Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I want to reply to my very good friend from Maryland, whom I have not only great esteem for, but, frankly, great personal affection for, and I want to respond to his question. This is not a cover vote. First of all, the main item here is actually veterans and military construction that is over $83 billion; that, through normal order, is moving forward. Now, to also move the Zika bill with it makes a lot of sense. Frankly, one of the things in this bill--and I disagree with my friend's characterization--we want to make sure that misguided environmental regulations don't stop us from deploying pesticides that we may need. That is in this bill. That is pretty important to move forward. The funding is also important. Now, my friends seem to forget, again, the long record here of who has been willing to support the NIH and who has been willing to support the CDC. We gave the NIH twice what the President asked for in additional new money last year. That is being spent right now, by the way. We also gave the Centers for Disease Control more money than the President asked for. This year, when the President tried to take $1 billion of discretionary money away from the NIH, both Republicans and Democrats on the Appropriations Committee said: No, Mr. President, we are not going to let you raid NIH and take money away and weaken the healthcare apparatus of the United States.…”