Jack Kingston: “I wanted to call attention that the House Appropriations Committee, working on a bipartisan basis, is ahead of schedule…”

“I wanted to call attention that the House Appropriations Committee, working on a bipartisan basis, is ahead of schedule for this year. And although that is what we should be doing, it does seem that sometimes in Washington things break down, and there is no progress that is being made. Unfortunately, a lot of that is happening in the other body. And then the House doesn't get credit for it. We have had some very good debate on the appropriations bills. We will have them under budget and on time. We are having a lot of push-back from some of our Members about, well, you need to cut this item out of it because there is pork here; there is pork there. And I can say this, that in a $2-trillion-plus budget, you can always find lots to criticize about it. I think we should always be on the lookout for more things to cut. But just to take an example, the agriculture bill, we cut 35 different programs out of it, we reduced spending, and we did it on a bipartisan basis. So often as Members get up to grandstand over one or two particular things, they totally forget the bigger picture that the committee has done a lot of work already. I want to just say to the House, Democrats and Republicans, I think we are moving in the right direction on appropriations bills. We are going to continue to do so and work together on it. ____________________”