Political Quotes

“Madam President, Senator Collins and I are here today to underscore the timeliness of a bipartisan solution we have been pushing since March. While I firmly believe we should replace the sequester with a balanced and comprehensive plan that delivers the same deficit-reducing punch, it appears to me, and to all of us, the sequester is here to stay for at least the remainder of the fiscal year ending September 30 of this year. We need deficit reduction, but the way in which we are doing it under the sequester is terrible policy and it is time to fix it. Just after the fiscal year 2013 sequester was triggered, with Senator Collins' leadership, she and I introduced a commonsense plan that would empower Federal departments and agencies to replace the indiscriminate cuts of sequestration with more strategic cuts. One only has to look at the way in which sequestration has endangered critical programs for working families, our senior citizens, and the middle class to know we have to do more than we are doing today. Throwing up our hands and doing nothing is poor governing. Senator Collins and I believe we have a responsibility here as leaders to inject some measure of common sense into the process. With that, Madam President, I wish to turn to my colleague Senator Collins for her thoughts on the necessity of the Collins-Udall legislative proposal. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.”