Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Again, the advocates for the legislation returned to this one single case, which we all agree about. The GAO ruled that the EPA ran afoul of the prohibition on propaganda and on campaigning. So the law worked there. The GAO blew the whistle on that. They shouldn't be coming out on one side of an issue and running a propaganda campaign. The government should not be engaged in propaganda. We all agree to that. This legislation does something completely different. This legislation, rather than just saying a good day's work to the GAO for blowing the whistle, it says: Now we are going to tell all the Federal agencies and departments that have been out soliciting public input on all sides of issues, saying there is a regulation that has come up about clean air, about clean water, about food, about drugs, about the disposal of nuclear waste, about radioactive materials, and it tells them you can't do that anymore. You can't go out and solicit public input. It places a complete chill on the ability of the government to go out and invite public participation in our government. Why? They keep returning to one case where the GAO blew the whistle where everybody agrees they were out of bounds. A flag was thrown on the play, but now they want to use that in order to essentially impose a gag rule on Federal agencies across the land who are doing our work.…”