Political Quotes

“The amendment that I bring forward just puts some additional transparency into a piece of legislation that I strongly support that just requires the President to lay out a detailed plan of how his budget would balance. What this amendment would do would be to specifically carve out direct spending. Direct spending, Madam Chair, represents more than 60 percent of all Federal expenditures. So more than 60 percent of our budget is direct spending, both means tested and non-means tested. All we ask for with this amendment is the transparency that as that supplemental budget is produced, that it also breaks out how means- tested spending and non-means-tested spending, number one, was averaged over the prior 10 years, but also, in this supplemental budget the President would lay out, what would happen to those direct spending programs over the course of the period that the President would lay out in that supplemental budget. One other thing it does is it makes sure that if there are any reforms, just like in the House budget, if we lay out any reforms, those would have to be spelled out in the language of this amendment. So if any reforms to direct spending would be included in the President's supplemental budget, that those reforms would have to be spelled out in an actual text of that document. This is something we already included in the House rules package.…”