Pete Domenici: “I will make a point of order that the Senator's amendment violates the Budget Act and requires 60 votes. Frankly, I do…”

“I will make a point of order that the Senator's amendment violates the Budget Act and requires 60 votes. Frankly, I do not understand what the distinguished Senator is talking about. He has been a longtime friend, and he has been on the Budget Committee. He has served on it. Actually, the Budget Committee is the source of the firewall that protects Social Security now. This amendment says he is taking away our jurisdiction, that we can't do anything with reference to Social Security, and we are the committee to make the recommendations. If, indeed, the recommendations in some other provision of law requires 60 votes to pass, that is a different thing. To say to a committee of jurisdiction that you cannot pass on anything because there is a supermajority requirement just seems to me that we could take every committee of jurisdiction, we could take away their jurisdiction all under the rubric that we are trying to keep them from spending money. Maybe we don't like Commerce. They have been putting out too many bills. So we adopt a process that says whatever your jurisdiction is, you can't report out any bills without a supermajority in these different areas. That is not right.”