Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman for including me on his committee. H.R. 5872 is a bipartisan bill. As has been mentioned several times, it did pass out of the Budget Committee unanimously, and that's a very good thing. I think, honestly, we have a very strong bipartisan agreement that sequester is a very bad policy, something that really shouldn't be allowed to happen. {time} 1310 Obviously, I also sit on the Defense Appropriation Subcommittee. So I focused on that area. If we don't arrive at agreement before the end of the year, we'll have $110 billion worth of cuts across the entire budget, but about a 10 percent cut on top of a half a billion dollars we've already taken out of defense that will begin that will have tremendous consequences in my State, potentially 16,000 jobs, $620 million or $630 million to the State economy. We all hope this doesn't occur, but we all know that the administration does have a responsibility to plan for it and to inform us of those plans. So far it has failed to do that. Mr. Speaker, it's worth noting for the record that we have dealt with sequestration in this House. We passed a measure to avoid it. It's the Senate that has failed to act. We may not have acted in a manner in which our friends on the other side would like, but the responsibility now is with the United States Senate to at least pass something and put us in a position to go to conference.…”