On the recordJanuary 20, 2011
Well, one of the things is we're going to reduce the nondefense discretionary spending to 2008 levels. Well, what's that worth? Well, that's a lot of money that you can save that way. We're going to reduce the budget office of every congressman. That was our first week. Your first week here. We cut the congressional budget offices by 5 percent. That's just to let people know we're serious. Then we read the U.S. Constitution on the floor of the House to say any bill you introduce now has got to be consistent with the Constitution. But we've got another whole series of things that we're going to do to try to reduce spending, some of them--there is $25 billion in unused Federal property. So what are we going to do with that? Why not sell some real estate? Let's get rid of it. $123 billion is allocated to programs to which government auditors can find no evidence of success. The one that I find amusing is, the Department of Energy was designed so we wouldn't be dependent on foreign oil. And the department's grown like mad, and we're more dependent on foreign oil than we ever were.
