Congressional Budget Quotes

While the budget resolution is a nonbinding blueprint, it is, nevertheless, an important guideline for Congress. Once the President's proposed budget is received by Congress on the first Monday of February, Congress generally goes to work on appropriating the funds required.

We know the Constitution gives the purse strings to the House.

There's not an appropriations bill in the last 10 years that the-that Democrats passed in the Congress. We haven't spent any money of your taxes in the last decade.

The debt limit does not affect the deficits or surpluses. The critical revenue and spending decisions are made through the congressional budget process.

I've been in Congress 14 years. I've been on the Appropriations Committee in which we are in charge of trying to move legislation.

Here's where I'm different from a senator. We pass continuing resolutions. We pass appropriations bills.

In mid-May, the House of Representatives approved the full amount of money that the Veterans Administration said was needed for next year - plus an additional $1 billion increase for veterans' health care.

In Congress, while the House's proposed defense budget calls for significant increases, it also cuts 11 billion dollars from veterans spending - including healthcare and disability pay. Be clear: we can't equate spending on veterans with spending on defense.

The national budget is perhaps the most important and least understood documents in Washington.

Historically, the responsibility for voting on the debt limit has gone to the party in the majority.

I've actually cut my personal pay individually; we didn't vote on that, but I've done that individually. It's important that folks know that we're going to roll up our sleeves and work on things, and members of Congress are going to sacrifice our own budgets first.

We've got the power of the purse in the Congress.

Even the Congressional Budget Office and the Social Security trustees appointed by the president say that Social Security is financially sound, without any changes for the next 40 to 50 years.

Harry Reid and the Senate haven't passed a budget. Their pay should be reduced until they do.

The Federal appropriations process is a marathon, not a sprint, and we are at the beginning of that process.

Next time a man tells you talk is cheap, ask him if he knows how much a session of Congress costs.

House Democrats have tried to increase port security funding on this House floor four times over the last 4 years, and House Republicans have defeated our efforts every single time.

Congress must build on the success of the Budget Control Act.

For much of this decade, both Congressional and administration budget projections showed a decline in science and technology accounts of between 20 and 30 percent in real dollars. The real impact to date has been far less severe.

We absolutely need to reform the Congressional budget-writing process.

Sickle cell does not have the priority in this country that it had in the 1960s, when I started working on it. Congress has been cutting everything that wasn't nailed down.

Rather than negotiating yet another continuing resolution at the last minute, the appropriations process should work as it was originally designed, with appropriations bills passing the House and the Senate and being signed into law by the president, after robust debate, with a process for amendments.

Chairing any Appropriations subcommittee is both a great honor and weighty responsibility.

I have saved $1,638,580 over my four years. That may not seem like a lot, faced with our deficit, but multiply it by 435 members of the House - and then the senators get three times as much - and you are adding up several millions in savings.