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Guest Commentary July 16, 2002
OMB Mangling Appropriations Process
The Honorable Robert Byrd
No committee in this Senate works harder than the Appropriations Committee. We have been working for months on the supplemental appropriations bill. We held hearings, months ago now, on the supplemental appropriations bill, hearings specifically concerning budget requests for homeland security.
The administration put its feet in cement and its head in the sand and adamantly opposed the committee's request, which was in writing, and signed by [Ranking Minority Member] Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and myself, to have [Homeland Security Director] Tom Ridge come up and testify so that the Appropriations Committee in the Senate, following a practice of 135 years of having witnesses appear in open sessions so that the people can hear what they said -- the administration did not want that, and the President put a muzzle on his Homeland Security Director and said, no, he will not come.
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Senator Stevens and I wrote a joint letter asking for an appointment with the President. We wanted to state our case. The President did not answer that letter. No. Some underling answered the letter.
So we had to proceed. We did. We proceeded as best we could. The full committee had excellent hearings over a period of five days, with testimony from firemen, policemen, local health officials, also testimony from seven Cabinet Members and the Director of FEMA.
So we proceeded as best we could. We put together a bill we thought was a good bill. Then, however, the President threatened to veto it because it had too much money, in his way of looking at it, too much money for homeland security. So there was the threat to veto the bill.
Only this [past] week... the President, in a speech, assailed Congress for "delay" in getting this appropriations bill downtown, saying the Defense Department is hard up for moneys. So Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Obey (D-Wisconsin and the Committee's Ranking Minority Member), Sen. Stevens, and I have been meeting. We met [last Wednesday] and we thought we had the whole thing pretty much wrapped up and that we could meet this [past Thursday] morning in full committee and vote the conference report out, and send it back to both Houses for their judgments.
Lo and behold! At seven o'clock last [Wednesday] night, here comes a request from the White House to hold up further action. They want to send up a different budget.
So, who is holding up defense? The President, in a public speech, lambasts the Congress for not getting this appropriations bill to him sooner. We have been wanting to go with the President and get this bill on his desk, but he just has not supported the efforts of the Appropriations members on both sides of the Capitol to move this bill, first withholding Mr. Ridge, who is the point man for the administration on homeland security, adamantly refusing to let him testify; then threatening to veto the bill. This is a difficult bill. The staffs work into the night around here on this bill; we try to work hard to get the bill down to the President. He assails the Congress for not sending the bill to him, saying that if he doesn't have it by a certain hour or day, it is going to affect the national defense, going to affect the military with personnel reductions and so on. ...
This Office of Management and Budget, as far as I am concerned, is just above my ears. Upon what meat doth this our little Caesar feed? I am talking about Mitch Daniels, the Director of OMB. He is always meddling, always meddling in the Congress, in its work and in appropriations. Not only that; he is always lecturing the Congress. I have never mentioned his name publicly until now. But I am fed up to my ears also.
The appropriations process is being mangled. It is being maimed. It is being murdered at the hands of someone who is not elected by the people of this country. What bar of judgment does he stand before?
I repeat, "Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed that he is become so great?" ...
I am just fed up. I am tired. I am tired of this mangling of the appropriations process. Here is this outfit, blows into town like a tornado and they are going to change the tone in Washington. And the tone has been changed. It is to the nth degree worse than what it has ever been before. I wish the President would step in and stop this interruption, this mangling of the appropriations process, this meddling by his Office of Management and Budget director, and stop that bigmouth down there from constantly meddling in appropriations bills and criticizing the Congress.
That man, Mitch Daniels, is not elected by anybody. I hate to say this about a man. I like him personally, but he just goes too far. I am tired of it. ...
I don't want to hear anybody in the administration accusing the Congress of delay in passing this bill. It is on their table. Let them come into court with clean hands before they attack the Congress.
Robert Byrd, a Democrat, is a U.S. Senator from West Virginia. The above commentary has been adapted from a speech Sen. Byrd delivered on the floor of the Senate, July 11, 2002. To contact him, Click Here.
The above column has been distributed by PoliticsOL.com.
