James Lankford: “in the past month, my great folks in Oklahoma have started learning a new term around here that is an old term…”

“in the past month, my great folks in Oklahoma have started learning a new term around here that is an old term, actually, but it is a term we use all the time, ``vote-arama.'' I have to tell you, it makes me sleepy just to say the word because vote-arama is a part of the 1974 Budget Act that allows for unlimited debate on an issue of certain types of budget process, rescissions, that we did yesterday, and then trying to be able to go back even farther to be able to deal with a reconciliation. I want to spend just a couple of minutes talking about it because so many folks that I talk to have no perspective on this. It is good to be able to get some context. The 1974 Budget Act set out 12 different appropriations bills that are done. That is how our budget is actually done. That is how we actually spend. When the House and the Senate and the President sign that, those 12 bills are now law so they have to be done; that has to be spent. But if the President were to say: I don't want to spend this amount; I don't think that it is necessary, it is the law so it has to be done. But the President can actually send back over to Congress a rescissions and say: I would like permission to turn this part off, and, literally, make a new law to be able to say we are not going to spend this. That is what has happened here in the last 24 hours. The President sent over, about 40 days ago, a rescissions for $9 billion and said: I don't think this needs to be spent.”