Political Quotes

“At the moment, Mr. Meadows, perhaps I would yield and you can give me a 30-second explanation of why the shutdown makes sense, but let's talk about the shutdown. Let's talk about the reality that the President proposed in his budget for 2019 that we should spend somewhere around $1.6 billion for border security, not specifying walls or all of it, but just border security. We, of course, do what we always do. We took that, and we put it through the ringer. We came out with $1.6 billion for border security, including some wall in there. But we didn't finish the task, so we did a continuing resolution last September and kicked the ball down the road, which is what we really do best, boom, boom, boom, bounce down the road until right after Thanksgiving. Then we hadn't quite completed it, so in a day when none of us were here, by unanimous consent, again, we kicked the ball down the road until December 11. Then the Senate sent over a piece of legislation that was unanimously passed in the Senate by voice vote, and it wound up over here the next day. Sometime between that evening when it passed the Senate and it wound up over here, the President decided that he needed $5 billion for a border wall. Now, perhaps there was a discussion of appropriations sometime during that process. I don't know. But in any case, it was in none of the bills. Suddenly, we had a $5 billion addition to border security. All of that happened overnight.…”