Political Quotes

“What we are facing today is the worst kind of demagoguery, and really it descends to propaganda. Look, the reason the phones aren't being answered is because the Republican majority has failed to answer to its responsibilities. The appropriations have been going down. The last 5 years, the budget cut for IRS has been close to $1 billion. So you try to hide from your failure and you point your finger everyplace except where it belongs--yourselves. You want to say no bonuses to the 80,000 people because this House majority has failed to meet its basic responsibility, and that is to fund so that there can be adequate resources to answer the phones. You are the ones who have shut it off. So the problem is not a lack of strategy; it is a lack of resources. The House Republicans are trying to pass the buck because they are not providing the bucks necessary for adequate taxpayer services. We had this chart yesterday, and here it is again. This shows, in the yellow, the amount of resources. In the blue, it shows the average time to answer the phone. As the resources have gone down, the time it takes has gone up. That is a simple fact. The only time that changed was when this institution provided some adequate resources, and so the time to answer the phones went down. Now you are back at it again, diminishing the resources, and you are essentially blaming the 80,000 people who don't get the adequate resources to do their jobs.…”