Barbara Mikulski: “I come to the floor today to urge my colleagues to support the bipartisan budget agreement. I congratulate our…”

“I come to the floor today to urge my colleagues to support the bipartisan budget agreement. I congratulate our colleagues, especially Budget Committee chairwoman Murray for her outstanding leadership in forging this bipartisan agreement with her House counterpart, Mr. Ryan. They reached this agreement in a way that is indeed a compromise--not everyone's desired outcome but a fair and necessary one. I urge my colleagues to support it. I think it is fantastic that they actually got a budget done. This is the first time in several years we are actually going to vote on a bipartisan budget conference agreement, and I think it bodes well for future activity where we return to the due order of passing legislation, one in each House, having a conference committee to hammer out the disagreements, and then it coming back to us for final agreement. What I like about this agreement is it creates certainty by avoiding sequester for 2 years, giving the top-line funding to us on the Appropriations Committee for 2014 and 2015. Many people do not realize that we on the Appropriations Committee who actually put money in the Federal checkbook to be spent have a cap put on our spending by the Budget Committee. That is called the 302(a) or the top line. We have not been able to do our Appropriations Committee work because we have not had a top line. This enables us to have one for 2014. We are under a mandate to bring it back to the Senate and to the House by January 14.…”