David Obey: “I hope that we are not about to spend another couple of fruitless hours. Excuse me, but I have laryngitis, so probably…”

“I hope that we are not about to spend another couple of fruitless hours. Excuse me, but I have laryngitis, so probably everybody will be happy about that. But the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis) is nodding yes. Mr. Speaker, I want to put this bill in the context of what is happening to the budget in this end-of-the-session snarl that we always appear to get in. Last Friday Senator Byrd was told by Senator Stevens that the process which the majority party would like to follow is as follows: He was told that by Friday the Republican majority would have laid out for all of the bills that were still unsigned, they would lay out what the approximate wishes of the majority party would be on those bills, what the bills would look like if the majority party could write them. They then wanted us to take that paper and come back to them with our honest response about what our differences were that would have to be resolved in order for us to get signed bills, and they were hoping that we would have no more than 10 objections to each bill. We have gotten some information since that time, but we still frankly feel that the basic Johnnie Higgins work has not been done, the basic nitty-gritty work has not been done, in a number of these bills so that we know exactly what it is the majority wants to do.”