Cord Byrd: “It has to be, which you will learn after a while. I welcome this exchange. I think that is what has been missing in so…”

“It has to be, which you will learn after a while. I welcome this exchange. I think that is what has been missing in so much of this. We all get on the floor and make our speeches, but we do not debate. So I welcome this exchange and I congratulate the Senator and commend him. But I happen to be on the Appropriations Committee, so I know a little about what I am saying. I helped to write the 1974 Budget Act. The resolution on the budget should be enacted by May of each year. And it is only after that budget resolution is enacted that the chairmen of the Appropriations Committees of the two Houses allocate those funds to their subcommittees. And it is only after that that the appropriations bills start coming through. But prior to the budget resolution in May, the Congressional Budget Office prepares its estimates of revenues and receipts and deficits for the forthcoming fiscal year and projects those 5 years down the road. What I have been saying is that, in addition to the flaw, the word ``estimates,'' which by these charts--and which you are going to ask me about in a moment--have been shown to be invariably wrong. The Congress, the House, and the Senate have to depend on those CBO estimates in enacting the budget resolution, after which, as I say, the allocations of funds and then the appropriations of moneys come to pass. But all that is in advance of the fiscal year. It is in advance of the beginning of the next fiscal year.”