Jerry Brown: “Mr. Chairman, my remarks here directly relate to the point of order and to other similar situations which have arisen…”

“Mr. Chairman, my remarks here directly relate to the point of order and to other similar situations which have arisen during the course of this and other appropriation bills. The rule with regard to legislating on an appropriation bill has been with us in the rules of the House for quite a long period of time. It was originally put there in order to distinguish between the role of the Committee on Appropriations and the rest of us peons who only serve on authorizing committees, and do not get a chance to do the heavy lifting that is involved in distributing the money, like the appropriators do. I have frequently had reason to raise points of order about legislating on appropriation bills as it involved the work of my own committee. There has been a propensity to insert in appropriation bills funding for research projects which were not authorized, and a number of other things of that sort. I did this to the point where I made myself obnoxious to my friends on the Committee on Appropriations for a period of several years, and I have ceased to pursue that as actively as I once did, because I began to recognize that there were many legitimate reasons why there should be or could be legislation on an appropriation bill. The standards for what are the appropriate reasons for having legislation on an appropriation bill are extremely vague.”