Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010
Floor Speech
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2010 -- (Senate - December 18, 2009)
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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, would the Senator yield?
Mr. CORKER. I would love to hear from the Senator from South Dakota as to what he thinks about this type of process.
Mr. THUNE. If I might, through the Chair, Mr. President, ask a question of the Senator from Tennessee, if he will yield, because he is absolutely right. This is being rushed. This is a massive reordering and restructuring of one-sixth of our economy, which we are going to be expected to vote upon in just a few days, on a managers' amendment which will be the so-called latest deal struck behind closed doors, as the Senator mentioned. We are going to be expected to vote upon that without having seen it today. In fact, I don't think any of our colleagues on the other side, or very few of them, have seen it, nor have the American people.
I have listened as the other side has gotten up here today with all these statements of outrage and that it is insulting, it is unconscionable that this side would be holding up funding for the troops, and what strikes me about that is the deadline for passing the appropriations bills is September 30. I think that feigned outrage is all about a bigger, grand sort of cynical plan at work here to try to push this health care bill through.
But would the Senator from Tennessee be able to answer a question regarding this. The Defense appropriations bill passed the House last summer. It passed the Senate in October, I think October 6. So we are talking 8, 9, 10 weeks ago now. Clearly, the Democratic majority's clock management is either very bad or this was part of some big, grand plan to push this thing to the very end and to jam this thing through, to try to set it up so that the health care bill could be passed right before the Christmas holiday without the American people having had an opportunity to see it, and the Defense appropriations bill, which carries a bunch of other unrelated items, would pass as well.
Does it seem a little odd and coincidental to the Senator from Tennessee that you would be debating the Defense appropriations bill right now when it could have been done weeks ago, if not months ago? In fact, these bills are supposed to be done by September 30, which is the end of the fiscal year.
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