Further Additional Continuing Appropriations Amendment, 2011

Floor Speech

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Mr. DICKS. I yield myself such time as I may consume.

First of all, I would like to thank the President and the leaders in the House and Senate on both sides for the compromise and for averting a government shutdown.

I think there was a major decision made tonight by both parties and by the administration to keep the government open.

That's what the American people sent us here to do. They sent us here to work out compromises, to be able to resolve issues and to move forward, and I think this is an example of that.

Now, this CR will run for 1 week to April 15. It is basically a clean CR in the sense of there is no ideologically driven language. It has $2 billion in it in cuts, but they are in the underlying agreement. And so I think this is acceptable.

My understanding is that there are cuts in discretionary spending and in some of the mandatory accounts. I am pleased that the leaders were able to reach this agreement.

We still have a lot of work to do. I want to say to my chairman that I still look forward to working on the 2012 appropriations bills, and I hope that we can work and have an open process where we can bring these bills to subcommittee, full committee and to the floor with open rules.

I would like to yield to my chairman just to make sure that that is still the path we want to go in this year. We want to avoid what happened in 2006.

Now, I reminded you--sometimes you forget a little bit--that when the Republicans lost in 2006, there were a number of unfinished appropriations bills and we had to do an omnibus in 2007. We did it a little faster, by the way. It didn't take quite as long. But we're glad that this agreement was reached, and I look forward to getting on with the work of the 2012 appropriations items.

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