Alan Simpson: “It's important to remember what we're doing here. We're dealing with a CR that funds the government for the last 7…”

“It's important to remember what we're doing here. We're dealing with a CR that funds the government for the last 7 months. This is not a full-year appropriation bill. We're dealing with a much shorter period of time. So the $100 billion that we were asked to reduce in this budget, if you looked at it, by the time this probably gets done, would, in effect, be about $200 billion if it were a full-year appropriations bill. The Appropriations Committee has done its job. It has done what our Conference asked us to do. We had actually had amendments on the floor that would reduce some accounts to less than what they have in the appropriations process. So I guess they would be paying us, I don't know. But some of the amendments have just gone too far. This one I think goes too far. And as some have said, across-the-board cuts don't give us the opportunity to decide what our priorities are. What we need to do is make sure that we get this amendment defeated, that we get this CR to fund the government for the last 7 months passed, and then get on with doing a budget for 2012, which was not done last year, and pass the appropriations bills so that we can fund the government for the next year at a level that I think many of the RSC members will be happy with when we get that done.”