Funding the Government
Floor Speech
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Mr. DURBIN. Will the majority leader yield for a question?
Mr. REID. I yield to the Senator from Illinois.
Mr. DURBIN. I wish to ask the majority leader, does he recall the time I returned from the Appropriations Committee and said Senator McConnell had come to the committee and said he was going to establish the maximum amount that he would vote for in all the appropriations bills, the 203(b) allocation of $1.108 trillion? And I said to the majority leader, I think ultimately that is what we are going to be voting for, Senator McConnell's number. Is the Senator from Nevada aware of the fact that the bill we were going to consider was at that number that was asked for by Senator McConnell in the Appropriations Committee?
Mr. REID. Yes, and it satisfied what we had debated here on a number of occasions and voted on, the so-called Sessions-McCaskill number. So we did that. This is not a big balloon that we just threw up to see how it would work out. Senator McConnell, who has had a longstanding association with the Appropriations Committee, that was a number he told us we should work with.
Mr. DURBIN. Will the Senator yield for a further question?
Mr. REID. I am happy to.
Mr. DURBIN. As a former member of the Appropriations Committee, is the Senator aware of the process in that committee, a bipartisan process where the ranking Republican member and the Democratic chairman of each subcommittee sit down to literally have a hearing, mark up a bill, and accept earmarks from both sides of the aisle?
That is the common practice and has been followed with the bills that are currently sitting in front of the minority leader?
Mr. REID. Yes. To Senator Cochran's credit, there were things he thought should not be in the bill that Senator Inouye was putting together. Senator Inouye, to his credit, said: OK, it does not go in. Everything people wanted in this bill--in addition to the work that went on on the subcommittee level, the full committee level--anything that was added at a later time had to be approved by both Senator Inouye and Senator Cochran.
Mr. DURBIN. On a bipartisan basis.
Mr. REID. That is right.
Mr. DURBIN. In every subcommittee.
Mr. REID. Yes. And things that Senator Cochran did not want in, Senator Inouye, being the gentleman he is, said: OK. That is what I will tell my caucus.
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