Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. I want to respond quickly to some of my friend's points, Mr. Speaker, and I want to go back to the essential reality that we are facing. Number 1, last year, when the President asked for $1 billion more for NIH, we said: That is not enough. We are going to give you two. Last year the President submitted a request for CDC. We looked at it and said: You know, it is not enough. You evidently don't care enough about public health, Mr. President. We are going to spend more money. This year he brought us a request to try and take $1 billion of discretionary funding away from NIH. My friends on the other side were as appalled as we were. We said: No, Mr. President, you are not going to take $1 billion out of NIH in a dangerous time of disease. We are not only going to keep that money there, we are going to put more money, additional money than you asked for. We said the same thing about the CDC, and so we will do it. In terms of what has been done, the minute the Zika virus appeared and the administration asked for emergency money, Hal Rogers, the chairman of the committee, responded and said: Spend whatever it takes. And, indeed, the administration has done that. My friends seem to suggest that there is something that hasn't been done, yet they never tell us what that one thing is. The reality is the administration has had the money to do everything it has wanted to do. This bill provides more money on top of that.…”