In remarks on the Senate floor on Wednesday, Senator Bob Corker joined a number of colleagues to discuss the broken federal budget process.
“The processes that we have in place make it impossible for us to really deal with our country’s fiscal issues,” said Senator Corker. “Today is the perfect example of that: we pass a continuing resolution through December [9], and we make no policy changes.
Think about an entity the size of our federal government. We spend $4 trillion each year of the American people’s money, and yet we don’t do the authorization process which lays out policies. If you can imagine IBM or Apple or Google or any company like that just continuing each year to do things exactly the same way and thinking that there is going to be a different result, that’s not possible. But worse than that, in spending the $4 trillion that we spend each year, we only budget $1.2 trillion, $1.3 trillion. The rest of it is on autopilot, and it is the part that is on autopilot that is the greatest threat to our country’s national security.”
Senator Corker also lamented the lack of a forcing mechanism to ensure the policies outlined in the budget are implemented.
“We are going to have to have a total reordering of how we do business,” he said. “We say the budget balances over ten years, but we never do the tough things that it takes for those policies to actually be put in place. So a forcing mechanism – I know several thoughts have been put forth – to force us to do that to keep government open, to keep functioning is something that has to occur.”
In closing, Senator Corker thanked Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi (R-Wy.) and Senator David Perdue (R-Ga.) for their leadership in efforts to reform the broken budget process.
“I look forward to working with you to ensure that we get the right outcome to save our nation and to keep us from this moral depravity that’s taking place where, in essence, every day that goes by we’re involved in generational theft, where because we’re not doing this, we’re really laying a huge burden on future generations,” said Senator Corker.