David Obey: “I hope the House will forgive my laryngitis today. Madam Speaker, I have just heard complaints from the minority side of…”

I think the gentleman from Florida has summed up the situation pretty well. In December, the House and Senate passed a 5-day continuing resolution in order to give the President time to sign the Defense appropriations bill. The President…

I would simply say, Mr. Speaker, that the White House submitted this request for disaster relief over a month ago. Everyone in this institution has known about it; in addition to which, the gentleman's staff has known for a good 2 weeks…

this Congress is broken. This place does not work.

The way I see it, we're watching a let's pretend attack on the deficit tonight by singling out these items that cost about a million bucks. If Members are concerned about the deficit, I would ask, why did they vote for two tax cuts…