Political Quotes

“I love this body, but sometimes I wonder about its collective intelligence, especially when we have come on the floor now three times on this bill, and especially since we are talking about money that has already been committed for the purposes that the gentleman from Delaware desires. My friends, we have got layoffs coming any minute now, and I am not sure everybody understands what that means. Let me illustrate. It means GS-14's doing the work of GS-7's while being paid at GS-14 rates. Federal employees are beginning to wonder whether this is a buyout or a sellout. We have been playing with the lives of dedicated career employees completely unnecessarily. As a result, attrition has slowed to a craw, and thus we have hurt ourselves on achieving deficit reduction as well. And for what? The one bill, Mr. Speaker, where the money is safe is the crime bill. We have already sequestered it in the budget resolution last week, and in effect there have been trial votes already that tell us that Members want this money committed and are going to do so. How many different ways do we have to do it, and how many times do we have to commit the same $22 billion to the same crime bill? If you vote for the motion to recommit, you are voting to cut $1.5 billion from defense, from veterans, from transportation, from the FBI, from everything we agreed that you wanted the money to go to last week when you voted for the budget resolution.”