J. Exon: “Yes. These provisions stayed out of the bill in conference, as the conferees sought to avoid another challenge on the…”

“Yes. These provisions stayed out of the bill in conference, as the conferees sought to avoid another challenge on the Senate floor that these provisions violated the Byrd rule. This manifests our intent to keep this bill within the proper parameters of budget reconciliation. Mr. President, changes in discretionary programs on a reconciliation bill, such as the ones mentioned by the Senator from Florida and the Senator from Massachusetts, result in no direct budgetary savings and are therefore extraneous under the Byrd rule. During floor consideration of this legislation, we struck section 2403(c)(1), and in section 2423, section 213(A)(f)(2) because they contained material that was not under the jurisdiction of the Finance Committee, namely many discretionary programs, because they violated section 313(b)(1)(C) of the Budget Act. These provisions also provide no budgetary savings, and violating the intent of section 313(b)(1)(A) of the Budget Act, but because they were cleverly embedded in language which did provide direct budgetary savings, it was difficult to fully enforce the Byrd rule. Nonetheless, it is clear that this bill should not be used to make changes in discretionary programs, and those who look to interpret the action of the Congress should take this into account. Mr. President, the purpose of the Byrd rule is to prevent reconciliation bills from being loaded up with provisions, such as these, that have no budgetary impact.”