Judd Gregg: “I rise to say a couple of words about what I consider to be a very dangerous precedent that appears about to be reset…”

“I rise to say a couple of words about what I consider to be a very dangerous precedent that appears about to be reset through the House resolution on the budget. There is something called reconciliation, which is the true hammer in the budget resolution. It allows changes in things such as Medicare, Medicaid, entitlement programs, or tax policy to be passed under an expedited procedure here in the Senate with only 51 votes. It is at the essence of the Budget Act. Its whole purpose, and the reason it was created, was in order to discipline the rate of growth of entitlement programs as its primary cause and to address tax policy. Last year, there was a token reconciliation instruction given of $750 million. I say that because reconciliations passed always have been used to save considerable sums of money, or reduce the rate of growth of programs by considerable sums. When I chaired this committee, we reconciled primarily Medicare, but other spending accounts, including agriculture, to the tune of almost $40 billion. In 1996, reconciliation was used for, I believe, $96 billion of savings and reductions in the rate of growth of programs.”