Political Quotes

“The chairman said this bill came out with strong support and it is relevant. Now, the vote in the committee--this was many, many months ago--was strictly partisan, and this bill is really a diversion. It was marked up at the same time as that Pay China First Act. Does anybody remember that irresponsible legislation that came to the floor that was passed by the Republicans and died the death legislatively it deserved? So here we are with this bill, part of a two-package bill, that also is going nowhere. It is worse than that, because it is really a diversion, a diversion from what we really should be talking about. It requires the Treasury Department to provide to Congress information on the debt limit that we already receive, distracting from Republicans' repeated recklessness about default and reinforcing the false belief that the debt limit is a tool for managing the debt. House Republicans refused to invite OMB Director Shaun Donovan to Capitol Hill this week to testify on the President's budget--an unprecedented action. We asked this morning in the Ways and Means Committee: Why did neither the House nor the Senate controlled by Republicans invite the OMB Director? Well, the chairman of the Budget Committee was there at the time and said something like: We don't have time. That is really shameful.…”