Spending Restraint

Floor Speech

SPENDING RESTRAINT -- (Senate - December 10, 2007)

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I do not see the majority leader on the floor at the moment. I know we are not having morning business and are going straight to the farm bill, which I applaud. But I do wish to use a few minutes of my leader time at the outset of today's session.

Mr. President, the majority in the House of Representatives will soon propose a half-trillion-dollar spending bill. They have left it to the Senate to make sure the bill includes troop funding. We have another responsibility to keep in mind as we wait for the House to act, and that is our responsibility to the taxpayers.

Nearly a quarter of the way into the fiscal year, we are still 11 appropriations bills short. That is out of a total of 12. Eleven out of 12 have not yet been signed into law. We need to act on these and to do so in a fiscally responsible way that ensures they actually become law.

As I have said, and as we have all seen, there is a way to make law and there is a way to make a political statement. On these appropriations bills, the middle-class tax hike known as the AMT, the farm bill, the Energy bill, and FISA, there is a way we can get all of these done, and we know what that way is. The path forward is clear. The question now is whether the majority will take it.

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