Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman. I think, certainly, we agree that we ought to work together. He and I have worked together, as a matter fact, on some very significant legislation more than a month ago that passed the House. I think the American public wants that. My urging to the majority leader would be that each of these ideas, if we are going to ultimately make them policy, has to be translated into legislation. The gentleman says all of us will be able to participate. Frankly, the gentleman knows, as well as I do, that legislation has to come to the floor for all of us to engage in, hopefully, with the ability to offer amendments and our ideas on how to perfect legislation that may come out of the committees. I would hope that we would see that. The gentleman mentioned the budget. I think the gentleman and others have said they want to accelerate the budget process. I think that is a good idea. I have always felt that we ought to move the budget and the appropriations bills earlier than we have historically done so that we can get those to the Senate, so they have time to work on them and bring them back, in order to have all 12 appropriations bills done seriatim, one after another. In my view, we are going to need a bipartisan effort and not have poison pills or the so-called riders in them in order for the Senate to consider them and be able to work their will and then go to conference and get that done all prior to October 1.…”