The Senate voted 59 to 39 in favor of an amendment I offered to the Budget Resolution calling on the Fed to tell the American people who they loaned $2.2 trillion to and how much each bank received.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I came to Congress to help reduce spending.
The financial report makes it very clear that if we got into honest budgeting today, that in fact we would find ourselves with a much larger deficit than we have today.
I continue to vote against such spending increases, but sometimes I think some of my Republican colleagues forgot that we were sent here to shrink the federal government, not to grow it.
But when I look at the fact that today is 1,000 days that we have not had a budget for the United States of America, you know, the House, one of the things we did, we passed a budget last year. But that is still sitting over there at the Senate. And so we have got to get this country back on track.
The country is facing a fiscal crisis, and the United States Senate is at the center of the debate about how to bring federal spending under control.
The Senate needs 60 votes to pass anything. They have to compromise with liberal Democrats to spend more money. Even though arguably we have control of the Senate, we really don't.
One of the most important tasks of the United States House of Representatives is to pass a budget resolution.
If the Senate can't perform its most basic responsibilities, I worry about how we're going to make the tough decisions and do the hard work that will be necessary to get our country on a path to fiscal solvency.
In 2006, the Congress had approved plans to allow the Fed, beginning in 2011, to pay interest on banks' reserve balances. In the fall of 2008, the Congress moved up the effective date of this authority to October 2008.
Here's where I'm different from a senator. We pass continuing resolutions. We pass appropriations bills.