David Obey: “I yield myself 15 minutes. Mr. Speaker, we are supposed to have our appropriations work done by October 1. We obviously…”

“I yield myself 15 minutes. Mr. Speaker, we are supposed to have our appropriations work done by October 1. We obviously do not have that work done. As I said yesterday, that is not unique. That has happened often in Congress. But I think something unique is happening which, in my view, no longer justifies voting for these continuing resolutions. I do not intend to vote for this continuing resolution, and I will vote against it. Continuing resolutions are supposed to be passed to give us more time to get our work done. When they are passed, we are supposed to be resolving our differences. This is now the 19th time that we have had to come to the floor and ask for yet another extension of time. I would not mind doing that if I thought we really were making progress. I have read several newspaper accounts this morning of the alleged agreements which were reached at the White House yesterday. I have read stories. If I believed that those stories were true, I would then feel fairly optimistic that in fact we could get finished within a few days over the weekend. But in fact what I know to be going on behind the scenes is at huge variance with the newspaper stories that I have seen this morning, so somebody has fed some information to a number of reporters, information which is simply not accurate. I suspect some of that misinformation has been spread by design, but I suspect that some other of it has been spread simply through honest misunderstandings.…”