Tom Carper

I think the balance of this bill has it right, because what it basically says is that nothing happens unless Congress affirmatively enacts these changes.

But one of the problems we ran into in the 1990's was, at a time when we were constrained for a while with revenue growth, we saw the operating budget, the capital budget constrained at a time when we actually needed to invest in our…

I think that is an approach that we need to move or migrate toward.

What I want to do is to provide for a reasonable response when a President says, my hands are tied.

The President says it is wasteful spending. Secretary Gates says it is wasteful spending.

I have always favored a second engine because I believe competition will drive the price of that engine down.

We finally, with the leadership of this man to my left and Senator McCain and this President, we basically pulled the plug on the F-22.

I am encouraged by what we are doing in these big deficits in a struggle to get an economy moving.

I think on earmarks the argument--I do not know if Senator Levin made it while I was out of the room, but if we have a grant program, we will say it is a transportation program, so we have like $100 in it, and somebody comes along and we…

I am actually encouraged that we are seeing a little bit of a restoration of bipartisan spirit in the Senate, which is good.

If we were to restore earmarks in that limited way with a lot of transparency, the idea of having the legislation before us, actually signed into law, I think would be helpful in an earmarks restored world.

If we ever go back in a future Congress and say we are going to restore earmarks in the appropriations process, maybe we could do this: Put a cap like some percentage of revenues that earmarks cannot exceed.

I would not have favored that, and I described it before you got here as giving the President--like putting a bazooka under the President's desk.

We need for the White House, the Executive Branch, to provide stronger leadership on long-term deficit reduction.

The last President, this President, current Secretary of Defense said, 'Why don't we stop buying more C-17s?'

I think it would enhance the President's faith in the Legislative Branch to take on his requests.

Thank you. I have used this analogy before, I think, in this Subcommittee or in this Committee, and in our experience in Delaware, we had something akin to earmarks.

I disagree with this President on the second engine, by the way, the so-called second engine on our new fighter plane.

Good questions. Thank you, Senator, thanks very much.

We need only ask our friends in Greece and in Ireland about that.

We really have to figure out how we are going to get better results for less money in this new time of fiscal constraint.

At some point, we will be hit by a fiscal crisis as credit markets lose face in the U.S. political system's ability to fix the problem.

Our Nation's debt stands at $14 trillion.

The Congress should have to vote on the President's proposals, we call them rescissions, reducing, rescinding spending

I congratulate you on this important bill and your excellent line-up of bipartisan co-sponsors.