Jeb Hensarling: “Again I want to commend the gentleman from Georgia for his amendment in this series of amendments, which, as I…”

“Again I want to commend the gentleman from Georgia for his amendment in this series of amendments, which, as I understand it, would bring the funding to the President's level, which, in most cases for many of us, is still too much. As I stated earlier in the debate, Mr. Chairman, I am still concerned that although clearly good cases are made for how these funds can be used, I look at the larger picture. We still have a bill before us that is growing this part of government at over twice the rate of inflation. Again, we are asking American families to somehow do more with less, and sometimes you wonder if government isn't doing less with more. This is on top of the pressure that has been put on the family budget by the new Democrat majority's enacting the largest single tax increase in American history in their budget. This is on top of the Democrat majority that is trying to increase what we call nondefense discretionary spending by $23 billion above the level of last year. This is in addition to the $6 billion, Mr. Chairman, that they added to the omnibus spending bill at the first of the Congress and the $17 billion in nonemergency spending that they tried to put into the emergency supplemental to support our troops that somehow we all know ended up with funding for peanuts and spinach and many other items that many Americans would consider being part of a pork-barrel spending effort.”