Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Schauer).

Mr. OBEY. I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee). (Mr. INSLEE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Donnelly).

Mr. OBEY. I yield myself the remainder of the time. Mr. Speaker, today, the Commerce Department just issued figures which have indicated that the depth of the recession in the last quarter of last year was much more severe than anyone had estimated. This is the good news part of the day: They also tell us that, in the first quarter of this year, the shrinkage of the economy has now slowed considerably, which is a very hopeful sign, because the economy, evidently, performed significantly better than most of the economic experts had thought it would perform. We all welcome that news, but as you know, that is not good enough. We need to see more progress. Our dilemma is this: Ordinarily in a recession, when the country is losing jobs, the Federal Reserve lowers interest rates, and that helps the housing industry to move ahead. It helps the auto industry to sell cars. Our economy is normally led out of the recession by the housing industry and by the auto industry. This time around, the situation is very different, because those two sectors have been basket cases for the past year and a half. The first glimmer of hope we've seen in the auto industry is the news that we received yesterday from the Secretary of Transportation, Mr. LaHood, who informed us that, in just 3 days' time, when the program was started, as far as they can tell, it's already oversubscribed. That means the consumers like this program; it means they are reacting to it, and it means that it would be irresponsible of us not to try to prevent the shutdown of this program just 3 days after it began. So we're here, trying to take advantage of one of the few bright spots in the economy to help move the economy forward. We still have a long way to go before good news shows up on the unemployment side of the ledger, but we'll take every bit of good news we can. Today, I think this is one piece of good news, and I think we need to respond to it.

Mr. OBEY. I would be happy to yield very briefly to my friend.

Mr. OBEY. I thank the gentleman. Mr. Speaker, I would ask for an ``aye'' vote.

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

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I don't particularly care to get into a partisan diatribe this morning. I recognize that the gentleman from Texas is the chairman of the Republican House Congressional Campaign Committee, and I can understand, in his position, why he would be willing to look anywhere he can to try to find the slightest issue which he thinks can restore his party to the majority status in this House. And I sympathize with them because I suspect that he's going to have to strain at gnats often in order to accomplish that. And one such example is the objection that they're raising to the rule this morning with respect to amendments. I want to walk you through, Mr. Speaker, what the facts are on the amendments that were offered to this bill. There were 35 amendments that were initially filed for the bill. On the Democratic side there were 21. Seven of those amendments were not in order because they violated the rules of the House, so they were set aside. That left 14 left. Of the 14 that were left, nine of them are now going to be wholly or partially incorporated into the manager's amendment with the agreement of the sponsors. That leaves five left. Two of those amendments, in the judgment of the Rules Committee, were related to arguments that better belonged in the authorizing committees. Another was, and I'm sure the gentleman from Arizona will be shocked by this, another would have added an earmark which would not have been eligible for funding under the program to which the earmark wanted to be attached, so the Rules Committee turned that down. And then two of those amendments, the remaining two, were dropped with the understanding that we would try to strengthen funding for the programs involved when we move to conference. So we've dealt with all of the amendments on the Democratic side. On the Republican side there were 14 amendments that were offered. Initially, nine of them were out of order. They were worked with, and that reduced the number to four amendments that were out of order under House rules and subject to point of order. That left 10 Republican amendments. Three of those issues, again, in the judgment of the Rules Committee, were determined to be issues that more appropriately should be dealt with in the health care reform bill. Example: one sought to prevent us from creating a public plan in the health insurance bill. I did not know that the Appropriations Committee was so talented that, in addition to handling the budget matters, it's also supposed to interfere in judgments about health care reform. Evidently, some people think they should. I think the Rules Committee was right. Another amendment dealt with an issue that had been disposed of in the authorizing committee, the Education and Labor Committee, in the same week. And then there was one other amendment that simply rehashed an old campaign argument, a matter which relates to elections and more properly belongs in either the Judiciary Committee or the House Administration Committee, which oversees elections. That leaves five remaining Republican amendments. Four of them were made in order. Four of them were made in order, four out of the five remaining amendments. And there was only one that was not made in order, and that one was an amendment that simply sought to stuff an additional $1 billion into a program that had already been increased by $12 billion. So if someone wants to make a Federal case out of the fact that one amendment was denied, be my guest. I've seen worse offenses around here. With respect to the budget, I'm not going to get into a partisan debate. All I want to say is this: both Presidents, Bush and President Obama, were faced with terrible problems when the economy collapsed late last year. We were losing 700,000 full-time jobs at a time when Mr. Obama was still waiting to take the oath to be sworn in, and so he inherited a terrible problem. Both President Bush and President Obama wound up having to push a lot of money into the financial sector of the economy to solve our economic problems. This bill takes care of the rest of the economy, and I hope we get to it and support it when it comes before the House.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include tabular and extraneous material on H.R. 3293.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank Mr. Tiahrt and every member of the subcommittee on both sides of the aisle for the work that they've put in in bringing this bill to the floor today. It's a controversial bill. I know we've had a lot of disagreements, but I think that the disagreement has not been disagreeable, and I appreciate that very much. I want to thank Beverly Pheto, Rebecca Motley, Cheryl Smith, Susan Quantius, Nicole Kunko, Stephen Steigleder, Mike Gentilly, Amy Battaglia, Albert Lee, Christina Hamilton, and Ellis Brachman; and on the minority side, Steve Crane, Stephanie Meyers and AmyClaire Brusch for all of the staff work that has been put into this bill. Mr. Chairman, this country has pushed a lot of money, government money, taxpayers' money, into the financial sector of the economy and Wall Street the last few months in order to try to stabilize the economy. This is the bill that tries to deal with the problems of everybody else in this society. I urge its passage, and I reserve the balance of my time. [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH24JY09.001 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH24JY09.002 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH24JY09.003 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH24JY09.004 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH24JY09.005 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH24JY09.006 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH24JY09.007 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH24JY09.008 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH24JY09.009 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH24JY09.010 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH24JY09.011 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH24JY09.012 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH24JY09.013 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH24JY09.014 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH24JY09.015 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH24JY09.016 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH24JY09.017 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH24JY09.018 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH24JY09.019 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH24JY09.020 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH24JY09.021 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH24JY09.022 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH24JY09.023 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH24JY09.024 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH24JY09.025

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I rise to enter into a colloquy with the gentleman from Colorado and yield to Mr. Polis.

Mr. OBEY. I yield to Mr. Perlmutter.

Mr. OBEY. I thank both gentlemen for your efforts on this issue. The committee will work with the gentlemen, the Department of Labor, and OMB, to ensure that this program continues to help deserving beneficiaries, and that the Ombudsman's Office continues to have the resources it needs to properly fulfill its oversight duties. I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. OBEY. I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Kennedy).

Mr. OBEY. I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Minnesota (Ms. McCollum).

Mr. OBEY. I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan).

Mr. OBEY. I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I recognize myself for the remainder of the time. Mr. Chairman, before I get into the specifics of the bill, I would like to take a couple of minutes to respond to some of the criticisms that have been made about the process by which this bill has come to the floor. Much has been made of the fact that this bill did not come to the floor under an open rule. There is nothing really new about that. On at least 25 occasions during the Republican control of this House, appropriation bills came to the floor without being under an open rule. But I want to specifically address the so-called ``outrage'' that has occurred by our supposedly denying Republican amendments the right to get a vote. Here are the facts: Republican Members of the House offered 14 amendments. They filed 14 amendments with the Rules Committee. Four of those amendments were not in order under the rules. A point of order could have been lodged against all of them, so they were out. Three more were on subjects that belong in the health care debate or the health care reform debate, which is now working its way through the Congress. I think what happened is that some Members on the other side of the aisle mistook me for Henry Waxman and thought we were in the Energy and Commerce Committee. Now, I don't think I look like him. I don't think Henry would want to look like me. But somehow there is confusion. So our Republican friends have brought a number of amendments, three of them, to this bill on subjects such as forbidding us from having a public option in the health care reform bill. That's not under the jurisdiction of this committee. All that would do is add to the confusion. So those amendments were rejected by the Rules Committee. Then our Republican friends offered another amendment which dealt with the issue of indirect student loans, whether that program should expire or not. That is an issue which was decided by the Education and Labor Committee earlier this week. It is an authorization. It's not an appropriation issue. So it's decided on that bill. So that takes us from the Republicans' 14 initial amendments down to five amendments. We made in order four of those five amendments. The one amendment that we did not make in order that was remaining was an amendment that would have added a billion dollars to a program that we already added $12 billion to earlier this year in the recovery package. We put $12 billion in increases into special education. In the 12 years that the Republicans controlled this place, in total they only added $8.5 billion to that program. So we poured money into that program. And given the competition on the part of all other programs for taxpayers' money, I think the Rules Committee justifiably felt that that amendment was a little outlandish, so we didn't vote on it. Now, if people want to make a Federal case out of that history, be my guest. The second thing we've heard today is considerable bashing--in addition to bashing of the majority party of the House, we've heard considerable bashing of President Obama. In terms of the bashing of the majority, we were told a bit earlier by one of the speakers over there that we had been partisan in the full committee and had rejected every Republican amendment. That's nonsense. We accepted 57 Republican amendments on all of the appropriation bills that went through the committee this year. I hardly think that that is being partisan. I would also point out that the bailout, which has been so roundly denounced by several speakers today, that bailout was originally proposed and asked for by President Bush. It was voted down the first time in this House. It was voted up the second time after credit markets further collapsed. And both Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain, in an act of patriotism, rose above their partisan and electoral interests and supported Bush on that issue even though it was unpopular. Enough said on that score. I would also say that for those who are screaming about the President's economic recovery efforts, the President has been in office a very few short months. The Recovery Act passed less than 5 months ago. It is designed to be a 30-month program to try to limit to some degree the job loss in this economy. We were losing 700,000 jobs a month in the last 3 months of the Bush administration. We've now seen that job loss decline to about 400,000 jobs a month. That's not good enough in anybody's eyes, but it is a whole lot better than was happening last year. And it's going to take, frankly, a long time to repair the damage done by 8 years of previous government policy. So I would prefer to set those issues aside. I don't think it's particularly productive to engage in partisan bashing. I should correct one statement that I made. I said that we accepted 57 amendments in committee. We accepted 57 amendments in committee and on the floor. Let me correct that statement. Having gotten rid of all of that underbrush, I would like to now turn to what is in this bill and why I believe the House ought to support it. As I said earlier, this government, both under President Bush and under President Obama, has pumped a lot of money into what I would call the elite sectors of the economy: the financial sectors of the economy, the banking system, et cetera, and Wall Street. And now this bill is the main appropriation bill that deals with the economic problems and the health problems of every other American, and I want to walk you through just a bit what this bill does. First of all, I think we need to understand this bill is fiscally responsible. The committee's allocation cut a total of $10 billion from the President's discretionary spending request, and in this bill, we have a $52 million reduction from President Obama's request. We have eliminated or cut some 44 programs, saving $1.3 billion. And I would point out that the largest single problematic increase in the bill is a $993 million increase for the Social Security Administration to dramatically cut back the backlog on disability claims facing that agency. And I think no one would argue those funds are wasteful. After we account for that increase for Social Security, that leaves us with a 1.7 percent increase for the rest of the bill. After you deduct for inflation, it means this bill, in real terms, is three- tenths of 1 percent above last year. That is hardly profligate. In addition, a priority for this bill is $1.1 billion which we include for activities to reduce improper payments, fraud, and abuse in the Department of Labor and Health and Human Services and in the Social Security Administration. That is a 50 percent increase in enforcement money to go after fraud and waste and abuse over the previous year. It's been estimated by the budget office that that action could result in over $48 billion in savings and increased revenue for picking up legitimate revenues that would have otherwise been lost. With respect to the Department of Health and Human Services, this bill increases that agency by about 3.3 percent. Again, hardly a profligate increase. Now, we're all talking about our desire to pass health care reform. We recognize in the committee that if we're going to do that, we have to increase the capacity in the health care system, and so we are appropriating nearly $3 billion to do just that. We're providing $2.2 billion for community health centers; $530 billion to expand training programs in the nursing field; $135 million for a career pathway innovation fund to again train nurses, medical technicians, and others in the health care industry; $75 million additional funding for State health access grants to help States transition to a health reform program; and $65 billion for State high-risk insurance pools. We've also increased the National Institutes of Health funding by $500 million. I've said many times on this House floor, when I go home, I've never had anybody in my life come up to me and say, ``Hey, Obey, why don't you in Washington get your act together and cut cancer research?'' and yet that is what the previous President and the previous Congress did. They eliminated over 900 medical research grants at the National Institutes of Health. We don't to that. We add a significant amount of money to try to beef up our medical research across the board. We also added some $200 million for an initiative begun by former Treasury Secretary O'Neill in Pennsylvania to try to get hospitals to bring under control their life-threatening hospital infection problem which is plaguing the entire country. With respect to senior nutrition and other services, we provided $1.5 billion. We have rejected the administration's efforts to cut $1.5 billion out of basic grants for Title 1. We've restored that funding. We have provided a large increase, $446 million, for the administration's top priority, which is the Teacher Incentive Fund, and $500 million for Pell Grants. The Department of Labor, more than half of the increase in that department is simply to help States to process unemployment compensation claims. We also have a $271 million program in this bill to strengthen our ability to help veterans transition to civilian workforce employment. And I think, Mr. Chairman, that's about all I want to say about the numbers in the bill. I just want to add one thing. With respect to the policy provisions in this bill, we have retained every single limitation that was contained in previous appropriation bills when our Republican friends were in the majority. We have retained every single restriction on abortion that was in bills when they controlled the House, and so I think we have leaned over backwards to try to work with our friends in the minority. And as I say, I appreciate the relationship that I have with the gentleman from Kansas. He's a fine and good man. We don't agree on everything, but as Will Rogers once said, when two people agree on everything, one of them is unnecessary. So we do the best we can to reconcile our differences. We all have deeply held beliefs, but I think this bill represents the values of the country and, I hope, the values of this Congress. I would urge support.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I have a manager's amendment at the desk.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, this amendment, I believe, is not controversial. It incorporates several amendments requested by Members and makes technical corrections to the underlying bill. These adjustments are fully offset and do not change the bottom-line funding for the bill. Briefly, the amendment provides an additional $5 million for the Career Pathways Innovation Fund within the Department of Labor requested by Mr. Teague, offset by a reduction in the green jobs fund It contains an additional million dollars for the emergency medical services for children's programs. As a result, the total of $21 million is included in the bill to bring improved emergency medical care to children due to Mr. Matheson's work on this issue It contains an additional $1 million for the National Center for Health Statistics within the Centers for Disease Control, fully offset. As a result, the bill includes $140 million for the collection of critical health statistics. Mr. Cohen sponsored this important amendment. Mathematics and Science Partnership program is increased by $5 million to $184 million to expand professional development for math and science teachers. Again, it is fully offset. It was urged by Mr. Holt and Mr. Ehlers and others. The amendment provides nearly $7 million for the Reach Out and Read program within the fund for improvement of education in the Department of Education. It will result in an additional $2 million for books to help children learn to read due to the efforts of Mr. McGovern. The amendment increases the amount from $20 million to $30 million within the charter schools program in the Department of Education that may be used for grants to charter management organizations. It replicates successful charter models at the request of Mr. Polis. The amendment provides $1 million for university-based modeling and simulation programs newly authorized by the Higher Education Act proposed by Mr. Scott. It then includes two funding limitation amendments sponsored by Mr. Cuellar with respect to the Federal management program designation and a prohibition on the use of funds in the bill for any first class travel in the agencies funded under this bill. And the amendment also makes technical correction. I would be happy to yield briefly to Mr. Cohen.

Mr. OBEY. I would be happy to yield to Mr. Teague.

Mr. OBEY. I thank the gentleman. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. Could I ask how much time I have remaining.