[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 186 (Monday, November 20, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H13349]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          BUDGETARY PRIORITIES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentlewoman from Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder] is recognized 
during morning business for 2 minutes.
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. Mr. Speaker, I must say how very proud I was to be a 
Democrat this weekend, because this weekend the Democratic party and 
this House stood up in the grand tradition of Roosevelt and Truman for 
work, for work.
  We insisted that this body keep working as we ran out of ``no'' 
cards, when the other side finally decided we should not adjourn, that 
we should stay in session until we got some kind of an agreement to get 
Federal workers back to work. That happened, and how proud I was of the 
solidarity on our side of the aisle as they chanted ``work, work, 
work,'' to the other side to get all of the petty nonsense of the last 
week behind us.
  That is now behind us. And now for the next 3 weeks this body must 
sit down with the American people and we must all dialog about what our 
priorities really are.
  Today we are going to see the first priority category. We see the 
defense bill going to the President. And after all of this that you 
have heard about balanced budgets, they are going to put a defense bill 
on the President's budget that is $7 billion over what the Joint Chiefs 
of Staff asked for. That was never done, even during the cold war. So 
we will be spending more than the whole rest of the planet combined on 
defense.
  If you think this year is expensive, wait until you see the rest that 
is coming in behind it for the next 7 years. This is just the teeny 
little Ritz cracker hors d'oeuvre, for the banquet that we will be 
ordering if we cannot override the President's veto of that bill.
  These are the kind of priorities we are going to talk about as we 
figure out what we do in this next 7 years. These are the priorities 
that are taking us into the 21st century. This is going to be a 
historic 3-week debate. Everyone in America should roll up their shirt 
sleeves and join it. It is our country and it is our future.

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