Political Quotes

“Reclaiming my time if I can, the gentleman voted for the Budget Control Act. How much in cuts were in the Budget Control Act? $1.2 trillion, as I recall, or $1 trillion, excuse me, $1 trillion, which is why we had the Supercommittee to get the additional 1.2 that the Speaker said he wanted. So your side assumed that we'd already done a trillion of the $2.2 trillion that the Speaker said was necessary. So the Speaker and your side, I presume, already adopted the premise that we'd cut $1 trillion in the Budget Control Act. Now, do we need more? I think the answer to that is yes. Mr. Van Hollen, in his proposal, made some cuts. I'm not saying you should have supported it. I'm saying you should have allowed the American people to have that alternative on the floor to consider. You say it wasn't germane. You and I both know--you know the Rules Committee process as well as I do--we could have waived that because the issue in front of us immediately--we're talking about the long term--immediately, is in 22 days, or 23 days, we're going to have a sequester. Almost everybody agrees that the sequester will have an adverse impact on the economy, and on our national security, and on discretionary programs because it would be irrationally done, across the board, without recognition of priority status. So that I tell my friend, I regret that we're not dealing with the sequester.…”