David Obey: “God help us all if that were to happen. Let me simply say, Mr. Speaker, you know, the President has not vetoed any of…”

“God help us all if that were to happen. Let me simply say, Mr. Speaker, you know, the President has not vetoed any of these bills. The last time I looked, our Republican friends were in control of both Houses; and yet they have been able to pass only two appropriations bills through both Houses and both of those have been signed. They all relate to the funding of one department, the Defense Department, but four of the bills that have yet to be passed have not even yet passed the other body, in the real world known as the Senate; and that means that the main problem has been that the majority party has not been able to reach agreement with itself. As the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) indicated earlier, every time an appropriations bill came to the floor, we were told, ``Well, we know it has problems, we know that this cannot be passed until it is fixed, but pass it on. This is only the first inning, we will fix it later.'' And now, because of that, we have all of those runners piled up on second base, and none of them are going home. That is why the government is again off the track, or the train is off the track. I repeat what I said earlier, the reason we are in this position is because early on, the majority party leadership decided that above all else, they were going to keep their party together and they were going to pass each of these bills on their side of the aisle alone, if necessary.”