Political Quotes

“Again, there is no question that everyone knows that we are in a suicide epidemic. We have to do whatever we can, whatever is within our powers--work with our States, work within our local jurisdictions, work with our community agencies--to deal with this horrible epidemic that we are having. My problem with and my opposition to the amendment is not the fact that we need to pay attention to suicide prevention. It is from where we get the funds. We take the funds from that, I guess, bottomless piggybank some people think is the Secretary's office. In the short time we have had since the last vote series, we will have taken $20 million from the Secretary's office if all those amendments pass on final vote. Madam Chair, we increased the Secretary's office by 1 percent in the underlying budget, so we increased it less than inflation. Again, the job of HHS is growing, not shrinking. We increased it only 1 percent. With this amendment, just since the time of the last vote series, we will have decreased the budget by 5 percent in that office. That is not responsible. That implies that the committee didn't do good work in setting how much the Secretary's office needs to administer a huge government agency, a very important government agency, one that, in fact, runs suicide prevention programs and drug addiction programs. Madam Chair, we have to set priorities. It is nice to say we have suicide prevention, but let's find the program--we didn't take it from a program.…”