Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, let me explain what this is. We have had a steady stream of Members for weeks now decrying the fact we just do not have enough resources to do the job we ought to be doing in homeland security or in transportation or in education or in health care or any other endeavor of the Federal Government. The fact is that we do not have those needed available resources because the Members of this House have put themselves in a box. They have done that by, in essence, saying that their number one priority above all others is to provide very large tax cuts for people very high up on the income scale. Example: This year if you make over $1 million you will get, on average, about a $140,000 tax cut. What I am trying to do here today is to do two things. I am trying to, first of all, help the Congress keep the promises that it made just 6 months ago. Therefore, this amendment would provide an additional $500 million to the Department of Homeland Security to meet the staffing and detention bed space increases that were called for in the Intelligence Reform Act and to allow States to meet the driver's license standards that were just imposed on those States by this Congress 2 weeks ago. So my amendment is simple. First of all, it adds 500 more people to the Border Patrol. Second, it adds 600 people to the immigration inspector workforce. And thirdly, it adds 4,000 more detention beds so that we can keep the promises laid out in the Intelligence Reform bill. Finally, we would fund the grant program that is authorized by the REAL ID Act, which the Congress attached a couple of weeks ago. I did not support that act. I did not vote for it. It was attached as a nongermane amendment to the appropriations bill. But we are told by the Congressional Budget Office it will cost about $100 million to implement. We are told by the Council of State Legislative Leaders it will cost $500 million to implement. That is a huge mandate however you slice it that we are laying on the backs of State budgets. So what I am simply suggesting is we can do both of these things by simply scaling back by a tiny amount that super-sized tax cut for people with super-sized incomes of over $1 million. We would simply cut that average $140,000 tax cut to $138,000, and we would have more than enough to fund these operations. The Committee on Rules did not allow this amendment to be made in order. That means that the only way it can be considered is if no one raises a point of order against it. I would hope they would not do so. This is a minor adjustment that we would make in the super-sized tax cuts in order to provide significantly more security for the entire country. I think it is worth the investment, and I would urge support for the amendment, assuming that no one decides to lodge a point of order against the amendment. Point of Order

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I must concede that under the rule that brought this bill to the floor, this amendment is not in order. I regret it. I think the country would be a whole lot better off if we passed the amendment. But I concede the point of order.

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 7 minutes. Mr. Speaker, ordinarily, on a piece of legislation like this, there would be virtually no debate and it would be passed routinely, but I think, for the good of the House, we ought to review exactly what we are doing here and why we are here doing it. As you know, last month, the supplemental appropriations for Iraq and other purposes was passed by the House and then passed by the Senate. On the Senate floor, the Senate saw fit to adopt an amendment, the purpose of which was to increase the number of visas for nurses by 50,000. That is what it supposedly did. Now, after that was adopted on the Senate floor, the bill was conferenced. It passed this House some time ago, and the conference passed the Senate yesterday. Today, we are here with this concurrent resolution, and what does this concurrent resolution do? It raises the number of visas for nursing by 50,000. Why do we have to chew the same cud twice? Why are we here doing today what we thought had been done much earlier? I think it is very simple. We are here because the normal processes, the normal democratic processes of the House and the Senate have not been followed. We are here because, in an attempt to solve a debate within the Republican Caucus, extraneous material was added to the Iraqi supplemental which had no business being on that bill in the first place. What essentially happened is that after this amendment was adopted by the other body, the leadership of the majority party then essentially took away from the Committee on Appropriations the ability to deal with all of these immigration-related issues. Now, who dealt with them? I am, frankly, not sure, but I think it was Senator Frist's staff, and I think it was the leadership staff in this House. But we are not sure because it all happened behind some closed door. I am not sure what room it was in. But it happened somewhere, some place in River City. So now, we are here correcting that mistake. Why am I making a Federal case out of something like this? Well, it is very simple. The history of Congress has been written for decades, and each decade some scholar has noted that Congress works principally in committee. Woodrow Wilson wrote his great piece on the organization of Congress, making the point that Congress really ran in committees. We are here today because that committee system has been corrupted. What has happened is that we have ignored the fact that the reason for the committee system in the first place has been so that the House could use the specialized knowledge that people develop on each and every committee and put that knowledge to work in the consideration of every bill that goes through this House. Under normal processes, the Committee on Appropriations would have been dealing with all matters that were attached in the appropriations bill. Under normal processes, Senator Hutchison should have been allowed to have access to the language before it was arbitrarily attached to this bill. But when people tried to find out what was happening on immigration and other issues, they were told it is being taken care of. It is being taken care of. Well, it certainly was. Mr. Speaker, I simply take this time to make the point that there is a purpose for creating committees. There is a purpose for vetting these issues through the committee of jurisdiction because, through the years, committees learn their business. But when the normal business is side-tracked, when everyone except the powers on high are excluded from the rooms where decisions are being made, then you are going to have mistakes being made because nobody is smart enough to know everything about everything, despite what some people in the leadership in both the Senate and House seem to feel. Occasionally, the omnipotent can make a mistake. And if the committee process is followed, our chances of making those mistakes would be minimized. So all I want to say, Mr. Speaker, is that I am sure mistakes like this will occur in the future. And this is no great Earth-shaking matter, but I felt it appropriate to use this opportunity to point out that the House is continuing to day-by-day, as far as I am concerned, corrupt the processes of the House by having the House evolve into a system in which a few staff people somewhere on Capitol Hill make all of the decisions, and then the other committees are told, Just do what you are told. Get rid of it. Move it on. After all, we have got to run the trains on time. It does not matter what is in them, but we have got to run the trains on time. So that is why we are here today, Mr. Speaker. I hope we could all take a lesson from this.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Speaker, we now find ourselves in an even more interesting situation. The gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Hostettler) has just raised some substantive concerns about the bill, and those ought to be responded to. The problem is that, because of the way this has been handled, because you had a matter that was not under the jurisdiction of the Committee on Appropriations essentially dumped into an appropriations bill, this issue is not going to be dealt with on the substantive level. The issues raised by the gentleman might be very legitimate, but they should be debated in the forum in which they are supposed to be debated, and that is the Committee on the Judiciary. Instead, we have the Committee on Appropriations which is supposed to focus on budgets here dealing with a legal issue about which our committee has no particular expertise. So, once again, the process by which the bill is being considered today changes the House from being what it is supposed to be, which is the greatest deliberative body in the world, to a poor imitation of Daffy Duck. I again would urge that we give greater consideration to normal order around here if we do not want to rapidly descend into being the laughing-stock of the country. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, can I inquire how much time each side has remaining.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield for purposes of a unanimous consent request to the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller.) (Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

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

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, in this form, I am.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), distinguished minority whip.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 8 minutes. Mr. Speaker, this bill before us today makes clear that we have now spent $284 billion in Iraq and Afghanistan since the war began. The money that has been spent in Afghanistan is certainly legitimate and justified. After all, that country harbored the people who attacked us on 9/11. The problem is, however, that $165 billion has now been spent to deal with a country that did not attack us. We have spent some $240 billion on this entire endeavor since the President first landed in his jumpsuit on that carrier and addressed the country under the banner ``Mission Accomplished.'' There has been quite a bit of that mission left since it supposedly was over. We have now been involved in Iraq longer than we were involved in World War I, and respectable and responsible experts have told me that they expect that we will be involved for at least another 5 years. This whole operation has been brought to us by the same people who erroneously told us that we had to go to war because Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and it was implied that they had, or were close to having, nuclear capability. That was all demonstrated not to be true. This has been brought to us by the same people who believed the assertions that our troops would be welcomed with open arms. It has been brought to us by the same people who thought they were so smart that they knew more than General Shinseki when the good general warned us that we would need substantially more troops and boots on the ground than we were scheduled to have if the postwar occupation was to go well. And it has been brought to us by the same people who provided to our troops insufficient armor for Humvees, insufficient body armor and insufficient jammers to prevent our troops from having their faces and their legs and their arms blown off by remotely detonated bombs and mines. I want to make quite clear I will support this bill because I feel that I have no choice but to participate in cleaning up the mess which somebody else left. But I do not relish it. I believe that the entire operation in Iraq has been accompanied by incredibly naive romanticism on the part of the White House and on the part of the civilian leadership in the Pentagon, and that has left the people fighting the war to bear the brunt of the miscalculations that have been made by the civilian leadership of our government. We have lost the lives of 1,500 American service men and women. We have seen more than 11,000 be injured. And this bill understates, in my view, the amount of money that will be needed eventually to restore the readiness of the U.S. Armed Forces and to minimize their casualties. The second thing this bill does is to demonstrate once again how we, on both sides of the aisle, have had to work doubly hard to overcome the resistance of the White House in adequately funding homeland security operations. They have been especially resistant to providing the adequate funding along the borders, especially the Canadian border. And it has taken a bipartisan effort on the part of a wide variety of people in this Congress in order to overcome that resistance. This bill falls far short of the funding that is necessary to provide a secure set of borders for the United States. The new bill that is going to be offered by the gentleman from Kentucky will help fill that gap, but that is forced to play catch-up because we have met a steady resistance effort on the part of the White House. Lastly, I simply want to say that while I am certainly no expert on the subject, I note that there is being attached to this bill a provision which many experts in the field feel has the potential to construct a nationwide database that could be very harmful in terms of people's efforts to engage in identity theft. I hope that proves not to be the case. I would simply make the point that certainly no one on our committee on either side of the aisle has the expertise that you would hope would be found in the authorization committees, and I wish that that provision had been dealt with on a separate bill rather than solving an internal problem within the Republican Caucus by having it attached to an unrelated bill, and I want to make one point about that. We are being lectured almost daily by the majority that we should not add ungermane riders to appropriation bills. I want to serve notice that if the majority feels free to add unrelated authorization bills such as this to a must-pass bill, that then I feel fully within my rights in offering whatever authorization legislation we feel appropriate on this side of the aisle and asking that it be attached to appropriation bills. If sauce is going to be okay for the goose, then it ought to be good for the gander. So we will see in the coming months what the attitude of the majority is when we seek to add what we feel are legitimate efforts to strengthen appropriation bills by adding various pieces of so-called legislation to appropriation bills. So since the majority has chosen to proceed down that path, I hope they raise no objection when we seek to follow it. With that, Mr. Speaker, again, I repeat I intend to vote for this bill with all of my misgivings. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha), the ranking member of the Defense Subcommittee, the gentleman who has long been trying to extend debate in this Chamber.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. Crowley).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield for the purpose of making a unanimous consent request to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee). (Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Speaker, I take this time to explain the motion to recommit that I will offer at the end of this debate. Here is what it does: The Senate bill contains funding for a total of 150,000 border patrol agents, 250 immigration investigators, and 168 immigration enforcement agents, and detention officers and their associated training and support cast. This conference agreement falls short of the Senate bill in 3 areas. It only contains funds for 500 border patrol agents, not the 150,000 called for in the Senate bill. It only contains funding for 50 immigration investigators, not the 250 called for in the Senate bill. Last, it also contains no funding for unmanned border aerial vehicles. The motion to recommit is simple. It would take us to the levels contained in the Senate bill for border patrol agents by adding funding for 550 additional border patrol agents and for 200 immigration investigators. It would also fund unmanned border aerial vehicles that have been used successfully in a test in Arizona to assist in surveillance. Former DHS Deputy Secretary Lloyd testified that the vehicles provided ``invaluable'' service. Since border patrol agents are trained at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Artesia, New Mexico, funding is included like the Senate bill to purchase and operate modular classrooms for these additional agents. This motion, in short, would provide an additional $284.4 million to immigration and customs enforcement to do this as was in the Senate bill. Need I remind anyone that the Intelligence Reform Bill, which became law last December, called for 2,000 additional border patrol agents a year and 800 additional immigration investigators? The President requested no funding for that supplemental request. I would note that on March 30 the administration announced it would add more than 500 agents in Arizona, but those are not new agents. 135 of them or so will come from other southwest and southern border patrol locations, and the remainder are simply new trainees who will replace agents retiring or leaving the border patrol across the country. So I would simply urge House Members to vote for this motion. It ought not be at all controversial. It is practical if you want to put your money where your press releases have been with respect to border patrol. Mr. Speaker, I yield for the purpose of making a unanimous consent request to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel). (Mr. ENGEL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time. Let me simply say that I intend to support this legislation when we actually get to it, but that does not mean I am happy with the contents of it. There are clearly more than seven or eight items, major items that I find very problematic. But what I want to do at this time is to alert the House to the contents of the motion that we would make on the rule if the previous question is not adopted. If the previous question is not adopted, we would be offering a request to establish a select committee such as the Truman Committee back in World War II to investigate and study the awarding and carrying out of government contracts to conduct activities in Afghanistan and Iraq. I would simply point out, all one has to do is to read the newspapers daily to understand how badly this is needed. The Washington Post this morning has the most recent story: ``Audit of Iraq Spending Spurs Criminal Probe,'' and then it talks about opening a criminal inquiry into millions of dollars missing in Iraq after auditors have uncovered indications of fraud and nearly $100 million in reconstruction spending that could not be properly accounted for. The article goes on to say, the audit of U.S. funds found that the contract files were ``unavailable, incomplete, inconsistent and unreliable.'' Other than that, they were terrific. And the article points out that as a result, auditors have said the U.S. Government may have trouble making a case against contractors who overbill or do not do what they are supposed to do. Now, we have been virtually begging on bended knee to get this Congress to establish a committee with teeth to look into this problem. We met with no success. I would point out that stands in stark contrast to what happened in 1941 when then Senator Harry Truman became aware of similar stories, and he saw to it that a committee was created in the Congress to investigate that situation. That committee held 432 public hearings and 300 executive sessions and issued 51 reports and saved the taxpayers a load of money. I would also point out, that was a case where a democratic Congress was investigating a democratic administration, and no great harm was done to the republic in the process. A lot of good was done. So I just want to urge Members to vote against the rule because, in my mind, this Congress is derelict in its duty and, in my mind, any Member of Congress who refuses to recognize how the taxpayers' dollars are being siphoned off every day by these operations, by these sloppy operations in Iraq, they are contributing to the fact that the taxpayers are being fleeced. They may not be wanting to do that, but that is the practical effect of their actions. So I would suggest, Mr. Speaker, sooner or later, we are going to have this committee, because we are going to be stuck in Iraq for another 5 years, and we are going to see stories like this headline every week. It is about time we got around to setting up a cleanup brigade to deal with the problem before we are all acutely embarrassed by it. So with that, Mr. Speaker, I simply want to say that while I would urge support for the underlying bill, I would urge that the rule not be supported until we have had an opportunity for this House to meet its oversight responsibilities. We ought to be acting like a watchdog in this case. Instead, we are acting like puppy dogs. That is not going to help the taxpayer very much.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to Mr. Vermont Johnson of Bayfield Wisconsin, who recently retired after nearly twenty years as an Advisor to the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. Mr. Johnson represented the sport fishing interests on that Committee and worked tirelessly to support measures that protect and improve the Great Lakes fishery. The Commission's Committee of Advisors was established under the 1955 Great Lakes Fisheries Act. The Committee is charged with advising the Commission about all fishery matters relating to fish stocks shared by Canada and the United States and is also an avenue for citizens to be heard on issues that concern them. Representatives on the Committee speak for the sport fishery, the commercial fishery, the public-at- large, and State agencies. Mr. Johnson has a lifetime of experience with the Great Lakes and has a deep knowledge of the matters relating to the resource. As a motel owner, he certainly appreciated how the Great Lakes and their fisheries lured tourists. During his tenure on the Committee of Advisors, Mr. Johnson took on a number of issues of vast importance to the Great Lakes, and although he technically represented the sportfishing concerns of the Lake Superior waters of Wisconsin, his contributions to the Committee had a basinwide impact. He was, by all accounts, an integral member of the Committee, providing leadership on issues ranging from the rehabilitation of native species to the effect of underwater log salvage on fish habitat. He regularly attended and led meetings--often at great distance from home and at his own expense--and interacted with interests throughout the Great Lakes region. Mr. Johnson grew up in Bayfield, Wisconsin, on the shores of Lake Superior. After , attending the University of Wisconsin, he enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard and served as Chief Boatswain's Mate aboard the Coast Guard buoy tender Balsam in the Pacific--which I am told is the only vessel of its type to sink a Japanese submarine during World War II. After his service, he returned to Wisconsin, earned a degree in school administration, and served as a school superintendent for 35 years in several districts, as well as continuing on in the Coast Guard Auxiliary. Mr. Johnson and his wife Harriett, who have been married for more than 60 years, continue to reside in Bayfield. He is an active leader in his community, helping to enlarge his church and leading the building committee of the Bayfield Heritage Association. In fact, he remains involved in almost every civic activity in Bayfield. For twenty years, Mr. Johnson--and usually Harriett--were stalwart participants in the meetings of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission and the Committee of Advisors. I am happy to honor Mr. Vermont Johnson as he retires from the Great Lakes Fishery Commission's Committee of Advisors--it is a pleasure to take note of his service.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I very much respect the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner); we are friends and have been for 30 years. I voted for the bill that precipitated this debate. I voted with the gentleman for that bill. But this debate is not about that bill, and it is not about the issue of sexual predators. It is about whether or not we can trust each other to deal with each other with fairness and with accuracy. It is about whether or not the majority will use its power to unilaterally mischaracterize any effort by any Member of the minority. I served a long time ago, and so did the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner), with a fellow by the name of Bill Steiger. He was one of the great Members in the history of this House. He spent a great deal of time trying to ensure that the Congressional Record accurately reflected what each and every Member said and did on this House floor. I think we owe it to his memory and the memory of others who fought the same battle, to remember, as this resolution says, that it is the long and established practice in the House for reports to describe recorded votes with objective, nonargumentative captions. I agree with this resolution that the committee majority departed from that practice by captioning these five amendments with inflammatory captions. There is enough skill on the part of the majority staff of the Judiciary Committee to describe any amendment offered by any Member in a non-pejorative, non-argumentative way. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the language used was intended to hurt the Member who offered it, not to provide an accurate description; and I do think the committee owes the minority an apology.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Sabo), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Homeland Security.