Political Quotes

“This was a letter I received in 2011 when we started raising the issue of duplication and making tough choices so that we could continue to provide benefits, we could continue to create and support a safety net for those who were truly dependent on it, but we do not waste money we do not have, spending it on things we do not absolutely need. I would put forward that when we have a multitude of programs and they overlap, we as Members of Congress do not have an excuse for not fixing that, because the things that are critical in people's lives eventually are going to suffer. Every dollar we spend on low-priority duplication, every dollar we spend that does not have a metric to say it is doing what it is should be doing is eventually going to be a dollar that is not there to support a food stamp recipient or a Medicaid recipient or housing for the indigent or care for the homeless or implementing Justice grant programs for policing and tribal courts. So it is not a matter of just solving the duplication problem, it is a matter of the arithmetic that is going to hit our country and that by delaying the time at which we decide we are going to address this multitude, which is now 1,400 programs through the first 2 years of reports from GAO and $367 billion of expenditures--and that does not count the other $800 billion that goes out of the Federal Government every year for grants that also address some of these same issues. So the time is now.…”