Energy And Water Development And Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2008

Floor Speech

ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008 -- (House of Representatives - June 20, 2007)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. FOXX. Mr. Chairman, my amendment would reduce funding for the Department of Energy Departmental Administration to the fiscal year 2007 level. This amendment would save $28 million, reducing the account from $304.782 million to $276.832 million, the fiscal year 2007 enacted level.

The Energy and Water appropriations bill is already $1.1 billion over the President's request. This amendment would reduce the funding in the Departmental Administration account, putting it at last year's enacted level. The bill provides a 10 percent increase for DOE's Departmental Administration account.

There has been at least $105.5 billion in new Federal spending over the next 5 years authorized by the House Democratic leadership this year. In enacting the largest tax increase in American history, the Democrats' budget allows for $28 billion in spending over that of the President's budget request.

This amendment is designed to save the taxpayers almost $30 million, just a small dent in the unnecessary increases in Federal spending this year, which is being fueled by huge tax increases. We've constantly heard on the floor, around this bill especially, the problem of increased rules and regulations. What happens when you have additional administrators? What you are going to get are more rules and more regulations.

We are constantly adding administrative costs to all of the Federal Government. I think we can make a very small dent, but an important dent, in our deficit spending by cutting these funds. This should not hurt at all the administration of the Department and the administration of programs.

If we were going to put in additional funding anywhere, we ought to put that money in for direct services and not for administration. We hear more and more about too much administration in the education field, but I think we have it all over the Federal Government, State governments, local governments.

We are talking about deficits, not surpluses. If we had a huge surplus in this country, we might be wanting to talk about spending additional money. But we don't need to be doing that. This will benefit the taxpayers all over this country. And what we need to do is to cut spending, not increase spending. That is what we heard all last year from the majority party. I am surprised that we aren't continuing to hear it this year. When they are in charge, they want to spend lots of money.

So, Mr. Chairman, I respectfully ask my colleagues to support this, which would save $28 million and make a small dent in our deficit.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source