Controlling Spending
Floor Speech
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Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I congratulate my colleague from Tennessee, Senator Corker, for his usual common sense, as well as the assistant Democratic leader, Senator Durbin, for his courage on the debt commission.
I believe that the decision made tonight about the omnibus bill is best for the country, but there could have been a better result. It would have been along the lines of what the Senator from Illinois described. If we had been able earlier in the year to agree on a budget in the Senate, which is how much are we going to spend, and if we could have gone committee by committee--and there are 13 subcommittees, and we both serve on the Appropriations Committee--and we could have brought those to the floor by August, voted on them, and got on with it so the government could run, that would by far be a better result.
There is no need to say why that didn't happen, whether it was a Democratic or Republican fault. It didn't happen. So that falls on all of us to look ahead and see if it can't happen in the future. I believe it can. In fact, I believe that it must. We have a time coming up next year when we will be asked to raise the debt ceiling. We will have before us a recommendation from the debt commission that five of the six Senators who served on it voted for. They stuck their necks way out to do that. The Senator from Illinois, the Senator from North Dakota, and three Republican Senators, as well. So I think it is incumbent upon all of us--we can find points of division fairly easily. That is not hard to do. Finding points of consensus is harder. Cutting taxes is easier. Reducing the debt is going to be harder.
So in the next 3 or 4 months, when we come back, I hope we will build on the conversation that I heard earlier this week with Senators Warner and Chambliss, and a group of nearly 20 Senators on both sides, who committed themselves to work on the debt commission. I hope we can, in the Appropriations Committee, start out the year with some way of agreeing on a ceiling, and then work together to work within that ceiling so we can run the government.
A continuing resolution for a year is a lousy way to run a government. It wastes money, because you end up funding things that should be cut and not funding things that need increases. I think this was the right result for the American people of the choices we had tonight. But there could be a better choice. It is our responsibility to see next year if we can offer ourselves, and therefore the American people, that choice.
I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
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