Political Quotes

“I was thinking, as my colleague was speaking in terms of the choices we have to make and whether someone with great means in this country would be willing to defer a small portion of a tax cut in order to keep us safe, that it does not matter how much your income, you are still vulnerable to terrorist attack in this country. And I cannot imagine anybody who would not say: Do what you need to do to keep my family safe. Do what you need to do to keep my children safe on the way to school or at school or after school or at their college or my husband and wife at work or me driving down the street. These are serious choices. I am constantly amazed at the times we use bureaucracy and budget arguments versus the times we ignore them. I very much understand the constraints of the appropriations process and the difficulty the subcommittee chairman has in operating within the amounts that have been allocated. I understand that and appreciate the hard work that takes. But I remember also, as a member of the Budget Committee, raising questions about why we could be appropriating $87 billion and before that $150 billion--over $200 billion--to Iraq that has never been in the budget at all, has never been anywhere in the budget. Instead of offsetting that in some way, we added it to the deficit, the largest deficit in the history of the country.”