Political Quotes

“I thank my colleague. Budget Conference I just want to point out the fact that we are now starting to see furloughs in the Federal workforce. There is no State in our Nation that is more ground zero, that is getting hit harder than the Commonwealth of Virginia with sequestration. There are real people who are being hurt. We have talked about some of the numbers, whether it is in Head Start or NIH grants, but let me share some of the things I have heard in the last 2 weeks from Virginians. Pat Hickman, who works at the Department of Defense in northern Virginia, says: ``I'm tired of hearing, `It's only one day,' and `it's only 20 percent.' '' Pat is now starting to decide, because of these 11 days of furlough, whether she is going to have to start to curtail her contributions to her Thrift Savings Plan. Her retirement would be in jeopardy. Another employee whose name didn't come forward said that if you have kids in school, during the summertime they are in daycare. This Federal employee spends $2,000 a month for daycare, and they are not getting a discount on these expenses that are built into their family budget. How could they have planned 1 year out that they were going to get furloughed 11 weeks in a row? Craig Granville, who works down at the shipyard in Portsmouth, says that furloughing for the next 12 weeks will hit their expenses hard. He has a wife who is currently going for treatment for an illness and the insurance company only pays half.…”