Jack Kingston: “That's correct. So, here we are, the first day back basically voting on anything of substance, we've already spent $20…”

“That's correct. So, here we are, the first day back basically voting on anything of substance, we've already spent $20 billion over a budget that's only 3 weeks old. Now, you had mentioned discretionary spending, and I want to make sure folks understand. Discretionary spending means Congress has agreed that year by year that level of spending can fluctuate. Now, that's opposed to what we call mandatory spending. And I use the term ``mandatory'' loosely because nothing is mandatory if you're the legislative branch that set laws. But we call things like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security mandatory spending, meaning, not just that we're going to spend a certain amount every year depending on a formula, but it also means, and I don't know if my friend from Tennessee or the other gentleman from Texas or Tennessee know this, but we don't have hearings on mandatory spending traditionally. I'm a member of the Appropriations Committee. We spend a huge amount of money on Social Security and Medicaid, but we've never had a hearing on it. Every year we wrestle on some of the mandatory spending and some of the discretionary spending, but the biggest portion of the budget we don't do hearings on. And I think that it's time that we start talking about some of the mandatory spending if we're ever going to be serious about balancing the budget.”