Political Quotes

“That is correct, and I thank my colleague for mentioning that. Senator Claire McCaskill, my Democratic colleague from Missouri, and I have offered legislation that would essentially take the budget that was submitted last year, which had a 5-year number. The first-year numbers were not very good. I will show some of the spending increases last year in our baseline accounts. I know my colleagues will find this hard to believe because it is so stunning, but the State Department and Foreign Operations got a 32-percent increase in baseline spending last year. EPA got a 35- percent increase. Commerce, Science, Justice, that is, the Commerce Department and the Justice Department, received 12.3 percent. The Treasury-HUD number was 23 percent; Agriculture, 8; and Defense, 4.1. So we have been spending rapidly, but the budget called for less spending this year and next year and the next year. It was a 5-year budget. So we asked our colleagues: Let's, on a bipartisan basis, pass legislation very similar to what was passed in the 1990s. That really was a critical act in achieving a balanced budget in the late 1990s, and this action would say that if you went above that spending level, which is basically projected to be 1 percent or so, it would take a two-thirds vote of the Congress. This would help us maintain spending, wouldn't my colleague agree, if we had a two-thirds vote?”