John Spratt: “let me make clear to everybody that this is not a tempest in a teapot. The money is not so significant in a budget of…”

“let me make clear to everybody that this is not a tempest in a teapot. The money is not so significant in a budget of $1.7 trillion, but the precedent is vitally important. A few weeks ago this House passed a budget resolution, narrowly passed it, which provided $530,863,000,000 for discretionary spending. Budget authority. And $560,885,000,000 for outlays. Now, the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations has requested an increase of $1.1 billion in budget authority and $1.4 billion in outlays. This procedure is not in compliance with the Budget Act. Section 302(a)(5) allows the chairman of the Committee on the Budget, when there is no budget resolution, to write a letter to the Committee on Appropriations and set a level so that the committee can then suballocate that overall level to 13 different committees and we can proceed with bills like this. But in this case it is not the chairman of the Committee on the Budget, it is the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, and he is actually requesting more than the House approved. So in two important respects we are deviating from the budget procedures that we have established and followed for 25 years so that we can spend $1.7 trillion in a reasonably fair, orderly and systematic manner. What we see here is a continuation of a trend, a sort of defiance, an indifference to the established procedure for the budget process.”