Political Quotes

“Mr. President, this will be the fourth time this year the Senate has faced an amendment from the Senator from Alabama which seeks to constrain discretionary spending. Each one of the amendments has been similar. The Senator from Alabama uses last year's budget resolution as his starting point. He argues that since Congress agreed to this level last year that we should stick with it. His goal is to mandate that the Congress hold the line on discretionary spending at these levels. I would remind my colleagues that the Budget Committee had the ability to make these caps binding when they passed this resolution last year, but they chose not to. Instead they put these notional targets in the resolution. However, since the last time the Senate defeated the amendment, one important change has occurred. The Budget Committee has now reviewed the President's budget request for fiscal year 2011 and has marked up a new budget resolution. They have changed their recommendation. Since the committee has determined the levels that it believes should be adhered to, I am not sure what benefit the Senate would have in agreeing to the notional targets in last year's resolution. Moreover, like the last three times, there simply is no justification for the rest of the amendment. We all understand that discretionary spending is likely to be frozen this year as the President has proposed. Our Budget Committee recommends it be cut by an additional $4 billion.…”