Political Quotes

“let me first of all pay tribute to the Blue Dogs, because I think what the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) said early on is right. I think the Blue Dogs have made an enormous contribution in this House towards the effort of being able to balance a budget and pay down debt. I am, however, a little bit mystified with this budget because I have always felt that the Blue Dogs did not like the tax cuts because they wanted to pay down more debt. And in this budget they do not have the tax cuts, and they do not even pay down as much debt as we do. They went into the spending mode. We actually pay down $25 billion more than the Blue Dogs do. But I want to pose a challenge to the Blue Dogs, because I am hopeful that we are going to beat their budget, and I am hopeful ours will pass. I think my colleagues ought to like our budget. It does cut a lot of taxes, but it pays down a trillion dollars in debt; and it does restrain spending, and it does protect Social Security. So I would ask my colleagues to think about it when we get to final passage. But I also want my colleagues to know that today we unveiled, I think it was 170,000 general accounting reports today on waste, fraud and abuse in the Federal Government. And the Committee on the Budget is going to start an effort to try to root out that waste in order to make this government more efficient. And we need the Blue Dogs.”