Joe Pitts: “It's over 1,900 pages long. It contains more than 6,000 earmarks. It costs over $1.1 trillion. It's the new Senate…”

“It's over 1,900 pages long. It contains more than 6,000 earmarks. It costs over $1.1 trillion. It's the new Senate omnibus bill and it's a legislative travesty. A lame duck Congress with Members who won't be here in just 3 weeks should not saddle the American people with hundreds of billions of dollars in new debt. This bill increases spending over last year, even though we ran up a $1.3 trillion debt this year, and will run up a similarly high deficit next year. We don't need to be growing the Federal Government; we need to be shrinking it. This bill totally ignores what happened in this country on November 2, but seeing as some of the earmarks come from Senators who won't be back next year, I guess we shouldn't be surprised. The American people are tired of paying their taxes so that $165,000 can pay for maple syrup research and $1 million can go to AFL-CIO training programs. Congress' approval rating this session is at a record low, 13 percent. With bills like this, we shouldn't be surprised.”