Burgess Owens: “we have just completed phase I of the most important process that takes place here in the Congress, and that is the…”

“we have just completed phase I of the most important process that takes place here in the Congress, and that is the budget of the United States of America for a 1-year period that deals with the fiscal 1997 budget, which will run from October 1, 1996 to September 30, 1997. It is important that the public understand that the budget that we have discussed today in the budget process is only the beginning. It sets the upper limits in terms of expenditures in broad categories, that the real spending process which gets into great detail is the appropriations process. Now, the Committee on Appropriations oversees the appropriation process, and the way the budget appropriations process was handled in the first half of the 104th Congress, it may be that the Committee on Appropriations could just send the rest of us home and take over and run the rest of the session because the other committees have very little power in the decision making, and this particular Congress, controlled by the Republican majority, we have less power than ever.”