David Price: “I thank my colleague for yielding. I want to commend both the chairman and the ranking member for their hard work on…”

“I thank my colleague for yielding. I want to commend both the chairman and the ranking member for their hard work on this bill. But no amount of hard work could redeem this bill, and I am rising in strong opposition. We call it the THUD bill. Well, the bill makes about the same sound as it spells--thud. The majority's bill says of our transportation and infrastructure commitments, We don't care if the wheels fall off. It says of our housing and development commitments, We don't care if the roof caves in. Thud. While I appreciate the hard work of the members of this subcommittee and of the dedicated staff on both sides of the aisle, the funding levels included in this bill are just unacceptable. They're impossible. The 302(b) allocation received by this subcommittee is 15 percent lower than it was last year. And that was already low. It's 19 percent below the Budget Control Act. It's nearly $10 billion below the level that the Senate is considering in the same bill. This funding level reflects the reckless discretionary spending caps adopted by the House majority in the Ryan budget resolution, which not only locked in sequestration; it doubled down on sequestration in order to shelter defense and homeland security bills from some of the cuts. This made allocations for our domestic investments even worse--far, far beyond the usual zone of political disagreement.…”