McCaskill comes out against excess spending
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-MO, took to the floor of the U.S. Senate on Tuesday to introduce an amendment aimed at balancing the federal budget, which is currently running a deficit of $1.35 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
McCaskill introduced the amendment with two other Republican senators, John Kyl of Arizona and Jeff Sessions of Alabama. The amendment would cap defense and non-defense discretionary spending at 1 to 2 percent annually.
The increase in total federal spending was due to projects favored by small groups of constituents in certain states, McCaskill said, but she also said senators must balance support for local projects with fiscal responsibility.
"We're spending on things that make it even harder to say 'no'," she said. "But the time has come that we all have to feel the pain of saying 'no'. We all have to be willing to suffer the political consequences of saying 'no'."
The full text of the senator's floor remarks are below. The Maneater obtained this unofficial transcript from McCaskill's office. For video of the speech, visit McCaskill's youtube page.
-- I join my colleague in this attempt to restore some sanity in Congress on spending. I come from a state where there is a required balanced budget, and over the last few years I'm not sure how they would have done that without quite a bit of pain without the help that the federal government has sent them, the fact that we have to balance the budget in Washington has led to some very, very bad habits.
I was thinking about spending over the weekend as this week there were a number of provisions that we're going to be debating that I have sponsored or I am a big supporter of. The Fiscal Task Force which went down this morning by a narrow vote, this amendment and then obviously Pay-Go which I have been the lead Senate sponsor on over the last several months.
These are all things that are trying to fight something that you encounter all the time as a parent – how much easier it is to say yes than no. Now, my kids hate that when I give them that lecture because they are always wanting me to say yes, and I always say to them well, the easiest thing to do is to say yes. Yes, you can have that outfit. Yes, you can take my car. Yes, you can go to your friends even though I'm not sure you finished whatever chores that you had around the house. And it's always easier just to go along with it. It's a good cause.
That's what happens around here. It's not like we're spending on evil stuff. We’re spending on stuff we believe in. We’re spending education. We’re spending on highways. We’re spending on our parks. We’re spending on our military. We’re spending on things that make it even harder to say no.
But the time has come that we all have to feel the pain of saying no. We all have to be willing to suffer the political consequences of saying no. And that’s why this amendment is such important step in the right direction. Now I want to be really honest about this because we have a tendency around here to make things bigger than they are.
This isn’t going to make a dramatic change in the deficit or the debt, and I’m not sure how many Americans have really focused on the difference between the two, but they are two different things and it’s not going to make a huge difference.
People need to remember, that if we took out all discretionary spending, if we decided we’re not going to spend another time on education or highways or any of the things that we decide on spending every year, we’d still have a massive deficit problem. We don’t fix the deficit by passing this amendment. We don’t fix the deficit by saying we’re going to even do discretionary domestic spending anymore. So this not a fix all.
But you know what it does? It begins to get usual. It’s a little like earmarking. Is earmarking a huge problem? No. But it’s like the fever – it’s a symptom. It’s a symptom of the disease. And so this will help get us well.
This will be a step towards recovery if we can pass this amendment to freeze our discretionary spending. I’m so pleased the White House has called for a freeze. I think it’s a wonderful bi-partisan moment, and I think we’re all hankering for a good bipartisan moment right now. I hope we’re all hankering for a good bipartisan moment.
I got a little worried this morning on the vote on the Fiscal Task Force because it seemed to me there might have been some political games being played, but I don’t know about anybody else. But I’m hankering for a good bipartisan moment, and this ought to be one. This ought to be one where Republicans and Democrats set aside who looks good and who looks bad, who gets the credit and who gets blamed, and do something that we need to do.
We used to have a freeze, and we used to have Pay-Go. They were allowed to expire in 2002. I wasn’t here. I’m not sure why they were allowed to expire. Did Congress think we don’t need Pay-Go anymore and that we didn’t need limits on discretionary spending anymore because we were out of the woods when it comes to the deficit or the debt?
I’m not sure why that happened. I do know this. I bet most of the folks who let those things expire wish they could take it back. I bet most of the folks who did some voting for major entitlement programs without paying for them during that time, I bet they wish they could it back because now we’re in a mess. And the first and most important step, I think, for us getting out of this mess is to vote to control our spending.
So I am hopeful that this will be passed by a wide margin. Some of my friends on the left have said the last thing in the world we should do now is to limit spending. Government is the answer in this difficult recession. I voted for the stimulus, and I think the tax cuts in the stimulus which doesn’t get talked about enough, I think the help to the states that doesn’t get talked about enough and the jobs that are going to be created this year are all very important to the progress we have made in terms of climbing out of the economic hole that we found ourselves in a year ago.
But we will not get out of this recession on the back of government spending, and if we decide that it’s just about government spending during this recession, we are dealing a very, very bad hand to our grandchildren. So I hope that this amendment passes, and I hope that it is not even controversial.
I am so pleased the president is on board. I’m so please that so many members of the Republican Party are on board, and let’s take this important step and then let’s live up to it during the appropriations process. And let’s realize that pet projects at home that we know we can get an earmark, that maybe this is the year to say no. This is the year to push back from the table and say all those pet projects, all those earmarks are really not the right signal we need to send to the American people this year.
So I thank my colleague from Alabama and Sen. Kyl who are co-sponsors on this. I look forward to wide bipartisan support. I look forward to enthusiastic applause tomorrow night in the President’s State of the Union when he lays out his freeze on spending. We’re all on board now. Let’s make it happen. --
