Political Quotes

“I think somehow I made a mistake. I came over here to listen to the debate, and it's almost like ``Alice in Wonderland,'' like we all fell down the hole here--up is down, down is up, black is white, white is black. I mean, this is confusing to the folks out there, so let's just try to understand where we are at this moment. We sent a bill--that is, the Republicans in this House sent a bill to the Senate that was rejected, rejected for several reasons. One of them was the pay-for, how is it going to be paid for--ways that dealt, I think, unfairly with workers who are unemployed. It shortened the period of unemployment not to 99 weeks, but even shorter, to just over 50. And it also went after Medicare recipients, causing them to pay more. It was rejected by the Senate. The Senate put together a compromise. Ninety percent of the Senators--well, just short of 90 percent--89 Senators, Democrat and Republican, voted for a 2-month compromise that was paid for, with the understanding that they would spend the next 2 months trying to figure out how to make this thing last a whole year. We're really far apart on many of the underlying things, and so here we are running up against the deadline. And, by the way, if we had a conference committee, if we actually had a conference committee and they came to a conclusion before the end of the year, did anybody consider the Senate rules? There is a potential of 90 hours of debate in the Senate before it could be taken up and passed.…”