Mark Souder: “first before I make the basic remarks I came down to the floor to make, I think it is important to make a couple of…”

“first before I make the basic remarks I came down to the floor to make, I think it is important to make a couple of comments on the appropriations process that has been, I believe, somewhat misrepresented in some of the comments we have heard today. I want to thank the gentleman from California (Chairman Lewis) and his subcommittee, the gentleman from Florida (Chairman Young) of the full committee, our esteemed late colleague Mr. Skeen, who all understood that the appropriations process is extremely difficult. We all come in with all these requests. We believe that everybody else's requests are pork except for ours. We try to have a budget resolution that we try to hold everybody in. This year we were fairly successful, but when we have the war in Iraq and other pressures, we inevitably go over. I had been a staffer for many years and then a Member of Congress. I do not know when we have ever been within the budget guidelines, and we have done better than normal. But the impression has been given that somehow this was an unprecedented, terrible thing and it was just Republicans and we jammed it. The unfortunate sad truth is if it was just Republicans, this bill would have failed today because we had a bunch of Republicans who did not back the Republican conference report. What we had were 58 Democrats who voted for this bill.…”