Political Quotes

“I yield myself the balance of my time. Very briefly, in one sense this is a meaningless resolution. My guess is that opinion makers in this country and I think abroad will consider it not meaningful, that it's going through the motions. But there is a real danger here, and that is what it says about the dynamics on the majority side. That's the worrisome thing. It isn't that we would slow things down. If this were to pass and become law, indeed, the ceiling would fall. We would go into default very soon. And I guess what this resolution being allowed to be brought up says is that there's a feeling within majority ranks that we have to let some bring this up, and perhaps a lot who voted ``yes'' now in essence vote ``no'' in order to bring some kind of peaceful equilibrium within the ranks of the majority. The problem is that we need to be able to reach across the aisle. Having set up a select committee, it says we need to worry less about the dynamics within our caucus or conference and more about reaching common ground. {time} 1430 That's why this exercise isn't meaningless. The danger is that it will become very meaningful and that we will become--this Congress-- essentially handicapped, if not imprisoned, by the inability of the majority on this side to step up to the plate and realize that in order to solve our problems there needs to be a balanced instead of imbalanced approach; that we have to look at revenues as well as spending cuts.…”