Political Quotes

“I commend my friend, the Senator from Oklahoma, who has made this a passion. I would acknowledge this is a challenge that transfers between administrations. When I was Governor of Virginia, under the previous administration, we tried to consolidate workforce training programs. We still had those 47 programs and were not able at the State level to consolidate into a more meaningful approach. I recall when I first came to this body, I thought let's at least find the low-hanging fruit, and we found those programs that both the Bush administration and the Obama administration had agreed were duplicative and unnecessary--16 programs, $1 billion; but a billion here and a billion there and you are talking about real money. I am happy to report 11 of those 16 programs have been eliminated. But the fact that there are those that both administrations agreed upon that have not been eliminated means there is more work to be done. I would simply point out to my friend from Oklahoma there has been legislation that he and the ranking member, the Senator from Delaware, who has also worked hard on these issues, supported 2 years back called the GPRMA bill, the Government Performance Results Modernization Act. In that bill for the first time ever, starting this year, there is a requirement that each agency of the Federal Government identify not only those programs that are the most successful, but those programs that are the least successful.…”