Political Quotes

“I thank my friend, Mr. Van Hollen, for yielding, and I thank him for the extraordinary job that he has done as ranking member of the Budget Committee. My friend from South Carolina has left the floor. I regret that. He was the Governor of a State. This budget would not have been tenable during his administration or, frankly, the administration of my own Governor, who happens to be a Republican. We have had Democrats in the past. The gentleman ended with a number of cautions about the path of fiscal irresponsibility and what it would lead to. I agree with him on that, but I will tell him it is indeed unfortunate that, once again, we have a budget that does not put us on a path of fiscal sustainability. We have a budget that is not real. We have a budget that pretends. That is what USA Today said today. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the budget resolutions offered by the chairman of the Budget Committee, Mr. Price, for whom I have great respect. I say budget resolutions, plural, because there are two of them. One was reported by the committee that channels $36 billion into the overseas contingency operations account, disguising it as emergency war funding as a way of getting around the defense sequester caps while offering token language providing about $20 billion to be offset at a later date. The other budget was unveiled by Republicans yesterday.…”