Jack Kingston: “Mr. Speaker, I will not speak to the details of this bill. We have been batting it around enough. I do want to speak to…”

“Mr. Speaker, I will not speak to the details of this bill. We have been batting it around enough. I do want to speak to the spirit of the bill and the compromise that went into it. We all knew when we went into this bill that Washington, DC was in financial trouble. We all knew that Washington, DC had to change. We all knew that the estimates that we had for revenues and taxes and savings based on past legislation never came through quite the way we guessed they would. We knew it would be difficult. Yet, somehow through this process, we have a bill together. Now it appears that folks on one side of the aisle do not like it because it is too conservative and folks on the other side of the aisle do not like it because it is too liberal. Mr. Speaker, this bill gives $1.4 billion as a budget for the District. That is a lot of money for a city of 554,000 people, which is about 50,000 lower than it had 10 years ago. Because of the many problems they have had, people have moved out of it. This bill reduces their spending about $150 million.”