Todd Tiahrt: “Mr. Chairman, the problem that we are facing tonight is the control of spending, how do we control spending and reduce…”

“Mr. Chairman, the problem that we are facing tonight is the control of spending, how do we control spending and reduce the Federal deficit. The easy target is the appropriations process because that is where we spend most of our time. We develop 13 bills for discretionary spending and we focus on all 13. But the real culprit is mandatory spending and off-budget items. If we look at Medicare which is mandatory spending, for example, it grew 14 percent last year, much faster than the rate of inflation. Yet we do not have nearly the time focused on Medicare that we do on these 13 appropriations bills. We also have the highway bill coming up, TEA-LU, which is moving towards $318 billion over the next 6 years. That is going to exceed what the trust fund provides. Where will that excess money come from? It will come out of the appropriations process for discretionary spending and once again, this burden will be there and the blame once again will be placed on the appropriations process. If we are going to control spending, we are going to have to learn how to focus on mandatory spending as well as off-budget items, because the appropriations process has all 13 appropriation bills submitted within budget. It is mandatory where the real problem is, and we are failing to deal with it.”