David Weldon: “I rise to say while I am pleased with many of the provisions in this bill, and I certainly want to commend the chairman…”

“I rise to say while I am pleased with many of the provisions in this bill, and I certainly want to commend the chairman particularly for a hard-fought negotiation with the other body on the issue of getting a toxic substance, mercury, out of the injections that we give little babies, I have to vote ``no'' on this conference report. I want to make very clear that there is an important, I think, distinction. There has been a lot of discussion back and forth about how we had combined appropriations bills in the past as the majority is doing today. At least my recollection of the facts in the past, we were forced to combine appropriations bills typically because there was a problem getting these bills through the other body because they wanted more spending and we wanted less spending. The purpose of the combination here tonight is to achieve more spending. Now, I saw a poll recently, and it truly amazed me, if you asked the American people a question, do you think the Federal Government taxes and spends too much, you get about 85 percent of Americans agree with that statement.”