Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, let me thank the gentleman from Ohio for striking the last word so you could raise this. Let me simply say to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank), I fully agree with him about the value of the program. The President's budget wanted to transfer it to this bill. The subcommittee did not pick up the money in this bill. In my view, it should have. But I would say that because it has not, there will be another opportunity next week to try to deal with this when the Teasury-Transportation bill comes to the floor. It would be disgraceful if the Congress allowed this program to fall through the cracks because neither committee included the funding for it and if Congress simply played Alfonse and Gaston on us between the two subcommittees.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I would not describe it as breaking the agreement. If the gentleman would be kind enough to let me explain what I think has happened here. The gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) and the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler) both missed their opportunity to offer their amendments in regular order because the reading went fast and neither of them was on the floor. We had a unanimous consent agreement which was about to be propounded by the gentleman from Ohio. When the gentleman from Illinois and the gentleman from New York discovered that they had missed their opportunity, the gentleman from Illinois asked for an opportunity to go back. At that point, I suggested that the unanimous consent agreement be rewritten to include your amendment and the gentleman's from New York. The committee majority preferred, and I can understand why, because it was time consuming, the committee preferred to simply rely on our ability to get unanimous consent to go back to consider yours and the gentleman from New York's amendment. However, the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie) was not part of the arrangement. And since your amendment takes money out of a program in his State, he felt required to object. So I do not think that anyone is ``breaking an agreement.'' This is what happens, number one, when Members are not on the floor when they need to be. Secondly, it is what happens when we do not include matters like that in the UC agreement. We were relying on an assumption that proved to be erroneous, and I am certain the gentleman from Ohio feels as badly about it as I do. But in my view, no one on the floor is breaking his word. This is just an unfortunate set of circumstances, and a Member has the right to protect his own State's interest if the opportunity presents itself.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, if I could have the attention of the gentleman from Ohio, I simply rise neither to speak for nor against this amendment, but simply to make an observation about it. The situation that the gentleman from Ohio finds himself in on this issue is a very difficult one, because he is trying to balance between two legitimate claims on the Federal Treasury. We have seen, as was observed in the Washington Post article this morning, a parade of Members come down to the floor yesterday and today trying to wiggle out from the consequences of the budget resolution which was imposed on the entire House by the passage of that resolution. Now, I do not like to be in that position. I have a little less sympathy for the gentleman from Ohio than I do for myself on this issue, because he voted for the budget resolution and I did not. But that being said, there is no right position on an amendment like this. This issue simply demonstrates that when the money that you provide for education is inadequate, when it is inadequate to the needs of the Nation, then we are going to be eating each other's favorite programs, then you are going to have all kinds of interest groups in this country chewing on each other and each trying to get out from under at the expense of everybody else. So I can actually understand why the gentleman opposes this amendment, because he needs some flexibility in conference to deal with some of the legitimate concerns that Members have. I love the program the gentleman from Georgia is trying to add money to. I had a son in the gifted and talented program. He was a National Merit scholar. Yet I would have a great deal of difficulty voting to add money for that program at the expense of programs that went to help less gifted and less advantaged children in this society. So the amendment is half right and half wrong, and I hope, therefore, that the Members on the majority side and the minority side will understand why the gentleman from Ohio is so reluctantly against this amendment.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman for correcting me, I misheard. I happen to think that that is a tremendous program too. But the problem is all of these amendments, taken together, will limit the chairman's ability to provide any flexibility at all in conference to fix these problems. So I urge the gentleman to think about it. He might be surprised at which programs are going to be bitten if the gentleman does not have the flexibility that he needs.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of this amendment. We have heard a number of Members on the majority side of the aisle say we should not overturn a court decision. Where were you on the Schiavo case when you brought the Congress back in order to stick your nose into the very painful end-of-life decisions that were made by a family in agony? You did not hesitate to try to overturn a court decision then. Get straight, fellows, come on. This amendment is absolutely necessary if we are going to stop the dumping of pension obligations on the taxpayers of the United States. The taxpayers have enough trouble now getting their representatives to do real things to fix Social Security and now they are going to dump the responsibility for private pensions on the taxpayer as well. That is goofy and it is gutless. It is stupid. It is negligent. Outside of that, it is a terrific idea. What I would say is this, and I hope the House remembers this when the Treasury bill is on the floor next week because I got added to that bill a requirement that the General Accounting Office do a study to determine whether or not we need to re-regulate the airlines and treat them as a necessary public utility providing service to every community in this country in order to save our pension system for airline employees. If we do not do that, if we do not do that, we can bet there will not be a single airline that has a private pension system by the end of the decade. There will be a race to the bottom in terms of costs, and the first people who are going to get run over in that race are going to be the workers who thought they had a private pension system. This Congress needs to start talking about matters that affect the people back home rather than continuing to focus on matters that deal with the welfare of people inside the system and inside the Beltway in Washington. It is about time Congress quit paying attention to little details that have nothing to do with people's lives and start focusing on big problems like preservation of their private pensions. This is the only way that we can fire a shot across the do-nothing leadership of this Congress' bow and get some movement on this crucial pension issue.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, without this amendment, Uncle Sam is being Uncle Sucker.

Mr. OBEY. I yield to the gentleman from Rhode Island.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim the time in opposition of the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition, not because I am necessarily opposed, but because I might be if I understood this correctly. This is not something that we have had a lot of notice to discuss, and I must confess considerable disquiet at the idea that we should overturn a report of the Department of Education Inspector General with respect to the use of taxpayers' money. As I understand it, the IG, and what I understand is on the basis of a 2-minute briefing, what I understand is that the Inspector General ruled that a number of these schools were, in fact, private and not public and also questioned the way that at least two of the schools had spent taxpayers' money. Will the gentleman enlighten me with respect to the latter concern?

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Chairman, I would also say that I note in the letter in the final audit report that there is a sentence which says: Additionally, two of the charter schools that we audited did not expend Title I funds entirely in accordance with applicable law and regulations. I do not know what the facts are with respect to that sentence, but I would simply say that I would not, in any way, want the acceptance of this amendment to be an indication that the Congress is carte blanche accepting the fact that funds ought to continue for those two schools, because it seems to me we have an obligation to make certain that, even if we are trying to deal with the temporary problem, we do not want an improper expenditure of taxpayers' money. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is misdirected, misguided, and stupid. If you are out in the woods with a rifle and you are hunting and you shoot at something, it would be nice if you are shooting at the right target. This amendment does not do anything about illegal immigration. This amendment simply shoots the victim of illegal immigration by damaging the local hospitals. If we have illegal immigrants in this country, it is because of a failure of the Federal Government to effectively enforce its immigration laws. That is the problem. The problem with the gentleman's amendment is that because he does not like the fact that the Federal Government has been ineffective with respect to immigration, he wants to take it out on the local hospitals. The local hospitals when someone shows up on their door, they have an obligation under the law to treat that patient. If the Federal Government does not pay for the treatment of that patient, then local taxpayers and local hospitals get stuck with the bill. I have a similar situation in my district. I have a huge percentage of Hmong who have come to this country since the end of the Vietnam War. They came because of a decision of the Federal Government. Yet after they come to my district, after a very few months of Federal support, the financial cost for maintaining them, for educating them and for dealing with their medical needs winds up being assumed by the local government. That is not fair. Local governments do not make the foreign policy decisions that determine who our refugees are, and local governments do not have anything to do with what policies the Federal Government follows with respect to immigration. I would suggest to the gentleman if you do not like Federal immigration policy, shoot the right messenger. This one shoots the wrong messenger. This amendment deserves to be roundly defeated, unless you believe that somebody should pay for somebody else's mistakes. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Linda T. Sanchez).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I simply want to say that I rise in support of the gentleman's amendment. I would fully grant that I think there is a problem with the timetable associated with the amendment because of its immediacy, but the fact is that under the rules of the House, the gentleman had no choice but to draw the amendment that way in order for it to be eligible to be offered as an amendment. The committee, if it so chooses, can easily fix this problem in conference. It can easily delay the effective date of the gentleman's amendment, and I think that is what we ought to do. I think the Social Security Administration, I think the Federal Government, I think the Pentagon, I think our banks and other financial institutions, have been incredibly reckless in protecting the privacy of American citizens. And we are increasingly going to see this as a huge problem, and we are also going to see identity theft mount exponentially. I congratulate the gentleman for trying to do something about it. That is more than one can say for most of this Congress. And if there are technical problems, this committee, if it is worth its salt, can easily have them fixed before the bill is reported back in conference. I urge support for the amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I think the gentlewoman from Connecticut has indicated correctly that there are a number of technical problems with this amendment; yet I think I know that if there is a roll call, it will be passed overwhelmingly. So what I would suggest in the interest of time, unless we want to stay here until midnight, is to simply accept a number of these amendments which we know have significant technical flaws, but which can be corrected in conference. Otherwise, we are going to have a lot of meaningless debates, and they will simply consume a lot of time, and we will wind up in the same place. So what I would simply urge is that the committee accept the amendment, recognizing that it needs to be fixed substantially in conference, and deal with some of the very practical problems just laid out by the gentlewoman.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I do so so that I can facilitate a colloquy between the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich) and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula), and I yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich).

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman said, for some reason we think that Mr. Tomlinson is being political. I wonder why? Mr. Tomlinson is the follow who said that public radio stations should get in line with the Republican election victory. Mr. Tomlinson is the person who appointed a consultant in order to try to measure the number of instances when people on PBS programs were, quote, anti-Bush or, quote, anti-DeLAY. Mr. Tomlinson is the person who recommended the appointment to head the Corporation of a former cochairman of the Republican National Committee. If Bill Clinton had appointed the former Democratic National Chairman to the public broadcasting board, the other side would be having a conniption fit. The other side would be screaming in outrage and passing out motions of impeachment; they have had a lot of practice at that. It is also Mr. Tomlinson who was reported to have worked to raise money in order to put the Wall Street Journal editorial board on public broadcasting. Now, there is an objective operation for you. I would also suggest that what is at work here is something broader than Mr. Tomlinson. What I think is happening is this, Mr. Chairman. I think we have a ``thought police'' brigade loose around the country. And we have seen evidence of it in a number of places. We saw it in the Schiavo case, where the Republican majority tried to tell every American family how they had to handle an end-of-life decision. Then we saw it in the efforts of the majority leader, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), who fired a shot at every judge in the country who had the temerity to think for themselves, warning them if they did not toe the line, he would go after their jurisdiction. And then you have this effort to appoint the chairman of the Republican National Committee as head of public broadcasting. And then I wonder why the American people get a little nervous about the thought police at work. The fact is that every public opinion poll shows that the American people have more confidence in the objectivity of public television and public radio than they do any other news outlet, and certainly more confidence in their objectivity than they have in us as a body. We have hit a new low recently in terms of public approval of the way this Congress is operating, I would say with good reason, because this Congress spends so much time worrying about things that affect itself rather than worry about things that affect the American people. So I think there is a very good reason for the gentleman's amendment. I regret that there is a necessity to bring it up. But I do think that Mr. Tomlinson is primarily responsible for politicizing this entire issue. Mr. Chairman, I do not mind seeing Republicans on public broadcasting. I do not think there was a better show on television than Bill Buckleys's program through the years. Bill Buckley had a huge intellect, and I think the country was served by the programs that he had on that program for many years. I do not think the country is served well when Mr. Tomlinson takes upon himself the duty of being the thought policeman for the entire country on public television. That crosses the line. He ought to go. He ought to resign. This Congress ought to demand that he do so. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I want to explain to the House why it is that I vigorously oppose this amendment. I am the only Member of the Chamber who was exposed to a recall effort because of my support for tribal sovereignty. Even though the Constitution of the United States does not provide for such a recall, our State constitution thought it did. And so I had to endure an effort in recall because of my fierce support for tribal sovereignty. But having said that, I want to say that the gentleman's amendment goes far too far in that regard. Now I will tell you why. In my State, we had an experience in which one of the tribes contracted out to a private party to run their casino. That private party took advantage of the fact that the compact that the Governor set up with the tribe was defective. And under that defect, they made quite clear to female employees of the casino that it was their obligation, in blunt language, to either put out or get out. Now, we all know what that means. And what the gentleman's amendment means under those circumstances is that when you remove the protection of the National Labor Relations Act, you subject individuals with no power at all to that kind of treatment by shysters and bums. Now, as far as I am concerned, I heard a whole lot about family values from that side of the aisle. You think this amendment represents family values in that situation? Give me a break. It does not.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I simply want to say institutions, no matter what they are, whether they are tribe or any other institution, they have a capacity to violate human rights. And with the gentleman's amendment, you will be opening a loophole in the law as big as a 65-foot truck. This amendment is a terrible amendment. It ought to be buried in a box and we ought to pretend it never was presented. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. But the contractors are bums.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word, and I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, let me simply say that, like the gentleman from Ohio, I see no problem with accepting the amendment on this side because, as I read it, it does not do nothing to nobody for anybody or about anybody. And so with that, I am happy to accept the amendment.