Political Quotes

“We know from polling that most Americans have no idea what ``sequester'' means at all. In fact, one of our colleagues said that she was talking to a constituent who said, Yes, I am all for sequester. Let's sequester all the Members of Congress in a room and make sure that they come up with a plan. That's not exactly the idea. ``Sequester,'' which most Americans don't know the definition of, actually means that for domestic discretionary spending--the things that help ordinary people and communities and law enforcement--there will be about a 9 percent across-the-board cut; just a meat-ax approach. You can't even decide between cutting conferences or leave in the research into cancer at the National Institutes of Health. No, everything is going to be across the board, a real meat-ax approach. There will also be about a 13 percent across-the-board cut in military spending. That's what we're talking about. And if people aren't following exactly what the definition is, they're going to soon find out what it means in their ordinary life. In education, we're going to see cuts that are going to require the firing of teachers. About 70,000 little children are not going to be able to have their Head Start programs. Small businesses are going to find that almost $900 million will be unavailable to them in loans for their small businesses. We're going to lose about 2,100 food safety inspectors. How will it feel if we don't know for sure if we're going to have safe food available?…”