Haley Stevens: “I am sorry to do this, Mr. President, but my distinguished friend, our chairman, I think is implying that this was done…”

“I am sorry to do this, Mr. President, but my distinguished friend, our chairman, I think is implying that this was done at the request of the White House. That is not my information. It was a decision of the Speaker because the Office of Management and Budget has not delivered to us the information we need to close this bill. The Speaker asked, notwithstanding the White House request that we get the bill done today, that we wait until we get the information from the Office of Management and Budget. The difficulty is this: We have faced such an enormous demand from the Office of Management and Budget to adhere to a line, a top line barrier that the Office of Management and Budget is willing to accept, $1.6 billion from the airline bill, airline supplemental bill, stabilization bill, that expired. We have such a blind mindset down there about top lines that we are unwilling to look at reality. The reality is, the Senate and the House have worked, and we are almost closed, and now we are waiting for some more Enron-type offsets, offsets that are meaningless in order to justify this top line mentality with which we are dealing. From my point of view, I think we should go see the President.”