John Thune: “what my amendment very simply says is that any of the funding in this bill that was not authorized as of February 1 of…”

“what my amendment very simply says is that any of the funding in this bill that was not authorized as of February 1 of this year could not be funded under the bill. The point very simply is that, in order for a stimulus to be effective, it has to be timely, it has to be targeted, it has to be temporary. Funding in this or programs in this that are created that are new programs are going to be none of the above. It is going to take a long time, as we all know, to get regulations in place and create the bureaucracies. All these programs that are new programs included in this legislation are going to take a very long time to implement and, therefore, I do not believe ought to be considered stimulus and they ought not be funded as a part of this stimulus bill. My amendment simply says any program that was not authorized as of February 1 of this year will not be funded under the stimulus bill. It is a way of trimming the cost of this bill back and doing something that actually I think eliminates a lot of the extraneous spending that is included in the bill. I urge my colleagues to support it.”