Sam Brownback: “The Brownback amendment is a simple amendment that calls for a change in the budget law, the pay-go rules of the budget…”

“The Brownback amendment is a simple amendment that calls for a change in the budget law, the pay-go rules of the budget law, to allow for discretionary spending program eliminations, all those key words, to be used for tax cuts or to save Social Security. It allows for that usage to be able to do those things. Now, according to current budget law--and I realize some of this can be arcane to a number of people--we cannot make cuts in discretionary spending programs in order to finance tax cuts. You have to make cuts in mandatory spending programs like Social Security and Medicare to pay for tax cuts. That is just not fair and it is not right and it is wrong. That is why we put forward this amendment. At this time I will read the amendment because it is short, sweet, and to the point and it is important. It is the sense-of-the-Senate that the functional tools underlying this resolution assume that-- (I) the elimination of a discretionary spending program may [with emphasis on the ``may''] be used for either tax cuts or to reform the Social Security system.”