Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, the timing of this discussion, I really asked to be recognized to address the Drake amendment, but as I listened to the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, I think there are some things that we need to take up and add to this particular discussion that he's opened up. And that is, what do we do about this conundrum of earmarks? First of all, we do have too many earmarks, and I've not been one that's said that that solves our spending problem here, but I think it puts bait out there for people to do things that, first of all, if the bloggers could see the things that are going on, they would weigh in on us, and perhaps that would be some of the regulatory function that the bloggers could perform. But a couple of nights ago, I sat down and went through two appropriations bills. One of them was the omnibus spending bill for 2005, 1,600 pages; another appropriation bill, 400 pages; all together, 2,000 pages. And I didn't read it all, wouldn't have been possible, but I leafed through that appropriations bill, and I find in there earmarks that wouldn't be identified as earmarks.”