Tom Coburn: “this is not truly about biosphere reserves. This is not about the United Nations. What this is about is us as a body and…”

“this is not truly about biosphere reserves. This is not about the United Nations. What this is about is us as a body and whether or not we are going to follow our constitutional process in this body. This is just one example of many where this body has violated and continues to violate its own rules in terms of authorized programs. In the last several years millions of dollars have been spent on this program as well as hundreds of other programs without any authorization whatsoever from this body. This amendment seeks to eliminate just one of the many hundreds of areas where money is spent, taxpayer money is spent, never being approved by Congress in an authorizing body, never being looked at completely by that authorizing body. Second, it lacks complete oversight. There is no oversight into the money, the taxpayer money that is spent. There has been no oversight function whatsoever. What this amendment attempts to do is to talk to the Congress about returning to do what it is supposed to do. Now if you oppose this amendment, then what you really do is you oppose us operating under the rules that we have set for ourselves, because what in fact we have said is that we are not going to fund money for programs that are not authorized. We are not going to spend American taxpayers' money in a way that we cannot go and see that it is spent properly. We are not going to spend money on authorizing programs.”