For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
October 14, 2007

Setting Speaker Pelosi's Record Straight: 14 Days and Counting: No Annual Spending Bills Sent to the President, No House Conferees Even Named
14 Days And Counting: No Annual Spending Bills Sent To The President, No House Conferees Even Named

White House News

      In Focus: Economy
      Setting the Record Straight

Congress Has Not Sent A Single Annual Spending Bill To The President For The Fiscal Year That Began October 1; Speaker Pelosi Has Not Even Appointed Conferees To Reconcile Differences Between House And Senate Bills

Speaker Pelosi's Fiction: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) falsely says the House is "on schedule" to get the 12 annual spending bills needed to fund the Federal government to the President's desk.

STEPHANOPOULOS: "Last year you criticized the Republican Congress as a do-nothing Congress, and one of the points you cited was they hadn't passed any of their appropriations bills by the fall. Democrats haven't passed any either."

PELOSI: "Oh, well we've – in the House we've passed every one of our bills."

STEPHANOPOULOS: "None are law yet, though."

PELOSI: "Well, they will be. And we're on schedule." (ABC's "This Week," 10/14/07)

The Reality: The fiscal year began 14 days ago, but only five annual spending bills have passed both houses, and Speaker Pelosi has not yet appointed any conferees to reconcile differences in these bills and get them to the President's desk.

By The Numbers:

14 Fiscal Year 2008 began 14 days ago on October 1.

Only 5 annual spending bills have been passed by both houses of Congress.

Congress has sent 0 annual spending bills to the President for his signature.

It has been 80 days since the homeland security appropriations bill passed the House and the Senate.

Speaker Pelosi has appointed 0 conferees to reconcile House and Senate budget bills.

Speaker Pelosi also failed to reach her goal of passing the 12 annual spending bills before the July 4 recess. "The House [will] have all 12 annual spending bills passed by the July fourth recess, in order to give the Senate enough time to take them on." ("Forget About the Ongoing, Hostile Partisanship Over the $125 Billion Supplemental Iraq War Spending Bill," Roll Call, 5/1/07)

Source: http://thomas.loc.gov/home/approp/app08.html