Political Quotes

“I have been in the Senate about 4 years now, and I am not sure I can recall a day before this one that so perfectly exposed Washington's total dysfunction. Last night or I guess this morning just before 1:30 a.m., Senate leadership finally dropped the $1.7 trillion Pelosi-Schumer spending bill--all 4,155 pages of it. In typical Washington fashion, hostages have been taken to pressure Members of this body to approve this bill without a reasonable opportunity to review, debate, or amend it. Most important to me are the Florida families fighting hard to recover from Hurricanes Ian and Nicole who are being used as pawns in exchange for approval of the massive and reckless $1.7 trillion Pelosi- Schumer spending bill. Immediately after the storm passed, I made clear that I would fight for and support a stand-alone disaster aid funding package to get Floridians the assistance they needed to recover. I even wrote to Senators Leahy and Shelby, the Senate top appropriators, urging them to work with me on getting much needed aid to Florida families as quickly as possible in a stand-alone disaster supplemental bill. My letter to them was written on September 30, 2 days after Ian made its catastrophic landfall near Ft. Myers, FL, but the aid Floridians desperately needed was delayed and turned into a hostage taken by Senate leadership so it could be stuffed in this massive omnibus bill.…”