David Obey: “You know, Mr. Chairman, we've had a game going on in this Capitol for the last 6 years. It's called ``Shift the Shaft,''…”

“You know, Mr. Chairman, we've had a game going on in this Capitol for the last 6 years. It's called ``Shift the Shaft,'' and nowhere is it more clear than in what has happened with law enforcement funding. As I said yesterday, we've had a Kabuki dance going on in this Congress for years. What happens is each year the President comes up with a budget. He's looking for things he can squeeze out of the budget to make room for tax cuts for millionaires. And so what does he do? He cuts the guts out of our assistance to local law enforcement, and then we wonder why the crime rate has gone up the last 2 years. He cuts the guts out of law enforcement, and then each year the previously Republican-controlled Congress comes in, they restore about one-third of those cuts, they say, oh, what good boys are we. Look at what we've done to help law enforcement. And at the end of that time, we're $1.5 billion below where we were in 2001 in terms of our assistance to local law enforcement. Now, maybe that makes sense to some folks; it doesn't make sense to me, not with the explosion of meth problems all over the country, not with the explosion of drug problems. The prior Speaker of the House had a big thing about going after drug production in Colombia. We're spending hundreds and millions of dollars in Colombia, but we're not spending nearly enough money here at home to reduce the demand for those same drugs that are being produced in Colombia, and this amendment would cut that further.”