Edward Livingston: “I have heard a few arguments against this bill. Certainly, I am not going to defend the process, because I hate the…”

“I have heard a few arguments against this bill. Certainly, I am not going to defend the process, because I hate the process. As the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, I think it is terrible that forces within the Congress militated against the final passage of all of our bills before the end of the fiscal year. The fact is that we passed 12 of the 13 bills before the end of the fiscal year in the House of Representatives. I think we exceeded the record of the other body. We did not get them all enacted separately, so we are putting these in a remaining package. But, all of those have passed the House, and they make up components of this bill. If the gentleman does not know what is in the bill, he could have looked at the reports from the various committees. He would see 90 percent of this bill in the various committee component parts that passed this House months ago. Is social security jeopardized? Of course not. The minority party neglected worrying about social security from 1967, when Lyndon Johnson changed the rules and allowed us to take off social security funds in order to mask the cost of the Vietnam War, and they did not worry about it for 30 years. We came along and brought fiscal integrity to the government. We are balancing the budget for the first time in 30 years. We are going to take care of social security. There is not an argument there.”