Ron Wyden: “I tell my colleague, I am pleased to be able to team up with him on this effort. Over the last few months, we have been…”

“I tell my colleague, I am pleased to be able to team up with him on this effort. Over the last few months, we have been digging into a variety of areas where waste of taxpayers' dollars has occurred. I think Senator Dorgan has made the central argument with respect to our amendment; that is, you do not get tough with somebody by wasting money. In other words, we are going to have a fair amount of discussion, I suspect, on this amendment about whether you are being soft minded on Castro, or something of that nature, whether you agree with Castro's political agenda. What we are talking about is stopping foolishness with respect to frittering away taxpayer dollars. As my colleague has said, what we are faced with is a situation where Fidel Castro has jammed TV Marti's airwaves since their conception. As a result, instead of feeding the Cuban people a glimpse of honest television, what we have been feeding the Cuban people is static and snow. Now, the snow on Cubans' TV screens may be the only snow they get in Cuba, but I can assure you this is about the most expensive snow we have seen on the planet. What we want to do is protect the interests of taxpayers. We have gone through Fat Albert. Now you have the question of the sequel to Fat Albert, with the President having proposed slashing other programs, particularly programs here at home.…”