Political Quotes

“Reclaiming my time in opposition, in all good, there is some bad. It is true that this amendment would offer some additional dollars for weather forecasting. But $16 million of it--the bulk of the $21 million--would go into technology transfer. Now, I am not opposed to technology transfer, but to take it out of the administrative work at NOAA, I have visited NOAA, and I understand how the operations there work. I have spent a lot of time learning about its operations. And I can tell you that NOAA cannot perform the duties that our Nation needs without the administrative capabilities. It would be just like coming here to the Hill and expecting the Congress to function without our back office operations. We would not be able to proceed forward. So I think that it is more important for us to have an appropriate allocation so that we can meet these needs than it is to rob the administrative capability of NOAA at a time when we want to place more demands on it. I think that the amendment--even though moving towards additional help for weather forecasting--the bulk of it is for a technology transfer to the private sector, which I am all for, but it sounds to me like it is robbing Peter to pay Paul. On the floor, it may be easy to pass an amendment that cuts administrative costs at a government agency, but it may be something that we live to regret. So I stand in opposition to the amendment. I reserve the balance of my time.”