Political Quotes

“This is a sage-grouse. I found out that the sage-grouse have poor eyesight, so they often collide with barbed wire fences and other obstructions that are difficult to see. And these collisions are often fatal. But the sage-grouse looks like a keen-eyed hawk compared to Congress. That is because the sage-grouse recently collided with the National Defense Authorization Act, and the nearsighted bird won. Hopefully this time it won't be fatal. We were supposed to vote to send the NDAA to the President this week, but a disagreement between the House and the Senate Republicans about the sage-grouse got egg all over the deal. That is right, a bill that authorizes over $600 billion in spending on wartime operations, weapons acquisition, servicemember benefits, and many other provisions critical to the defense of our country was taken down by a bird. But unlike the plane that landed in the Hudson River, Congress doesn't seem to have a Captain Sully to rescue it from bird-induced mayhem. Don't get me wrong. The NDAA has many problems. It redirects billions in critical funding towards a program the Defense Department does not want. It sidesteps the Bipartisan Budget Act compromise by requiring supplemental funding just to keep the Pentagon running. It contains a myriad of poison pill riders, from allowing contractors to engage in discrimination against the LGBTQ employees, to releasing tens of thousands of handguns into our communities with no background checks.…”