Norman D. Dicks: “This is not a debate which really takes place very often on the floor of the House, and does not take place in full…”

“This is not a debate which really takes place very often on the floor of the House, and does not take place in full light with full accountability to the public. We know last year's number. We know how much money we spent last year. But we cannot talk about how much money we are going to spend this year. We cannot talk about the number which we are debating here on the floor today. We cannot talk about whether it is an increase or decrease from last year's number because we have last year's number. It used to be at least we could talk about the percentage increase of the secret number, but now since we know what the number was, we cannot even talk about what percentage increase or decrease it might be in this year's budget.”