Political Quotes

“I wish to say a few words about the bill that we voted on this afternoon and put it into a broader context. This was the bill to begin the vote and debate on the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations bill, which passed out of the Appropriations Committee in a strong bipartisan vote. There has been a lot of talk and a lot of stories in the media over the last several weeks about the government running out of money, a government shutdown. In a lot of those stories, the narrative talked about the Republican Party being the one focused on a government shutdown. The media actually loves this narrative, but, like a lot of narratives in the media, they are not always so accurate. So I wanted to give what I think is the much more accurate story, what is really going on here in the Senate. Many of us are new Senators--the Presiding Officer and myself included--13 of us, actually. A lot of us came to Washington and a lot of us actually ran for the Senate because we were fed up. We thought the American people were fed up; we knew they were fed up with the dysfunction of the Federal Government. There are a lot of examples of that. You know many of them. In the last several years we have run the debt of our Nation from $10 trillion to $18 trillion. Think about that. Looking at these interns here on the floor, that is going to be their responsibility if we don't get ahold of that--$18 trillion.…”