Heidi Hammel Quotes

A budget is a reflection of our values, and as a member of the House Budget Committee, I work each year to ensure that our federal budget invests in programs that support working families, enhance our research and development capabilities, and ensure the safety and security of the American people.

There is no escape from the cost of public needs.

If the government can afford luxury travel for its cabinet officials, then surely we can find the resources to invest in quality education, jobs skills training, and properly fund the State Department and foreign aid programs.

We need to be very thoughtful about how we propose to spend the money that NASA does have for space exploration. And we need to be clear that there's the human spaceflight part of NASA, and there's the science space part of NASA, and there's also aeronautics. Those are all very different things that NASA does.

Yes, the money could be better spent on Earth. But would it? Since when has money saved by government redlining been spent on education and cancer research? It is always squandered. Let's squander some on Mars. Let's go out and play.

In a time of tight budgets, difficult choices have to be made. We must make sure our very limited resources are spent on priorities. I believe we should have no higher priority than investing in our children's classrooms and in their future.

Nobody wants to pay higher taxes. But do you want your kids to get a good education? You have to pay for that. Do you want Medicare for senior citizens? I do. We have to pay for it.

Spending an extra dollar on the D.C. public school system isn't spending an extra dollar on education. Spending an extra dollar with the Pentagon doesn't buy you an extra dollar on defense. Republicans need to look skeptically at military spending.

It will be a great day when our schools have all the money they need, and our air force has to have a bake-sale to buy a bomber.

We have managed to acquire $13 trillion of debt on our balance sheet. In my view we have nothing to show for it. We haven't invested in our roads, our bridges, our waste-water systems, our sewer systems. We haven't even maintained the assets that our parents and grandparents built for us.

Government does not have a revenue problem; government has a spending problem. Government does not have a revenue problem; government has a priority problem. It is time that we begin to fine tune our focus and decide what the priority of government ought to be.

The budgets we work on in Congress are more than just fiscal documents; they are a reflection of our moral values as well. In choosing where to spend money, members of Congress choose what priorities they value.

Where we're coming down is we currently have $787 billion of stimulus that's been passed. We're certainly focusing on spending that money as quickly and as efficiently and as transparently as we can. We think that's absolutely the right strategy.

I think what's been lacking from our discussion for a long time is really that other part of what a Budget chair does, which is set the priorities for this country in terms of making sure we invest in the right places, in education, in job training, and to make sure we do a balanced approach moving forward.

A billion dollars every week for Iraq, $87 billion for Iraq. We can't get $5 billion for childcare over five years in welfare reform.

As proud as we are of this city and as extraordinary as it is, all of south Louisiana and all of the Gulf Coast is a very special place, and the federal government has underinvested in it year after year after year, whether it's education or health care.

A budget should reflect the values and priorities of our nation and its people.

Infrastructure is one of the core responsibilities of government and one that cannot be shortchanged by other controversial spending. I believe investment in infrastructure pays dividends for decades and is a wise investment of taxpayer dollars.

Every governor's got tough choices to make.

Government is inevitably going to play a very significant role in infrastructure, and in a country with a federal system where vibrancy and economic health depend on interstate commerce, it's not going to be private enterprise or state governments that will give you things like an interstate highway system.

I believe in infrastructure, I believe in investing in your hard assets. Where I think government starts to fail is when it starts getting itself weighed down with the social programs. And I think the American public just feels like a lot of that money is tossed aside and wasted.

I think in the end the big issue is that the private sector still needs more help. And the answer is not more big government. I know in my state our reforms allowed us to protect firefighters, police officers, and teachers.

Government spending clearly needs some adjusting. But a budget is a statement of our priorities, and balancing our spending on the backs of our nation's seniors is not the right approach.

Conservatives should insist that defense spending be examined with the same seriousness that we demand in examining the books of those government agencies that spend taxpayer money in the name of welfare, the environment, or education.

The government can access these funds but only following approval by the parliament to support our budget requirements and investments in infrastructure development, education, public health, and so on.