'It Takes Away Our Whole Job': Kirsten Gillibrand Makes The Case Agianst Rescissions

6 months ago

During a Senate Appropriations Committee markup meeting on Thursday, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) spoke about an amendment which gives the committee more authority over rescissions packages.

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00:00Further comments? Madam Chair, can I respond to that comment? Senator Gillibrand. So I don't want

00:06you to confuse the issues of the rescissions we do in our bills. Of course we add money, we take

00:11away money, and the technical term of that is rescission. What Senator Merkley's amendment is

00:16about and what I'm talking about is putting a bill on the floor from the White House, from the

00:23administration, that is not negotiated on a bipartisan basis in our committee. So don't

00:27confuse the term of art, rescission. Rescission just means take away. And we give and take away

00:33in our appropriations bills, as we should, on a bipartisan basis, resulting in the excellent

00:38piece of legislation that Chair Hyde-Smith and I put together. And half the amendments in the

00:44manager's package are members saying, please take away a little money from here, put it over here

00:48because I can fund one more project. That's what the manager's package is. So I'm well aware that

00:53this committee does rescissions every day. That is not what Senator Merkley's talking about. Senator

00:57Merkley's amendment prohibits the executive branch from using its authority, the other branch of

01:03government, to defer or rescind funding from this T-HUD bill. Under this amendment, any changes to

01:09funding can only be made through future annual appropriations committees passed by Congress.

01:14Our job. So we are in agreement. Our job is what we should be protecting. And that's what his amendment

01:20is trying to do. He's not trying to say rescission's a bad word. He's saying when we do rescissions,

01:27it should be done by our committee and our committee only. Because what happens politically,

01:31what you must understand, is when the president says, I want you to cut all this money from here,

01:36here, and here, and here. Sometimes people don't want to stand up to the president if they are the

01:41party in power. They just choose not to do that. That's not a fight they want to do. And it undermines

01:47us. It takes away our whole job. Our whole job. And so I just don't want to have this committee

01:53confuse the word rescission, that it's the word that's bad. It's who is suggesting it in what

01:59context.

'It Takes Away Our Whole Job': Kirsten Gillibrand Makes The Case Agianst Rescissions

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