The problem is the agency we are appropriating money to has demonstrated with great clarity that it is spectacularly dysfunctional,

Society as a whole is better off when information is available to the public. Whether you are talking about how to prevent disease, or about who does the best job of treating disease, it is...

What we should be doing in this amendment is to provide every single dollar that we need to conduct the operation now going on in Kosovo. We should not provide one dime less and neither...

[Obey struggles to balance the demands of his faith with the obligations of pluralism — and for this, he receives few rewards. Recently, he offered an amendment to increase funding for child care, job training...

This bill is replete with gimmicks. It hides $45 billion in budgetary sleight of hand. This would be laughable if it wasn’t so corrosive to the public’s perception of what we are doing.

The problem is that the agency that we are appropriating most of the money to has demonstrated with great clarity that it is spectacularly dysfunctional,

The NRA was one of the items that we pointed to when we added money to the labor, health and Education appropriations bill by reducing the size of the tax cut.

They’re going to require a whole lot more money than he asked for last night, … The Army is stretched incredibly thin. We don’t have the personnel to respond if we had other problems in...

You’ve got the votes. Let’s pass this turkey, get it on to the president, let him veto it, let’s clear the air and then let’s really sit down and do business,

I wouldn’t mind wagering there will be, at best, a tiny dribble of sales.

We asked for specific information on how they (FEMA) are awarding contracts and who contracts are going to,

The services provided to patients are so much broader in scope than in the past, all of that costs more money and I believe that it all has value.

throwing money at the problem with no game plan.

Yet because the administration has not consulted the agencies it is moving around, the proposal risks creating huge new redundancies and unnecessarily expanding the size of government at a huge cost to taxpayers.

The report shows that Mr. Tomlinson was willing to ride roughshod over the law to impose his political mind-set on PBS programming, … The Corporation for Public Broadcasting needs significant reform and vigorous oversight.

Instead of telling us who is doing what and how, we got a few spreadsheets.

There is a sign that hangs on my wall that says, ‘What is it you want me to do to somebody else that is more important than what you want me to do for you?’

FEMA still does not know any more about what it was doing last week than it was a month ago, … an incompetent agency.

They are targeting programs for poor people to pay for tax cuts for rich people.

I am particularly concerned about [the presence] of asbestos.

we will have lost an important safety net for Wisconsin’s dairy farmers.

This is a very difficult question. If you take a look at the aging population and demographics, we are going to have a big increase in the number of health care jobs needed in the...

It is a moral imperative that we adopt that amendment on the defense bill. Otherwise the $21 million in this bill for victims of torture is a joke and a sham.

This is just get-through-the-week stuff.

Recent news reports suggesting that the CPB increasingly is making personnel and funding decisions on the basis of political ideology are extremely troubling.

We’re going to see the rest of it on the installment plan,

We are going to see a tremendous number of health professionals retire over the next 8-10 years. We are not doing nearly enough to deal with this problem.

They get rid of the symbol but still keep the pork.

What that, in essence, says is that you’re not going to worry about the biggest disasters that could occur, you’re only going to worry about the smaller ones,

I opposed Clinton’s budget deal in 1997 because he brought in $115 billion cut in Medicare that created greater pressure for providers not to participate.

represents yet another effort to conceal the full costs of meeting the challenges in Iraq until after the election.

We don’t have enough people going into those fields and there is a high burnout rate in some health care professions, so it is very important that we get more people into the pipeline right...

We have had to drag this administration kicking and screaming to get additional funding for border security. If he is finally serious about securing our borders I say ‘Welcome sir, it’s taken you long enough,

appreciated that a Christian would speak out.

I think we have to be very careful when we toss around terms like ‘cut health care costs.’ We would do very well to expect a cut in the rate of increase.

The president’s speech was an admission of gross miscalculation … The army is already stretched incredibly thin. We don’t have the personnel to respond if we had other problems in the world.

We have to take a look at what advertising itself contributes to added health costs, especially when it is aimed at gullible people.

This bill does nothing whatsoever to stop the fleecing of the taxpayer by listing earmarks on tax bills.

This (the FEMA reduction) is something that isn’t going to stick.

I think this goes far broader than public broadcasting. I think across the board there is an effort by Republican ideologues to force institutions across society to bend to their will. You see it in...

If you want quality service, you have to pay for it. You don’t buy into waste. I have great misgivings about the amount of advertising that we see in the health care field, some by...

would weigh down the homeland security agency with huge amounts of non-homeland security responsibilities.

We need to be careful when we talk about cutting health care costs. They are not going to be reduced – what we really want to do is do is slow the rate of increase.

Tomlinson’s resignation should be used to bring people together, not divide them as he and the administration have done,

It’s more than a little late.

This is on a magnitude we’ve never done before.

It makes no sense to tell the country and the profession that we will make the investment to pass it, and then turn around and not fund it.

By the administration’s own estimates, the new Homeland Security Department would employ at least 160,000 people,

Whether you are from Minnesota, Wisconsin or any other Northern tier state, you are not going to like the reimbursement formula. The problem we face is that we wouldn’t have that formula if a majority...

The defense bill should be about delivering equipment and support to our troops. Instead, it is being used to deliver a multi-billion bonanza to oil companies.