Already this war on gangs in California is taking money from universities to build prisons, and the universities have some clout.
Budgets are moral documents. They reflect the values of any government and when you're compromising clean air, clean water, and lead, you're making a statement about communities you don't care about.
Look, ideally I'd like to have free money to give to everybody. The reality is in government you have to choose and make decisions.
Only those who are ideologically opposed to military programs think of the defense budget as the first and best place to get resources for social welfare needs.
By cutting critical domestic programs such as education, health, environmental protection, and veterans' services, this budget reveals misplaced priorities.
We look at education as an investment. They [the conservative Republicans] see it as an expense.
If you don’t have the budget, you can’t get anything done. That’s why bureaucrats are always fighting about budgets.
Washington is stuck in an endless cycle of disaster response. The U. S. Government spends billions of dollars on disasters after they happen, but it pinches pennies when it comes to preparing for them. And both Federal and State policies create incentives for people to hold and rebuild in increasingly risky costal areas.
The wealthiest Americans often live as though they and their children had nothing to gain from investments in education, infrastructure, clean-energy, and scientific research.
If a budget is designed to show our values, it's clear where the majority stands: against opportunity, against education, and against America's hard-working, tax-paying middle class.
The Pentagon has a long tradition of dialing up the threat to get more dollars at budget time.
We're gonna put $456 million to go to an island of 50 people? You know... The bridge to nowhere. And this is right after Katrina happened. And so I offer an amendment to take that money from Alaska and repair the stuff in Louisiana.
I'll tell you what's funny about it [NSA wiretapping]: They tell us we got to cut the budget; we have to have budget rollback. We're going to cut the budget on air traffic control, and every once in a while your plane is going to be delayed for three hours. But we do have the money laying around to hire people to read your emails and listen to your phone conversations. That just doesn't make any friggin' sense at all.
In America, we have subsidized private jets, big banks and hedge fund managers. Wouldn't it make more sense to subsidize kids?
Most people in the country would think the diamond jubilee is a wonderful occasion for us to celebrate together as a community and as a nation. But I suspect that most people in the country would think, given that there is very little money around, that this probably would not be the top of their list of priorities for the use of scarce public resources.
Let us invest less and less in war and tax cuts for the richest 1 percent, and more and more in jobs and schools for the other 99 percent.
You have got to be willing to pay for the government you want.
The budget is not just a collection of numbers, but an expression of our values and aspirations.
Latin American countries have lavished money on its armies when they should have been lavishing it on their children.
Tax policy should reflect a country's values and address its problems.
Real Texans want their kids to have the best education possible, not the one politicians looking to brag about budget cuts have left us with.
My appropriations requests have always sought to benefit New Jersey. That is how I base my submissions to the committee for consideration.
… while they're adding teachers in places like South Korea, we're laying them off in droves. It's unfair to our kids. It undermines their future and ours. And it has to stop. Pass this bill, and put our teachers back in the classroom where they belong.
It's all about the money.
I know each fund has its supporters, and that some will not want to see the surplus go to schools. But, in tough times, you have to set priorities. And our priority is education.
