Continuing Appropriations and Surface Transportation Extensions Act, 2011

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I hesitate to speak of course, lest we get off message, but I am going to take that chance in any event.

I have had the opportunity of serving for a long period of time with Mr. Lewis, Mr. Rogers, Mrs. Lowey, Ms. DeLauro, Mr. Dicks on the Appropriations Committee. I am not sure I see anybody else who served on that Appropriations Committee with us. And I served on the Labor, Health, Human Services, and Education Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee. And I went on in January of 1983. I won't go all through every year from 1983 to today. That would take too long and would bore you stiff.

But I had the great privilege of sitting just a couple of chairs from the gentleman from Wisconsin, who had been in the Congress some 12 years before I came, having been elected in 1969. Served over four decades in this body. I will adopt all the words that were ascribed to him by the gentlewoman from New York, but three words that I would use are ``tough,'' ``courageous,'' and ``effective.''

I think the gentleman from Kentucky caught it as well. He is a difference maker. I think, Congressman Rogers, your words were very appropriate, not because you agreed or others agreed necessarily with the difference he wanted to make, but you knew if David Obey was engaged in an issue, he would make a difference on that issue.

From my perspective, the good news is David Obey was almost invariably engaged on the issues he thought affected average people, who were not so average at all. Whether it was their education, their health, their housing, making sure the NIH was trying to find cures for diseases that afflicted them,
whether he was standing up to make sure that people in the cold of winter had heat or in the scorching heat of summer had air conditioning to keep them healthy, David Obey could always be counted on as a strong, unwavering, uncowering voice on behalf of people who needed a voice. They had a special interest, but they did not have money to hire voices. They needed voices in this body that we know as the people's House.

The people on some 20 occasions returned David Obey to the Congress of the United States. Maybe it was one more than that, 21 occasions. They returned David Obey to the Congress of the United States because they saw in David Obey that voice that they needed and wanted and respected.

David Obey, in addition to the three attributes I ascribed to him, is honest. One of the things I most admire in David Obey and one of the things I most cherished was his slaying of the dragon of hypocrisy. I don't think anything angered David Obey more than seeing hypocrisy. There is too much hypocrisy, where we say, Oh, we are for this, and then we vote for that, or vice versa. We could always count on David saying, Hey, you want to be honest? Stop posing for holy pictures.

I am sure that has been mentioned during the course of this, because there is a famous phrase that we all remember by David Obey. By that, he meant, of course, be real. Don't try to flim-flam the public. Stand up for what you believe in, not what you think people want to hear. And we had no better example and no more faithful example of that performance than David Obey.

I want to thank David Obey. I want to thank him for being my friend. I want to thank him for being an example of what Members of Congress ought to be. I want to thank him for being a steadfast, faithful voice for the people who needed a voice, a leader on behalf of the principles that I think this country was speaking about when it said that we establish a government to protect the general welfare. David Obey believed that to his very core, and every day of his service his belief was manifest in his actions.

I also want to thank my friend Jerry Lewis. Every day that I served on the Appropriations Committee, I served with Jerry Lewis, and almost every day with Hal Rogers. Hal came a little after Jerry and I came to the committee.

One of the things that I recall to people about this committee is that for most of my service, not all of my service, unfortunately, but for most of my service it was arguably the most bipartisan committee in the Congress of the United States, where we worked together, made determinations together. And, yes, there were differences, but we did so in a civil, collegiate way that the American public I think would have appreciated.

Jerry Lewis has been someone who has focused on our institution. For many of the years that I served, Jerry Lewis and Vic Fazio from California were chairs of the Legislative appropriations committee, and they worked together as a team to make this institution more effective, better serving its Members and better enabling its Members to serve the Nation.

Jerry, I want to thank you for your service as chairman of the committee, but as a member of the committee and certainly as chair of the committee that didn't get much publicity and sometimes was a thankless job, but was a job that you and Vic did in the best traditions of what the American public says it wants--bipartisan cooperation, positive partnership--and I thank you for that.

Hal, I wish you the best of luck as you undertake these responsibilities. We are losing a giant as David Obey retires. David Obey chose to retire. There is no doubt in my mind if he had chosen to run again, his people would have sent him back.

So, David Obey, you have been a great Member of this Congress. You have served your country, your State, and our people well. We are, all of us, in your debt. Godspeed.

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