Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, actually, I agree. It is not a great process. I would have loved to have expedited it and been done with it. In fact, I think, had we been able to reach an agreement with the President on the remaining bills not enacted since Christmas, we would have been done with this process. But back then the President closed the door, he vetoed the bills and then blamed the Congress for turning the Federal employees out on the street, when in fact it was his vetoes that did it. He won the PR wars during the Christmas holidays, no doubt about that. It was a public relations battle. I look back on what happened, and I think the President clearly won the PR wars. But in negotiating with the administration since then, in trying to reach a resolution on these bills, we have found it singularly impossible to get them to seriously come to grips with the problems with which we are faced in these various bills. After all, in December the President said that he wanted to get the budget under control and that he was in favor of a balanced budget. In February he said that the era of big government is over. About that same time, he was telling us he wanted $4 to $6 billion in additional spending in those bills he had vetoed. Now we are getting the message that anywhere from $8 to $12 billion additional spending is necessary for the same bills.”