Political Quotes

“Madam President, in a few minutes the Senate will gather here to vote on the continuing resolution which funds our Federal Government, in this case for 2 weeks. It is hard to believe we have reached that point in Washington where we are going to fund our government 2 weeks at a time. Critics may look at us and say that certainly the men and women who serve in the House and Senate ought to be able to gather together, to sit down like adults, Democrats and Republicans, and really plot the spending and budget for our government for at least the remaining 7 months of this year. It does not seem like an unreasonable request. Instead, we appear to be lurching from 1 month to 2 weeks, and I don't know what is next. What is at issue is how much money will be spent in the remainder of this year and whether we will follow the House lead in a bill known as H.R. 1, the House budget bill, which made $100 billion in cuts for the remainder of this year. The Senate has already made some $41 billion in cuts in an effort to use these spending cuts to reduce the deficit, but the House wants to move that to a higher level. I just returned this past week from a visit to my State when we had a week of recess and went from one end of the State to the other to measure the House budget cuts and their impact on my State of Illinois. What I found is, in community after community, many of the cuts that were made by the House were not done in a thoughtful manner.…”