David Obey: “I simply want to say if he feels badly about that and wants to know why that is the case, all he has to do is look in…”

“I simply want to say if he feels badly about that and wants to know why that is the case, all he has to do is look in the mirror along with a number of his other colleagues. Why do I say that? Because I tried about a month ago to make clear to the House that I thought the Appropriations Committee staff had had insufficient time to take a look at and screen a number of these earmarks, especially those that came early in the process. So I offered up another option, and what I proposed is that the committee simply be given more time to screen those earmarks, and that before the Congress adjourned in August, we would then publish all of them, and any persons who had doubts about them would have more than 30 days over the August recess, and our staffs could have reviewed each and every one of them for a much longer period of time. The gentleman and others on that side of the aisle chose to belittle that proposal, suggesting that we were trying to, quote, ``hide earmarks until conference.'' Not so. All we were trying to do was to give the staff and any Members who were interested additional time in which to review those earmarks.”