Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The legislative branch bill is what we do to ourselves. We don't need the President's budget. This is what the House, in its wisdom, does for spending with respect to the House accounts and also some accounts we share with the Senate--Capitol Police, Congressional Budget Office, other agencies like that. As we look at what we are doing here in the context of this appropriations season, the amount of money that is spent on this represents about a 4.7 percent cut from the previous budget year for purposes of the legislative branch. It gets a little bit less when you add the Senate in, but the House has done its job in terms of leading by example. Now, you may say, how have you done your job? Let me tell you this: What we have done with respect to Members' office budgets, committee budgets, and some of the support functions--for instance, in the Library of Congress, the Congressional Budget Office, and the General Accountability Office--we have left those accounts at or near what their previous levels were. Some of them enjoy modest increases, but if you care about constituent services, if you care about doing a good job of being able to hold the Senate's feet to the fire, the White House's feet to the fire, or the people on the other side of the aisle's feet to the fire, you need resources to do that.…”