Kent Conrad: “I want to stand and commend my colleague, Senator Feingold, for his initiative with respect to the budget circumstance…”

“I want to stand and commend my colleague, Senator Feingold, for his initiative with respect to the budget circumstance facing the country and the Congress. Senator Feingold has crafted an amendment that represents a compromise on the question of the budget for this year. It is critically important that we adopt a budget for this year, and it is also important that we have the budget disciplines extended. I hope my colleagues realize what we face. In the absence of an extension of the budget disciplines, the budget points of order, the pay-go provisions all expire on September 30. That would mean the things we have used to control spending and to exercise fiscal discipline are gone. They are gone. That means that as we go through the appropriations process, we would not have the allocations to the committees that are enforced by 60-vote points of order to prevent spending from going out of control. We would not have those same 60-vote points of order to protect against additional tax reductions that would threaten the fiscal condition of the country. And we would not have the provisions that allow us to protect Social Security. All of those provisions expire at the end of September. Mr. President, that is what Senator Feingold is before us offering now--an extension of those provisions, an extension that has been worked out with very detailed, bipartisan discussions over an extended period of time.”