Political Quotes

“The chairman and the majority leader both make good points, and I would like to address them for just a moment. The chairman, who I have had a good working relationship with, made the point that this passed out of committee without anything left unresolved. And to a certain extent I would agree with him. Except of course we didn't have a score on this. We never do. We didn't know what this bill was going to cost. And when we discovered that this was going to cost millions of dollars every year, we made it clear before the last round of a request for a vote that we would have to find an offset or we would have to modify the bill to ensure that it would not cause the taxpayers to look at this as simply a perk for government. Because ultimately we can talk about morale, but the Federal workforce makes on the average $60,000 more than their private-sector counterparts. So morale should already be good in an organization the size of the government that has added a quarter of a million new workers since we went into a recession. There is no question that telework can justify this if it's done properly. Our amendment is going to seek, our one motion to recommit-- we weren't allowed any amendments--to try to at least trim around the edges to have our Members be able to go home and say of course we supported telework, but we made sure there were some safeguards of the American people's money.…”