Hal Rogers: “I thank the gentleman for yielding. As to the point, Mr. Speaker, of whether or not we offset these emergency bills…”

“I thank the gentleman for yielding. As to the point, Mr. Speaker, of whether or not we offset these emergency bills, over the last 10 years, we have used offsets in over half of the emergency spending bills and supplementals, over half, 15 of 30, actually, including war supplementals, emergency supplementals, military construction, defense supplementals, disaster relief and recovery, in 2008, for example, and on and on. Using offsets to pay for disaster relief is the rule here. This is not an exception. And we're only offsetting $1 billion of it. In fact, when the Homeland Security bill passed a few months ago, it included this very offset, and the bill passed by bipartisan support throughout the body. You've already voted for this, and, I might add, successfully. Now, on that green car fund--I'm going to call it that--there's over $4 billion this minute sitting idle in that account, and it's been sitting idle for 3 years. The $1.5 billion rescission in subsidies we propose will not have a significant impact on the program, contrary to what some people say. All applications for those loans in late-term stages and negotiations will not be affected. Talk to the agency downtown, which we have. They will not be affected. The factory in Michigan or Indiana will not be affected. In total, eight pending applications for loan guarantees totaling over $6 billion will not be impacted by this offset.…”