Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 9 minutes. Madam Speaker, let me say that this motion to instruct is, I think, fairly straightforward and simple, although the context in which it is offered is certainly not. What this motion attempts to do is simply insist that the $50 million contained in the House bill, but not contained in the Senate bill, for the purpose of retrofitting existing facilities and constructing special overhead cover devices to protect soldiers in bases throughout Iraq, is maintained. That overhead cover system would provide protection from artillery, rocket-propelled grenades and missile attack up to and including 122 millimeter rockets. That is virtually exactly what this does. But let me, in the context of offering this proposal, make a few observations. Even if this motion is adopted, and I would certainly expect that it would be, I think that we still must face the fact that our troops will not be adequately protected, nor will American citizens abroad be adequately protected so long as our Government is still taking actions which discredit this Nation and this Congress is continuing to neglect its oversight responsibilities with respect to those actions. Let me give three examples. In 2003, it came to the Nation's attention that the Secretary of Defense had established an operation known as the Office of Special Programs, the primary purpose of which was to vet intelligence and advise Pentagon leadership and the White House on plans for invading Iraq. That office was staffed by a select group handpicked by then Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. It was charged with developing the rationale for invading Iraq, and it was created out of a frustration on the part of the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense and their allies within the administration, their frustration that the normal intelligence operations in our Government were not being ``sufficiently forward leaning,'' as the Secretary of Defense put it, in finding weapons of mass destruction and in building a case for going to war in Iraq. The problem is that that office was established to provide information outside of the normal channels, and it was even designed to go around the Department of Defense's own intelligence operation unit. The problem with that Office of Special Programs is that it relied on so-called intelligence from like-minded true believers, primarily Ahmad Chalabi and his allies in Iraq. At the time, we asked that the Surveys and Investigations staff of the Appropriations Committee look into this matter and determine what the facts were surrounding the creation of this operation. We obtained some support from the majority party but not sufficient support under the rules of the House in order to allow that surveys and investigation study to proceed, and so it never took place. Second, earlier this year, the committee became aware of intelligence actions that the Department of Defense was taking, actions of an under- the-table nature, which a number of us felt were highly inappropriate and highly dangerous, classified activities which cannot be discussed in public. We tried to offer language to assure that in the future such actions would not be undertaken without proper notification to the Congress and to this committee. The fact is that when I offered language to try to do that, I received a phone call from Andy Card, the President's Staff Chief, and in that phone call he told me that if I would withdraw that language he would assure me that this matter would be worked out to the satisfaction of both the executive and legislative branches. In fact, while we have made some small progress in reaching an understanding on this matter, there are still two very important issues that have not been resolved, that the administration has not agreed to, and they are key issues, including whether or not this Congress will be informed of those activities in a timely fashion so that the information provided to the Congress is, in fact, meaningful. We are still being stonewalled on that matter, and the Congress still, in my view, has not lived up to its oversight responsibilities on that matter. Now, yesterday, we see in the Washington Post a story which says CIA holds terror suspects in secret prisons. It notes that close to $100 million evidently was spent to establish these secret compounds at which detainees were evidently subjected to torture-related activities, including water-boarding, and yet we are told that not a single member of the Appropriations Committee and not a single member of the staff have been told by the CIA that that had been going on. This committee has an obligation to protect the power of the purse. In my view, until we take action on this matter, we stand vulnerable to the justifiable charge that Congress is ignoring its responsibilities to protect taxpayers' money and to protect the reputation of the United States internationally; And when we do that, we put at risk the very troops that we are trying to protect through this motion this morning. Madam Speaker, I would hope that this language would be supported by the majority. But I would also hope that this Congress understands that even if it is, we are failing our fundamental responsibility to the American taxpayer if we do not exercise considerably more vigorously than we have up to date our responsibilities to see to it that matters related to Iraq are being handled in a manner which makes certain that the Congress knows what is going on, and gives the Congress an opportunity to try to make certain that what is going on is consistent with American values. That certainly is not the case when we see these kinds of horrific headlines in the paper, and I would associate myself with the remarks contained in the editorial in the Washington Post this morning. Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record at this point the editorial which makes clear that Congress has not in any way, shape or form lived up to its responsibilities, and, in my view, they have enabled the administration to continue to cover up its activities with respect to Iraq, its activities with respect to manipulating intelligence, its activities with respect to allowing agencies to engage in conduct not at all consistent with American values or American interests. [From the Washington Post, Nov. 3, 2005] Rebellion Against Abuse Last month a prisoner at the Guantanamo Bay military base excused himself from a conversation with his lawyer and stepped into a cell, where he slashed his arm and hung himself. This desperate attempted suicide by a detainee held for four years without charge, trial or any clear prospect of release was not isolated. At least 131 Guantanamo inmates began a hunger strike on Aug. 8 to protest their indefinite confinement, and more than two dozen are being kept alive only by force-feeding. No wonder Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has denied permission to U.N. human rights investigators to meet with detainees at Guantanamo: Their accounts would surely add to the discredit the United States has earned for its lawless treatment of foreign prisoners. Guantanamo, however, is not the worst problem. As The Post's Dana Priest reported yesterday, the CIA maintains its own network of secret prisons, into which 100 or more terrorist suspects have ``disappeared'' as if they were victims of a Third World dictatorship. Some of the 30 most important prisoners are being held in secret facilities in Eastern European countries--which should shame democratic governments that only recently dismantled Soviet-era secret police apparatuses. Held in dark underground cells, the prisoners have no legal rights, no visitors from outside the CIA and no checks on their treatment, even by the International Red Cross. President Bush has authorized interrogators to subject these men to ``cruel, inhuman and degrading'' treatment that is illegal in the United States and that is banned by a treaty ratified by the Senate. The governments that allow the CIA prisons on their territory violate this international law, if not their own laws. This shameful situation is the direct result of Mr. Bush's decision in February 2002 to set aside the Geneva Conventions as well as standing U.S. regulations for the handling of detainees. Under the Geneva Conventions, al Qaeda militants could have been denied prisoner-of-war status and held indefinitely; they could have been interrogated and tried, either in U.S. courts or under the military system of justice. At the same time they would have been protected by Geneva from torture and other cruel treatment. Had Mr. Bush followed that course, the abuse scandals at Guantanamo Bay and in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the severe damage they have caused to the United States, could have been averted. Key authors of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh, could have been put on trial, with their crimes exposed to the world. Instead, not a single al Qaeda leader has been prosecuted in the past four years. The Pentagon's system of hearings on the status of Guantanamo detainees, introduced only after a unanimous ruling by the Supreme Court, has no way of resolving the long-term status of most detainees. The CIA has no long-term plan for its secret prisoners, whom one agency official described as ``a horrible burden.'' For some time a revolt against this disastrous policy has been gathering steam inside the administration and in the Senate; it is led by senators such as John McCain (R-Ariz.) and by the same military officers and State Department officials who opposed Mr. Bush's decision to disregard the Geneva accords. Their opponents are a small group of civilian political appointees circled around Mr. Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney. According to a report in the New York Times, the military professionals want to restore Geneva's protections against cruel treatment to the Pentagon's official doctrine for handling detainees. Mr. McCain is seeking to ban ``cruel, inhuman and degrading'' treatment for all detainees held by the United States, including those in the CIA's secret prisons. There is no more important issue before the country or Congress. Yet the advocates of decency and common sense seem to have meager support from the Democratic Party. Senate Democrats staged a legislative stunt on Tuesday intended to reopen--once again--the debate on prewar intelligence about Iraq. They have taken no such dramatic stand against the CIA's abuses of foreign prisoners; on a conference committee considering Mr. McCain's amendment, Democratic support has been faltering. While Democrats grandstand about a war debate that took place three years ago; the Bush administration's champions of torture are quietly working to preserve policies whose reversal ought to be an urgent priority. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman), the ranking member on the Government Reform Committee.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Speaker, a moment ago I cited the Washington Post editorial which appeared in the paper today. I would like to read just a portion of that editorial. The editorial reads as follows: ``As The Post's Dana Priest reported yesterday, the CIA maintains its own network of secret prisons into which 100 or more terrorist suspects have `disappeared' as if they were victims of a Third World dictatorship.'' When I see references to the disappeared, my mind goes back to President Pinochet in Chile and the ``Disappeared'' under his regime. And I wonder whether or not many Americans and many Members of this Congress are comfortable with our White House being tossed into the same terminology, into the same basket as the outrageous conduct of the Chilean Government a number of years ago. The editorial goes on to say that under the policies of the CIA with respect to these institutions ``prisoners have no legal rights, no visitors from outside the CIA, and no checks on their treatment, even by the International Red Cross. . . . President Bush has authorized interrogators to subject these men to `cruel, inhumane and degrading' treatment that is illegal in the United States and that is banned by a treaty ratified by the Senate. The governments that allow the CIA prisons on their territory violate this international law, if not their own laws.'' It then goes on to point out that despite all of this, ``not a single al Qaeda leader has been prosecuted in the last 4 years.'' It then goes on to say ``the CIA has no long-term plans for its secret prisoners whom one agency official described as `a horrible burden.' '' Then it notes that a congressional rebellion against this kind of activity is being led in the Senate by Senator McCain and that his main opponents are ``a small group of civilian political appointees circled around Mr. Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney.'' The editorial then goes on to say, ``According to a report in the New York Times, the military professionals want to restore Geneva's protections against cruel treatment to the Pentagon official doctrine for handling detainees. Mr. McCain is seeking to ban cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment for all detainees held by the United States, including those in the CIA secret prisons.'' So I would submit, Mr. Speaker, that in addition to passing this motion today, this House needs to stand as one; every single Member of this House ought to be willing to support the retention of the McCain amendment on the defense appropriations bill. And I would hope that we would see this House finally face up to its obligations on that score.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), the distinguished ranking member of the Armed Services Committee.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Speaker, in keeping with the spirit of this motion to instruct, the purpose of which is to protect American troops, I want to simply say that no matter how hard we try, we are going to have a difficult time doing that unless we change some unpleasant facts on the ground in Iraq. When more than 80 percent of Iraqis tell pollsters that they want America to leave their country, when almost one-half of Iraqis respond to pollsters by saying that they believe that terrorist attacks on U.S. troop are justified, we have a serious problem. In my view, we are not going to be able to turn that around until we make clear that our policies are consistent with our interests and our professed values. We need to get to the bottom of how we got into Iraq and how we are conducting this operation in Iraq now. We need to get to the bottom of that. We need to determine who is responsible for some of the stories that we have seen in the papers the past few days; and if we do not do that, we are going to continue to invite the kind of negative opinion around the world that is plaguing our ability to succeed in Iraq. I would hope that this House would recognize that responsibility.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the distinguished minority leader (Ms. Pelosi).

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I must confess I am confused about where we are at this point. I thought I heard the Speaker----

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thought I just heard you indicate that for the motion to be in order one of the questions that might have to be present was the question of the dignity of the House. When we are told that $100 million of taxpayers' money has been slipped into an appropriation bill for an illegal purpose, is that not, in fact, a challenge to the dignity of the House?

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I note that the majority party is considering a number of actions to cut spending, including actions to cut back child health care under Medicaid and including actions to cut back SSI payments to disabled Americans. I wonder if some of those same Members of Congress would be willing to eliminate Federal coverage for health care for Members of Congress before they reach down to the low-income groups in this society and cut their health care. It seems to me that if you are going to start by cutting health care benefits anywhere, we ought to start right on this floor, with the people who work here.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, this motion is really meant to do two things: it is meant to rein in bureaucratic arrogance on the part of USDA, and it is meant to rein in bureaucratic arrogance on the part of the State government of Texas. With respect to USDA, this motion would prevent the arbitrary and secret closing of almost one-third of Farm Service Agencies around the country. In the agriculture appropriation subcommittee hearing this year, the subcommittee chairman asked the USDA witnesses if their budget was based in any way on an assumption that there would be a closure of Agriculture Department offices. The agency responded in the negative. And yet The Washington Post has now revealed in a September article that FSA had plans afoot to close 713 Farm Service Agencies around the country. When that was discovered, the Agriculture Department indicated, ``Oh, this was just a draft. It was just a draft.'' But in fact USDA had pulled all 50 State FSA directors into Washington to give them instructions about how to go about selecting which offices would be closed. So it seems to me that USDA was disingenuous in their response to the Congress of the United States and that any self-respecting Congress would pull that agency's chain until we get straight answers to straight questions. The second issue that this motion deals with is the question of whether or not Texas ought to be able to go off on its own, in violation of Federal law, by privatizing the administration of the food stamp program. In June of 2004, Texas asked USDA to approve their request to privatize the administration of that program. The USDA sent them numerous letters requesting information that would enable USDA to determine whether or not the plan that Texas was providing was rational or not and whether it was consistent with law or not; and Texas has, frankly, stiffed the agency. If you take a look at the letters sent by the agencies, you will see for instance that in a letter from USDA to Senator Harkin, USDA said: ``We do not yet have enough information to ascertain whether or not Texas's proposal is in compliance with the act in regard to the certification of recipients.'' It also then went on to say: ``We are concerned with the State's aggressive schedule for rolling out this project, especially with regard to contingency planning.'' In another letter from USDA to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, USDA stated: ``FMS needs to have clear and coherent narrative explanations of the food stamp certification process that are grounded in the contract and its supporting documents.'' USDA then went on to tell Texas: ``We must ensure that your new system is in full compliance with food stamp rules, regulations, and policy and that service to our program clients is not compromised.'' Nonetheless, despite that, the Texas State government has yet to respond and provide the kind of information that is needed by USDA if USDA is to consider approval of their plan. The problem with the Texas plan is that while recipients are guaranteed under the law that they will have an opportunity to have their eligibility determined by a State employee, in fact, what Texas is trying to do is to circumvent Federal law and allow eligibility to be determined by a private party. The problem with that is that if you have a public servant who denies you a right, you are entitled under the law and you have a somewhat more direct redress than you do if you have a private citizen working for a private company who has no long- term commitment to the government and who can simply stiff the recipients and does not have to answer questions from the government. The government is supposed to be active in protecting the rights of each and every individual citizen of this country. Texas is interposing itself to prevent that right from actually being delivered; and in the process, in my view, Texas is clearly in violation of the law because they have proceeded with a plan that has not yet been approved by USDA. Again, any self-respecting Congress, in defense of what is existing law, would pass this motion so that Texas cannot unilaterally obviate State law.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, continuing my reservation, I thank both gentlemen for their responses. Let me say that while I intend to withdraw my reservation, given those assurances, I would hope that that would happen as soon as possible, and I would also hope that sometime, somewhere, someone will explain to me why we can forgive billions of dollars of debt to the Third World, billions of dollars of debt to Eastern Europe, but not recognize that American citizens may need that same privilege. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object to the gentleman's request, it is my understanding that this bill allows $750 million of the $50 billion in disaster relief funding that we provided to be used for loans to assist local governments in providing essential local services. It is also my understanding, as has been discussed here, that there is a ``fig leaf'' attached to this bill, at least it has been called that by some, which would create the impression that these communities are going to be provided loans, rather than grants, and that these loans must be repaid. I would simply make this observation: This country forgave debt to Eastern Europe, billions of dollars worth of debt. We forgave debt to the tune of billions of dollars for Third World debt. Yet we are being told today that somehow we are supposed to believe that the communities who are supposedly assisted by this legislation will in some way be able to pay back the debt which they would incur under this legislation. I think we are fooling the American people if we pretend that those communities are going to have the capacity any time soon to repay those debts, and I suspect that this provision is here more to deceive the American people about the true cost than to in fact reflect reality. I think that if we are going to be honest with the American people and if we are going to be fair to the recipient communities, we need to recognize that these communities are not likely to have any ability to repay that was any greater than the ability of Eastern Europe or the Third World to repay the debts that we forgave in those cases a long time ago. That is one concern I have with the bill. The second concern I have with the bill is a conservative concern, if you will, because while it is assumed that this bill will provide loans for functions such as police protection, fire fighting and everyday emergency work, in fact there is no guarantee that that is the only purpose for which these funds will be used. Because of that, I want to ask the gentleman whether or not he would be amenable and whether the majority leadership would be amenable to adding the following section to the legislation that the gentleman seeks to have considered. That would read as follows: ``Section 3, reporting requirements. The Committees on Appropriations of the House of Representatives and the Senate, the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and the Senate Select Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs shall be notified no later than 15 days after a loan is made pursuant to this act. Such notification shall include the following: Number one, the amount of the loan; number two, an assessment of the borrower's financial position; number three, reasons for the necessity of the loan; and number four, a description of the essential services to be provided with the funding from the loan.''

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, continuing my reservation, I have been told by several people that they do not want me to pursue this because ``the Senate is going out of session and it will be hard to get an amended version considered by the Senate.'' Heaven forbid that we should ask the Senate to come back and work on something of this urgency. This is the same Senate that did not hesitate to come back in order to tell one American family, the Schiavo family, how they should deal with an end-of-life issue for one of their family members, and yet we are told that we should not build in this protection for the taxpayer because it might inconvenience the other body. I am very reluctant to agree to proceeding with this legislation without this reporting requirement because, as we have just discovered under the previous $50 billion that we provided to FEMA, they have given us a miserable explanation of the money that they have spent so far. They have given us meaningless spreadsheets and money defined in very broad, meaningless categories that tells the Congress nothing that will enable us to exercise our responsibilities as watchdogs of the public purse. So, I guess my question is, if I withdraw my reservation, how soon can we expect to have this kind of reporting requirement brought to the House so that we know that in fact the money which is being provided will be used only for the purpose for which it is described today?

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, first let me say that there are a number of useful things in this conference report. For 3 years, many of us have been trying to strengthen support for border enforcement and control, and this bill is $675 million above the President's request. That is good. It also provides some additional funding to beef up transit security and port security, and that is good. It provides $655 million for fire grants, 30 percent more than the Bush request, and that is good. It provides $30 million for three pilot projects to increase the screening of cargo, which is a major terrorism vulnerability that remains unaddressed by the Bush administration recommendations. This bill, therefore, helps to take care of a rather important problem. But, in my view, there are three big problems that remain which will require me to vote ``no.'' First of all, because of the need to add $675 million more for border programs, the conferees cut funding for other programs substantially below the President's own request. Example: Pre-disaster mitigation programs, $100 million below the Bush request, $50 million below last year. Grants to States and localities to help them prepare for terrorism and other events are cut by over $800 million, or 20 percent from last year; and this occurs on the very day when we have been briefed by the administration warning us about the total incapacity of State and local governments to respond to local problems, such as a pandemic. Aviation security screening is cut by $83 million from the Bush request under this bill. My second problem with the bill is that it approves a thoughtless reorganization proposal made by Secretary Chertoff. Just 2 weeks ago, members of the majority party told us it was premature to return FEMA to its previously independent status; and yet this legislation embraces a reorganization plan proposed by Secretary Chertoff, the sixth reorganization this agency has had, and that reorganization goes in the wrong direction. My third objection is that FEMA is not reformed, but it is in fact further deformed by this proposal. We all understand that the response of the Homeland Security agency to the disaster of Katrina was, well, for want of a better word, disastrous; and yet nothing is done in this legislation to provide for a return to independent status for FEMA. It remains buried in the bowels of a dysfunctional bureaucratically layered agency; and, in fact, this bill moves us further in the wrong direction. The fire academy and other training programs are specifically taken away from FEMA. So there are two ways, I suppose, that Members can deal with this bill. We can squawk about it, if we do not like parts of it, and hold our noses and vote for it because it does have some substantial improvements, and I congratulate the gentleman from Minnesota and the gentleman from Kentucky for those. But the fact is that there is another choice if we believe that this bill still is not sufficient to meet the national interests, and that is to vote against the bill as a protest; and that is what I feel compelled to do tonight.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, very briefly, section 1 of the motion to recommit would simply provide that we fund the programs covered under the continuing resolution at the current rate rather than at the lower of either the current rate of the House-passed or the Senate-passed bill. I have already explained the impact of that on program. Section 2 would simply repeal the President's edict that workers in the Katrina- affected region would not be subject to the protections of Davis-Bacon wage protections. Section 3 would simply guarantee that the MILC program remains in force for the same length of time as other titles of the farm bill. And section 4 would require a reduction in the size of the tax cuts for taxpayers with incomes of over $400,000, as I just described in my previous remarks. Point Of Order

Mr. OBEY. Yes, I do, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, if the rules required equity in legislation we brought to the floor, this amendment would be in order. Unfortunately, they do not; so I must reluctantly concede the point of order.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 13 minutes. Mr. Speaker, I do not know quite what to say about this continuing resolution. I have a lot of notes here, most of which I will not use, but let me simply note that this is another case of the failure to effectively govern by the Republican President and the Republican majority in this Congress. We are here facing an end of the fiscal year situation 3 days from now. We have failed in the basic test of governing, and I think it is important to understand why. Throughout the year, we on the Democratic side of the aisle, in the minority, have worked with the majority on every possible procedural issue and cooperated with them procedurally at every juncture so that we could enable this House to pass the 10 appropriation bills that are necessary to pass, even though we disagreed in most instances with the content of those bills. When I was asked by numerous Members of my caucus and a number of members of the press why we were cooperating procedurally when we opposed the substance of many of the bills, I made it clear. I said we were cooperating because I wanted the record to show at the end of the year, when the Republican majority failed to pass its appropriation bills by the end of the year, I wanted the record to show clearly why. Now we are here and in spite of our procedural cooperation, the Republican majority has managed to pass only two of the 10 appropriation bills under our responsibility. Why? In my view it is because the majority caucus has such a fundamental disrespect for the basic functions of government that it has sacrificed and squeezed so many education and health and veterans and other programs in order to pay for huge, supersize tax cuts for the most wealthy among us, that, in the end, they have not been able to convince their Senate colleagues to go along and go on record and endorse those cuts. So now we are faced with a stopgap funding bill which is brought to the House floor by the gentleman from California. Normally, if Congress fails to pass its appropriation bills, then it continues funding at the existing rate until Congress can get its act together. Instead, this bill does something quite different. It says that for the time period under the continuing resolution, we will be spending at the lower of either last year or the House-passed bill or the Senate-passed bill. That results in a number of, I think, extremely inequitable realities. It, for instance, means that we are effectively cutting $800 million below last year and $400 million below the President in the field of education. It means that we are cutting essential job training programs below last year and cutting job training formula grants by $138 million. In health care, it means that we are cutting maternal and child health care, and we are cutting rural health outreach programs. It means that we are cutting the Community Service Block Grant, a program which deals with the needs of the poorest people in this society by 50 percent. It means that we are eliminating the 10 percent increase that this House had planned for veterans health care. It means that we are cutting the FBI by $616 million below the House-passed bill. It means that we are freezing low-income heating assistance at a time when the cost of home heating for low-income Americans is going to rise by 40 to 50 percent. But it leaves intact, it leaves intact the huge, supersize tax cuts for the top 1 percent of earners in this society, people who make more than $400,000 a year. And it leaves in place the President's edict, his unilateral edict in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, that the workers in the afflicted area who are trying to put that area back together are not even going to be allowed to get a decent prevailing wage that they would otherwise be guaranteed under Davis-Bacon. And yet while it is chiseling on the wages of those workers, it is saying to the persons who make over $400,000 a year, on average you are going to get a $32,000 tax cut. Mr. Speaker, $32,000 is a lot more than a lot of people in this country make in a year. A huge percentage of my district makes less than that $32,000. But we are going to give an average $32,000 tax cut to the people in this society who need it least. The bill also assures the death of one part of the farm bill that was passed 3 years ago. It makes sure that the only major farm bill that is going to expire is the program that is given some financial support to the smallest farmers in this country, the MILC program. Now, the question is being asked in this town, ``How are we going to pay for Hurricane Katrina?'' In my judgment, Mr. Speaker, that is the wrong question. Katrina, no matter what the eventual cost is and it is going to be large. It is going to be somewhere between $100 billion and $200 billion, I expect. Let us say it is $100 billion. That is a huge amount of money. But this economy is large enough to handle that because it is essentially a one-time bubble. Even though it will be spent out over the next 3 or 4 years, it is a one-time event, and this economy is always big enough to handle that. But the right question to be asking is not how are we going to pay for Katrina? The right question is: ``How are we going to be able to pay for the decisions already made by the Republican majority of this Congress and the White House to give away to the wealthiest people in this society, the top 1 percent, over $1 trillion in tax cuts over the next decade?'' We are going to give away, in tax cuts to the top 1 percent, ten times as much as Katrina is being estimated to cost. So the right question to ask is: ``What are we going to do so that we can afford to pay for the Katrinas that come along and the Iraqi War, where we have a war of choice driven by a President who misled us into that war by giving us false and misleading information?'' So if the Members vote for this continuing resolution today, they are voting to keep those giant tax cuts in place. They are voting to do not one blessed thing to deal with the long-term fiscal impact that they have on the country and, yes, will be chiseling on some of the programs that I just mentioned. Mr. Speaker, I am going to offer a motion to recommit, which does a number of things. I am going to offer a motion to recommit, which, number one, would provide that the funding levels in this bill be at the current rate rather than the three-headed rate spelled out by the gentleman, so that we do not, even for a month, cut back on what we are doing on job training or community service block grants or low-income heating assistance or other programs like that. Second, it will ask that we treat all farm programs the same. Third, it will restore Davis- Bacon prevailing wages. It will countermand the President's unilateral edict. And that is basically what I will be asking the House to do. Under the rules of the House, as they have been jury-rigged, under the rule of the House, if a Member of the House lodges a point of order, this motion to recommit will not be allowed to obtain a vote. But if persons on the majority side of the aisle refrain from lodging a point of order, then the House would be allowed to vote on a measure which restores equity to the farm programs, on a measure which restores equity to funding levels for all programs, and it would restore Davis-Bacon protections for workers as well. And it would also, I should add, instruct the Congress to come back with a change in the Tax Code so that we limit the size of the tax cuts for people who make over $400,000 to the size received by persons in the top 5 percent of the economy. That means they still get at least a $9,000 tax cut on average. That is not bad. To those in the majority side of the aisle who say that we should not be doing that, I would say that does not surprise me because that represents the economic philosophy of the majority party. To those on the Democratic side of the aisle who might find it a little nerve- racking to vote to scale back tax cuts even for those well-off folks, my suggestion is if they cannot even stand up and do that, they might as well go and cross the aisle.

Mr. OBEY. I most certainly am, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to recommit.