Jeff Flake: “One of the gentlemen mentioned that we in Congress simply shouldn't let the Federal Government spend this money. The…”

“One of the gentlemen mentioned that we in Congress simply shouldn't let the Federal Government spend this money. The last time I checked, we are the Federal Government. We're one branch of it, and it's our job to appropriate money to another; that is, to actually spend that money. We don't spend that money here. We don't write the checks. That's done by the Federal agencies. Our role is to provide oversight and to authorize the programs. And so I'm not advocating at all that we step back. I'm advocating that we actually go to the time-honored practice of authorization, appropriation, and oversight. And that allows us to actually go into these Federal agencies and really provide good oversight. But I can tell you, it's very difficult to provide oversight for example for the Defense bill. Last year or the year before, I believe, we provided an earmark in the Defense bill for a museum in New York, in the Defense bill. How can you provide good oversight with any straight face, go to the Defense Department and say, we think that you should have spent more money on body armor for our troops in Iraq. Oh, but by the way, we directed you to spend $2 million on a museum in New York. It just doesn't seem right to me.”