Date: 2012-02-08
Speaker: VAN HOLLEN (democrat)
Chamber: H

Mr. Chairman. I yield myself such time as I may consume. Let me begin by thanking the chairman of the committee. PAUL RYAN. and our staffs for working together in a cooperative and bipartisan manner on what I think is a very important piece of legislation to bring before the House. While we have deep disagreements in this House over many policy issues. I know that we all agree that we should be responsible and careful stewards of taxpayer dollars. Thats what this bill before us is all about. It creates new mechanisms for greater transparency and greater accountability in spending taxpayer dollars. I believe that it will. over time. result in a better use of those taxpayer dollars. and savings identified through this process will go to deficit reduction. For those of us who believe that government can play a positive role in peoples lives by creating opportunities. like investing in education for our kids. like strengthening our economy through investments in infrastructureour roads. our bridges. broadbandby making key investments in scientific research. for those of us who believe that. it is especially important that taxpayers have confidence that their tax dollars are being used wisely. To the extent they dont believe that. it makes it more difficult to invest in the common good. So we should take every opportunity in this body to make sure those taxpayer dollars are being well spent. Lets be clear about what this bill does and what it does not do. As the chairman indicated. it does not give the President unilateral lineitem authority. The Supreme Court ruled in 1996 that the lineitem veto law that was passed by an earlier Congress was unconstitutional because it handed over that unilateral authority to the President of the United States. I think that was the right Court decision. I also think it was the right policy decision. This approach is entirely different. Its different because it expressly requires congressional action before any savings. sometimes called rescissions. proposed by the President can take place. It simply requires Congress to consider and vote on the Presidents proposed savings. Congress. by a majority vote in each House. can support the Presidents recommended savings or reject those savings. In the end. Congress has the final say. Now. I think everybody here knows we can do a better job in this Congress of scrutinizing spending bills. This bill provides a strong incentive to do that. Lets consider how the process worked just last December with the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2012. That bill was over 1.200 pages long and included over a trillion dollars in spending. In fact. Mr. Chairman. Ive got that bill right here. It was submitted to this House at 10:47 p.m. on December 15. 2011. and was voted on less than 15 hours later. No one can say they had an adequate opportunity to scrutinize that spending bill. Let me mention a couple facts about that bill. It included in it nine separate appropriation bills rolled into one. Of those nine bills. four had not been reviewed or voted on by the full House. The House had never had a chance to look at them or vote on them. Two of them hadnt even had a vote in the Appropriations Committee. One of those two. the LaborH bill. $160 billion in taxpayer money. not voted on even in Appropriations Committee. The Foreign Ops bill. not voted in Appropriations Committee. Only one of those nine was voted on in the United States Senate before that lastminute decision. I want to make this clear. This is not a criticism of the Appropriations Committee. This is a criticism of the process that weve had in this Congress whether you have Democratic Houses in control or Republicans in control. What this bill does is try and provide a small fix to that process so that we have a little more scrutiny. Under current law. the President can already propose savings. but under current law. the Appropriations Committee can totally ignore it. All this does is say lets take up those recommended savings in the light of day. Lets have an upordown vote in the United States Congress and. you know what. if we agree the Presidents identified additional savings. that will help reduce the deficit. This is a good bill. Its a bipartisan bill. and I urge my colleagues to support it. I reserve the balance of my time.