Date: 2013-06-04
Speaker: VAN HOLLEN (democrat)
Chamber: H

I thank my friend. Mr. HASTINGS. Ive been listening to Mr. WEBSTER. And if I were Mr. WEBSTER. Id be doing exactly what hes doing. which is focusing on the underlying bills: the spending bill to support our veterans. to support military construction. and homeland security. But as others have pointed out. the vote before us is not on those underlying bills. Its on the rule. And everybody needs to understand that whats at play here is a scheme to use the rules to affect not just the veterans budget. but to affect other parts of our budget. In fact. Mr. Speaker. I find it especially cynical that our colleagues would use the spending bills on veterans and military construction as the vehicle to pass their budget levels which will result in dramatic cuts to the parts of the budget that fund our kids education and that fund the investments in science and research to find cures and treatments to things like cancer. because we know the Appropriations Committee has already set out what the levels for those categories to the budget will be. And do you know what they are? A $30 billion cut below the sequester level to the parts of the budget that fund our kids education and that fund that scientific research. So. yes. this is the rule for two particular bills. They are good bills. The veterans bill is a good bill. But the rule. ladies and gentlemen. has embedded in it the Republican budget levels for the overall budget process. And thats going to hurt education for the kids of those veterans and the family members of those veterans who have diseases whose funding for research is going to be dramatically cut. A 20 percent cut below the sequester level. thats what youre adopting in this rule. a 20 percent cut for the category of the budget on education. Now. why are we here? Were supposed to have a budget process. The House passed a budget. I dont like the budget. but it passed a budget. The Senate passed a budget. Under the rules of the Congress. in fact. as a matter of law. the House and Senate are supposed to have completed a conference committee by April 15. That was quite a while ago. In fact. its been over 70 days since the Senate passed a budget and the House passed a budget. Now. we dont have a HouseSenate conference committee report. Why might that be? Well. it turns out that the Speaker of the House has refused to appoint conferrees to work with the Senate to come up with a budget. Now. our Republican colleagues beat up for years on the Senate for not having a budget. I can understand that complaint. But the Senate has a budget now. and yet our Republican colleagues refuse to go to conference. You made a big deal about "no budget. no pay." Guess what? We dont have a budget. We have a House budget and we have a Senate budget. but we dont have a Federal budget. and yet everybody is getting paid. What happened to that? Now. why would we not want to go to conference? Mr. Speaker. just today in the United States Senate. PATTY MURRAY. the chairwoman for the Budget Committee. for the llth time tried to get consent to go to conference to work these differences out in a transparent way. blocked by a Republican Senator. Here is what Senator MCCAIN has had to say about the whole process. because I would urge our colleagues to listen to him. This is a quote from Senator MCCAIN: I think its insane for Republicans who complained for 4 years about HARRY REID not having a budget and now were not going to agree to conference? That is beyond comprehension for me. And I think its beyond comprehension for the American people. Why are you sitting on the budget? So what are we doing in this rule? This rule says lets pretend. Lets make believe that the House and Senate went to conference. and lets pretend that they agree. except lets pretend that they agreed on the House budget numbers. the numbers that would cut the part of the budget that deals with our kids education by over 20 percent. Lets pretend that because we dont want to go through the normal process. Thats what this rule does. Its a total fake. And its a fake because of the refusal to work these issues out in a transparent manner for the American people. So. the previous question is a very simple statement. It just says lets comply with the law which says a conference committee was supposed to have met and completed action by April 15. lets at least start down the process of complying with the law. It says that it is the sense of the House of Representatives that the Speaker should follow regular House procedure and immediately request a conference and appoint conferees to negotiate a fiscal year 2014 budget resolution so we can have a real Federal budget. not a fake budget. which is what youre calling for in this rule under the guise of saying lets just fund our veterans.