Cord Byrd: “S. 1594 is a comprehensive attempt by the Senate Appropriations Committee to bring before the Senate, in a timely…”

“S. 1594 is a comprehensive attempt by the Senate Appropriations Committee to bring before the Senate, in a timely manner, all of the pending fiscal year 1996 appropriation issues. By that, I mean that this bill not only would fund the five remaining fiscal year 1996 appropriation bills, which are funded in Title I through the end of the fiscal year, but the bill also contains the President's requests for emergency disaster assistance for thousands of victims of floods and other recent disasters throughout the country. These disaster assistance payments amount to a little over $1 billion and are contained in Title II of the bill. Title II also contains $820 million in defense spending relating to Bosnia. These appropriations are fully offset by rescissions from the committee's defense (050) allocation. Finally, Title II contains non-military assistance for Bosnia totaling $200 million. Rather than offset this non-DoD spending for Bosnia with DoD offsets, as requested by the President, the committee chose not to offset this $200 million and, instead, to declare it emergency spending under the appropriate section of the Budget Enforcement Act.”