Political Quotes

“one of the items previously discussed deserves further exploration; that is, the whole question of what we are going to do in the closing weeks to meet the Senate's obligation to the people of this country, to deal with the most basic responsibilities of this Chamber. The most basic responsibility, of course, is to meet and pass the spending bills necessary for the orderly operation of the Federal Government. For those who are not students of the process, the fiscal year that we work under starts on October 1, and we are supposed to pass 13 different spending bills so that come October 1, the actions of Government can continue their business. This is our ordinary responsibility. So we meet on September 14 to discuss a lot of issues of importance. But the American people have the right to ask us what we have done about our basic responsibility to pass the spending bills for the next year. The honest answer is, of 13 bills, we have only passed and had signed into law one bill, and that is the military construction bill. All of the other activities of the Federal Government, frankly, are still in play. They are being debated on Capitol Hill. It is a sad commentary on those who manage the House and the Senate that we have not made more progress. In fact, closer inspection suggests to us that there are some serious problems ahead.…”