Political Quotes

“I think 2 weeks ago the American public understood one of the consequences of the sequester cuts, these across- the-board, mindless cuts, when they saw what was going to happen with furloughs with the air traffic controllers and the air traffic service in this country. I never supported sequestration. These are mindless across-the-board cuts. I certainly did not want to see what would have happened to the FAA happen. That was mindless across-the-board cuts. We provided system flexibility to be able to avoid that circumstance. But what we need to do is replace sequestration for all agencies that are affected because similar occurrences are happening in other agencies. The reason is these are across-the-board mindless cuts. They are deep cuts. To the agencies that are affected, it is equivalent to about a 10-percent cut. This is on top of 3 years of reduced appropriations for these agencies. So it is affecting the core mission of the agencies. They have no flexibility, and therefore they have to cut back on their mission. That is what happened at the FAA. Of course, we provided some flexibility so they can do some other things. But we have not done that as far as providing relief from these across-the-board cuts in other agencies. So we are going to see many Federal agencies having to fundamentally change what they do. Let me give a couple of examples. I was recently at the National Institutes of Health and saw firsthand the great work they are doing.…”