Official Truth Squad
OFFICIAL TRUTH SQUAD -- (House of Representatives - January 31, 2007)
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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia. He does such a wonderful job of pulling the Truth Squad together and helping us focus on the issues that are important to our constituents and of concern to our constituents and of concern to all Americans.
Certainly the process that we have seen carried out here in the House of Representatives is one that causes us concern. For those of us who respect regular order, who respect the integrity of the House, to see an omnibus spending bill go straight from the drafting table of a couple of Members, one in the Senate and one in the House, and then come directly to the floor for a vote is of tremendous concern.
We all know that our Nation has a process that was laid forth in the founding of this Nation, a process by which this body would conduct its business on behalf of the people, the people's House. Today, as I heard some of my colleagues across the aisle talk about how we had returned to regular order, I thought, oh, my goodness, I do not think this is what people had in mind.
I really do not think, Mr. Speaker, that when people went to the polls in November and voted and said we want to see a change in things, we want greater accountability, we want greater transparency and we are frustrated with what we have seen in Washington. I do not think this is what they had in mind, and certainly we would hope this is not the process that the Democrat majority will follow as they talk about what is going to be regular order.
What the gentleman from Georgia just said about the omnibus is so very true. As he said, this is a continuing resolution. It requires two sheets of paper. It is a total of about 40 lines of type. That is it. It just says we abide by the budget that was in place in 2006. Our constituents may remember that the budget that we passed in 2006 was the budget that made 1 percent across-the-board reductions in spending, 1 percent. It was a $40 billion savings to the American people.
Now, the budget, this omnibus budget, this 137 pages is going to end up spending about $17 billion more. So they are reducing and doing away with the savings that we worked hard to put in place.
The thing that is of tremendous concern to me, and I am so delighted to see the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) who is such an advocate for our military and is really, having chaired our Armed Services Committee, speaks so well to that issue and I know he is going to talk about it, but it just breaks my heart to know that our National Guard troops and our troops at Ft. Campbell, which is located in my district, are going to have far less money for quality of life because of the actions that were taken in this budget and the way in this budget, in this document, H.J. Res. 20, and people can go online and pull this up and look, and how they have taken from military quality of life, money that should be going to our military families and have moved that to other departments; how they took money from our military quality of life, $50 million, and that is given to the Palestinian Authority. That is something that with my constituents has certainly raised a lot of questions.
The thing that interested me when it came to the issue of the earmarks was they had said, oh, no earmarks are going to be in this budget, and then I found out that, well, there were earmarks that were in the budget. Nevada seems to have earmarks. Other States seem to have some curious earmarks that are left in there, but then there are funds that are turned back to the agencies.
I said, well, how does this money get spent? Is it done with letters of instruction? How is it done? What I found out was that the process that they would revert to, and I guess this is regular order, would be the process before money started being earmarked. It is where you pick up the phone and you call the agency and say let me tell you how I think we need to spend that money.
My constituents long ago said they did not want the activities of smoke-filled rooms. They wanted more transparency and the American people wanted to see greater accountability, and I think that we will continue to hear from our constituents. They want a smaller budget that is going to be more responsible of their money. This is not our money. It is the taxpayers' money. Government does not have a revenue problem. With the tax reductions that have been passed, the Federal Government has brought in more money than ever.
What government has is a spending problem. It has a priority problem, and this big, bloated budget that was passed today is a budget that will continue to fund a bloated bureaucracy that just cannot get enough of our constituents' money.
I was disappointed today with the actions of the majority. I was disappointed in how they chose to carry it out. I do hope that we see a change in the way they carried forth, and to the gentleman from Georgia, I will tell you, I hope that we continue to see a return to a respect for how we address the people's business in this House.
We talked some about one man, one vote and the sanctity of that and the importance of that, and I do hope that everyone will continue to keep their focus on being certain that we respect that for our constituents.
I thank the gentleman for the time.
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