Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman for yielding. Let me just say, and I won't take all the time, but there is something to the ``laugh factor.'' At some point we've got to realize here that the country's watching us, and they're looking to see if we're funding programs like $600,000 to try to figure out if policymakers actually do what citizens want them to do? $200,000 to study why political candidates make vague statements? We're funding this with taxpayer dollars. The acid test ought to be for all of us, whenever we're spending money here, is this program worth borrowing money from our kids and our grandkids, from some countries, that don't like us very much who are buying our bonds? And this doesn't pass that test. It doesn't even come close. And if we simply say this is a big NSF budget and this is a very small part of this, this program, if we continue to say that, we'll never cut it, and that's the problem here. We aren't. The NSF funding, overall, is way up from the post-stimulus level. We said at the time that the stimulus was passed that that's just a one- time deal, and these rates will come down, or these programs will come down. They haven't. We're continuing to fund them. And programs like this, the country just looks around and says, this is laughable. Look at what our policymakers are doing.…”