Political Quotes

“Mr. President, about 3 months ago, one of the results of the last time we raised the debt limit was a report by the Government Accountability Office. Ninety-seven Senators in this body voted to put that in the last debt limit extension. What was that? That was a requirement for the Government Accountability Office over the next 3 years to list every program for us in every area so that we knew what we were doing. The purpose for that amendment was--and that happened to have been my amendment. I went to the CRS and the Government Accountability Office and I said I want to know every program in defense, education, et cetera. They told me: It is impossible; we cannot do it. So collectively, as colleagues, we said that you will do this. It has been a big job. They have done a fantastic job on it thus far. I cannot wait until we get the second and third part. One of the results in the first report the GAO gave to us showed close to $200 billion worth of duplication. Those are my numbers, not theirs, in terms of looking at it. Let's say I am twice wrong, and say it is $100 billion. The fact is, what we found in just the first third of looking at the Federal Government is that we have multiple duplicative programs that do exactly the same thing; they are just in different agencies or across agencies. In a moment, I will talk about what those are. The response to that report was the greatest response GAO has ever had to any report they have ever listed.…”