Heidi Alexander: “I thank the Senator from Arkansas for his leadership. I will answer his question to the best of my ability. I suppose…”

“I thank the Senator from Arkansas for his leadership. I will answer his question to the best of my ability. I suppose some people may be watching and say what we are talking about is a lot of ``inside baseball.'' Well, it would be like telling a bunch of people that talking about singing at the Grand Ole Opry is ``inside baseball.'' This is what we do. I went out to see Johnny Cash at the House of Cash when I was Governor of Tennessee many years ago, and I didn't know quite what to say to him, and so I said: Johnny, how many nights do you appear on the road? With that big-old deep voice of his, he said: Oh, about 200. I said: My goodness. Why do you do that? He looked at me and said: That is what I do. Well, this is what we do or at least what we are supposed to do. I mean, we are elected by the people from Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, and all over this country expecting us to get results. They sent us up here to put the country first, put our States next, and try to lead us in the right direction. We have our partisan differences, but in the end one of the things we are supposed to do is to appropriate dollars. It says in the Constitution, section 9, article I, that ``no money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law.'' That is us. So this is what we do. In addition to that, we are supposed to oversee the spending of that money.…”