Political Quotes

“Madam President, I rise today to talk not about legislation or about the tax bill--well, I may talk about the tax bill a little-- but I do wish to talk about deadlines and how we all do our work, whether it is in the Senate, in our businesses, or in our personal lives. I wish to talk about deadlines missed and deadlines that don't exist. One of the realities of this place that I think is very unfortunate is that we rarely make our deadlines. These are self-imposed deadlines. These are deadlines that we create. We pass a law that says something has to happen by September 30. We set the deadline, and then we don't make it. Most notoriously, it happens with budgets. I don't know the last time we had a budget on time. I think it is about 17 years ago. I suspect there are probably less than a dozen Senators in this Chamber who were here when we last passed a budget on time. There is no excuse for that. The problem is that when we put it off, we don't know anything more than we did at the time of the deadline. We could have done it, and yet, because we are able to, we put it off. That is human nature, unfortunately. Who among us would not have put off the deadline for a book report if we could have said to the teacher: Gee, I don't think I can make that Monday morning deadline. I will just do my book report on Tuesday. Life doesn't work that way. In the real world, there are deadlines. There are consequences if you don't get your work done on time.…”