Political Quotes

“Last evening the Senate made a regrettable decision to defer action on completing its work on the fiscal year 2011 Appropriations bills. I shouldn't have to remind anyone that we are in mid-December, 1 week before Christmas, nearly 3 months into the fiscal year. Yet because our Republican colleagues have decided that they cannot support a bill that they helped craft, we now face placing the Federal Government on autopilot for another 2 months under a continuing resolution--a CR. My colleagues should all understand the consequences of this decision. First, a CR does virtually nothing to accommodate the priorities of the Congress and it abdicates responsibility for providing much needed oversight of the requests of the executive branch. Each year, the Senate Appropriations subcommittees conduct hundreds of hearings to review the budgets of our government agencies. Our committee members and staffs conduct thousands of meetings with officials from the executive branch, our States and municipalities, leaders and workers from American companies, and the general public. The committee relies heavily on the work of the Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Budget Office and outside experts to determine spending needs. Tens of thousands of questions are forwarded each year to officials in the executive branch asking them to justify the funding requested for each respective agency. It is painstaking, detailed work.…”