John Spratt

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, let me make clear to everybody that this is not a tempest in a teapot. The money is not so significant in a budget of $1.7 trillion, but the precedent is vitally important. A few weeks ago this House passed a budget resolution, narrowly passed it, which provided $530,863,000,000 for discretionary spending. Budget authority. And $560,885,000,000 for outlays. Now, the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations has requested an increase of $1.1 billion in budget authority and $1.4 billion in outlays. This procedure is not in compliance with the Budget Act. Section 302(a)(5) allows the chairman of the Committee on the Budget, when there is no budget resolution, to write a letter to the Committee on Appropriations and set a level so that the committee can then suballocate that overall level to 13 different committees and we can proceed with bills like this. But in this case it is not the chairman of the Committee on the Budget, it is the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, and he is actually requesting more than the House approved. So in two important respects we are deviating from the budget procedures that we have established and followed for 25 years so that we can spend $1.7 trillion in a reasonably fair, orderly and systematic manner. What we see here is a continuation of a trend, a sort of defiance, an indifference to the established procedure for the budget process. This is the latest budget resolution that we have seen; the longest delinquency in producing a concurrent budget resolution in 25 years. When we finally, 2 months late, got the budget resolution to the House floor, it came to the House floor 10:30 p.m. and we debated it into the wee hours of the morning. And as we took it up, we noted that this budget resolution, which was a majority resolution, the Republican resolution, had a huge black hole in the middle of it. Because even though we had passed a highway spending bill that exceeded the balanced budget agreement by $35 billion, and set new levels of spending for transportation in that amount, the budget resolution wholly ignored what the Congress had done and left unresolved exactly how those spending increases would be accommodated in the resolution. And then, when there were not enough votes to pass it, it unraveled still further on the House floor. This is no way to run a budget process, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. SPRATT. I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, let me explain to the House our problem. This bill has a totally nongermane provision in it, this resolution. For the first time in the 15 or 16 years that I have been in the House, and longer for the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), we are using a rule to comply with the Budget Act. We are making budget process procedures here in a rule. Buried in this rule dealing with military construction appropriations is a major budget resolution provision. No notice. Simply stuck in there with the numbers. So that anyone who did not follow the numbers would not really understand the significance of this provision. But here is the significance of it. This is an admission of failure. The Budget Act says that the budget resolution must be completed by Congress, through the House, through the Senate, through conference, a concurrent resolution passed by April 15. We are already more than two months delinquent. More delinquent, later than ever before in the 25 years that we have had a budget process. In order to complete the process, the reason we have this deadline is so that the Committee on Appropriations can begin its allocation process. It has 13 subcommittees. The resolutions that we pass of spending functions has to be allocated to the separate subcommittees. And unless we get this done timely, the Committee on Appropriations cannot get their bills to the floor. But anticipating that we might not do it timely, there is a provision in the Budget Act that gives the chairman of the Committee on the Budget the authority to file a spending allocation which the Committee on Appropriations can then take and suballocate. It is section 302(a)(5) of the Budget Act. So, Mr. Speaker, we have a procedure established not by rule of the House, not by a resolution, but established by law. It is statutory law of the United States giving the chairman of the Committee on the Budget the authority to notify the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations that this is his spending allocation which he can suballocate. So the first question is why did we not follow black letter rules? Why did we not follow the statutory law of the United States as prescribed in the Budget Act? Why do we bury in a MILCON rule this arcane provision that nobody would understand unless he followed the letter of the budget process? What is happening here? What is this all about? A totally nongermane provision buried for the first time in a construction bill. Why do not we simply have the chairman of the Committee on the Budget write the letter that is necessary? Then we notice there is a slight discrepancy, if we consider a billion dollars slight, because these numbers add up to $1.1 billion in budget authority and $1.4 billion in actual spending, we call it outlays, more than was provided for in the Kasich resolution, the House Republican resolution which narrowly passed the House just a couple of weeks ago. So the whole House spoke on this subject and passed a resolution a couple of weeks ago, and already we are beginning to unravel that resolution. We saw it almost unravel here on the House floor. And the last thing I said about it is we passed a resolution, but what have we passed? Because the black hole in the middle of it leaves as much unresolved as resolved. Here we begin to see one of the mysteries of the black hole in the middle of that resolution. We have to come out here and patch it up with a military construction spending resolution on the House Floor. But nobody should mistake the import of this. We have just raised spending and, therefore, I guess reduced the tax cut that the Republicans would make in their budget resolution by at least a $1.1 billion. The resolution we passed, even though we had passed ISTEA, the renewal of the highway funding bill called T-21, the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century, even though we had passed that and even though that increased spending under the Balanced Budget Agreement above the Balanced Budget Agreement by $35 billion and that had to be accommodated, the budget resolution passed by this House totally ignored it and left it to be worked out later. And here we are working it out in this stealthy fashion. A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon we are talking real money. This is some way to run a budget process.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I want the gentleman to go back to his office and answer his mail. We cannot meet with the other body until we have a conference committee. We passed a resolution 2 weeks ago. When are we going to conference? After the July 4th break. That is about July 15.

Mr. SPRATT

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cardin). (Mr. CARDIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. SPRATT. The gentleman is correct.

Mr. SPRATT. I yield to the gentleman from Missouri.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I began this debate by saying that the Kasich resolution is not realistic. I could not have given more graphic proof for my argument than what has just happened before our very eyes here in the House of Representatives, right here in the well of the House. We have seen this budget come unraveled, piece by piece. First of all, we started this morning.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. (Mr. SPRATT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. When we passed the highway bill we repealed some veteran benefits, and in return, to palliate, we added $1.6 billion to the Montgomery G.I. bill. It is not in this bill. Instead, this bill still has a remnant that is out of date. It calls on the Committee on Veterans' Affairs to reconcile another $10 billion. They take a double whammy, a double hit.

Mr. SPRATT. Absolutely not. We passed a bill, it costs $2 billion, and it is not accommodated in this budget.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield three minutes to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt) the minority leader. (Mr. GEPHARDT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran) to respond.

Mr. SPRATT. This morning we passed a resolution renouncing the fees, but the Kasich bill has $8 to $10 billion in new user fees, $7 in all, in it. Presumably they are not going to repudiate their principle and impose user fees of their own when they have denounced the President for doing it.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm). (Mr. STENHOLM asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Costello). (Mr. COSTELLO asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Mrs. Kennelly).

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey). (Mrs. LOWEY asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, the Neumann substitute is an amendment and its main failing is that it fails to amend, correct, fix the many defects that are in the Kasich budget. In fact, it worsens them. At the outset I read a long bill of particulars to ask the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Neumann) if any of these problems in the Kasich budget had been cured or corrected in his substitute, and I have yet to hear an answer. He wants to go 50 percent further with spending reduction beyond Mr. Kasich. In income security, where the Kasich resolution would take $10 billion out of TANF, we already have a letter from the gentleman's governor, the governor of Wisconsin, a stinging rebuke saying this is a repudiation of the governors' agreement with respect to welfare reform. Presumably the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Neumann) would go further, $15 billion out of the TANF block grant. Law enforcement, Kasich cuts law enforcement by $8 billion. If the gentleman from Wisconsin wants to go 50 percent further, presumably he will take $12 billion out of law enforcement. Section 8 housing, which has just been raised by the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis), the Kasich budget claims to provide the outlays to renew 1 million section 8 contracts. Presumably the gentleman from Wisconsin would put 1.5 billion people out of housing. Kasich is bad enough. Neumann is worse. It is ultrabad. Vote it down.

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Hefner). (Mr. HEFNER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell). (Mr. DINGELL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)