Political Quotes

“When I was campaigning for this job 2 years ago, one of the things that I told folks back home I would do if I ever got here was to try and roll back discretionary spending to 2008 levels. One of the things I've done since I've been here is work on the Republican Study Committee budgets--we've done two of them now--which try and make an effort to really get our spending addiction under control and lower our deficits and balance our budget in a reasonable amount of time. {time} 2130 As encouraging as this bill is and as much work as the Committee has done on this particular bill, it doesn't accomplish those things. That's why I'm here. I also draw attention to the fact that this bill, as much as an improvement as it has made over previous bills, still spends more money than we did last year. The amendment, Mr. Chairman, is fairly simple. I seek to cut $3.1 billion from this expenditure. That represents 9\1/2\, roughly 10 percent of the overall bill. However, it only represents about one-half of 1 percent of all the discretionary spending. We're spending over a trillion dollars in the discretionary budget this year. More importantly--and what I think the folks back home would like to know-- is that it's only one-sixth of 1 percent of the overall Federal expenditures. It's only one penny out of every $6 that we spend. It is our effort to try and bring some sanity to the spending side of the equation. It is not an across-the-board cut. We have tried, Mr.…”