On the recordFebruary 8, 2012
I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, this bill is an important, bipartisan measure. It has bipartisan support here in the House. It has strong bipartisan support in the Senate where it's introduced by Senator Carper and Senator McCain and has strong bipartisan co-sponsorship. It's supported by the Obama administration. But Mr. Simpson is absolutely right: it's not the bipartisanship that makes this bill the right thing to do. It's the fact that it calls for greater transparency and greater accountability in our process. Everybody in this body has to concede that we can improve our budget process. Yes, we should work on the tax expenditure component. Yes, we should work on mandatory spending. Of course we should. But this is a simple bipartisan measure we can take to provide more transparency when it comes to over $1 trillion in discretionary spending. And I go back to where I started. Just look at this bill, 1,200-plus pages. This House took less than 15 hours, less than 15 hours to review this bill. Now, given the fact that we didn't have adequate time to scrutinize this, I don't see anything wrong with saying that if the President of the United States, Republican or Democrat, identifies some savings we can make for the taxpayer that go to deficit reduction, that this Congress should have to vote on that. You don't have to say yes. You just have to vote, up or down.…
