Political Quotes

“Mr. President, so here is the state of play. There is a group of 19 to 22 U.S. Senators, a bipartisan group that is trying to find a pathway forward. Senators Schumer and McConnell had a meeting. We don't know exactly how that went. There are some reasons to be encouraged. I think there are not that many reasons to be overly optimistic, but there is a pathway out of this. We can get out of this mess. I think lots of us understand, a lot of us having served in the legislature or at the executive level, actually at the county level as well. We all understand how insane this is to do four CRs in a row, and we all understand that we work very hard to get to the U.S. Senate. I am looking at all of you and thinking about how difficult everybody's race was just to arrive at the world's greatest deliberative body. Forgetting, for the moment, someone's calculus about who has a temporary or even long-term partisan advantage in light of this shutdown, we all know shutdowns make this institution weaker, and we all know shutdowns make Senators weaker. We don't fight tooth and nail and go through that awful process--there are some joyful moments in a campaign, but nobody necessarily looks forward to it. It is a tough thing. You don't go through that so you can diminish the body in which you serve, and we are diminished by this process.…”