Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman for yielding. As you know, Mr. Spratt and I and others have been working on this for many months now to try to see if there is a budget that can garner majority support. There was some indication, I will tell the gentleman--he's usually at the White House with us. He wasn't with us today. But Mr. Cantor is usually joining us at the White House in our meetings with the President. But the fact is that the Senate Republican leader indicated he'd like to see some bipartisan agreement, at least on spending levels and observed that he thought the spending levels the President had sent down for our consideration were--he would like to see a lower number but he appreciated the fact that that number was sent down and was a constraint on spending, in fact, froze non-defense, non-security spending at last year's levels and did so for a number of years. So I made the observation at that point in time that I was hopeful that we in fact could perhaps reach some bipartisan agreement. I will be discussing with the gentleman probably early next week that possibility. But I will tell you that Mr. Spratt continues to work very, very hard at trying to see if he can come up with a budget resolution that reflects something that can get agreement. I want to tell the gentleman that one of the problems we have, as the gentleman knows, is we have created a situation of where the budget will have some very tough numbers on it. They are realistic numbers. They are the numbers.…”