Douglas Alexander: “I do not suppose there is a row of seats in the U.S. Senate that produces more passion and eloquence than the back row…”

“I do not suppose there is a row of seats in the U.S. Senate that produces more passion and eloquence than the back row on the other side of the aisle. I enjoyed listening to the Senator from New York and the Senator from Massachusetts on this subject. I was especially struck by the Senator from New York, who spoke about budget deficits and talked about history and talked about an ocean of red ink and made a very impassioned speech. Then, when she got to the end of her speech, she volunteered to be on the list of big spenders that is going to be created at noon, which will be those who vote for the Reid amendment. The Gregg amendment and the Reid amendment are identical. They are about border security. All the Reid amendment does is they took the Gregg amendment, which is a carefully structured approach to try to help maintain our border security on the southwest border, just at its present level, and they just struck out ``Gregg'' and they wrote in ``Reid'' and they did something else: they struck out the way to pay for it. So they are going to pay for it from thin air. They are going to pay for it with cotton candy. There was talk about a brazen smokescreen. That is a brazen smokescreen. That goes on all the time here. I am on the Budget Committee. The Senator from New Hampshire is the chairman. We sat in the Budget Committee and voted down--I think it was 17 ``no'' votes--as the Democrats sought to add $128 billion over the next 5 years.…”