On the recordApril 14, 2011
Mr. President, today we are going to vote on last year's unfinished business. We are going to vote on a continuing resolution that will fund the government through this fiscal year, which ends on September 30. The proposal we have before us in order to fund the government through the end of the fiscal year certainly is not perfect. In fact, there are many--myself included--who would like to see it make deeper reductions in spending. That said, we will be voting on a proposal that will cut spending by around $40 billion this year, and when you look at baseline spending over the next decade actually saves over $300 billion over the 10-year period. What strikes me about that is that it will be the first time in a long time that we have done something about reducing spending. That is not something routinely or traditionally done here. In fact, we are going to reverse a trend that began a long time ago but accelerated a couple years ago when nonnational security discretionary spending increased by almost 25 percent in the last 2 years. This is an important first step.…





