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David R. Obey

Former U.S. Representative (1969 to January 2011)

(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Why He Matters

A brash politician who as a freshman lawmaker yelled at a veteran committee member, Obey represented Wisconsin's 7th Congressional District for four decades. He was a staple on the House Appropriations Committee, serving as the chairman or ranking minority member from 1994 to 2011.

But in May 2010, Obey pulled the plug on his long congressional reign, announcing his retirement when faced with a challenging reelection fight from Ashland County District Attorney Sean Duffy (R), a former star of MTV's "Real World." "There is a time to stay and a time to go. And this is my time to go," Obey said, describing himself as "bone tired."

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Background

At a Glance

Career History: Chair of the House Appropriations Committee (January 2007-2011); Ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee (1995 to 2007); Member of the Wisconsin State Legislature (1962 to 1969)
Birthday: Oct. 3, 1938
Hometown: Wausau, Wis.
Alma Mater: University of Wisconsin at Madison, B.S., 1960; M.A., 1962
Spouse: Joan

Religion: Catholic
DC Office: 2314 Rayburn House Office Building, 202-225-3365
District Office: Wausau, 715-842-5606; Superior, 715-398-4426
Email
Web site

Path to Power

Obey grew up as a Republican in Wausau, Wis. As a junior high school student in 1952, he filled up a wagon with Republican literature for President Dwight Eisenhower (R), Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-Wis.) and Rep. Mel Laird (R-Wis.), attached the wagon to his bicycle and rode around the neighborhood to distribute the information. That was the last election Obey considered himself to be a Republican.

Obey has pointed to a handful of factors in his transformation into a Democrat, but he mainly cites a story about his junior high American history teacher, Arthur Henderson, who was labeled a communist and a Bolshevik by Sen. McCarthy. "He taught us about the Bill of Rights. He taught us that it guaranteed Americans the right to be wrong or to believe in whatever they wanted. He taught us the history of the 1920s, which showed what happened to American workers as they tried to exercise their right to organize and bargain collectively in order to achieve their fair share of the American dream," Obey said. McCarthy supporters tried unsuccessfully to get Henderson fired, but were successful in making his life miserable. It was enough to get Obey to vote for Adlai Stevenson(D) for president in 1956.

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Obey went to college at University of Wisconsin in Madison and did graduate work in Soviet politics expecting to be a teacher before turning to politics. In 1962, before he had finished his master's, Obey ran for the Wisconsin House and won. In 1969, then-Rep. Laird, for whom Obey distributed leaflets as a junior high school student, left Congress to become President Richard Nixon's defense secretary, and Obey jumped on the opportunity to run for U.S. House. He surprisingly won in a special election in April 1969.

Appropriations Veteran

Just a few months after his election, when he was just 30, Obey got a seat on the House Appropriations Committee, where he still serves 40 years later. He has always been a fireballer, and in his first term in Congress, he cursed at veteran Rep. John Rooney (D-N.Y.) after Rooney told him to sit down.

Obey had to wait until March of 1994, after the death of William Natcher (D-Ky.), to become the youngest Appropriations chairman since 1919. In an unusual election for committee chair, he beat out Neal Smith (D-Iowa), who was a more senior member, 152 to 106, in a full Democratic Caucus vote. Funding the government was a priority for him, and he is the only chairman alive to complete all 13 spending bills by the Sept. 30th deadline. He managed the feat in 1995.

Obey has long been a Democratic Party leader, but he failed on multiple occasions to move up the formal leadership ladder. He ran for House Budget Committee chair in 1980 and lost to then-Rep. Jim Jones (D-Okla.) by just five votes. Then, in 1984, he pondered running for Democratic Caucus Chair but backed down when it became clear that Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.) had more support. Still a powerful member of the Caucus, Obey pushed Gephardt to run for Majority Leader after Jim Wright (D-Texas) and Tony Coelho (D-Calif.) retired.

He is the third most senior member of the House and has easily been reelected every two years with the exception of 1994, a hard year for Democrats across the board, when he won 54 to 46 percent.

He was facing a tough reelection challenge in 2010, when he retired. His open seat is ripe picking for Republicans in their quest to regain the majority.

The Issues

On his official House Web site, Obey says that his experiences growing up - not just his hatred for McCarthyism - shaped his liberal philosophy on taxes, government oversight and health care.

He talks about his father working in a floor business that used asbestos for years,unaware that it caused cancer even though the manufacturers were, and says that is why he fights for worker safety and more government regulation of businesses. He talks about his father going to the hospital for an operation and coming out with his arms paralyzed, explaining that illustrated how families can be perilously close to economic disaster and need access to decent health care.

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He talks about being scared that he wouldn't be able to finish his college education after his father lost his job while Obey was at Madison. He said that experience made him realize the importance of making college affordable.Furthermore, Obey also worked at a paper mill for summers during college and said watching the mill dump waste into the Wisconsin River helped convince him that more environmental regulation was needed.

Obey is more conservative than most Democrats on key social issues. He is personally opposed to abortion and voted for the late-term abortion ban, but has said that he doesn't think he should push his views on others. When the Catholic Church rebuked Catholic politicians who didn't seek to ban abortion, Obey spoke out against the church's actions. He also is opposed to gun control, saying that one of the guns outlawed by the Assault Weapons ban was owned by 23,000 people in his district. Still, he voted with the Democratic Party 98 percent of the time in the 110th Congress.

Earmarks

For someone with serious clout who first served on the House Appropriations committee 40 years ago, Obey is a relatively conservative earmarker. The one exception has been for the Wisconsin milk industry. He and Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) added $100 million in emergency assistance to a 2001 agriculture spending bill for dairy farmers coping with low milk prices. It was the third year in a row Congress had approved assistance for dairy farmers and the subsidies have continued to flow.

As wasteful earmarking increasingly came under public scrutiny, Obey and then-Senate Appropriations Chairman Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) banned earmarks in the fall of 2006 for the 2007 fiscal year because Congress struggled to pass spending bills in 2006.

But Obey has stood up for earmarks as an important part of the political process, and says that all budget requests are technically earmarks, obligating the Appropriations Committee to decide which ones are reasonable. He supported the 2007 bill to make earmark requests public, though he said "this is a very complicated matter."

Iraq War

A harsh critic of the Iraq war, Obey voted against giving the president the authorizing the war in 2002. In 2003, he called for Bush Defense officials Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld to resign.

After Democrats recaptured the House in 2006, Obey faced the difficult task of trying to make good on Democratic campaign promises to begin a withdrawal of U.S. troops in Iraq without seeming to pull the rug out from under troops already there.

Some liberal Democrats called for him to stop funding the war altogether through the appropriations process. He dismissed them as "idiot liberals" in a video that was a YouTube hit.

Education

Obey's childhood experiences led him to push for making higher education more available and affordable. As a veteran Appropriations Committee member, he has worked to increase funding for programs like Pell Grants and Head Start.On multiple occasions, Obey has argued for increased funding for Pell Grants. In 2001, he bashed President George W. Bush's proposed Pell Grant increase as a "token."

In 2005, the Government Accountability Office issued a report, at the request of Obey, that said the number of students eligible for Pell Grants was falling.

The Economy

Obey reluctantly supported the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street in the fall of 2008, at the same time blaming Republicans for deregulation laws that he opposed and now blame for the poor economy.

"For all of my 39 years in Congress, I have fought against trickle-down economics and the mindless deregulation that has produced today's economic crisis," Obey said.

The Network

Obey strongly supported Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) during her rise to House speaker, despite the fact that he has not always gotten along with other Pelosi allies like Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) and the late Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.).

One former Obey chief of staff, Scott Lilly, worked for the Democratic National Committee and is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress; another, Will Stone, lobbies for Denny Miller Associates. Former Appropriations Committee Chair Rob Nabors was a senior adviser to then-White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

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