David Obey: “this bill is here because of a massive institutional failure on the part of the Congress. Now, it is true that there are…”

“this bill is here because of a massive institutional failure on the part of the Congress. Now, it is true that there are some major victories for the President and for my party in this package. In my judgment, those major victories are here because we had a large portion of the Republican Caucus, known as the CATs, who early on this year indicated that they did not like the way the Congress handled appropriations bills the year before when we had a relatively bipartisan approach, and they decided they wanted a much more partisan approach; they wanted the bills to be written only on the Republican side of the aisle. They did not want the minority party included; they did not want to hear what our views were; they wanted to bring their agenda to the floor, so they did. They cut $1 billion out of the President's education program. They eliminated the Low-Income Heating Assistance Program. They eliminated the Summer Jobs Program. They laced the appropriation bills through with antienvironmental riders. They proposed all kinds of measures which they thought they could impose on what they perceived to be a weakened President, and then something happened. What happened is that the moderate Republicans decided they could not support that package, and the Senate Republicans also decided that some of these bills were so extreme that they would not vote for them.”