Cliff Stearns: “Mr. Chairman, I am glad to see the Ranking Minority Member from the Committee on Appropriations fighting to reduce waste…”

“Mr. Chairman, I am glad to see the Ranking Minority Member from the Committee on Appropriations fighting to reduce waste and to say that he was upset about congressional pork, because I have been here some time and I have been in the minority and I have seen these emergency supplementals and in this case, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) was chairman at that time. When the gentleman can stand on the House floor and take out a single program and say that we are going to decimate these people, we are going to hurt them because of the reduction, and it is only 10 percent, and, in fact, it is a program that has not been authorized by Members of Congress, why do we not just do away with all the procedures here in the House of Representatives and just bring to the floor any idea by any Member at any time and just vote on it? Pretty soon, we can be the brand-new Santa Claus of history where we just vote on bills, not on the basis of merit, but on the basis of emotion. So I urge my colleagues to look back at this bill and realize that this is not taking away from anybody. The programs are all left in place. This is nondefense. This is nonemergency.”