David Obey: “Mr. Speaker, I think Members will recall when we were sitting around here last February and March waiting for the…”

“Mr. Speaker, I think Members will recall when we were sitting around here last February and March waiting for the President to send up the supplemental and talking about starting the appropriations bills after we got back from the spring recess. The dogwoods bloomed and the cherry trees bloomed and, finally, the azaleas; and yet we had no appropriations bills. So then we had talked about how busy the summer was going to be after we had gotten back from the Memorial Day recess. We had droughts across most of the country. We had forest fires in the West. Tiger Woods won the U.S. Open, and the All Star Game ended in a tie, and nearly three-quarters of the appropriations bills during that time never even got to the House floor. After all of that transpired, we left for the August recess talking about how impossible the fall would be. We were going to have long nights and late nights, and that was going to be the only way that the House could get its work done before the election. Well, we returned in September and we did not work those long weeks or those long nights. The Republican leadership of the House would not let the chairman of the committee take up the bills that the committee had reported. And in September we had a continuing of the work style of the previous 3 or 4 months.”