David Obey: “With respect to veterans' health care, everyone has said that the original budget request was inadequate. We all agree…”

“With respect to veterans' health care, everyone has said that the original budget request was inadequate. We all agree on that. On this side of the aisle, during consideration of the Veterans Department budget we asked that $2.4 billion be made available for veterans health. The committee chose to provide $1.7 billion, instead. Now, the action that is coming today on the part of the majority party will cut an additional $200 million out of that $1.7 billion. We do not think they ought to do that. Secondly, we have heard a lot of people give some lurid examples of waste, fraud and abuse. They said, we can easily get at that if we pass this 1 percent cut. The problem is that the way the 1 percent cut is designed, we cannot get at any of that waste, fraud, and abuse. We also cannot get at any congressional Members' pork projects, any of the earmarks. One example, in the VA-HUD report on page 95, we will find a list of 444 earmarked items. The problem is that none of those items can be eliminated under this proposal before us today. All we can do is take 1 percent out of them.”