Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I certainly thank the gentleman for yielding and those extremely kind and gracious words, and I certainly rise in support of this very important bill. I want to echo the praise that has been offered on this floor by members of both parties for our chairman, who is bringing his last full appropriations bill to the floor as the full committee chairman, and just tell him what a pleasure it has been to work under his leadership and to learn, frankly, at his knee, and usually with a pretty good cigar at the same time. So I have enjoyed that, and I think he has done a great job. I also want to congratulate my friend, the ranking member. This is a chairman and a ranking member that, frankly, have done their jobs the last 2 years. All 12 bills were reported out of the Appropriations Committee most years, and all 12 should have been on this floor and dealt with, and I regret that they were not. There are a lot of good things in this continuing resolution--as has been mentioned earlier, the additional funds for biomedical research, the adjustments and extra funding for defense at a critical time for our country, and certainly the disaster relief funds which certain parts of our country share--but I know this is not the bill that Chairman Rogers wanted to bring to this floor. Frankly, we have got to get out of this. I couldn't agree more with my friend from Indiana who said it pretty well: this is not this committee's fault. It is a failure in this Congress.…”