David Obey: “I take the well to regrettably indicate that I do not intend to vote for this rule, and I do intend to support the…”

“I take the well to regrettably indicate that I do not intend to vote for this rule, and I do intend to support the gentleman from California [Mr. Beilenson] in his motion, because I think the Committee on Rules made a major mistake in deciding which amendments they were going to allow this House to vote on. We have a very serious issue facing this country with respect to refugees, and I am talking about legal refugees, not illegal refugees. The problem is that the U.S. Government makes a foreign policy decision to allow thousands and thousands and thousands of refugees to come into this country and then it dumps the cost of educating and training and supporting those refugees onto local units of government. Now, I think that ought to stop. So I offered an amendment before the Committee on Rules which would simply say that if the Federal Government is going to make a foreign policy decision to allow refugees into this country, that they then ought to pay for the cost of educating and training them and providing worker training and providing language training so that a foreign policy decision of the U.S. Government does not become an unfair burden on local taxpayers.”