Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise today to point out that we are only 12 days from the end of the fiscal year and to call upon the majority leader to bring the appropriations bills to the Senate floor. We have wasted the last 2 weeks. We have spent time voting on issues that were not nearly as time-sensitive. By the end of July, the Senate Appropriations Committee had held hearings on, thoroughly considered at full committee markups, and reported for consideration by the full Senate 11 of the 12 appropriations bills, roughly 96 percent of the discretionary funding permitted by the caps. All of the bills--all of them--received strong bipartisan support. We advanced six of the bills unanimously. Unanimous support for any bill in today's Senate is no small feat and a testament to the hard work and seriousness of our committee members on both sides of the aisle, led by our chair, the senior Senator from Washington. But what has happened after the committee reported its bills? Nothing. They have languished on the Senate calendar. Instead of taking up the Senate committee-passed bills--including bills that passed unanimously--that we passed earlier in the summer, the Senate has spent this month processing nominations and taking show votes aimed at scoring political points. Show votes: We had another of those yesterday. We voted for the second time on the exact same bill on IVF. What was that? That is not what the Senate should be doing at this critical time.…”