Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman for his comments. Let me only observe that the bills which the gentleman has now discussed for 3 weeks running, on which we've had colloquies, are no longer available in either the Senate or the House. He knows that. They were in the last Congress, and they died in the last Congress. There has been no legislation in the 59 days that we've been here, put on this floor, and only the majority leader can put legislation on the floor, no legislation which would have an alternative to the sequester. And, in fact, notwithstanding some of the representations that have been made, Mr. Speaker, there was a bill on this floor on July 19, 2011, which was called cut, cap, and balance; 229 Republicans voted for that bill. That bill had as its fallback, if the objectives of the bill were not reached, sequester. That was substantially before--many days before--the President, and through the person of Jack Lew, talked about making that a part of a piece of legislation that we needed so that we did not default on the national debt. And for the first time, not only since I've been serving in the Congress, some 32 years, but for the first time in history, as a result of that action of coming so close to defaulting on the national debt, this country was downgraded by a single point. The gentleman talked about the STEM bill that was passed. He voted for it. I voted for it. An overwhelming majority of Democrats and Republicans voted for it to help our economy.…”