On the recordMarch 5, 2013
Mr. President, as some of you may have heard, we are a bit short of money. We are borrowing $50,000 every second. We borrow over $4 billion every day. In a year's time we borrow over $1 trillion. There are ramifications to that. Some economists now say that the burden of our debt is costing us 1 million jobs a year. What I am asking is, in the midst of this sequester when people say we have no money to cut, to take this small item. Why would I want to cut this small group? There are a couple of reasons. It is called the National Security Working Group--about $2.8 million, which is not much money in terms of Washington. But why would I want to cut it? The first reason would be that there are no records of them meeting. We heard about the START treaty. It was in 2009 when they were last meeting. There are no public records that this group, which spends $700,000 a year, has met in the last 3 years. There are no public records of who works for the committee. There are no public records of their salaries. Every one of my staff's name and salary is printed in the public record--not for this group. Now, they say we need this group to negotiate treaties. Well, we have a group; it is called the Foreign Relations Committee. I am on the Foreign Relations Committee, and that is where we discuss treaties--or at least we are supposed to. The Foreign Relations Committee has dozens of employees, and millions of dollars are spent on our committee. It goes through the regular process.…
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