David Obey: “sometimes Members of the minority have to take time to spell out what the majority is doing, because it appears that the…”

“sometimes Members of the minority have to take time to spell out what the majority is doing, because it appears that the thought police in the majority caucus prevent many people on the majority side from expressing what it is that they are really doing, even those who disagree with what they are doing. The committee originally decided that this computer 2000 problem was so severe that it justified being handled as an emergency, and they put the money in this bill and in the Treasury-Postal bill to deal with it. Now, because of an internal revolution once again in the Republican Caucus, this emergency money is being taken out and we are being told: ``Well, do not worry, we are going to gather it all together in some supplemental bill. We will deal with it at some future time. We do not know how we will pay for it, but it will be out of mandatory programs.'' They leave us wondering, number one, whether they will ever be able to pass that emergency legislation at all. Secondly, they leave us wondering if they do target mandatory programs, whether it will be Medicare or whether it will be Social Security or what programs they will go after in order to fund this emergency when they get around to feeling that it is really an emergency. Mr. Speaker, I want to point out that there was a very good reason why the committee put this money in in the first place. It is a ``little'' problem if all of a sudden in the year 2000 our FAA computers go dark.…”