David Obey: “I yield myself 7 minutes. Mr. Speaker, ordinarily, on a piece of legislation like this, there would be virtually no…”

“I yield myself 7 minutes. Mr. Speaker, ordinarily, on a piece of legislation like this, there would be virtually no debate and it would be passed routinely, but I think, for the good of the House, we ought to review exactly what we are doing here and why we are here doing it. As you know, last month, the supplemental appropriations for Iraq and other purposes was passed by the House and then passed by the Senate. On the Senate floor, the Senate saw fit to adopt an amendment, the purpose of which was to increase the number of visas for nurses by 50,000. That is what it supposedly did. Now, after that was adopted on the Senate floor, the bill was conferenced. It passed this House some time ago, and the conference passed the Senate yesterday. Today, we are here with this concurrent resolution, and what does this concurrent resolution do? It raises the number of visas for nursing by 50,000. Why do we have to chew the same cud twice? Why are we here doing today what we thought had been done much earlier? I think it is very simple. We are here because the normal processes, the normal democratic processes of the House and the Senate have not been followed. We are here because, in an attempt to solve a debate within the Republican Caucus, extraneous material was added to the Iraqi supplemental which had no business being on that bill in the first place.…”