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may move to strike the last word as I run through the time here, if I
do. I am grateful to the gentleman for bringing
this amendment. I think it is exactly the kind of fiscal responsibility
that many of us on both sides of the aisle talked about during our
campaigns. It is an important thing to have before the Congress.
We have talked about PAYGO for taxes, but this is really PAYGO for
spending. This is trying to reprioritize the spending of the Federal
Government, to look at spending we are doing now as the first way to
pay for spending we should be doing in the future.
I haven't heard anything in the debate today that doesn't suggest
that we need to move forward with the bill that the chairman has
brought to the floor, that the committee has brought to the floor, that
there is a lot of interest in amending this bill in ways that make it
better. But there is no real discussion that the underlying bill
doesn't do the kinds of things we need to be looking for as we move
toward energy independence. Millions and billions of dollars, however,
are authorized with no real requirement for fiscal discipline. In
one of the votes we have taken this year in the early bills, the 6
for '06, the implementation of the 9/11 Commission, when we finally weeks
after the vote got the cost estimate of the vote, the cost estimate
was an estimate of $30-or- so billion over 5 years. And so we need to
be sure that we are doing things that make sense with the people's money.
I think President Reagan, who would have been 96 this week had he
lived, said that a government has never voluntarily reduced its size.
One of the ways we can at least maintain the size of the government
is, we look at new and worthy things to suggest that the size of the
government would not grow just because the needs of the government are
changing. In this bill we ask for the authorization----
The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman's time has expired. Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike
the last word. This legislation authorizes $10 billion in
spending to the EPA. And, frankly, the EPA spends a lot of money that
could be spent in different ways. In the EPA budget last year $47,459,367
was spent in projects in foreign countries. I would suggest, in supporting
the gentleman's amendment, that probably you could find $10
million there and, if you couldn't find it there, you could find it
somewhere else. Currently, the EPA has paid for things that
establish a coal bed methane clearinghouse in the People's Republic
of China or developing or producing a television documentary in China,
in Chinese, on mercury pollution or improving environmental monitoring
quality and capacity in the Ukraine. They may all be good things,
but none of them as important to American taxpayers as the proposal today.
This proposal would allow this bill to move forward, but require the
EPA to find the $10 million for this new program by evaluating the value
to the American people and the American taxpayer of their old program.
I think the money that is there to do this can be found elsewhere. I
particularly am grateful to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Roskam)
for bringing this to the floor as one of our first opportunities to
talk about PAYGO for spending. If we are going to do things that meet the
new priorities of the country, it is also an opportunity every time
to look at the current spending and to reprioritize what the Federal
Government has been doing.