Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, the vote we take today may be the most monumental vote during our tenure in Congress, and the amount of money we are committing is, in itself, epic. I have heard folks from both sides, and particularly the other side, talk about this is all for the families and the working people, and yet I find myself saying, if that is the case, we might have produced a bill that didn't include millions of dollars for nonessential, nonemergency-related funding such as the Kennedy Center, NPR, the Smithsonian, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment of Arts and Humanities. Could we have done this without strengthening the hands of unions in the private sector? Sure. But we give $88 million to the Peace Corps, which fired over 7,000 volunteers just 10 days ago, hundreds of millions more to the IRS, refugee assistance, election security, and the Department of Education. These may be worthy or not, but they certainly have no place in an economic relief package, and it is a shame that they are in here. The President is rightly concerned about whether the cure here, the economic cure, may be worse than the sickness. We incentivize small employees to keep their---- The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.”