[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 139 (Tuesday, October 1, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12090-S12091]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      OMNIBUS APPROPRIATIONS BILL

  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, yesterday I was one of a handful of 
Members of the Senate to vote against the FY97 omnibus appropriations 
bill.
  This was a difficult vote and I have mixed feeling about passage of 
this bill.
  While I am pleased a Government shutdown was avoided, I am 
disappointed in the way the process was handled.
  Various measures that warranted separate consideration, ranging from 
the immigration bill, to amendments to the age discrimination law to 
banking legislation, were wrapped into this massive bill. The measure 
was hundreds of pages long, and few Members of either body were fully 
aware of the wide range of items shoved into this must-pass bill at the 
11 hour. It has been pointed out by a Member of the other body that you 
could get a double hernia just trying to lift this omnibus spending 
bill.
  I predict that over the course of the next several weeks, there will 
be many surprises discovered in the package. Some of the special 
interest pork provisions are buried deep within the various titles, as 
well as policy changes that should have been debated in public and 
voted on without the pressure to keep the government running.
  Moreover, although we succeeded in avoiding a massive new tax cut 
that would have set us backward on the road to deficit reduction, this 
omnibus spending bill represents a missed opportunity to cut Government 
waste and stop the unnecessary spending. The fact that this bill was 
loaded up with special spending provisions for individual Members 
indicates that it is business as usual in Congress when it comes to 
spending Federal dollars. While we have made significant progress in 
reducing the Federal deficit, much of that work was done in the last 
Congress and we missed the opportunity in the 104th Congress to finish 
the job and truly get the Federal budget into balance.
  This bill adds a whopping $9 billion in deficit spending for defense 
systems above what Department of Defense requested. When all of the 
fiscal year 1997

[[Page S12091]]

appropriations bills are lined up together, excessive spending on 
things like sending Russian monkeys into space and massive out-dated 
water projects out West continues to drain the Treasury. I voted 
against this bill because I think we could have done a much better job 
at curbing unnecessary spending, government waste, and reducing the 
Federal deficit.

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