David Obey: “I would like to give an example. The Slaughter amendment that was on the floor last week on the arts, the gentlewoman…”

“I would like to give an example. The Slaughter amendment that was on the floor last week on the arts, the gentlewoman from New York in an earlier paragraph of the bill tried to cut several million dollars from one account so that when we got to the next paragraph in the bill, she could use that money for another purpose. She was not allowed by the House to consider both items at the same time. So the House first adopted the first half of her amendment, and then had a donnybrook about what would happen to it when we got to the next paragraph. If she had instead told the House that she wanted to cut $22 million out of the Interior bill so that when we came to this bill we could use it for border inspectors, for instance, what that lockbox amendment would say is that we could not transfer that money for that purpose. We could only use it to reduce the amount of spending in that bill, and we could not use it for the purpose which was intended, because our rules prevent us from transferring money from one appropriation bill to another at that point in time. That is the problem with the bill. It means that the legislative intent of the House as expressed by the sponsor, if a majority votes for that amendment, cannot then be carried out in a subsequent bill. That is why the lockbox is a well-intentioned idea but it has a harebrained result, and it does not have diddly squat to do with Medicare and social security, and the gentleman knows it.”