David Obey: “if one looks at the Budget Act, the purpose of the Budget Act was to force a Congress to get away from runaway spending…”

“if one looks at the Budget Act, the purpose of the Budget Act was to force a Congress to get away from runaway spending and runaway deficits by forcing the Congress to confront trade-offs between spending and revenues. In fact, the Congress is being prevented from doing that and the Congress is being shielded from facing those explicit trade-offs unless amendments such as this are offered and debated fully in the House. We recognize that funding for these programs under the budget resolution is being cut back in order to make room in that same budget resolution for the tax cuts that have been provided and to make room for further tax cuts which the majority party is talking about offering this week. If we cannot offer this kind of an amendment, then it would seem to me that the entire budget process has been intellectually corrupted and turned into a mere enforcement mechanism for majority party will rather than being used as a device to work out an explicit and forthright set of trade-offs. I would urge the Chair to reject the point of order. The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simmons). The Chair is prepared to rule on the point of order. The Chair finds that the proposed instructions dwell their operative focus on matters not within the scope of the differences committed to conference by the two Houses. On these premises, the Chair holds that the instructions do exceed the scope of conference. The point of order is sustained.”