Kent Conrad: “No. The way it works, authorizations mean nothing without appropriations. And the money for appropriations is not…”

“No. The way it works, authorizations mean nothing without appropriations. And the money for appropriations is not available unless it is made available by the budget resolution. The hard reality here is all of this talk about money for education is just that, it is talk. We can pass 100 amendments that say we are going to provide money for education, but if the money is not in the budget, it does not get allocated to the Appropriations Committee to be available for actual expenditure. We have a lot of great speeches out here, but without the money in the budget resolution, they don't mean much.”