Political Quotes

“we were notified just after lunch of the new strategy that is coming out of the Cruz control that we are facing on Capitol Hill. It turns out that Senator Cruz is going to pick and choose those departments of government that he wishes to open. That's right. The junior Senator from Texas is going to go through his priority list of Federal agencies that he thinks should be open and funded. We closed down virtually all of them at midnight and, sadly, some 800,000 Federal workers have been furloughed across the United States, some of them going home without a paycheck for as long as this goes on. The height of irresponsibility is that the junior Senator from Texas now wants to pick and choose those agencies he wishes to reopen. One of those agencies, not surprisingly, is the Department of Veterans Affairs. Of course, we owe that obligation to our veterans. They wish to open the Department of Veterans Affairs, but perhaps not other departments. Let me remind the Senator from Texas of a couple of realities. They may fund the Department of Veterans Affairs with a short-term appropriations bill, but this bill will not help bring back the paychecks of the 546,000 veterans who currently work for the Federal Government--546,000, over half a million. To help the Department of Veterans Affairs, they are ignoring half a million or more veterans who are Federal workers.…”