John Thune: “I want to come back to the one point I neglected to make earlier or did not have the time to make in my remarks; that…”

“I want to come back to the one point I neglected to make earlier or did not have the time to make in my remarks; that is, even though I made the point that the House bill when it came over was at a certain funding level, $820 billion, the Senate compromise is $827 billion, and that actually the compromise is more costly than was the bill that so many people complained about as being pork laden when it came over from the House. There are those who are saying this bill is going to get bigger in the conference committee when the House and Senate get together to work out their differences. I want to note what one of the Senators from Michigan said recently, and that is: I expect there will be some significant improvements over the package that comes out of the Senate. He said: There would be a push for more spending on infrastructure, education, and aid to the States. The President indicated recently: "I will be honest with you, the Senate version cut a lot of education dollars. I would like to see some of this restored." We talk about cuts in this program as if we are actually cutting something that already exists. We are talking about $1 trillion in new spending, an unprecedented amount of spending that has not been authorized. It did not go through regular order.”