Don Nickles: “I understand my colleague did not like two provisions. Maybe the President did not like two provisions. It may well be…”

“I understand my colleague did not like two provisions. Maybe the President did not like two provisions. It may well be the President will look at the rest of the bill and he will not like other provisions. My point being, we have two branches of Government, both equal, and the President can make a request and Congress disposes of it and he has the right to veto it. Evidently he has done that. I understand the majority leader of the Senate is trying to get in contact with him today and maybe some discussions will ensue. I also just happened to be looking at this report. The initial request was $4.5 billion in discretionary outlays. The committee report, the committee report as it came out of the Senate was $7.6 billion, so, in other words, $3 billion more than originally requested. The conference report, after it went to conference, was $8.6 billion. And if you add budget authority with the mandatory it was over $9.5 billion. So this, like a lot of urgent supplementals, grew, and many times they grow at the request of the administration. They did not make it in their initial request, but they asked for more money, and somebody else said, well, I think we should fund this and everyone was in agreement, both Democrats and Republicans, so we go ahead and fund it. What we wind up doing is we fund things in an urgent supplemental that, frankly, should be funded in the normal appropriations process.”