On the recordApril 30, 2015
I appreciate the gentlewoman from Tennessee's consistency. We have seen a lot of these amendments. The problem is with the debate. You would think that we were not doing anything to reduce this deficit, that we were not cutting spending. The reality is the only committee in Congress that is actually cutting spending is the Appropriations Committee, and we have been cutting spending for the last 4 years. Now, this bill that we have before us today meets with and falls within the budget resolution that was just adopted earlier this day, and, if we had wanted to reduce everything by 1 percent again, then we should have adopted a different budget resolution. It is easy to say let's just take one penny out of every dollar. Who can't do that? We have taken much more than one penny out of every dollar as we have cut spending more and more in the appropriations process by the Appropriations Committee. It is not that we don't want to reduce spending; we are reducing spending, but, of course, we could cut one more cent out of every dollar we spend. Who couldn't do that? Then we will have a new baseline. You know what? Then we ought to cut one penny out of every dollar at that baseline. You know what? Then we will have another baseline, and we can cut one more penny out of that. We are trying to do it smarter. We are trying to look at the needs of the agencies that we fund, reduce spending, and set priorities.…
