Jack Kingston: “a couple of weeks ago, when Congress passed the historic balanced budget agreement by a vote of 333, it set forth a very…”

“a couple of weeks ago, when Congress passed the historic balanced budget agreement by a vote of 333, it set forth a very good tone for Congress and the White House and the Senate to work together to move us toward a balanced budget by the year 2002. And although this resolution is very important, it is only the first step. There will be a lot of skirmishes down the road over taxes, education, Medicare, health care in general, and so forth like that. One of the things that the Republicans have done, however, to make sure this does not lead us to a gridlock and a Government shutdown is that we have passed the Gekas-Wynn Government shutdown prevention provision. What that says is that if Congress and the President have not agreed on a balanced budget or the appropriations bills by September 30, then the Government would continue at 100 percent of the 1997 funding level and that would prevent a shutdown. Now, for some reason the President is against this. I hope that he will change his mind and support this so that we will not have the Government shutdown as we did last year.”