Herbert Klein: “my heart goes out to the people of southern California. We clearly need to act and act quickly to provide them…”

“my heart goes out to the people of southern California. We clearly need to act and act quickly to provide them much-needed relief. As a strong advocate of cutting spending, ideally I would like to have offsetting cuts for every penny in this emergency appropriation. For that reason, I will support the so-called Fazio amendment, which provides $2.5 billion that I know is also contained in this amendment. Beyond that, I offered an amendment to the Committee on Rules which would have provided all of the necessary offsetting cuts, some $21 billion over 5 years, without cutting any domestic program. It would have done so by cutting European burden sharing, the space station, helium reserve, the advanced liquid metal reactor, programs such as that. Unfortunately, the Committee on Rules did not allow that amendment. By contrast, this and other amendments cut critical domestic services. I do not believe we should pay for this disaster by depriving the people of New Jersey of much needed funds for housing, for economic development, for seniors, for highway and transportation projects. I hope that after this bill is passed we can reconsider my amendment which will give us the necessary offsetting cuts without cutting any critical domestic programs. I oppose the Myers amendment.”