA emergency supplemental funding totaling $441 million. SBA stated that the reason their projections were inadequate was because the size of the loans were much larger than previous disasters, from approximately $30,000 to $60,000 per loan. Even though Katrina and other hurricanes hit in late August, because the SBA was so slow in approving loans, they had no idea of the size. Once the SBA began to approve loans at a quicker pace, they apparently discovered that they would probably be short of funds, but even that, Mr. Speaker, is not the whole story. SBA believes they will need an additional $400 to $600 million on top of what is being provided here to provide funding for all the hurricane victims of Katrina, Rita and Wilma. The difference is expected to be presented during the larger Iraq-Katrina supplemental, which is supposed to be coming any day. The fact that the administration had no idea that one of the key agencies on the ground in Louisiana was almost out of money seems to me to be just another example of the wholly inadequate response which the Nation has seen in the aftermath of these hurricanes. The administration's initial response was disorganized and indecisive. The people who knew what they were doing, the experienced career employees of FEMA and other first responders, were apparently ignored by incompetent and unqualified political cronies who should never have been in the positions of leadership that they had. I would have thought that 9/11 would have been a wake-up call. I would have thought that Katrina would be a wake-up call. I think that every Member of this House has the right to be tired of being disappointed by the folks who cannot shoot straight when it comes to providing the needed relief. Let me also, Mr. Speaker, express my concern about the fact that this Congress is not taking action to address another problem which is an emergency, namely, the energy crisis in this country. Despite some relief being caused by warmer than usual temperatures, the latest figures issued on February 7 by the Department of Energy confirm that the cost of heating one's home has still risen dramatically this winter. Comparing this winter to last, average prices for natural gas are up by 31 percent, average prices for home heating oil are up 25 percent, and average prices for propane are up 18 percent just over that year. In spite of those price increases, this year's appropriation for the Low Income Heating Assistance Program is actually $21 million less than last year. A shortfall in LIHEAP is even more serious than these price figures would suggest, Mr. Speaker, because, first, this winter's increase comes on top of price increases over the past several years that far outpace the appropriations this Congress has provided for LIHEAP. Since the winter of 2001-2002, the average price of home heating oil has more than doubled, the average price of natural gas has gone up 95 percent, and propane is up 68 percent, yet funding for LIHEAP has increased only 20 percent over that period. So high energy prices were causing a serious problem even before the gulf hurricane disrupted oil and gas production, and that drove prices still higher. The hurricanes simply made an existing problem worse. I would also point out that these big increases in heating bills mean big increases in the number of people who need our assistance, as well as increases in the amount of aid that they need. The LIHEAP program has been serving only about 16 percent of those who are eligible based on Federal income standards, and I think we ought to be able to do better than that. I would say that with the number of recipients rising faster than the appropriation, the average grant has been going down. At the very same time, prices are going up. The energy assistance directors estimate nationwide that the average LIHEAP grant shrunk by about 10 percent over the last 4 years. So it seems to me, Mr. Speaker, the need for supplemental funding for LIHEAP is apparent. I wish that we could provide it. I wish it were before the House today in a vehicle which would allow an honest discussion of what funding level is needed, in a vehicle that would allow the House to work its will, offer whatever amendments Members think are appropriate so we can approve at a funding level commensurate with national need. It would seem to me that at the very least we should be providing emergency funding to bring the LIHEAP program up to the authorized level of $5.1 billion. This is an emergency now, not in April or May, and I wish that this Congress saw fit to deal with this problem. We obviously have enough time today. I am told that when this debate is over we are going to be rolling these votes or delaying them until about 4:30 or 5 o'clock. That would have been plenty of time to have a spirited, full debate on the issue, give Members the opportunity to offer whatever amendments they needed in order to fulfill our responsibilities to attack national problems. We are not doing that today with respect to that problem. We are meeting a temporary need in SBA, and I am sure Members will want to vote for that, but we ought to be doing a lot more. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I was told that I had one other Member who wanted to speak, but she is detained in another meeting. So I think if the gentleman is interested in yielding back the balance of his time, we could do that on this side as well.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the right to object in order to simply ask at the proper time that I may be allowed to insert a statement from Mr. Conyers in the Record with respect to the PATRIOT Act. And I have been asked by the distinguished minority leader, Ms. Pelosi, to read the following statement: ``Mr. Speaker, I do not intend to object to this 1-month extension of the PATRIOT Act provision contained in this legislation. We would have preferred a 3- or 6-month extension to allow the American people a longer time to discuss the very serious impacts of these provisions on the civil liberties of the American people. But it appears we will only be given 1 month for that national debate. ``I also want it to be clear that this legislation involves only a small portion of the PATRIOT Act. Ninety percent of that act is law and remains law, regardless of what we do here today. ``The portion of the law in dispute is the very controversial section that affects the basic civil liberties of the American people. The rights of our citizens, as guaranteed by the Constitution, should not be shoehorned into a tight timeframe. We should have the time for a vigorous and thorough debate. In the meantime, the overwhelming majority of the PATRIOT Act is in place, and will remain in effect. ``Mr. Speaker, there is a very crucial debate in this country today about the rights of American citizens to privacy, and about the proper role of the Congress and courts in assuring that no one, not even the President, tramples on those basic privacy rights without complying with the law. In this atmosphere, it is appropriate to give additional time to examine the implications of these controversial provisions of the PATRIOT Act.''

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, more than a year ago when Mr. Lewis was elected chairman of the Appropriations Committee, he came to me and asked if we could have an understanding that we would express our substantive differences, but still cooperate in moving bills forward in an orderly way once those differences were expressed. We did that. Time and time again, the minority was denied the opportunity to offer different sets of priorities, priorities that did not offer huge tax cuts for those who have the most in society, paid for with cuts in education, health care, and worker protection for those who have the least. Despite the fact that the rules of the House were used to block our efforts to obtain on-the-record votes on a number of our alternatives, Democrats continued to cooperate procedurally even as we made clear our differences on policy. The Republican majority wanted to finish all of these bills by the end of the fiscal year, and we did not procedurally obstruct them, because while we differed strongly with the values that lie behind their budget priorities, we respected the fact that they are in the majority, and we respect and revere this institution. But because of internal divisions between the majority party, divisions within the House GOP caucus, and divisions between House and Senate Republicans, the fiscal year ended with the Labor-HHS bill and the Defense appropriations bill that represents 67 percent of the discretionary spending in our budget bill still being hung up in the legislative process. Now in the closing days of this Congress, the Republican leadership has decided to use the must-pass Defense appropriations bill to force down the throats of the American people a number of wholly unrelated gifts to special interests. They decided to hold funds for our troops hostage in order to force Congress into removing protections against oil drilling in ANWR. To make room for their tax giveaways, they even imposed a second round of cuts on education, health, worker protection, and even imposed a $4 billion additional cut in military spending. Senate action yesterday has corrected one provision inserted in the bill by the abuse of power, the strong-arm attempts at drilling in ANWR, and for that I applaud the Senate. I led the opposition to ANWR's inclusion in the conference, and I am happy that the Congress was not blackmailed into accepting it. But, frankly, Mr. Speaker, continuing under my reservation, ANWR was not the biggest problem with the conference report. The biggest problem is that it shortchanges our economic future by refusing to make adequate investments in education. And it cruelly neglects to strengthen support for programs that help provide critical health care services to people who desperately need them. But we have lost that fight. This Congress has made the decision to cut critical health, education, worker protection, and social service funding by $3 billion below last year's level. What I find so gutless about Congress' performance on this bill is that those cuts could not pass the Senate on a rollcall vote, so the majority party had to arrange for their Senators to duck this vote, thereby hiding from accountability by arranging for the bill to be passed through the Senate without a rollcall vote. That means the majority party has denied critical help to families most in need of help, but has not had the courage to forthrightly defend their votes to the people affected in the public arena. This bill makes that problem $1.4 billion worse for those programs and because of the across-the-board cut, it makes other ill-advised cuts in critical funding for the FBI and local law enforcement, and it even cuts an additional $4 billion out of the Defense bill. If I could do anything to change that, I would; but it is clear the die is cast. Continuing under my reservation, Mr. Speaker, there is a second outrageous problem with this bill. The majority has turned the proposal to prepare for a flu pandemic into a giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry. When the President requested $7 billion to begin a much- belated crash program to develop a new generation of vaccines and antiviral drugs to combat a potential flu pandemic, the Republican majority responded by cutting it in half. When I asked Senator Stevens in conference why we shouldn't fund the rest of the administration's request so that it was clear that the government had a long-term commitment to the development of needed vaccines and antivirals, he responded that because liability protection language for manufacturers was not being adopted, long-range funding should be withheld. The conference committee ended its work with the understanding, both verbal and in writing, that there would be no legislative liability protection language inserted in this bill. And because the majority told us it did not want any compensation program for victims to be applied against the discretionary portion of the budget, no funding was provided for that, either. But after the conference was finished at 6 p.m., Senator Frist marched over to the House side of the Capitol about 4 hours later and insisted that over 40 pages of legislation, which I have in my hand, 40 pages of legislation that had never been seen by conferees, be attached to the bill. The Speaker joined him in that assistance so that, without a vote of the conferees, that legislation was unilaterally and arrogantly inserted into the bill after the conference was over in a blatantly abusive power play by two of the most powerful men in Congress. We then discovered that this language provided all sorts of insulation for pharmaceutical companies and that this insulation applied not just to drugs developed to deal with the flu but in fact applied to a far broader range of products. In essence, the provisions allowed the Secretary of HHS to issue a declaration that has the effect of almost completely prohibiting lawsuits in State or Federal courts by persons whose health was injured against manufacturers and various others for compensation for injuries caused by the use of covered countermeasures. That determination would bar lawsuits against a wide range of covered persons involved with the countermeasures including manufacturers and their suppliers, their distributors, State and local governments and their employees involved with the use of those countermeasures, medical personnel prescribing and administering the countermeasures, and so forth. That is very broad power, indeed, to ban lawsuits. Unlike the language requested by the administration, the division E language is not limited to products to combat a flu pandemic. Rather, it applies to any drug, vaccine, medical device, or other products useful in dealing with anything the Secretary considers to constitute a health emergency or that could constitute an emergency in the future. Although a rationale often offered for lawsuit protection is that it is needed to encourage manufacturers to develop and produce new treatments, the protections of division E are not limited to new or experimental products. Rather, nothing in the language would prevent the Secretary from providing protection against lawsuits to drugs that have been on the market for decades. Further, the language explicitly prohibits any judicial review in either Federal or State court of the Secretary's decisions to grant immunity from lawsuits. If anyone believes that the power is being exercised too broadly, or even in violation of the law, they apparently would have no remedy other than asking the Secretary to change his mind or asking Congress to amend the law. Although proponents point to provisions of this language that make an exception and allow lawsuits in cases of willful misconduct, that exception is so narrowly drawn as to be almost meaningless. First, the provision defines ``willful misconduct'' as acts taken intentionally to achieve a wrongful purpose, knowing there is no legal or factual justification, and in disregard of known or obvious great risk. Basically, Mr. Speaker, the only conduct that would permit a lawsuit under this definition is probably conduct so egregious as to be criminal in nature. However, even this highly restrictive definition of ``willful misconduct'' doesn't seem to have been enough restriction on lawsuits to satisfy the authors of division E. They added yet another provision that allows the Secretary of HHS to promulgate regulations further narrowing the scope of actions that could give rise to a right to sue. Then there is yet another provision that says that if the conduct in question is regulated under the Food and Drug Act or Public Health Service Act, a lawsuit for willful misconduct can be brought only if the Federal Government has taken enforcement action against that conduct. Finally, the language makes various changes to the normal rules of civil procedure to add further obstacles and difficulties in front of a potential plaintiff. In short, as a practical matter, there is virtually no right for anyone to sue about anything covered by a secretarial determination under this language. In summary, the administration asked for some very broad liability protections for manufacturers and others involved with countermeasures against pandemic flu, and the administration's proposal was widely criticized as going too far. With division E of the Defense appropriations conference report, Congress would be providing even broader protection, potentially covering a wide range of drugs, vaccines, and devices far beyond what is needed to deal with flu. Further, this denial of the right to sue is more sweeping than provided in the case of childhood vaccines or in the case of smallpox vaccine. In the smallpox case, manufacturers were protected by basically substituting the Federal Government as defendant, with the scope of potential lawsuits against the Federal Government narrowed, but not eliminated. Now, Mr. Speaker, I recognize that some sort of liability protection or indemnification is necessary and appropriate to encourage development and manufacture of some measures to deal with pandemic flu; and I would support such reasonable language, language that has been reviewed by a committee that knows what it is doing in a process that allows for public comments. But there are real doubts about whether it needs to be this broad. It is worth noting that Sanofi Pasteur, our only domestic flu vaccine manufacturer, has already signed contracts with the Federal Government to make avian flu vaccine and has already delivered some lots, rather than refusing to proceed until legislation like this is enacted. Similarly, Roche has been supplying Tamiflu for the national stockpile and actively seeking contracts to supply more. The result of this legislative action was a provision in the pending bill that prevents anyone who is a victim of a faulty vaccine from being able to obtain compensation in the courts. It says, in effect, that if you become seriously ill because of mistakes in manufacturing that you lose your right to sue for compensation, but you can as an alternative seek compensation from the government. The problem is that no funds were provided, or no money was provided, for that fund. So anyone who gets sick would have to lobby Congress to put money in the fund before they can collect. Thus, people injured lose their right to sue, but are not guaranteed any alternative means of covering their medical bills, lost earnings, and other costs. Mr. Speaker, the committee system was created years ago to ensure that, to protect the public interest, legislation would be carefully reviewed before it was placed before the body for consideration. But that protection was arbitrarily bypassed by the leadership in both Houses. This is the second time that this Congress has supinely done the bidding of the pharmaceutical industry in the dead of night. The first time a vote was held open for 3 hours while the Republican majority twisted arms to create the complex and ridiculously confusing prescription drug bill that our seniors are now so desperately trying to understand, a bill that was ushered through this institution by over 600 lobbyists and that protected companies by preventing the government from even attempting to negotiate lower drug prices. If I thought that denying unanimous consent on this bill would force the majority to eliminate that language, I would object. But, Mr. Speaker, it has also been made quite clear to me that the majority will not relent on the language that insulates drug companies. So, Mr. Speaker, I want it to be clear that the action to insert this special interest language in the bill is, in my view, a corruption of the legislative practices of the House. When Congress returns in January, I intend to raise a question about the privileges of the House that are highlighted by this action because it has brought discredit to the House and should disturb every Member who serves here. No Member of Congress, no matter how powerful, should be able to unilaterally insist that provisions that were never discussed and never debated in the conference should wind up being slipped into that conference report without a vote of that same conference. This is what happens when there are no checks and balances and when one party controls the White House, the Senate, and the House and respects no limits on its own use of power. We have been placed in this position because the House Republican leadership has sent Members home for the Christmas holidays with the message to the Senate that we would not be here even if the Senate changed the legislation the House sent. That was irresponsible, and the country will pay the price. This institution, unfortunately, will also pay a price in terms of diminished respect from the people we were elected to represent. This is a shameful and shabby way to end the worst session of Congress I have experienced in my 36 years in this House. So, Mr. Speaker, I most reluctantly withdraw my reservation, because lodging an objection at this point would simply delay the shameful inevitable.

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. With all due respect, what does not happen is that the leadership does not abuse its power routinely to alter the contents of conference reports. So I know the gentleman didn't, and I have no objection to the gentleman proceeding. But I wanted to use this as an opportunity to point out that the leadership of this House, starting with the Speaker of the House, is abdicating his responsibility to protect the integrity of this institution.

Mr. OBEY. Reserving the right to object, Mr. Speaker, for the last 8 hours, we have been dealing with a majority leadership that has stripped out of the appropriations process and out of the conference virtually every major understanding we have had on those bills. We have had the United States Senate ram down our throats an ANWR provision. And then after we were assured in conference that there would be no language with respect to drug company indemnification, 3 hours after the conference report we get 45 pages of language which Senator Frist and the Speaker of the House demanded be included in the conference report after the conference was specifically told it would not be in there. Now, I want to know how do we have assurances on any bill brought to this floor under unanimous consent that that same kind of nonsense is not occurring in these instances? I have a responsibility as the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee to try to defend the integrity of this House, and I will use any opportunity I can to point out how the majority leadership in this House is destroying the principle that this is supposed to be the greatest deliberative body in the world. How long is the bill? Because, Mr. Speaker, I am tempted to demand that every single bill that comes up tonight be read in its entirety.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, the Republican leadership of this House has decided that this war-time Defense bill is the proper vehicle to resolve the debate on ANWR. Now, I know this is not the first time that substantive legislation has been added to an appropriations bill, but it is certainly one of the worst. There is something especially outrageous about the willingness of the majority party leadership to allow the Defense Department bill, in a time of war, to be held hostage to totally unrelated special interest items. The Defense bill should be about delivering equipment and support to our troops. Instead, it is being used to deliver a multibillion dollar bonanza to the oil companies. That action represents a fundamental corruption of the integrity of the legislative process, in my view. This legislation allows one Senator to grease the skids to allow the passage of ANWR by sprinkling enough money around this bill in selected accounts to buy enough votes in the Senate to ensure passage. I think that ought not happen, but that is what is going to happen if we pass the rule. I have another objection to what is happening here tonight. I have in my hand 45 pages of language which we were told in writing during the conference would not be included in the conference committee report. This is language which relates to indemnification of the pharmaceutical industry and the establishment of a compensation fund. What happens under this language is that individuals have their right to sue in case they are made very ill or in case, say someone in their family dies, they lose their right to sue a pharmaceutical manufacturer except when the Secretary finds malfeasance. Instead, they are told that they can have access to a compensation fund, but then there is no money put in the compensation fund. So that means that if you do get sick, you lose your right to sue, but you have to lobby the Congress in order to provide an appropriation in order to provide compensation for your loss. We were told in writing that that was not going to be in the conference report; and yet Senator Frist walked across the Capitol, walked into the Speaker's office, and Senator Frist and the Speaker demanded that the Republican leadership on the House Appropriations Committee insert that language in the bill. So we are here tonight recognizing that once again the orderly legislative process has been corrupted by a couple of muscle men in the Congress who think that they have a right to tell everybody else that they have to do their bidding. ANWR does not belong in this bill. This language with respect to the drug companies does not belong in this bill. It ought to be stripped. This rule should be turned down.