James T. Callahan: “sometimes it is amazing to me the memory of some of our colleagues about we did nothing this year. One of my…”

“sometimes it is amazing to me the memory of some of our colleagues about we did nothing this year. One of my responsibilities in the House is to Chair the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Export Financing and Related Programs, how much money we are going to give the President for foreign aid. It is not a pleasant job. But just to remind my colleagues, we did our job. The President wanted $13.5 billion. We did our job, but we would not give him all he wanted. We passed the bill through the House, we passed it through all the committees, we passed it through the Senate, but the President said, ``There is no sense in sending it down here, because I will veto it if you do not give me another $1 billion.'' Well, we felt like we had better things to do with that $1 billion. But the President said no, and there we were faced with the possibility of shutting the government down or giving him his $1 billion. So it was not that we did not do our job, because we did everything we were supposed to do, except the President refused to sign the bill, telling us that unless we gave $1 billion more, that he was going to shut the government down.”