Dale Bumpers: “As you know, an emergency appropriation does not require an offset. An appropriation in this bill which is not an…”

“As you know, an emergency appropriation does not require an offset. An appropriation in this bill which is not an emergency does require an offset. And under the Budget Act, spending that is not an emergency and nondefense discretionary spending must be offset with nondefense discretionary spending and defense spending that is not an emergency must be offset by defense spending cuts--offsets. And the House has done something--the thing that really sort of got me interested in this--the House has done something which is really very strange and, frankly, I consider to be a violation of the Budget Act. What they have said is, we are declaring these items--for example, assistance to Bosnia and the Iraqi operation--as emergencies. And, as I said, under the law they do not require offsets if they are emergencies, but the House has chosen to offset them anyway. And they have offset them totally from nondefense discretionary spending, such as housing, AmeriCorps, and other things that may not be popular to some people but they are fairly popular with me.”