Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, we now have the question as to whether this is a Congress seriously dedicated to reducing the budget deficit, understanding that that causes some difficult choices everywhere, or whether we will, as this appropriations bill does, exempt the defense and intelligence budgets together from any significant budget discipline. Remember, we talk about the entitlements leaving us only a certain amount of discretionary spending. We are talking about approximately half the discretionary spending. If you go forward and provide this significant increase for the defense and intelligence budgets, an intelligence budget which found, and let us be very clear, this cut would be $1.8 billion from the appropriations proposal, which would make it a freeze. It is acknowledged by the intelligence agencies which are part of this budget that they misplaced more than twice this amount. More than twice the amount of $1.8 billion was kind of lost because they have got so much money they cannot keep track of it.”