Political Quotes

“Mr. Leader, there are 5 days--full days--left to go. You are right; we have been discussing this for some period of time, but with all due respect to any strategy that we have, you only brought six bills to the floor and passed six bills through this House, and that is only half of the appropriation bills. The MilCon bill got 255 votes; the Energy and Water, 240; the Legislative Branch, 357; the Commerce, Justice, Science, 242; T-HUD, which we didn't like and, apparently, a lot of your Members didn't like either, 216 votes; and the Defense bill, 278 votes. There was nothing on our side that stopped the appropriations process from going forward. You chose not to bring six of those bills to the floor. I don't take any blame on our side of the aisle, whatever our strategy might be. Our strategy has been consistent with, very frankly, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee strategy, and that is to have funding levels on both the defense and nondefense side of the ledger which were rational and reasonable. I repeat ad nauseam, as you know--and you are tired of hearing me repeat it, I am sure--Mr. Rogers' comments that the sequester levels given to the Appropriations Committee to meet their responsibilities were ill-conceived and unrealistic. That is Mr. Rogers' quote, not mine, not our strategy.…”