Political Quotes

“I thank the chairman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to thank Chairman Crenshaw and, indeed, Ranking Member Serrano for their leadership and the hard work that they have dedicated to the subcommittee. I would further like to thank the committee for including in the markup a language request I made during the programmatic request period. The policy I mentioned would preclude the agencies funded by this bill from hiring or contracting with outside organizations for the purpose of teaching the employees of those agencies how to support or defeat legislation being considered here in Congress. I first learned of this practice when reviewing Senator Tom Coburn's annual Wastebook and found that NASA and other agencies had multimillion-dollar contracts out so that their employees could learn more about Congress and the legislative process. Though I appreciate anyone's interest in Congress and the processes involved with conducting legislative business, I do not find this a prudent use of taxpayer money. So today I humbly request that, in any conference committee proceedings between the House and Senate, the chairman push to include such language in the government-wide provisions title of any final bill that would be voted upon by both Chambers rather than limiting this policy to those agencies funded directly by this bill.…”