If they can’t stop spending on “small stuff”, they never will on huge stuff.
If they can’t defund AMTRAK and NPR, they won’t defund anything.
You sidestep the issue I think Imhofe is raising. It’s not about big or little amounts of money. It’s about the way Congress functions, about the way “cram downs” take place.
Certainly money is an important issue. But as far as devastating changes in the way America is governed is concerned, the horsetrading of earmarks was the way Pelosi convinced congressmen whose constituents were opposed to Obamacare or the Stimulus to nonetheless vote for those monstrosities.
Imhofe may be wrong about this, but I hear him and others raising this question. It deserves dispassionate discussion.