Political Quotes

“let me reiterate my concern about this piece of legislation. Normally, when we would come to the floor from the Committee on Appropriations, we would have pretty well fashioned legislation which we knew was very close to something that the Senate was going to consider; and, in the end, we would be convinced that it would pass both bodies. As late as Thursday or Friday of last week, we believed that we would be able to report out of Committee a bill that was not offset. Even today, the Defense Department is not sure whether this particular piece of legislation will be offset. They know now that we will not have IMF. We know that we will not have the U.N. attached to this bill. On the other hand, the other body has an entirely different bill with no offsets. It is over $5 billion, almost twice as large as this particular bill. Under normal circumstances, the Defense Department would not be caught in the middle. It would be able to say, okay, we are going to try to get a bill and work things out. All day long, as I understand it, they have been trying to come up with provisions of what would happen if we passed a bill that is offset with the Skaggs amendment, which the President will veto, and with provisions which offset the domestic policy, which concerns the White House and they claim they will veto. It puts us in a position where we have a bill which will not be signed into law, and they only have 4 months left in the fiscal year.”