On the recordMay 15, 2013
Amendment No. 816 expands the review commission so that, in fact, it can look at everything. We have given them the responsibility. What the bill does is a great first step, but it protects all the earmarks from 1996 forward, so we are not going to look at any of those. We are not going to allow the review commission, the deauthorizing commission, to make recommendations on everything. We are going to select what they will look at. If we trust them to look at the other things, we ought to trust them to look at all of it. We do have an opportunity to turn them down if, in fact, they are trying to deauthorize something the Congress thinks shouldn't be deauthorized.
