David Obey: “this argument that we have had tonight is not about cuts in this bill, it is about the way we make choices or should…”

“this argument that we have had tonight is not about cuts in this bill, it is about the way we make choices or should make choices in a bipartisan manner on issues that affect this institution and our constituents. Last month, the majority passed a budget resolution, which it has every right to do, which cut $36 billion below current services for domestic programs. The issue is how those cuts are going to be distributed both between departments and programs and within departments and programs, and it is about whether those cuts will be fair or unfair. After that budget resolution was passed, the Republican majority again, as is its right, divided that money between the 13 subcommittees on the Committee on Appropriations, and the committee began to report its bills. First, we reported agriculture. We reported a bipartisan bill, supported on both sides of the aisle, and I think the committee did a good job in distributing the cuts within the Department. But then the Republican leadership, in response to concerns expressed by some members in its caucus, responded unilaterally by unilaterally changing that bill, by cutting agriculture research, by cutting food and drug funding without consultation with anyone on this side of the aisle. And in the process they turned a bipartisan bill into a partisan one.”