Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I might consume. Mr. Chairman, several weeks ago this House chose to make $140,000 tax cuts for persons who make more than a million dollars a year a higher priority than dealing with the $300 billion-plus backlog that our States and communities have in dealing with their sewer and water problems. When I came to this Congress, the population of this country was 203 million people and our principal program to attack the lack of clean water was a multi-billion dollar grant program to local communities. Today, our population is 35 percent higher, and yet we have moved principally to a loan program to our local communities represented by the Clean Water Revolving Fund. And yet, despite that huge population increase, that huge increase in demand, the committee has chosen to cut this key program by 40 percent over a 2-year period. I am simply asking this House to reconsider its earlier priority decision. I am asking them to approve an amendment that will scale back that $140,000 tax cut to $138,000. What do we do with that money? Do we expand the clean water program? No. All we are trying to do is to bring it back to the level that it was at 2 years ago before we went on this cutting binge. I know that this amendment is subject to a point of order, because the Rules Committee chose not to protect it. I would hope, however, that no Member of the House would lodge that point of order. If they do not, we would be able to make this priorities change and send it on to the Senate. It seems to me that if you ask any man or woman on the street in this country whether they think it is more important to provide a $140,000 tax cut for the most fortunate 1 percent of people in this country or whether they would be willing to settle for a $138,000 tax cut so we have enough money in the budget to clean up our dirty water for our local communities, they would certainly choose the latter. I am tired of reading headlines in newspapers like the Milwaukee Journal, for instance, reporting on the cryptosporidium outbreak in Milwaukee because of a bad sewer and water system. I am tired of seeing communities dump their overflow sewage into Lake Michigan or Lake Superior or any other lake in this country every time they have a storm. It is about time that we make mature choices, and I think this amendment is an effort to push the Congress into making one. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time. Point of Order

Mr. OBEY. Yes, I do, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the purpose of the Budget Act was to force the Congress to make tough trade-off choices, by making trade-offs between individual programs on the spending side and by making trade-offs between revenue levels and spending levels. The problem with the way the budget process is being approached these days is that instead of forcing Congress to look at those trade-offs clearly, the process has been fragmented so that spending decisions occur at one point in the year, revenue decisions occur at another, and the public is therefore never aware of the connection that exists between the two. Unfortunately, because that is the way the majority has proceeded it means that this amendment is subject to a point of order if any Member chooses to make one, and so I very regretfully concede the point of order.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the remainder of the time. Mr. Chairman, I do not in any way criticize the subcommittee chairman for decisions he has made. The problem does not lie with his decisions. The problem lies with the budget resolution which imposes those decisions on him. I certainly understand Members asking for STAG grants if that is their only access, and I have no objection to that, but my objection is simply this: the budget resolution, which the majority party voted for, decided that it was so important to provide tax cuts of $140,000 a year to people who make over a million bucks that they are willing to cut back the basic program that helps communities deal with their sewer and water problems by 40 percent over a 2-year period. Then what they do after they have imposed those kind of cuts on this program, then they go to the STAG program. They get a tiny little $100,000 or $150,000 program for their districts. They go to their districts, they say, ``Oh, look, what a good boy am I, look what a friend I am for clean water.'' Meanwhile, the votes that they have cast on the budget resolution have gutted the ability of this Congress to provide meaningful help to communities who need real help on sewer and water. I think we are sort of chasing our tail; and so, as the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks) says, this is a very difficult priorities choice, and I do not fault the gentleman from North Carolina at all for the choice he has made. I think we have an obligation to try to put some more money back into the basic program first. That is what the amendment tries to do, and I would urge a ``yes'' vote.

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

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. Yes, I am.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I will take only 1 minute. The budget resolution passed earlier this year told the Congress to find a way to meet the targets in that resolution, even if we had to gut the Clean Water program and to cut the STAG grants. What this motion says is that the committee ought to go back to the drawing board and find a way to meet these targets without cutting either the STAG grants or the Clean Water Revolving Fund. It would simply ask the committee to provide an additional $242 million to the Clean Water Revolving Fund and $110 million for State and Tribal Assistance Grants, returning both programs to last year's level. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, my understanding is that there are no other amendments left to the bill, and I simply want to say that I think the chairman of the subcommittee has been very fair and balanced in the way he has approached the bill. I think the bill is not fair and balanced, not because of anything the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Taylor) did, but simply because it could not be under the budget adopted by the majority party 2 weeks ago. How any Member votes on this bill is, in my view, up to that Member. I am not going to be asking any Member to vote any way on any appropriation bill, but I will be voting ``no,'' and I would like to briefly explain why. I am simply not going to vote to gut the main program that we use to help local communities to deal with a $300 billion-plus backlog of decrepit sewer and water systems. I am not going to vote to leave 200 of our 544 wildlife refuges without a single staff person. I am not going to vote to cripple EPA enforcement programs to the tune of $400 million. This bill does all of those things, not because the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Taylor) wanted to, but simply because of what the majority leader said 2 weeks ago when he said, ``This is the budget the American people voted for when they voted for a Republican House, a Republican Senate, and a Republican White House.'' I do not agree with Mr. DeLay on much, but I agree with him in that assessment. So I would simply say, if Members are comfortable with implementing that kind of a budget that puts $140,000 tax cuts for millionaires ahead of protecting American children from dirty drinking water, then they ought to feel comfortable voting ``yes.'' I am not, and I will vote ``no.'' Sequential Votes Postponed in the Committee of the Whole

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Madam Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Let me simply say that I think the chairman has produced a fair process. He has treated the minority fairly and I very much appreciate that, but I believe the bill fails this country in many fundamental ways, and that failure is a direct result of the Republican budget resolution which requires this committee to cut $11.7 billion below the amount needed to maintain current services for domestic discretionary programs. As the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), the majority leader, said 2 weeks ago, ``This is the budget that the American people voted for when they returned a Republican House, a Republican Senate and a Republican White House last November.'' I think that is true. This is exactly what it means. The Republicans in this House voted by a vote of 218 to 212 to adopt that budget resolution. Not one single Democrat voted for that budget resolution, because we recognized the damage that would be done by it. Now, we are told by Members of the majority side we have limited resources. We absolutely agree with that. That is why this House should never have voted to eliminate all taxes on estates of over $7 million. It should never have voted to give persons who make more than a million dollars $140,000 tax cuts next year and do it all with borrowed money because the result of that vote has been a $400 million cut in EPA programs to improve the quality of our air and our water. The result has been a 40 percent cut in the clean water revolving fund. We have $388 billion worth of needs at the community level to fix sewer and water systems; and yet this program is cut by 40 percent in this bill. The damage done by this bill cannot be fully understood unless we take a look at it in a broader context. This is a great and growing country. When I came to this Congress, there were 203 million people in this country. Today, there are 282 million. That is a 34 percent increase. We are going to have another 26 million increase between now and 2010. When I came, there were 108 million cars in America. Today, there are 231 million cars. That means more pollution. It means more congestion. It means more pressure on our national parks. It means more pressure on the part of real estate developers. It means more pressure on our sewer and water programs. In the face of that new pressure, what are we getting out of this bill? We are getting a 34 percent reduction in the funding for the main bill that will help us to clean up our sewer and water problem. I think that is an incredibly myopic decision. In the teeth of all of that pressure, we are crippling EPA. We talk about how happy we are to see a slight increase in the national parks budget; but in fact, there are still 720 positions in the National Park Service that continue to remain unfunded. We have 200 of the 544 wildlife refuges that have no staff whatsoever. In the teeth of all that expanded pressure, what do we get? Despite this bill, we still have a $5 billion backlog in maintenance for the Park Service, a $13 billion backlog for our national forests. I would like to see, for instance, this bill enable us to buy precious land at Pope's Creek on the property where George Washington was born before a real estate developer can grab it and turn it into condos; but we are not going to be able to do that because this bill, for the first time in the 36 years I have been a Member of this House, zero-funds land acquisition programs at both the State and the Federal level. We ought not to do that. For two generations, we have had a bipartisan consensus behind certain minimal actions in the environmental area, especially in the area of clean water. This bill unravels that consensus because it means we can talk a good game in terms of cleaning up our water and our air, but we are not going to put our dollars where our mouth is. So I think, as the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) says, ``This is the budget that the American people voted for when they returned a Republican House, a Republican Senate, and a Republican White House last November.'' If you are satisfied with the results of this bill today, vote for it. I intend to vote against it. I think it is a disaster for the environmental consensus that we have built up with such hard work for so long.

Mr. OBEY. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Madam Chairman, I do not want to rain on anybody's parade, but in a sense I do. What we have just witnessed here is our annual Kabuki dance on the question of the arts. In the first years that the Republicans were in control, they wound up making a very large cut in the arts program. I offered an amendment in the Appropriations Committee to restore a portion of that cut and that amendment was adopted. But the majority exercised its power in the Rules Committee and when this bill went to the Rules Committee, the Rules Committee arbitrarily, unilaterally eliminated my amendment which had been adopted by the full committee. But then they proceeded to make the exact same amendment in order with one difference: that amendment was to be offered by a Republican, because the majority party wanted to have the issue both ways. They wanted to be able to tell their right- wing supporters that they had cut the devil out of the arts, yet they wanted to tell what few remaining moderates were left in their caucus that they could go home with a rollcall in their pocket bragging about the fact that a Republican had partially restored some of that funding. That maneuver was enough to give insincerity and hypocrisy a bad name. And now what we have seen here today is, I hope, not a repetition of what we saw last year. Because last year, as was pointed out, we had an arts funding level which was $49 million below where it was at its high water mark, $100 million in real terms after adjusting for inflation below where it had been just a few years earlier. An amendment was offered, $10 million. Liberals and progressives argued for it. Conservatives argued against it. The amendment was passed, added $10 million, everybody got to put out their press releases; and, guess what, when we wound up in conference with the Senate, 80 percent of the money was stripped out of the bill. So the bill was left with a token $2 million increase. I just have one observation. I would hope that if the House wants to demonstrate the slightest bit of sincerity on this issue, that having adopted this amendment, it will stick to it in conference so that something other than a phony Kabuki dance has taken place on the floor this year. I know that is quite a bit to expect given the hypocrisy that often accompanies conferences and given the penchant for so many Members of either body to try to pose for political holy pictures on some of these issues; but nonetheless I would like to express the vain hope that on occasion some sincerity will be displayed on this issue and that if the House adopts an amendment, it really means it.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, I am trying to stall for time while we clear up a controversy that has arisen. I certainly am in support of the intention of the gentleman's request, but it is my understanding that there may be a problem with one of the amendments. I am hoping that by the time I am done filibustering here the gentleman's staff will have worked it out with the Parliamentarian and we will be able to proceed.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, with that understanding, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. This is a scaled-back version of the first amendment I just offered. It does not have the tax offset. It is fully offset by other reductions in this bill, and what it tries to do is to correct the problem that I cited just a moment ago. Just 2 weeks ago, this House passed a nongermane proposal which established an elaborate and convoluted and Rube Goldberg process by which every American will have to obtain their driver's license in the future. It is going to require added security arrangements for every office that issues State driver's licenses if those licenses are going to be allowed to serve as an ID card when climbing on an airplane. It provides substantial additional duties which will be imposed on States and be imposed on the Department of Homeland Security itself. Now, I do not know whose cost estimate is correct. I do not know whether the Congressional Budget Office is correct when it says that this will only be an unfunded mandate of $100 million or whether the National Conference of State Legislative Leaders is correct when they say that the unfunded mandate will amount to about $500 million in cost. But for the moment, in deference to my conservative friends on the other side of the aisle, I am assuming the conservative estimate of cost is the accurate one, the one laid out by the Congressional Budget Office. So I am simply urging that we in fact provide for the States grant program that was authorized in that REAL ID proposal that the majority was so anxious to bring to the House floor just 2 weeks ago. We in the minority had nothing to do with the writing. We in the minority were not consulted on the language. We in the minority were not consulted about the idea of imposing another mandate. We were just told ``take it or leave it.'' And so it is now the law of the land. Now, I am not in any way reducing accounts below last year's funding level. All we are doing is reducing some of the Secretary's management accounts by a portion of the increases that this bill provides. The science and technology account, for instance, is being reduced by $50 million of the $55 million increase. That still leaves a small increase. The Office of Secretary Executive Management will still retain a $7 million increase. I think we have hard choices to make, and I am not afraid to suggest that I think it is a better use of resources to put this money where the amendment tries to put it to at least keep the majority consistent with its promise in the Contract With America, the good old Contract With America which Congress passed 10 years ago and promised that there would be no more unfunded mandates. I am just trying to help keep a Republican promise, and I am sure I will have enthusiastic support of Members on the majority side of the aisle. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. Let me get this straight. Two weeks after the majority party imposed this huge new unfunded mandate and required that it be attached to the defense appropriations supplemental to pay for the war in Iraq, we are now told by the majority, gee, we do not have any idea what this is going to cost. You mean you imposed a mandate without having any idea what it was going to cost? If we follow the logic of what the gentleman is saying, we will say to the States, Congress had no idea what it was doing and so you are going to pay the bill. That is what the gentleman has just said. I find that mighty peculiar. I urge an ``aye'' vote on this amendment. I want to make clear I did not vote for REAL ID. I think it is a cockamamie idea, but it is now the law of the land; and the question is, is the Federal Government going to pay for what it mandated, or is it going to stick the cost on the backs of local and State governments? I hope it is not the latter. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Sabo).

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, what we are doing is reducing the increase in the amount of money that is in this bill for consultants.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. As the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Sabo) pointed out, this amendment is simply asking the Congress to stick to its promise in the Contract With America, to not provide any more unfunded mandates. What we are saying on this side of the aisle, we did not vote for this turkey, but it is now law; and given that fact, we ought to at least make sure this does not wind up on the backs of the States and local governments. What we are saying is at least keep your commitment not to load any more on the State and local property taxes, and let us pay for this by simply reducing the size of the growth in consultants at the Secretary's level. This is already a bloated, dysfunctional agency. We are now going to be asked to provide very large increases to provide more consultants. It seems to me that they can afford to get along with a few less consultants so we can provide one less unfunded mandate in State and local government. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, whoever designed this proposition today is a real piece of work. This is the bill that was submitted to the Committee on Rules last night, a perfectly coherent bill. I had already indicated my intentions to support the Republican chairman's effort. I thought he did a reasonable job, even though he had inadequate resources. This is the bill after the Committee on Rules has gotten done with it. Look at this. The Committee has shredded the document that we are supposed to take seriously when we come to this floor and debate it today. It is eviscerated. I do not understand the majority leadership in this House. Earlier this year, I was asked if I would work out a process which would enable the majority to pass its appropriation bills in a timely fashion. I have been working with the majority; and so far, we have worked out a process which we expect will enable us to support at least seven of the appropriation bills that are coming to the floor. I had fully expected to stand shoulder to shoulder today with the gentleman from Kentucky, the chairman of the subcommittee, who has done a most thoughtful job in providing necessary oversight for one of the most dysfunctional agencies in this government; and even though he had been given inadequate resources, I had indicated that because of the quality of that oversight I intended to vote for the bill. That is no longer the case. If this bill is shredded on the floor by points of order made by willful single Members, I will vote against the bill because it will then make no sense whatsoever. What this action does, in making these provisions subject to a point of order by a single Member, this action puts at risk the thoughtful effort that the committee has put together with respect to securing screening of cargo on passenger airplanes. It puts at risk the funding to ensure that we have a rational terrorist watch match list operation. It puts at risk funding for port security and a number of other items critical to the national defense of the country. This bill is being eviscerated because of a juvenile, a juvenile, dispute within the Republican caucus about committee jurisdictions. It is what Dick Bolling, my old mentor, used to call dung hill politics, where people put the welfare of their own committee ahead of the welfare of this institution and the welfare of the country. It is little league politics at its worst. I do not understand how we can be asked on the minority side to sit down and work out a bipartisan agreement on this appropriation bill, and then after we have done so, we are then told that some whiz kid, either in the Committee on Rules or in the leadership's office, has decided that they do not like the compromise and they are going to open it up, to shred it. The Committee on Homeland Security, the authorization committee that is objecting to some of these provisions in the bill, this is a committee that has existed for 3 years and never put one bill into law. The one bill that has to pass in order to assure this country adequate security is this bill, the appropriation bill for homeland security; and yet we are going to follow a process today which not only shreds this bill but makes much less likely the prospect that we will finish our regular appropriation bills on time. If the leadership did not intend to allow this bill to go forward, then why did it even allow it to come up until the authorization committee had gotten off its duff, done its job, completed action on the authorization, so the appropriation committee could then bring the bill to the floor? If the House leadership on the majority side of the aisle did not think it was important enough to pass this bill, then why are we here? Why are we here? Why are we wasting our time? All this process means is that in the name of jurisdictional purity, the average Member of this House will not have any say whatsoever about the eventual content of the provisions stricken from this bill because those choices will be made behind closed doors, in conference between the two Chambers, out of reach of the average rank-and-file member on both the Committee on Appropriations and the authorization committee. This is a lousy way to run a railroad.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, there are two problems that we face in dealing with this bill. The first is that we have an agency which is essentially incompetent and dysfunctional. We are trying to protect the Nation's security by working through an agency which is gargantuan, which is bureaucratic, to say the least, which is filled with inertia, and filled with people working at cross purposes. Outside of that it does a terrific job. And the chairman and the ranking member of the subcommittee have tried to do their dead level best to provide the kind of Congressional oversight that is necessary if you are going to help bring this agency out of its troubles and put that agency in a posture where it can be a trusted repository of the responsibilities that we have given to it. The second problem we have is that we still have not faced up to the need. Even though the agency which we must go through in order to deal with this problem is a mess, we still have not faced up to the fact that we need more resources. We still only inspect a tiny percentage of the container cargo which comes into this country every day. We still inspect an infinitesimal percentage of cargo on passenger airplanes. Mr. Sabo has focused on that issue many times. We, despite all of our posturing, and despite every Member of Congress who has gone on the Lou Dobbs Show and talked about the need to secure our borders, we still are incredibly short in terms of the number of border guards, in terms of the number of immigration inspectors. And then, in addition to that, the Congress on the supplemental appropriation bill added an entirely extraneous provision which set up this new complicated, convoluted Rube Goldberg operation that every citizen is going to have to go through in order to renew their driver's license. And the cost of that program is indeterminate, but we are being told by the Congressional Budget Office that it will cost at least $100 million, which will be laid onto State and local governments. We are told by the National Council of State Legislative Leaders that it will cost about $500 million, and we have laid that responsibility on State and local governments. So, Mr. Chairman, it seems to me that even with our doubts about the agency there are certain functions that we ought to be providing more money for unless we are determined to create yet another unfunded mandate. The committee has not been able to provide additional money, not because of any defect in the committee but for one simple reason: This House has decided to make as a higher priority providing very large tax cuts for the next 10 years, and a huge percentage of those tax cuts have gone to the most blessed persons in this society. Let me put it that way. The reality is that if you make over a million dollars this year, you could expect, on average, to get a $140,000 tax cut. We could plug all of the holes I have just mentioned in our homeland security activities if we simply limited that $140,000 average tax cut to $138,000. And that is what the amendment would do that I intend to offer at a later point in the proceedings. The Rules Committee did not make that amendment in order, while they did make in order, or they did make it possible for any single Member to walk onto this floor and wipe out 15 pages of this bill that provide needed resources for numerous security activities. So we are in the situation where the Rules Committee has precluded me from offering an amendment which can be voted on by the entire body, and yet the Rules Committee has said we are going to allow a single Member from a committee that has never produced a bill that has gone into law, we are going to allow them to walk in here and shred this bill. That makes no sense to me. So I just think the Rules Committee has failed in its stewardship responsibility, and I think we are failing our responsibilities to our constituents if we do not provide more resources than this bill provides. Having said that, I want to congratulate the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Rogers) for doing the best job that he could under the circumstances. I had intended to vote for this bill until they took it and shredded it. Whether I will vote for it in the end will be determined by just how irresponsible people are when they come to the floor and knock out provisions of this bill just because their committee did not happen to think of them.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. Anyone who serves here any length of time knows that one thing that we really appreciate is if we are not surprised or sandbagged by other Members or other committees. Earlier today the Committee on Rules provided a sandbag to this committee when, without anyone on this side of the aisle knowing about it, they simply left this bill open to a whole variety of points of order. And they did that after we had worked out some delicate compromises between both sides of the aisle. I strenuously objected to that action. I cannot be credible in objecting to that action if I do not also object to surprises that occur on my side of the aisle. I made a statement in the whip's meeting last week and asked every member of our caucus to please come to those Members of the House on this side of the aisle whose responsibility it is to run the bill from this side of the aisle. We asked that they come to us if they had any amendments so we could walk through with them how those amendments might or might not fit into the greater scheme of things. At least we wanted to have a chance to consult with Members. This amendment is here with no prior notice to me. I do not know if anyone else on this side of the aisle was noticed, but I certainly was not noticed, and I do not appreciate it. The fact is we have our differences between parties, but we try to run these bills in a way which will protect the interests of all Members. We cannot do that if individual Members continually surprise us with amendments so that we have not had an opportunity to try to make certain that they are drafted in such a way that they do not get in the way of what the sponsor is trying to do or get in the way of what we are trying to do. The gentleman from Kentucky has pointed out that this account has already been increased by a very significant amount. It has and I applaud him for it. The fact is there are some accounts in this bill that do not have a dime in it, and that needs to be corrected before an amendment like this is offered. So I regretfully have to say that while I wish we had more money for a number of these accounts, as one who has to balance where we put limited amounts of money I have to agree with the gentleman from Kentucky and urge defeat of the amendment.