Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise to speak on the budget issues we are facing, the continuing resolution--all the issues that have been talked about over the last week or so. Oftentimes when I speak on the Senate floor, I talk about what it is like back home in Nebraska. I do so because I am enormously proud of my State. It just seems our State does so many things right. Again today I am going to take a moment or two to get started and talk a little bit about that and my experience in dealing with budget issues. I had the great honor at one point to serve a couple terms as mayor of a great city, the community of Lincoln, NE. It was a strong mayoral form of government. Each year I would have the responsibility of preparing a budget and submitting it to a seven-person city council that would take it apart and put it back together. I would work with them to get a budget done. It never occurred to me that as mayor of that city I had the ability not to do a budget. I cannot imagine walking into a state of the city address and saying to the good people of Lincoln that after giving it some thought, I decided that it was going to be a situation where I would not be submitting a budget for consideration of the city council. It just never occurred to me. I look at that community today led by a mayor who is very capable. It happens to be of the other political party than I am. That community has the lowest unemployment rate of any community in the United States. Why?…”