Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. While I intend to claim time in opposition to the amendment that addresses Open World a little bit later, which I know will come as a surprise to the chairman, I do want to point out now that what the chairman says is not quite accurate, which is why I am going to oppose the amendment. Because were we--and there were a number of options available to the Rules Committee--taking the $5 million that is going to Open World in the Legislative Branch bill now and putting it in to some other place in the Legislative Branch bill, life safety programs, restoring the cuts to GPO, or doing something that is going to make sure that the legislative branch can be competitive and has the ability to get our work done, then that would have been fine, because I agree that Open World is actually a square peg in a round hole and shouldn't be funded out of this bill, and I have made that case for many years. Instead, what the majority did is they took an amendment that takes that $5 million and puts it into the spending reduction account. We are already $106 million below 2010 levels in our MRA, in our office accounts. This bill is flat-funded for 3 years in a row. We are doing ourselves a disservice and making it difficult for us to do our jobs when we had a ripe opportunity to take that $5 million--which I would have been for--and put it somewhere in the Legislative Branch bill instead of sending it out of here. That is not responsible.…”