Dale Bumpers: “While he was saying, ``I can't spend a penny that Congress doesn't appropriate,'' he was never vetoing any money bills.…”

“While he was saying, ``I can't spend a penny that Congress doesn't appropriate,'' he was never vetoing any money bills. He signed everything we sent him, and the people should be grateful, because while he was President, Congress appropriated billions less than he asked for. But he vetoed a defense bill because it was not high enough, and we had to give him more money to get him to sign the bill. Mr. President, the American people last fall were angry about a host of things. There was no one single thing that people were angry about. There were a whole host of things they were angry about. It is an interesting thing, you take 1 percent of the vote last fall and shift 1 percent of the vote here, here and there, and we would not have anything bordering on an American revolution. As far as the bonded Contract With America, so far two things have passed both Houses and have been signed by the President, and both of them would probably have been passed without the so-called Contract With America. People were not voting for the Contract With America, because they did not know anything about it. They were voting because they were angry. They were angry about the deficit, they were angry about gays in the military, they were angry about some Members getting in trouble. It was a whole host of things. But I can tell you, Mr. President, the one thing they were not voting for was chaos. So far, that is all they have gotten out of it.”