David Obey: “let me simply say that I am moving to strike the enacting clause to give the House an opportunity to reconsider what it…”

“let me simply say that I am moving to strike the enacting clause to give the House an opportunity to reconsider what it is about to do on this legislation today. Everyone recognizes in this House that we need to save money. Let me stipulate again as I have throughout the process, I fully support cutting every dollar in the macro amount, in the total amount in this bill. The only dispute that we have on the Democratic side of the aisle with those on the Republican side of the aisle is where you cut the dollars in this bill and where you do not. We think you ought to change the targets. We think you ought to cut more congressional pork, for instance. We think you ought to reconsider your decision to prevent the Coleman amendment from coming to the floor which would have allowed us to cut $400 million in Members' highway pork. We think you ought to reconsider your decision to prevent us from offering an amendment which delays for 5 years the construction and purchase of the F-22 aircraft. The F-22 aircraft is meant to replace the F-15. The F-15 is the best fighter in the world. Nobody can come close to that fighter. For us to move to replace the F-15 with the F-22 when the F-15 clearly has a military life extending out to the year 2014, for us to decide we are going to buy the replacement plane at $150 million a copy is budgetary nonsense.”