Political Quotes

“Madam President, I am here to speak on another topic, actually, and that is what we are about to do with respect to appropriations. This Congress was told by the majority leader that the Senate would return to the regular order, and I have no doubt he intended to make good on that promise. I know he is an appropriator. I know he is an institutionalist, and he really wanted to get back to the regular order. We were given assurances that keeping the government funded would be an orderly and bipartisan process, and it was true at the committee level, but that was then, and today we are far from that promise. Today the Republican leadership, led by House leadership, has refused to complete funding bills for the current fiscal year. And what is so confounding for the folks who pay attention and who believe in the appropriations process, who believe in our constitutional prerogative, our constitutional obligation to hold the pursestrings and to use that authority to be a proper check on the executive branch, is that simply kicking the can down the road and passing another short-term CR doesn't result in anything conservative at all. Many in this Chamber talk passionately about the need to eliminate government waste, fraud, and abuse, and yet a CR does exactly none of that. It does the opposite.…”