John Spratt: “I would say to the chairman, who I have great respect for, this bill should have gone, the $87 billion bill has enough…”

“I would say to the chairman, who I have great respect for, this bill should have gone, the $87 billion bill has enough policy in it, enough money in it that it should have gone through the typical two-step process. The authorizing committee should have had a hand in it and we did not. We asked for it and did not have that opportunity. In light of that, I would ask him to take a broader view of what happens here on the House floor in the appropriations process to acknowledge the fact that we did not get a chance to put it through committee and, therefore, give us a chance to make a little bit of law, which is not very complicated law. Most of this stuff has been around a long time. We whittled down a package of old ideas to deal with inequities and deficiencies and shortcomings in personnel policy. This stuff has been around a long time. It is not complicated. There is no reason we should not be able to add it to an appropriations bill.”