David Obey Quotations

This (the FEMA reduction) is something that isn't going to stick.

would weigh down the homeland security agency with huge amounts of non-homeland security responsibilities.

We have had to drag this administration kicking and screaming to get additional funding for border security. If he is finally serious about securing our borders I say 'Welcome sir, it's taken you long enough,

I wouldn't mind wagering there will be, at best, a tiny dribble of sales.

It is a moral imperative that we adopt that amendment on the defense bill. Otherwise the $21 million in this bill for victims of torture is a joke and a sham.

represents yet another effort to conceal the full costs of meeting the challenges in Iraq until after the election.

Recent news reports suggesting that the CPB increasingly is making personnel and funding decisions on the basis of political ideology are extremely troubling.

We have to take a look at what advertising itself contributes to added health costs, especially when it is aimed at gullible people.

Tomlinson's resignation should be used to bring people together, not divide them as he and the administration have done,

The defense bill should be about delivering equipment and support to our troops. Instead, it is being used to deliver a multi-billion bonanza to oil companies.

What we should be doing in this amendment is to provide every single dollar that we need to conduct the operation now going on in Kosovo. We should not provide one dime less and neither should we try to use this to play games with the budget.

We asked for specific information on how they (FEMA) are awarding contracts and who contracts are going to,

Yet because the administration has not consulted the agencies it is moving around, the proposal risks creating huge new redundancies and unnecessarily expanding the size of government at a huge cost to taxpayers.

The president's speech was an admission of gross miscalculation,

we will have lost an important safety net for Wisconsin's dairy farmers.

throwing money at the problem with no game plan.

What that, in essence, says is that you're not going to worry about the biggest disasters that could occur, you're only going to worry about the smaller ones,

every day that we delay professionalizing FEMA and depoliticizing it is another day that taxpayers' money is being spent by an agency which has been demonstrated under these circumstances to be incompetent.

FEMA still does not know any more about what it was doing last week than it was a month ago, ... an incompetent agency.

The services provided to patients are so much broader in scope than in the past, all of that costs more money and I believe that it all has value.

This bill is replete with gimmicks. It hides $45 billion in budgetary sleight of hand. This would be laughable if it wasn't so corrosive to the public's perception of what we are doing.

This bill is replete with gimmicks, ... It hides $45 billion in budgetary sleight of hand. This would be laughable if it wasn't so corrosive to the public's perception of what we are doing.

This bill does nothing whatsoever to stop the fleecing of the taxpayer by listing earmarks on tax bills.

They get rid of the symbol but still keep the pork.

They are targeting programs for poor people to pay for tax cuts for rich people.

It makes no sense to tell the country and the profession that we will make the investment to pass it, and then turn around and not fund it.

Instead of telling us who is doing what and how, we got a few spreadsheets.

By the administration's own estimates, the new Homeland Security Department would employ at least 160,000 people,

You've got the votes. Let's pass this turkey, get it on to the president, let him veto it, let's clear the air and then let's really sit down and do business,