David Obey: “I do not in any way blame the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) or his colleagues in the majority party on the…”

“I do not in any way blame the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) or his colleagues in the majority party on the Committee on Appropriations for the fact that we are here with only about 5 percent of the budget passed for this year because I think they genuinely tried to perform in the tradition of the Committee on Appropriations, which is to try to reach bipartisan agreement on all appropriation bills. The reason that we got our work done on time that year is because the first thing I did when I became chairman was to walk across the partisan aisle, sit down with my Republican counterpart, then Congressman McDade, and suggest that we in a bipartisan way determine how much could be spent by each of the subcommittees, and we did that. That was the only time in the history of the Budget Act that that was done in a bipartisan way, and because we worked out our differences ahead of time and agreed to compromise ahead of time, we were left only to argue about the details, and we were able to finish all of the budget on time.”