Jay Dickey: “in 1995, when I was fortunate enough to get on this committee, I asked what subcommittees I would be on and one was…”

“in 1995, when I was fortunate enough to get on this committee, I asked what subcommittees I would be on and one was called the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education. I asked people about that committee, and they said this is one time that you can go into deliberations and it will not be political; that there will be people like Louis Stokes on the other side who are just as concerned about poor people, just as concerned about medical needs of people, and just as concerned about all these programs that we have, NIH and all these programs that we have; that is, it is completely nonpartisan. Well, I am afraid to say that is not true. I would like to point out why and how I can come to that conclusion right now. We have had a subcommittee process going on here where we have laid out this whole plan, and I think the chairman has done an excellent job, and I believe that the opposition believes the same thing. In the subcommittee there was not one amendment that had a setoff to it, there was not one amendment mentioned. It was an ambush that was being planned, a political ambush, not an ambush in any other fashion or in a constructive way. They were sanitizing themselves and saying no, we are not going to have setoffs, we are not going to match these things. That could either be it was politically motivated, or they really and truly agreed this was a tremendous balance of all the interests in every respect.…”