Political Quotes

“I must oppose this rule. Under this rule, any Member can strip funding from this bill by raising a point of order. I am particularly concerned about the appropriations to repair the year 2000 problem. Numerous computer programs will either crash or generate errors when computing dates for the year 2000. People should know that date-sensitive computer programs are everywhere. In desktop and mainframe computers, in machines used in manufacturing, in simple devices such as the computer chips in coffeemakers which have timers. Consumers everywhere are going to be watching what we do here. Since computers are so widespread, since software is time-sensitive, since computer chips are in all kinds of devices, failures cause serious repercussions. In government, many areas are vulnerable to failure. Many government agencies have made progress on the Y2K problem, and that is thanks to the gentleman from California (Mr. Horn) and also thanks to President Clinton and Vice President Gore. It has been bipartisan, but we have a lot of progress that needs to be made. Removing the Y2K appropriations from this bill cripples the agencies' ability to cope with this problem. Now, the President asked for $234 million for year 2000 conversion. We will need another $138 million next year.”