Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes. The gentleman mentioned in his statement that we had not used offsets to fund disaster relief; I beg to differ. In 2001, emergency supplemental, offset; 2002, emergency supplemental, offset; 2004, disaster relief for wildfire and others, offset. And in 2005, offset for relief for the tsunami. In 2006, relief for Katrina, offset. In 2008, disaster relief and recovery, $20 billion in offsets. I could go on. There are many times where we have used the offsets to pay for supplementals. In fact, over the last 10 years, 15 of the 30 emergency spending bills and supplementals were offset, for a total of $60 billion over the last 10 years. Now, on this offset that has been mentioned, over $4 billion sits idle in that account and has so for 3 years now as the administration has been slow to obligate that money. The $1.5 billion rescission in subsidies we propose will not have a significant impact on the program. This is the same rescission, Madam Speaker, that we used in the 2012 Homeland Security appropriations bill that passed this House with bipartisan support in June. Exactly the same. And yet the Senate didn't act and that billion dollars was not available for disaster relief. States with applications in the queue in this program, like Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio, Michigan, Florida, Missouri, California and many others, will still receive their due diligence just like before and could receive awards as well. I reserve the balance of my time.”