Jim Sensenbrenner: “I regret that I must offer this amendment to S. 878, but its passage will avoid a problem highlighted by the…”

“I regret that I must offer this amendment to S. 878, but its passage will avoid a problem highlighted by the Congressional Budget Office and its cost estimate for the bill. Budget rules require us to stay within a 1-year and 5-year budget authority score for direct spending. The bill as reported by the Committee on the Judiciary comports with the 1-year spending threshold imposed by the budget rule. Unfortunately, however, the 5-year score exceeds the corresponding threshold by roughly $5.5 million. To cure this defect, I was faced with choosing either deleting meritorious circuit and district judgeships from the bill or retaining all of the judgeships while staggering their implementation over a longer period of time. I have chosen the latter option as the better of the two, and this amendment reflects that. While some judicial districts will have to wait longer for additional judges under this plan, at least those judges will have been authorized for the relatively near future.”