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American Morning

Budget Report Debate Halted

Aired May 04, 2001 - 10:11   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
STEPHEN FRAZIER, CNN ANCHOR: We're going now to Capitol Hill, where a page-turner has turned into a show-stopper. Early this morning, House members had to curtail their marathon debate when an oversight was discovered. The two inch thick report on the budget was missing two pages and that stopped everything.

CNN congressional correspondent Kate Snow joins us from Capitol Hill now with the latest -- Kate, a long night. What is the latest?

KATE SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, it was a long night, Stephen, and a bit of an embarrassment at that for the Republican leaders, who really wanted to push that budget through last night. The Republican chairman of the Budget Committee wanted to get it done to build the -- keep the momentum going that they thought they had.

It turns out that the Congress works much like any other business. When you've got a big report, you've got to make copies to give out to people and to put in the record. Well, it turns out when they were making those copies, apparently two pages got misplaced and set aside and the copy that went into the official record of Congress in the House at about 11:30 last night was missing those two pages.

We're told they weren't all that important, they didn't have a lot of important details in them, but they were nonetheless pages that needed to be in the document. Since they weren't there, because of the way the rules work in the House, they would have taken hours to have to start all over again with the process. So instead of doing that, they decided that they would simply break and take it up later.

The House recessed at about 2:00 a.m. last night. They postponed this vote. The vote will now happen on Tuesday. Republicans said it was the complexity of the process that held them up and Democrats responded angrily.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. BARNEY FRANK (D), MASSACHUSETTS: We ought to be glad. We have here a problem not of complexity, but of basic physics. The majority has, as many of us have been saying for some time, constructed a budget in which the whole is significantly smaller than the sum of the parts and in the process of trying to jam that large whole into that, into those parts, into that small whole, apparently things came apart.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SNOW: The chairman of the Budget Committee, Jim Nussle, said that there was not much he could do. He simply didn't know where the pages had gone and he apologized to his peers.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JIM NUSSLE (R), IOWA: First of all, I would apologize to the members. I can you all sorts of great rationalizations and excuses, but it's my responsibility. I apologize to the body for that. I'd like, and my recommendation is that we take the opportunity that has been given to us to read it carefully and then debate it carefully on Tuesday and to move forward.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SNOW: House Speaker Dennis Hastert called it simply a technical error and the one thing out of this is that Democrats now may have more time to look over the document. One of their big complaints yesterday was that they simply hadn't had time to read everything that they were supposed to vote on -- Stephen.

FRAZIER: And now they have that. Kate Snow on Capitol Hill.

SNOW: That's right.

FRAZIER: Kate, thanks very much for that update.

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