ICYMI: Jack talks Appropriations on Cavuto

Statement

On the role of the Appropriations Committee
"This committee is going to be central to cutting the budget and we have to have conservatives who have a long track record and being budget cutters. I wish we could have everyone on the team to be total budget hawk but it's going to take really tough skin to vote no on some of these things. By the end of the spring, we'll all be accused of hating seniors, hating children, and hating education. So we're going to have to have some real tough hides on the turf."

On Waste in Spending and the Need to Cut
"I have been in the back room of [the committee] and gotten into these budgets. The waste that we have in the federal government which everyone knows about is atrocious. It's even worse than you think when you start reading the bill. Right now, for example, there is $290 billion worth of programs that have expired so they are unauthorized yet we continue to spend money on them every year…this wasn't Democrats alone. Republicans had a hand in ramping up spending but we've got to bring it under control. We need to go back to at least '08 spending levels, we need to rescind the unused stimulus money, we need to go after any waste."

On Earmarks
"We've got to get rid of the earmarks. I think everybody is in agreement with that but we need to go beyond it and look at some of these grants. Grants are federal government giveaways, they're a slush fund for the Administration to take care of their own constituencies and so much of it is waste. Twenty-eight percent of the state's budget on average comes from the federal government. We've got to stop it. It's all deficit spending."

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