Political Quotes

“Mr. President, the bill we have before us today is a bill to fund emergency relief through FEMA for a lot of the emergency disasters our country has experienced over the past 6 months. I don't think there is a large disagreement that we ought to take care of the areas that are the Federal responsibility in the respective States for the extreme weather as well as fire-related tragedies that have been experienced by a multitude of States. However, the question is, given where we stand as a country, do we just borrow the money to do that and add it to the debt or is the government running so efficiently that we can't cut something else and make a choice about how we pay for it? The bill as brought forward has no pay-for at all. In other words, the assumption is that if we pass this bill, we will go and borrow approximately $7 billion more in the international markets. What I would put forward is that we know we have plenty of areas we can cut now that are not effective, not efficient, that are wasteful, that are duplicative, and we would not have to borrow that additional money. The easiest thing in the world is to spend somebody else's money. And what we are doing with this bill by not paying for it is actually asking our grandchildren to pay for an obligation we have today. The amendment I have asked to be called up is nearly identical to an amendment this body passed by a vote of 64 to 36 in April of this year.…”