Dale Bumpers: “Let me make one observation. I am not going to pursue this and belabor it any further. But as I read this language here…”

“Let me make one observation. I am not going to pursue this and belabor it any further. But as I read this language here, Senator Chiles used to say ``the mother tongue is English,'' and this is the way I read this English. The sequence would be that the authorizing committee would authorize appropriations. I assume that the authorizing committee would either say such sums as shall be necessary, or if they have a CBO figure, what it is going to implement that, they would authorize that amount to be appropriated. The Appropriations Committee on which I sit would subsequently decide, also based on what CBO says it would cost to implement the mandate, and the figure might be different than the one the authorizing committee used when they passed the authorizing legislation. But assume for the purposes of our argument that the authorizing committee says it will take $100 million to implement this mandate; the Appropriations Committee comes along, as we usually do several months later, to discuss whether we want to appropriate this $100 million or not, because it may be that CBO by that time has said--let us assume for the purpose of argument--it will only take $90 million. So we appropriate $90 million.…”