Political Quotes

“I was so excited when I came in because I have a new desk in the Senate. With seniority, I have now moved to the row where giants in our institution once stood. This is the particular seat which just a few weeks ago was held by John Kerry. Although my desk location is new, I come to the floor with what seems to be a persistent pattern in the Senate and in the Congress, which is that when faced with big problems that affect the fate of the Nation, let's delay, let's blame, and let's not get to the work the American people elected us to do. I rise today to speak about sequester--something that was never, ever meant to happen. It came out of the dark days of the debt ceiling debacle in the summer of 2011 when we were facing a downgrade of the U.S. economy and a dysfunction of the Congress. In order to get us to the table, we came up with an agreement to have a supercommittee that would meet on both sides of the dome to come up with how we could begin to solve the serious fiscal issues facing the United States of America. There was an insistence, yes, by one side of the aisle that we have a trigger. And, yes, the President looked back on history. What we have now is a situation where we said what we would propose as a trigger if we didn't get our act together, which we have not.…”