Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2011
Floor Speech
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Mr. GRAVES of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for your attentiveness to this process. I know it is laborious.
I want to draw attention, I want to go back just a few steps here when we were listening to an amendment brought to us by my good friend from New York (Mr. Reed).
As we are going through this process, there are those who have been working extremely hard, the Appropriations Committee and Members all across this House, and Mr. Reed dug very deep and he found something I think all of us wanted to see, something that was exposed, that the American people pointed out clearly, that the Federal Government has been spending money where it does not need to be spending money.
Think about where we are as a nation: $14 trillion in debt; unemployment unacceptable; GDP dropping; $1.5 trillion of deficit, which is almost 150 percent of what the Federal Government takes in. Think about where we are. And then children, upon conception, you ask any economist, they will vary somewhere between $42,000 and $47,000 of debt inherited upon conception.
Yet Mr. Reed, he points out here today a great find: That this government is funding a Tijuana sewer rehabilitation project. There is something about that that just stinks. And I would hope that this House, that Americans all across this country, that Members of this House would see that just $10 million is being funded for a rehabilitation project of a sewer facility in Mexico, yet we are in this position of this fiscal house being out of order and in disorder.
I would hope that this House would see and recognize that this simple amendment, only $10 million, a small amount compared to that $1.5 trillion deficit, is worthy of a ``yes'' vote of amending this out of this CR, and we would send a message to the American people: It doesn't matter if it is $1, $10 million, $1 billion, if it is unnecessary funding coming from this government, we are going to get it out and get this fiscal house back in order.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
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