Political Quotes

“some of the Senators on the Republican side have other appointments to make, so I am going to defer my remarks until the end of the colloquy. What I will do is first state why we are here; second, go to Senator Isakson, then we will go to Senator Pryor, and then back to Senator Collins, if we may. Madam President, our leaders--the Democratic leader, the majority leader and the Republican leader--sometimes get criticized. They have hard jobs, and we recognize that. We also recognize that they can't do their jobs unless we do our jobs well. So tonight what some of us thought we would do, on the Democratic side and the Republican side, is apply a management principle that is called ``catching people doing things right.'' We believe the majority leader and the minority leader, Senator Inouye, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and Senator Cochran, the ranking member, are doing things exactly right when they say it is their intention to try to move all 12 of our appropriations bills through the Appropriations Committee and get them to the floor so we can deal with them before the next fiscal year starts. We are here not just to compliment them but to pledge to them our support in helping them achieve that goal. There are many important reasons we should do that, but basically it is our constitutional responsibility to appropriate money. It is a time when we need to save every penny we can.…”