Liz Saville Roberts: “1,000 hours. I said hours and minutes; even years. This has been the third year on this particular budget plan. This is…”

“1,000 hours. I said hours and minutes; even years. This has been the third year on this particular budget plan. This is the culmination of 3 years of hard work that the Senator from New Mexico has put in, all members of the Budget Committee, as well as the staff. This has been a Lonesome Dove Trail ride. I hope we get through the tall grass and balanced budget with all of our body parts intact. If we do, the chairman will get most of the credit. In the last session of the Congress we had two balanced budgets. We worked very hard and very diligently. They were vetoed by the President. We even came to a Government shutdown. Nobody wants to repeat that. I understand that when you are doing a budget for the U.S. Government, you have many, many strong differences of opinion. After all, for better or worse, the Congress of the United States reflects the diversity we have in this country and the strong difference of opinions. Goodness knows, we have good diversity and strong differences of opinion. The House, the other body, just the other night stayed until 3 a.m., and, finally, by a two-vote margin, succeeded in defeating an amendment that was a deal breaker. It involved highways. As a matter of fact, it involved transportation, the very issue we are discussing on the floor at this very moment other than my comments. Two votes was the difference.…”