Political Quotes

“Mr. President and fellow Senators, you have a clear vote it seems to me. One, do you support the President of the United States when he said we shall not cut defense anymore? He even said, ``My staff has advised me, some of them have, to cut defense. But it is wrong. We have cut defense enough.'' The Harkin amendment would cut defense some more to pay for what the President should have funded from the beginning: The Byrne amendment which fights drugs and crimes in our cities and States in probably the best way that any Federal money is spent. The other choice is to take Senator Gorton's approach, and it will be the second vote, and say we do not want to cut defense anymore, but we do want to replenish the Byrne Grant Program in its totality. We want to fund it right up to current policy which means inflation on top of last year because it is a great program. Then Senator Gorton says, as I would interpret it, the President should never cut the Byrne grants, and said to the agencies of this Government, you can spend $1 billion on new furniture. So we say cut that in half. I believe had the President been looking at $1 billion worth of new furniture or cutting the Byrne grants, he would have said cut the furniture. In any event, whether he says it or not, we ought to say it here today. That is why we ought to support the second vote. Everybody wins. Senator Harkin gets the Byrne grant replenished.”