David Obey: “Mr. Chairman, we have been facing three emergencies. One is with the war in Kosovo, which this bill is supposed to be…”

“Mr. Chairman, we have been facing three emergencies. One is with the war in Kosovo, which this bill is supposed to be dealing with; and then we have two others, two other weather-related emergencies; one in Central America which has created such a disastrous situation because people are not able to make a living after Hurricane Mitch in Central America. We are going to see a flood of immigrants coming into this country unless we do something about it. Second is the emergency in rural America, which is caused in part by natural disasters and in part by the collapse of farm prices for a number of commodities. When this all first began, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, tried to do the right thing. He produced a proposal to deal with the first emergency in Central America and in rural America, and he had a bipartisan approach to it which we were fully willing to support. Then his party leadership intervened and said, ``no, we do not want to do it that way.'' So they reversed course, and they attached a number of pay-for provisions to the supplemental, which were terribly risky for the national security interests of the United States.”