Political Quotes

“before the distinguished Senator from New Hampshire leaves the floor, I want to commend her on a number of things, but most important is her hard work with me and many others on the biennial budget bill, which we hope will come to the floor in the future. I want to comment, because this potential shutdown, which I hope doesn't happen--we have been speculating or asking the agencies to speculate on what this means. If you read yesterday's Washington Post, you saw that the only agency of the government that will work seamlessly through a shutdown, without any shortcoming or deficiencies, is veterans health care. That is because we biennially appropriate for that. The one thing that will be open during the shutdown is the one thing we do in the 2-year process rather than a hit-or-miss process like the current appropriations act. So the distinguished Senator, who was Governor of her State that has a biennial appropriations process and has worked with it, knows what I know. If you can plan and make things predictable, you will save money and improve the quality of your service. I hope we can get this country to a position where we do biennially appropriate and can spend 1 of every 2 years doing oversight and find waste and find ways to do things better and less expensively.”