Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, this amendment is straightforward. It would simply reduce more than $34 million in funding for the National Drug Intelligence Center and transfer that money into the spending reduction account. In short, the amendment would zero out funding for the National Drug Intelligence Center, which has survived for the past 3 years by way of a very broken earmarking process. For many institutions, drugs are handled with a zero tolerance policy. I would submit that taxpayers should send a clear signal here that we have a zero tolerance policy for this kind of wasteful spending. There has been no better example for wasteful spending than the NDIC, an entity I have come to the floor many times within the past to criticize and to limit funding for. Not just me, but many other Members. A pet project that once belonged to a powerful Member of Congress, the NDIC was established in 1992 and has been the recipient of hundreds of millions of dollars since then. In 2005, the White House OMB reported that the NDIC ``has proven ineffective in achieving its assigned mission.'' In 2006, a spokesman for the DOJ asserted that the resources of the NDIC should be ``realigned to support priority counterterrorism and national security initiatives.'' And yet, here we are, 5 years later, funding the NDIC in spite of what will be 3 years of trillion-dollar deficits and a skyrocketing national debt.…”