Gilbert Gutknecht: “at several points in this debate we heard about priorities, and I just want to make it clear we are not changing the…”

“at several points in this debate we heard about priorities, and I just want to make it clear we are not changing the priorities of this subcommittee, and we are not saying they did the wrong things, but what we are saying is, I think it is an old German expression, it maybe an old Iowa expression: ``Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me,'' and if we look at the history of what has happened around this place and in this city over the last 10 or 15 years, we have one budget deal after another budget deal. We had Gramm-Rudman, we had this deal, there were promises made to the American people, and what they all amounted to was this: Manana, tomorrow, next year; we are going to fix it next year. But if we are going to balance the budget, it is not what we do next year that counts. It is what we do now, it is what we do every day, it is what we do on every appropriation bill. Now, I think those guys have done great work, and I admire the Committee on Appropriations and the Committee on the Budget for all they have done.…”