Political Quotes

“Before I start on this amendment, let me address what was just said here. We're told by challenging these earmarks, $300 million in this bill, that we, those who want to save some money here, know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. I think we better translate that into Chinese. And the next time we try to auction our bonds and we have no takers and the Chinese won't buy this paper, say, ``Hey, you know the cost of everything but the value of nothing.'' See where that gets us. It does matter what kind of deficits we run and what kind of debt we have. It matters. It matters a lot. We may say that it doesn't around here or that we'll get serious about it later or that we can fund all of the bike paths we want this year or streetscapes or whatever we're doing because we'll get serious about it next year, but we never seem to do it. I've been doing this for several years now, and I hear that all the time. ``Yeah, we'll get to it later. This year we've got to do this,'' and we never seem to get to it. So I would just challenge the cost of everything, the value of nothing, those sayings. Yeah, they're nice to hear, but when you're running a deficit of $1.4 trillion, I think there's a little too much cost there, and I think people across the country would agree. This amendment would prohibit a million dollars going to the downtown Tacoma streetscape improvements in Tacoma, Washington, and reduce spending in the bill by a commensurate amount.”