Pete Domenici: “I come to the floor here today to share with my colleagues and my constituents my frustration with the inaction of…”

“I come to the floor here today to share with my colleagues and my constituents my frustration with the inaction of Congress on its most basic responsibility, to enact bills to make appropriations for the Government for the coming year. No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time. That is the Constitution of the United States. There is no responsibility more fundamental than the one I have just read. The American people pay taxes and they expect the Congress to do something with those taxes every year. Part of it they expect to be spent on the operations of Government--for the payments of the Defense Department, for the payments of the Treasury Department, for all things that go on in the Energy Department. All of those functions of Government are put together and handled in appropriations bills that have a committee chairman and a ranking member, and each year, under our system, where it is annual, they are supposed to produce an appropriations bill that goes from House to House and becomes a final product when it has been passed in both Houses and gone to conference between the two Houses and comes out as a final bill, which goes to the President of the United States. That is the format. There are 13 of those that cause the Government of the United States to function.…”