Political Quotes

“let's put the budget point of order of the Senator from Texas against our fiscal relief amendment into some context. The Senator's point of order, in essence, claims that the fiscal relief provided by our bipartisan amendment is somehow not emergency spending. Let's look at the facts. Let's look at the situation. The Budget Enforcement Act of 1990 established statutory limits on discretionary spending and a pay-as-you-go requirement for new direct spending and tax legislation. But it also exempted from the caps all discretionary spending designated by the President and the Congress as an emergency requirement. The law does not further define what is an emergency requirement. That is up to us. One place we can look for guidance, however, is to the criteria developed by the Office of Management and Budget for the President to use when determining whether or not a spending provision qualifies for emergency treatment. The Office of Management and Budget determined that an emergency spending provision is ``sudden, urgent, necessary, unforeseen, and not permanent.'' The funds that the amendment allocates to the States is all of those things. They meet the criteria precisely for emergency spending. First, our amendment addresses a sudden and unforeseen problem. That is the unexpected drop in revenues States have experienced.”