Charles W. Stenholm: “there are two budgets; no, there are four budgets being considered tomorrow. The one that I support borrows $137 billion…”

“there are two budgets; no, there are four budgets being considered tomorrow. The one that I support borrows $137 billion less than the majority budget. I listened to a lot of speeches today, and I do not understand how anyone can propose that borrowing $137 billion more is going to make good economic sense. We are talking about spending cuts. I hope my colleagues from rural America take a good hard look at our colleagues' budget. Cutting 46 percent more out of the agriculture discretionary function over the next 6 years does not make good economic sense by anybody's standards. Cutting 13 percent from research extension this year, 1997, does not make good sense. Whoever proposed that, I do not understand how they could possibly come up with that. The idea that there is that much more overhead down at USDA completely ignores the fact that we have spent the last 3 years reorganizing the U.S. Department of Agriculture. We have cut $4.2 billion from that overhead. Now to come in and say we are going to take another $695 million because somebody keeps saying there is unnecessary bureaucratic overhead downtown, they are not looking at what has already been done over the last 3 years in the current administration, and they are truly going to do irreparable harm to agriculture, rural health.”