Cord Byrd: “no committee in this Senate works harder than the Appropriations Committee. We have been working for months on the…”

“no committee in this Senate works harder than the Appropriations Committee. We have been working for months on the supplemental appropriations bill. We held hearings, months ago now, on the supplemental appropriations bill, hearings specifically concerning budget requests for homeland security. The administration put its feet in cement and its head in the sand and adamantly opposed the committee's request, which was in writing, and signed by Mr. Stevens and myself, to have Mr. Ridge come up and testify so that the Appropriations Committee in the Senate, following a practice of 135 years of having witnesses appear in open sessions so that the people can hear what they said--the administration did not want that, and the President put a muzzle on his Homeland Security Director and said, no, he will not come. Mr. Stevens and I wrote a joint letter asking for an appointment with the President. We wanted to state our case. The President did not answer that letter. No. Some underling answered the letter. So we had to proceed. We did. We proceeded as best we could. The full committee had excellent hearings over a period of 5 days, with testimony from firemen, policemen, local health officials, also testimony from seven Cabinet Members and the Director of FEMA. So we proceeded as best we could. We put together a bill we thought was a good bill.…”