David Obey: “I just want to use this time to respond to a couple of claims made by our friends on the other side. One of the speakers…”

“I just want to use this time to respond to a couple of claims made by our friends on the other side. One of the speakers said they have had a big increase in the National Institutes of Health budget. What they are trying to do is have it both ways. This bill pretends that it is appropriating $2.7 billion in additional money for the National Institutes of Health, but it has language tucked into the bill which says that only $1 billion of that can be spent. I do not regard that as real money. The gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Istook) indicated that this bill is $12 billion above last year. That is because they are pretending that last year's bill cost $85 billion, when in fact it cost $96 billion. They hid billions of dollars in spending last year. In fact, when we take a look at all appropriation bills last year, they hid more than $45 billion, so they are pretending that we are above a let's-pretend level of last year, which is $45 billion higher than they are continuing to admit. On Pell grants, they brag about what they are doing for Pell grants. What a double game their party has played on that issue. Last year they passed an authorizing bill telling the country they were going to raise Pell grants by $400 for the maximum grant. They then proceeded to cut that back to $175 in the appropriation bill they passed just 2 months later.”