Political Quotes

“Before the Senator from Oklahoma leaves the floor and we proceed to a voice vote, et cetera, I wish to thank him for his steadfast advocacy in getting more value out of the taxpayers' dollar for the taxpayers' contribution to the Federal Treasury. He has been a well-known advocate for the consolidation and streamlining of existing programs, and I salute him for that. Going back to 1996, we actually started this with streamlining childcare bills. In 1996, because I was here during the welfare reform debate and passage, we had four different childcare bills, with four different eligibility requirements, with four different levels of bureaucracy. So the money was going into the bureaucracy's determining eligibility rather than into childcare. In the 1996 welfare reform bill, we consolidated so that we have the child care and development block grant. That is how we got to where we are. The Senator from Oklahoma talks about how he has data that cuts across eight different Federal agencies. I pledge to him, as the chair of the Appropriations Committee, to actually sit down and look at this data, to put our heads together. And really, with money as tight as it is, the stringent budgets we are under, particularly when it comes to funding the kinds of compelling human needs that are in health and human services and education, we want to get more value for the dollar. We don't want to get more bureaucracy for the dollar.…”