Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. So let me be explicit. Does that mean that there is no change whatsoever from the decision made in the conference when the conference approved A-76?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would continue to yield under his reservation, I at this point do not plan to object, but under the reservation of the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Sabo), I just want to make one point. I referred earlier to what is happening in this House, when we see decisions made by subcommittees routinely overturned when somebody does not like them. I do not want to object, because this bill is a serious matter involving homeland security, but I must note that we are cooperating procedurally on this side of the aisle, even though this conference was gaveled to an end in a manner which prevented me from being able to get a vote on the matter that I discussed earlier on the previous bill, and in my judgment that was a slap in the face, not just to me, but to every member of the conference on both sides of the aisle who were prepared to support that motion. I think that when this House routinely allows votes to be reversed, as they were on the Medicare bill weeks ago, or when they allow conference committees to block what is clearly the action of the majority will in the subcommittees, then this House might as well not operate at all. We might as well just wire our respective buttons to our respective party leaders' offices and go get a steak somewhere for the remainder of the year. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to hear that the A-76 provision has not been arbitrarily removed. I wish I could say the same thing with respect to the extension of the milk program to which I referred several weeks ago. Mr. Speaker, I will not object to consideration of the bill.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I would simply make two points. I recognize that this bill is some $800 million above the amount that was requested originally by the President, and for that, I congratulate the subcommittee; but if anyone in this House thinks that this is an adequate response to the threat that faces us, they are smoking something that is not legal. The fact is that we have immense homeland security needs that are not being met. And the fact is also that despite his public protestations to the contrary, the President for 3 years in a row has strenuously resisted adequate funding for homeland security. Starting with the first meeting that I had with him in the White House after 9/11 when, before the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) or I could even get a word out of our mouths explaining to him what some of the additions were that we thought needed to be provided, before we could even get a word out of our mouths, the President said, I just want you to know that if you appropriate one dollar more than I have asked for I will veto the bill. So much for an open mind. I really believe that with respect to adequate funding levels for homeland security that the President's conduct itself is a security risk, because we have immense needs that are not being met. This Congress on a bipartisan basis has consistently tried to meet those needs, and we have been consistently reined in by a White House which, as the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards) indicated, by a White House that thinks it is much more important to provide four times as much money to people who make a million bucks by way of tax cuts than to provide larger increases for homeland security funding. Now, reasonable people can disagree, but those are my views, and I hope that we are not proven to be right by future events. I just want to make one other point. I referred earlier to an important matter which was not included in this bill despite the fact that the Senate conferees voted by majority vote to include it and despite the fact that we had a majority of House conferees who favored that same provision. I do not mind losing. I lose every day. There is nothing wrong with losing, and I can certainly accept that provided that the process that is used to determine the outcome is fair. But when it is not fair, as it was not in this case, when the process is not fair, then it leaves one to want to oppose the basic bill that is before us. I am not going to do that because these matters are too important; but I do want to suggest that sometime, somewhere, it would be nice if committee judgments were allowed to stand rather than having the House leadership insist that they be overturned because they were not consistent with the dictates of that House leadership. I thank the gentleman for yielding me time, and I reluctantly urge support for this bill. Again, I recognize the committee has tried to meet its responsibilities, but we are being hemmed in by a President who prefers to put money in the pockets of millionaires before putting adequate resources into the budgets that would provide greater port security, airport security and all the rest.

Mr. OBEY

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I am pleased that the gentleman from Kentucky has accepted the Sabo motion, but I want to express a caution. It does the country no good, it does this institution no good if that motion is accepted for purposes of moving us to conference and then discarded the moment we move into conference. I do not want anybody to vote for this motion to accept today unless they intend to oppose any bill that comes back from conference which short-sheets the funding levels described in the Sabo amendment. To do that would be legislative hypocrisy. Mr. Speaker, I think a number of things need to be pointed out. This President and this administration have a long history of trying to prevent this Congress from providing all of the funding that we think is necessary to protect Homeland Security. After we were hit by anthrax, and our committee on a bipartisan basis put together a list of crucial additions to the Homeland Security budget, we went down to the White House and tried to show them to the President. Before we could say one word, the President said, ``Well, I want you to know that if you appropriate a dollar more than I have asked for for Homeland Security I will veto the bill,'' without even listening to what it was that we had to say. We had to point out to him that there were four different Federal installations that his own security people had said were under grave threat of terrorist attack, which his budget was not doing one blessed thing to protect, and he still resisted us. So we had to come back to the Congress and, despite the President's threat of veto, we had to add several billion dollars to the bill that year. The next year, the President pocket vetoed $1.5 billion in additional funding for Homeland Security that this Congress had provided on a bipartisan basis. Ninety-eight percent of the Republicans and the Democrats in both Houses had voted for those add-ons, yet the President declined to allow that money to go forward. So today we are still far behind where we should be in protecting our courts, far behind where we should be in protecting the northern border. We have 2,000 fewer inspectors on the northern border than the PATRIOT Act itself said we ought to have. So I am frankly amazed at the footdragging that this administration has done or has engaged in when it comes to providing adequate funding for these items. We have only 13 percent of America's fire departments who are fully equipped to respond to a full-blown HAZMAT incident. We only have one-third of firefighters per shift who are adequately equipped with self-contained breathing apparatuses, and we still have a minuscule percentage of cargo inspected as they come into our ports. The gentleman from Kentucky talks about how we have 38 ports we are now trying to put the new Customs system in. There are 38 ports we are trying to get that done in, but it is not done yet. And as far as China is concerned, we are barely off the ground at inspecting the huge amount of cargo that comes into this country from China. So we have huge additional holes. So I hope this House and this committee will not be disingenuous in accepting this amendment now and then walking away from its requirements as soon as we get to conference later today. What we have been doing consistently is moving bureaucratic boxes around, rather than providing adequate resources to do the job. What we did 2 years ago on Homeland Security, we had 133 agencies that had something to do with homeland security. This Congress took 22 of them, not including the FBI, not including the CIA, the two most important agencies, we took 22 out of 133 agencies, lumped them together, called that the Homeland Security agency. We still had 111 agencies on the outside looking in. They were not included in the reorganization. As a result, we have a huge percentage of key personnel positions in the Homeland Security agency today that are still not filled, and almost 25 percent of the positions that are filled, are filled with political appointees. Mr. Speaker, what we have not done, while we have rearranged the boxes, is to provide enough adequate financial resources to this agency. So I hope we are serious in accepting this motion today.

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

Mr. OBEY. I have attended a lot of briefings that I have never seen you at, with the CIA, the Homeland Security Agency, and a number of others.

Mr. OBEY. You don't know the briefings I have attended.

Mr. OBEY. Get your facts straight.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Kentucky says that he resents the fact that I have raised some of these shortcomings on the House floor. I am sorry he takes so many things personally. We all recognize that his committee has added $800 million to the administration budget; and as far as it goes, that is fine. But that does not mean that we are meeting the needs of this country. He likes to talk about things that people do not know, ``classified information.'' Rather than hiding behind that classified information, I would simply say I will tell you what is not classified: the fact that we have fewer air marshals today patrolling the skies than the President and the Congress promised in 2001. I will tell you what is not classified: the fact that the President of the United States himself said that 40 percent of people who are in this country illegally have overstayed their visas, and yet that backlog of cases has grown by 40,000 a year. I will tell you something else that is not classified: the gentleman says we need to be fiscally responsible. The President in the debate with Mr. Kerry last week said, ``Well, it is interesting to see how much Mr. Kerry wants to provide for homeland security, but where is he going to get the money?'' I will tell you where we tried to get it. We tried to say, instead of giving people who make $1 million a year a $128,000 tax cut next year, let's cut that back for those folks who make over $1 million and put that money into additional port security, put that money into airline security, put that money into screeners. And do you know what? The gentleman from Kentucky voted against that. So he had a choice between homeland security and additional tax cuts for millionaires, and he made the wrong choice.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I think both the Menendez bill and the core bill are headed in the wrong direction on final passage. I would vote against both of them.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for the time. Mr. Speaker, it is too bad we are here under these conditions tonight, because the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) tried to bring out a bill which would have met all of the problems all of the parts of the country face. Unfortunately, the gang that cannot shoot straight has called for other ways to deal with the problem, and so we are dealing with only half a bill. I want to make one point: that I speak not as the ranking Democrat on the Committee on Appropriations, but simply as a Member of Congress from Wisconsin. One of the deficiencies with this rule is that it does not allow for an amendment to extend the Milk Income Loss Contract program. Now, that program was authorized in the 2002 farm bill. It is currently scheduled to expire next year, while other commodity programs run through the end of the farm bill, September of 2007. In my view, dairy farmers ought to be treated under the milk program in exactly the same way that farmers of other major commodities are treated under the farm bill. If Congress fails to extend the milk program through to the end of the farm bill, then dairy farmers across the country will be at a disadvantage when Congress prepares a new authorization in 2007. That is because, under existing budget rules, there will be no budget score for milk, and only the milk price program will appear in the budget baseline. That means the budget baseline for dairy price safety programs will be deceptively low, about $800 million below where it needs to be in order to ensure that dairy farmers are not treated less equitably than they are treated today. I do not think this Congress ought to allow that to happen, but unfortunately, we are not going to be allowed to try to correct the problem by the rule which is being adopted tonight. The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Putnam) I notice indicated that the farm bill ought to be used to help farmers. There is one way the Committee on Rules could have done it. They could have helped dairy farmers across the country, but they chose not to do so. I regret that, which is one of many reasons I will be voting against this rule.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Florida (Mr. Boyd).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the minority whip.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Jackson). (Mr. JACKSON of Illinois asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Kilpatrick). (Ms. KILPATRICK asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to another distinguished gentleman from Florida (Mr. Davis).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Chairman, what has happened on this bill is that after the four disasters that have been referred to this evening, the committee did what we did after the Congress was hit by anthrax a number of years ago. The committee went around to the agencies to try to figure out exactly what it was they needed to fully meet the needs of people who had been hit by these disasters. They went to the Agriculture Department, and the Agriculture Department people unofficially told the Congress what they thought the real level of need was. There are some 35 States who have legitimate needs that need to be responded to with respect to refurbishing or reconstructing highways that have been damaged. And there are various other needs that will be listed in a chart which I will ask at the proper time to insert in the record following the remarks I am now making. Essentially, the chairman, his staff and my staff, tried to work out what we thought was a tightly disciplined package to meet legitimate needs being faced in this unprecedented hurricane year. Unfortunately, the way this place has come to work more and more is that people who know the least about problems are the people who often have the most to say about how they are dealt with. And so, as a result, people who did not go around looking at the damage on the ground, as some of our Florida colleagues did, people who did not have a direct knowledge of the damage that was done and the kind of relief that was needed, they, for ideological reasons, decided that the committee product did not suit their pure idea of what was good and righteous, and so they decided, well, no, that is too much money. So the bill has been scaled back. Now, as a result of its being scaled back, we are going to have a couple of amendments that are offered in Rube Goldberg fashion which will try to meet some of these legitimate needs by slashing into funds that meet other Americans' legitimate needs in programs ranging from agriculture conservation to cancer research. So we will be asked to vote for a bill which, as the gentleman from Florida indicated, may be good as far as it goes, but it sure does not go very far given the real need. Now, this damage did not occur in my district, but there have been times when it did, and I know how badly we needed that help. And I know when my farmers were hit with droughts how badly they needed that help. And if we cannot remember what it was like when our constituents were hit with this kind of problem, then we cannot expect other Members to remember when we have a problem. So I regret the fact that we have this half-a-loaf approach. I assume people will vote for it in the end because it is about all that we can get out of the system, but this, again, is a sorry mess. This Congress has not hesitated to provide $128,000 tax cuts to people making a million bucks a year. But, oh, if you are a farmer who was hit by drought or if you are a property owner hit by hurricane damage or if you are a town chairman trying to deal with your road problem, sorry, buddy, you take second place, you take third place, you can sit in the caboose. We have to put that millionaire in the front seat, first class. That is essentially what this Congress has done on program after program all year long. We should not be surprised they would do it again tonight. It is too bad, but there is not much we can do about it because the powers that be in this place have decided this is the way it is going to be. Mr. Chairman, may I ask how much time remains?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm).

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), committee chairman.