Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I rise to oppose the gentleman's amendment. I kind of think back to the movie Titanic. There is one scene where the captain--evidently the captain--comes out on the deck just about as the Titanic is going to hit the iceberg. I can remember the blank look on his face and thinking what had he been doing before all this happened. We saw the tragedy that occurred. Sometimes if you don't have captains in the pilot house you can really run aground, you can really have trouble. Already, the majority this evening has cut--I think we are down to $146 million in administration in the Department of Energy, a vast department. That kind of level of cut is going to cause big mistakes. There will be accounting mistakes, there will be contracts that won't be overseen. In a way, you are seeding a very bad future for the management of the funds that we do vote for here tonight. I think the gentleman, perhaps, isn't really familiar with everything the Department does. You can come down here and be kind of cavalier and propose amendments, but in the end, we can't absorb these cuts at the Department because you're going to have problems that are caused by no captains being at the helm. I think that's really a big mistake, because this Department has to manage over $30 billion--billion dollars--of tax dollars on the energy and water front.…”