Department Of The Interior, Environment, And Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010
Floor Speech
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Mr. JORDAN of Ohio. Madam Chair, let me first thank the ranking member from Idaho for his work on this legislation and the chairman. In fact, the chairman and I spoke earlier this evening about this amendment. We joked around. I told him he might be for it, but I doubt he would be, actually.
Earlier this week, in fact, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of this week, the Treasury auctioned off $104 billion of Treasury bills; $104 billion of debt we sold this week, the largest amount ever sold by this country. The reason we had to sell that much debt is because we are spending too much money. In fact, we are spending so much that over the next decade, think about this, over the next decade, we are going to take the national debt, which is now $11 trillion, we are going to take it to $23 trillion.
Think about what it takes to pay that off. Think about what our kids and grandkids are going to have to do to pay that off. First, you have to balance a budget; then you have to run a trillion-dollar surplus for 23 years in a row, and that doesn't even count the interest which is now approaching a billion dollars a day. Spending is certainly out of control.
So this amendment is real simple. This amendment says, you know what, let's do what all kinds of families are doing, what all kinds of taxpayers across this country are doing, what all kinds of small business owners across this country are doing: let's live on exactly what we were functioning on, what the Federal Government was functioning on just 1 year ago. In fact, it wasn't even 1 year ago. It was 9 months ago we were still going on a continuing resolution for 2008, living on the 2008 appropriated levels. Let's do that.
Instead of increasing spending in this bill by 21 percent over what we were functioning on just 9 months ago, let's do what all kinds of families and taxpayers, all kinds of small business owners across this country are doing. In fact, unemployment in my district runs anywhere from 10 to 16 percent in the 11 counties I have the privilege of representing. There are families, there are small business owners, there are taxpayers in the Fourth Congressional District of Ohio who are living on something less than what they were living on just 9 months ago. But somehow the Federal Government can never get by on less. It is only the families and taxpayers who have to do that.
Again, my amendment is pretty straightforward. It says, let's go back to where we were just 9 months ago. The government should be able to function on that amount of money, and it reduces the appropriation amount in this bill by $5.750 billion. Again, that amount is a 21 percent increase over what we were functioning on just 9 months ago.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. JORDAN of Ohio. Madam Chair, there they go again. I think the chairman's words were ``irresponsible meat-ax approach.'' This is not a cut. This is not a cut. This is saying let's hold the line. This is taking the first step--what I would say is a pretty modest first step--towards trying to rein in spending so we don't saddle future generations of Americans with this enormous step.
If you don't take this first step and say, let's hold the line, let's freeze where we're at, you never have to prioritize, it's just the band plays on. We'll just keep increasing. We'll just keep spending. We're saying, well, we never have to decide which programs make sense, which ones should be eliminated, which ones are redundant. You never have to make the tough calls. You just keep spending, which is, frankly, the easiest thing in the world for politicians to do, spend and spend and spend, borrow and borrow and borrow, tax and tax and tax. Well, that's pretty easy for this place to do. The tough thing is usually the right thing.
I had a coach in high school. He talked about discipline every stinking day. I used to get sick and tired of hearing about it. And he said that discipline is doing what you don't want to do when you don't want to do it. Basically that meant doing it his way when you would rather do it your way. It meant doing it the right way, the tough way, the difficult way when you would rather do it the easy and convenient way. The easy and convenient way is to continue to spend and spend and spend. The tough thing to do is to say let's hold the line and then let's figure out which programs actually make sense, and I trust the gentlemen here on the committee to do that.
But if you never hold the line, you never get to the first step. This is a modest first step. We still know we've got trillions of dollars in debt we've got to deal with. We can't even take the first step. That's what is so frustrating--and, frankly, in my mind, so ridiculous--about this place is we can never even just say let's just stop. Let's do what Americans all over this country are having to do. We can never do that. And the Democrats just read off a bunch of lists, oh, this, this and this--that's baloney. We just want to hold the line, and everyone across this country understands that.
Let's hold the line. Let's pass this amendment and take that first step towards becoming fiscally responsible and exercising a little discipline in this Congress for a change.
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