Don Nickles: “the essence of this amendment, I tell my colleagues, is it says that we allow the money to go in for an additional…”

“the essence of this amendment, I tell my colleagues, is it says that we allow the money to go in for an additional amount for disaster relief, $1.6 billion to remain available until expended, period. What I am deleting is the emergency. The additional part of this amendment says that I am deleting 'provided these funds will be available only to the extent the official budget request for a specific amount includes the designation of the entire amount of the request as an emergency requirement defined in the Balanced Budget Emergency Control Act of 1985,' and so on. In other words, I am striking the emergency section of this request. So we can put the money in. If there is an emergency, by golly, FEMA has the money; it can pay it. So nobody should say, 'Hey, you took money away from my emergency.' What it does mean is, in the budget next year we are going to have to include whatever portion of that $1.6 billion would be spent in 1999 in the budget. We have caps to spend about $580 billion, I am going to guess, next year in the discretionary accounts. This is going to have to be part of it, or, in the year 2000, this will be part of it. This means we still may be able to have a surplus in 2002. It means maybe our budgets mean something.…”