Political Quotes

“Madam President, this is the first appropriations bill we are considering for fiscal year 2014. Unfortunately, in my view, it gets us off on the wrong foot because of the spending level. The bill spends more than $54 billion, which is about $5 billion above last year's spending level and more than $10 billion over the House proposal for this coming fiscal year. Considering that our debt stands at over $17 trillion, we ought to be spending less, not more this year. This bill already takes a larger portion of the allowable spending compared to last year. People will point out that the budget agreement we agreed to in 2011 simply sets an aggregate number and that we can spend whatever we want in certain appropriations bills as long as the total doesn't go over $967 billion. That is true, but it is impossible. I can say that with experience in the House and now in the Senate; that if we overspend on the initial appropriations bills, we will somehow cut back in the bills that come later. Often the last bill to come up is the Defense bill. Nobody is going to undercut our troops or spend less on a defense bill, but that would be required if we were to stay under the budget control agreement number. When we overspend on the initial appropriations bills like this, it simply means one thing: that we are going to bust the budget. I can tell my colleagues, to have any credibility with the taxpayers, we have to stick to the agreement that was agreed to in 2011. We passed so far.…”