Tom Harkin: “Now, my friend from Pennsylvania, for whom I have the highest respect and affinity, is right; there are a lot of good…”

“Now, my friend from Pennsylvania, for whom I have the highest respect and affinity, is right; there are a lot of good things in this bill. It reminds me of sitting down at a dinner and you have a smorgasbord of prime rib, steaks, lamb chops, pasta, and all this wonderful meal spread out, and you can sample each one, but you have to take a poison pill with it. Is that really worth eating? That is the problem with this bill. There are good things in it; I admit that to my friend from Pennsylvania. But this 1-percent across-the-board mindless cut that was added later on--I know not with the support of either one of us on the Senate side--is a poison pill. Then they tried to say this is 1 percent and you can take it from waste, fraud, and abuse, or anything like that. But when you looked at the fine print, it was 1 percent from every program, project, and activity; every line item had to be cut by 1 percent.”