On the recordApril 8, 2014
At this time, it is my great pleasure to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. McClintock), a champion for budget transparency and a member of the Budget Committee. Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, our Constitution assigns the principal responsibility over the public purse to the House of Representatives. Under that constitutional doctrine, a dollar can't be spent by this government unless the House says it gets spent. Yet today, spending increasingly seems to be out of our hands, driven automatically by a variety of provisions and practices that thwart the very design of the Constitution. Roughly two-thirds of our spending is for entitlements, over which we have lost any direct control in the appropriations process. That is the big problem. But there are other reasons for this problem as well that this bill addresses. One of them is the current process by which we calculate the baseline from which we begin our annual budget negotiations. Any family would begin its budget process by asking, for example: What did we spend for groceries last year? Once it has that baseline, then it would begin to adjust for changing circumstances. The price of milk is going up. Should we cut back or look for substitutes? Or should we cut back on something else to afford that increase? That is the rational process known to every reasonably well-managed family.…
