Political Quotes

“my friend from Arizona, for whom I have the greatest admiration and respect--he and I came to Washington together in 1982 as new Members of Congress. Of course, at that time I was aware of his gallant deeds for our country as a member of the U.S. Navy. However, the Senator has tried to indicate that there was something wrong with how the energy and water appropriations bill was handled, especially the raising of the 302(b) allocations. That is done all the time. We worked very hard with the chairman of the Budget Committee, the ranking member of the Budget Committee, the chairman of the subcommittee, this Senator, the chairman of the full committee, and the ranking member of the full Appropriations Committee to come up with some way to take care of the weather-related problems that had occurred, dealing with the Corps of Engineers. What we did was, we had an amendment ready to offer, to have an emergency appropriation, in effect, for the $125 million that was caused by weather-related activities. I have no doubt that would have been agreed to. However, after meeting with the Senators about whom I spoke, they were able to find money in other appropriations bills that was not used. Rather than have the emergency designation, we simply raised the 302(b) allocation. The $65 million was just that. So anyone who would in any way infer that there was anything wrong with that simply is wrong.”