David Obey: “Mr. Chairman, if you follow the logic of the last speaker, what you are saying is that we should provide in this bill…”

“Mr. Chairman, if you follow the logic of the last speaker, what you are saying is that we should provide in this bill $3.25 billion to the airline industry, which we do not owe, but that we should not provide the funds in the bill to reimburse the volunteers for services, for which we do owe. I find that that makes no sense whatsoever. The gentleman from New York (Mr. Walsh) is absolutely right. This is an obligation which government has. We should not blame the recipients, we should not blame the participants in this program for the screw-ups of the agency on their bookkeeping balances. The fact is that this is totally defensible at a time when we are trying to encourage volunteerism, at a time when we are trying to encourage a sense of self-sacrifice. It would be a strange message indeed to say that we are not going to meet our obligations to the volunteers under this program.”