Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Again I say, there was a way to pay for this. We have to be frank with the American people on this. Jobless benefits have cost so far $319 billion, and yet unemployment is still at 9.6 percent; and we've seen really nothing coming from the other side who has controlled the majority in the House, controlled the majority in the Senate, controlled the White House. We've seen nothing to help small businesses get going again to hire. We've seen nothing to promote competitiveness in the U.S. economy. Their answer is to continue to extend unemployment benefits unpaid for. Now there's agreement. We're not disagreeing about extending the unemployment benefits at this time. We're saying, let's do it in a responsible way and pay for it. It wasn't always this way. This is the ninth attempt to extend this program. And when Democrats passed their only paid-for unemployment insurance extender bill in November of 2009--the only one that was paid for--the Obama administration hailed that ``fiscally responsible approach to expanding unemployment benefits,'' adding that ``fiscal responsibility is central to the medium-term recovery of the economy and the creation of jobs.'' That was from the administration's statement of policy about the Democrats' one paid-for UI extension bill, which was H.R. 4548. There were 156 Republicans who supported that November 2009 bill.…”