Political Quotes

“I would like to thank distinguished Ranking Member Bishop. I would like to thank Chairman Culberson. I would like to thank Chairman Rogers. I would like to thank all of the outstanding staffs for putting together a really good bipartisan bill. It's an important bill, and I know how hard you worked together to produce a really good product, and we thank you. This bill does represent a reasonable approach and continues a long commitment to our veterans and our military facilities. It continues the bipartisan tradition of providing funding levels that Members on both sides of the aisle could agree are appropriate while avoiding contentious legislative riders that complicate passage. However, the Republican majority's refusal to go to conference to forge a bipartisan agreement on the budget resolution is really unacceptable. This imperils this year's appropriations process, making it nearly impossible to move all 12 bills. Instead, it is likely that we will consider in the full House only a few bills with reasonable allocations, including MilCon-VA, while others are left in limbo indefinitely until we pass a continuing resolution. I am optimistic that this bill has a good chance of enactment as long as we don't attach any controversial riders, but other important priorities will assuredly suffer.…”