[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 118 (Monday, September 13, 1999)]
[House]
[Page H8126]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 THE REASON FOR CONFUSION IN THE HOUSE

  (Mr. OBEY asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, in case people are wondering what is happening 
here, why the House looks so disorganized, it is for the following 
reason: Those of us on the Minority on the Appropriations Committee 
have been working with the Majority on the committee all today under 
the assumption that we would have a common understanding about what the 
schedule would be for the remainder of the day, and we had expected one 
and perhaps at most two motions would be made to go to conference on 
appropriation bills.
  We were trying to cooperate with the Majority in making sure that 
that went smoothly on the matters that we understood might come before 
us. Then what happened is that evidently the House leadership decided 
it wanted to make a unilateral decision to have motions on five 
different appropriation bills. The problem is that the Majority on the 
Committee on Appropriations did not know that that was going to happen 
and neither did the Minority. In my view, that is a lousy way to run a 
railroad. The House is running around here now looking confused because 
it is confused.
  It just seems to me that there is no particular purpose to be served 
in rushing to conference on these bills when neither side even 
understood that we were going to be doing that. I am still trying to 
cooperate under these circumstances, but I would ask the House 
leadership that if we cannot do this in an orderly fashion for some of 
the remaining bills that we simply deal with it tomorrow morning, if we 
run out of bills that we can handle in a rational fashion, because 
otherwise we are simply stumbling around here. And in the process, we 
will be denying Members the opportunity to debate questions which I 
know Members wanted to debate on at least two of the bills that are 
coming up today.
  Members did not know this would be happening before they got back, 
and I think the leadership has an obligation to avoid situations like 
that.

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