John Spratt

Mr. Speaker, the budget that the Republicans brought to the House late last Thursday has more than just two pages missing. It is a budget full of plugs and placeholders, and what is really missing are real numbers. Take defense, the…

I want to suggest there are many things you ought to do and one of my biggest concerns is the way defense has been treated in this budget. When it left the House, we provided $70 billion more than the rate of inflation and gave the…

President Bush will outline today his plan for national missile defense. I reserve judgment until I hear the speech, but I have been following SDI and NMD, National Missile Defense, for years; and I have a few thoughts of mine that I want…

Mr. Speaker, this motion has four purposes. First of all, it says to the conferees on the budget resolution, go as close as they can to what the Senate provided for education. Basically, the House resolution endorses and puts forth the…

the Medicare Trust Fund is currently slated to become insolvent in 2028 or 2029. Social Security, fortunately, could last until 2038, 2039, for 10 more years. So the Medicare Trust Fund is intended, for the same reason, to sequester these…

I rise in favor of total repeal of the estate tax now for 99.5 percent of all estates; all Americans who may die, 99.5 percent. This means repeal today, not 10 years from now. That means the family businessmen, the family farmer for whom…

in 1 minute this chart says it all. These are the reasons we cannot support this tax bill. It starts with the surplus, a blue sky surplus estimated at $5.6 trillion. We then back out what everybody agrees we should back out, the surplus in…

there has been a lot of reference today to the Clinton budget act in 1993. It was preceded by the Bush budget summit in 1990. On that occasion, when that budget summit agreement, which laid the first level of foundation for the successes…

I guess the puzzling, perplexing aspect of this bill is why we are reaching for a new solution when we have got other solutions ready at hand. For example, as the gentleman from Iowa knows, we are way over the discretionary spending caps…

the NIF is esoteric physics, but it is essential to the quest for reliability of nuclear weapons. If my colleagues believe, as I do that we should forebear testing and one day ratify the comprehensive test band treaty, believe me canceling…

Mr. Speaker, I am going to vote for this bill because I think basically we should segregate the part A trust fund. But I am going to plead the abuse of process before acceding to the bill, because this is not the way to make important law…

section 3(b) of the gentleman's bill adds a new requirement to the congressional budget resolution. It requires the resolution to show receipts, outlays, and surpluses of deficits in the Old Age and Survivors, OASDI Social Security Trust…

the problem we have is that section 3(b) requires that the congressional budget resolution show receipts, outlays, and surpluses in the OASDI trust fund, while section 5 prohibits it. Am I correct? I had to ask staff to make sure I am…

Mr. Speaker, this bill walls off the surplus in the Medicare Part A trust fund. It says in effect that the surplus in the President's budget and in the congressional budget resolution should be at least as large every year as the Medicare…

By putting them back in the budget, the gentleman is undercutting the whole idea of having Social Security off budget. It boggles my mind why the gentleman would want to do that, when the idea is to separate these accounts and treat them…

I represent a lot of military retirees; and I can speak to the sentiments others have voiced that they feel betrayed. This bill is an effort to try to make them feel that we are keeping the promises we made about military health care for…

The irony of this bill is that it elevates the budget resolution to a joint resolution so that it has the force and effect of law, and then it takes the contents of this newly elevated resolution and literally guts it. It reduces us from…

my colleague may have noticed that I winced when I heard him speak up in the background. I was not quite sure what was happening back there because that was a bold proposal. It was almost heresy because it breaks with the compromise that…

It is true that this has been voted upon before. We were desperate for solutions and so this was one of the jerry-rigged solutions that we came up with. It has been through committee. It has been on the floor. Let me tell my colleagues…

Mr. Speaker, this is another rule that was passed late at night to bring to the floor a conference report that, in all due respect, does not deserve the name. It is hard to call this a conference report when nobody has conferred. We have…

this budget resolution was not produced until late last night; and this morning, we found it on our doorsteps. Some Members who have had only a cursory opportunity to look it over may think, well, they have touched it up here, tuned it up…

This whole debate began when the President sent us a budget and said let us do prescription drug coverage; there is a gaping hole in the comprehensive care we ought to provide in Medicare. And I absolutely agree with that. When the…

Mr. Speaker, I am offering this motion to instruct the House conferees on the budget resolution, basically to say to the conferees, let us put the Medicare drug prescription benefit first and foremost, ahead of everything else. Let us do…

Mr. Chairman, shortly the House will pass a $12.6 billion supplemental appropriation bill. I guess it will pass. The House should understand that this bill, this supplemental, breaches the spending levels that were set just last week when…

last Friday morning, the House passed the Republican budget resolution by all of four votes. Today, the Republican leadership would override it because if this rule passes, the House will take up and probably pass a supplemental…