Political Quotes

“I just wanted to spend a few minutes talking about Reed amendment No. 3255 and to point out to my colleagues I know this amendment will pass, but I believe we ought to be on record as voting to add $1.7 billion in additional funds that our kids are going to pay for. This is paid for, but it is smoke and mirrors. We have used a trick in how we do this. Ultimately, what is going to happen is here is another bill that will require funding from the health account at the Pentagon, which is in operations and maintenance, which means we will not have $1.7 billion for naval exercises, for flight training, for tank training, for range training. In other words, out of this account is where it comes to all the preparedness. I must give President Obama credit. He has recommended what the committee recommended doing for the last 2\1/2\ years. Now we have an amendment that takes where the committee went to, actually, a small copay, increasing copay on pharmacy benefits for retirees, and reverses that and forces our veterans to have to use mail order. I am OK with mail order. I know we save a lot of money with that, but the CBO says as soon as we stop this one year, the mandate is going to go back the other way and the cost is going to be this amount of money. They have met the literal requirements of pay-go, but they haven't met the functional requirements. Here we have another amendment that we will take out of the operations and maintenance account, and that is important.…”