David Obey: “so far, with the six appropriations bills which have passed the House, we have seen bipartisan support for every single…”

“so far, with the six appropriations bills which have passed the House, we have seen bipartisan support for every single one of them. This is the first bill that will generate considerable opposition, and I want to explain why. The fault does not lie with the gentleman from New York (Mr. Walsh) or the subcommittee. He has done the very best job he could possibly do, given the allocation that he was given. The problem is that the allocation is too low, and that forces the bill to be at least a half billion dollars lower than it should be for veterans health care, and it cripples the enforcement of clean air and water laws across the country. It forces the bill to provide inadequate funding for housing for poor kids. It forces the bill to eliminate the National Service Corps, which even the subcommittee itself admits is not a serious initiative, but they had to do it to, quote, ``fit into the so-called budget rules''. It forces a number of other reductions which everyone understands in the end are essentially irresponsible. Why does it do that? It does it because the tax bill passed earlier in the year by this Congress sucked up every single dollar on the table, which meant that we had nothing left to deal with the long-term problems of Social Security, of Medicare, of education, of veterans medical care, of environmental protection or any other national priority.”