Political Quotes

“If some of my colleagues appear, I will be glad to yield the floor, but I will share a few more thoughts. The President's budget does some other gimmicky things. He claims he has a 5-year freeze on nondefense discretionary spending. He told the American people that in the State of the Union Address. We have looked at those numbers, and it appears pretty clear that there is a 5-percent increase in the discretionary spending next year. How do they accomplish that? They reclassify all discretionary transportation funding as mandatory spending and say it is not discretionary. They just declare it is mandatory spending, and they say they have reduced discretionary spending by $7 billion. What kind of hokum is that? This is not worthy of the President of the United States and the Office of Management and Budget, coming here with a gimmick like that--just redefine discretionary spending and say it is there and say: I have a freeze in discretionary spending. What else did they do? They hide another $9 billion in the reverse of that, in one-time mandatory savings. Actually, they use it in the discretionary account, but they do not count it as increased spending. That is $9 billion. And the President's proposed spending levels for next year will be even further out of whack as a freeze because this Congress is going to reduce the spending this year, hopefully by the full $61 billion the House has asked that we reduce it. You say: Mr. Sessions, this is all partisan bickering.…”