[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 27 (Thursday, February 13, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H673-H675]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     REQUEST TO DISCHARGE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS FROM FURTHER 
CONSIDERATION OF HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION 23, CONTINUING APPROPRIATIONS, 
                            FISCAL YEAR 2003

  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, in order to allow ample time for 
the House to move this bill now to the Senate and for the Senate to 
debate it, pass it, and to engross the bills and get them to the 
President and give him a little time to review this bill, I ask 
unanimous consent that the Committee on Appropriations be discharged 
from further consideration of the joint resolution, (H.J. Res. 23), 
making further appropriations for the fiscal year 2003, and for other 
purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.
  The Clerk read the title of the joint resolution.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to consideration of the 
joint resolution?
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Wisconsin is recognized 
under his reservation.
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, in a democratic institution, when we have 
nothing else, the only protections that remain for individual Members 
and for the constituents that we represent lie in the normal processes 
of the House. We have just passed a bill in which 90 percent of the 
dollars contained in that bill were dollars that were never debated on 
their merits on the House floor. For the last year, this House has 
engaged in a process of refusing to allow the democratic process that 
is fundamental to this Nation to manifest itself on the floor of this 
institution. And as a result, we have never had an opportunity to 
debate the wisdom of, for instance, cutting the first responders below 
the President's budget or doing a number of other outrageous things 
that happened in this bill tonight.
  Because I take my institutional responsibilities seriously, I, in the 
end, most reluctantly voted for the bill that just passed, despite the 
fact that I am outraged by the process that produced it; I am outraged 
by the rigidity with which the White House has dealt with these issues; 
I am outraged that the White House, especially the Office of Management 
and Budget, have seemed to have determined that it is their way or the 
highway on all occasions.
  I am used to give-and-take and I have had a cooperative relationship, 
not necessarily a loving relationship, but a cooperative relationship 
with virtually every President I have served under, including this 
President's father, and I want to have the same kind of relationship 
with the White House under these circumstances. But now we are being 
asked to provide for consideration of a motion tonight which, under the 
Rules of the House, ought to be brought up tomorrow; and we are being 
asked to pass a continuing resolution which gives the President more 
time to consider the very items that we were given no time whatsoever 
to consider on this floor today. I find that double standard both 
interesting and quaint and outrageous.
  And so I have great respect for the job the gentleman has tried to 
do, but there are two ways to handle massive legislation like this on 
the House floor. One is to try to work out differences; and in working 
out those differences, it is important that one keeps to his or her 
word. Secondly, the other way to deal with it is just to ram the other 
side. And in too many instances, including the conference that took 
place, the full conference that took place the night before last, 
issues were rammed rather than working out an honest give-and-take 
arrangement.
  So, in my view, if this body believes that the President needs more 
time to continue to study the document which we were not allowed to 
study before we voted on it, I am only the ranking Democrat on the 
committee and I have no idea of the impact of dozens of provisions in 
this bill; and I simply want to say that because of that, I think that 
the White House ought to have to exist under the same conditions that 
we have been forced to exist under. If we have to consider legislation 
without having an understanding of what is in it, and incidentally I 
know that Mr. Daniels, the OMB director, told his staff that he was 
going to be in charge of the conference.
  Now, if he has not told the President of the United States what is in 
this bill, it is a little late, because they have imposed this product 
on us. So with all due respect, if the House wants to consider a 
continuing resolution, then it ought to do so under the regular 
processes of the House by bringing it up tomorrow.
  Now, that is going to inconvenience me in a major way. I know it is 
going to inconvenience a number of my colleagues. But once in a while 
we have to put duty ahead of convenience, and I to intend to do so in 
this instance.
  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. OBEY. Now, under my reservation, I am happy to yield to the 
gentleman from Florida.
  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for 
yielding; and

[[Page H674]]

the purpose of my request is to make sure that the bill does not get 
bogged down administratively between here, the Senate, engrossing the 
bill, and getting it delivered. That does take some time. And the 
present CR runs out on February 20. The House will not be in session on 
February 20.
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, perhaps it should be.
  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Well, that is a subject for discussion. But as 
of this moment, the House will not be in session on February 20. All we 
would ask for in this CR is to go to February 24 to give the President 
those few extra days. The gentleman has every right to exercise his 
right to object and if he does, so be it; and then the leadership will 
determine whether we will be here tomorrow or Saturday or whatever.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. OBEY. Continuing under my reservation, I yield to the gentleman 
from Massachusetts.
  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I am puzzled. I thank the 
gentleman from Wisconsin for standing up for democratic procedures, but 
as I understand it, we will not be in session. The President does not 
have an item veto. I am interested to learn that the President is 
somewhat distrustful apparently of the Republican majority and does not 
want to sign anything from them without having a chance to hold it up 
to the light, and maybe he has a point there. But when he reads it if 
he does not like it, what is he going to do, veto the whole thing? In 
that case, the CR probably ought to go to March or April.
  We are giving the President not much of a choice if we go with a CR 
to the 24th; we are still not in until the 25th. So if the President 
does catch you at something, and apparently there may be some things in 
there he is a little nervous about, what is his remedy? Veto the whole 
omnibus? I mean, if you had not done it in this way, we would all not 
be in this bind. But it does not make sense to me that even giving the 
President these extra few days, he will have no remedy if he does find 
something he does not like, because if he vetoes this, the CR is out on 
the 24th, then there is nothing and we do not come back until late on 
the 25th and you have that thing anyway. So I do not understand what 
this accomplishes, in any case.
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, continuing under my reservation, let me just 
address one bill: the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education 
bill. That is really the guts of what we do domestically each year.
  Now, we have a right to have issues like that debated. We have seen a 
strategy for the entire previous year which denied the minority the 
opportunity to even address the substantive issues related to education 
and health care, worker protection and the like, because there was a 
conscious strategy on the part of the majority to deny this House the 
opportunity to even consider those bills until after the election, 
because they were devoted to a budget resolution which made no sense 
and did not reflect what even majority party members would vote for 
after the election was over. So we were asked for a year to frustrate 
the ability of this institution to consider those major issues; and 
then after the election, it is all dumped into this pile, and we are 
told to vote for it, up or down. That is a fundamental abuse of this 
institution.
  We are in the minority. We do not expect to win votes. You are in the 
majority; you won it fair and square, I honor you for it, and that 
means that you have a right to run this institution. But you have to 
run it in a way, if you are true to the traditions of this place, you 
need to run this institution in a manner which gives both you and us an 
opportunity to exercise our responsibilities. We have been denied that 
opportunity for an entire year. And that means that we cannot fulfill 
our fundamental responsibility as a minority, which is to offer 
alternatives on appropriation bills if we do not like the product you 
bring to the floor. And if you have the votes, you win. If you do not 
have the votes, then you do not. The problem is, we have never been 
able to figure out who had the votes, because we have never been able 
to vote.
  So, under those circumstances, we have engaged in a charade for a 
year, and this is the product of the charade. And there is a lot of 
garbage in this pile, and I am telling my colleagues that a lot of 
people who voted for it are going to wish they had not voted for it, 
and there is a lot of garbage that would not be in this pile if we had 
been able to consider these bills on an individual basis.
  So all I am saying is, after we have seen this total abuse of process 
for now over a year, we are now asked, once again, to forgo the right 
of the minority to notice on an issue, again for the convenience of the 
very people who put us through this in the process. I do not believe in 
the Bridge on the River Kwai syndrome. I do not believe in cooperating 
with people who are abusing the process by which this institution is 
supposed to run. So despite that fact, I have given my cooperation in 
many instances, as the gentleman knows, procedurally.
  But it is very simple tonight. If you want a continuing resolution, I 
want us to get back to the normal processes, and I want us to deal with 
people on the basis of those normal processes; and that means that the 
normal process is if you really want a CR, come in tomorrow and pass 
it. But I do not intend to give unanimous consent request to consider 
it tonight.
  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. OBEY. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.
  Mr. YOUNG of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for 
yielding, and again I thank him for the cooperation that he has shown. 
There is no doubt we spent a lot of time putting this bill together. 
But I think the gentleman and his ranking minority members on all of 
his subcommittees and their staff would concede the fact that we were 
totally open and as we went from point to point, issue to point, 
project to project, that we were open with the minority, the ranking 
members and their staff. So this should not be a big surprise to 
anybody that paid attention to their appropriators on either side of 
the aisle. That was a very open process, a difficult process, one that 
I hope we never have to go through again, as well as the gentleman from 
Wisconsin. But we did the best we could with what we had to work with.
  I would hope the gentleman would let us do this CR tonight to extend 
for merely 4 days, just to make sure that this gets to the President 
and he has time to at least look at it, and I thank the gentleman for 
yielding.
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, continuing under my reservation, I would 
simply say that I think the gentleman has been totally open. I fully 
agree with that. The problem has not been him.
  The problem has been that while he has tried to keep the process 
open, we have been denied our fundamental right as a minority to even 
offer amendments to the products that your committee has produced, and 
then all of the deals are made behind closed doors. If anyone attended 
the conference two nights ago, one of our members asked Senator 
Stevens, he said, what is the process by which we are going to 
determine the outcome of the items that are still open in conference? 
And the response he got from the chairman of the conference was, the 
same process that was used to consider the items that are already 
closed. That process was simply a process in private where decisions 
were made by the majority.
  Now, in the end, the majority is going to win most of these; I 
understand that. But we have a right to have honest differences 
considered, and at least we have the right to have those honest 
differences addressed in full view of the public and the press so that 
the public can determine which argument has the better of it, but they 
have been denied this time and time again, and we are fed up.

                              {time}  1915

  I am fed up with it. So I am going to, at every opportunity, take 
full advantage of whatever rights we have on the floor to try to see to 
it that we never have happen again in this institution this kind of 
nonsense because of the denial of the regular legislative process over 
the course of many months.
  So I most regretfully suggest, if the gentleman wants to extend a 
courtesy to the White House that the majority would not extend to its 
own Members

[[Page H675]]

and to us, then by all means, I am ready to consider that tomorrow, but 
not tonight.
  Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman does not have any further questions, I 
regretfully object.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Objection is heard.

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