Political Quotes

“I note that the chairman and I are well aware of how well things go when we take each one of these bills. He certainly has led that effort, and that is the way we should do it. I mentioned this when the Vermonters were here last weekend. Marcelle and I hosted them, so many of whom had driven through the night to join the hundreds of thousands of people in the Nation's Capital for the Climate March. Many of them asked: Why can't we do it the way we used to? I told them we were ready to go to all of the bills in November, and I am sorry that leadership said no. There are things on which we have done a lot in this bill. Those of us on the Appropriations Committee have read this bill, and we have read most of it since last November. The EPA provides funding to improve the environmental quality and ecological vibrancy of our small State's great Lake Champlain, the jewel of New England, as well as crucial funding for similar partnerships all over the country. I am also pleased to report what is not in this bill. In a bipartisan way, we get rid of more than 160 poison pill riders--riders that would have undermined the health insurance of millions of Americans by attacking the protections they have under the Affordable Care Act and riders that would have slapped restrictions on women's access to healthcare, especially in rural areas, and riders that would have rolled back consumer financial protections of Dodd-Frank regulations and weaken environmental protections.…”