Wisconsin: Seventh District

Rep. David Obey (D)

David Obey (D) Elected April 1969, 19th full term up
Born:	10-03-1938, Okmulgee, OK
Home:	Wausau
Education:	U. of WI, B.S. 1960, M.A., 1962
Religion:	Catholic
Marital Status:	married (Joan)
Elected  Office:	WI Assembly, 1962–69.
Professional Career:	Asst., family-run supper club & motel, 1962–68.
DC Office	2314 RHOB, 20515 202-225-3365 Website: www.obey.house.gov
State Offices	Superior:715-398-4426; Wausau:715-842-5606;
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In the late 19th century, on the rail lines radiating northwest from Chicago and Milwaukee, came thousands of migrants whose descendants have made the northern reaches of Wisconsin the most thickly settled land this far north in the United States east of the Mississippi. What brought people up so far was not cropland—there are no industrial-sized wheat farms as in the Red River Valley of North Dakota—but trees, iron and cows. This was one of America’s largest virgin timberlands, and the river towns are still dotted with paper mills. Farther north, iron brought Finns and Italians to the port of Superior, Wisconsin, right next to Duluth, Minnesota, and to smaller towns on the chilly lake, like Bayfield near the Apostle Islands. Then on the cleared forestlands came dairy farms. Dairy cattle, properly cared for, thrive in these northern uplands, and the sons of Wisconsin dairymen, many of them immigrants from Germany and Norway, moved their dairy herds even farther north. On this base small cities grew, some with big enterprises. Wausau has paper mills and Wausau Insurance, Wisconsin Rapids has Stora Enso, and Stevens Point has Sentry Insurance. While many rural areas have declined, the area around Wausau, Wisconsin Rapids and Stevens Point has generated new businesses and jobs and retained a high-skill work force. The number of dairy farmers is in sharp decline, but farmers are turning to potatoes, vegetables, cranberries and ginseng.

All these places are in Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District, which stretches from Stevens Point in the south to Lake Superior in the north. The politics of northern Wisconsin and the 7th District has a rough-hewn quality, a certain lumberjack populist flavor. Ancestrally Republican, this area favored the progressivism of the LaFollettes. Today, the Superior and Stevens Point areas are heavily Democratic; Wausau’s Marathon County and many of the smaller counties have been more Republican. This was a closely divided district in the last two presidential elections: Al Gore carried it by 47.5%-46.8% and John Kerry by 50.1%-48.7%.

The congressman from the 7th District is David Obey, a Democrat first elected in April 1969 and now chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and one of the most capable and strongly motivated legislators on either side of the aisle. He grew up in Wausau, where his father worked in a roofing factory; he started off as a Republican, but was influenced by history teacher Arthur Henderson—who assigned papers on the politics of the 1920s and was attacked by McCarthyites—and between 1952 and 1956 Obey switched from supporting Dwight Eisenhower and Joe McCarthy to Adlai Stevenson and William Proxmire. Obey graduated from the University of Wisconsin, studied Soviet politics for three years in graduate school, and in 1962, when he was 24, he was elected to the Wisconsin Assembly even before he got his master’s degree. When Melvin Laird resigned his House seat to become Richard Nixon’s Defense secretary, Obey won an upset victory in the April 1969 special election.

In the state legislature, Obey was inspired by older New Deal Democrats who fought hard for the little guy; when he entered the House, the driving energy came from liberal Democrats opposed to the Vietnam War. Obey preserves something of the force of each group. He is not a sentimental liberal: He has a prickly personality and a vigorous temper and does not suffer gladly those he considers fools or knaves. But he can leaven that with humor: he likes to quote Archy the Cockroach, the supposed writer of Don Marquis’s Archy and Mehitabel, and he is part of a band called The Capitol Offenses, which plays bluegrass music and gospel hymns. Even as he moved to the top of the seniority ladder, Obey has retained his sense of outrage and his eagerness to fight for what he believes in—a quality that even some Democrats complain has been too intense. But he continues to display abundant energy and leadership on a host of fronts. He has had his disappointments. He lost the Budget Committee chairmanship to Oklahoma’s Jim Jones in 1980 by 121–116. In 1984 he wanted to become Democratic Caucus chairman, but demurred when it became clear that Dick Gephardt had the votes. Even so, informally Obey became a key leader of liberal Democrats, in 1989 pushing Gephardt for majority leader when Jim Wright and Tony Coelho were resigning. He has been a supporter of Nancy Pelosi’s rise in the leadership, despite some friction with other Pelosi supporters like George Miller and John Murtha.

Obey remains a true believer in traditional liberalism, in Keynesian economics and economic redistribution. He thinks that government should provide economic security, create jobs and build infrastructure through public investment, that it should control health care costs and guarantee coverage and a choice of providers. He bucked the Clinton administration, vocally opposing NAFTA and, when Bill Clinton seemed to be backing away from universal health care coverage in July 1994, said “then I will walk away from the Clinton health care plan” and supported his real preference, a single-payer system. In June 1995, when Clinton accepted the Republicans’ goal of a budget balanced in seven years, Obey immediately issued a written statement reading, ‘‘I think most of us learned some time ago that if you don’t like the president’s position on a particular issue you simply need to wait a few weeks.’’ Obey also opposed some administration positions from the right. He has long opposed abortion, and has voted for the partial-birth abortion ban and other limits on abortion, but he is not for abolishing abortion rights. When former La Crosse Archbishop Raymond Burke admonished Catholic officeholders who do not seek to outlaw abortion, Obey wrote in the Jesuit publication America, “While I detest abortion and agree with Catholic teaching that in most instances it is morally wrong, I decline to force my views into laws that, if adopted, would be unenforceable and would tear this society apart. That judgment may be wrong, but it is a judgment honestly arrived at, and one that I am obligated to make.” Representing the north woods, Obey opposes gun control, and once pointed out that one of the guns singled out in the assault weapons ban was owned by 23,000 residents of the 7th District, including two sheriffs.

Obey is above all an appropriator, and takes some justifiable pride in his skill at this work. He first got his seat on Appropriations in August 1969, when he was just 30. He first became chairman in March 1994, after the death of William Natcher; he was the youngest person to hold the post since James Good of Iowa in 1919. He got the job over the more senior Neal Smith, who had the support of other cardinals (Appropriatese for subcommittee chairmen), but Obey had more from non-committee liberals and less senior members, and won in the Democratic Caucus 152–106. Obey showed a determination to get things done on time—which is not always how appropriating works. For years much of his work was on the Foreign Operations Subcommittee, which he chaired from 1985 to 1995. This panel handles rather small sums of money but deals with some very sensitive issues, and it was often rocked in disputes about aid to the Nicaraguan Contras, the pace of negotiations in the Middle East, the treatment of the liberated nations of Eastern Europe. Obey has not always gotten his way, but in each case he worked to move appropriations bills forward in an orderly manner. He passed separate foreign operations appropriation bills nine out of 10 years, something that had only been accomplished twice in 10 years by his predecessors. Similarly, when Obey became chairman of the full committee in 1994, all 13 appropriations bills were signed into law prior to the beginning of the new fiscal year for the first time in 47 years; it hasn’t happened since.

The Appropriations Committee has a bipartisan culture: there may be partisan votes between two sets of alternatives, but the subcommittees and the full committee tend to come to consensus on just how to spend the amounts they are allocated by budget resolutions and their own internal determinations. Obey worked relatively amicably with Chairman Bob Livingston from 1995 to 1999 and with Chairman Bill Young from 1999 to 2005; his relationship with Jerry Lewis, chairman in 2005–07 and now ranking minority member, has seemed more strained. After September 11, Obey and other Appropriations leaders backed George W. Bush’s emergency appropriation of $40 billion, but put restrictions on spending—the first $10 billion could be spent after consultation with congressional leaders, the next $10 billion only after giving Congress 15 days of notice in which members could make objections, the last $20 billion only with congressional approval. In October Bush asked for $20 billion more for homeland security; Obey, like Robert Byrd in the Senate, thought that more was needed. He delayed the measure for two days in November because the Republican leadership would not allow a vote on his amendment for $7 billion more; Obey argued that more was needed for, among other things, protecting nuclear sites, but the Republicans passed a rule 216–211 blocking the amendment.

Obey was ranking Democrat on the Labor-HHS Subcommittee, the focus of the appropriations process in fall 2002; the conservative Republican Study Committee was pressuring the leadership to bring up Labor-HHS and hold it to the Bush budget limits, while Obey and subcommittee Chairman Ralph Regula, who worked together harmoniously, argued that they would be forced to cut worthy programs. Obey asked Speaker Dennis Hastert to allow four alternatives on the floor, in vain, and all but the defense and military construction appropriations were delayed until after the election and not passed until February 2003. In June 2003, Obey proposed to restore $1 billion to military housing and to increase homeland security spending by $1 billion, to be financed by reducing the tax cut on those earning more than $1 million a year; this was brushed aside as an invasion of Ways and Means’s prerogatives. In June 2004 the House leadership gave him a floor vote on a proposal to increase discretionary spending, largely education, homeland security and veterans’ health care, by $14 billion and scaling back tax cuts. It was defeated 184–230. But Obey did help facilitate the passage of other appropriations. When incoming Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis reduced the number of subcommittees from 13 to 10, Obey said Democrats “had no input whatsoever.” “The result of this is you have not seen power this centralized since the days of Czar Cannon,” he said.

Obey is not one of those appropriators who load up their districts with earmarked projects, though he has supported some. But he has paid close attention to district interests. Most important is the plight of Wisconsin dairy farmers; since 1937 the Agriculture Department has fixed milk prices by a formula that allows higher prices the farther a farm is from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. This increases prices to consumers, creates an oversupply of milk and reduces dairy prices in the Upper Midwest. Obey opposed the Northeast Dairy Compact, which allowed New England states to set higher prices, and it finally expired in September 2001. He voted against the farm bill in 2002; he supports its Milk Income Loss Contract provision but complained that it left in place unfair Federal Milk Marketing orders. In October 2004 he was miffed when House Republican leaders took the MILC program out of a drought and hurricane emergency appropriation and in January 2005 said that, despite George W. Bush’s endorsement of the program, it would be hard to get an extension because of administration cuts in other farm programs. In 2005, he got it renewed as part of a disaster bill, but was angered when the Agriculture Committee in September decided to let it expire just before the end of the current farm bill, meaning it wouldn't be included in the budget baseline for the next farm bill, due to be reauthorized in 2007. “With all respect to the sainted authorizers, I have no intention of paying attention to their will. This ain’t the way a rational legislative body would work.” In May 2006 he got an extension of MILC passed so that it would be included in the budget baseline.

Obey has stirred controversy on a number of issues. In 2005 he got an amendment in appropriation condemning proselytizing at the Air Force Academy; when Republican John Hostettler said this was part of “the long war on Christianity in America,” Obey demanded that he withdraw the remark. He supported the $51.8 billion emergency Katrina appropriation, but his amendment that FEMA report directly to the president was defeated along party lines. “The problem is that the agency that we are appropriating most of the money to has demonstrated with great clarity that it is spectacularly dysfunctional.” He complained that Lewis did not clear with him a committee Surveys and Investigation staff review of the measure; he was said to be angry that Lewis had blocked the year before an S&I review of Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon intelligence analysis operation. In February 2006, he called the Bush budget “wrongheaded and embarrassing” and said the administration had “the most fiscally irresponsible people to ever occupy the White House.” He was especially critical of the freeze on Pell grants. In May 2006 he sought to cut military aid to Egypt after the arrest of democratic politician Ayman Nour; despite administration opposition, the committee cut $200 million. He has been a furious critic of the work of the Architect of the Capitol in constructing the Capitol Visitors Center. In May 2005 he blocked approval of office space plans for three weeks, under a provision requiring approval by both the committee’s chairman and ranking member, and pushed an amendment to transfer all authority from the Architect to the GAO and appoint an inspector general in his office. The amendment passed the House with the legislative branch appropriation in June, but the Architect made the provision moot when he announced in August that he would not seek renomination at the end of his 10-year term in January 2007.

The practice of earmarking funds became vastly more common during the years Republicans held a majority in the House, and as an appropriator who did relatively little earmarking on district projects Obey seemed not necessarily averse to changes although, as he pointed out in May 2006, identifying earmarks would help rather than hurt many members in their districts. “You list earmarks and all that’s going to do is to encourage more of them.” When he and Robert Byrd took over as Appropriations chairmen, they faced the problem that only two appropriations had been passed by both houses; the House had passed all but one by July 4, but the Senate had not acted in the fall, and the House Republican leadership decided not to bring them up after the election. Obey criticized that decision. “Either the Congress will be consumed for months trying to pass those remaining bills . . . or it will be forced to pass some long-term continuing funding resolution. Either of those scenarios would represent lousy outcomes, but they would have been made unavoidable by Republican inaction today.” Obey and Byrd decided to take the continuing resolution route, with "limited adjustments.” And they announced they would not allow any earmarks to go into effect in the budget year ending September 30. “The best way to get people’s attention that there needs to be serious reform is to say there won’t be any earmarks. We have to build in some protection for when some idiot goes too far and fouls the nest. The problem is not earmarking. The problem is the abuse of earmarking.” This of course was hailed by earmark opponent and conservative Republican Jeff Flake: “If Chairmen Obey and Byrd are serious about this, then they deserve some praise. If they’re serious, they’ve managed to do something that Republican spenders have had a hard time doing lately: say no.” But Obey did not rule out earmarks in the fiscal year 2008 appropriations. With more than 32,000 earmarking requests that he needed to approve, Obey extended the time for requests from March 16 to April 27 and announced that no earmarks would be added to appropriations bills until conference; he threatened to do away with them completely if the minority party "demagogues" the issue. The resulting uproar led Republicans to stall progress on the House floor for three days. Obey and party leaders brokered a compromise that let the first two appropriations bills go without earmarks until before the August recess (at which point they could be challenged on points of order on the floor) but allowed projects to be added up front to later bills. Republicans also agreed to let the bills proceed in a timely fashion.

Looking ahead as a member of the newly-minted majority, Obey was nettled when incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi got the Democratic Caucus to limit members to six years as chairmen, a change Republicans made after they won their majorities in 1994. He told Pelosi he opposed the move; she said that if he had the votes to overturn it, she would let the caucus vote. Incoming Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said, somewhat vaguely, “It will be revisited at some point in time. When it will be revisited I don't know.”

Obey voted against the Iraq war resolution in October 2002 and has been harshly critical of administration actions in Iraq. In September 2003 he said that Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz should resign. In March 2007 the task fell to him of constructing supplemental appropriations for Iraq with timetables for withdrawal but which also provided for the troops. In the halls of the Rayburn Building, Obey was approached by antiwar activist Tina Richards who asked him to defund the war now. “We can’t get the votes. Do you see a magic wand in my pocket? We don’t have the votes for it,” he said in a six-minute interchange captured by a cellphone camera for public view on YouTube. He spoke of “idiot liberals” who didn’t understand the bill and said, “We’re trying to use the supplemental to end the war.” Similarly, in a Democratic Caucus, when asked by aspiring presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich whether the supplemental allowed privatization of Iraqi oil, “I told him to read the goddamn language. If someone’s ears are too tender for that language, that’s too bad. I did it on purpose. . . . I’m sorry he’s only at 1% in the polls. He simply does not like me and I don’t like him. I make no apology [for] what I said to Kucinich. He had it coming.”

Obey is the third most senior member of the House and one of three who served in the 1960s. He has been reelected by wide margins, except in 1994, when he won 54%-46%. He has said he plans to run at least through 2010, before the next round of redistricting. In 2006, against a 26-year-old Republican and a Green candidate, he won 62%-35%-3%. 

Committees

• Appropriations (Chmn. of 37 D)
  Labor, HHS, Education & Related Agencies (Chmn.); Select Intelligence Oversight.

Presidential Vote

District Demographics (More Info)

• Cook Partisan Voting Index: D + 2
• Area size: 19,391 square miles
• Urban Population: 42.0%
• Rural Population: 58.0%
• Population 2000: 670,462
• Population 2005 (est): 683,930
• Median Income: $39,026
• Poverty Status: 8.6%
• Military Veterans: 14.5%
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 95.1% White; 0.3% Black; 1.5% Asian; 1.5% Native Am.; 0.0% Hawaiian; 0.8% Two+ races; 0.0% Other; 0.9% Hispanic Origin;
• Ancestry: 30.4% German%; 8.6% Polish%; 7.6% Norwegian%;
• Occupation: Blue collar 31.8%; White collar 51.5%; Gray collar 16.7%;