Political Quotes

“I will be brief. Mr. Chairman, I have the utmost respect for our distinguished chairman. He speaks with great wisdom on many, many occasions, and I'm sure he did on this occasion as well. However, I would just reiterate a couple of things. Number one, we did adopt a ban on earmarks, which I think was the right thing to do. It was really a proclamation to the American people that we are serious about stopping wasteful spending. However, in essence, when we have these types of things, they are really giant earmarks to certain areas of the country. {time} 1650 They do go through scrutiny, so it is unlike an earmark in some areas. But nonetheless, these are benefiting certain parts of the country at the expense of other parts of the country, similarly to what an earmark does. I just think they are really bad policy, and as I indicated, duplicative in many instances. So we have different programs doing exactly the same thing, and we're really wasting dollars. Prudence says that we must reduce spending and must pay down our debt. We have to do it. If we're going to do it, this is the type of thing we really have to cut, and this would go towards deficit reduction. We have got a $13 trillion deficit. We need to start working on it. I just think this is one way to attempt to do that. Additionally, Mr. Chairman, I would note that it's the responsibility for providing aid in supporting local and regional development type things.…”