David Obey: “I yield myself 1 minute to answer the gentleman's question. The gentleman wants to know why do we have money in this…”

“I yield myself 1 minute to answer the gentleman's question. The gentleman wants to know why do we have money in this bill for the census? Simple. It's because the Secretary of Commerce asked us to put it in because they've had a huge technical screw-up in the Department of the Census. The last time I looked, the Secretary of Commerce was appointed by the President of the United States, Mr. George W. Bush. He wants to know why we have money in this bill for prisons. Simple. We've been told by the Bureau of Prisons--last time I looked, it's run by the Bush Administration--that if we didn't provide this money, because of cost overruns they're going to have to fire guards and lay off people in Federal prisons. Anybody interested in law and order I don't think is going to be happy about that. So it seems to me it is responsible to respond to emergencies on both the domestic side and on the international side. I'm sorry that the gentleman doesn't seem to be aware of the fact that we have, in writing, requests from both of those agencies, but that happens to be the fact. And that's the answer.”