On the recordApril 8, 2011
First of all, I think many of us here in this House want to see the government to continue to be funded. But let's review what has happened here. Last year, the Democrats failed to pass a budget. They failed to propose a budget. So this Congress, we're here doing the work of last year's House and Senate. We proposed a bill to fund the government, and in that bill, we cut $61 billion. That is under the backstop of the fact that we're going to borrow $1.6 trillion this year alone. Our national debt is $14 trillion. The Democrats in the Senate say they don't like our proposal. That's okay. If you don't like it, pass your own proposal. Give us a counterproposal, and we will consider it. But the bottom line is the Senate has failed to act. They haven't sent us a counterproposal. So what we've done is we've passed two extensions to fund the government, and again yesterday we passed a third. The Senate isn't going to take it up. Again, if you don't like our proposal, give us your own. We can't negotiate with ourselves. We're willing to sit down and talk, but we can't continue to put out our proposals and our ideas and have you fail to give us a response. ____________________





