David Obey

let me simply note for observation by the gentleman from Kentucky that the Rules of the House allow Members, if the majority decides to proceed under an open rule and under the 5-minute rule, the Rules of the House allow Members to strike…

We do not want our members to be on the alert for compliance problems only to find out that the administration lacks the resources to bring about enforcement actions on the issues we raise. It is important that the administration be able…

2 weeks ago the House passed the bill on China trade policy. I did not support that bill; the majority did. I am not here to enter into another argument about what we should have done on that bill, but I do believe if we are going to enter…

Mr. Chairman, I find this amendment interesting and in some ways, contradictory. What this amendment does is to provide about $3 million to the U.S. Office of Trade Representative, but it really, as I understand it, does two things. It…

Mr. Chairman, on each of the last three appropriation bills, we were asked by the majority to agree to an overall time limit so that we could finish the bills on a reasonable time schedule, and we agreed on all three of those bills. Last…

I think the case is clear, we cannot do a lot directly to influence the price being charged to consumers for gasoline or any other product, but we can try to see to it that government has enough resources to keep the rules of the game…

Mr. Speaker, I guess what this rule shows today is that no matter how hard and no matter how many rank and file Members work to try to reach a bipartisan agreement on appropriation bills, that, in the end, the majority party leadership…

I would like to give an example. The Slaughter amendment that was on the floor last week on the arts, the gentlewoman from New York in an earlier paragraph of the bill tried to cut several million dollars from one account so that when we…

I, for one, take exception to the idea that the greatest public service that we do for people is to refuse to use the little resources we have on behalf of the constituents we represent. The size of this economy is growing. There are a…

I certainly expect that by the end of June the House will have all or almost all of the appropriations bills through the House, but frankly, I think that means almost nothing. I do not know of a baseball game in which we score a run by…

the assertion of the gentleman from Kentucky is not correct. The President's budget was not brought to the floor. The majority's interpretation of what the President's budget was was brought to the floor, and that interpretation was…

Mr. Chairman, I hope we can minimize debate on a lot of amendments, and so I would like to get something off my chest early in the process so I do not have to keep popping up and down and offering a dozen amendments to do that. We are at a…

We need to know what is happening with production changes. And the effect that this bill has on our ability to know all of that is decimated because we are cutting the budgets of the agencies that do the statistical analysis to tell us…

Just to defend the gentleman from Rhode Island, I would point out, if you look at the spread sheet for this bill, if you look at the line labeled Indian Grants, $21 million requested by the administration. Recommended by the committee…

I would simply say I grant that, but nonetheless it does not deny the correctness of the gentleman from Rhode Island who indicated that the administration did have a new initiative specifically aimed at dealing with the problems in Indian…

this amendment attempts to restore full funding of the President's requests for antitrust activities of the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission. We have had a series of efforts in the Committee on Appropriations to try to…

those merger cases draw staff resources away from the commission's nonmerger activities, which often deal with existing continuing harm to consumers. The Federal Trade Commission has a continuing challenge in determining how to divide its…

I really do not want to withdraw from the WTO. We need to be there, but I am voting yes out of frustration. There are two problems. At home, the issue is simply whether those in this society, the investing class, the managing elite, the…

We talk a lot in this Congress and in this society about generational inequities. One of the worst things we do to the younger generation is to make it harder for them to buy that first house. I know that when I was first married, my wife…

I would certainly think in a period where Mr. Greenspan and company have begun an upward ratcheting of interest rates, that we would be especially anxious to do these things.

I would simply say that to suggest that the veterans are getting a bad deal by asking that $4 million be spent on this suit when we can get back hundreds of millions of dollars in return is patently preposterous on its face.

Mr. Chairman, this place is something else. I am no blue nose. If people want to make an informed decision to smoke, so be it. I used to smoke three packs of cigarettes a day. At the same time, I worked with asbestos. Johns Manville…

this bill is a debate or part of the debate about our national priorities and our national values and it helps decide who we are going to put first in this society. This Congress has committed itself to pass a large number of very large…

let me point out that the amendment that we offered, the amendment that the Committee on Appropriations refused to make in order, specifically provided that the money would go in that veterans' account. If you do not believe it, ask the…

Mr. Chairman, before we vote, I simply want to rise to remind people why so many of us will vote against this bill on final passage. The bill is $1.7 billion below the President's request, and $302 million below fiscal 2000. That applause…