Part B Amendment No. 6 Offered by Mr. Garrett of New Jersey

PART B AMENDMENT NO. 6 OFFERED BY MR. GARRETT OF NEW JERSEY -- (House of Representatives - July 08, 2009)

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Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to speak on behalf of my amendment to the fiscal year 2010 Agriculture Appropriations bill.

This amendment would simply maintain funding for the Food and Drug Administration at the same level as last year. It would save taxpayers $373 million. As American families struggle to tighten their fiscal belts and spend less, I believe Congress should stop spending so much.

Tragically, many of my colleagues were not allowed the opportunity to bring their amendments up for debate today. Because Democratic leaders have changed the traditional process, American families have missed over 70 opportunities to reduce wasteful programs and to fix what's broken here in Washington, the outrageous spending that we're doing.

You would think in these difficult times that Congress would be willing to restore the people's faith in the way that we spend their money. I think most people would like for us to be more frugal. For my part, I also tried to offer an amendment to reduce the bill's funding level by half of a percent, 0.5 percent, a reduction of just half a penny out of every dollar spent, but that amendment was not allowed to be offered on the floor today, as well as were many others that I offered.

Other amendments I offered would have saved hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars by eliminating double dipping, maintaining other programs at the 2009 levels, and preventing the purchase of new Federal lands, but these amendments were not allowed either.

Mr. Chairman, as the House conducts one of its most important tasks, the appropriation of funds, we owe it to the American families and people to have an open debate, to allow all ideas to be heard, and to work towards real fiscal constraint here in Washington. We can do that in a bipartisan manner, but we're not allowed to do so by the leadership. In fact, the Democrats should be as outraged as I am that their voice is not heard either. Debate is being stifled, and it's not right. It's not fair not only to us, but it's not fair to the American people.

We have to stop this outrageous spending that we're doing. I urge my colleagues to support my modest and simple amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, maybe the gentlewoman doesn't know that I'm a physician. I'm concerned about people's health. And my amendment won't do a thing to cut all those programs that you're accusing me of trying to cut. And I resent the fact that you're accusing me of trying to cut that because I'm not trying to hurt people. I'm not trying to harm folks. I'm not trying to stop research. And my amendment wouldn't do that.

My amendment would simply put the funding at the current level. We are stealing our grandchildren's future by spending so much money, by creating a huge debt. I'm not picking on the FDA. What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to save my grandchildren's future. And what we have right now with this bill is a 14 percent increase in funding over last year. That's outrageous. And I resent the fact that you're saying that I'm going to cut all these programs, because my amendment will not.

And, frankly, I just don't understand this kind of emotional debate because it's not debate and it's not correct. The thing that I want to do is I want to save my grandchildren's future by stopping this outrageous, egregious spending that we're doing here. We don't have the money.

Let's keep all these programs. I would love to see us have continuing resolutions for all these appropriations bills across the board, freeze the spending for at least a year.

The people in my district are suffering. Most counties have a 13 to 14 percent unemployment rate. And what we are doing is we are increasing the budget for this bill, for this appropriations bill, by 14 percent. That's outrageous.

And I tell you, the American people should be outraged. They should be calling every single congressional office and saying ``no'' to these spending bills that are just basically stealing our children and grandchildren's future.

We have got to stop this spending. It's absolutely ridiculous. It's going to bankrupt this country, if we're not already bankrupt. And I'm just trying to save spending the taxpayers' dollars. It's absolutely critical that we do that.

The budget that was presented by our President increases the debt over the next 5 years more than every single President since George Washington. I hear your side keep talking about the debt President Bush created. I wasn't here during that time. I voted against all the bills that we have had since I've been up here, and I think George Bush was wrong in creating that much debt. But your President and my President is creating more debt than George Bush and every other President in history.

We need to stop this spending.

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