Political Quotes

“Again, I wholeheartedly support this legislation, and I think it's a very, very important piece of legislation. I want to congratulate Mr. Hanna and all the cosponsors for it. At the same time, though, there is an old saying: Give me my flowers while I live. The fact is that there are many Federal employees, and we get the calls every day, when we sit in committees and we hear negative things said about Federal employees, and I think we forget that we take so many of them for granted. And so often when you take people for granted, you just assume that things are going to work and that agencies are going to work. In my district, I have the Social Security Administration, and I get complaints from employees almost every day. As they see a downsizing, they see their workload increasing tremendously, but yet they are still being subject to pay freezes and things of this nature. So I think, again, this legislation is extremely important; but, again, I emphasize that I think it's so important that we not place these Federal employees in positions where they are constantly told that they're not doing enough work or they are not needed in many instances and need to be downsized, need to have their pay reduced and need to have the increases to their contribution to the retirement system. With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. {time} 1240”