Political Quotes

“what we have seen is a recognition that these are tough times and we need some belt-tightening. But to go back to this level of sequestration is not the right thing to do because that is taking a meat cleaver approach, across-the-board, on cutting Federal programs. It is just not a responsible way of belt-tightening. Fortunately, this motion to recommit, to in essence go to the level of appropriations for Transportation and Housing and Urban Development that was to take it to the level of the House, which is considerably lower than what has come out of our Appropriations Committee in the Senate--fortunately, this motion to recommit was defeated. Why do we want to cut funding, as the House bill does, to critical areas such as air traffic controllers? It is dangerous, shortsighted, and we have been to this rodeo before. As a matter of fact, doesn't anyone remember that earlier in the year we had to fix the sequestration cuts that went into effect in the current fiscal year because it was cutting out all kinds of air traffic controllers and furloughed a number of them and closed the contract towers for the small airports? We had to reverse that. The public rose and said: This is not the right nor intelligent thing to do when it comes to the public safety. In addition to compromising the safety of the traveling public, those air traffic cuts would have increased the flight delays by hours and hours and caused a lot of cancellations.…”