It's the duty of Congress to use American tax dollars responsibly, Richard Stern says.

American taxpayers deserve to know where their money's going because “the government doesn't have the moral right to walk up and take whatever it wants of your labors because a bureaucrat thinks they know better than you how to use the resources you produced,” says Stern, director of the Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget at The Heritage Foundation. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)

There are 12 appropriations bills that move through Congress each year, and according to Stern, it's the job of lawmakers to ensure that each bill uses Americans' hard-earned taxpayer dollars well, but also the job of the American people to hold their elected officials accountable to do just that.

"I think we've ended up in a society where people have kind of quietly thought, 'Maybe the government is better at spending that than I am.' And I think that's been the genesis of the problem," he says.

Stern joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain what appropriations are and the approval process for them, and why politicians need to be more transparent and responsible when spending taxpayer money. 

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