Political Quotes

“Madam Chair, I yield myself 2 minutes. Madam Chair, one of the things that the other side has been talking about is how we need a vision and need to plan for the future, which is true. The only problem is that the stuff we have before us isn't it. This is a collection of minor programs that already exist and changing them in ways that sometimes make no difference but sometimes have some negative counterpoints. There is one bill that was just talked about here that if there is a default on that bill, all of the sudden now, the Federal Government is on the hook to pay for that. It was never that way before. Those are minor changes that if we were handling these bills separately, if they were actually being done in an appropriate way, we could talk about those minor changes in there. But once you put them all together in a package with a couple of really good things to lead the way, everything kind of falls in place. Let me give you another example. One of the issues that comes in the folderol of bills that are underneath this is the Sea Grant Fellowship Program, which is currently discretionary. This bill would make it mandatory. Sounds kind of nice. The program places fellows in the executive branch. We have no problem with that whatsoever, but what this bill would do, one of the things in the weeds of this concoction of bills that has been cobbled together, is it would use taxpayer dollars to supply free staff for Members of Congress. That concept is just plain wrong.…”