Political Quotes

“I yield myself 2 additional minutes. Now, you will say to me, Oh, it's future Federal employees, so it doesn't really matter. That's $15 billion of the $134 billion that has been proposed. They've already paid $60 billion, $60 billion. And by the way, your side of the aisle is not going to give them that 0.5 percent that the President asked for, so that will be $30 billion. So in 3 years--Mr. and Mrs. America ought to know, Madam Speaker--Federal employees will have paid $90 billion in contributions to help bring this deficit down. And by the way, Federal employees, as a percentage of our population, are down by a third over the last 20 years. It's not that the bureaucracy has grown. Yes, our population has grown. We are trying to serve them. They are down by a third in numbers. Now, I know something about Federal employee pay. I represent 60,000 Federal employees. And you could say, Well, Hoyer is up there defending his people. You would be right. You would be very right. But most of the Federal employees don't live in the Washington metropolitan area. They live in your districts, all over this country, serving your farmers, serving your drugstores, serving everything that you do. Do I think it's the private sector that makes this country great? Absolutely. Do I believe they need an energized, high-morale, highly educated Federal workforce as their partner? I do.…”