Steve Buyer: “I don't consider this a high-water mark for Congress in the 15 years I've been here. I don't consider it a high-water…”

“I don't consider this a high-water mark for Congress in the 15 years I've been here. I don't consider it a high-water mark because I'm very disappointed in us, in how we have conducted ourselves with regard to our process, in how we have treated ourselves to each other, the lack of intolerance with regard to how we view each others' opinions. I don't think this is a high-water mark. A lot of this is taking place at the committee levels, and I have to reiterate my disappointment. We can battle it out. The democratic process is never meant to be pretty and easy. It's a difficult process, but it's exactly what it was meant to do so we wouldn't have capricious actions, that we wouldn't have power centralized and imperialistic from the top down. And that's what kind of happened here, and I'm very bothered by it. There is no 'time of the essence.' Yes, this is a program that we came together in a bipartisan fashion and passed almost 10 years ago to care for children, poor and impoverished and to take care of them; and we've done that. We can extend that existing program and work together in a bipartisan fashion, if that's what this was really about. But it's not.”