Political Quotes

“I rise in what I would call tepid support of the rule here. I believe that what we are going through could be prevented, and I think we need to start discussing this on the floor of the House of Representatives. We may have a balanced budget this year, I think CBO says by perhaps $8 billion. But in the 5 years, now my sixth year, that I have been in this Congress, every year we have wrestled at least once, if not more than once, with the emergency appropriations process; and the question is, do we offset it or not offset it? And now that we are starting to balance the budget, we are starting to offset it. If we do not offset it, all of a sudden we have spending out there which has just been added to the debt in the past and now may take away from the surplus in the future. If we do offset it, what are we going to offset it with? There lies an entirely different fight, which we will get into later when we get to the bill itself. But the bottom line is there is a way of avoiding this. I have introduced legislation to this effect which is of a particular consequence because it is budget mechanisms we need to look at. A budget reserve account would do this.”