Robert Torricelli: “the experience of this Congress in our own time has been exactly the opposite. Our national debt has increased by…”

“the experience of this Congress in our own time has been exactly the opposite. Our national debt has increased by fourfold not because of a Congress, but because of the very executive power that you are using today to control spending. It was, after all, during the Reagan and Bush administrations where they proposed spending in excess of the spending proposed by budgets within this Congress against restraint attempted in this Congress that this deficit was created. But indeed, Mr. Chairman, none of these arguments compare with the concern for our constitutional government. Our country has been blessed with leaders like George Bush, Bill Clinton, Gerry Ford, and Jimmy Carter, who, even if they possessed executive power, would not have abused it. But who here can be certain that will be true for all time? Who would serve on a Watergate Committee if Richard Nixon had this power over your district? How would the Vietnam war have been different if Lyndon Johnson had had the power to control your districts if you voted against appropriations? And what of Harding and Teapot Dome, or Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as the gentleman from Virginia has suggested, over the courts? How would American history have been different? I know that our country is troubled, and I know that we have problems. But this constitutional arrangement has withstood civil wars, international conflict, and a depression, and served this country well.”