Katie Porter: “A year ago, the President and the Congress came to an agreement to work over a 5-year period to bring the budget into…”

“A year ago, the President and the Congress came to an agreement to work over a 5-year period to bring the budget into balance. As part of that agreement, the President insisted that the funding in areas that were of priorities to the White House be increased in the first year, and that was done. The bill funding the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education was increased by $5 billion last year, and many of the programs that have been mentioned today and many others were increased very substantially, and I supported that. We passed that bill on the House floor overwhelmingly. The second year and the outyears of the agreement called for fiscal restraint on discretionary spending. The spending levels were agreed to by the White House and by the Congress together, and the allocations that were given to our subcommittee and others this year reflected the caps on spending that were necessary to help bring the budget into balance.”