On the recordOctober 8, 2013
I thank my chairman. Mr. Speaker, the chairman is actually the one who appointed me as the rules designee to the Budget Committee, and I'm grateful to him for that because it really gives me an opportunity to express what, for my constituents, is commonsense budget reform, Mr. Speaker. They know you just can't keep spending and spending and spending and never have to pay the bills. The bills have to get paid. But I would say that the funding level that the United States Senate has agreed on is absolutely in no way a compromise. It's the law of the land. The law of the land, if this Congress were to dissolve itself tomorrow, is that for fiscal year 2014 we're only going to be able to spend $967 billion. The Senate wants to spend $986 billion. The law of the land is not going to let them spend that much. That's just the law of the land. Now, we don't have to like it. We can try to change that, but to characterize that as somehow moving to the middle is to misrepresent, Mr. Speaker, what the facts of our budget are. As my colleague from North Carolina said so well, the House has adopted a position, and the Senate rejected it. So we moved to the middle and adopted a position, and the Senate rejected it. So we moved further to the middle, adopted a position, and the Senate rejected it. Then we said, Let's just sit down and talk about it to find that pathway forward. My friends on the other side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, are talking a lot about a budget conference.…
