Rand Paul: “I rise in support of amendment No. 3410, which would take the spending for Sandy relief and spend only 1 year at a time…”

“I rise in support of amendment No. 3410, which would take the spending for Sandy relief and spend only 1 year at a time and would offset that spending with spending cuts. Now, you ask, why would we want to do that? Well, if you have been watching Congress in recent years, you might understand that we are not very good with money up here. Each year we are spending $1 trillion that we do not have. To me, there is absolutely no objective evidence that we are very good with money up here, so you do not want to give Congress 3 years' worth of spending authority on Hurricane Sandy. Why don't we do it 1 year at a time and make sure there is correct oversight and make sure the money is not being wasted, make sure the money is not being abused. I will give a couple of examples of what is in the current bill. We have money for Alaskan fisheries in the Hurricane Sandy bill. They tried earlier today to stuff money in here for a country by the name of Palau in the western part of the Pacific. Now, I thought this was about emergency relief for Hurricane Sandy, which hit the northeast coast. What does that have to do with sending money to the far reaches of the Earth, including sending money to work on Alaskan fisheries? If you want to give money to Alaskan fisheries, have a bill on the floor about Alaskan fisheries, but do not pretend that we are going to stuff it in some emergency bill for the Northeast.…”