Political Quotes

“we are once again asking for the support of our colleagues to raise the contract authority or budget authority in the highway bill. We said we were going to do this when we brought it to the floor. Eighty of our Members voted in the Budget Act to allow the Finance Committee to come in with additional resources, which they have done. There has been discussion about the legitimacy of the offsets and the Finance Committee actions. The Joint Tax Committee has scored it. That is the authoritative view. It does not add to the budget. The comments about this being a budget buster are absolutely wrong. These funds are paying for the money we add. I will explain a little bit of complicated budgetary process. There are two things called the obligation limit, which is the amount that can be spent, the guaranteed amount. Traditionally, we have put a higher number into the bill for what we call budget authority, or what is called contract authority. That is because the highway departments cannot spend all of the money that they contract, and to enable them to spend the $283.9 billion guaranteed spending proposed by the President we have to have a higher contract or budget authority number. This measure, which was added by the Finance Committee and which is now subject to the point of order, was designed to raise, with a fully offset amount, the spending so that we could provide additional funds for badly needed State roads. Let me be clear.…”