Political Quotes

“OK. Great. I will withdraw my unanimous consent request. Amendment No. 521 Mr. President, this is a very straightforward amendment. The people who vote against this rule change, what they are going to be telling you is they do not want you to know what is going on in the Senate, and they do not want us to know what is going on in the Senate. Because all this rule does is make it a force of habit of the Senate that before we look at legislation, we ought to determine whether it duplicates what is already out there in the government, and we ought to determine if it is overlapping to other programs. Had this amendment been in effect, a third of what we passed in the past would not have passed because we would then have seen--which we are ignorant of today--all the other programs that were available and out there that accomplished the same purpose for which we passed another new program. In one of my committees last year colleagues offered amendments--well intentioned, with good motives--to accomplish a good purpose. But they lacked knowledge. What they did not know was--and both amendments were ultimately withdrawn when it was explained to them--that, in fact, we already had programs that did exactly the same thing. So what we have is, we have over $200 billion worth of duplication now within the Federal Government.…”