Thursday, October 25, 2007

U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
Floor Statement on Federal Spending
Remarks as Delivered on the Senate Floor

Mr. President, I am delighted to come to the floor today. I heard this morning the announcement by the Democratic leader, Mr. Reid, that we probably will not bring the remaining five appropriations bills to the floor of the Senate before the year is out. Quite frankly, when the Republicans or Democrats have been in charge lately, it seems we have gotten into this situation going well past the fiscal year without acting on all the appropriations acts.

It seems to me as if, my ninth year in the Congress and my third year in the Senate, more often than not we end up with minibuses or omnibuses. We roll tremendous appropriations bills one into the other, pass them at the end of the night, and find out weeks later what is in them. That is not good regardless of your party, and it is certainly not good for the United States of America.

I come to the floor this morning to talk about some suggestions that have been made by some very distinguished and learned Members of this body on both sides of the aisle about opening our appropriations process, diagnosing the problems with it, and fixing it statutorily.

I particularly call the attention of the body to Senator Domenici from New Mexico, one of the longest serving Members of the Senate. He will be retiring at the end of next year. He has introduced consistently every year a biennial budget. The idea is that we appropriate in 2-year bites rather than a 1-year bite, and we do oversight in the second year.

Think about this for a second. What if the Congress did appropriations bills in odd-numbered years, meaning we spent the money in odd-numbered years and in even-numbered years, the same year we are up for reelection, we do oversight. So all of a sudden our debate and races are not about what we are going to spend but how our money is being spent.

That is responsible, it is smart, and it makes sense.

Those who object will jump up and say: Oh, well, then we will just have a lot of emergency appropriations bills. Give me a break. Have you seen how many emergencies we have done in the last 2 years? We have emergencies come up all the time. Of course, you are going to have those. The emergency that exists is not the fear of having an emergency but the fact that once again this year we have gone past the end of the fiscal year, and we are operating under a continuing resolution. The United States has an untold number of issues that must be dealt with, and we are on cruise control in terms of the appropriations of our country. It is not right.

Now, I have voted for some appropriations bills, and I have voted against some appropriations bills. I am glad we have gotten seven done. But we have five out there that all of a sudden are probably going to get rolled in with about three or four others, get vetoed, and then get rolled into an omnibus. We will fly in here in the dead of night, have a document on our desk that is probably as thick as five or six concrete blocks stacked on top of one another, in very fine print, and we will be asked to cast a vote on how we are going to spend the money of the taxpayers of the United States. It is not right.

We need to look at new and creative ways to run the Government of the United States and its fiscal affairs. I commend Senator Domenici's appropriations recommendation and the idea of the biannual budget, and I encourage this body to start looking at a constructive solution like that. Senator Voinovich, who ran the State of Ohio--he has been a Governor--and is as sound a fiscal person as you want to find in this Senate, pointed out as well yesterday that the whole situation is just broken. We have entitlements on cruise control, discretionary spending in a continuing resolution, and we in the Congress fight over little tiny parts of the appropriations process when we ought to be considering it in its totality. We should take each of the 12 budget units, bring them to the floor, debate them, pass them, and send them to the President. Do them responsibly, as we are expected to do.

When the announcement was made that we are not going to get to five appropriations bills this year, there was also an announcement that we are going to have an Omnibus appropriations bill. We are going to roll all the bills into one, not debate them, not make decisions based on their soundness, and not even, for most of us, have a say in it; certainly not have a say during prime time or a say on the floor of the Senate.

Mr. President, I come today to talk about responsibility on behalf of our body and responsibility on behalf of the people of the United States, and I urge the majority to join with us to seek out recommendations such as those of Senator Domenici, seek out the sound advice of Senator Voinovich, and let's get our fiscal affairs in order. If we don't, we are going to waste more and more tax dollars and we are going to have more and more programs that go without oversight and we are going to spend dollar after dollar after dollar on old problems while our new problems and new challenges go unmet. It is not right for me, it is not right for you, Mr. President, and, most importantly, it is not right for the people of the United States.