Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar), our outstanding chairman of the full committee, for his very accurate explanation of the confusing, convoluted way we go about the budget and contract authority differences in this Congress. I want to commend the gentlemen from Virginia and from Michigan for bringing this legislation to the floor. It is a good bill. As I said, even though the CBO may not count it as reducing the deficit by $107 million, it is a step in the right direction, and we should be looking for savings in every Department and agency in this Federal Government, and we are going to have to if we are ever to get the Federal deficit and our national debt under any type of control. What we first need to be doing, though, is to stop spending hundreds of billions of dollars on very unnecessary foreign wars and turning the Department of Defense into the Department of Foreign Aid with all the nation-building that they are doing. Then we need to go to every Department and agency, and instead of building other countries with money that we don't have, we need to start building our own country. I think no one has been more of a leader in that regard than our chairman, Chairman Oberstar, but we need to start taking care of our own country and start putting the American people first once again. I do think that this bill is a step in the right direction; so I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this legislation.”