Political Quotes

“I thank the vice chairman for his remarks. I think he makes excellent points. We had a tough top line to meet. The CBO score--these budgets speak words that people are trying to follow. The Congressional Budget Office actually says how much things will cost, and when they took a look at what our FHA program and certain mortgage rates would cost, they found out we overestimated revenue by $4 billion. That is a lot of money even by Washington standards. So we had to adjust accordingly, and it has not been easy. I will tell my colleagues that we are now coming down to talk about where we really are now--what are the agencies we want to fund, why we want to fund them at the amount we do, and what problems they actually solve for the American people. The American people have a right to ask at the end of the day not ``did you spend money'' but ``what did you spend it on and what did we get for it? Are we a stronger country? Do we have a better economy? Do our children have a brighter future? Are we meeting compelling human needs?'' I think in these three bills the answer is yes. When we look at Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations, we want to tell our colleagues what we have done. It really funds several different agencies, and it comes to a total of $51.2 billion. It is consistent with the CJS allocation, and it is $398 million less--I want to say this clearly.…”