On the recordFebruary 8, 2012
I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I rise in strong support of this legislation. I appreciate that it's a bipartisan piece of legislation. I lose no sleep at night over whether the President of my party or the other party can take action to send back some spending that we have done here and force Congress to reaffirm it. Had we had that over time, I think we would have saved considerable money. We've had the process here that the chairman of the Budget Committee has mentioned, the process of earmarking over the years. Tens of thousands of earmarks have been proposed by Members of this body unchecked. Oftentimes we would approve one bill with 6,300 earmarks in it. It would be wonderful to have somebody able to send one of those items back and at least force us to spend additional time on that item and to say, do we really want to spend that money or not? It provides some check on this process. We need more checks, not fewer. Like I said, I think that this is constitutional. It doesn't cede our power of the purse. It simply reconfirms our commitment to control spending, something that we have not had much control of lately as evidenced by the massive deficits that we've run. So I rise in support of that legislation.
