David Obey: “Mr. Speaker, this bill is a pitiful Christmas tree with such a bad smell that it smells more like a garbage truck than…”

“Mr. Speaker, this bill is a pitiful Christmas tree with such a bad smell that it smells more like a garbage truck than something appropriate to Christmas. It spectacularly insults the judgment of both the House and the Senate on a number of items. Both Houses of the Congress voted to provide overtime protections for workers because the administration is trying to take those protections away from 8 million workers. This bill, without one minute of comment in the conference committee, arbitrarily at the instruction of the Republican leadership rips out those protections. Both Houses voted on a bipartisan basis to cap the number of television stations that could be owned by media conglomerates around the country. Despite that fact, again, without a moment's discussion in the conference committee, at the instruction of the leadership, this conference committee has ripped out the judgment of both Houses on that score; and they have come back with a nice cozy insider arrangement that protects all of the major media giants from having to do anything inconvenient. So much for pluralism and democracy.”