Heidi Alexander: “I congratulate the Senator from California. With her usual precision, she has identified the big problem, and she…”

“I congratulate the Senator from California. With her usual precision, she has identified the big problem, and she approached it as she usually does--in a very direct way. The picture she presents is not one we can tolerate in the United States of America. The good news is, we have done a good job on discretionary spending. That is what we are working on in these bills. The chart I showed last week, which shows about the same things in a little different way than hers, points out that the spending in 12 appropriations bills has been flat and will be flat for the next 10 years. In other words, if the work the Appropriations Committee is doing on $1 trillion were all that there was to the Federal budget, we would not have a Federal debt problem. That blue line is Federal spending under control. We set priorities. We have oversight. Senator Feinstein and I have eliminated programs. We do that every year. We are getting control of this budget of big cost overruns that persistently happened on large construction projects. So I am proud of that blue line. I am not proud of the red one. That is the one Senator Feinstein is talking about. This is $1 trillion, but on top of that is $3 trillion. That is the automatic spending. There has been very little courage shown on the Republican side of the aisle or on the Democratic side of the aisle.…”