Political Quotes

“Well, I thank the Senator from Utah. One of the things I fear most is that we are having a tough enough time controlling spending. Dr. Coburn, who served in the House--I admired his time there. He went after earmarks and after a lot of these appropriations, and he did the same thing when he came to the Senate until the last day he was here. He had a saying. He said: ``Earmarks are the gateway drug to . . . spending addiction.'' What he meant by that is if you give an earmark in an appropriations bill, some people will say ``Well, it is just an earmark for a couple of million dollars for a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame''--that was actually one. The problem is, once you get your earmark there, you are obligated to support that entire bill, no matter how ballooned it becomes. During the period, particularly in 2001 to 2006, boy, we bloated up a lot of appropriations bills. We were running basically at almost a surplus in 2001, and by the time we got to 2006, it was anything but, and nondefense discretionary spending and defense spending related to earmarks increased significantly. It just was not a good trend. So what I fear most is that we have been able to have some control on nondefense discretionary spending, and the growth of that has been slower than other things, but once you start getting earmarks in these bills, then you will be obligated to support them no matter what. Then you support bloated appropriations bills just to protect your earmark.…”