Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, just to quickly respond, let me first say thank you to the ranking member of the subcommittee. We have worked on this bill for a year. We agreed on language. We accepted the administration's language and worked with OMB on making sure that this was a bill that not only passed with bipartisan support but was something that the Senate would welcome and the President would sign. So it's been a good year. We've worked very well together, I think, on the issue up until this point. And I know that it became somewhat contentious in committee because we had several different properties listed in the bill to help pay for and make sure that this was a pay-as-you-go bill. We pulled those out in an effort to create bipartisanship and to make sure that those issues that the other side of the aisle wanted addressed were addressed, but we went a step further. As the ranking member of the committee asked for several different amendments, we agreed to those amendments. The environmental issue, we agreed to her amendment. Even though OMB had suggested that they didn't want lawsuits to apply, we went ahead and, in a sense of bipartisanship, wanted to agree to the ranking member's amendment on this. As well, the homeless, we agreed to a $2 million exemption to make sure the homeless were well taken care of. That was changed to $3 million. We agreed to that. It was changed to $5 million.…”