Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Speaker, for the past 3 years, a number of us on this side of the aisle, including the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards), myself and several others, have tried to bring the administration to the realization that we needed many more dollars in the veterans health care funds than, in fact, they requested each year. And each year we have been able to drag them a little bit towards that goal, but we have not been able to drag them far enough. As a result, we have heard many, many horror stories. We have heard that thousands of patients have had to wait more than 3 months for appointments in California. We have heard that in States like Arkansas and Oklahoma and Mississippi and Louisiana, the VA has stopped scheduling appointments for many veterans who are eligible for care. We have heard of 6-month delays in emergency surgery in Oregon. We have heard that facilities have had to erect scaffolding to protect patients and staff from falling bricks in Maine. We have heard that a medical center in Vermont has major shortfalls in their prosthetics budget. We have been told that doctors have had to pilfer supplies from neighboring hospitals to carry out routine procedures in Illinois. And we have been told that life safety improvements like replacing fire alarm systems have been postponed as the funds are used to cover operating expenses in States like California. Yet, in the face of stories like that, in April VA Secretary Nicholson told the Congress that no additional funds would be needed for fiscal year 2005. But by the end of June he had to admit that there was a big problem, and he then testified that an additional $975 million was needed. Two weeks later, the problem in their eyes got even bigger. OMB asked for yet another $300 million for fiscal year 2005, so they are admitting a $1.3 billion shortfall right now; and the numbers look worse for the coming fiscal year. The VA has already amended their $20 billion medical care budget request for an additional $1.7 billion, and that does not count the additional $500 million they are going to need, because I doubt that many Members want to go along with the administration's proposal to raise the veterans health care fees and co-op pays as has been suggested by the administration. I would hope that by now every Member realizes that we have a VA health care crisis and we have to deal with it right now. The other body did the right thing in the interior bill. They provided $1.5 billion of emergency money for the VA. That would cover the immediate $975 million shortfall and provide an additional $525 million that could be distributed among the VA regions to take care of the source of problems that each of us has been hearing about. I would point out also that in my view some Members of this House have paid a very high price for speaking out on behalf of our veterans. We saw earlier this year news stories which reported the fact that the majority caucus not only removed from his chairmanship but removed from the committee itself the Member on the other side of the aisle who chaired the committee in charge of veterans funding because he had been too insistent in agreeing with those of us on this side of the aisle who kept insisting that we needed more funding for veterans health care. I would hope that it would be recognized that he was right, that we were right, not just about yesterday's problems but about today's and tomorrow's with respect to this account. So I would simply urge each and every Member of this House to vote for this motion. This money is going to be provided. It is just a question of how many times we have to hit the House along side the head before, like a stubborn donkey, they finally recognize that something needs to be done. Reality is here. It would be nice if we faced up to it. I would hope this would receive the unanimous support of the Members of the House. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished ranking member of the subcommittee, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards), who has been a key leader on this issue as the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Military Quality of Life and Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, how much time do we have remaining on each side?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Filner).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Corrine Brown).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, let me conclude on this side by making four simple points. First of all, one of the previous speakers tried to suggest that, in fact, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) had not been fired by the majority party caucus because he had been too willing to speak his own mind about the needs that he saw for veterans' health care. I would simply say that I am perfectly happy to believe that if the House is ready to believe that my grandmother is an astronaut and that the Cubs are going to win the pennant this year. The fact is that we know what the facts are, or were, I should say, with respect to the removal of the gentleman from New Jersey from office. He simply did not follow the party line and paid a price. So did the veterans. And now this bill is trying to help meet those costs. Secondly, the gentleman from New York indicated that there had been a variety of estimates about what would be needed for veterans health care funding this year. The fact is that the Democratic estimates that we offered were consistent, and the bipartisan estimates that were offered by the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) and the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Evans) were consistently that we needed $2.5 billion in this account over the budget request. The House earlier enacted a $1 billion increase. This $1.5 billion in this motion now brings us to the $2.5 billion that we have been saying all along was needed and that the gentleman from New Jersey and the gentleman from Illinois were saying all along was needed. Thirdly, I would simply say that the administration's denial of the truth on this matter follows a pattern. We saw earlier over the past year and a half when the Veterans' Administration was discouraging outreach, because if veterans knew what they were entitled to, it would cost more money, and that would impact the budget. So we have already seen that effort to not fully explain to the American veterans what they were entitled to. In that sense, it is very similar to the action of the administration in threatening to fire the government official who tried to tell Congress what the true cost of the prescription drugs under Medicare proposal was that the administration proposed last year. Lastly, I would simply say one of the previous speakers raised the question as to why we were providing this money as an emergency. It is very simple: because it is an emergency for each and every veteran who otherwise will not be adequately served. We have a war going on. It would be nice if during that war we had a sense of shared sacrifice that was conveyed to each and every citizen of this country. But we really do not. We have a narrow band of people, those in the uniformed services of the United States, who are being asked to sacrifice virtually everything while 90 percent of American society is making no sacrifice about the war. They are getting tax cuts. They are able to be comfortable in their homes. It is only a precious few military families who are bearing the entire burden of that war. It is human nature, I guess, for Americans, when our soldiers go off to war, to cheer and to have the bands playing, but it would be nice if we had that same enthusiasm for veterans when Johnny comes marching home again. Unfortunately, we have not demonstrated that because of the shortfalls that we have seen in the veterans' health care budget. I would hope that we would adopt an understanding that if we ask someone to put his very life at risk, to put his family's future at risk and go to war to defend an action of the President of the United States, I would hope that we would recognize that we have a concurrent and permanent obligation to each and every one of those soldiers to meet the full cost of meeting their health care needs, their education needs, and their economic readjustment needs when they return to this country. That is the very least that we ought to do. This amendment tries to measure up to that standard. I would urge a unanimous ``yes'' vote.

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. Mr. Speaker, I express this reservation in order to take a couple of moments to again express my disquiet about this legislative appropriation bill. I had originally intended to offer a motion to instruct conferees, but in the interest of time and comity, I will not do that. But I, under my reservation, want to make a number of points about funding contained in this bill. This bill contains another large amount of taxpayers' dollars to pay for what is euphemistically referred to as the Capitol Visitors Center now being constructed on this end of the Capitol. In my view, that project has become a story of spectacular mismanagement and colossal government waste, and I feel obligated, as often as I have the opportunity, to object to the way this project has been handled and to object to what it is going to produce. The cost of the Capitol Visitors Center, which was first estimated at $95 million, has now ballooned to well over $500 million, and there is no end in sight to the escalation in cost. My second objection is that, for this money, we are getting a pitiful allocation of space to the major needs of the Congress and an outrageous, wasteful allocation of space to areas that I think represent far lower-grade needs. The current design of that Capitol Visitors Center, the House space under that project, provides for approximately 87,000 square feet of space, of which only 3,200 square feet is for hearing rooms where public business can be conducted. The major need of this Congress, if we are going to expand the size of this building, is to have rooms that are sufficiently large so that we can have conferences with the Senate and do our legislative business. Instead, the primary usable space in the House portion of this project is for, in essence, a media center or a propaganda center. It is to make the Congress comfortable with television. So we are going to have this elaborate, two-floor, ornate, state-of-the-art media center, communication center, propaganda center, whatever you want to call it, but we will have tiny rooms for conference committees and very little additional usable space. In short, what I think we will have in the end is an opulent Taj Mahal, abundance of show space, but we will have a shortage of usable working space. I think that is regrettable given what the taxpayer is going to be asked to spend. I would also say again that I find it incredible to hear the changing justifications for the new theater which is going to be in the visitors center. There is a huge 450-seat theater which is being built at a cost of many millions of dollars. When I asked why we need another room of that size, I was told, well, because it is a place where Members of Congress can bring large constituency groups. I do not know how many Members of Congress bring 450 people into a room in the Capitol, but if there is a Member who has ever tried to do that, I have never met him. Secondly, we were then told, well, actually this will be good space for the House of Representatives to meet in when its existing House Chamber, the room that we are in now, is refurbished and reengineered and redecorated. The only problem with that, Mr. Speaker, is that we already have a room, the Ways and Means Committee room in the Longworth Building, which was built for that purpose, to serve as a backup House Chamber, and which was just redecorated at a cost of many, many dollars. It is beautiful. It ought to be sufficient. In addition to that, there is yet another Chamber being built for the House off- campus, which I cannot talk about because it is classified. So we are going to have two backup Chambers at a cost of an enormous amount. And when we really dig into what this room is really supposed to be for, we discover that in the original budget justifications, what it was designated as, is being an additional theater for the Library of Congress. So those are some of my objections to this bill, and I believe that this is the last chance that we have to get the leadership of this House and the Architect of the Capitol to at least change the way the space is being designed so that it is more usable, more efficient, and more useful to produce legislative products rather than propaganda press releases out of a media center. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I rise to be heard on the point of order. Section 945 to which the gentleman objects is in this bill for the purpose of ending a practice under which a credit card company can jack up a cardholder's interest rates to the default rate which can be as high as 30 percent. Even if that person has never missed a payment and never been a day late on any payment to that credit card company, that interest rate can be jacked up if that consumer was 1 day late in the payment of some other bill and that was reported on a credit report. This language is in here to correct a glaring and obscene omission in legislation which was passed by the House several weeks ago, the infamous bankruptcy bill. As I understand the rules, the gentleman is objecting to this language because it is legislation on an appropriation bill and falls under the jurisdiction of another committee. As I understand the rules, while the Rules Committee did not protect this section in the rule under which the bill is being debated, this section could be passed by the House if no Member chooses to object to it. I would respectfully suggest to the gentleman, in the interest of protecting consumers in this country from these bloodsuckers, I would suggest that the gentleman would do the country a great service if he would withdraw his point of order.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I would have to reluctantly concede because of the warped rules which the majority party passed out of the Committee on Rules, which protected countless other provisions from points of order, but neglected to protect this section so that some of the biggest banks in the country can rip-off Americans, I would have to confess that under that myopic and misguided rule, I would have to concede the point of order.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I am going to repeat some remarks that I made on the floor the other day. I happen to have a Visa card. I have had it for years. The other day I received in the mail a notification that this Visa card had been transferred to another bank. If you take a look at the fine print on the notice that accompanies that transfer, the fine print makes clear that the following can occur. Let us say that for 10 years the gentleman from Florida who just lodged the point of order, let us say for 10 years that gentleman has held this same Visa card, and that for that 10-year period he has not been late a single day in any payment to this credit card company. Nonetheless, the gentleman from Florida, or any other citizen of America, can have the interest rate on this card raised to the default rate if, for instance, that person had gone on vacation and while on vacation that person's wife, let us say, had broken her arm. And let us say she was responsible for writing the checks each month and because she was hurt she could not write the checks for a couple of weeks. And if that late payment because of that injury--to another company on another account--wound up in a credit report totally unrelated to your performance on the initial card, nonetheless, that credit card company claims the right to jack up interest rates to 30 percent. In my view, that is nothing but blood-sucking usury, and I find it incredible that the majority party in this House finds ways time and time and time again to genuflect to the special interests like these credit card companies and to use the technicalities of the rules of this House to deny the average American citizen the protection that they ought to have a right to expect from representatives of this body who are supposed to represent the general interests rather than the special interests of these credit card companies. It is an outrage that this body would allow this kind of a practice to continue. It is an outrage that the well-connected shysters who engage in this practice are not stood up to unanimously by 435 people in this House. So all I can say is if the majority wants to hide behind the technicalities to protect yet another well-paying special interest, I cannot do a whole lot about it except raise my voice, and that is what I am doing today. I would hope that the American consumers would take notice who it is that decides that the technicalities of the rules are more important than giving the consuming public a fair shake.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, the practical result of the point of order lodged by the gentleman from Florida is to make the credit card companies the only people in America who can raise the price of something you bought after you bought it. If people are comfortable putting themselves in that supine position, I cannot do anything about it. But I find it interesting that the gentleman is a member of the Rules Committee, which cleverly left this measure exposed and then exploited that failure on the part of the Rules Committee in order to knock this language out of the bill. That is a nice sleight of hand operation.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I cannot believe what has just happened on the floor of this House. In effect, what has happened is that some of these same people who tried to stick their noses into the question of how the Schiavo family should deal with an end-of-life issue at a time of great pain for that family, some of the people in this House who felt compelled to stick their noses into that case are now trying to stick their noses into the question of how often someone who is wearing the uniform of the United States can see their family. I am getting awfully tired of having people on this floor bleat about family values and then take actions which keep families apart. I am awfully tired of hearing people, in effect, suggest that because we dislike Mr. Castro so much that the only way someone wearing the uniform of the United States is going to be able to see his family in Cuba is only if they are lucky enough to see Castro go. What happens in the meantime? Where are these vaunted family values? I will tell the Members where they are. When they get in the way of people's political ideology or family squabbles in Cuba, they get tossed out the window. What a pitiful joke. Amendment No. 4 Offered by Mr. Davis of Florida

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I simply add to the gentleman's thoughts this point. I find it quaint, indeed, that this House would appear to want to try to promote the freedom of Cubans by denying freedom to Americans. That makes no sense to me. The last time I looked at it, we are supposed to be representing Americans; and the people I represent ought to have a right to travel anywhere they choose so long as they are citizens of what is supposed to be the greatest, freest democracy in the world. I wish everyone in this Chamber would have a better understanding of that than they seem to have. I thank the gentleman for his efforts.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The OMB circular which was just read reads, or which was just referred to in the amendment reads as follows: ``When testifying before any congressional committee or communicating with Members of Congress, witnesses will give frank and complete answers to all questions.'' The purpose of this amendment is simply to make certain that none of the funds in this bill may be used to, in any way, assist in any communication from the Executive Branch of government, which is not frank and complete and truthful. Now, that may seem like an odd thing to ask, but let me point out recent years are replete with examples of how the executive branch, including this administration, have grossly misled Congress on matters of national importance. Example, the Department of Veterans Affairs deliberately withheld information related to the cost of veterans medical care that was needed during consideration of the fiscal year 2005 supplemental, which they now admit has resulted in a $1 billion shortfall in veterans health care. In fact, they have stonewalled us over the past 3 years in terms of being frank about the needs of veterans health care. This administration has consistently and repeatedly declined to provide a full accounting of anticipated cost for the Iraq war. Previous OMB Director Mitch Daniels once said that because of oil revenues, the war would be ``affordable,'' and probably would only cost the U.S. 50 to $60 billion. Instead, the President continues to request funding for the war, and yet when you ask everyone from the Secretary of Defense on down, they are steadily refusing to give us real figures about the anticipated cost of that war. We will all recall that just a year ago a Federal Medicare actuary was threatened with dismissal by a high administration official for disclosing the exact cost of the Medicare prescription drug benefit before Congress voted on the measure. And we will all remember, no doubt, former economic advisor Larry Lindsey, who was criticized by his colleagues and eventually fired for correctly predicting an Iraq war that would cost the U.S. at least $200 billion. At the time his prediction was termed outlandish by higher officials in the government. The former Chief of Police at the National Park Service was fired for publicly discussing budget shortfalls that she argued threatened the safety of her police force and hindered their ability to protect national park lands. And former Member of Congress, Mike Parker, who once served in this very institution was fired for speaking candidly about the budget request of the Army Corps of Engineers. And I must say that I had the unpleasant experience in the 10 years that I chaired the Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee of having well-known administration witnesses purposely mislead our subcommittee about the Iran-Contra issue. And several of those officials who were much less than candid at the time are now serving in this administration. So unfortunately, I think there is a long track record, not just with this administration, but with many, of misleading the Congress, of telling us half truths, of telling us no truths at all. And I do not know how you can change human nature to insist that the persons testifying before our committees be more forthcoming. But at least you can have the Congress spell out, through a vote, the fact that each and every Member of this Congress expects the administration to allow its witnesses to tell the truth. We should not have to, as Senator Specter was forced to do last year, we should not have to change the law to require that officials from the National Institute of Health or anyone else can answer Members' questions without referring to higher-ups in the administration to get a politically correct answer. So that is the purpose of this amendment. And I would hope it would be adopted by this House. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the distinguished minority leader.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, how much time is remaining on both sides?

Mr. OBEY. Does the gentleman have any other speakers besides himself?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.