Political Quotes

“There is an explanation. I cannot necessarily and I do not want to make explanations about why it was done this year. I will talk about that for a minute. The fact is that it is reasonable for us to say that there is going to be an emergency that happens in this country that we cannot budget for. Katrina is an example. We could not have anticipated that a year ahead of time there would be an emergency as catastrophic as Katrina and the devastation it caused in the gulf States. And I have been there and many of you have been there to see the devastation. So that is why we allow for a process that we can have a supplemental appropriations. We get an emergency appropriation, as it is called; and that is appropriate because we need to act quickly. We need to act appropriately to help Americans. We have done it to help people in other countries as well. That is certainly true in time of war as well. If you go to war, you did not anticipate going to war. Then you have an emergency appropriation, a supplemental is what we call it, and that is appropriate. What is less understandable and I think that you make clear is what about a year later? What about 2 years later? Why cannot we anticipate at least in a better way what in fact the costs will be to clean up in Katrina? If we are wrong, we might need to do a supplemental. But now to not say we are in Iraq. There is a cost; we know what it is costing us every week.…”