Political Quotes

“I, too, rise to join my colleagues in urging the House to pass the continuing resolution before us. This is not the course of action any of us would prefer, obviously, but the House passed all 12 appropriations bills, and it was on the path to complete action on appropriations before the start of fiscal year 2018, but our ambition was overtaken by events, whether you want to blame the ponderous pace of the Senate or time devoted to important issues like ObamaCare or tax reform. In any event, we need to pass this short-term continuing resolution to prevent disruption of important governmental programs and create a window in which budget caps discussions can occur. All of us stand ready to conference our appropriations bills once a debate on budget caps is resolved. I want to emphasize how important it is for us to pass each of the 12 appropriations bills. It is important that each be enacted rather than cherry-picking a few that may have the broadest support. It is dangerous to allow any part of the government to run on CR autopilot for a full year, when we have worked hard to include oversight provisions and targeted funding reductions in our bills. All of these would be lost with a yearlong CR. And speaking about the programs in the Military Construction-VA bill, which I chair, a full-year CR prevents DOD from starting 204 new projects. This is the core of our MILCON program. Each year we appropriate funding for hundreds of new projects.…”