Political Quotes

“I thank the Chair, and I thank Senator Boxer. She points out the hardship of people not getting a paycheck. Senator Boxer points it out very clearly. Some of these people are the same people who were just furloughed as a result of sequestration, so they already had smaller paychecks because of sequestration. Let me remind my colleagues that sequestration was put in 2 years ago as a placeholder. I don't know of a single Senator who wanted to see sequestration take effect. It was a placeholder to get to a budget negotiation. What did we do? We passed the budget. We passed the budget almost 7 months ago. We said: Let's negotiate. We knew it was not going to be our budget. We know we have to negotiate with the House to get a budget to get rid of sequestration. I mention that because once again we have a very simple request today: Open the government and pay our bills. Sit down and negotiate. It is pretty simple. We have not brought forward our policy objectives in this, which is to have a budget that makes sense for this country, that allows growth of employment, invests not only in roads and bridges but energy and research and education so we can build a competitive economy for the 21st century. We want a budget that is balanced on how we reduce spending--not just on what we call our discretionary spending accounts but also as we look at our entitlement spending. We want to see our health care system more efficient. We want to work to make it a more efficient system.…”