David Obey: “I want to say that I think this bill being brought forth today is an excellent bill. It will strengthen America's…”

“I want to say that I think this bill being brought forth today is an excellent bill. It will strengthen America's security, and every Member interested in doing that ought to vote for it. The four security-related appropriation bills which we will bring to the floor, Military Construction, Homeland Security, State/Foreign Operations and Defense, will come in at a level about $2 billion above the President's request. This is a key bill in doing that. I do want to make a few comments about what I understand was said while I was off the floor a few minutes ago with respect to earmarks. Let us trace what the facts are. The last time the Democrats controlled the appropriations process, I was chairman of the Appropriations Committee. In those days, earmarking was focused on about four subcommittees. There were no earmarks whatsoever in the Labor-Health- Education bill the year that I was chairman. Two years ago, there were over 3,000 when the Republicans were running the show. When we took over the Congress last year, the Republicans had not passed a single appropriation bill on the domestic side of the ledger. So we had to complete their work for them. And one of the ways we did that was to put a moratorium on all earmarks for the year. We promised at the time that we would try to resurrect the process, provided that we had a process that was more transparent.”