David Obey: “I am proud of the fact that on four separate occasions this Committee on Appropriations on a bipartisan basis tried to…”

“I am proud of the fact that on four separate occasions this Committee on Appropriations on a bipartisan basis tried to add additional funding for key homeland security items even though on each of those four occasions the White House opposed our efforts. But I want to tell you that today I think the chairman has produced a perfectly reasonable bill provided that we think that the status quo is all right given everything that has happened. My problem is that I and my staff and the chairman of the full committee and his staff, have had extensive conversations with virtually every one of the national securities agencies in this country. And we got from them a year ago, a year and a half ago, and we have gotten from them as recently as a few weeks ago, their honest best estimates about where we need additional support in order to increase security of people on the home front. The problem we have today is that we cannot put the resources in this bill that we ought to be putting in because the Congress, the majority party in the Congress, has decided that instead their number one and virtually only priority is tax cuts.”