Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. Let me simply say, Mr. Speaker, that this is no less binding than is the budget resolution passed by the Republican majority. Let me also say that we have heard a lot of concern about small business. I would like to see how many small businesses in each of our districts have profits of $1 million per owner to qualify under this bill. Thirdly, we are not raising taxes; we are asking people who make $1 million a year or more to limit themselves to a $24,000, on average, tax cut, which is still 25 times as much as the average person in this country making $50,000 a year will get. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the distinguished minority leader.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), ranking member of the Committee on the Budget. (Mr. SPRATT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished 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, could I inquire how much time is remaining.

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

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 10 seconds. Mr. Speaker, despite the fiction we have just heard, you have to make $1 million a year profit in order to be covered by this. To suggest small businessmen are hurt by that is laughable.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. Mr. Speaker, again, despite all of the misinformation that we have just heard, the IRS has told us that fewer than six-tenths of 1 percent of all returns with small business income have incomes of more than $1 million. To suggest that this is even laying a glove on small business is a colossal red herring fiction.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. The gentleman refers to one-third of the top bracket. This does not touch everybody in the top bracket. The top bracket is $319,000 or more. We do not touch anybody with an income of less than one million bucks, less than one million bucks. That is not $300,000. Do not try to bamboozle people.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. Line 22 and line 23 of page 6: The only taxpayers that are affected are ``taxpayers with adjusted gross income above $1 million.'' Period.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Olver). (Mr. OLVER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews). (Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel).

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the remainder of the time. Mr. Speaker, this amendment is pure and simple about shared sacrifice, as the gentleman from Illinois has just indicated. What we are asking is that those lucky people in this country who make more than $1 million a year, that includes the one-half of 1 percent of small businessmen who make profits of over $1 million a year, we are asking them to accept a scaled-back tax cut so that they only get, on average, $24,000 in tax cuts. That is 24 times as large as someone will get if they make $50,000 a year. And, instead, we are saying please, for the sake of the country, take a little bit smaller tax cut so that we have some room in the budget to strengthen protection on our borders, to strengthen protection in our ports, to strengthen protection at our airports, to provide stronger opportunities for education, to provide more civilized health care for our veterans, to provide better housing for our military personnel, to provide a little better shot at protecting the environment, to help local communities so that they do not have to lay off hundreds of thousands of kids from health care programs like SCHIP and Badger Care in my own State. This is an effort to see to it that we can enrich the many and enrich the few at the same time. Trickle-down economics is what we have heard from our friends on the other side of the aisle today. They say if you just give enough to the people at the top, eventually some will trickle down to people at the bottom. My old friend Harvey Dueholm in the legislature used to describe it this way. He said trickle-down economics is the theory that if you just feed the horses enough oats, eventually some of it will filter down to the sparrows. Think about it. And vote ``yes.'' It is the fair, it is the right, it is the just thing to do.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, the majority is currently planning to include a provision in this rule that will effectively allow an increase in the Nation's debt ceiling. In my view, this procedural gimmick is an abuse of the troops that this bill is meant to support. It abuses the troops in order to hide responsibility. It epitomizes the total lack of shared sacrifice that this administration and the Republican majority have hoisted on the American people. This administration has taken action in Iraq on the basis of misguided, misinformed, and manipulated intelligence. It has exposed American troops to greater risk than necessary because of poor post-war planning. It has so stretched the Army that it has effectively reinstituted the draft for those in the Guard and Reserve who are now being told that they will have to extend their service in Iraq beyond their original hitch. While this administration has been asking for so much sacrifice from those servicemen and women, it has asked for virtually no sacrifice from the most well off and the most well connected members of this society. The administration has run up huge additional debts in order to give those people supersized tax cuts averaging over $80,000 for people that make $1 million or more. The majority is then using the defense appropriations bill as a vehicle to enable them to continue the reckless additions to this debt brought on by those tax cuts. It is a cynical game that should shame even those who run this Congress. A vote for the previous question on the rule is most certainly a vote to increase the debt ceiling by almost $1 trillion. People ought to vote no. You ought to strip this rule of the extraneous material and allow us to vote up or down on the defense bill if we are indeed trying to accomplish the purposes which the defense bill is presented to us to accomplish.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, and I will not object, but I simply wanted to make this reservation in order to express my agreement with the motion that is being offered by the gentleman, to say that what this means is that for the first time in 4 years, the minority would have an opportunity to state its first preferences with respect to budget priorities, and having been given that consideration, that should facilitate the handling of the remaining appropriation bills. We are in the minority. We recognize that. We expect that the majority is going to win these votes. But we feel that we at least have a right to have our first preferences voted upon in a nonprocedural way. And when that happens, it is much easier to facilitate an orderly consideration of the appropriation bills, even though we may differ on the substance.

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

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, continuing under my reservation, it is my understanding that in accordance with this unanimous consent agreement, that this resolution is expected to be on the floor Thursday, and I think that will greatly facilitate the consideration of other matters. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I just want to take a few moments to express one concern I have about this bill. I want to make clear I will vote for the bill on passage. But I want to say this before I do: If a Nation is going to be led into war, its leaders owe the public an explanation of our choices and an estimate of the costs of the acts that we are about to incur. We have not been getting that from this administration with respect to Iraq. The administration's response to every question has been ``Trust us! and Oh, by the way, please get out of the way.'' To wage war, the administration asked first of all that we provide an unfettered lump sum of money. The Congress declined to do that. The administration then provided the Congress with faulty intelligence. When we asked the administration for an estimate of the cost of the war over the long term, the Secretary of Defense responded by saying, quote, ``that is unknowable,'' despite the fact that the Pentagon has always had their own internal estimates of what long-range costs are supposed to be. When we asked the military leadership of this country how many troops it would take to pacify Iraq, General Shinseki was honest enough to tell us: ``about 200,000.'' The administration said, ``No, no, no. That is not right.'' And they, in effect, punished the good general for his frankness. When the State Department prepared long-term plans for post-war Iraq, the DOD brushed aside those plans. They did not know the cost of their own plans but they knew more than everybody else did. The administration rushed into war with inadequate supplies of body armor, and jammers, they needed for remotely detonated devices, and inadequately armored Humvees. Now there are 800 dead or more. The Army is stretched to the breaking point. We have effectively, for the Guard and Reserve forces who are seeing their tours of duty extended, we have effectively for them reinstituted the draft. And the country is still wondering where we are going and how we are going to get there. We spent $150 billion so far on the effort. We now have a $390 billion defense bill before us. At first the administration admitted no need whatsoever for additional funding. Now they are at least ``fessing up'' to the fact that the first quarter costs will be $25 billion. In fact, the Pentagon's internal estimates indicate that it will cost at least $50 billion more than we are being told. If this bill fessed up to the full year cost of funding this war, we would be appropriating at least $50 billion more than we are appropriating today. No doubt after the election, the public will be told what the facts are on the installment plan. Then little by little, we will learn what the estimated real costs are. Now, I understand that the administration cannot give us down to the last jot and tittle what the final cost will be, but they can certainly give us estimates about a range of cost expectations, given their own internal planning. The country has a right to that. And if we were determined to provide the public with full information, that is what we would be doing today. I wish we were but we are not. Let me simply say I am pleased that the bill does contain language which was accepted by the committee to require the administration to give us their best judgment about what the range of cost will be of this war. Regardless of whether we are for it or against it, regardless of whether the administration was right or wrong, we are there, we need to know what the plans are for dealing with the problem and we need to know what a reasonable expectation of cost is so that we can make realistic judgments about other national priorities, so that we can make realistic judgments about how much in tax cuts the country can afford. Otherwise we are simply going to be adding all of this to the tab and asking our kids to pay it down the line. So I congratulate the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis) for producing a reasonable bill under the circumstances. But let us not kid ourselves, if the taxpayers want to know what the real cost of this bill will be once the full cost of the war will be factored in, you will have to up it by at least $50 billion. You are going to be looking at a total cost for that war, which is approaching $250 billion, without factoring in what additional costs we will have the next 5 years. It is a huge, huge price to pay for a mistake.

Mr. OBEY

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

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

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

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