Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the House voted to repeal a controversial provision in the omnibus appropriations bill that no Member knew was in the bill when the bill was filed. Yet today, having learned little, the House will rush to vote on the intelligence bill about which Members know probably just as little, and they will do so without having the language available. I would like to be able to vote for this bill because it will probably improve the sharing of intelligence, and there are a number of other good provisions in it. But Mr. Speaker, we need to recognize that there have been two intelligence failures in the last 5 years. First was the failure to prevent the 9/11 attack. Second was the use of faulty intelligence to suck us into a dumb war in Iraq. The new layer of bureaucracy created by this bill may or may not help us on the first front, but it is likely to make it harder to correct the second. That is why I am going to vote against the bill and against this motion to speed up its consideration. One of the bill's most glaring shortcomings is that it does not guarantee that dissenting or alternative views will ever be clearly stated to the President. That was a major problem in the decision to go to war in Iraq. To correct that problem, Senator Roberts included a provision in the Senate bill establishing an office and a process to provide these alternative points of view at every stage. That provision is, sadly, hugely watered down now in this bill. The bill simply leaves it up to the National Intelligence Director to decide how different points of view are factored into decisions. That is a terribly weak substitute. Second, in emerging domestic and foreign surveillance operations, the bill does not sufficiently protect ordinary Americans from the mistakes of Big Government. The bill does contain a Presidential board to look at government-wide privacy issues, but that will do little to protect innocent Americans or to address specific grievances that may arise. That will come back to haunt us, just as certain aspects of the PATRIOT Act have. Finally, the bill purports to increase the number of border and Customs agents; but in fact, the bill does nothing of the kind. That language is meaningless without the dollars to back it up, and this House has rejected providing those dollars, (ill-advisedly so in my view they voted that way;) the House has rejected providing those dollars four times in the past year, and this bill does absolutely nothing to change that. On that score, this bill is simply an empty institutional press release. When this bill is corrected on those three fronts, and on others, I will be happy to vote for it, but not until.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel), the distinguished ranking member of the Committee on Ways and Means. (Mr. RANGEL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1\1/2\ minutes. Mr. Speaker, it is ironic that we have an argument going between two gentlemen, neither of whom who had any responsibility for the problem that occurred. The responsibility for this problem lies squarely on the shoulders of the majority party leadership because they knew that they could not bring their appropriation bills to the floor in the Senate and pass them before the election, so they created the situation in which, after the election, all of these appropriation bills were jammed together. They were then dealt with by the staff night after night. The staff worked with no sleep, and, as a result, language that should have been caught and corrected was not corrected. That is what happens when Members do not respect the processes of the House. That is what happens when you do not give Members of the majority or minority enough time to actually know what they are doing. The House has egg on its face because the majority party leadership had an agenda on appropriation bills that precluded their ability to get votes for them in the other body until after the election. That is a sad fact as to what happened, and the way to correct this is to see that we have enough time to do our jobs, that we quit suspending the rules around here so Members have enough time to read conference reports, and we make compromises ahead of time so the House can get its appropriations work done in an orderly way. That is what has been sadly lacking over the past year.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the distinguished minority leader.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, this is an extremely regrettable incident. The House is gathered here today, long after the session is supposed to be over, because we had language inserted in an appropriation bill which, if read on its face, would create a grave threat to the privacy of individual taxpayers. I am personally confident that that was not what was meant. I do not believe that this language has been placed in this omnibus appropriations bill because of any conspiracy to invade privacy. I do not believe that at all. I do believe, however, that the House has been operating under a different kind of conspiracy and that has been a conspiracy to, in essence, shut down the congressional consideration of appropriation bills until after the election because of the knowledge on the part of the majority party leadership that the funding levels for a variety of programs were so tight in areas such as education and science and health that the leadership knew that those votes could not pass the Senate before the election. And then after the election, the appropriations committee, its members and its staff, were then given marching orders to produce bills in virtually no time. Those bills were then brought to the floor. This is the report, the conference report, now some 3,000 pages of original text. Those bills were brought to the floor with no opportunity for any Member, including the gentleman from Florida and myself as the chairman and ranking member of the committee, to actually take the time to review what was in the language of all 3,000 pages and the language was produced by staff that was sleep-deprived, harried and harassed and under orders only to get the job done within a certain time window laid out by the majority party leadership. The Washington Post contained the following paragraph in an article written by Dan Morgan in describing the situation. That paragraph in Mr. Morgan's story reads as follows: ``But a reconstruction of what happened suggests less a sinister conspiracy than problems arising from the legislative practices of the present Congress, in which sleep-deprived staffers often take on much of the burden of writing major bills under deadline pressure, and legislation drafted in secret is rushed through both Chambers before lawmakers, let alone the general public, have a chance for review. ``Senator Kent Conrad, ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee, warned that `something really seriously bad is going to happen if we let this continue.' Senator John McCain said, `This process is broken.' '' So says the story in The Post. I think that story is accurate. And I would point out that when we have legislation that is produced under those conditions and then when that legislation is brought to the floor under conditions in which the rules of the House are suspended so that Members do not have the normal time to look at a bill, what happens is that there are items in the bill that are not only hidden from members of the opposition party; there are items in the bill that are hidden from the majority's own caucus. I think that rank-and-file Members of both parties are grossly disserved, and I think the appropriations committee is grossly disserved when we are not given sufficient time to review actions taken by staff and to review actions taken by conferees. This is supposed to be the greatest deliberative body in the world. It is a far cry from that when you are asked to swallow 3,000 pages, when a bill is filed at 1 o'clock in the morning and then brought to a floor vote with no opportunity to really read the fine print. So I simply think, Mr. Speaker, that the way to gain something out of this experience is to determine that in the future we are not going to suspend the rules on massive appropriation bills; that we are going to allow people to have the time to review the contents. But even more importantly, there needs to be a determination to begin the process with a realistic budget resolution so that the majority party can bring its bills to the floor and pass them. I am probably not going to like the priorities in those bills. But the House is better served and Members of both parties are better served when there is an orderly process so that we can debate these differences honestly. Right now we are all paying a price and this institution is paying a price because that has not happened in the past year. I have made quite clear where I think the responsibility for that lies. Mr. Speaker, I would simply ask Members to remember this incident when we vote on rules changes for the coming Congress. I would ask Members to remember that there are reasons why we should not suspend these rules. If it is important for us to pass something quickly and if there is bipartisan agreement on that necessity, you can get two-thirds to bring up these bills. Many times we have cooperated procedurally to move appropriation bills forward, but we need to have the safety valve of those rules in order to prevent future mistakes like this which embarrass the institution. And so, Mr. Speaker, I would hope that we remember that when we are asked to vote on rules changes at the beginning of the next Congress. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, I think before we move forward on this, it is necessary to clarify a few things and ask a few questions. We are here because a provision was included in the omnibus appropriation bill that allows the chairmen of the Committee on Appropriations or their agents access to IRS facilities and tax return information that may be housed within those facilities without apparently adequate protection for the privacy of taxpayers. Most Members did not know this language had been included. So far as I know, I have yet to meet a single Member who knew it. Certainly I did not know the language had been included. This is a serious problem, and it raises the question, why did it happen. It seems to me there are three reasons for that. First, there was obviously not enough time to review the bill. This bill spends over $380 billion of taxpayer money. It is over 3,000 pages long. The IRS provision is six lines in the middle of it all. It was not filed until 1 a.m. on Saturday morning. Unless they have come down today, there is still no official GPO print of the document. It was not available in useful electronic form until Tuesday. Despite the fact that this issue was briefly discussed on the House floor in a relatively obscure way during the colloquy between the gentleman from Florida (Chairman Young) and the gentleman from California (Chairman Thomas), it was only thanks to the review of the legislative language by Senator Conrad's staff that we discovered the problem. That alone suggests Members should have had more time to review the bill. Second, the pressure from the majority party leadership to complete action and adjourn was overriding. To meet the timetable of that leadership, staff worked all night for several days in a row in an effort to finalize the omnibus bill as quickly as possible; and as a result, corners were cut. Third, this provision is not the only problem with the omnibus. There are important policy issues that were placed in this bill that were never voted on in either Chamber. Some of them are reasonable and some of them most certainly are not. There are also a number of other important provisions that were dropped at the insistence of the Republican leadership, even though they had been supported by majorities in both Houses. In neither case were Members of the House given sufficient time to become aware of them or to fully understand their significance. I include the following examples for the Record. Some examples of problematic provisions added include: Limits on judicial review of timber sales in Alaska; Removal of the wilderness designation for areas of Georgia; Extension of grazing permits without legally required environmental reviews; Allowing use of wilderness in ways that are banned under current law [other examples to follow]. Some examples of items that were dropped include: Language related to contracting out; The bipartisan Chabot/Andrews amendment would have prohibited road building in the Tongas National Forest in Alaska to support non-economically viable timber sales; The provisions that would ease the economic embargo and travel restrictions on Cuba; The Sanders cash-balance pension plan amendment that would have protected American workers who are covered under traditional pension plans from unfair conversions to cash- balance plans; and, The MILC reauthorization. Mr. Speaker, in addition to these examples, I think it is important to understand that there were still other problems with this legislation. The full policy impact of funding cuts, for instance, were obscured by the manner in which the across-the-board cut effectively hid the real funding levels for a number of key programs. For all of those reasons, that is why I said during floor debate the following: ``As the press finds out more and more about what the impact is on various programs, I think the Congress is going to wish that we spent considerably more time dealing with this in a rational manner.'' Now, some of those problems could be avoided if the House adhered to rules that are meant to give Members time to review legislation before they vote on it. But the majority leadership has almost routinely set aside those safeguards. I agree with Senator Conrad's statement yesterday, echoed by comments yesterday and today by the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), that that must change. But in the final analysis, an even more important reason for this fiasco is the way the House majority party leadership has systematically sought to minimize accountability for their decisions by hiding those decisions until after the election. From day one the majority party leadership ran this House in a way that guaranteed that appropriation decisions would be hidden from the public until after the election. Congressional Quarterly wrote this 2 days ago: ``Appropriation bills are the only measures that are traditionally open to free-wheeling amendments in both Chambers. But in the Senate this year, seven of the 13 measures were never put to a minute of floor debate.'' Continuing to quote CQ: ``That may have limited the right of Senators to try to change the legislation, but it was of great benefit to the majority leader, who did not have to tie up the Chamber for most of June and July allowing Senators to offer amendments, and it was further evidence that the GOP leadership had every intention all year long of compressing most appropriations into one bill.'' So says CQ. Now, why did they do that? Because the Republican leadership knew that they could not sell the appropriations bills to moderates in their own caucus in the other body before the election. Congressional Quarterly pointed out: ``In the omnibus Senate VA appropriations subcommittee, Chairman Bond had to slash $3 billion from the VA-HUD bill that advanced unanimously earlier through the Appropriations Committee in September. Senator Specter likewise had to use budgetary legerdemain to make his bill more politically attractive until it was rolled into the omnibus and pared back. `The amount we have been given was not adequate,' Bond said.'' Mr. Speaker, to avoid these controversies, these bills were packaged together. The main reason for this problem is political, not procedural. Staffers are being blamed; but as a practical matter, staffers were forced to produce legislation under impossible circumstances. The majority staff presented language that had not been properly vetted. The minority staff did not catch the fact that the majority had inadvertently dropped language that would have protected the privacy of American taxpayers. As a result, the Congress has egg on its face, the majority is disgraced, the Committee on Appropriations' ability to conduct oversight still has not been addressed because legislative language will be dropped rather than fixed, nobody wins, and the Nation has less confidence in the competence and honesty of its institutions. One measure of how badly this institution is suffering is the level of distrust and suspicion that now permeates both Chambers. It has become hard for some to believe what I want to believe, that this was an unintended mistake that resulted from lack of time for Members to meet their responsibilities and lack of sleep on the part of the staff that had been pushed to the point of exhaustion. I have been told, for instance, that two members of the appropriations staff actually fainted during a readout of the energy and water bill because they had been up for more than 2 days in a row without sleep. That would not have happened if the House and Senate had passed its bills under the regular order and conferenced them one by one with no ``doomsday'' deadline. It is one thing for Congress to wind up putting numerous appropriation bills into a broad-based omnibus bill because legitimate controversies have delayed the compromises necessary to pass those bills. It is quite another thing to produce this kind of end-of-session chaos by design. This should be a wake-up call to the majority party leadership to change practices and procedures to prevent this type of credibility and accountability problem in the future. Most of all, it is a wake-up call to reestablish trust, by recognizing that adherence to normal rules and respect for the rights of the minority do not just protect the minority, but the majority as well. If Dick Bolling, the legendary former chairman of the Committee on Rules, were around today, he would say, ``Let's stop the bitching and get about the fixing.'' That is exactly what we ought to do. But the problem is that in the old days, we actually used to have conferences. Every member of every subcommittee used to meet with members of the other body in conference and they would thrash out the differences. As a result, Members took pride in the fact that they all knew what was in the bill, even if the other body largely relied on staff. Today that difference is gone. Today it is apparent that even people who are in charge of producing the bill are not fully aware of what is in it because of the rush and because of the lack of an orderly procedure. We need to go back to the time when we were having real conferences with the other body so that we could legislate rather than simply impose policy decisions that are predetermined ahead of time in the majority leadership's office. Mr. Speaker, further reserving the right to object, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Matsui).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. OBEY. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I will be very brief. I would just like to make one point. A fair amount has been written about how the responsibility for this mistake lies with congressional staff. I want to simply make the point that the staff was ordered to produce an appropriation bill by a certain deadline. And so they performed in an astoundingly enervating way in trying to meet the deadlines that they were ordered to meet and they worked to the point of exhaustion. And when people do that, there are going to be mistakes made. The reason we have rules is because it enables not just the minority but the majority as well to catch mistakes and correct them before they embarrass the institution and do damage to our system. The way to avoid mistakes like this is to prevent hundreds of pages of appropriations from coming to the floor without ever having been considered in both bodies. The way to avoid problems like this in the future is to see to it that the necessary political compromises are made at the beginning of the process in the budget resolution so that you do not have such an unrealistic set of marching orders to the Appropriations Committee that the leadership is forced to conclude that they cannot get the votes from their own troops in the other body until after they are safely past the election. So a little less rigidity, a little less ideological zeal, a little more willingness to compromise, and a little more recognition that every Member of this body has a right to do his or her job and they can best do it when they are given the time to do it. That will mean that in the end we remake this body into what it is supposed to be, which is 435 people who are legitimate representatives of their constituents, rather than rubber stamps for whatever the leadership front office wants them to vote for on a particular day.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3\1/2\ minutes. Mr. Speaker, I will reserve my comments on the contents of this bill for a later point in the proceedings; but right now, I would simply like to say two things. First of all, I want to express my great admiration and appreciation for the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Frost) who handled the rule on this bill. It was the last time he will do so in this House. Martin Frost has provided his district, his State, the country, and this institution with a superb record of public service. I honor him for it. They could not beat him on the square, so they had to rig the reelection lines; but he has served his district with great dignity, with great ability. His mentor, when he first came here, Dick Bolling, would be very proud of him; and I know we are all proud of him. I also would like to say with respect to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), the chairman of the committee, the budget resolutions usually come to this floor, they are vague, they have large generic numbers; but after they are passed, then the appropriations legislation has to translate those resolutions into reality and into specifics. At that point, we get many Members who have voted for those budget resolutions then writing us letter after letter after letter on the committee demanding that we increase funding for this program or that program or another. They do it for LIHEAP. They do it for NIH. They do it for health programs, for agriculture. The gentleman from Florida (Chairman Young) has the job of cutting through that hypocrisy; and he has tried to do so many, many times. Bill Young to me epitomizes what the American dream is all about. Bill Young grew up in hardscrabble circumstances in Pennsylvania. He rose from serious poverty. He became the first Republican to serve in that State senate in Florida. He was the only Republican serving the first year he went there, and he has thrived and prospered; and now he is completing his service as the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations. I simply want to say, representing the minority, that Bill has recognized that when you are a chairman of a committee, you have a different responsibility than you do when you are an individual Member of this House. You have separate and sometimes conflicting obligations to your country, to the Congress itself, to your committee, to your district, to your State and to your party, in that order. The gentleman from Florida has always tried to exercise those responsibilities. He has done it with charm and grace and fairness, and I would simply say that the fact that he will no longer be chairman of the committee after this year is a greater loss to the House itself than it is to him, and I think we all owe him a round of applause for his stewardship. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time for the moment.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to revise and extend my remarks later in the proceedings and to include immediately after my remarks charts and other extraneous material.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the distinguished minority whip.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute 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 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the minority leader, who has some scathing remarks she wants to utter about the chairman of the committee.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield for purposes of a unanimous-consent request to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar). (Mr. OBERSTAR asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 14 minutes. Mr. Speaker, this is a sad bill. There are countless good reasons to vote against it. In fact, this bill is a poster child for institutional failure. That is true for several reasons. First of all, because the nine appropriation bills which are wrapped into this early Thanksgiving turkey should have been dealt with by the House months ago. Secondly, it is totally inadequate to meet the Nation's needs in education, health care, and the environment. It falls so far short from meeting our investment obligations for the future that it could only be brought to the floor by the majority party after the election. Third, there are things that have been added in this omnibus bill which have never been voted on by anybody. Some of them are reasonable; some of them certainly are not. An example, Republicans chose to take this opportunity to slip a number of anti-environmental provisions into this bill which I will list in full in my extended remarks. Fourth, the Republicans have taken out several provisions that were supported by the majority of this body and should have been retained. I will again expand more fully on them in my extended remarks, but those provisions include eliminating the contracting-out provision, the bipartisan Chabot-Andrews amendment prohibiting road building in the Tongass National Forest, provisions to ease the economic embargo on Cuba, the Sanders cash-balance pension plan amendment, the MILC reauthorization bill which the President twice claimed to favor, and they also stripped out the language which would have protected 6 million workers from being chiseled on their overtime rights. Another troubling feature of this bill is that it misleads people into thinking that funding for the programs in this bill is more generous than it actually is because it applies an across-the-board cut to the accounts in this bill, but it does not show the impact of those cuts on individual programs. I have often quoted my friend Archie the cockroach and I am moved to do so once more in commenting on this action by the committee. Archie said once that ``man always fails because he is not honest enough to succeed. There are not enough men continuously on the square with themselves and with other men. The system of government does not matter so much; the thing that matters is what men do with any kind of system they happen to have.'' The problem we have today is there are all kinds of papers floating around this floor that profess to describe what is the funding provided for each of the programs provided in this bill, but they significantly overstate the amount of money in those accounts because the effect of the across-the-board cut is not counted. I would also say that this bill is not here in a lame duck session because of any delaying action by the minority party. The record shows that the minority party has procedurally cooperated with the majority to bring all these bills to the floor. Of the 12 appropriation bills brought to the floor before the election, eight were expedited by unanimous consent agreements from the minority; four of the bills not considered under unanimous consent agreement were completed in a single day while the Labor-Health-Education bill took only two days. Despite that procedural cooperation, even though they control both Houses of Congress and the White House, Republicans could not enact these bills. Why? Well, it was not because the majority party could not compromise with the minority; it was because the majority party could not compromise with itself. Why was that? Because rank-and-file members of the majority party, especially in the Senate, did not want to act on these bills with inadequate funding for education, health, science and environmental protection until they were safely past the election. This bill shows some examples. This bill slashes funding for the EPA by $335 million. The biggest cut, $259 million, comes from the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, even though surveys have shown that we will confront a $388 billion investment deficit in that program alone over the next 20 years. This Congress just finished doubling the NIH budget over the past 5 years, but NIH in the long run is heavily dependent upon basic initial research done by agencies like the National Science Foundation. Congress is on record supporting the need to double NSF funding, and yet the bill cuts funding for the NSF by $107 million below last year. This is the most Luddite provision in the bill. Support for housing and community development block grant funding is so pitiful I cannot even talk about it. One of the most reckless actions is a $332 million cut to the FAA after the bill's across-the- board cut is taken into account. FAA will lose staff, including safety inspectors and air traffic controllers, and forgo needed safety technology improvements, all at a time when clogged and overcrowded airways make the skies dangerous. But perhaps the most serious neglect of our responsibilities is reflected in what this bill does on education. Unbelievably, it cuts the President's request for title I education funding, the prime mover of education reform, by $607 million, almost 50 percent. It falls $482 million below the President's request for special education. It cuts funding for after-school programs by $25 million below the request and below last year's level, denying 1.3 million kids the educational opportunities they were promised in No Child Left Behind. Flu vaccine. This Congress has still managed once again to cut the President's request for flu vaccine, by a small amount admittedly, but it is still $800,000 below the President's request. On low-income heating assistance, despite the fact that the increased costs are expected to be 28 percent for home heating oil this year, this bill provides only half that increase in funding. That means a real reduction in assistance provided to the most vulnerable people in our society. Let there be no doubt that if Democrats were running this place, this bill would look far different. In June, we had a vote on a bill that detailed our Democratic priorities, H. Res. 685. If that bill were before us today, we would be providing an additional $3 billion for homeland security, police, fire and emergency services, an additional $5.7 billion to strengthen education, an additional $2.3 billion to fully fund veterans health care and improve housing for military families and an additional $1.3 billion to improve health care by expanding community health centers, rural health clinics, mental and child health programs. If today we were voting on the Democratic priority package rather than this bill, we would be providing $1.5 billion more for title I, serving an additional 500,000 low-income children so that they can meet the high standards of No Child Left Behind; we would be providing $1.2 billion more to serve the special education needs of 6.9 million children with disabilities; and we would be providing $2.2 billion more for Pell grants, increasing the maximum Pell grant to $4,500. Based on the debate yesterday on the debt ceiling and on the majority leader's comments just a few moments ago, I know that some people on the other side of the aisle would claim that the Democrats' proposals to increase these investments in education, health, science and the environment would add to the deficit, but that is simply not the case. If the Democrats' priority plan were before us tonight, this legislation would actually reduce the deficit by $5 billion because our priorities package would limit the jumbo-sized tax cuts for persons making over $1 million a year to the same amount provided to other less fortunate Americans. It would redirect $14 billion of the money saved to crucial additional investments and would use the other $5 billion for deficit reduction. This bill would be at the same time more fiscally responsible and more humane than the bill brought before us tonight. So Democrats have demonstrated what our priorities are. We have done everything we possibly can to improve the warped priorities of the majority budget, but the majority has rejected and defeated those efforts. At this point, we are at the end of the calendar, and we are out of options. We need to move on. At this point our choice is simply to continue to vote ``no'' as a protest for the misshapen priorities in the bill or to grudgingly vote ``yes'' because this bill is $4 billion closer to meeting our responsibilities than Congress would be if we turned this bill down and we had to live with a continuing resolution. So, Mr. Speaker, I will reluctantly vote for this bill, but I will certainly not be leading the cheers because this body should have been able to do much better. I know the chairman of the committee and the various subcommittee chairmen have by and large done their best with what resources have been made available to them. That limitation has been imposed upon them by their own party leadership and by the White House. This bill could have been made much more humane and much more socially responsible by a relatively small adjustment. $14 billion more for our top domestic priorities as we have in the Democratic priority package is a lot of money, but it pales in comparison to the $280 billion that this Congress passed out in tax cuts this year alone with so much of it aimed at high-end taxpayers. For only 5 percent of that amount that was provided in tax actions this year, so much of which has gone to the most privileged and well-off among us, we could have made responsible investments in the future and had bipartisan agreements in support of these bills long before the election. One more point. In response to the majority leader's reshaping of history, to put it kindly, let me state what the facts are with respect to the national debt. The last President to balance a budget was Bill Clinton. The last President to balance a budget over his full term of office was President Truman. The last time I looked, they were both Democrats. The facts are also these: since 1946 at the end of World War II, under Democratic and Republican administrations alike and under a Democratic Congress for all of those years, from 1946 to 1979, the Nation's debt as a percentage of our total national income declined from 126 percent to 25 percent. In other words, we cut it by more than 75 percent. Then President Reagan came to power and he doubled that to 50 percent. Bill Clinton came to power and again brought that debt down. In contrast to just a few years ago when Bill Clinton left office, in large part because of the actions of this Congress and this President, economists today are predicting deficits as far as the eye can see. That is why Democrats sought to improve investments in this bill, not in a free-lunch way, but by engaging on our own pay-as-you-go proposition in order to see to it that even as we increased crucial investments in the economy, we still were trying to keep some money available for deficit reduction. If the majority party were doing that, this bill would be a lot more palatable today. Mr. Speaker, I will, as I said, reluctantly vote for this bill, but this bill is no great product. As the press finds out more and more about what the impact is on various programs, I think the Congress is going to wish that we spent considerably more time dealing with this in a rational manner. Some examples of how the Omnibus would be different if Democratic priorities were being voted on today rather than the Republican majority's plan: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Issue H. Res 685--Democratic priorities FY 2005 Republican omnibus ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Health care for veterans......... +$1.3 billion over the Republican -$235.1 million below the House budget resolution to fully fund Republican budget resolution. veterans' medical care at levels advocated on a bipartisan basis by the House Veterans' Affairs Committee. Investments in education......... +$5.7 billion over the President's -$779 million below the President's request. request. Title I.......................... +$1.5 billion over the President's -$607 million below the President's request to support reading and math request. instruction for 500,000 additional low-income children. Child Care and After-School +$300 million over the President's $25 million below the President's Learning. request to double the number of request and last year's level. children receiving quality after- school care in five years. Special Education................ +$1.2 billion over the President's -$482 million below the President's request to meet the promise the House request. Republicans themselves made on special education funding. Pell Grants...................... +$2.2 billion over the President's -$468 million below the President's request to increase the maximum Pell request, freezing the maximum Pell Grant by $450 to $4,500 for more than Grant at $4,050. 5 million low-income students. The average public 4-year college tuition has increased $1,400 (36 percent) since 2001. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Public health ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Infectious diseases and +$100 million over the President's Provides only $9 million over the immunizations. request to protect the public against President's request. infectious diseases (like SARS, West Nile Virus, tuberculosis, and AIDS) and for child and adult immunization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Health care and medical research ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Core health ``safety net'' +$400 million over the President's -$32 million below the President's programs. request for community health centers, request, including -$103 million for rural health clinics, mental and community health centers and -$12 child health programs. million for mental health programs. NIH research..................... +$500 million over the President's $170 less than the President's request for health research in areas request. such as liver cancer, SARS, breast cancer, Parkinson's disease, and Alzheimer's disease. National nursing shortfall....... +$35 million over the President's Provides only $4 million over the request for the ``Nurse Reinvestment President's request. Act'' authorization. Dental care...................... +$50 million over the President's No funding included. request for dental services in rural and other underserved areas. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Clean water standards and environmental protection ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Land protection and preservation. +$325 million over the President's -$62 million below the President's request for conservation programs request. covered by the bipartisan commitment reached in 2001. Water infrastructure............. +$500 million over the President's -$259 million below the FY 2004 request for the Clean Water State levels. Revolving Fund. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Basic services in rural communities ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Community assistance for refugees +$50 million over the President's Provides only $11 million over the request for States and local President's request. communities to offset the cost of the dramatic influx of refugees anticipated as result of the Administration's commitment to permit resumption of refugee flow to pre- September 11 levels. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The best that can be said about this bill is that if it passes, it will provide $4 billion more than a Continuing Resolution. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. OBEY. I would simply like to say that I have enjoyed very much the relationship between both of us. But I have enjoyed nothing in that relationship more than in the days after 9/11 when the gentleman and I worked so closely with each other, visiting all of the security agencies in town to discover what they needed. We worked arm in arm providing $40 billion when it was needed and seeing to it in the process that congressional prerogatives were protected. It was a great bipartisan experience. I wish that we had been allowed to continue that on many more fields of endeavor.

Mr. OBEY. I intend at some point to insert in the Record the names of all of the staff, including associate staff, but I just want the House to appreciate the fact that many members of that staff have been working on this bill for 2 and 3 days without sleep. I do not think the public or the Members understand that, but their dedication to this place is phenomenal. House Committee on Appropriations Staff Listing--(September 20, 2004) Front Office--H-218 Capitol--52771 Jim Dyer, Dale Oak, John Blazey, Therese McAuliffe, Di Kane, Sandy Farrow, John Howard, Jane Porter, Theo Powell. Communications--H-218 Capitol--65828 John Scofield. Editor--B-301A Rayburn--52851 Larry Boarman, Cathy Edwards. Computer--B-305 Rayburn--52718 Vernon Hammett, Tim Buck, Carrie Campbell, Jay Sivulich, Linda Muir. Surveys & Investigations--283 Ford--53881 Rob Pearre, Mike Welsh. Agriculture--2362-A Rayburn--52638 Martin Delgado, Maureen Holohan, Leslie Barrack, Joanne Perdue, (Detailees: Tom O'Brien, Mike Gregoire). Commerce-Justice-State--H-309 Capitol--53351 Mike Ringler, Christine Kojac, John Martens, Anne Marie Goldsmith, (Detailee: Jonathan Miettallo). Defense--H-149 Capitol--52847 Kevin Roper, Betsy Phillips, Doug Gregory, Alicia Jones, Paul Juola, Steve Nixon, Leslie Albright, Greg Lankler, Paul Terry, Sarah Young, Kris Mallard, Kevin Jones, Sherry Young, Callie Michael. District of Columbia--H-147 Capitol--67500 Joel Kaplan, Clelia Alvarado. Energy & Water Dev--2362-B Rayburn--53421 Kevin Cook, Dennis Kern, Scott Burnison, Tracey LaTurner, (Detailee: Timothy Winchell). Foreign Operations--HB-26 Capitol--52041 John Shank, Alice Hogans, Rob Blair, Rodney Bent, Lori Maes. Homeland Security--B-307 Rayburn--55834 Michelle Mrdeza, Stephanie Gupta, Jeff Ashford, Tom McLemore, Terry Tyborowski, Kelly Wade, (Detailees: Ben Nicholson, Brian Dunlop). Interior--B-308 Rayburn--53081 Debbie Weatherly, Loretta Beaumont, Chris Topik, Greg Knadle, Andria Oliver, (Detailee: Darren Benjamin). Labor-HHS-Ed--2358 Rayburn--53508 Craig Higgins, Susan Firth, Meg Thompson, Sue Quantus, Francine Salvador, Nicole Kunko, (Detailee: Timothy Monteleone). Legislative--H-147 Capitol--67252 Liz Dawson, Chuck Turner, (Detailee: Kathy Rohan). Military Const--B-300 Rayburn--53047 Carol Murphy, Walter Hearne, Mary Arnold, (Detailee: Eric Elsmo). Transportation--2358 Rayburn--52141 Rich Efford, Dena Baron, Cheryle Tucker, Leigha Shaw, (Detailee: Kristen Jones). VA-HUD--H-143 Capitol--53241 Tim Peterson, Jennifer Miller, Doug Disrud, Tad Gallion, Tammy Hughes. Minority--1016 Longworth--53481 Rob Nabors, Mark Murray/Foreign Ops, Cheryl Smith/Labor, Education, David Reich/HHS, Soc. Sec., William Stone, Tom Forhan/Legis/Mil Con, Mike Stephens/Interior/EPA, NSF, Martha Foley/Agric/DC, Michelle Burkett/VA-HUD-NASA, Beverly Pheto/ Homeland, Christina Hamilton, Linda Pagelsen/Justice- Judiciary, David Pomerantz/Commerce-State, Mike Malone/Trans- Treas, David Morrison/Defense, David Helfert/Press, Dixon Butler/Energy & Water, Bob Bonner/CIS, FLETC/Postal, MARAC, SLSDC, Paul Carver, Lesley Turner, Chris Fitzgerald, Mandy Swann, Heather Wilson, Beth Houser, (Detailees: Bill Gnacek/ Laura Hogshead/Amy Lazor).

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, no choice. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise to claim the time in opposition.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, we have heard some quite interesting statements tonight. One of the previous speakers derided this side of the aisle for the way we handled the national economy for the 40 years we were in control. Here are the facts: from 1946 until 1979, our national debt as a percentage of total national income declined by almost three-quarters, from 126 percent of our total national income to about 25 percent of our total national income. Then along came Ronald Reagan and his free lunch budgets; and in the years he was President, our national debt, as a percentage of our national income, doubled. Our national debt went from less than $1 trillion to more than $3 trillion under Ronald Reagan's stewardship. Bill Clinton came into the White House, and with the support of the Democratic Party with not a single vote from the Republican side of the aisle, he took the actions that led to a balanced budget and produced the surpluses that were referred to earlier by the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer). Mr. Bush then came along and reversed all of that progress. So I am sorry. We can all have our own spin, but the fact is one cannot change history. One cannot change the record. I would say only one other thing. All of the talk about the past is beside the point. This debate tonight is about what we are going to do tomorrow, and that is what the Stenholm motion is all about. It says that regardless of what anybody has done in the past, tomorrow we are going to return to the kind of fiscal responsibility we have not seen under the Bush administration by returning to PAYGO. If they believe in being more responsible tomorrow than they have been up until today, they will vote against this resolution and they will vote for the Stenholm motion.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, in the main, I have no real objections to almost all of the provisions in this bill. I would note with respect to the drought aid for farmers and the disaster relief for States, those two items were like the tail on the dog. Originally they were attached to one appropriation bill, and now they have come back here today and the tail is attached to a different dog. I would like to make a few comments about that, because I do not think much of the process that has been followed. This drought and disaster package was originally going to be folded into the Homeland Security appropriations bill. The minority had doubts about that. We had preferred to have that package handled separately so that Homeland Security could be handled separately without any attendant baubles and bells and whistles being attached. But in the interest of time, the majority decided it would be better to fold it into another bill, and we cooperated in that process. But then some very strange things happened. First of all, an offset was adopted. After much objection being raised by the conservative members of the majority party caucus, a ``let's pretend'' offset to the drought aid cost was attached to this bill, and that offset does not really offset the money in this bill until 2014. So it is a very interesting ``let's pretend'' operation. The gentleman from Florida tried to handle that in a straightforward way, but people who thought they knew better insisted that they go through this Rube Goldberg approach, so we have a ``let's pretend'' budget savings item in this bill. There is another problem, because when the decision was made to, as the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) indicated, essentially amend the farm bill in dealing with these issues, then that raised other concerns on the part of other farmers around the country. Because of that, Senator Kohl from my own State had been asking that the problems of dairy farmers be dealt with by extending the milk income support program. The Senate adopted that amendment in conference and presented it to the House conferees. We had the votes for that provision on the House side of the conference, but rather than allow us to have a vote on the issue, the chairman gaveled the conference to a close. We then saw a Kabuki dance engaged in by the President and various Members of this House. The same day that that conference was being considered, the President said in a speech in my hometown, Wausau, Wisconsin, that he was in support of the content of the Kohl amendment to extend the milk program. Given that fact, the conference had every right to expect that the White House would be supporting what we were trying to do. But when we called down to the White House to ask whether or not they would be sending a letter in support of the amendment that had been presented to us by the Senate, the White House indicated that no support would be forthcoming, no letter would be forthcoming. Nonetheless, we tried to work with the majority, and late Thursday night, I was asked to sign a conference report based on the understanding that certain items would be in the bill and certain items would not be. One of the items that was supposed to be in that bill was this provision, since we had the votes for it on both sides of the conference. And I signed the conference report. The next morning when I returned to the Hill, we saw that a different judgment had been reached by the House leadership, and we were told that the Speaker and the majority whip said, ``No way. That provision is not going to be included in this bill.'' What we have had, in my view, is the President talking one way in Wisconsin on this subject and his principal political allies are, at the same time, deep-sixing our efforts to try to pass what the President said he supported. When we asked the White House for some help to deal with it, they respectfully said ``no.'' So now we have a situation in which agriculture, as a sector in the budget, will suffer a long-term problem, because when this program expires, it means that the entire agriculture baseline budget will be $800 million less than it would otherwise be, and that will substantially disadvantage every farm group when the next farm bill is written. I rise today not to talk about the fact that that individual program is not in this bill, because that really is less important than what this process has done to the House. What we have seen is this: We remember when the majority leadership held a rollcall open for 3 hours because they did not get the results they wanted on the Medicare bill. They lost the vote so they simply kept the rollcall open until the House reversed its position. What we saw in this case is, when it was apparent that we had the votes (because we had the support of two members of the Republican Party in this House), when it was seen that we did have the votes for that provision, the conference was simply adjourned and, lo and behold, the subject was then moved to another conference committee, and there we had a situation in which we did not have the votes in that subcommittee. What that means is, what the leadership has decided is that there is going to be a new way of operating around here. If you go into a committee and you lose a vote, it doesn't matter, you just move the subject to another committee and have the vote in another committee. It just seems to me that this is a fundamental corruption of the democratic process. It is a fundamental corruption of the legislative process. What it means is that no committee need bother to reach any judgments on anything because if the leadership does not like it, or if the White House does not like it, they will simply reverse the decision regardless of the votes in the committees. What has happened in my view is that this House has become a wholly owned subsidiary of the White House. What has happened is that this Capitol is really the East Wing of the White House. That is what it has become. No checks, no balances, no separate exercise of judgment or power. I would say that that is the most fundamental corruption of all that can occur in a legislative body. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to make those points to simply point out my concerns for the way this institution is being run. I also want to express regret that despite the President's words on the dairy problem when he was in dairy country, it is apparent that the White House had no intention of following through on those words, and I regret that, too. In spite of that, I will vote for this bill because it meets legitimate needs of the country, and I think we have no choice but to do it. But this is a sorry way to do business. I know the gentleman from Florida is not responsible, but the leadership of this House is, and sooner or later we need to ask whether regular procedures will be returned to the floor of this House and whether or not democracy will once again be honored in this House. We are trying to impress the people of Iraq that they should have a democratic process. At the same time we see the legislative process, which is supposed to be the defining measure of any democracy, profoundly corrupted by these procedural high jinks, and it does no great credit to the House to allow that to happen. Announcement By the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. OBEY

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