Gilbert Gutknecht: “Mr. Chairman, this is the next installment of the amendments that I have been offering to all of the appropriation bills…”

“Mr. Chairman, this is the next installment of the amendments that I have been offering to all of the appropriation bills since the House passed the joint budget conference committee report, and as my colleagues will probably recall, under that report this House for the first time in the last 4 years is actually going to allow the deficit of the United States to go up in the next fiscal year, and many of us who were upset upon learning that went back to our offices and tried to figure out what it was that perhaps we could do on a constructive basis to recover that fumble. And what we came up with was the notion that if we offered a 1.9 percent across-the-board reduction on the balance of the appropriation bills that were still out there, we could recover $4.1 billion in additional Federal spending. So I offer this amendment in good faith even though I serve in the District of Columbia Oversight Subcommittee, and I appreciate the work that the gentleman from New York [Mr. Walsh] and his subcommittee have done in terms of controlling the level of spending and trying to get the fiscal house in order not only for the District of Columbia, but for all of the taxpayers of the United States. But, Mr. Chairman, I think, in fairness, if we are going to offer this to one appropriation bill, we have to offer it to all of them.”