Political Quotes

“back in 1985, I was a second-term Member of the House of Representatives and a member, I was proud to say, of the House Appropriations Committee. The Committee chairman was a man by the name of Jamie Whitten. He was from the State of Mississippi. He was a Mississippi Democrat. Yes, there used to be Mississippi Democrats. Jamie Whitten had been a witness to a great deal of American history. He was on the floor of the House as a newly minted Congressman from Mississippi on December 8, 1941, when Franklin Roosevelt delivered his ``Day of Infamy'' speech. There I was speaking to this same man 44 years later, and I was a junior member of his Appropriations Committee. I knew that Appropriations, under the House rules, had several members who were also represented on the Budget Committee. So one day I went to Chairman Whitten from Mississippi and suggested to him that I wanted to be on the Budget Committee in the slot reserved for Appropriations members. Chairman Whitten looked down at me and he asked: Why do you want to be on the Budget Committee? I said: I think it is good because the Budget Committee makes the spending decisions and blueprints that Appropriations and other committees follow. He kind of sat back in his chair and Chairman Whitten said to me: Well, if you want to be on that committee, you can be on that committee, but I want you to remember one thing, the Budget Committee deals in hallucinations and the Appropriations Committee deals in facts.…”