Political Quotes

“Mr. President, since 2001 I have served as chairman on three different appropriations subcommittees. I chaired subcommittees on Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, the Interior Department, and today the Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development. Over the years I made a lot of tough choices on which programs to fund and which programs not to fund. But never have things been as bad as they are today. The cuts that we are making to our appropriations bills under sequestration are strangling programs that must be funded. Programs that are vital to our economy, vital to public safety, and programs that promise to deliver the next breakthroughs in energy research. To compound the problem, we are now just a few days away from a government shutdown that has the potential to devastate our economic recovery and shake the confidence in our government to get anything done. I would like to speak today about the negative effects a shutdown and continued sequester would have on my subcommittee. The agency within my subcommittee that may have the most direct impact on the public is the Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps safeguards our dams, our levees and our drinking water, it keeps our harbors open for cargo ships, and it maintain more than 4,000 recreation sites. Simply put, a government shutdown would mean the termination of a wide range of vital Corps activities.…”