Don Nickles: “Yesterday the Senate completed action of the second of 13 appropriations bills for fiscal year 2005, the Department of…”

“Yesterday the Senate completed action of the second of 13 appropriations bills for fiscal year 2005, the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill. Although the Senate has not yet adopted a new concurrent resolution on the budget, we did establish a discretionary spending allocation for the Appropriations Committee in the recently enacted Department of Defense appropriations bill. That allocation, and the subcommittee allocations that were derived from it, enabled us to consider the Homeland appropriations bill under the usual budget enforcement protections. During debate on the Homeland appropriations bill, a total of 10 budget points of order were raised against amendments that sought to increase spending by an incredible $19.9 billion in 2005 alone. If those amendments had been enacted and incorporated into the discretionary spending baseline, their 10-year cost is a staggering $220.2 billion. Including debt service costs, that number increases to $285.3 billion. I am happy to inform my colleagues that the Senate upheld all 10 budget points of order and rejected each one of these spending increases. Unfortunately, the Senate did adopt an amendment providing $2.98 billion in emergency spending for agriculture disaster assistance. I opposed that amendment because it did not belong on this appropriations bill, and it should be paid for and not add to the deficit.”