Political Quotes

“I thank the Chair. This Senator wants to take a few moments to talk about the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which I think is a good piece of legislation. I support it, and I hope my colleagues will allow it to move forward. I think when God speaks, maybe He would speak about that issue too. However, I really want to talk a little bit more about where we are on the funding of Planned Parenthood, the two aspects of it. One is a large--hundreds of millions of dollars--appropriations that goes there through the Medicaid program, and another is $28 million that was directly appropriated last year from the government to this Planned Parenthood agency. I call it an agency, but that is not really correct. It is a nongovernmental entity, a nongovernmental activist group that does some good things and some things I don't think are good. I think we ought to recognize that Congress has certain powers. It is very clear, I would submit, that a majority of the Members of the Senate and a majority of the Members of the House of Representatives do not want to fund this agency--certainly not as it has been funded in the past. What we have, as I understand it now, is at least $28 million of federal money that goes to it unless Congress decides not to fund it. Colleagues, the power of the purse resides in the United States Congress. Not one dollar can be spent by the President, any of his Department heads, or the U.S. military, unless Congress has appropriated the money.…”