David Obey: “I do not believe that either the chairman of the committee, and I certainly know that the ranking Democrat on the…”

“I do not believe that either the chairman of the committee, and I certainly know that the ranking Democrat on the committee is not comfortable with this process, not comfortable with the allocations that have been put forward for crucial legislation for the American people. At issue and still hanging out there are everything that goes to Health and Human Services and Education that the government does, things crucial to the health of our people, crucial to the education of many; also the issue of veterans health care, as the gentleman from Wisconsin said. We still have not adequately funded and taken care of identified problems with veterans health care, and yet money to do that in the bill coming up later today was stripped from the legislation late in the night. We have the issue of homeland security. I serve on the Select Committee on Homeland Security, and we know that we are not meeting the needs adequately of aviation security; of port security; of the other aspects of homeland security; of first responders, those who we are going to call on, our fire, our police, and others in our home States who do not have the tools they need to respond day to day, let alone to potentially catastrophic emergencies and terrorist attacks.”