Political Quotes

“First, I give praise to the chair and the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee for the cooperative nature of the committee this year in terms of inserting good government amendments into appropriations bills. It was a real pleasure to be able to work with them and to put some of the oversight results that we have done over the past few years into appropriations bills. The bill we have on the floor, even though the chair is supporting the bill, is not her bill. It is a bill that came to her from House Republicans. So any criticism I might have of the bill is certainly not directed toward the chair of the Appropriations Committee. But it is important to be reminded of what the Congress told the American people less than 2 years ago, that we were going to go on a diet, and then 1 year ago when we had the Ryan-Murray agreement. I will outline where we are with what we are getting ready to vote on, because we are about $47 billion above what we agreed to in the Ryan-Murray budget, and that doesn't include emergency funding. Appropriators didn't write this bill. This bill came out of the House. We understand the timing of it, we understand the process. But this bill doesn't keep our word to the American public that we said we were going to keep. That is No. 1. No. 2 is the chair of the Appropriations Committee attempted to put bills on the floor, and she was open to an amendment process.…”