Tom Harkin: “Now, why am I taking the time here late at night to talk about this? Because we are about to go out on a break. We are…”

“Now, why am I taking the time here late at night to talk about this? Because we are about to go out on a break. We are going to go out for the month of August. In the first week of September when we come back, the chairman of the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Subcommittee, the largest of the nondefense appropriations subcommittees--and that is my colleague and my friend, Senator Specter from Pennsylvania--will be calling us together to mark up the nondefense portion of the appropriations bill. Right now, the allocation that was given to our subcommittee with respect to outlays is almost $300 million below a freeze from last year--$300 million below a freeze from last year. The House, using those figures, marked up a bill, and the only way they marked it up was by completely eliminating all of the funding for the summer jobs program and all of the funding for the heating assistance for the elderly and poor--the LIHEAP program. They just eliminated all of that, and then they came in with the allocations that they had. What my amendment basically says is that the chairman of the Budget Committee ought to apply the same rationale, the same decision, on using OMB estimates for nondefense as he did for defense. We need the outlays that this amendment will give us to fund programs important to Members on both sides of the aisle. This is not a Democrat amendment.…”