Political Quotes

“in the last 14 months, as chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, I have been fighting these budget battles, and I have great sympathy for what the gentleman is trying to accomplish with his amendment. He wants to cut down on the amount of discretionary spending from the U.S. Congress. He is right, and we agree, and we have been working with him and jointly with the other body to do exactly that, and we have had enormous success. The fact is nondefense discretionary spending over the years under Democrat control has just gone up, up, up, up, and up. In fiscal year 1994, it was up to $237 billion, in fiscal year 1995, they had it up to $246 billion, and had they retained control, it would have kept going on up. But we have scaled it back. We had the rescission bill that cut back fiscal year 1995 to $230 billion. In 1996, right now, we are down to $223 billion. In 1997, according to the budget agreement that passed the House and Senate, we will be down to $219 billion. We are making inroads in spending.”