Political Quotes

“I know things seem like they are speeding by us at the speed of light on this bill. We received an announcement of a breakthrough on the part of some of our colleagues that is going to give this bill the momentum to pass and come out of here with a bunch of votes. But I think there are some questions we need to ask. First of all, I see the distinguished chairman of the Finance Committee. I know he has probably looked at this. The underlying bill provides that $8.3 billion is immediately appropriated as emergency spending to fund the trust fund that will fund at least some of the operations in this immigration reform bill. But when I started to look at it a little more closely and consider the fact that even though the underlying bill had zero funds for new Border Patrol personnel, this new bill--this new proposal, I should say, that we have yet to see-- supposedly it is going to come around 6 o'clock--has an additional 20,000 Border Patrol. That is doubling the size of the Border Patrol. Senator Hoeven, the distinguished Senator from North Dakota, said earlier in response to a question I asked him, that would cost an additional $30 billion. So we have $8.3 billion, if my arithmetic is correct, and $30 billion. That is $38 billion. I noticed on page 48 of the Congressional Budget Office cost estimate, the CBO estimates that implementing this bill, the underlying bill, would result in net discretionary costs of about $22 billion more.…”