Kent Conrad: “No, I will not yield. We hear, over and over, this is more money than the President's budget. Well, the President's…”

“No, I will not yield. We hear, over and over, this is more money than the President's budget. Well, the President's budget is exactly the same amount as in this amendment. The President called for $768 billion in discretionary spending. It is true, we did not adopt his policy. There is a $9 billion difference because he wanted to transfer money from mandatory spending to discretionary. Do you know what he wanted to transfer? He wanted to transfer the cost of Federal employees' retirement and claim it was discretionary rather than mandatory. I have not found anybody who thinks that is a wise policy. Clearly, it is required that we pay the retirement costs of Federal employees. That is not discretionary. The fact is, the President's discretionary number is exactly the same as the number we have. We didn't adopt his policy, but that is his number. Now, let's look, in comparison, to last year. Last year we spent $710 billion in discretionary. These are the increases: $45 billion for defense, every penny of it requested by the President; $5.4 billion in homeland security, every penny requested by the President. The only difference is $7 billion, the difference between last year and this year, that is going to other things. All of the rest of the increase is for defense and homeland security, every dollar requested by the President. There is $7 billion more, 1 percent, for all the rest of Government. That doesn't even keep pace with inflation.”