David Obey: “I would very much like to be able to support this bill, and I regret very much that I cannot do so. I would like to…”

“I would very much like to be able to support this bill, and I regret very much that I cannot do so. I would like to explain why that is the case. First of all, let me simply observe that I think that this bill gives vivid testimony to the strangeness of the majority party budget resolution. This bill, in fact, eliminates $700 million of the President's initiatives in areas under the jurisdiction of this subcommittee. Those are reductions in the President's initiatives that were made by the President's own party. The reason they did that is because they understood that the President's budget increases were essentially 'let's pretend' increases; they were financed by cutting deeply into the base of existing programs such as Indian health care, which no civilized person would suggest that we cut. But nonetheless, those initiatives are now gone because of the unreality of the President's budget and the unreality of the budget resolution itself. But more importantly, my problem with this bill is that it scuttles the conservation agreement that was made 4 years ago.”