[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 3]
[House]
[Page 4324]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  APRIL 15 BUDGET RESOLUTION DEADLINE

  (Mr. CONNOLLY asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. CONNOLLY. Mr. Speaker, tomorrow is the deadline by which Congress 
is supposed to have enacted its annual budget resolution.
  As a former member of the Budget Committee, I take that 
responsibility very seriously, and I know the Speaker, the former 
chairman of that committee, does as well. So it saddens me that the 
House majority is now abdicating that responsibility.
  I come from local government where we had to work on a bipartisan 
basis to adopt and balance budgets every year. Yet, rather than work 
with Democrats to advance a budget resolution that reflects the 
spending levels of the hard-fought 2-year bipartisan budget agreement 
adopted just 5 months ago, House Republicans have decided not to pass a 
resolution at all because some in their caucus want to undo that 
bipartisan agreement.
  Budgets are values-based documents, but they don't have to represent 
just one set of values. They can be inclusive and should represent the 
broad diversity of the interests of the people we represent.
  Working together, we can demonstrate the power of government to spur 
economic growth, provide for national security, and meet the needs of 
our people.
  Mr. Speaker, one only has to look at the growing costs of the Zika 
virus, the opioid addiction problem, and the Flint water crisis to 
realize the cost of doing nothing.

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