Come. that s going to take an honest conversation between republicans and democrats. shepard: and a lot of people are very concern about that. specifically though, as far as spending cuts, where would you begin? guest: well, we are going to be having those questions in every committee. one of the tasks that speaker boehner has given every chairman is to look how many is being spent and to identify ways that we can start saving money, looking at the duplicate programs. you have heard we have enacted an earmark ban, for example, until we reform that process. we are looking at ways to rolling back. prestimulus and saving the money that hasn t been spent already in the stimulus, for example. but we are going to look through every part of the budget. shepard: as i discussed that
Ban on earmarks tonight, and something that is technically your purview, the legislative branch, and even harry reid, the senate majority leader was heard this is an issue any president would look to have taking power away from the legislative branch of government, only giving the president more power. he has enough already. that is harry reid s way of saying back off. guest: they like their pork. i think the president is right. he cosponsored an earmark ban when he was in the senate but tying with that the freeze on the current discretionary which we peed to recognize that it is not serious. it is like taking the car to 100 miles an hour and they say you are going too fast you put it on cruise control. we need to cut our spending here and freezing it makes no sense at all. neil: who are you sitting
Because democrat harry reid would have gotten $252 million for his home state of nevada, according to politico, not the only democrat who state stood to gain $100 million. let s look at the republicans. senator mitch mcconnell, right there on that list. you know? tell me, what is he doing there? so was senator john thune of south dakota in leadership. so was senator john cornyn in text in the republican leadership. senate minority leader mitch mcconnell had allies whipping this trying to get whole support for this bill with funding levels he agreed to even weeks back. just a few days ago he switched positions and decided that this was an untenable position after they passed an earmark ban to be backing a bill this large stuffed with earmarks. and so they dug in and even though, as i said, there were about nine republicans who were going to vote with the democrats
actually, she s right. i mean, she s right. this cuts both ways. republicans like earmarks, too, some of them and remember, some republicans voted against that earmark ban a couple of weeks ago but what she was saying is that those who actually did vote for the earmark ban then had earmarks in this spending bill and they were about to go for it until they were called out on it so in a way, she s right and i think we have to give some credit to mitch mcconnell who had some earmarks himself. well, $112 million. he was apparently on the phone to other republicans saying hey, we have to give this stuff up. i think this is the way i understand it went down. 10 months to do it, they chose not to. for the second year in a row, they re bringing it to the dhed line with christmas and holidays looming straight ahead. they say we have to get this passed and we ll do it. everybody writes in their wish list for would be earmarks and they don t even talk about it for 10 months and all of a sudden at 12:15 on wednesday, they get this bill and it s
Castle in delaware. look at nevada. look at alaska. in primaries this year where establishment figures were beaten. do i want to be the next person to face that kind of a primary challenge because i voted for this bill, because i voted for earmarks? much easier to join the republican resistance. so you had this bizarre situation where you had people who had earmarks in this bill coming out and saying they were opposing their own earmarks. yeah, it really was a comedy of errors coming out of washington with this. the republicans had to know after voting for the earmark ban that their earmarks were going to come out in this legislation. god bless jim demint for pulling this stunt this afternoon, it worked. but, erick, this is probably a naive question, but when it comes down to it, what s wrong with letting a bill come up for a vote? regardless of which party poses it, isn t that the core principle of democracy, whether it s this or don t ask, don t tell or whatever? it takes 60 votes to do almost anything.