David Obey: “I want to correct that statement. Legislation brought to the House by the majority so far this summer would more than…”

“I want to correct that statement. Legislation brought to the House by the majority so far this summer would more than exhaust the $14 billion on-budget surplus projected by CBO for fiscal year 2000. First, the tax bill passed by the House cost $4.5 billion in fiscal year 2000. Second, the emergency designation for the entire cost of the 2000 census allows more than $4 billion of fiscal year 2000 outlays to occur without being counted against the committee's allocation or the budget caps that we are talking about. Even though those outlays, Mr. Chairman, will not count under the budget rules, they still will occur and they will eat into the surplus. Third, the majority has been instructing CBO to lower its outlay estimates for most of the appropriations bills that have been reported by the committee. Those scorekeeping plugs reduce outlays counted for the defense bill by $9.7 billion and for various domestic bills by at least $2 billion. That means that the three items that I have just listed more than consume the $14 billion in on-budget surplus projected by CBO for the year 2000.”