Political Quotes

“Madam President, I thank Senator Conrad. Let me say the retirement of Senator Conrad from North Dakota is a great loss to the Senate and to the Nation. We have only six or seven months left to do something significant. It will be easier to do it when Kent Conrad is working with us. I hope we can achieve it. I also want to say for those who have come to the floor over and over to say it is time for a budget resolution, it bears repeating that we passed the Budget Control Act, which is a law. A resolution is just that, a resolution passed by the House and Senate, recommending our spending levels. A budget law passed by Congress, signed by the President, has the force of law and it in fact is going to determine our spending levels for the next year. The people who come to the floor and say isn't it about time we had a budget resolution so we knew what we were going to spend next year--we do. We passed it on a bipartisan basis. In fact, the Republican Senate leader voted for it, so it was not as though it wasn't a bipartisan effort, it was all the way, and the President signed it and it guides our spending. Let me speak for a moment about those ``thrilling days of yesteryear,'' as they used to say on the old radio serial, going back to 2001, if you can stick with me for a minute. That was the last time the United States of America had a balanced budget. Who was President at the time? It was President Clinton, who left that budget for President Bush.…”