Political Quotes

“Absolutely. I think that most of our friends who have been looking at the Congress operate thus far have been surprised to wake up in the morning and all of a sudden see headlines indicating that such and such is about to happen. We have always tended to take these kinds of decisions through a process of hearings; people would come before the committee to talk about the pros and the cons of all of these kinds of actions. But that is not what is happening here, not in this instance and in other instances as well. There are just two or three people, or whatever number, who have gotten together and decided what they need to do in order to make it work. As our friend from Missouri said earlier, if this were being done in order to do something about the deficit, I am convinced that the veterans in my congressional district and the veterans all across America would be lining up to do their fair share, because they too want to see us take this deficit down even further. But that is not what is being done here. We are going through a process of deciding how much money can be moved to put over in a big pot that the friends and supporters of our Republican colleagues can dip into in order to see a tax break for themselves. So that is what is happening here as a result of that. I hope that the American people will wake up and get in touch with their Congress people before we do our veterans what I consider to be irreparable harm.”