Haley Stevens: “If the Senate passes this bill--and I seriously urge that it do so--we will go to conference, and the only matters that…”

“If the Senate passes this bill--and I seriously urge that it do so--we will go to conference, and the only matters that can be considered in the conference are those two projects. If the House passes the bill--and I presume it will--which has all of the 38 projects, and we pass this one which has 36 projects, the only 2 things that can be discussed in that conference are the 2 projects. And we will bring the conference report back before the Congress very quickly, I believe. But, Mr. President, this bill goes beyond the question of what should normally happen under the Line-Item Veto Act concerning actions of a President. This bill pertains to projects that were eliminated at a time when there was an agreement entered into by the leadership of the conference and the Presidency on the level of spending in several discrete categories. From the point of view of this Senator, the most important one was the agreement on the level of spending for the Department of Defense. If this bill does not become law, $287 million of the amount we thought would be available to meet our needs of the Department of Defense will not be there.”