David Schweikert: “As we get ourselves sort of organized, you will actually notice a couple of these boards are a little worn. It is…”

“As we get ourselves sort of organized, you will actually notice a couple of these boards are a little worn. It is because it is a, shall we say, the continuation of a theme. But this is sort of an auspicious day to actually do some of this, as we are getting ready to do the omnibus, the big budgetary bill. What is so important here is, I want, everyone, first, to understand the $1.1-plus trillion we are talking about is solely what we call the discretionary portion of the budget. This is the portion of the budget we debate here, we do amendments, we work through; and then, in this particular case, because of a series of blocks and frustrations and game-playing that happened previously, we get here to the end and we are trying to package it all together. But it is not the majority, it is not anywhere near close to the majority of our Federal spending. So take a look at this board. And this is for 2015. So we are right now working on the budget for the 2016 appropriation cycle. If you see the blue, the blue is mandatory spending. Those are things like Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and other parts of the welfare portion of our budget that are formula-driven, that you hit a certain age, you get a benefit; you fall below a certain income, you get a certain benefit. It is about 69-plus percent of our spending, and this is for last year.…”