The last time all regular spending bills were individually passed by Oct. 1, the start of the government’s fiscal year, was 1994. Obey had been chairman of the Appropriations panel since early that year, but the Republicans won control of the House in November, and he lost the gavel.

What followed was a disastrous confrontation over spending between the GOP leadership under House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia (1979-99), and President Bill Clinton that climaxed in a government shutdown in late 1995. Appropriations weren’t finished until fiscal 1996 was almost half over.

The appropriations process has been largely in disarray since. On only three occasions has Congress avoided the need for one or more multibill omnibus spending measures. And only once — the year after the shutdown — were the spending bills all finished on time, but that took enactment of a last-minute omnibus.

Moreover, the bipartisanship that once was a hallmark of the House Appropriations Committee has broken down. And the committee faces continuing demand to overhaul an earmark process that has been haunted by a series of federal investigations.

Even so, Obey has already managed successes this year, particularly on the economic stimulus measure, which the chairman can claim as his own work.

“The stimulus bill is a David Obey bill,” said Georgia Republican Jack Kingston , a member of the House committee. “Knowledge is power and position is power, and he’s got both of them right now, so you’re going to see his mark on a lot of appropriations bills,” he said, reflecting the grudging respect that many members of the minority party have for the Democrat.

Obey bristles at criticism — mostly from Republicans — that the stimulus bill was a costly boondoggle. “This is the biggest spending bill in the history of the Congress,” he said. “Because this is the biggest hole in the economy in the lifetime of anybody in the Congress. You’ve got to match the solution to the size of the problem.”

And he is philosophical about being able to spend as much as he would like in the regular appropriations process, which will begin when lawmakers return June 1 from their Memorial Day recess.

Although the budget resolution for fiscal 2010 provides appropriators with roughly $1.1 trillion, the total is about $10 billion less than Obama had requested. “I’m never satisfied with things around here,” Obey allowed. “We’re going to do whatever we can with what we have.”

A Political Education

Obey wasn’t always regarded as a liberal, or even a Democrat. He started his political life as a Republican, and although his economics are decidedly left-leaning, he still holds conservative views on gun laws and abortion that mirror his rural Wisconsin constituency.

As a junior high school student in Wausau, he handed out literature for President Dwight D. Eisenhower and GOP Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy. Obey writes in his 2007 memoir, “Raising Hell for Justice: The Washington Battles of a Heartland Progressive,” that he became a Democrat after McCarthy labeled his high school history teacher a Bolshevik.

Obey has spent most of his adult life in legislative office, having been elected to the Wisconsin House in 1962. He ran for the U.S. House in 1969, and won, after President Richard Nixon tapped Wisconsin Republican Melvin R. Laird to be Defense secretary. Obey got his seat on Appropriations a few months later, but waited decades to hold the gavel.

In 1994, when Appropriations Chairman William H. Natcher of Kentucky was unable to fulfill his duties because of illness, Obey challenged his more senior colleague, Neal Smith of Iowa, for the acting committee chairmanship and won in a vote of the House Democratic Caucus. He became chairman when Natcher died, only to lose the position when Republicans took over the House a few months later. He once again assumed the helm in 2007.

Friends and foes alike say Obey will drive the appropriations process with a combination of experience, knowledge and bullheadedness. “He’s very much a son of the institution,” said David E. Price of North Carolina, chairman of the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee. “He very much guards the prerogatives of the House and the power of the purse.”

Republicans say Obey keeps them on their toes. “He’s always prepared,” said Harold Rogers of Kentucky, senior GOP member of the Homeland Security Subcommittee. “He’s very effective. He gets what he wants. He knows how to use the system.”

Obey’s view is that “if money is policy, let’s use it to advance our policy ideas,” said James Dyer, a former Republican staff director of the committee and now a lobbyist with Clark & Weinstock.

Obey has said he will work with Republicans on appropriations issues. As an example, he said GOP House members came to him with their requests when he was writing the economic stimulus bill. “A lot of Republicans didn’t want it known that they were talking to us because they would be chastised by their leadership,” he said. And when the bill reached the House floor, Republicans attacked Obey for not consulting with them. “I wasn’t going to blow the whistle on people,” he said, in explaining why he didn’t identify those GOP members who had input on the bill.

Though Obey is known to cooperate with the minority, he also has difficult relations with some Republicans. “Obey is not shy about being your ally” when he agrees with you, but he can also be blunt, said former GOP Rep. Jim Nussle of Iowa (1991-2007), who as House Budget Committee chairman and later as director of the Office of Management and Budget under President George W. Bush often clashed with Obey.

“It was clear that we had completely different jobs to do,” Nussle said of his time at OMB. “David is a passionate politician. He is not afraid of going nose to nose with you.”

Obey’s relationship with California Republican Jerry Lewis , the previous Appropriations chairman and current ranking member, has been stormy. The two clashed bitterly last year when Lewis attempted to add offshore-drilling amendments to appropriations bills, an effort Obey viewed as a political stunt.

“In some ways, the easiest job in this place is when you’re in the minority and you know you’re going to lose and you’re in it for the ride,” Obey said. (

Second-Meanest?

Obey’s fractious relationships aren’t limited to the minority. Aides, reporters and lawmakers of both parties have felt his wrath.

Friends call him passionate. Others call him mercurial and cantankerous. In 2008, Washingtonian magazine published a survey of 1,700 congressional staffers and reported that Obey was found to be the second-meanest member of the House, behind Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas. Legend has it that on any given day Obey’s intensity can be measured by the number of pencils he carries in his breast pocket.

His temper has led to a few public dust-ups. In April 1997, Obey had a confrontation on the House floor with House Republican Whip Tom DeLay of Texas (1984-2006), over Democrats’ efforts to change campaign finance law. Obey attempted to insert into the Congressional Record a Washington Post article that said lobbyists wrote legislation in DeLay’s office. DeLay objected, and the two argued — first in a public debate and then face-to-face. DeLay shoved Obey, and the two exchanged words.

In March 2007, an anti-war activist confronted Obey in a Capitol Hill hallway and criticized him for supporting a military supplemental spending bill. In a video that was widely distributed on YouTube, Obey angrily responded to the woman and denounced “idiot liberals.” He later apologized to her.

Two months later, he lambasted Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio during a House Democratic Caucus meeting. Obey expressed frustration with Kucinich’s questions about a military supplemental and addressed him with a profanity, leading some Democrats to object to Obey’s behavior. Kucinich now dismisses the incident. “Aw, come on,” he said. “He and I laughed it off afterwards.”

There are occasions, though, when Obey’s blowups win him further respect.

Former senior Senate staffer G. William Hoagland, now vice president for public policy for Cigna Corp., recalls when Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee once sneaked a health provision into an omnibus spending bill over the Appropriations Committee staff’s objections. The provision hadn’t been included in either the House- or Senate-passed versions, and so shouldn’t have been in the omnibus, recalled Hoagland, who was Frist’s budget and appropriations aide at the time.

“Obey blew his stack,” said Hoagland, the target of the tantrum. “He was right, but I also worked for leader Frist.”

Dyer has been on the receiving end of Obey’s temper and benefited from it. “If you lose your temper, you get people’s attention,” he said. “A member once told me, ‘You’ve got to let Obey talk.’ ” And when columnist Robert Novak attacked Dyer in print as a traitor to the GOP cause, Obey publicly defended the Republican aide and denounced Novak.

Obey doesn’t apologize for his outbursts. “My style is very direct. If I think something, I want people to know it,” he said. And if he thinks someone is taking a cheap shot, Obey says, he’ll get angry. “I’ll make no apology about that.”

Obey’s directness may come into play in dealings with the Senate, where Inouye is just beginning to find his way as the man in charge, and the stepping-aside of Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia — who carefully protected the prerogatives of the Senate — may strengthen the House chairman’s hand.

Inouye is “not as forceful, powerful or tough as Dave Obey,” said James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University. As a consequence, Obey will have an advantage in House-Senate conference committees on spending bills, Thurber said.

Return to Regular Order

Obey’s experience may make a difference when it comes to negotiations on specific spending questions. The Senate often has an advantage in demanding compromises because its rules generally require controversial provisions to win the support of 60 members — a three-fifths majority. Already this year, House Democrats were forced to accept changes in the stimulus bill that they opposed in order to get a conference agreement on the bill through the Senate.

Time may also work against efforts to complete all 12 regular bills by Oct. 1. Nonetheless, Obey and Inouye have committed to avoiding a large omnibus measure this year.

And with Democrats in control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, the chairmen should be able to fulfill that promise, said Robert D. Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute and a former director of the Congressional Budget Office. If they can’t, Reischauer said, “the system may be so fatally flawed that we should go back to the drawing board.”

“I hope we get back to regular order,” said Rogers. “We haven’t been there for a long time.”

With former Obey aide Nabors now ensconced as deputy director at OMB, it may be easier to bridge the inevitable disagreements between Congress and the Obama administration as appropriators attempt to hammer out deals with the White House over thorny spending issues.

Nabors has long experience on both sides of the negotiating table. He worked for the Appropriations Committee for four years and before that had been at OMB. “I pray for him daily,” Obey joked.

And he made it clear that even though his former chief aide is at the White House, Obey does not intend to roll over to the administration. “I’m certainly willing to work with a Democratic president,” he said. “But I work with him, not for him.”

For example, Obey has said he will oppose a prime administration request, to increase funding for the International Monetary Fund, unless European nations do more to stimulate their faltering economies.

But working with the president is going to be easier for Obey than it has been in the past. “For the first time since I’ve been here, I’m pleased with a president’s budget,” he said.

Obama and Obey appear to agree on basic questions of economic equity for the disadvantaged and assistance for the middle class. Here, Obey often shows a tendency toward quaint expressions as well as fiery rhetoric. He is a devotee of the writings of a newspaper columnist, Don Marquis, who was popular in the early part of the 20th century. Marquis invented a philosopher-cockroach named Archy, who would use a typewriter to leave messages that were printed in the newspaper the following day.

Obey often peppers his speeches with Archy’s sayings, including one about politicians: “Did you ever notice that when a politician gets an idea, he gets it all wrong?” Obey’s fondness for protecting those who can’t protect themselves is summed up by another favorite Archy saying: “As the pompous world goes by, I see things from the underside.”

With Obama’s election, Obey has mellowed on the issue of his own retirement. In 2006, he told reporters, “I intend to die in the well of the House, kicking the hell out of somebody.”

Now his view has changed: “All I’ve ever wanted to do is serve with one good president.” Obey lists four conditions for his retirement: that the economy is stabilized, that universal health care is enacted, that “equal opportunity” is enhanced and that the government make a commitment to save the planet.

“I’m hoping that under this guy we can do all four,” he said. “And if we can’t, it will be the biggest disappointment of my life.”