Political Quotes

“There are other Members who are coming down to speak. But while I have this time, I wanted to just add a few other comments to the Record. First of all, over the weekend, there were some reports and some statements made that this was a manufactured crisis by one of our colleagues on one of the big talk shows on Sunday morning. First of all, that infers this is not a real crisis, that it was just made up because we enjoy fighting here in Washington. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is not fun to do, but sometimes this is necessary. Sometimes it is necessary to draw sharp lines between policies because the outcome affects people's lives. Where would we have been along the gulf coast had that Cantor doctrine been in effect and used when Katrina hit the gulf coast? Instead of New Orleans and Biloxi and large portions of the gulf coast being rebuilt today, we would still probably be debating where we were going to find the money to do the work. Now, that is No. 1. No. 2, the crisis may not be real for the whole country right now, today, as we speak on Monday, but I promise, for people in many States--and I will find this document which I have used several times in debate on the Senate floor--it is pages and pages, too numerous to mention--they are already having a crisis because these line items and numbers represent projects that have already been pink-slipped, shut down. Government is still operating through this week, and we are going to work this out.…”