Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank him for his hard work to help keep the government open. While many of us will not agree on the legislation before us today, we know it is necessary for us to proceed. So I don't rise to support or oppose the legislation but, instead, to comment on the situation that we are in. Again, today, we are in a situation. We are debating a short-term bill to keep the government open on a week-by-week basis. This is not any way to run a government or a business. It certainly is not the way, as the military leadership has told us, to protect the national security of our country--on a week-to-week basis. Democrats will work with Republicans on legislation that will create jobs, that will strengthen the middle class, and that will reduce the deficit. On all three of these scores, this Republican spending bill fails. Democrats have long fought for fiscal responsibility as a top priority of this Congress. We won't go into the history right now, but it's well known that President Clinton took us out of a period of deficit--his last five budgets being in surplus, or in balance. President Bush turned that around immediately when he became President, and now we have to dig ourselves out of the deficit that he has taken us into. Last December, Democrats passed a $41 billion cut in the President's budget. We did so with only one Republican vote, $41 billion. Democrats are in the lead on fiscal soundness.”