John Spratt

I do not rise to defend the President's conduct. It was wrong, and months of deceit only made it worse. But that still leaves the question, was the conduct of such enormity that it can be compared to bribery or treason? I followed the…

I have long supported VA subvention, and I want to fix the home health care payment formula as much as anybody on the floor, although I am not sure this bill does much for home health care in my State. I am sure of this, it deals a body…

Mr. Speaker, in a week, just a week, the government will declare a budget surplus for the first time in 30 years. This is a landmark achievement, and in large measure it is the result of rigorous budget rules that Congress enacted in 1990…

there is a season for everything. There is a time to ratify START II, and that is now, immediately, as soon as we can get the Duma to do it. And then there is a time to ratify START III. It comes right on the heels of START II. And that…

we all know why we are here and for whom the bells toll. When Jake Chestnut and John Gibson died, they died for all of us. And we live, we go on, we move freely about this Capitol because they did their duty, they did it without flinching…

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…

Could I just ask the gentleman, Mr. Speaker, in 1985, did the deeming resolution raise the allocation above that which the House had just approved 2 weeks before? This is $1.4 billion more than the whole House approved.

let me explain to the House our problem. This bill has a totally nongermane provision in it, this resolution. For the first time in the 15 or 16 years that I have been in the House, and longer for the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey)…

When we passed the highway bill we repealed some veteran benefits, and in return, to palliate, we added $1.6 billion to the Montgomery G.I. bill. It is not in this bill. Instead, this bill still has a remnant that is out of date. It calls…

Right here a few minutes ago the gentleman saw them restore it. It validates what I have said. These cuts are not realistic. They will not happen. They undid them right here on the House floor.

Absolutely not. We passed a bill, it costs $2 billion, and it is not accommodated in this budget.

We say it has a $50 black hole, and it is getting bigger by the minute. Mr. Chairman, less than a year ago the House approved the balanced budget agreement of 1997. It was a good agreement, a bipartisan agreement. It built on the Clinton…

Mr. Chairman, I am not here to speak about the CATS' meow. Mr. Chairman, here we go again. To placate the extremists, the Republican leadership has brought to the floor a budget which is so extreme that the Republican Senate Committee on…

It does indeed, and I do not know where it will come, except for TANF. This is another example of the budget resolution saying it will, and then Members getting up here and saying it will not, and then voting for a document that says it…

I began this debate by saying that the Kasich resolution is not realistic. I could not have given more graphic proof for my argument than what has just happened before our very eyes here in the House of Representatives, right here in the…

This morning we passed a resolution renouncing the fees, but the Kasich bill has $8 to $10 billion in new user fees, $7 in all, in it. Presumably they are not going to repudiate their principle and impose user fees of their own when they…

the gentleman who just spoke said that our resolution, the substitute which I am offering on behalf of the Democratic Caucus, makes no effort to mitigate the marital tax penalty, and that is not correct. Section 11 says, it is the sense of…

Mr. Chairman, we are headed down the same road we were in 1995: Cut services for the elderly and the poor and give tax breaks to the rich. Let me take one specific. When we went into the Committee on the Budget we said, give us the…

I support student loans, and I support the kind of compromise that has been reached in this bill, but as the ranking democrat on the Committee on the Budget I have to raise concerns about this bill because I do not think it complies with…

Mr. Chairman, I am for spending more on highways and mass transit, but we have a process for deciding how much more and which priorities we will pare back or preclude to make room for more spending on highways so that we can keep the…

I support more funding for highway and mass transit. My district needs it, and my constituents want it. And the committee has kindly provided some funds for my district. But we have provided a substantial plus-up in transportation spending…

the bill before us is carefully crafted. It was worked out in a completely bipartisan spirit by the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon), the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Pickett), and myself and, truth be told, by our staff, in close…

Ron, we go back 15 years. A long time. When I came here in 1983, you had just reached the first plateau of power in the House. You had become a subcommittee chairman. It took you 12 years to rise up the seniority ladder, which tells us a…

last night, after making a statement on the floor, I filed for extension of my remarks a longer statement, which I prepared as I reviewed the committee report on H

this bill concerns our national security, but it was not heard, it was not debated, it was not marked up, it was not reported by the Committee on National Security because the committee waived jurisdiction. The first time I knew of it was…