Political Quotes

“Mr. Chair, I want to begin by thanking my friend. We are classmates, we are friends, and we have served on the Budget Committee together. So I know the commitment to fiscal responsibility is serious and continuing and real. I particularly want to thank her for her kind words about the work of the committee in recent years because we genuinely have tried to continuously lower the amounts of money. My friend makes a very good point about the dangers we face in terms of a skyrocketing national debt, but as my friend suggests, we have already cut this more than 1 percent. I am not suggesting there aren't areas that can be cut additionally. There probably are. But as an appropriator, we prefer to look at things individually, one at a time, because there are always areas that could be plussed-up as well. I don't think anybody here really wants to cut money, even 1 percent, from cancer funding or Alzheimer's research or Pell grants or programs that we think actually help folks have an educational choice, like charter schools, and yet that is always the impact of an across-the- board cut. You cut things that need to be cut, for sure, but you also cut some things that probably shouldn't be. So we would prefer to continue the approach that my friend has singled out and said that seems to work well, and we will do that, and I know she will be helpful in that.…”