Political Quotes

“We will have a vote on the floor of the Senate. It is an important vote because tomorrow is the day of sequestration. The American people are learning new terminology. The fiscal cliff meant nothing to most Americans 6 months ago, but by New Year's Eve many understood that something serious was about to occur. Laws had been passed which meant that taxes would go up on virtually every taxpaying American on January 1 if Congress failed to act. That was the fiscal cliff. We reached a last-minute agreement on ways to avert that from happening and to make sure any tax increases on the income tax side were going to be exclusively applied to those in the highest income categories. Well, the Americans breathed a sigh of relief and said thank goodness that emergency is over. We are good in Washington at manufacturing crises, and now we are in a new crisis of our own creation. This is not some act of God, some natural event, some occurrence we have no control over. We created this. We created something called sequestration, and here is what it was all about. The President sat down with the leaders in Congress--this goes back over a year now--and said: Listen, we need to do something about our deficit, but let's do it in a bipartisan way and a balanced way. Let's put together a supercommittee--an equal number of Democrats and Republicans--and let's reach an agreement once and for all. Stop bickering and reach an agreement. Let's reduce the deficit as a result of that agreement.…”