Political Quotes

“What Senator Gramm did in his modification is really identical to what the House has done in their bill. The House does actually declare an emergency, but they actually do not exceed their caps. What Senator Gramm is going to do, the effect of his amendment is to keep the emergency declared and pay for it, so we do not exceed the overall budget cap as opposed to the caps on specific subcommittees. I think that makes perfectly good sense, to make sure that we pay for this within the whole appropriations account as opposed to just targeting specific subcommittees because of these occasionally arcane budget rules that we have to deal with in this body. I want to reiterate that I hope on this matter we can get a strong vote of support, frankly, from both sides of the aisle, that we are no longer going to continue the practice of previous Congresses--not this Congress, but of previous Congresses--every time that we have a disaster.”