Heidi Alexander: “I rise to thank the Senator from Arizona for his comments. One of the advantages of having a full appropriations process…”

“I rise to thank the Senator from Arizona for his comments. One of the advantages of having a full appropriations process is it puts the spotlight on the money we spend. I am asking to put this chart where the Senator from Arizona can see it. We will be debating 12 appropriations bills hopefully in the next few weeks. This is the first one. It is $37.5 billion. A little more than half of it is defense spending--our weapons, plutonium enrichment, and necessary things for our country--but all of the spending we are talking about in these 12 bills adds up to $1 trillion. The Federal spending for this year is $4 trillion. The money the distinguished Senator from Arizona, Mr. McCain, was talking about is our defense money. It is down here on this blue line. It is in the trillion dollars. It is nearly half of that. As we look back since 2008, this blue line has stayed level. Over the next 10 years it is projected to rise at about the level of the rate of inflation. At the same time, this line, which is the $3 trillion line--mandatory spending, entitlements, all that--is going up. After about 10 years, the end result will be that this will go from about 32 percent of our total spending to about 22 percent. What is that going to do to our defense spending?…”