David Obey: “On this side of the aisle, because this bill has not been on the floor for 3 years, we want to see this bill voted on.…”

“On this side of the aisle, because this bill has not been on the floor for 3 years, we want to see this bill voted on. Speaking very frankly, politically, we would be delighted to finally see this House vote on this bill, and substantively we would also be delighted to see us vote on the bill and would like to see it done tomorrow. We are operating under a unanimous consent agreement under which some 11 Democratic amendments have been laid out in the unanimous consent request with time limits attached to them. We would be very happy to attach time limits to all remaining amendments. We believe that 80 percent of the amendments on the Democratic side will not be offered. Of those that will be offered, our understanding from talking to most of the Members is that they will be offered and withdrawn after an explanation of what the Member was trying to do for 5 minutes. I know of only two or three amendments on our side that do not fit that category and on which we need to do further work, but we are willing to work out time limits on all of those.”