David Obey: “I don't like to have to oppose this amendment, but the fact is where some of the previous amendments were merely…”

“I don't like to have to oppose this amendment, but the fact is where some of the previous amendments were merely troublesome, this amendment is irresponsible. Now, let us point out what's happened so far. What we have going on here is a ``let's pretend'' game. We have the administration telling us that this bill is runaway spending, and they threaten to veto the bill when in fact this bill in real terms is only a little over a 2 percent increase over last year. It is a large difference with the President's budget, but that's because he tried to cut $7.5 billion of it. In real terms, this bill goes up by less than $5 billion. By now we have a number of people in this House who are trying to escape from the consequences of the President's budget. So we have pretended in one amendment that we can add money to AmeriCorps by taking money out of administrative management accounts for the Labor Department. Then we are pretending that we can take out, yes, just a small amount, $500,000, out of that same account in order to deal with National Labor Relations Board. Then we are having another effort to escape the squeeze on behalf of another very worthy cause, deaf and blind children. And those have been accepted. But now this amendment comes in, and it proposes to increase funding for a very worthy cause, Center for Disease Control TB Elimination Program.”