Political Quotes

“first, I rise to celebrate that we are finally, after months and months of doing everything under the Sun but facing our gravest challenge, which is spending and debt, focused on that on the floor of the Senate. That is progress. We have a long way to go, but at least that is progress. For months, I have been urging us as a body, urging the majority leader, who controls the floor, please, let's focus on our gravest challenge, Federal spending and debt, and not wait until the eleventh hour, not wait for a crisis atmosphere. Let's put on the floor meaningful legislation about spending and debt. For months and months, unfortunately, we did everything but that on the floor of the Senate. The majority leader looked for every bill and every topic but that, and it was all sorts of cats and dogs--many of them, quite frankly, trivial, unnecessary legislation, particularly compared to this grave challenge of spending and debt. Finally, last week, a group of conservatives here said enough is enough. We should not go out on our planned July 4 recess, which was scheduled to be all of this week. We said we are going to block that. It takes unanimous consent for that to happen. We said we would block it and, sure enough, we did. We said, wait a minute, we are not blocking that just to be here. We are not blocking that to be here and continue to move on to every other issue under the Sun but spending and debt.…”