David Obey: “let me simply ask of the distinguished majority leader. Obviously all of us want to get rid of as many appropriation…”

“let me simply ask of the distinguished majority leader. Obviously all of us want to get rid of as many appropriation bills as we can. We are going to have enough real arguments on the bills where we have real differences that we ought not have arguments on bills where we may not have any real differences. But I would just like to caution, or raise one point of caution. We are going to go into conference again on the Interior bill about 2:30. We were in conference on it this morning until it was interrupted for a rollcall vote on the House floor and a leadership meeting, as I understand it. If we go back in, if everything goes well and everything is kissy-face and nobody has any problems with it, we might be able to finish by 5 o'clock or so, very optimistically speaking. But at that point it is my understanding that there is an expectation that there would then be a follow-up meeting with the White House to try to discuss the known objections that the White House has to the conference as it is being formed right now. Right now there are at least eight items which are still considered vetoable. One is the land legacy item where we have not only a $500 million difference but substantial differences not between the parties but between the Congress as an institution and the Presidency as an institution on how that package is to be handled. We have considerable shortfalls in the Native American health area, which the White House is insisting be restored.…”