Jeff Flake: “all I can do in response to that is quote William Faulkner. Anyone who believes that we cannot save money by eliminating…”

“all I can do in response to that is quote William Faulkner. Anyone who believes that we cannot save money by eliminating earmarks does not care much for the facts and is not much interested in them. The notion that this budget is set and now all we can do is spend up to the top of it belies the fact that last week we could have offered a lesser bill, a smaller bill. Earlier in the process when we established the budget, we could have simply said we are not going to fund this year. {time} 1145 Therefore we are going to save billions and billions of dollars. But, no, we passed a bigger budget and then we come here today and say, darn, I wish we could have saved money; we just cannot, it is too late. Mr. Chairman, I would submit that people are getting tired of hearing that argument. And we simply cannot continue to spend money this way. So with that, I would urge that we accept this amendment, and at least start, at least send some signal that we are going to be better stewards of the taxpayers' money. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.”