Political Quotes

“Mr. Chair, that might be all well and good, but last year, the commission's inspector general--not Perry, not this Congress, the inspector general identified the massive increase in the commission's funding over recent years as a threat to its ability to evaluate grant proposals, measure program performance, and conduct appropriate oversight, meaning this spike in funding threatens to worsen an already tenuous link between funding and success. Mr. Chair, these commissions are populated by the politically connected to hand out money to those that are connected to them. That is what they are for. That is what they do. They don't do much else other than that, and they are certainly no measure of success. Again, I presided over the hearing where we asked them for their metric, their measure of success. Again, Mr. Chair, it was that they received a lot of applications for grants and loans. People want money. That is your measure of success? That is pathetic. We certainly must bring the funding level for the ARC down to ensure that it has the capacity to ensure if you are going to spend the money--I am not getting rid of the commission. I am just saying if you are going to spend the money, let's do it wisely and actually prove that it does something to help the people that you allegedly are helping as opposed to the people that sit on the commission and dole out the tax dollars. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.”