David Obey: “I originally had intended to vote for this resolution and this bill, but then about an hour ago my staff brought it to…”

“I originally had intended to vote for this resolution and this bill, but then about an hour ago my staff brought it to my attention something which they discovered about this bill. Buried in the bill, in fact, not in the bill at all, but in the budget for the House Administrative Office, is a $750,000 item that would begin to provide expanded dental care for Members of Congress and their staff July 4 of next year. No Member on this side of the aisle, to my knowledge, knew anything about it, and no member of our staff knew anything about it. I am only the senior Democrat on the Committee on Appropriations, and yet I did not know that that provision was at all tied into this bill. So we called the majority staff and asked about it, and they told us that they did not know anything about it. I believe the person that my staff talked to on the majority side, but I do not know what that means in terms of who put that provision in the bill. I assume the tooth fairy. But somebody did. And until that provision is removed or until we have an assurance that it is going to be removed, and I understand that the majority is going to remove it, nobody on this side of the aisle intends to vote for this rule or the accompanying bill.”