David Obey: “I want to walk through once more what the record is with respect to dealing with this problem. Right after 9-11, the…”

“I want to walk through once more what the record is with respect to dealing with this problem. Right after 9-11, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) and I went down to the White House. He and I and our staff chiefs, when we were locked out of our offices because of the anthrax scare, he and I went downtown to the White House after we had spent a week talking to every security agency in town, virtually, trying to find out what they thought the needs were on the homeland security front. We went down to the White House, expecting to have a give-and-take discussion about what additional funding we ought to provide. We ran smack into the President of the United States, who walked into the room, shook hands, sat down, and then said, and I am paraphrasing, but this is pretty close, he said, well, I understand some of you want to provide more money for homeland security; but I want you to know that my good friend, Mitch Daniels, tells me that we have more than enough money in the budget for our request. I want you to know if Congress spends one dime more on homeland security than we have asked for in our budget, I will veto the bill.”