Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentlelady from North Carolina yielding me the time. We are here today to talk about a rule that would qualify certain amendments to solve a procedural problem, a mistake that the majority party made here. But why not use this rule as an opportunity to something really more, to help solve and resolve ongoing problems. One could look at the far map that I have of the United States over there. Everything that is in red is land and property owned by the Federal Government. Ronald Reagan looked at that and said, You never see something like that this side of the old Soviet Union. Think about that. One out of every three acres of this country is owned and controlled by the Federal Government. And I hate to say this, but in 2007, OMB did a study and said that, of that, $18 billion worth of that property is excess. It is useless. It is needless. This year, Peter Orszag updated that report and said there are 14,000 buildings that the Federal Government owns that are excess, and 55,000 buildings that are underutilized and not necessary. When I first came here, The Washington Post did an editorial that said, Until the District of Columbia can get hold of all the excess land and buildings owned by the Federal Government and put those to economic use, the economy of Washington, D.C., would never grow. Those of us in the West have been saying that for a long time. In fact, this year, I introduced two land transfer bills.…”