Russ Feingold: “I rise to join the Chairman of the Budget Committee, Chairman Conrad, the Ranking Republican Member, Senator Domenici…”

“I rise to join the Chairman of the Budget Committee, Chairman Conrad, the Ranking Republican Member, Senator Domenici, and the Senator from New Hampshire, Senator Gregg, in offering this amendment to extend the budget process. Exercising the power of the purse is among Congress's most important responsibilities. Justifiably, there has been much concern in the Nation about how Congress has exercised and will exercise its responsibilities under the Constitution's war powers, and certainly that is a grave and consequential responsibility. But we should recall that the way that the Congress ended the Vietnam war was through the exercise of the power of the purse, by constraining spending. The power of the purse is a momentous power. Article I, section 9, of the Constitution reserves the power of the purse with Congress through the admonition that: [n]o Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law . . . . Interpreting that power, our Founder James Madison wrote in the ``Federalist Papers'': They, in a word, hold the purse that powerful instrument by which we behold, in the history of the British Constitution, an infant and humble representation of the people gradually enlarging the sphere of its activity and importance, and finally reducing, as far as it seems to have wished, all the overgrown prerogatives of the other branches of the government.…”