David Obey: “I am sorry to interfere with the gentlelady's time, but I just wanted to bring something to the attention of the…”

“I am sorry to interfere with the gentlelady's time, but I just wanted to bring something to the attention of the gentleman from California. He mentioned that the time stamp on the proposition he received was 6:31 p.m. last night. That was one of only two packages. That time stamp refers to the time at which the legislative counsel got this copy to the staff. The staff still had to read it, to check it out, to make certain it did what it was supposed to do. And that was on the easiest package, that was on the President's package. And everybody knows what the President's request was and what the Warner amendment is. The time stamp on the other package is 9:30 p.m. last night. What that means is that you have over 200 pages, which we got from legislative counsel, and the staff had to read every page of that to make certain, again, that it did what it was intended to do, and to make sure that, among other things, it reflected the changes that had been demanded by the White House at the same time.”