David Obey: “I yield myself 13 minutes. Mr. Speaker, I do not know quite what to say about this continuing resolution. I have a lot…”

“I yield myself 13 minutes. Mr. Speaker, I do not know quite what to say about this continuing resolution. I have a lot of notes here, most of which I will not use, but let me simply note that this is another case of the failure to effectively govern by the Republican President and the Republican majority in this Congress. We are here facing an end of the fiscal year situation 3 days from now. We have failed in the basic test of governing, and I think it is important to understand why. Throughout the year, we on the Democratic side of the aisle, in the minority, have worked with the majority on every possible procedural issue and cooperated with them procedurally at every juncture so that we could enable this House to pass the 10 appropriation bills that are necessary to pass, even though we disagreed in most instances with the content of those bills. When I was asked by numerous Members of my caucus and a number of members of the press why we were cooperating procedurally when we opposed the substance of many of the bills, I made it clear. I said we were cooperating because I wanted the record to show at the end of the year, when the Republican majority failed to pass its appropriation bills by the end of the year, I wanted the record to show clearly why. Now we are here and in spite of our procedural cooperation, the Republican majority has managed to pass only two of the 10 appropriation bills under our responsibility. Why?…”