Political Quotes

“2 days ago, Senator Coburn offered a series of amendments to the debt ceiling bill requiring $120 billion in funding cuts, including $1.3 billion from the State Department. During the debate on those cuts, Senator Coburn stated that the ``foreign ops appropriations increased by . . . 33 percent last year.'' If that were accurate, I would share the Senator's concern. But when the Senator purports to speak for the American people, as he often does, he should stick to the facts. The Senator surely knew that by suggesting the State and Foreign Operations budget increased by 33 percent in a single year he was distorting the actual increase, and that he was not counting the billions in supplemental funding for these programs in fiscal year 2009, every dollar of which was added to the Federal deficit and will have to be paid in future years because the former Republican administration wanted to pretend to be spending less. In its fiscal year 2010 budget, the Obama administration, responding to pressure from Congress, stopped the budget gimmickry of funding ongoing programs like aid for Iraq, year after year, in off budget ``emergency'' supplementals. Instead, the President requested funding for these programs in its regular fiscal year 2010 budget.”