Political Quotes

“some have argued that the TEA-21 highway and transit firewalls somehow have caused the appropriators to underfund other discretionary spending. This is false. The truth is that TEA-21 provided more, not less, funds for remaining discretionary appropriations. First, all the increased spending for the highway and transit firewalls was fully reflected in the firewalls and fully offset by other, saving provisions in TEA-21. Second, the current, overall discretionary spending caps were only adjusted downward by the amount of highway and transit spending provided in 1998. In other words, existing discretionary spending was not reduced by the amount of firewall spending, but rather by the amount that the appropriators had previously provided for FY 1998. Third, there is no longer any pressure on the existing discretionary spending caps to fund increased highway trust fund spending. Without a doubt, if these new highway and transit firewalls had not been created, there would have been inordinate pressure within the existing caps to increase trust fund spending above fiscal year 1998 levels. Fourth, because of differences in CBO's and OMB's scoring of the discretionary cap adjustments an extra $900 million of outlays was added to the appropriations Committee's 302 allocation for fiscal year 1999. Over the next five years, the effect of this adjustment is between $4 and $5 billion. The fact is that TEA-21 made more funds available for remaining discretionary programs.…”