Departments Of Transportation And Housing And Urban Development, And Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010--Conference Report
Floor Speech
DEPARTMENTS OF TRANSPORTATION AND HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2010--CONFERENCE REPORT -- (Senate - December 12, 2009)
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Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I want to speak for a moment about the vote we are about to take here to proceed with the so-called Omnibus Appropriations Act, H.R. 3288. This is the bill which for those who have not been following closely cleans up a little bit of a mess that the Congress has created because we did not do our work earlier in the year.
We are supposed to pass appropriations bills to run the government, to run the various Departments, and we did not get around to doing that. So right here, at the very end, we have to combine all kinds of those bills together in what is called an omnibus bill--six bills in total.
I find it ironic we are talking about a bill which is nearly $500 billion--to be exact, it is $446.8 billion in new spending--at a time when our national deficit is $1.4 trillion, the health care bill we are debating in its first 10 years of implementation is $2.5 trillion and, next week, we are going to be asked to raise the debt ceiling in this country by something like $1.8 trillion.
I saw a bumper sticker that said, ``Don't Tell Them What Comes After A Trillion.'' We used to think in billions. When I first came to Congress, millions were a big deal. Now we are talking trillions, and it is being tossed around as if it is nothing. Now another $ 1/2 trillion spending bill.
Well, obviously we need to run the government. But do you suppose the government could be a little bit like families and be a little bit prudent in how much it spends or how much it increases its spending over the previous year?
Let me give you some examples. The bill for Transportation and HUD receives a 23-percent increase over last year--23 percent. The State Foreign Operations bill receives a 33-percent increase over last year. Included in that bill is a 24-percent increase for the State Department's salaries and operations. A lot of Americans would like to see their salaries and operations increased by 24 percent. Commerce, State, and Justice receives a 12-percent increase over last year.
You might say, well, the government is in tough shape. We need, for some reason, to increase our spending by 33 percent. No, not with what is in this bill.
My colleagues have done a little bit of a check to see if there are any earmarks in this bill, for example. And guess what--5,224 earmarks and those earmarks alone are over $3.8 billion.
I gave some examples of those earmarks, and I do not want to embarrass any of my colleagues by citing them today. But I think it would be appropriate for us to at least have the opportunity to strike some of these earmarks and save a little bit of money. Because the argument is always made: Well, we can't save money. We have to keep spending what we are spending. There is nothing in there to cut.
There is a lot in there to cut. So the point I want to make to my colleagues here today, before we vote to proceed with this legislation, is we could do better. There is no argument that we have to spend 33 percent more on the State Foreign Operations bill or 23 percent more on what we call affectionately around here the THUD bill, when we have this deficit of $1.4 trillion, when we have to increase the national debt by $1.8 trillion, when we are talking about spending another $2.5 trillion, and that is just for the first 10 years of operation on the health care bill. I have not even mentioned the bills earlier this year--bailing out AIG, the insurance companies, General Motors, Chrysler, and the stimulus package, and well over $1 trillion when you add in the interest.
By the way, I did not mention interest. Part of the problem is we do not have this money. We are borrowing it. We have to borrow this money in order to pay it to these folks, and that means you have to pay interest. I have not even included the interest cost, which for all these bills amounts to several hundreds of billions of dollars.
There is a point at which, if you are talking about your own family and your own credit card, instead of asking the credit card company to expand the limit so you can put even more money on your credit card--which is what we are doing here--you would start paying that credit card down and you would be a little bit more careful about your spending.
All I am asking is: Can't we be a little more careful about our spending so we do not have to increase Departments of government by 23 percent, 33 percent over last year's spending? I do not think that is too much to ask on behalf of our taxpayers.
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Mr. KYL. Thank you, Mr. President.
Let me respond to my friend, the majority whip now. Two plain points. First of all: that Republicans also serve on the Appropriations Committee. That is true. If the majority whip, however, wants to defend this bill, that is his prerogative. He can do that. I have the right to vote against it.
I do not serve on the Appropriations Committee, and I do not think it is a good bill. There may be some Republicans who do. I did not contend this was strictly a partisan activity, but I said it was wrong. When our constituents, who pay the taxes in this country, ask us to be more frugal, we could be more frugal than this.
Secondly, undoubtedly, in a bill of almost $500 billion, there are good things. In fact, I know there are some good things in this bill. And I certainly suspect that the increase in veterans spending the majority whip referred to is probably supported by everybody in this body. That is the problem, however. When you do not do these appropriations bills one at a time, so you can vote on each one on its own merits, you are relegated to combining them into one giant bill. That is why it is called an omnibus bill, and you cannot differentiate between the things you support and the things you oppose. So what you have to end up doing is accepting all of the bad stuff in order to be able to support the good things.
That is a time-honored tradition around here. If you cannot get it all passed on its own merits, then bundle it up with a whole bunch of other stuff, and we will have to accept a lot of bad policy and bad spending because we do not want be accused of not supporting our Nation's veterans.
Some of us are willing to say--and I, in fact, have had this conversation with veterans before: Would you rather have us vote against a bill which includes veterans spending but is way more than we should be spending or vote for that bill simply because it has veterans spending in it? I used to have this conversation with veterans when I was in the House of Representatives because they always combine veterans spending with HUD, and it was hard to pass the HUD bill but easy to pass the veterans bill. That is why they did it that way. My veterans were very understanding when I voted against that bill.
We have to be a little bit more courageous around here and a little bit more honest with our constituents in the way we set these bills up, so we do not argue to them: Oh, you don't want to vote against veterans, do you? No, nobody wants to vote against veterans. But if you get to the point in the year where you have not done your work, and you have to combine all these bills together--and you have some good spending, for example, for veterans, but you are also raising the State Department by 33 percent--I think a lot of folks would say: That is too much. And we could actually save money by being more discreet in supporting some things and opposing others.
That is why it would have been better if the majority could have gotten these bills to us one at a time rather than combined into one omnibus bill.
So, I do think, at a certain point in time, our constituents can demand of us more fiscal prudence, more responsibility in the way we vote. The only way Republicans have to oppose a process by which all of these things came together at once, and the only way other Democrats who wish to demonstrate their prudence in spending to their constituents can do that, is to vote ``no'' so we do not proceed to this bill, so we could try to break it apart and vote on veterans, if you want to vote for veterans, but not a 33-percent increase in the State Department bill.
I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and to do this in a more responsible way so we do not have to go home and say to our constituents: Well, we voted for a 33-percent increase in the State Department over last year. I know it is tough for you, but the State Department needed that money. So I hope you will forgive us for doing that.
I do not think we want to do that. I hope my colleagues will vote ``no.''
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