David Obey: “I will not take more than 3. I simply would like to, as a courtesy to the House, explain the motion. For the last 2…”

“I will not take more than 3. I simply would like to, as a courtesy to the House, explain the motion. For the last 2 weeks, the attention of the House has been focused on the efforts of the majority party to pass its reconciliation bill, which includes significant cuts in food stamps, in child support enforcement, in disability payments in order to pay for the tax cuts which this Congress has already largely passed. The problem that we have with that is that this bill, in effect, hits those same poor people a second time with cuts in education, health, worker protection programs that are in the bill. The Senate appeared to give the persons interested in this bill some hope that those cuts could be avoided by adding a $3 billion financing gimmick to their proposal. But it is clear now that that provision is being discarded, and that means that the new caps that the Appropriations Committee adopted last week will eliminate the ability of the Senate to provide that extra $3 billion. That means that the only way that we can avoid that hit is to reduce the size of the tax cuts being provided to make room in the budget for some of these crucial items. So this motion simply attempts to instruct the conferees to accept the Harkin amendment which would add $8 billion in order to pay fully for the flu pandemic work that needs to be done.…”