David Obey: “I rise to support the Orton amendment. Mr. Chairman, I want to make clear from the start that the issue is not whether…”

“I rise to support the Orton amendment. Mr. Chairman, I want to make clear from the start that the issue is not whether or not projects being built with contract authority are good ones or bad ones. That is beside the point. Some of them are good and some of them are bad, no doubt. The question simply, to me, Mr. Chairman, is whether or not we are going to treat all spending the same when it comes to making spending vulnerable to the President's ability to review it. Mr. Chairman, the issue is simply why should contract authority be exempt when money spent through direct appropriations is not exempt from the President's review? As the ranking Democrat on the Committee on Appropriations, I stood on this floor last week and offered an amendment which was accepted by this committee which enabled the President to review every single project approved for fiscal 1995 in the appropriations process. I happen to think most of those projects are perfectly defensible. I happen to think that most of the projects that are financed by the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure under contract authority are perfectly defensible. However, that is not the question. I also think that we can make the same argument with respect to deficit reduction on appropriated earmarks that the gentleman has made with respect to contract authority.”