Don Nickles: “I remind my friend and colleague from Alaska--he is my friend--we had an agreement on $784 billion. The Senator from…”

“I remind my friend and colleague from Alaska--he is my friend--we had an agreement on $784 billion. The Senator from Alaska has an initial $5 billion on top of that. The agreement was $784 billion. The Senator from Alaska got $3 billion from defense for other items; then an additional $2.2 billion on top of that. A deal is a deal. If people do not want to waive the Budget Act, we don't have to have a budget. I tell my colleagues that if the VA-HUD bill wants to bust the budget by declaring an emergency, we can bust the budget all day long. Why have a budget? They want to bust the budget by another $1.5 billion. I am sure every other committee would love to. Why have a budget if you are just going to say: Wait a minute; for an appropriated item we don't have enough money. We want more, and we will declare an emergency. It doesn't count. Now this year you will go to conference with the House with different figures. We are going to have the same figures so we can finish the bills on time. I am just disappointed in the statement of my colleague from Alaska. I believe a deal is a deal and a budget is a budget. It takes 60 votes to waive the budget. If our colleagues elect to waive it, I guess that will be their choice. This Senator hopes that we will not do it. The NIH gets an additional $1 billion this year. Maybe that is not enough, as some would like, but the committee had $127 billion to allocate. They could have allocated that in any way they wanted.”