John Hoeven actually said...

"There are two kinds of schools of thought. One school of thought is everybody should take a proportional reduction."

"Your budget increase is 2.8 percent. We may not be able to increase your budget by 2.8 percent."

"I guess the question I ask, is there more that you could do to raise dollars for the program that would in essence help us with this budget?"

"I think we should take a look because it might be something that would be worthwhile and something we should pursue."