Judd Gregg: “I rise to speak a little about the supplemental appropriations bill, which is now pending. I want to begin by…”

“I rise to speak a little about the supplemental appropriations bill, which is now pending. I want to begin by congratulating the Senator from Mississippi, Mr. Cochran, for the extraordinary job he did in producing this bill. When it left the Senate, it was around $105 billion. It comes back to us from conference at $94.2 billion or $94.3 billion--I forget the exact number. It was not easy to bring it down from the Senate position to what was acceptable to the President and to the House. It was really a result of Senator Cochran simply saying that we are going to make these difficult decisions and we are going to have a bill that meets the conditions the President laid down for our spending responsibility. He deserves a great deal of congratulations and respect for having accomplished that. Within the bill, he has included also an issue which I am interested in as chairman of the Budget Committee. It is what is called a ``deeming resolution.'' It sets the amount of money that can be spent on the discretionary side of the budget. That is those accounts that we appropriate, on which we spend every year, and which are automatic expenditures for things like education and some of the health care accounts and national defense are some of the big ones, as is homeland security. This deeming resolution has set a number of $873 billion, which I think is a very responsible number, which the President sent up in his budget, and the number the House had in their budget.…”