Political Quotes

“I just need to clarify that the process that was used for the earmarks on this bill did not follow all of the rules that we had agreed upon in the committee and perhaps inconsistent with the Rules of the House. But I do know that they were inconsistent with the agreement that we have in the Intelligence Committee, which is that on a bipartisan basis the chairman and the ranking member would review earmarks, their content, the Member, and would sign off on the appropriateness of each of those earmarks. With the filing of the bill to the Rules Committee, there was at least one earmark that was never brought to my attention and for which I never received a copy of the request from the Member identifying the earmark or a statement from the Member indicating that there was no financial interest along with the earmark. Now, that does not say the earmark is bad. It does not say it was wrong. It is just a process foul in terms of what we had agreed to.”