David Obey: “Mr. Speaker, in the bill which the President vetoed last week, in addition to funding for the troops in Iraq, we…”

“Mr. Speaker, in the bill which the President vetoed last week, in addition to funding for the troops in Iraq, we provided funding for a number of other high-priority purposes. We provided additional funding above the President's request for veterans' health care, something which the President did not want. We added additional funding to defend the country against a potential epidemic from the pandemic flu virus that our scientists are concerned about. The President asked for that money 3 years ago, but this time around said he didn't want it in the bill. The President said he did not want to see the money that we put in the bill for homeland security and a variety of other programs. It seemed to me the administration took special pleasure in also objecting to the fact that we had agricultural disaster funding in the bill and that we had the funding in the bill to respond to the court decision on western salmon and we also had funding in the bill to deal with Western school programs that had been allowed to lapse by the previous Congress and several other provisions like that. The President said that those programs didn't belong in this bill because they weren't emergencies. Well, in fact, I think the President had it backwards because what the President seemed to suggest is that the only legitimate funding for an emergency appropriation would be for the war in Iraq.”