Political Quotes

“I am going to reiterate what I said before. The concern that the Senator from Pennsylvania has is a concern that there is not a lot of trust in this body, and I agree--fair reason to be. As far as having rules, I believe in having rules, but I don't believe we should have rules that tie the hands of our standing committees, that say: You can't do this. Appropriations, I don't care what you see, what you see, what issue comes down the road for veterans--in this case, Martin Heinrich, the chair, and John Boozman, the ranking member--you guys can't address it. That is what the Senator from Pennsylvania wants to do. That is not how this process should work. We should be dealing with issues as they arise. That is a fact. And by the way, I have said for some time, programs that have outlived their lifespan, we should be cutting those programs, but we don't do that very well. But we have been at war for 20 years. With that war--by the way, that was all put on a credit card--there was a fair amount that was funded by an OCO account. And now we are going to say: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no; we are not going to spend the money to take care of our veterans. I am going to use this as an excuse. I am going to use as an excuse the fact that the Appropriations Committee might spend too much money. Well, that is on us.…”