David Obey: “in the main, I have no real objections to almost all of the provisions in this bill. I would note with respect to the…”

“in the main, I have no real objections to almost all of the provisions in this bill. I would note with respect to the drought aid for farmers and the disaster relief for States, those two items were like the tail on the dog. Originally they were attached to one appropriation bill, and now they have come back here today and the tail is attached to a different dog. I would like to make a few comments about that, because I do not think much of the process that has been followed. This drought and disaster package was originally going to be folded into the Homeland Security appropriations bill. The minority had doubts about that. We had preferred to have that package handled separately so that Homeland Security could be handled separately without any attendant baubles and bells and whistles being attached. But in the interest of time, the majority decided it would be better to fold it into another bill, and we cooperated in that process. But then some very strange things happened. First of all, an offset was adopted. After much objection being raised by the conservative members of the majority party caucus, a ``let's pretend'' offset to the drought aid cost was attached to this bill, and that offset does not really offset the money in this bill until 2014. So it is a very interesting ``let's pretend'' operation.”