Roy Blunt: “I think that my friend is right that there was a pattern that developed with the bill that included the Veterans bill…”

“I think that my friend is right that there was a pattern that developed with the bill that included the Veterans bill that we didn't like. And so in the Congress that started in 2005, we tried to restructure that so that that would not happen in the future. We were trying to break that pattern, and, in fact, we did. And in 2005, that bill passed individually, as did every other bill. In 2006, unfortunately, that was not the case, and there was a penalty to be paid for that, and I guess we paid it. But we were trying to break that pattern of coupling veterans benefits with something that was much more controversial than veterans benefits. It was part of at that time Veterans Administration and Housing and Urban Development, and so we took Veterans and put them with the Military Construction so that military families, military personnel, veterans and retirees would all be in a bill that we hoped would be the least controversial of all bills and not be the subject of that packaging to get those most controversial things done. Frankly, I think the 2005 experience showed that we were on the way to achieving that.”