Wasteful Spending Amendment

WASTEFUL SPENDING AMENDMENT -- (Senate - January 23, 2007)BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

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Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, first of all, I commend the Senator from Texas on his remarks. I commend Senator Judd Gregg on the submission of this amendment. I commend Senator McConnell, the Republican leader, for his insistence on bringing this amendment to the floor of the Senate early. It had been my preference that it be debated during the lobbying reform and ethics bill, S. 1, which we debated last week because the remarks I am going to make tell you how much I think the enhanced rescission and a second look at wasteful spending is so important to end, curb, and finally do away with what has been an abuse in this body for a long time, and that is the abuse of earmarks.

In fact, I want to tell a story. When I first came to the Congress of the United States in 1999, the first budget that I voted on and was passed was a voluminous, huge budget--appropriations bill. It had spending in thousands of different categories, many of which I never even looked at, A, because I was not on the committee that had jurisdiction or, B, because so much of it went into last-minute negotiations in the conference committee on the appropriations bill.

I will never forget a telephone call I got at 8 o'clock in the morning from a reporter, shortly after--about 2 weeks after the passage of an Omnibus appropriations bill. A newspaper reporter called and said to me:

Congressman, why did you vote for a $50,000 appropriation for a tatoo removal parlor in California?

I said:

I didn't vote for any such a thing.

The reporter said:

Yes, you did. Didn't you vote for the Omnibus budget?

I said:

Yes, I did.

The reporter said:

Well, it was right there in clear view.

I said:

Well, it wasn't in clear view to me.

Well, it turned out, after going through that embarrassing experience, which all of us in this business go through from time to time, I started digging around trying to find the $50,000 appropriation for a tatoo removal parlor in California. Finally, I found it. It went into the budget on the appropriations bill on the last night of negotiations. It was on something like page 1186, line 33, in small print. The appropriations act we voted on was put on our desk about 8 hours before we voted on it.

I am not a fast reader anyway, but I couldn't read 1,100 pages in 8 hours. I would go blind. And the fact is, Congress was embarrassed, the Representative who put it in there was very embarrassed, but this Representative was very embarrassed. So I introduced legislation the next year to basically put an end to the last-minute earmark that said the earmark had to be in bold type, large fonts, and on the front page of each appropriations act, and had to lay on the desk for 24 hours to at least give us a chance to look at it.

What Senator Gregg has proposed today is the opportunity for us to not only get a second look, but in the case of a lot of these earmarks a first look, at wasteful appropriations. That is why I thought it should have gone on the previous bill we debated last week, the lobbying reform and ethics bill for, you see, if a President of the United States had gotten that omnibus budget and had the right of rescission, that President could have said: I think we ought to strike the $50,000 for a tatoo removal parlor in California. And under the Gregg proposal, it would come back to the Senate and the House, and we would have to affirm that. I do not think there is a single person in either party, including the author of that earmark 9 years ago, who would not have voted to affirm the President's rescission.

The light of day, sunshine, the power of knowledge, facts are stubborn things. But so often in the appropriations process facts get obliterated or not seen. Appropriations get written in late at night in negotiations between conferees, and we end up with wasteful spending.

This is an outstanding proposal by Senator Gregg. As Senator Cornyn has said, and others who have spoken today have said, it actually reflects what has been approved by Members of both parties in this Senate before. But it makes good, common, horse sense and passes the constitutional test, which is so important.

The President gets four times a year to send rescissions to the Congress. The Congress has to fast-track its response within 8 days. The Congress has to affirm the rescission, which is the key point in the balance of power between each of the bodies of Government that are so important to our Constitution. It does not give a President unilateral authority, but it forces the light of day on a Presidential decision for us to take a second look at what was probably a mistake that this body might have made.

Lastly, I have had some experience with this process. I had the privilege of representing the great State of Georgia for 17 years in its statehouse, in its State senate. At the time I was in the minority, and the Democratic Party in Georgia was in the majority. A dear friend of mine, a fellow against whom I ran for Governor of Georgia in 1990, and who came to this Senate, Zell Miller, and whom I later replaced in this Senate, a great Georgian--I watched him use the line-item veto, which is legal in Georgia, to cause accountability on the part of legislators, to let the light of day shine on appropriations and, most importantly, to see to it that Georgia was run in a fiscally sound way and we didn't get away with things that we should not have gotten away with.

If it is good enough for the States, it is good enough for the Federal Government. If it passes the constitutional test of the division of power in our Government--legislative, executive, judicial--it ought to be a part of the body of law, and this proposal does.

Most important of all, although all the promotion pieces I have read call this a second look at the budget process, in many cases because of the volume it gives us, as individuals, a first look at a mistake we made. Instead of current law, where once that mistake is made it is there, under this right of recision we have a second chance at what was a first impression, and we can make the right decision and do the right thing.

The money, when it is struck, goes where it ought to go--to deficit reduction. This country has a serious deficit problem, and it has had a serious spending problem. Enhanced rescission places the responsibility on the President to delineate a mistake and forces us to affirm if that, in fact, was a mistake, and the benefit from that savings goes to reduce the deficit, which is the mortgage on our children's future and the future of our grandchildren.

I am delighted to come to the floor today as a cosponsor of the enhanced rescissions amendment proposed by Senator Gregg to speak in its favor, and I encourage every Member of the Senate to take a second look at this proposal.

It makes sense. It is constitutional. It is the right thing to do.

I yield the floor.

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