David Obey: “I want to talk, however, about something which has been attached to this bill in the form of the Stevens amendment…”

“I want to talk, however, about something which has been attached to this bill in the form of the Stevens amendment, because I think that amendment brings us face-to-face with what has essentially been the institutional dishonesty which has plagued this Congress going back to 1981. What happened in 1981 and in many years since is that after the passage of the Budget Act, which imposed a new budget organization plan on the Congress, the Congress, beginning with 1981, began to pass a series of fictional budget resolutions. They are outlines which the Congress has to pass of expected budget activities; and after those outlines are passed, then we can proceed to pass the actual appropriation bills. What has happened since 1981 is that the Congress has adopted fixed targets for spending based on assumptions that are totally false or at variance with what we really expected to happen down the line.”