(Washington D.C.)- U.S. Rep. Sander Levin (D-Royal Oak) submitted the following floor statement in support of the Continuing Resolution: 

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the resolution before the House.

Few will take any great satisfaction with the manner in which the Congress is at last completing the budget process for 2007.  This work was supposed to have been completed 4 months ago.  It is important for everyone to understand how we got to this point and why we are forced to take the extraordinary step of approving a continuing resolution to fund nearly every domestic program for the balance of this fiscal year.

We are here today because the Republican majority that controlled the House last year failed to do its work.  Last May, they voted for a budget resolution that was so unrealistic that not even they could find a way to live within it.  As a direct result after 8 months, the former majority was able to complete action on just 2 of the 11 regular appropriations bills.  Then, in early December, the outgoing leaders of the House and Senate decided to punt on the remaining funding bills, pass a stopgap spending bill to keep the Government operating through February 15, adjourn the Congress, and leave town.

So now it is up to the new Congress to clean up this budgetary mess as best we can, and that's what the bill before the House does.  It is an imperfect solution.  There are any number of programs that deserve a lot more funding than we are able to give them here today.  We are still constrained by the overall funding levels adopted in last year's budget resolution, a budget that not a single Democrat voted for.  At the same time, I am glad that the measure we are considering today manages to increase funding in a number of priority areas, especially veterans health care, medical care for U.S. troops wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Federal highway program, medical research at the National Institutes of Health as well as some key education programs.  I also applaud the decision to put a moratorium on Members' earmarks until a reformed process is put in place to provide an accountable and transparent process for funding these projects.

Even so, some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have gotten up to complain that we should have done better.  They want less spending in some areas and more spending in others. After sitting on their hands for 8 months last year, they now object to the procedure we're using to clean up the mess they made.  It is unfortunate that the people who are complaining the loudest today were unwilling to convince their own leadership to make these spending decisions last year by passing the individual funding bills on time and getting them to the President for his signature.

The reality is that we are already 4 months into fiscal year 2007.  There isn't time to spend another month or two debating spending bills that should have been completed last September.  The agencies and the States have waited long enough for Congress to act, and the President is submitting his 2008 budget request to us next week.  It's time for Congress to complete this work.  

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