Pete Domenici: “I am for the kids, but I am also for passing an appropriations bill that helps all the farmers in the United States and…”

“I am for the kids, but I am also for passing an appropriations bill that helps all the farmers in the United States and puts into play the entire agricultural program of this country. Frankly, Mr. President, the other day I came to the floor and talked about, how much longer are we going to spend debating the cigarette tax and various expenditures under that program? I made a mistake, I told the listeners that we had 2 weeks. We had 4 weeks to debate these issues. Now we are scheduled to pass appropriations bills that will keep our Government running and more and more, for some reason, we leave it to everybody here to speculate--the other side continues to offer amendments, be it on the tobacco issue or some other program that has nothing to do with the appropriations process, that delays it and then puts in motion things that actually put the bill in jeopardy. The Senator just spoke and said this was not a budget issue. Let me tell you, it is a budget issue. It is a budget issue to the tune of $100 million being added to the expenditure side of a balanced budget 5-year plan, because under the Budget Act you cannot count taxes against expenditures like this. So we are breaking the budget to the tune of $100 million--$100 million. It seems to this Senator we ought not to be doing that when we just got a 5-year agreement in place. And so it is subject to a point of order. The Senator can say it is technical. I say it is real.”