Political Quotes

“Mr. President, the majority leader referred to what we are doing this evening as ``awash with good news.'' Well, it is also awash with earmarks. They have not been around for over 10 years, and we are bringing them back. I am going to call up an amendment here in a bit that is going to talk about what to do about them, but I think you need to have a backdrop of what we are doing here this evening. I am on the Budget Committee, and we didn't report out a budget resolution, and I don't think we have done a budget consistently for over 10 years. This is the biggest business in the world that now is spending close to $5 trillion--only $1.5 trillion of it that is even subject to review because the one ingenious thing that we have done here is put most of our spending on autopilot. That is what drives the government currently, and that means that the Budget Committee is a useless appendage because we don't use it anymore. I got here a little over 3 years ago. We were $18 trillion in debt. Now we are over $30 trillion in debt, and everyone seems to shrug their shoulders. That is not a good business plan, for Americans to be borrowing money, even if it has good stuff in it, when it is for consumption. It will only end up in a hard reconciliation down the road. Now, let's talk about earmarks. It is kind of a gateway drug to more spending. There are 367 pages of earmarks. I just took a quick poll how much it weighs in paper--4 to 5 pounds.…”