John Spratt: “I rise to oppose the rule. I recall when we opened this Congress the colleagues on the other side told us we were going…”

“I rise to oppose the rule. I recall when we opened this Congress the colleagues on the other side told us we were going to have open rules and free and open debate, and this is a protestation, a rule that has been mostly honored in the breach, and this rule is a classic example of it. This bill adds $12.9 billion to the President's request, the Pentagon's request for national defense. There was an amendment filed that would strike the entire $12.9 billion. In all candor, I probably would not have voted for it, but that is the overarching issue here. At the very least we should open the debate with how much money we are going to spend on national defense. If we do not want to debate $12.9 billion, a huge add-on, at least we could have taken up the Foley amendment offered by a gentleman from the other side of the aisle to strike $2.6 billion and keep defense spending flat next year with the level of spending this year. But that amendment, too was precluded by this particular rule. These two amendments, as I said, are the overarching issues. They address what we are going to spend and what we are going to allocate to defense. Deep within the interstices of this rule there are other things that are precluded that I think are good government amendments. I offered one. A simple amendment to strike $25 million in funding that was added to the budget to accelerate the production of plutonium pits that go into nuclear weapons.”