[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 174 (Tuesday, November 25, 2003)]
[House]
[Page H12315]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           COMMENTS REGARDING CONFERENCE REPORT ON H.R. 2673

  (Mr. OBEY asked and was given permission to speak out of order for 7 
minutes.)
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to take this time to comment on the 
legislation just filed. The legislation just filed would complete the 
work of the Committee on Appropriations and the Congress on a number of 
appropriation bills which were not able to get through the system one 
by one, as is the usual process. But in the process of putting together 
this omnibus appropriation bill, the House has, I think, reached a new 
low in terms of its willingness to reflect the will of the membership.
  We elect in this country 535 people to come to this Congress, 435 of 
them in this institution; and the idea is that those Members are 
supposed to vote on various issues, and after those Members have voted, 
then a conference committee between the Senate and the House is 
supposed to iron out whatever differences remain between the House and 
the Senate in the consideration of that legislation.
  That is really not what happened on this legislation this year. Time 
and time again, the conferees simply disregarded the will of Members of 
both Houses, went into a back room, and decided on their own, without 
consulting anybody but themselves and the White House, that they were 
going to cut the cards a different way and deal a new hand to everyone.
  So we find, for instance, that in the legislation just filed, even 
though both Houses of Congress in public, on-the-record votes made the 
decision to try to scale back the expansion of the ability of large 
businesses in the communications industry to own television stations, 
despite the fact that both branches of the Congress voted to put a 35 
percent cap on the percentage of American homes that should be 
reachable by any one corporate entity in the television business, 
despite that fact, the conferees produced legislation just filed at 
this moment which changes that cap and raises it to 39 percent. No 
votes taken in either House to do that, just an arbitrary judgment 
because the White House said, ``If you do not do it our way, we are 
going to hold our breath and turn blue.''
  So the conferees caved and went against the position of both Houses. 
I think that is a national scandal. This is a backroom deal to 
strengthen the hands of the national media giants against local control 
of television. It allows ABC and NBC to acquire additional stations up 
to the new 39 percent limit, and it takes Fox and CBS off the hook so 
that they do not have to divest as they would have had to if the will 
of the House and the Senate had prevailed.
  I am also concerned about what has happened here with the across-the-
board cut that is being provided in this legislation because, as I 
understand the impact of that cut, that is going to mean a reduction of 
$178 million in crucial veterans medical care; and it is going to, as I 
understand it, severely hamper the VA in its ability to reduce the 
backlog in handling cases brought to them by veterans. It now takes 
about 157 days to process a veteran's claim; and this across-the-board 
cut in the operations of the VA will, I am afraid, result in seeing 
those delays expanded rather than contracted.
  I also want to take just a moment to point out that this institution 
has engaged in a very questionable practice with respect to 
congressional earmarks. In the past, there is no question that Congress 
had provided significant numbers of earmarks. But in the past 4 or 5 
years, in my view, that has gotten incredibly out of control. There is 
nothing wrong with Congress deciding to take a reasonable number of 
projects through earmarks in order to give this institution an 
opportunity to define what activities it considers to be very 
important; but when the practice explodes to such a degree that 
virtually every university hires a lobbyist to try to obtain funds 
through the political process rather than the process of peer review, 
then the Congress abandons all pretext of taxpayers' moneys being used 
in rational fashion.
  The other problem, Mr. Speaker, is that when earmarks change in 
character from being a convenience to Members to a weapon in the hands 
of the majority party to punish Members of the minority party who 
oppose those appropriation bills, then we have, I think, fundamentally 
corrupted the appropriations process of the House, and I think it 
becomes a source of shame for the House in many ways. We have had a 
huge explosion in the amount of Member-directed earmarks over the past 
4 or 5 years; and I would say that when that is accompanied by the idea 
that Members will be punished if they vote on the basis of substance, 
then I think this Congress ceases to be a body which can earn the 
respect of the American people. It seems to me that if we are going to 
allow earmarks to be used as a partisan threat, then what we will do is 
eliminate the ability of the appropriations process to be considered on 
the merits, and the only thing Members will be focused on will be their 
local pork projects rather than the broader welfare of the country; and 
I think that will demean the process of the Congress and demean the 
American people in the process.

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