Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I come to the floor today to voice my concerns with the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill. I do not take issue with the bill's specific spending provisions, and I believe my home State of Georgia needs a strong bill that recognizes the importance of ongoing infrastructure and housing and development projects. As some of my colleagues have already noted, this bill includes many taxpayer protection provisions, specifically that extravagant conferences will be curtailed, an issue many of our constituents as well as Members of Congress were shocked to learn about. But my concern is with the overall spending level and the decision of the majority to write this and other appropriations bills to levels that exceed the Budget Control Act. In 2011, Congress passed the Budget Control Act which placed caps on what the Federal Government could spend. I voted against that bill in August of 2011. Over the years I have served in both the House and the Senate and there have been too many times when I have seen both bodies come together to bust spending caps. For us to have no checks and balances on the ability of either the House or the Senate to bust the spending caps that were set in 2011, I thought, was wrong because they were going to get busted. Well, guess what. Here we are, and this is not the first time since 2011 we have had a vote in the Senate that will ultimately bust those spending caps.…”