Pete Domenici: “I would just like to submit to the U.S. Senate that we ought not be doing this every year. Don't we have enough…”

“I would just like to submit to the U.S. Senate that we ought not be doing this every year. Don't we have enough knowledge and wisdom and information to appropriate every 2 years instead of every year? Don't we have enough information about budgets and estimating that we could do a budget that lasted for 2 years and make automatic economic adjustments? Of course we do. Mr. President, if the authorizing committees are wondering why they do not have a chance to do things around here, this is one reason. Because we hardly have enough time to do the appropriations bills. Because they are up every year as if we were in constant motion. In fact, I defy even Senators with the best recollection to recall one appropriations bill from another year by year. They are so often that they are all one big glob of votes. Frankly, the Senator from New Mexico had made a mistake this year, because there is a bill at the desk saying we ought to do this every 2 years. We would get our job done better and we would have oversight time and the Senate would be a better place to work in and could do its business better.”