John Spratt: “This process needs to be fixed. If the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) will remember, we had a conference in 1997…”

“This process needs to be fixed. If the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) will remember, we had a conference in 1997 when we did the balanced budget agreement of 1997. Most of the budget principles, when they were affected, the subcommittee chairmen of the Committee on Appropriations came. It would be good if we could get together again, something like that, where you do have interest from all of the House, and we could sit down and I would hope in a nonpartisan way try to come up with a better process than we have right now, because the process we have now is in the ditch. I would still have problems with the gentleman's amendment because it does not provide for the full double-edged PAYGO. It has now a provision in it that changes the fiscal year to November 1. I do not quite understand why the gentleman would want to do that. But, nevertheless, it is a moot point now. We appreciate the gentleman's removing it from consideration. There are some ideas in there I do agree with. For example, the gentleman would tell CBO not to assume that expiring tax provisions are not going to be renewed.”