Political Quotes

“I rise to support the Musgrave amendment. I think it is the wise move to make. It shows good stewardship to come in and look at this budget and say, where do we slow the growth and how do we slow the growth? As we all know and as we have learned from so many of our States that have balanced budget amendments that have to curtail the growth of the budget, across-the-board reductions work. They work. And the reason they work is because you get to go in and manage. The Departments get to manage where they want to make those reductions. We all know you can make those half percent reductions. Mr. Chairman, they have been proven to work. The thing that is so very interesting to me is, even if this were to pass, making a half percent reduction and saving the taxpayers $268 million, which is what Mrs. Musgrave is seeking to do, you would still have an increase. You would still have an increase in Science, Commerce, Justice spending. That would be there. But what we are seeking to do is rein in what the Federal Government spends. We can sit here and argue about the particulars of budgeting. We can talk about how baseline budgeting always sets us up for saying whatever is put on the table is a cut, and we can talk about how zero-based budgeting might be a better approach to how the Federal Government goes about setting its annual budget. But one thing we know is this, that the liberal elites always want to come in and spend more.”