Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, this motion is very simple. It does two things. First of all, it instructs the conferees representing the House to accept the Senate increases in the Byrd and other amendments that would strengthen our customs and border protection; it would strengthen our immigration and customs enforcement and fund the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. Secondly, it instructs the conferees to agree with the Senate amendment, again, the Byrd amendment, which would require that all future administration requests for funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan be presented within the context of the regular budget rather than being funded as they have been so far through the supplemental process. Let me address briefly both issues. With respect to the border protection issue, let me point out that many years ago the Rudman-Hart Commission had effectively warned this Congress that our borders were a sieve. In the immediate days after this House was hit with the anthrax scare, shortly after 9/11, I went down to the White House with the then-chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), and we proposed to the President a bipartisan list of supplemental additions to antiterrorist activities that we believe should be funded in order to strengthen homeland security. Included in those recommendations were added dollars for our ports, added dollars for our border protection. When we laid out what we were interested in doing, the President simply ended the conversation by saying to us, ``I am sorry but my good friend here, Mitch Daniels,'' who was then the Director of OMB, he said, ``my good friend Mitch Daniels here tells me that the administration has requested more than enough money for Homeland Security. And so I want you to know if you include one dollar more than we have asked for in our budget submission, I will veto the bill.'' That is essentially what he said. Ever since that day, we have been strained in the Congress to overcome the White House's reluctance to provide adequate resources to secure our borders. I would point out that the PATRIOT Act itself called for a tripling of inspectors and agents on the northern border alone, and yet no Bush administration budget has ever proposed to meet that goal. Only because of congressional insistence have we finally been able to meet that goal, and I would say it has been a long time in coming and it was long overdue. On March 30 the administration announced that they were putting 500 agents in Arizona, but those agents were not new agents; 135 of them were simply transferred from other sources and the rest of them were simply new trainees to take the place of agents who were retiring or leaving the service. That is why we believe that the added funding provided in the Byrd and other amendments in the Senate to add funds for securing our borders, that is why we believe that money is necessary. With respect to the second provision, the reason this second provision is necessary is to end the administration practice of hiding the true cost of the war in Iraq. We have spent, to this point, about $280 billion on that war. CBO estimates that the 10-year cost of our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan will wind up being about $460 billion, and yet all of that money has been spent through a supplemental process, rather than the process of having the President submit in his regular budget their estimated cost for those activities for the year. When you cut through all of the bull gravy, there is only one reason why the White House has done that, because they are trying to obscure the full cost of those military operations. Now, I would simply remind this House that President Roosevelt included the cost of funding World War II in his 1943 budget request. President Johnson included the cost of paying for the war in Vietnam in his 1966 budget request. President Clinton, at the insistence of this Congress, provided in the regular budget for the costs for financing our Bosnia operations and the enforcement of the no-fly zone edict in the 1997 budget. People think that the President this year has submitted a budget which contains a deficit of $390 billion. In fact, that budget deficit does not include $1 of the more than $80 billion that this House voted to add to pay for the war in Iraq just a couple of months ago. So I would say this provision simply is in pursuit of truth in budgeting, and I see no public policy reason why either of these provisions should be resisted. I ask for a ``yes'' vote when the vote occurs. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Tauscher). Mr. Speaker, could I inquire, after her 5 minutes, how much time do I have remaining.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, could I inquire of the gentleman if he has any other remaining speakers.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, let me simply say I think I have already chewed the cud quite enough, and I think anyone who cares to listen understands what this motion does. These motions were accepted by wide margins in the Senate. I see no reason why they cannot be accepted here; and if the gentleman is prepared to yield back, so am I.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, Earth Day is a great day to call attention to the many environmental public health challenges that face everyone on the planet. Established by Wisconsin's own Senator Gaylord Nelson on April 22, 1970, it stands as an annual reminder that as human beings we should recommit ourselves to his vision of a world where we demonstrate a mutual respect for one another by not ``fouling the nest'' and preserving the fragile planet we share. I submit for inclusion in the Record this statement from Senator Nelson on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of Earth Day: Earth Day 2005--A Wake Up Call (By Former Senator Gaylord Nelson--Founder of Earth Day) The 35th anniversary of Earth Day is a sobering occasion. On previous anniversaries we have hailed this ``new awakening'' as millions around the world suddenly rose up and pledged their support for a new campaign to save the natural environment. In 1993 American Heritage magazine called Earth Day ``one of the most remarkable happenings in the history of democracy.'' There has been progress, of course, particularly in public awareness of the critical role environment plays in our lives and in the education and training of new environmental leaders. Environment has become a major political issue. The public is prepared to support those measures necessary to forge a sustainable society, if the President and the Congress have the vision to lead us to that goal. Unfortunately, the President and the Congress have not stepped up to the challenge of providing national and world leadership on the environmental crisis. In fact, on some key issues, they are actually resisting or reversing progress made in the past 30 to 40 years. And without strong, sustained leadership from the President and Congress the urgent challenge to protect the environment and create a sustainable society cannot succeed. Theodore Roosevelt made conservation a top priority for the Republican party, and many members of his party carried that torch over the years. Recently, however, the GOP leadership has abandoned this cause. There are many serious environmental problems confronting us. But two current environmental issues dramatize this failure of leadership--energy conservation, and population control. Both are critical to the sustainability of our society. In each case, there is not only a lack of wise national leadership but an apparent determination to turn back the clock. The surrender to special interests on these two issues makes a mockery of any claim to environmental awareness. Egged on by the President, the Senate on March 16 sneaked into the annual budget resolution a scheme to allow drilling for oil in the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, protected in 1960 at the urging of great environmentalists such as Sigurd Olson, Justice William O. Douglas, and Wilderness Act author Howard Zahniser. The bill was signed by President Eisenhower. This is not just a sabotage of environmental policy. It also undermines any hope for a wise energy policy. When all the evidence calls for bold steps to conserve energy and develop alternative sources, this cynical action implies that we can burn all the oil we want and just move on to the next untapped source, no matter where it might be. We are told it may be 10 years before a very modest amount of oil could be produced from this pristine refuge. And what would it cost in real terms? For the President to call for oil drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge is like burning the furniture in the White House to keep the First Family comfortable. Equally critical is the failure of the President and Congress to confront the issue of population control, in our own rapidly growing country and the rest of the world. A ``Rockefeller Report'' in 1972, issued by the President's commission on population growth, urged the U.S. to move vigorously to stabilize our population at about 200 million as rapidly as possible. Since then our population has ballooned to 282 million, and is expected to reach 500 million between 2060 and 2070. We are heading into a century in which we will double and triple our population in a short time. World-wide population projections are equally chilling. A series of international conferences have called for bold action to control population growth. Yet the United States in recent years has become an aggressive opponent of family planning programs in other countries, and we are now facing efforts by some ``new conservatives'' to impose similar restrictions at home. On previous Earth Days we have offered a solution: The President should set the standard by delivering a message to the Congress on the state of the environment, citing priorities that need to be addressed. Congress then should hold hearings on these issues. This would produce a ``national dialogue'' on the sustainability of our environment, and provide a roadmap to the future. Without Presidential leadership and Congressional hearings, we cannot claim to be taking seriously the most compelling threats facing our society. On environmental issues, our intelligence is reliable. Our scientists have the facts, if we will only listen. It is a ``slam dunk'' that we cannot continue on our present course. But without Presidential and Congressional leadership, even an enlightened public cannot cope with the greatest challenge of our time.--Gaylord Nelson, Washington, DC April, 2005.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I am getting increasingly worried because we have named many a building after Ronald Reagan, but we have not yet named anything significant after our existing President, George W. Bush. In light of the fact that the estate tax bill that passed yesterday will add $290 billion to the national debt, in light of the fact that the President has presented us with a budget deficit of $400 billion this year, not counting what happened yesterday, in light of the fact that he is trying to blow up Social Security by borrowing an extra $1.4 billion to finance those privatization accounts of his, I hope that Members of the House will join me next week in renaming the U.S. Bureau of Public Debt the ``George W. Bush Bureau of Public Debt.'' I think we ought to honor the President. He has truly earned this award.

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 10 minutes. Mr. Chairman, this amendment will enable the House to choose between the social Darwinism of the President's budget and a different budget which more accurately reflects the message of the social gospel. If we take a look at what the President has done, he inherited a $240 billion surplus when he came into office, and yet the budget he presents to the Congress today contains a $290 billion deficit. That deficit does not include the $80 billion that we spent yesterday on the war on Iraq. It does not include the $2 trillion it is estimated will be the cost of borrowing to pay for the personal or private accounts that the President wants to use to blow up Social Security. It does not include dollar one of the $1.2 trillion it is estimated that it will cost to make the President's previously passed tax cuts permanent. So we have a huge deficit as far as the eye can see, under the President's budget. Then the President tries to reclaim the mantle of fiscal responsibility by making some well-publicized cuts in the domestic discretionary portion of the budget. In plain terms, that is the appropriated part of the budget that goes for programs like education, health care, science, veterans benefits, things like that. The President's cuts in the domestic arena do not lay a glove on the deficit because the deficit is so large; but I would point out, for instance, that those cuts average only about 5 percent of the over $200 billion cost in this year's budget alone of the President's tax cuts. They are less than 20 percent of the over-$50 billion in costs, for the cost of the supersize tax cuts that the President has given to the top 1 percent of earners in this country. But those cuts are large enough, Mr. Chairman, to do great damage over time in the investments that we need to make in education, health care, science, veterans, community infrastructure and the like. In real terms, those cuts amount, after you adjust for inflation, to about $16 billion; and if you further adjust them for population growth, that is a real reduction in services of about $19 billion for those programs. So this amendment does basically three things. It cuts $5 million from some of the President's proposed initiatives, and it combines those cuts with savings on the tax front. What we do on the tax front is to just simply recognize the essential injustice of the fact that right now folks who make more than $1 million in this country this year will on average get a $140,000 tax cut. This amendment would limit that $140,000 tax cut to about $27,000 and save enough money to devote $10 billion to deficit reduction and to use the other $16 billion for the initiatives that we have outlined in the amendment in the area of education, health, science, veterans, homeland security, environment, law enforcement, and community development. Now, within that framework, we are able to add $2.4 billion to programs that can do real things to reduce the pressures for abortions. Among the critical investments made by this amendment are a cluster of programs that would make it economically easier for low-income and vulnerable women who choose to carry pregnancies to term by providing additional funding for maternal and infant health care, for child care and Head Start and after-school programs, for low-income housing assistance, for the community service block grant, to provide people with the opportunity to get help in the education and training areas, and also to provide additional medical services such as dental care. We also provide additional funding for child abuse and domestic violence prevention programs. Now, I would simply say that if our concern for life does not stop at the checkbook's edge, then these are initiatives which ought to be supported by everybody in this Chamber. The reason I offer this amendment is because over the last 30 years something really bad has happened in this country. Thirty years ago, we had the smallest gap between rich and poor of any industrialized country in the world. Today, we have the largest gap between the rich and the poor of any industrialized country. The wealthiest 1 percent of people in this country control 33 percent of the Nation's wealth. The poorest 40 percent are struggling to hang on to less than 3 percent of the Nation's wealth, and the President's budget makes it worse. That is why I say that this amendment helps us choose between the social Darwinism of the President's package and values that more accurately reflect the social gospel. Now, the opposition will say, ``Oh, we do not need these additional education dollars because we have had such a large increase in education the past 2 years!'' Let me point out the Republican majority has been dragged kicking and screaming into supporting those education increases. If Congress had approved House Republican Labor-H bills for education over the past 10 years, we would be spending $19 billion less on education than we are spending today. On title I, if House Republican bills had passed, we would have spent $2.8 billion less for title I grants to school districts than we are spending today. After-school centers, if the administration's budget request had been passed throughout the years, we would be providing $1 million less to local school districts for help in that program, and the list goes on and on. So I would ask, Mr. Chairman, do we really want to pay for $140,000 tax cuts for the most well-off people in this society by providing real cuts in the number of grants that the National Institutes of Health will be able to finance research grants into cancer, diabetes, Parkinson's and the like? Do we really want to pay for $120,000 in tax cuts for the most well-off in this society by continuing to mount barriers that prevent people without means to get a college education for their kids? The College Board last year indicated that the average cost of attendance at a 4-year public university has increased by $2,300 over the past 4 years, biggest 4-year increase in history. The President's answer to that is to toss an extra hundred dollars on the table in the form of Pell grants, and then he pays for it by wiping out Perkins loans and a number of other education initiatives for those same people. I really think that the issue is very simple. All this amendment does is to prevent real reductions in the kinds of programs that I have just talked about. What it does is to restore our ability to at least keep up with inflation on those programs by saying to the most well-off people in this country, ``Sorry, folks, you are going to have to get along with a tax cut of only $27,000.'' Most of them I think would agree that this is a far more socially just and economically wise set of decisions to make than the budget resolution we have before us. This applies only for 1 year. We do not get into any games about 5- year or 10-year budgets. This applies only for the next year. This is the priority statement which people will be able to make on appropriated portions of the budget for the coming year; and if they think these priorities are better, I hope they vote for the amendment. If they think they are not, then they have a perfect right to vote against it. I would urge an ``aye'' vote. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the remarks of the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Putnam), but I think he must have been talking about a different amendment. The gentleman refers to significant cuts in national defense. There is only one cut in any program that can be considered at all related to national defense in this amendment, and that is a $1 billion reduction in the Star Wars account because they have had so many technical problems with that program that they cannot in the coming fiscal year spend all of the money that has been provided to them. So the practical impact on the program will be zero. That is the only reduction in defense. I would point out that this comes on top of a $16 billion increase in the defense budget which is before us right now, and it comes on top of the $80 billion that we added yesterday for Iraq that was not counted in the President's budget. So I would suggest it is a red herring to claim this has any significant negative effect on defense. In fact, I will bet Members that considerably more than a billion dollars remains unspent from that Star Wars account at the end of the fiscal year because of technical problems that the Pentagon itself has admitted are there. With respect to tax increases, I know the majority party likes to pretend that Democrats are talking about tax increases for the middle class. The facts are quite to the contrary. The only people who will lose anything by way of tax cuts in this amendment are people who make more than a million dollars a year. Under existing law if we leave things as they are right now, if you make less than $10,000, you average about an $8 tax cut under the President's package. If you make less than $20,000, you will get back the princely sum of $326. If you make $500,000 to $1 million, you will get on average a $27,000 tax cut. And if you make $1 million adjusted gross income or more, on average you will get a tax cut of $140,000. I do not know many people in that bracket who would not feel that investing in children, investing in homeland security, investing in veterans' benefits is preferable to giving those folks a super-size tax cut. We are not saying they cannot have a tax cut, we are simply limiting the size of their tax cut to $27,000 so we can meet these other investment needs. I think the vast majority of citizens in this country would think that is a better balance and a better set of priorities. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes. I find the logic of the gentleman interesting. He says that this amendment will result in cutting defense $1 billion. It will not. It will result in a defense budget increase of $16 billion, not counting the $80 billion add-on that we provided yesterday. All we are doing is eliminating $1 billion of the increase because it cannot be spent because of technical problems in the program. That does not reduce the effective firepower of the United States by one bullet. Let me also note the gentleman had some interesting comments on mandatories. This amendment does not touch mandatories. All we are dealing with in our amendment is the appropriated side of the budget for 1 year alone. We are not getting into the argument about mandatories. That is in the jurisdiction of another committee. So the gentleman's remarks are interesting, but irrelevant in terms of this amendment. With respect to NIH, let me simply say, we can talk about how much it has been increased the past few years. If you think it is a good idea for us to have 500 fewer research grants out in the field attacking cancer, attacking Parkinson's, attacking diabetes, then by all means vote against my amendment. If you think we ought to correct that, I would urge you to vote for it. If you think we are spending enough on veterans, then by all means vote against this amendment. If you think we are not, then I would suggest you vote for our amendment which adds $3 billion to the veterans health care budget. We have a huge hole in the services that we provide veterans. All you have to do to realize that is to talk to some of those soldiers who have come back missing arms, missing legs, missing eyes. If you are comfortable with the amount that we are providing for the VA now, by all means vote against my amendment. Otherwise, vote for it. If you are comfortable with the fact that the President's budget will make it harder for low-income seniors to keep their houses heated during wintertime, then by all means vote against the amendment. But do not do what 40 Members of the majority party did last year. After they voted for a budget which required a squeeze on all kinds of domestic programs, then they wrote our committee a letter asking us to increase funding for LIHEAP, increase funding for education, something which we could not do under the budget which the majority imposed on us. As the gentleman said, this is a question of priorities, and I make no apology for mine.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Wisconsin (Ms. Moore).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Chairman, let me simply cite a couple of other specifics. One of my objections to the President's budget is that the President is not asking to slow the rate of increase in education; the President is asking us to cut education funding below last year's level at the same time that we have laid the mother of all mandates on local school districts. Under No Child Left Behind, we have given them a whole set of marching orders. They are very expensive marching orders, but we have fallen more than $9 billion behind the amount that we promised in the authorization that we would be providing to those local school districts if we passed those education mandates. It seems to me we ought to live up to our promise. Pell grants. Pell grants is the major program that enables young people from poor families to go to college so that ``equal opportunity'' is something other than a slogan in this country. Under the President's budget, the percentage of cost at a 4-year public university that will be paid for by Pell grants will drop from 41 percent to 34 percent. I do not call that progress. I would also point out that the President's budget requires the imposition of new fees on veterans in order to gain access to the veterans health care system. I do not think we ought to do that. So the issue before us is very simple. Do you want to insist that we give tax cuts of $140,000 on average to people who make over a million bucks? Or do you want to scale those tax cuts back to $27,000 on average and use that money to invest in more care for our veterans, to invest in better education for our kids, to invest in a stronger homeland defense, to invest in more efforts to protect our parks from encroachment? The choice is simple. I think it is very clear where the American people come down on this. I will repeat my assertion. I believe the President's budget adds to the gap between the wealthy and the poor in this country. In that sense, I think it is social Darwinism. I repeat that charge, I stand by it, and I think that this in contrast more nearly recognizes the message of the social gospel, which is that we do need to care about each other. I would remind you of the words, ``What you do for the least of these, you do for me.'' That is what this amendment is trying to do. I make no apology for it.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. I would simply say the gentleman asked whether I thought that we could possibly find places in the budget that are wasteful that we could eliminate in order to meet the limits of the budget resolution. I would ask him how did he vote yesterday on our motion to create a Truman-like committee to investigate the fraud that is going on on the part of a number of military contractors in Iraq? We hear daily stories about how taxpayers are being ripped off. If the gentleman is concerned about taxpayers' money being wasted, why did he not vote for that amendment yesterday instead of voting against it like every other good soldier did over there yesterday? They all voted against it. So, Mr. Chairman, what we have before us is very simple. We have a choice of sticking with the Committee on the Budget's budget, which will leave in place tax cuts of $140,000 on average for people who make over 1 million bucks or whether they think in the interest of social justice and compassion, we ought to scale back those tax cuts so they have to skimp by on only $27,000. The poor devils. They are going to have to get food stamps to get along, I guess, if they are only getting a $27,000 tax cut. The question is, are we going to scale back those super-sized tax cuts so we can meet our obligations in the area of education, veterans health care, homeland security, and the other items I have just named? I think economically and morally it is not even a close choice.

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

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, could I ask the Clerk to read the amendment?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I made clear yesterday that based on conversations with Andy Card, the President's staff director, I have agreed to withdraw this amendment pending the administration's getting together with the leadership of the Committee on Appropriations and working out a process by which activities of the Department of Defense that are classified will in fact be communicated to the Congress. I am not just talking about after the fact; I am talking about a communication prior to the activities. I simply want to read one sentence from an article that appeared in the New Yorker about this matter. It reads as follows: ``The intelligence system is now designed to put competing agencies in competition. What is missing will be the dynamic tension that ensures everyone's priorities in the CIA, the DOD, the FBI and even the Department of Homeland Security. The most insidious implication of the new system is that the Secretary of Defense no longer has to tell people what he is doing so they can ask, `Why are you doing this? What are your priorities?' Now he can keep all of the mattress mice out of it.'' Well, if the Congress considers itself to be mattress mice, then they will not be concerned about the reports that we hear about the Department of Defense's activities. If the Congress takes seriously its obligation to exercise the power of the purse, which is one of only two real powers that we have outside of actual legislating, and if the Congress feels we have an obligation to this institution that transcends our obligation to the committees on which we serve, then the Congress will see to it that the executive branch understands that we are not trying to dictate what they do; we are simply trying to see to it that what they do is consistent with American values and will not get the country in trouble in the first place.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I want to make clear that I assume good faith on the part of the White House, and I hope we can work things out. But if we do not, I will be pursuing every possible avenue to see that an amendment such as this is adopted because this Congress has an obligation to know what is happening in some of these covert and clandestine operations. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, let me simply congratulate the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Hooley) for her motion. I would hope that every Member supports it. I think that the contents of it are important. In fact, we need to go further. We have increased in this bill insurance benefits for servicemen and women who die up to $400,000, but servicemen and women who come back from combat who are brain damaged, who have lost their sight, who have lost their arms, who have lost their legs, they come back to really very little assistance from Uncle Sam. In addition to what the gentlewoman is talking about, we also need to be looking at the huge hole that still exists in the earning power of those individuals, and we need to do a whole lot more than we are doing today. I think the Hooley amendment is a great start, and I would urge every Member of the House to vote for it.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, there are a number of things that can be said about this bill. Let me simply say that I opposed going to war in the first place. I think this country was misled into war on the basis of bad information and false information. And I believe some of that was purposeful. I think that our attack on Iraq is the dumbest American war since the War of 1812. But nonetheless, that is past history. We now have the question of whether or not we are going to pay for the war which we have waged. And at this point, I do not believe we have any choice. What I do wish is that the administration would be forthcoming about the full cost of the war, because you can bet just as surely as you sit here today that the administration will be back for even more money to cover the costs which are allegedly being provided for under this bill today. I think the administration is giving us the facts about the cost of this war on the installment plan. And by the time the full truth comes out, the costs will be much higher than this bill implies today. I also believe that it is dead wrong for this Congress to decline to appoint a Truman-like committee to investigate profiteering and fraud by contractors in Iraq. Just the story today about Halliburton in The Washington Post ought to be enough to prod this Congress into setting up a meaningful investigative committee. As has been pointed out, Harry Truman, when he was in the Senate, conducted almost 400 hearings and issued over 50 reports on war profiteering during World War II. That was a Democratic Congress investigating a Democratic administration and it did no harm to the country. I hope that today this House will still agree to appoint that kind of a committee. Having said that, I think there is a far more important issue which is associated with this bill. Mr. Speaker, as we know, some of what appears in the newspaper can be right and some can be wrong, but there have been a number of stories which have appeared in the newspaper about the activities of the Defense Department which I find highly disturbing. I quote from one story Sunday, January 23, Washington Post: ``The Pentagon expanding into the CIA's historic bailiwick has created a new espionage arm and is reinterpreting U.S. law to give Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld broad authority over clandestine operations abroad.'' That article goes on to say: ``The Pentagon official said they are establishing the strategic support branch using reprogrammed funds without explicit congressional authority or appropriation.'' It then goes on to say: ``One Republican Member of Congress with a substantial role in national security oversight declined to speak publicly against political allies, but he is quoted as saying, `It sounds like there's an angle here of let's get around having any oversight by having the military do something that normally the CIA does and not tell anybody. That immediately raises all kinds of red flags for me. Why aren't they telling us?' '' I think that question needs to be answered. There are a number of other comments in the press which are along the same lines. I would simply get to the last one by reading a portion of an article that appeared in the New Yorker several weeks ago. I just want to read one paragraph: ``The new rules will enable the special forces community to set up what it calls action teams in the target countries overseas which can be used to find and eliminate terrorist organizations. `Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador?' the former high-level intelligence official asked me, referring to the military-led gangs that committed atrocities in the early 1980s. `We founded them and we financed them,' he said. `The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want and we aren't going to tell the Congress about it.' '' Mr. Speaker, I think that the Congress has a right to demand that we be told about it. I had originally intended to offer an amendment today which would have fenced and prohibited the expenditure of the intelligence funds in this bill until we get from the administration an understanding about how we are going to be informed on these matters. And I do not mean after the fact. I had intended to offer that amendment, but yesterday I received a phone call from Andy Card, the President's chief of staff, who asked me to at least temporarily withhold offering that amendment, and he gave me his commitment that the administration would try to work out an arrangement to see to it that the leaders of the Intelligence Committee, the Armed Services Committee, and the Appropriations Committee are given the adequate information that they need to make choices around here. I told him that I would be willing to withhold that amendment on this bill with the understanding that if we have not got this worked out very quickly, that we will have an opportunity to deal with this issue on the next regular vehicle moving through here, which would be either the armed services bill or the defense appropriations bill. This, in my view, is the most important issue associated with this bill, and I intend to be back here with just such an amendment if we do not get the kind of reporting from the administration that we have a right to expect under the Constitution.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha), the ranking member of the defense appropriations subcommittee.