Appropriations 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.

If we can afford tremendous sums of money to win the war, we can afford to invest whatever amount it takes to win the peace

When we explore other planets, we learn a lot about our own.

That’s what politicians do all the time. They promise you something, they don’t provide the money for it, and then they kick the can down the road and pass on the bill to the next generation.

The federal government is currently operating on a budget passed in the dead of night just before Christmas. It comprised three massive documents, ran to a staggering 3,296 pages, weighed in at a hefty 43 pounds, and had a price tag of $650 billion. Congress had about three hours to look at it before voting on it.

Government can’t work if lawmakers don’t give Government agencies the funds they need to do their work.

When you're the president of the United States, you have no money unless the Congress says, 'Here's what you can spend it on.'

I said to my liberal friend that we are fundamentally the same. I spend money like its my money and you spend money like its my money.

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

Educating Negroes is pointless and dangerous. The state should ensure that tax dollars from white citizens should only go to white schools.

We have a major crisis in the system. the Preisdent is so powerful that he overehelms the rest of the Government. .... This has been going on for over 50 years. Each president adds more and more power.... Congress is crippled and cowardly .... They don't use their appropriations power. They have been passing continuing resultions for 20 years.

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.

Congress, of course, is not bound to accept the president's budget figures, but the House has the sole power to appropriate funds for spending, and it is a duty that should not be ignored.

The Pentagon cannot acquire any equipment or technology without adequate funding. And the current budget process does not allow for the development and deployment of solutions to urgent problems on the battlefield.

If you look at history we've had since I've been in office, in an environment where we haven't had earmarks, we've still been able to get tens of millions of dollars for McLennan County.

The desire of appropriations committee members to protect their prerogatives prevent Congress from effectively monitoring the intelligence community.

When the Budget has once been approved by the President and transmitted to Congress, it is his budget estimate and no officer or official of the War Department would have any right to come up here and attempt to get a single dollar more than is contained in that estimate .

When we're told, "You have to find $750 billion to cut", and we say "OK, we can do that; ....the Congress shouldn't turn around and say, "Not in my district" or "Not my weapons system".

The House of Representatives cannot only refuse, but they alone can propose the supplies requisite for the support of the government. They, in a word, hold the purse: that powerful instrument by which we behold in the in the history of the British constitution an infant and humble representation of the people, gradually enlarging the sphere of its activity and importance, and finally reducing, as far as it seems to have wished, all the overgrown prerogatives of the other branches of the government.

Government shutdowns do not actually become what the term implies. Two-thirds of the government cannot shut down. We're only talking about the third of government that's discretionary spending, and even at that, nobody loses their jobs, and nobody loses their Thanksgiving turkey. The whole thing has resulted from the Republican Party thinking they bought the farm back in 1995.

Any President must depend upon congressional support in order to implement his foreign policy, for Congress has power to regulate foreign commerce, to raise armies and maintain navies, to lay and collect taxes for the common defense, and to declare war.

The federal budget is the workplan of the nation.

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

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

Congress may spend money in aid of the "general welfare.