Political Quotes

“Mr. President, what we have experienced today is a long debate about how we should spend our money, and I have said repeatedly that this is a terrible, rotten, no-good way to spend your money. It is a terrible way to budget your money. It is a terrible thing to sort of lurch from deadline to deadline. Basically, Congress lurches all the way to a deadline. We approach midnight, and we are either up or down on some bill that is decided by a few people but not by the vast majority. So Congress basically lurches from deadline to deadline, and then Congress waits until the last minute and then gloms all of the spending together in one enormous bill. When that bill comes forward, though, at the very last minute, we are told that we don't have enough time to debate and amend the bill, so no one really is allowed to participate in the process other than a few folks behind closed doors. The consequences of this have not been good, I think, for the country. All day long, what we have been requesting and what I have been asking for is simply 15 minutes to have one amendment, and my amendment would have said that we should live within our means, that we should live within the budgetary caps we have set and try not to add too much debt. We were denied this amendment even though we have had plenty of time. We probably had time for 40 or 50 amendments today had we actually allowed this to happen. But make no mistake--the result of this bill today is a bipartisan looting of the Treasury.…”