Jack Kingston: “The gentleman from Indiana has talked about this being a first step. I think controlling spending, fiscal responsibility…”

“The gentleman from Indiana has talked about this being a first step. I think controlling spending, fiscal responsibility is almost like daily exercise and daily diet. It cannot just be a vote once a year. It needs to be a daily exercise. There are all kinds of things that we can talk about in our multitrillion-dollar budget. Zero-based budgeting. As an appropriator I can tell you when agencies come in to us, all they talk about is the new spending. They do not ever go back to why did we originally need the money. And I will give you an example. We had a series of forest fires out West. When I was on the Interior Appropriations bill, we spent money to help react to fight the forest fires. And the next year, no fires, so we tried to take the money out of the budget. No fires, no fire money. But guess what? That was called a cut because people decided, oh, no. You are not going to go back to zero base on us. I think we should look at a Grace-type commission, an outside, a BRAC-type commission that could look at the Federal agencies and figure out which ones of them can be eliminated, where are the duplications and so forth. I think we should talk seriously about ending earmarks or at least reducing earmarks for the coming year to offset the cost of Katrina and Iraq. And then after we pass this, I believe we should go back and look at a half percent or a 1 percent or a 2 percent across- the-board decrease, because all of this has to be done year after year.…”