§008. BPLA §004 – (WGD) Acknowledgements and Disclaimers

Budget Process Law Annotated

Acknowledgments and Disclaimers

The author owes particular thanks to his collaborator, Allison Parent, Counsel to the Senate Budget Committee, and the Chief Counsel to the Senate Budget Committee Gail Millar, who by virtue of having worked at the office of the Senate Parliamentarian, the Congressional Budget Office, and the Department of the Treasury, is among those most familiar with the budget process.

The Budget Committee, under the leadership of Chairman Judd Gregg, Ranking Democratic Member Kent Conrad, Staff Director Scott Gudes, Democratic Staff Director Mary Naylor, and Democratic Counsel Lisa Konwinski, as well as the Finance Committee, under the Leadership of Chairman Charles Grassley, Ranking Democratic Member Max Baucus, Staff Director Kolan Davis, Democratic Staff Director Russ Sullivan, Deputy Staff Director Ted Totman, budget analyst Steve Robinson, and Democratic budget analyst Alan Cohen, and, of course, Senator Robert C. Byrd, himself, deserve the ultimate credit for this work.

The author of this volume has collected many of the precedents that appear here from the Rules database of the LEGIS computerized legislative information system once available to Senate offices. Often the author has merely paraphrased the headnote of the Parliamentarian’s notation of a precedent in that database. Consequently, this book owes much — if not all — to the Senate Parliamentarian, Alan Frumin (who wrote the lion’s share of the entries in the Rules database), and his excellent and helpful staff, Pete Robinson, Elizabeth MacDonough, and Leigh Hildebrand. Thanks are due, too, to former Parliamentarian Bob Dove and other former staff of the office of the Parliamentarian who have assisted the author over the years: Kevin Kayes (now Chief Counsel to the Democratic Leader), Jim Weber, Beth Smerko, Jennifer Smith, and Sally Goffinet.

Thanks are due to Finance Committee intern Jacob Kuipers. Thanks are due, as well, to those formerly associated with the Budget Committee who authorized and assisted earlier editions of this volume: Senator Jim Sasser of Tennessee, Larry Stein, John Callahan, [page xxxix] Agnes Bundy, Nell Mays, Louise Echols, Michael Higginbotham, Doug Kilday, Alex Rogers, Rita Graf, Jackie King, Kelly Hines, Buck White, Alex Green, Rick Brandon, Steve Bell, John Hilley, Nell Payne, Carol Hartwell, and Austin Smythe.

Bob Keith of the Congressional Research Service, Sandy Davis of the Congressional Budget Office and formerly of the Congressional Research Service, Tom Armstrong of the General Accounting Office, and Jack Conway of the Senate Appropriations Committee also provided valuable component parts of this volume.

Although the author has imposed on each of these people named above for material for this volume and for help in its writing, none bears responsibility for its content. The annotations included here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Senate Budget Committee, the Senate Finance Committee, or of anyone other than the author, although, as do most authors, the author does hope that others will share the views expressed here.

The author would be remiss not to thank his dear spouse Ellen Weintraub for her patience in putting up with endless discussions of this volume. Finally, the author owes a debt to Martin Gardner, whose work10 has undoubtedly inspired many an annotation,11 and perhaps a few laws.

W.G.D.