POSTPONED: Should Congress Override a Veto of the Homeland Security Funding Bill?

A Forum with Appropriation Subcommittee Chairman David Price

July 30, 2007, 11:00am – 12:00pm

About This Event

This fall the White House and Congress will face off in an epic showdown over spending priorities. President Bush continues to insist that Congress provide more than $120 billion a year for an unpopular war in Iraq, while at the same time insisting that the additional $22 billion Congress wants to spend on domestic priorities will bust the budget. He has threatened to veto nearly all of the domestic appropriation bills now before the Congress.

It appears that the first appropriation bill Congress is likely to send the President will fund the Department of Homeland Security. According to a letter sent on June 12th "The Administration strongly opposes" that bill because the $2.1 billion it includes above the amount requested by the White House is "irresponsible and excessive."

But what is Congress spending that $2.1 billion on at Homeland Security that the White House so strongly objects to and should the Congress allow the veto to stand if the President makes good on his threat. These are questions that Congressman David Price, Chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee that drafted the legislation will address at a Center for American Progress forum at 11:00 am on Monday, July 30, 2007.

Keynote Speaker:
Representative David Price (D-NC)

Moderated by:
Scott Lilly, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress

Location

Center for American Progress
1333 H St. NW, 10th Floor
Washington, DC 20005

Biographies

Representative David Price currently serves on the House Appropriations Committee and is Chair of the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee. He is also a member of the Appropriations Subcommittees on Commerce, Justice & Science and on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development.

Born in 1940, Price grew up in the small town of Erwin in East Tennessee. His father was a high school principal and his mother was an English teacher. Price studied at Mars Hill College and was a Morehead Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH). He earned his B.A. there in 1961, and continued his education at Yale University, where he received a Bachelor of Divinity degree (1964) and a Ph.D. in Political Science (1969).

Price taught political science and public policy at Duke University. He is the author of four books on Congress and the American political system.

Scott Lilly is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress who writes and does research in wide range of areas including governance, federal budgeting, national security and the economy. He joined the Center in March of 2004 after 31 years of service with the United States Congress. He served as Clerk and Staff Director of the House Appropriations Committee, Minority Staff Director of that Committee, Executive Director of the House Democratic Study Group, Executive Director of the Joint Economic Committee and Chief of Staff in the Office of Congressman David Obey.

He served two years in the U.S. Army and is a graduate of Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Public Policy Institute at Georgetown University.