Heidi Alexander: “I thank the Chair. Senate Responsibility Mr. President, earlier this year I came to the floor with a group of Republican…”

“I thank the Chair. Senate Responsibility Mr. President, earlier this year I came to the floor with a group of Republican and Democratic Senators to congratulate the majority leader, Senator Reid, and the Republican leader, Senator McConnell, as well as the leaders of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Inouye and Senator Cochran. The reason for the congratulations was this: They said they were going to do their best to bring all of the appropriations bills to the floor and pass them. That may not seem like such a monumental pledge or promise, but it, in fact, is, because only twice since the year 2000 has the Senate gone through the whole process of bringing all 12 appropriations bills to the Senate floor and enacting them in time for the beginning of the fiscal year on October 1. Why is that so important? Well, we are in the midst of a fiscal crisis. We are borrowing 42 cents out of every dollar we spend. One way to deal with that is through the appropriations process. That is our first constitutional responsibility. Judges judge; we appropriate. That is the first thing we do. We have control of the people's money. The appropriations bills I am talking about, the 12 of them together, constitute a pretty big number. More than a third--38 percent--of all the dollars we spend in the Federal Government go through those 12 bills. It used to be a lot more.…”