Roy Cooper: “let me say amen to my friend's comments from Georgia. That was outstanding. I have the pleasure of serving on the Budget…”

“let me say amen to my friend's comments from Georgia. That was outstanding. I have the pleasure of serving on the Budget Committee and this week, probably on Thursday, we will start marking up the budget for the United States of America. That is one of the most serious responsibilities that we could ever undertake. It is an incredibly complex document and process. You are talking about $2.7 trillion. You are talking about not only all the defense programs, you are talking about Social Security and Medicare and a world of other programs, parks, agriculture, you name it; everything that the Federal Government is involved in. In the span of a few short hours, we will be able to offer a few amendments, and we try to do this on a bipartisan basis. It is hard, but let me report on what happened last year in last year's markup. I offered a number of the Blue Dog amendments as part of our 12-point plan for reform. They were individual, commonsense measures such as, for example, getting a cost estimate on every bill here so we know the cost of what we are voting on; having a recorded vote so that the members of this body go on record when large amounts of money are spent. We were one of the first groups in the country to go ahead and require transparency for earmarks so the public, everyone, would know what individual spending items were being requested.…”