Political Quotes

“I have no idea, but two points on that, if I could, to my colleague. One is we do know it would produce 50,000 here at home if it was spent here. Second, there was an article the other day in The New York Times about how we are paying thousands of Iraqi workers who do not show up for work but just to kind flood the economy with money, thousands of no-show jobs. I am from Chicago. We think we have written the book on no-show jobs. We know something about no-show jobs. And thousands of people are getting paid a salary who do not show up. Let me bring up a couple other things, if I could, because I think this is relevant to everybody's district. We are going to spend, according to the Wall Street Journal today, $4.6 billion of the $21 billion in Iraq, 4.6 is going to go for drinking water, wetlands restoration, environmental policy for Iraq, and also irrigation. I have a bill to invest $4 billion in the Great Lakes, Lake Michigan, Lake Erie, Superior, Lake Huron. Twenty-seven million Americans get their daily drinking water from the Great Lakes. Twenty percent of the world's entire freshwater exists here in the United States. It is the largest body of freshwater in North America. Not a single Federal dollar; yet we are going to spend $4.6 billion in Iraq for drinking water when we have got 27 million Americans here who get their daily drinking water from the Great Lakes and not a single dollar dedicated?”